Towards an understanding of global ‘private ordering’ in ICANN: text mining 23 years of Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) Decisions

ABSTRACT

To assess the prospect of the ICANN Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) enabling global ‘private ordering’ for domain-name disputes, this study analyses textual data from 75,590 UDRP complaints involving 142,423 domain names. Using data provided by DNS Research Federation’s Data Analytics Platform (DAP.Live), we ask three major research questions: To what extent does the UDRP process differ between resolution bodies? What are the most prevalent themes as represented by keywords and topics? To what extent have these topics changed over time? Using descriptive statistics and a series of inductive text-mining techniques (term-frequency, term frequency-inverse document frequency, and topic modelling), we find substantial evidence for the ongoing stability of the UDRP. Case growth has continued since 2000. There is strong global support for two of the six DRSPs, WIPO and NAF. Average decision time varies substantially by DRSP with WIPO at 63 days and CAC at 36. Panelists heavily employ precedent when adjudicating complaints. Trademark holders continue to dominate the process, winning about 90% of complaints; however, successfully contested cases show strong UDRP jurisprudence supporting non-trademark holders. Topic models created capture both abstract (jurisprudential) and concrete (cybercrime) concepts and show spikes in cybercrime during COVID-19.

KEYWORDS:

• Text-mining
• private ordering
• ICANN
• UDRP
• internet governance
• DAP.Live

Acknowledgements

Dr Cogburn, Mr Ochieng, and Ms Wong would like to thank the staff of the DNSRF for their ongoing support of this research project, especially Emily Taylor, Mark Robertshaw and Georgia Osborn. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided such helpful insights during the review process. They would also like to thank American University Vice Provost for Innovation and Research, Dr Diana Burley for introducing our research team to the DNSRF. Also, we would like to thank the Internet Governance Lab Faculty Co-Director, Dr Nanette Levinson. We also thank Fiona Alexander, Distinguished Policy Strategist in Residence in the School of International Service and Distinguished Fellow at the Internet Governance Lab. We would also like to thank Eduardo Diaz, Alfredo Calderon, and the entire team working on the North American School of Internet Governance (NASIG) for inviting us to present the penultimate version of this paper during NASIG 2023 at American University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the DNS Research Federation [grant number 37282].

Notes on contributors

Derrick L. Cogburn

Dr Derrick L. Cogburn is a Professor at American University in Washington, DC, with a joint appointment in the School of International Service, serving in the Department of Environment, Development & Health; and in the Kogod School of Business, serving in the Department of Information Technology & Analytics. He is Founding Executive Director of the AU Institute on Disability and Public Policy (IDPP), Faculty Co-Director of the Internet Governance Lab (IGL), and Director of COTELCO, the Collaboration Laboratory. Dr Cogburn’s multifaceted research interests are located at the intersection of information technology, global governance, and socio-economic development. He uses computational text mining and data analytics approaches, including unsupervised and supervised machine learning and artificial intelligence methodologies, to better understand large-scale text-based datasets in the areas of cybersecurity, disability policy, and distributed collaboration in knowledge work. He has published widely, with his most recent books being: Researching Internet Governance: Methods, Frameworks, Futures (MIT Press 2020); Transnational Advocacy Networks in the Information Society: Partners or Pawns? (Palgrave-McMillian 2017); Making Disability Rights Real in Southeast Asia: Implementing the CRPD in ASEAN (Lexington 2016); and The Turn to Infrastructure in Internet Governance (Palgrave-McMillan 2016). He is Editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series Information Technology and Global Governance.

Theodore Andrew Ochieng

Theodore Andrew Ochieng is a Senior Research Associate in the American University Internet Governance Lab and a graduate of the Analytics Master’s Program at the Kogod School of Business at American University. He has several years of experience helping organisations leverage data to solve problems by increasing data utility through supporting various stages of the modelling and analytics pipeline, such as improving ETL pipelines, data cleaning, feature engineering, and developing and deploying models.

Haiman M. Wong

Haiman M. Wong is a Doctoral Candidate in Purdue University’s Doctor of Technology program. Her research interests centre on the intersection of technology innovation and leadership, natural language processing, rhetoric, political science, law and internet governance. Her work experience spans across the finance, education, cybersecurity, political consulting, non-profit and technology sectors, where she worked in data science, communications and media relations, global cybersecurity risk and threat intelligence management, cybersecurity incident response and digital transformation. She is also a Senior Research Associate in the American University Internet Governance Lab and an alumna of the Master of Data Science program at American University’s College of Arts and Sciences.