Centre for Internet and Society

Brazil passes Marco Civil; the US-FCC Alters its Stance on Net Neutrality

geetha — 2014-04-24T10:05:32Z

Hopes for the Internet rise and fall rapidly. Yesterday, on April 23, 2014, Marco Civil da Internet, the Brazilian Bill of Internet rights, was passed by the Brazilian Senate into law.

Marco Civil, on which we blogged previously, includes provisions for the protection of privacy and freedom of expression of all users, rules mandating net neutrality, etc. Brazil celebrated the beginning of NETmundial, a momentous first day about which Achal Prabhala blogs, with President Rousseff’s approval of the Marco Civil.

At about the same time, news broke that the US Federal Communications Commission is set to propose new net neutrality rules. In the wake of the Verizon net neutrality decision in January, the proposed new rules will prohibit Internet service providers such as Comcast from slowing down or blocking traffic to certain websites, but permit fast lane traffic for content providers who are willing to pay for it. This fast lane would prioritise traffic from content providers like Netflix and Youtube on commercially reasonable terms, and result in availability of video and other content at higher speeds or quality. An interesting turn-around, as Marco Civil expressly mandates net neutrality for all traffic.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/brazil-passes-marco-civil-us-fcc-alters-stance-on-net-neutrality

Analysis of ICANN revenue shows ambiguity in their records

Sunil Abraham, Arjun Venkatraman and Akriti Bopanna — 2018-04-27T10:01:26Z

We, The Centre for Internet and Society, have been instrumental in having ICANN become transparent about their revenue with our persistent requests for their sources of revenue.

Click to download a PDF of the Analysis

In 2014, CIS' Sunil Abraham demanded greater financial transparency of ICANN at both the Asia Pacific IGF and the ICANN Open Forum at the IGF. Later that year, CIS was provided with a list of ICANN's sources of revenue for the financial year 2014, including payments from registries, registrars, sponsors, among others, by ICANN India Head Mr. Samiran Gupta.This was a big step for CIS and the Internet community, as before this, no details on granular income had ever been publicly divulged by ICANN on request.¹ Our efforts have resulted in this information now being publicly available from the years 2012 onwards. We then decided to analyze all these years of financial data collaborating with Ashoka fellow Arjun Venkatraman and following are our observations:

To get a clear picture of ICANN's revenue, it can be seen that over the years it has been growing steadily. In 2016 it was 1.7 times the revenue it made in 2012.

A breakdown by country reveals that a significantly higher proportion of their revenue is from sources registered in the United States.

It is also interesting to note that revenue from China has seen a spike in the past 2 years, especially in the period of 2015-2016. Verisign CEO, James Bidzos confirmed in an interview to analysts that Chinese activity had surprised them as well though they expected the activity to slow down in the second quarter of 2016.²

Verisign also happens to be the top paying customer for ICANN every year, running the .com/.net names. Their payments are orders of magnitude greater than payments made by any other single entity or even several collective entities.

ICANN differentiates its sources of revenues by each class of entity which stand for the following:

RYN - Registry
OTH - Other
RYG - Registry
RIR - Regional Internet Registry
RYC - ccTLD (Top Level Domains)
IDN - Internationalized Domain Names
RAR - Registrar
SPN - Sponsor

It is evident that the Registries and Registrars contribute the most to revenue however the classification of these groups in itself is ambiguous. RYG and RYN both stand for registry but we do not find any explanation given for the double entry for a single group. Secondly, Sponsors are included yet it is unclear how they have sponsored ICANN, whether through travel and accommodation of personnel or any other mode of institutional sponsorship. The Regional Internet Registries are clubbed under one heading and as a consequence it is not possible to determine individual RIR contribution such as how much did APNIC pay for the Asia and Pacific region. The total payment made by RIRs is a small fraction of the payments made by many other entities and they all pay through the Numbers Resources Organization (NRO), who is listed as paying from Uruguay however the MOU creating the NRO does not specify their location as being there. The NRO website states that " RIRs may be audited by external parties with regards to their financial activities or their operations. RIRs may also allow third parties to report security incidents with regards to their services." ³ Their records show that financial disclosure is done in an inconsistent manner with the last publication from AFRINIC being for the year 2013 ⁴ while the RIPE NCC who coordinates the area of Central Europe, Middle East and Russia last published an annual report for the year 2016 but had no financial information in it. ⁵

The most frequently found words in their sources which can give us an idea of the structure of the contributing entity yields the following result.

Several clients have registered multiple corporate entities to increase their payments to ICANN such as DropCatch, Everest and Camelot. ⁶ The first of them, DropCatch, is a domain drop catcher, essentially selling expired domain names to the highest bidder. By the end of 2016, about 43% of all ICANN-accredited registrars were controlled by them. ⁷

Many clients have reported themselves from different countries over the years as well such as 'Verisign Sarl' which has been reported as originating from Switzerland and in a different year from the United States. ⁸ Another curious case is of the entity, 'Afilias plc', which when categorized as a sponsor (SPN) is reported from Ireland however as a registry (both RYG and RYN) is reported from the United States. Some entities have originated from one place such as the United Arab Emirates and then moved to other countries such as India.

To summarize, the key takeaways from the information we have dissected so far are:

- ICANN's revenue has been steadily increasing with the 2016 seeing a 1.6 times increase of its revenue generated in 2012.

- United States is the country that most of the revenue originates from.

- After the US, China is now the largest contribution to ICANN revenue, significantly increase their contributions from 2015.

- Verisign is the top contributing entity, their contribution much greater than other entities.

- Registries and Registrars are the main sources of revenue though there is ambiguity as to the classifications provided by ICANN such as the difference between RYG and RYN. The mode of contribution of sponsors exactly is not highlighted either.

- Several entities have been listed from different places in different years, sometimes depending on the role they have played such as whether they are a sponsor or registry. Registering multiple corporate entities to acquire more registrars has occurred as well.

1. Venkataraman, P. (2017). CIS' Efforts Towards Greater Financial Disclosure by ICANN . [online] The Centre for Internet and Society.[Accessed 14 Mar. 2018].

2. Murphy, K. (2016). Verisign has great quarter but sees China growth slowing | Domain Incite - Domain Name Industry News, Analysis & Opinion . [online] DomainIncite. [Accessed 14 Mar. 2018].

3. Nro.net. (2018). RIR Accountability Questions and Answers | The Number Resource Organization . [online] [Accessed 11 Mar. 2018].

4. African Network Information Centre - Annual Report

5. RIPE Network Coordination Centre Annual Report 2016

6. Murphy, K. (2016). DropCatch spends millions to buy FIVE HUNDRED more registrars | Domain Incite - Domain Name Industry News, Analysis & Opinion . [online] DomainIncite.[Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

7. Id

8. Detailed list is available on request

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analysis-of-icann-financials-from-2012-2016

'Delink ICANN from US jurisdiction'

praskrishna — 2016-11-15T14:16:36Z

Eight Indian civil society organisations involved with internet governance have called for complete delinking of ICANN from US jurisdiction, saying an important global public infrastructure being subject to a single country’s control is unacceptable.

The article was published by Deccan Herald on November 12.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable.

The demand from Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society and IT for Change as well as Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Centre among others came against the backdrop of ICANN’s meeting in Hyderabad that ended on Wednesday.

The other organisations involved in the campaign are Free Software Movement of India (Hyderabad), Society for Knowledge Commons, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Delhi Science Forum and Third World Network (all in New Delhi).

“Urgent steps (should) be taken to transit ICANN from its current US jurisdiction. Only then can ICANN become a truly global organisation . We would like to make it clear that our objection is not directed particularly against the US, we are simply against an important global public infrastructure being subject to a single country’s jurisdiction,” a joint statement said.

Though the US has given up its role of signing entries to the Internet’s root zone file, which represents the addressing system for the global Internet, the groups said, the organisation that manages ICANN continues to be under US jurisdiction and hence subject to its courts, legislature and executive agencies.

“Keeping such an important global public infrastructure under US jurisdiction is expected to become a very problematic means of extending US laws and policies across the world,” the statement said.

Explaining the issue, it said country domain names like .br and .ph remain subject to US jurisdiction.

“Iran’s .ir was recently sought to be seized by some US private parties because of alleged Iranian support to terrorism. Although the plea was turned down, another court in another case may decide otherwise. Other countries cannot feel comfortable to have at the core of the Internet’s addressing system an organisation that can be dictated by one government,” the statement said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-herald-november-12-2016-delink-icann-from-us-jurisdiction