Richard Henderson

Richard Henderson

Active member of the At Large constituency
Joined on October 11, 2003
Total Post Views: 92,567

About

50-year-old British school teacher, married with three children. Formerly Prison Governor in the UK Prison Service, and Headmaster of two schools. Author of the novel “Chasing Charlie”. Climbed in Greenland and the Alps. Advocating the right of ordinary internet users to have a central role in determining DNS and Internet governance policy. Twice elected to executive panel of Icann At Large.

Except where otherwise noted, all postings by Richard Henderson on CircleID are licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Featured Blogs

Why Restricted TLDs Should Not Be Gatecrashed

In recent weeks, thousands of what ICANN describes as "questionable" registrations have been activated... Let me illustrate: Mr. ICANN decides to hold a party. He has decided that he only wants to ask some of his professional friends to come, so they are asked to bring their party invites with them to prove they've been invited, because poor Mr. ICANN has had trouble before with people gatecrashing his parties. At a sunrise party he'd held a few years ago, all kinds of people had gatecrashed and no-one had asked to see their invites and it was dreadful. So Mr. ICANN hires a bouncer to stand guard at the front door of his house. The bouncer, Johnny Registry, assures Mr. ICANN that no-one will get in without an invite... more

Shambles at the .Pro Registry

Registration of .Pro domains has descended into shambles as the Registry responsible for their administration has allowed a flood of domain registrations which appear to be in breach of the strict rules restricting who can register a .pro domain and the certified credentials required before any such domain can work. more

ICANN and the Almost Invisible New TLD Evaluation Process

There is a worldwide interest in the extension of the namespace to include new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) and select new registries to run them. If these New TLDs are to be selected objectively, and without partisan favours to insiders, then there is a clear need for criteria and careful evaluation of lessons gained from previous TLD launches. This was the principle behind the "Proof of Concept" approach, promised by ICANN, and yet ICANN appears to have retreated to a lightweight in-house evaluation, carried out obscurely, in the hands of selected individual under a 6-month contract 4 months ago. What have we learned about Sunrise, about Landrush, about abuse of process, about implementation and enforcement of agreements, about registrars who game the system to warehouse names for themselves, about proposed marketing budgets which evaporate into thin air? more

Topic Interests

DNSNew TLDsDomain NamesRegistry ServicesICANNCybersecurityPolicy & RegulationInternet GovernanceIPv6 TransitionInternet ProtocolLawDomain Management

Recent Comments

Some Thoughts on ICANN's Next CEO
In Pursuit of IDN Perfection?
In Pursuit of IDN Perfection?
Shambles at the .Pro Registry

Popular Posts

Shambles at the .Pro Registry

Why Restricted TLDs Should Not Be Gatecrashed

ICANN and the Almost Invisible New TLD Evaluation Process