Featured Blogs

The Future of Communications Cross-Subsidies

It used to be so much easier to manage a system of cross subsidies for communications. If a regulator wanted consumer services to be subsidized by businesses, rural to be subsidized by urban, local subsidized by long distance, TV production subsidized by distribution, it could just issue an order to make it so. So let it be written; so let it be done. There were few, if any, other suppliers of those services, so there were limited arbitrage opportunities. more

First gTLD Auction Settled; Next Auction Will Be on August 13th

We're pleased to announce that the first Applicant Auction has come to a successful finish! As of this morning, the winners are now the only remaining applicants for the six contested strings... The winning prices totalled $9.01 million, which we have distributed to the other applicants after confirming that their ICANN applications have been withdrawn. more

Big Future for Telemedicine?

According to a report just released by McKinsey & Company, we are on the verge of seeing a major shift to health care from home. The report says that as much as $265 billion in annual fees to Medicare and Medicare Advantage could shift to homes by 2025. We've already seen the start of the trend towards telemedicine. The spending on telemedicine was 38 times higher in 2021 compared to 2020. Most of that shift is obviously due to the pandemic. more

Coachella Unsuccessful in Domain Name Dispute, Failing to Prove Bad Faith Use and Registration

The Complainant is the owner of the well-known Coachella festival. It owns a trademark registration, issued in 2016, for the mark CHELLA. The Respondent asserted that he intended to use the disputed domain name to set up an online women's clothing store but never did so. He claimed that growing up, his nickname was "Chelle" and that he modified that name to make it sound more feminine for use in connection with the store. more

Registry/Registrar Separation: Clarifying the Mess!

Do you keep hearing about this Registry/Registrar Separation (or Vertical Integration) issue but really aren't sure what it's all about? This post should help you to get a better understanding of the details of this saga which is one of the most controversial, yet still unresolved issues within the new gTLD program. more

Aussie Football Code Makes Habit of Brand Innovation with Its Branded TLD

The world's first sporting code to launch its own branded Top-Level Domain (TLD) has continued to flex its innovation muscle with a creative new endeavor. The Australian Football League (AFL) has added www.coffee.afl to its existing line-up of .afl sites. The dedicated website offers fans the chance to buy team branded coffee pods, with proceeds going to support their clubs. more

Testing, Testing, Testing for a More Secure (Internet) World

Reading up on COVID-19 and Zoom/Boris Johnson outcry yesterday, an analogy struck me between the two: the lack of testing. In both cases, to truly know how safe and secure we are, testing needs to be stepped up considerably. This post focuses on cybersecurity. Over the past days and weeks, more and more organisations have switched to digital products and services to sustain working from home, to keep productivity up and to be connected. more

DNS Evolution: Innovation or Fragmentation?

There is no single name system that is necessarily bound to the Internet. Unlike IP addresses which are in every IP packet, names are an application construct, and, in theory, applications have considerable latitude in how they handle such names. There could be many name systems that could coexist within the Internet, in theory. In practice, there is strong peer pressure to use a single name system. more

Web Localization: Sometimes as Simple as a Black and White

The death of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej has led to stores running out of black and white clothing as the population mourns its leader in color-appropriate clothing. What does this mean for website localization? ...Web localization isn't just about creating a localized website and forgetting about it. It's about creating a living and breathing website that responds quickly to local events. Web localization is about respect. more

.ORG Will Thrive Under Ethos Capital

I've been proud to serve Public Interest Registry (PIR) since 2017 and play a part in helping the organization support those with a mission to do good. I recently joined every one of my fellow board members in reaching the unanimous decision to approve the sale of PIR, as I believe PIR's mission will best be served by the sale and .ORG's long-term future will be stronger under Ethos Capital ownership. more

The Digital Age and Education of the Future

For some years I hear people discuss that education needs to transform and adapt to the Digital Age. In one way education has: I am told that so called MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, are a huge success. Classes from lecturers at (top) universities are freely available online. But this is traditional education distributed and made accessible in a modern form. The debate ought to focus on education for the jobs and skills of the future. more

Announcing the Final Terms of the First Applicant Auction for Contested gTLDs

We received several emails and phone calls with thoughtful comments on the proposed plan for the first Applicant Auction and have made several small changes to the plan. The final terms will be sent to applicants who requested the RFC, and can also be requested on our website. Here is a quick summary of the changes. more

RIPE 86 Bites: Gigabits for EU

Rudolph van der Berg presented on the latest updates from the ongoing tensions in the Internet industry between carriage infrastructure providers and content providers, with a European perspective. The carriage providers in the EU region are asserting that they're making major capital investments in augmenting the access network infrastructure to carry gigabit traffic volumes, which is largely streaming content, while at the same time the content providers were getting a free ride, or so goes the argument. more

Open Internet Access on the Line in Brussels

This summer EU regulators are finalizing their guidelines for member states on legal protections for wired, wireless and mobile open Internet access service. European citizens, businesses and NGOs have one last chance to make their voices heard on the so-called "net neutrality" guidelines by writing a comment for Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) by July 18. more

How Safe Are Your .KIDS?

This year has been one of the busiest years for domain launches in quite a while. Before the end of 2022, we'll see one more significant domain launch, namely .KIDS, on November 29, 2022. This extension is being launched as a safe space on the internet for children and parents. The registry has set out some very strict use policies to make this happen. Some companies have already registered their brands during the Sunrise Period, while others have taken up names in the Community Sunrise. more