As president and CEO of Tucows Inc., Elliot Noss leads the company’s business strategy and vision. He is responsible for overseeing operations for the company’s domain registration, domain portfolio, email and retail lines of business.
During his tenure, Tucows has grown to become the largest wholesale provider of domain names. Under Elliot’s leadership, the company has rapidly expanded the wholesale service line to include email services, SSL certificates, and enhanced domain name offerings which are sold through a growing international reseller channel.
Elliot has been a leader in the Internet industry for over a decade. He champions areas of vital interest to the service providers and Internet users including privacy, ICANN reform and registrar matters, and the implications of emerging technologies.
Elliot chairs the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science Advisory Board and is a distinguished graduate of the University of Toronto where he earned a BA. He earned an MBA and LLB from the University of Western Ontario.
Except where otherwise noted, all postings by Elliot Noss on CircleID are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
The latest ICANN Applicant Guidebook was released in mid-April and covers the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLD). The introduction of new gTLDs has been an ongoing conversation for more than a decade. We have an opportunity to approve the final draft in time for consideration of the new gTLD implementation program during the ICANN Board meeting, which will be held on Monday, 20 June 2011, in Singapore. We submitted our comments yesterday and wanted to share them with you. more
Now that the search has officially commenced, I thought it might be useful to make some public statements as to what I would like to see from the next ICANN CEO. My comments are driven by what I see as the deficiencies over the last number of years and, most importantly, by a deep desire to see the ICANN experiment in global governance succeed. The Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen and a healthy ICANN strengthens its ability to foster positive change. more
The outcome of the .Net rebid process will involve the security, stability and diversity of management of the Internet's critical infrastructure. As well, the rebid process introduces competitive forces that will flow through to users in the form of cost savings and improved service levels. DENIC has submitted a bid that is consistent with the goals and interests of the Internet community and is the only proponent that has done so. Let us consider the following factors and assess the alignment of the bids with the goals and interests for the Internet community. more
There is much talk currently about the WSIS meeting taking place in Geneva this week which means some needed attention is being paid to Internet governance. While some may view the term "Internet governance" as an oxymoron and my natural reaction is something along the lines of "I hope that they continue to view regulation as too complicated so that we Internet-folks can just keep doing what we are doing" I confess to knowing deep down that we would all be better off with a simple, effective policy framework than with the current anarchic state. more
I have been thinking a lot about stewardship lately in my role as CEO of Tucows and how that relates to employees, a board of directors and investors. Where I've got to, which is not necessarily relevant for this post, is that stewardship needs to exist at EVERY level of a company and a life. With the recent dustup created by Verisign's new Sitefinder service it has crystallized for me what has always bothered me about the .com/.net registry and the way Verisign has approached it.
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I will try and take a different approach with this post. There are two elements of WLS that I think are most material and are not discussed often enough. They are i) the scope of the original NSI-ICANN contract and ii) the use of multiple accreditations.
...Verisign is paid a sum of money to perform a service. They own neither the primary nor the secondary data. I will not bore you with a recitation of various sections of the agreement nor with long-winded legal arguments. They are for another forum. The implication of this conclusion as it relates to WLS is that any re-registration market service is outside the scope of the original contract and should be treated as any new service should. more