ICANN’s Peter Dengate Thrush Problem

Conflict of interest, whether real or imagined, looks bad for ICANN as it faces fresh criticism over its fresh TLD plans.

ICANN has a problem.

As criticism mounts against its approval of the fresh top level domain name program, some groups are pointing fingers at an inherent conflict of interest.

The key example is former ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush.

One month following pushing through a vote on the fresh TLD program in his last meeting as Chairman he took a role with publicly-traded Top Level Domain Holdings, a firm focused solely on profiting from fresh top level domain names.

There are no rules prohibiting this move, as Dengate Thrush pointed out when I interviewed him regarding the fresh role.

I can’t blame him for jumping at the opportunity. I also don’t think putting the program up for a vote in June had anything to do with profiting from it — I think it had to do with getting the program approved ahead of his term as Chairman was over.

But it doesn’t matter. The problem is it just looks bad.

Recently Internet Advertising Bureau joined Association of National Advertisers in opposing the fresh top level domains program. Interestingly, I haven’t seen them point to this specific conflict. But other groups, counting Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, have.

ICANN has received plenty of pushback on its fresh TLD plans both during the process of creating the applicant rules as well as following it was approved. Everyone has an opinion, and it would be wrong to point to Dengate Thrush’s move as proof that this is just a money grab.

But that won’t stop people from bringing attention to it, and that will bad for ICANN.