Senior ICANN Staffer Leaves To Join .Bank – Conflict of Interest Anyone?

Craig Schwartz has been headhunted by BITS.

Seemingly they’re planning on bidding to run a .bank domain extension so adding Craig to their staff wouldn’t be such a bad idea

However isn’t there a small bit of conflict of interest?

Should senior ICANN staffers be running off to work for prospective registry operators?

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By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade. He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

2 comments

  1. I don’t think there is a problem, per se, with anyone in the domain industry moving to work for anyone else.

    Many of the restrictive clauses that some people seem to be hell bent on, are so widely drawn as to be unenforceable. But they scare people into leaving the industry rather than work for a potential competitior of a former employer. I don’t think that’s a good thing.

    I do however, think if anyone leaves ICANN and has been in a regulatory style role, there should be a period of purdah which is proportionate — and similar to that that Civil Servants have before being able to join private companies they’ve previously regulated.

    How long that period is should depend on the nature of the ICANN role they are vacating.

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