Featured Blogs

WLS & Recourse to the DOC

ICANN's recently posted "Seventh Status Report" states: "ICANN's Board of Directors voted 14-1 to take no action in response to the request, on the grounds that the decision to allow the Wait-Listing Service to be offered was not a threat to competition...".

Several firms that currently offer competing services have signaled (pdf) that they are not in agreement with this assessment. more

Is WLS the Right Mechanism to Protect Consumers?

The claim that the *only* way that reliable wait listing can be done by *the* registry is not true. The registrars could, as a technical matter, if they chose to do so, "wrap" the registry with a new entity that mediates all acquisitions and releases. Whether this accords with ICANN's hyper intricate contractual scheme or with laws against restraint of trade, I don't know.

Personally I consider WLS to be contrary to the idea that a contract contains an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing - it seems to me that WLS violates that implied covenant - It is as if my doctor is selling contracts on parts of my body should I die while under his care. more

Domain Registrars File Lawsuit Against ICANN

Members of the Domain Justice Coalition filed a lawsuit today requesting a temporary restraining order and other relief against ICANN to block the implementation of a domain name Wait Listing Service (WLS). The WLS was proposed by VeriSign, Inc. (pdf) and approved by ICANN in federal court in Los Angeles. The suit challenges ICANN's failure to comply with its internal decision-making process requirements when it approved implementation of the WLS in the face of opposition from domain name registrars, resellers and consumers. more

Moving Target: Spammer Using Over 1000 Home Computers as DNS

Some individual appears to have hijacked more than a 1,000 home computers starting in late June or early July and has been installing a new Trojan Horse program on them. The Trojan allows this person to run a number of small websites on the hijacked home computers. These websites consists of only a few web pages and apparently produce income by directing sign-ups to for-pay porn websites through affiliate programs. Spam emails messages get visitors to come to the small websites.

To make it more difficult for these websites to be shut down, a single home computer is used for only 10 minutes to host a site. After 10 minutes, the IP address of the website is changed to a different home computer... more

ICANN Approves At-Large Framework for Latin America

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently launched organizing of the individual Internet user community (At-Large) for increasing global participation and representation in ICANN. Under a framework approved by ICANN's Board of Directors, local and regional groups may now form in Latin America to involve their members in critical issues that effect their use of the Internet's domain name system. more

Pool.com Launches ICANN Lawsuit Against WLS

Pool.com has launched a lawsuit challenging the right of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to proceed with a monopolistic new Wait List Service (WLS) this fall.

In a Statement of Claim filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Pool.com states that the new "WLS proposed by ICANN and Verisign Inc. will have the immediate and total effect of ending all competition among Registrars for dropped or deleted domain names" in the rapidly developing backordering industry. Pool.com seeks a court injunction preventing ICANN from proceeding with the WLS, a declaration that ICANN's actions constitute intentional and wrongful interference with Pool.com's trade and commercial prospects, as well as significant damages.  more

Juniper’s IPv6 Advocate Tests Mythology

IPv6 advocacy has been tainted by FUD and half-truth. CommsWorld recently interviewed Juniper's Jeff Doyle, who is a strong supporter of IPv6 -- but who also has little patience for IPv6 mythology. Forget security, half-true address crises and QoS: the best reason for the world to run with IPv6 is what's driven the Internet all along -- innovation. more

Analyzing The Inbox of a Spammer’s Domain

Consider this scenario: you need a domain name for your site so you go to your favorite domain registrar's website and upon a quick search find that your third choice is actually available! You quickly pull your credit card and register the name. Everything is good and you can't wait to have your new domain start pointing to your site and represent your official email address. But not so fast -- some of the recent events are revealing that, these days, when you are registering a domain name there is one more critical thing you need to do: check under the hood! more

Fight Spam With the DNS, Not the CIA

It seems like spam is in the news every day lately, and frankly, some of the proposed solutions seem either completely hare-brained or worse than the problem itself. I'd like to reiterate a relatively modest proposal I first made over a year ago: Require legitimate DNS MX records for all outbound email servers.

MX records are one component of a domain's Domain Name System (DNS) information. They identify IP addresses that accept inbound email for a particular domain name. To get mail to, say, linux.com, a mail server picks an MX record from linux.com's DNS information and attempts to deliver the mail to that IP address. If the delivery fails because a server is out of action, the delivering server may work through the domain's MX records until it finds a server that can accept the mail. Without at least one MX record, mail cannot be delivered to a domain.
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UDRP Dilemma In Proving Bad-Faith Domain Registrations - Part III

In the final part of this 3-part series article, the issue of UDRP in proving bad-faith domain registrations that are held passively is examined with respect to the trademark's characteristics. The registrant's attitude could in some circumstances also be regarded as evidence of bad faith use of a domain name that is held passively. Panels often infer evidence of bad faith of the registrant from an unsatisfactory response or an absence of response to the complainant or if it is impossible to contact the respondent. more

AusRegistry Earns $9M In Its First 12 Months

The Privately-owned Melbourne-based company AusRegistry that won a four-year contract on July 2002 from AuDA to provide registry services for Australia's .au ccTLD has reported an earning of $9 Million -- beating its original expectation by $3.5 Million. This earning comes from 52,640 new registration of .au, .org.au, .com.au, .asn.au, .net.au, and .id.au -- the majority portion consisting of .com.au. (pdf report)

AusRegistry has also recently won a contract to operate the registry for Solomon Islands domain names (.sb), and negotiating with five other countries that reportedly includes one "significant" ccTLD. The company is also interested in being authorized by the Australian Communications Authority to run trials of ENUM: "It just makes sense to do that, given the strength of the .au database...the cost to us is minimal, given we've got the existing infrastructure," said the AusRegistry's managing director Adrian Kinderis. [Source: news.com.au] more

New TLDs: Can You Say .Never?

ICANN continues at its snail's pace on introduction of new top-level domains. At the Montreal meeting, staff sprung this RFP for new sponsored TLDs. As if "a few" and "sponsored" weren't limitation enough, it further narrowed the applicant pool to those who had applied unsuccessfully as sponsored TLDs in November 2000. more

ICANN Submits Seventh Annual Report

ICANN has just submitted its seventh status report under ICANN/US Government Memorandum of Understanding to United States Department of Commerce (DoC) titled: "Report by ICANN to United States Department of Commerce Re: Progress Toward Objectives of Memorandum of Understanding". The report provides a review of recent ICANN developments including... more

ICANN Reaches Landmark Agreement With Country Domains

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) concluded its Montreal meeting with a landmark agreement that cements the relationship between ICANN and the worldwide community of country-code top-level domain registries. "Today's agreement represents both a historic achievement for the ICANN process, and a powerful vote of confidence in the newly reformed ICANN 2.0," said Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and CEO.

Finalizing four years of dialogue and negotiation, the creation of the Country-Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) heralds a new era of cooperative and productive relations among ICANN and the country-code domain registries. The structure and rules for ICANN's new ccNSO were endorsed by domain registry organizations and individual managers representing every region and populated continent. "Today's agreement is a testament to how ICANN is seen as a forum the international Top Level Domain administrators can come together and jointly address issues," said Twomey. more

UDRP Dilemma In Proving Bad-Faith Domain Registrations - Part II

In the second part of this 3-part series article, the issue of UDRP in proving bad-faith domain registrations is examined with respect to the trademark's characteristics. The first part of this article can be found here. In assessing whether there is a passive holding of a domain name, panels look carefully into the trademark's characteristics in question, namely what is the degree of reputation and distinctiveness of the trademark in question. more