Summary

  • Sivasubramanian Muthusamy filed Reconsideration Request 26-4 for Nameshop on 12 August 2026, challenging ICANN’s 14 July action on new-gTLD application 1-1873-71868 and alleged Board inaction.
  • The application has always remained .IDN. A 2012 request to replace that string with .INTERNET was denied; none of the later correspondence turned it into an .INTERNET application.
  • A 14 September 2025 Board instrument is framed as a termination procedure and says the CEO was directed to terminate five unsuccessful applications. Its operative instruction nevertheless says a non-withdrawing application will be moved to “withdrawn status.”
  • ICANN’s 9 June 2026 letter said the application would move to terminated status. Its 14 July letter said that had happened. The current public row displays Terminated [13] and the interface separately offers Terminated and Withdrawn as filters.
  • The Request 26-4 page displays the request and an annex at the evidence cutoff, not a merits determination. The requester’s allegations are not findings that ICANN lacked authority or that .INTERNET should be delegated.
  • ICANN should publish a versioned closure concordance that joins the application identity, Board clause, notice and refund windows, operational state, reason code and accountability docket.

One application, not two strings

The cleanest way to read the dispute is to start with the identifier that did not change. Nameshop submitted application 1-1873-71868 in the 2012 new-gTLD round for .IDN. ICANN’s 2019 account says IDN is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code for Indonesia and therefore fell within the Applicant Guidebook’s treatment of geographic names.

Nameshop asked in September 2012 to replace .IDN with .INTERNET. ICANN denied the request in February 2013. Its change process permitted administrative and clarifying corrections, including typographical corrections; it did not permit an applicant to substitute a different applied-for string. A 2013 Board Governance Committee recommendation also found the challenge to that denial untimely and identified no process or policy failure requiring reconsideration. It did not approve .INTERNET after a new merits review.

That distinction matters now because the 2026 request advances arguments about .INTERNET. Those arguments belong to the requester. The object ICANN closed remained .IDN. A transparent state record should carry that immutable identity at the top, with the rejected change request linked as a separate event. Otherwise an argument over what the application should have become can displace the simpler fact of what it was.

The prior record also contains independent reasons the 2012-round application could not proceed. ICANN’s 2019 letter says Nameshop did not meet all Applicant Support criteria: it failed the Public Interest Benefit, Financial Need and Financial Capabilities panels. The letter recounts the geographic-name problem, denial of Reconsideration Request 13-2, the end of the Cooperative Engagement Process and the absence of an Independent Review Process filing. It offered a full refund upon withdrawal and pointed toward a later round.

None of this decides whether every past ICANN judgment was wise. It establishes the baseline that the 2026 filing does not erase: .IDN was the application, .INTERNET was a rejected change, and the old round had reached a non-proceeding state.

The Board instrument contains both words

On 14 September 2025, ICANN’s Board approved a procedure for five 2012-round applications previously determined not to proceed. Nameshop’s .idn application appears in the list. The heading calls the item a “Termination Procedure for 2012 New gTLD Program Applications.” The rationale says the Board directed the President and CEO to terminate the unsuccessful applications. The current status page’s footnote 13 uses the same summary.

The operative instruction then becomes more precise. Each applicant was to receive notice and 90 days to withdraw voluntarily. If an applicant did not withdraw, “ICANN will move the application to withdrawn status.” The instrument also deals with the remaining refund window and forfeiture if no valid refund request arrives within it.

It would therefore be inaccurate to say that the Board never authorized termination. It would be equally incomplete to omit the state label the resolution expressly selected for implementation. The public instrument uses termination as the procedure and withdrawn status as the specified database destination.

That may reflect an understood internal model. Perhaps termination is the institutional action and withdrawn is the application-system state. Perhaps a later implementation convention created a distinct Terminated state for Board-closed applications, preserving Withdrawn for applicant-initiated exits. Such a distinction could be sensible. The public documents reviewed here do not supply the versioned mapping.

The implementation chain changes the label

The later letters make the operational path clear. On 1 May 2026, ICANN told Nameshop that .IDN could not move forward. It offered a last opportunity to withdraw by 15 May and obtain a full USD 47,000 refund.

On 9 June, ICANN said Nameshop had refused to withdraw and had forfeited refund eligibility. It said the organization would proceed to move the application to “terminated” status under the Board-approved process. It also said there were no further avenues inside the 2012 round and suggested applying in the 2026 round.

On 14 July, ICANN used the completed tense: application 1-1873-71868 “has now been moved to ‘terminated’ status.” That letter is the staff action Request 26-4 challenges.

A fresh search of ICANN’s official Current Application Status system closes the factual loop. The row reads IDN, Nameshop, 1-1873-71868, Terminated [13], and Did not meet all criteria for Applicant Support. The search interface exposes Terminated and Withdrawn as separate filter values. Its help text names Withdrawn, Delegated and RA Terminated as final statuses, but does not include plain Terminated in that short list.

The row proves the public state now displayed. It does not reveal the enum definition, the state-transition code or the legal meaning ICANN assigns to it. Nor does a different label prove a different practical outcome. On all current evidence, the application does not proceed in the 2012 round and the refund opportunity ended. The missing item is the public concordance that shows how those consequences attach to the label.

Request 26-4 opens review; it does not supply the answer

Muthusamy filed Request 26-4 on 12 August. The filing challenges the 14 July staff action and alleged Board inaction. It argues, among other things, that the action lacked proper authority and seeks relief connected with .INTERNET. Those are the applicant’s claims. Publication by ICANN does not make them findings.

Article 4.2 of ICANN’s current Bylaws defines a narrower institutional path. A materially and adversely affected requester can challenge specified Board or staff action or inaction on grounds including conflict with ICANN’s Mission, Articles, Bylaws or established policies, failure to consider material information, or reliance on false or inaccurate relevant information. The Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee can screen, investigate, seek submissions and recommend. The Ombuds ordinarily reviews the request unless recused. The Board makes the determination contemplated by the process.

At the evidence cutoff, ICANN’s Request 26-4 page displays the request and Annex A. It does not display an Ombuds assessment, a BAMC recommendation or a Board decision. That observation describes the public page. It cannot prove what work may be occurring internally, and it cannot be converted into a prediction on admissibility, timing or merits.

This separation protects both sides. Nameshop’s allegations remain visible and attributable. ICANN’s answer will have to come through the actor and instrument assigned by the Bylaws. A filing creates a review docket, not a substitute decision.

Publish the state transition as a joined record

ICANN does not need to decide Request 26-4 in advance to clarify its application-state vocabulary. It can publish a thin, versioned closure concordance alongside the existing status row.

The first block should freeze identity: application number, original string, applicant and the fact that the .INTERNET change request was rejected. It should distinguish identity from arguments about what the string ought to have been.

The second block should record authority: the exact Board resolution, its operative clause, document version, delegated actor and the pre-state—such as Will Not Proceed—from which implementation began. The phrase withdrawn status should be preserved, not paraphrased away.

The third block should record execution: notice date, voluntary-withdrawal deadline, applicant response, refund deadline and outcome, transition timestamp, actor class, reason code and resulting system state. If Terminated is the implementation of the Board’s withdrawn status instruction, the record should say so. If the terms are distinct, it should define the distinction and cite the authority for the later state.

The fourth block should record review: Request 26-4, any Ombuds material, BAMC recommendation, Board determination, remedy, correction or confirmation. Each later document should state what it supersedes and whether the operational state changes.

This is a modest control. It does not expose confidential applicant data, grant a stay that the Bylaws do not provide or imply that a filed request is valid. It makes the public ledger capable of reproducing the institution’s own act.

Heng Lu’s useful distinction here is bounded. A record should describe an authorized act rather than become an unexplained source of expanded authority. A review channel can gather evidence and test procedure; it does not acquire the Board’s decisional role merely by being open. Applied to ICANN, that principle calls for a precise chain between resolution, staff execution and review—not for importing RIR property claims into the DNS.

Sources

  1. ICANN Reconsideration Request 26-4 page
  2. Reconsideration Request 26-4, redacted
  3. Annex A to Request 26-4
  4. ICANN letter, 14 July 2026
  5. ICANN letter, 9 June 2026
  6. ICANN letter, 1 May 2026
  7. ICANN Board resolutions, 14 September 2025
  8. ICANN Current Application Status
  9. ICANN letter, 14 June 2019
  10. BGC recommendation on Request 13-2
  11. ICANN Bylaws
  12. ICANN Reconsideration index
  13. ICANN Correspondence index
  14. Nameshop response, 15 July 2026
  15. Heng Lu, The Multi-Stakeholder Mirage