Featured Blogs

ICANN and the Data Quality Act: Part VI

This is the sixth part of a multi-part series reported by ICANNfocus. This part focuses on ICANN's Strategic Plan. Read previous parts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V. "The requirement that ICANN develop a Strategic Plan offers an important opportunity for achieving meaningful reform of the organization. The Strategic Plan is one of the key new ICANN duties contained in the most recent amendment to their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Commerce. The MOU specifies in considerable detail the elements that ICANN is to include in the Plan including issues ranging from executive compensation to mechanisms for ICANN accountability..." more

Report and Analysis of Public Comments Submitted to ICANN on the .COM Pricing Provisions (Part I)

ICANN's call for Public Comment on Proposed Amendment 3 to the .com Registry Agreement yielded 9,040 public comments during the six-week comment period that ran from January 3, 2020 to February 14, 2020. The public response was amongst the most robust if not the most robust, that ICANN has ever received. To put this in context, the last several Public Comment periods received under 20 comments apiece. more

Words and Descriptive Phrases as Trademarks Registered as Domain Names

In a trademark context, who owns or controls, or would prevent others, from using words and phrases commonly available to speakers in a language community, is in persistent tension. While common words alone or combined may become protected from infringing uses under trademark law, their protection is contingent on factors such as linguistic choices and strength or weakness of marks in the marketplace. more

Fighting Phishing with Domain Name Disputes

I opened an email from GoDaddy over the weekend on my phone. Or so I initially thought. I had recently helped a client transfer a domain name to a GoDaddy account (to settle a domain name dispute), so the subject line of the email -- "Confirm this account" -- simply made me think that I needed to take another action to ensure everything was in working order. But quickly, my radar went off. more

Introduction Of A New Domain: The Sweden Way

Network Information Centre Sweden AB (NIC-SE), which is the organization that administers .se domain names, will be introducing a new regime for registration of .se domain names.

Under the new regime, applicants from all over the world will be able to apply for registration of a .se domain name without needing to prove that the desired domain name reflects a company or organization name. There will no longer be preliminary examination of applications for registration of .se domain names nor any restriction on the number of .se domain names per applicant. It will also be possible to register geographical names as .se domain names. However, non-Swedish applicants (those without a permanent business place or address in Sweden) must provide a local contact (i.e. person or entity who is permanently resident in Sweden). more

Defendants Respond to Dell’s Anti-Tasting Suit

The defendants in Dell's domain tasting suit responded last Friday. It looks like a pretty feeble response to me. Their main argument is that they're just the registrar, and deny Dell's claim that the registrants are fakes made up by the registrar. They also argue that they're not infringing, they didn't use the names in question in commerce, they were just acting as helpful search engines, you know, like Google or Yahoo. (The comparison to Google and Yahoo is theirs.) more

Does China’s Digital Silk Road to Latin America and the Caribbean Run Through Cuba?

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an ambitious, long-term, global investment and development program. It was launched in 2013 with a focus on infrastructure -- roads, railroads, pipelines, undersea cables and ports. Since then China has invested $80 billion and signed 173 BRI agreements with 125 countries and 29 international organizations. more

Resolving the ICANN-Proposed TLDs Debate

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has recently decided to allow any entity to register a top-level domain name (TLD). The best mechanism for valuing this decision, a mechanism that outperforms crowdsourcing, blogs, and committee decisions, is the legal and easy-to-implement solution known as prediction markets.
In handing down its TLD decision, ICANN never identified the problem it was trying to solve... more

Who Are the Major New gTLD Applicants and… (Part Five: Rightside Registry)

Rightside is a name you may only have heard of very recently. It is a relative newcomer in the new gTLD industry. It is important to note that there is a difference between "Rightside" and "Rightside Registry". One is the Trademark and also the name of this new group to which eNom (a Registrar), Namejet (a platform to buy/sell domain names and Premium domains) and Name.com (another Registrar) belong. As for "Rightside Registry", it is the new name of the platform to operate new gTLD applications. more

Spare a Thought for Venezuela

Please spare a thought for Venezuela. This, the 33rd largest country in the world and with about 34 million people, the largest proven reserves of oil, the cheapest price of gasoline in the world, and was in 1950 richer than Germany, has fallen on times so hard in this once Latin America's richest country that 75% of the population lost an average of 11 Kg (24 pounds) in weight in one year because of food scarcity. And you might ask: "Why should I care?" more

EFF Files Brief in Support of Email Privacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in a case that could have a profound effect on the privacy of Internet communications. The brief argues that the decision in US v. Councilman, soon to be reheard by the full First Circuit, should be overturned. more

Breaking It Down: the IANA Transition in Practical Pieces

As a Regional Internet Registry, APNIC has a strong interest in the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and the services it provides. We have followed the progress of IANA carefully, in particular through the evolution of ICANN, and the various steps taken by the US Government to reduce its level of oversight. Along with other RIRs, through the NRO, we have made several public statements about the IANA and its future development, mostly in response to US Government enquiries. more

Rod Beckstrom, Twiki and the Foswiki fork - ICANN Must “Get Things Right” on New TLDs

One of the most disastrous things that could happen to the DNS would be for the root to "split", as it would mean that identifiers would no longer be universal. Instead, "Example.com" would have totally different meanings for different users, substantially reducing the benefits of domain names. Can this happen? Important lessons for ICANN can be learned by studying the history of Rod Beckstrom, Twiki and Foswiki. more

A Noteworthy Report on Fast Flux Hosting

This very interesting document was released by ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) for public comment yesterday. And it asks some fundamental questions while at the same time pointing to sources such as the Honeynet Alliance's reports on fast flux. more

Red Cross and Internet Governance with Cause

One of many controversies surrounding the introduction of new domain names is the special protection given, though a moratorium, to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (RCRC) and International Olympic Committee (IOC). Although the RCRC and the IOC are discussed together, they are very different. more