The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held its second meeting of the year June 22-25. Due to COVID-19-related safety concerns the meeting, originally planned to take place in Malaysia, was again held virtually. USCIB Vice President for ICT Policy Barbara Wanner joined the meeting remotely, along with several USCIB members as part of ICANN’s Business Constituency (BC).

As ICANN President and CEO Goran Marby noted, the ability of the ICANN community to adapt to this challenging time represents a “testament to our shared goal of [working to ensure] the continued security, stability and resilience of the DNS [Domain Name System].” Marby also noted that protecting against DNS abuse never has been more critical since “bad actors” have exploited the pandemic.

According to Wanner, the spike in COVID-related DNS abuse was a hot topic at ICANN 68. USCIB reiterated acute concerns expressed at ICANN 66 and ICANN 67 about inaction by ICANN Org and the contracted parties in mitigating domain name system (DNS) abuse that continues to escalate by the day. The BC asserted there should be an agreed approach to implementing tools to combat such abuse that is institutionalized as a process and memorialized in contracts between ICANN and the registries and the registry/registrar agreements.

“ICANN Org continued to insist while it expects registry operators to enforce their agreements with registrars prohibiting DNS abuse, there continues to be a lack of clarity about what constitutes DNS abuse which complicates contractual enforcement,” said Wanner. “The contracted parties, in turn, underscored their commitment to combatting abuse and highlighted voluntary efforts to develop a Guide to Abuse Reporting Best Practices. By the meeting’s conclusion, there was no clear path forward, although several approaches were proposed.”