ICANN revenue could drop 5% over FY 2021-2025 due to COVID-19, officials said at a Tuesday webinar. The $11.1 million decrease is expected to come from fewer domain name registrations and fees from contracted parties such as registries and registrars, said Director-Financial Planning and Analysis Shani Quidwai. The webinar was to allow public feedback on a proposed five-year strategic, operating and financial plan, and FY 2021 (ending June 30) operating plan and budget. The drafts published in December are now slightly obsolete and have been tweaked before expected board approval next month, said Chief Financial Officer Xavier Calvez. The nonprofit expects the pandemic to affect all its planned activities and finances for the rest of this year and all the next fiscal year, which is why it developed a new set of financial projections, he said. Changes to the revised documents include the lower revenue projection and reduced personnel costs due to less hiring and less travel and meeting cost because of travel restrictions. Plans for a new round of generic top-level domain names remain unchanged, Quidwai said. The organization is in good shape to weather the crisis because of a stable reserve fund and control over its finances, said CEO Goran Marby, but there's "a lot of uncertainty going forward" that will affect ICANN as an institution.
Apps that warn citizens to avoid people infected with COVID-19 are a key element in lifting lockdowns, the European Commission said Wednesday. Its European road map toward easing containment measures noted contact tracing can help. Apps must comply with all EU privacy and data protection rules, the EC said. Among unresolved questions are whether the regime should be mandatory and how effective it will be.
European telcos will provide cellphone location data to help analyze COVID-19's spread, under recommendations unveiled Wednesday by the European Commission. The proposed "toolbox," which is intended to support steps to return to normality and which the EC said will be finalized April 15, includes a common EU approach for modeling and predicting the virus' evolution via aggregated, anonymized mobile location data. The use of telecom metadata has buy-in from mobile operators and EU data protection officials. Some privacy advocates are concerned.
EU and U.K. telecom operators are scrambling to decide what to do about Huawei gear in their networks despite neither the EU nor the U.K. banning it, officials and consultants said in interviews and reports. Companies face significant costs to replace the equipment and are under pressure to build out 5G networks. Showing the sensitivity of the issue, no stakeholders would speak about the subject on the record in phone interviews.
The coronavirus pandemic could have contradictory effects on European telecom providers, officials said in recent interviews. Demand may rise as people increasingly work from home. or fall from customers who lose their jobs or get COVID-19. European telcos said their supply chain hasn't been affected. U.K. ISPs said they can handle increased usage. Authorities said EU privacy rules must still be followed.
The status of existing data protection rules and Privacy Shield in Britain is unclear following the nation's Jan. 31 departure from the EU, privacy attorneys told us. The two sides are in a transition period until Dec. 31 to allow them to negotiate a new relationship. During that time, the EU general data protection regulation will apply in the U.K., and companies won't need to take immediate action, a U.K. Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) FAQ says. It's anyone's guess how the talks will pan out and what they will mean for data protection rules between the U.K. and EU or the U.K. and the U.S., lawyers said.
Questions about ICANN's role in vetting the Public Interest Registry's sale to private equity firm Ethos Capital and how public interest commitments for .org should be enforced predominated Monday at ICANN's first entirely virtual public forum. ICANN board members were in listening-mode only as they try to decide whether to approve PIR's sale by the Internet Society. They were pressed for more detail about how they plan to settle the controversial issue. The March 7-12 meeting was scheduled to be in Cancun, Mexico, but is taking place remotely due to the coronavirus (See 2002270028).
Sale of the Public Interest Registry should be halted until ICANN can vet all financial details, the Electronic Frontier Foundation blogged Friday, responding to new accountability commitments by the buyer, Ethos Capital, about price caps, censorship safeguards and privacy protections for. org domain names (see 2002210017). EFF urged the FTC to review the buyout. Limiting price increases and establishing a "stewardship council" doesn't lessen the risk for nonprofits because the handpicked body "will have no real authority or practical ability to override the wishes of PIR's new equity owners," EFF Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz emailed us. The sale risks bankrupting PIR, he said. The Internet Governance Project said Ethos' public interest commitment is good news, because it's the agreement between ICANN and the registry "that will protect .ORG registrants, not promises, and not 'stopping the sale.'" The proposal "falls short" of IGP recommendations because composition of the stewardship council has no slots for independent noncommercial bodies and could lead to an "Ethos-selected group of puppets" and because potential steep price increases aren't accompanied by longer domain name registration terms.
The potential anticompetitive impact of trademarking domain names created by adding a generic top-level domain (gTLD) such as .com to an otherwise generic terms like "booking" is at issue in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Patent and Trademark Office, backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, seeks a per se rule barring such domain names from being protected. Intellectual property scholars and lawyers and online companies disagree, although some also note anti-competition concerns. Case documents in PTO v. Booking.com (No. 19-46), which is set for argument March 23 (see 2001310027) are here.
A proposed amendment to VeriSign's registry agreement with ICANN provoked a barrage of negative comments from some stakeholders and a fierce counterattack by the .com registry operator. The consultation, which ended Friday, sought input on a plan to amend the contract to allow VeriSign to raise the price for .com domains by a maximum of 7% annually in years in which there's no other price increase. Foes accused ICANN of, among other things, failing to act in the public interest. In return, VeriSign blasted domain speculators for undermining the process for their own gain.