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Michele is co-founder and CEO of Blacknight. He is actively involved in Internet policy development, and is currently a member of ICANN’s GNSO Council as a representative of domain registrars. He is also involved with policy development for several domain registries, including .IE, .EU and .US. He previously served as chair of i2Coalition and is a member of the Names and Numbers Steering committee of eco. Michele received the Irish Internet Association Net Visionary Award in 2013 and was named one of Ireland’s 30 Technology Disruptors at The Spiders Awards in 2019.
Except where otherwise noted, all postings by Michele Neylon on CircleID are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
David Redl has written to ICANN in relation to the ongoing work around whois and GDPR. The letter, which was shared with the GNSO Council last night, is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it offers the carrot in relation to what's been done so far, but then there's the not so veiled threat, which isn't a revelation by any means, of "domestic legislation." more
When the UK announced its intention to withdraw from the European Union it was clear to some of us that this would cause complications with .eu and possibly other domain name extensions. Over the past year, it's become clear that the European Commission, who mandate the .eu domain name policy, weren't interested in providing a "soft landing" for impacted registrants of .eu domain names. more
AlpNames has been sent a notice of termination by ICANN. Unlike many termination notices that specify a future date, the one they were sent has an immediate effect. As reported in multiple fora over the last few days AlpNames had gone offline, and at time of writing still is. They've also become unresponsive. It's on the basis of this that ICANN decided to terminate their contract straight away. more
Brexit will impact many things. One that has not been getting much attention, however, is domain names and more specifically .eu domains. Under the current regulations, you need to be a resident of the European Union to register a .eu domain name. As I covered in a blog post last year, there is the potential for hundreds of thousand of .eu domain names being pulled overnight. more
Last week during the ICANN meeting in Barcelona I attended a short presentation from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Their mission is pretty simple: ...eliminate child sexual abuse imagery online. Fortunately, the presentation I was at did not include any of the actual material (which would have been illegal anyway) but even without seeing any of it the topic is one that I think most people find deeply disturbing. more
The controversial site gab.com has been shut down by GoDaddy and given 2 days to move the domain elsewhere. The deadline expires at midnight tonight Irish time. In recent days the site has seen itself become increasingly disconnected as various service providers and online platforms including PayPal have shut the door to them. At present the site is displaying this notice... more
In order for the Internet to function properly, there has to be "trust". Trust in "online" is something that has ebbed and flowed over the years, but over the past two decades more and more of our daily lives are linked closely to "digital". Our banks encourage us to use online banking and their mobile apps. Government agencies share (and collect) information from private citizens and businesses online. And of course we all do more and more of our shopping online... more
As I predicted ICANN is pursuing its case against EPAG. They're now not only appealing the case to a higher court in Germany but are also trying to get the entire thing referred to the European Court of Justice. In an announcement late last night ICANN made it very clear what their intentions are. While they're pursuing the appeal in the higher court in the German region, which makes sense at some level, it's also very clear that they're not taking "no" for an answer. more
German courts seem to be pretty fast, so instead of having to wait weeks or months to see how they'd rule, we've already got the answer. The German court in Bonn has ruled that EPAG (Tucows) is not obliged to collect extra contacts beyond the domain name registrant. The decision, naturally, is in German, but there is a translation into English that we can use to understand how the court arrived at this decision. more
As I noted over the weekend, ICANN has instigated legal action against EPAG, an ICANN accredited registrar based in Germany that is part of the Tucows group. ICANN claims that the case is to "preserve WHOIS data", but Tucows asserts in their statement that the ICANN approach is flawed. It's not a frivolous statement, but one they've backed with fairly detailed rationale - and this is just their public statement and not a formal legal filing. more
We've talked about the conflicts between our ICANN contract and privacy law in the past. Not once, not twice, but multiple times. We refused to sign the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) with ICANN until we'd received a data retention waiver. That decision probably cost us money, but if we have to choose between operating legally or illegally our path is clear. more
After the Brexit vote, I wrote that there could be an impact on EU registrants based in the UK. Over the past year, the UK government has been engaged in negotiations with the EU to navigate the application of Article 50 and the UK's exit from the European Union. While there has been a lot of focus on issues like the customs union and the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the eventual departure of the UK from the EU will have a tangible impact on the European digital economy. more
Earlier today ICANN held a webinar to provide an update on their data privacy activities in relation to whois and GDPR. Rather than simply talking about the various "models" they produced both a visual mapping as well as a matrix. While some attendees may not agree with how all the models are classified it is still a helpful way of showing the deviations from the current fully public whois model for gTLD domain name registrations. more
ICANN has issued a guidance notice to registrars and registries in relation to Hurricane Maria, which caused massive damage throughout the Caribbean. This isn't the first time that this has happened, with a previous incident in Asia triggering action from both registrars and registries to give domain name registrants impacted by the natural disaster breathing space. more
Websites associated with the upcoming referendum in Catalonia are being blocked by ISPs in Spain. While several of the domain names used by advocates of the Catalan referendum have been seized by authorities others are being blocked by the ISPs in Spain. For those of us outside Spain the blocking has zero impact on us, so we can see the sites without any issue, but for users in Catalonia, ISPs are blocking access. more
The Catalan government has written to the European Commission claiming that the Spanish government is in breach of EU law. In a letter from Jordi Puigneró Secretary of Telecommunications, Cybersecurity and the Digital Society at the Government of Catalonia addressed to Andrus Ansip, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, the Catalan government calls out the moves by the Madrid government as censorship. more
There are thousands of sites and services on the 'net that offer domain name whois lookup services. As of last night, many of them may have stopped working. Why? Many of them rely on fairly rudimentary software that parses the whois from Verisign (for .com and .net) and then relays the query to the registrar whois. The site or service then displays the whois output from the registrar's whois server to you. more
Bill Sweetman from NameNinja has released a handy little guide to domain name pricing for startups. While the guide is aimed at businesses starting out, the information around domain name pricing is applicable to anyone who wants to either "upgrade" their online brand or launch a new one. The guide focusses primarily on .com domain names, but also mentions both ccTLDs, alternative domains and new gTLDs. more
CENTR, the body which represent of European domain registries, will be holding its annual awards again this year. What's different for 2017 however is that they've added a new category: "Registry of the Year Award" ... And unlike with the other award categories, this one is open for voting to the registrar channel. The online voting or ranking is open now and is open to registrars who have a direct relationship with the registries. more
Earlier today some of the biggest names in the tech industry sent a letter to Congress in support of the IANA transition and urging Congress not to delay it. The IANA transition relies on the expiry of the contract between the US Government's Department of Commerce and ICANN which is scheduled for the end of this month. As has previously been noted, some conservative politicians, most notably Senator Ted Cruz, have been very vocal in their criticism of the move and want to block it in Congress. more
Senator Cruz's against the IANA transition will continue next week with a senate hearing next week. The hearing is entitled: Protecting Internet Freedom: Implications of Ending U.S. Oversight of the Internet. While the hearing is being chaired by Cruz, no indication of who else will be speaking has been made public so far. In a press release from Cruz's offices earlier this evening, the Senator continued his almost hysterical and misleading narrative. more
I've mentioned the IANA transition in several posts over the last year or so. Personally I'd love to not have to mention it ever again, as it's not the kind of topic that we should be spending too much time thinking about or worrying about. There are plenty of other things out there that cause us all headaches without adding to the list. However the IANA transition is a topic that is of fundamental importance for the global internet community. more
Senator Cruz' crusade against the IANA transition is back in full swing. With the deadline for the expiry of the IANA contract approaching both he and other anti-transition types have been working hard on their campaigns to block the transition. The latest addition to the Cruz website is a special lander page featuring a countdown clock... Yes, that's an image of President Obama shaking hands with China's Xi Jiping. more
The Heritage Foundation are conservative, in the American political sense. So it's not surprising that they've been linked to some of the anti-IANA transition stuff coming from Ted Cruz and Co. Tomorrow they're holding an event, which is clearly not aimed at bolstering support on Capitol Hill for the IANA transition... While I, and many others, would find the entire "jeopardizing free expression and enterprise" angle to be total bunkum, it is aimed at tapping into US conservative fears. more
eco, which is the largest internet industry association in Europe, is holding a virtual meeting later this month to discuss Brexit. The meeting, which is scheduled for July 27th at 1200 UTC, will be the first of several dialogues among industry to discuss the potential impact of the UK's exit from the EU on the domain name industry. As I mentioned in a recent post, the exit of the UK from the EU has an "unknown" impact on how domain name registries and registrars will interact with UK based registrants. more
How diverse is ICANN? While the recently published Afnic report gives some insights, it didn't explore ICANN staff in any detail. ICANN's HR team, however, did share some data on ICANN's staff diversity during a session at the ICANN meeting in Helsinki earlier this week. Some interesting data was shared about how ICANN handle their HR overall, but the bit that caught my eye was in respect to gender. more
The current policies for .eu domain name registration restrict registration to organisations, businesses and individuals that meet certain criteria. In order to get a .eu domain name you need to be resident within the EU, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein. This is laid out in the current policy... Post-Brexit it is unclear whether UK registrants will still qualify to hold their .eu domains. more
ICANN is a strange beast. Even the term "ICANN", which is itself an acronym, has more than one meaning. There are at least two "ICANNs", one is the "community", which is made up of everyone who engages with the ICANN "circus" and then there is ICANN the organisation itself -- a California not-for-profit. While people outside the internet industry probably have never heard of ICANN or had any direct dealings with it, the policies that get decided at ICANN have a tangible impact on how the internet operates. more
It looks like Senator Cruz' letter writing campaign isn't going to end any time soon. While previously the Senator and former US presidential hopeful was happy exchanging salvoes with ICANN he's now switched gears and is instead focussing on NTIA and the US Department of Commerce. The latest letter is focussed on a very strange interpretation of the IANA transition proposals. more
Earlier this week the Latin American and Caribbean TLD Association (LACTLD) put out a statement about ICANN meetings. The statement, which is available in both Spanish and English, while very polite and diplomatic, expresses the organisation's concerns with ICANN moving meetings out of Latin America due to health concerns. So far this year the meeting scheduled for Panama (ICANN 56) has been relocated to Helsinki. more
ASOP (Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies) is often seen as taking a rather confrontational stance towards domain name registrars, registries and hosting providers. However both ASOP and others, including LegitScript, often cite the assistance they've received from internet industry players in their work. This year ASOP has decided to take this a step further... more
Earlier this week French supermarket giant E.Leclerc launched a new site for their sports' goods. The key change? The new site lives at sport.leclerc. Leclerc, which employs over 94 thousand people, is one of the companies that opted to get its own "dotbrand". While some companies have rolled out a variety of different things on their own domain extension it's still rare to see a brand launching anything with mass market appeal using their own TLD. more
Republican Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (and others) has sent yet another letter to ICANN. This time round, the letter is addressed both to the Chairman of the ICANN Board, Dr Steve Crocker, as well as to former CEO Fadi Chehadé. The letter repeats some of the questions previously put to ICANN, though the wording is much blunter this time round. Cruz' office issued a press release with details of the letter under the title of "ICANN Is Stonewalling the U.S. Congress". more
As you may know, ICANN holds three public meetings every year. The most recent one, ICANN 54, was held in Dublin... So the next ICANN meeting is being held in Marrakech, Morocco starting Saturday, March 5th through March the 10th. Up until now all three meetings were the same length and had the same basic structure. However, from this year onwards, that'll change. How that will play out in reality, however, is anyone's best guess. more
ICANN critics often focus on ICANN's expenditure. The organisation's overall budget had been growing for years prior to the new TLD program launch. However with the new TLD launch it mushroomed very quickly, with the organisation collecting $185k per application. With 1930 applications that gave them $357,050,000 ... ICANN's overall budget is big and how it decides to spend that money will always be subject to quite a bit of scrutiny. more
Tomorrow afternoon at 1pm EST Apple will be giving testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. The session that Apple and others will be taking part in is aptly named, The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy In common with other hearings the various witnesses called to speak have already submitted their written testimony, so we can already look at it and analyse it. more
Encryption is key to commerce online. Anything that weakens it is a threat to the digital economy, so the FBI vs Apple case is something that a lot of people are watching very closely... The most recent development is that Apple has filed "Motion to Vacate the Order Compelling Apple Inc. to Assist Agents in Search, and Opposition to the Government's Motion to Compel Assistance." Legal filings aren't light bedtime reading, but this one explores the legal issues as well as the privacy and security implications from multiple angles and underlines why this case is so important. more
ICANN's current CEO Fadi Chehadé is leaving the organisation in a few weeks time. His replacement has been announced and the upcoming public meeting in Marrakech, Morrocco, will be Chehadé's final public engagement as ICANN CEO. A couple of days ago Chehadé sent the ICANN board a letter entitled "Summary of My Tenure". While the letter may have been addressed to the board, it was published on the ICANN website immediately. more
EURid, who run the .eu registry, have finally been delegated .?? (Cyrillic for .eu). Punycode xn--e1a4c. One of the things that EURid is chartered to do under its contract to the European Commission was to get the extension in scripts other than Latin. EURid used ICANN's IDN ccTLD "Fast Track" process, though whether the process is truly "fast" or not is debatable, as it is still quite a long process. more
Republican senator and US presidential candidate Ted Cruz is not very happy with ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade. In a letter dated today, Cruz along with two other senators, have dropped some pointed questions for Chehade in relation to his involvement with a recent meeting in China... "As you must know, the World Internet Conference is not a beacon of free speech..." more
ICANN comment periods on policy proposals don't normally garner much attention. In the case of the current comment period on proxy/privacy services, however, things are very different. To date several thousand comments have been filed, while the topic of the policy proposals has received media attention across hundreds of outlets. more
The controversy over the competing .africa TLD applications has been going on for some time. A recent decision by the International Centre For Dispute Resolution (ICDR) said that ICANN had breached its own by-laws and has questioned why ICANN won't allow a current board member and the former GAC Chair to speak to them and provide evidence. A letter that was published on the ICANN site yesterday suggests that ICANN may have changed their tune... more
If your first language isn't English and you don't use the Latin character set you can and will run into barriers. While Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) i.e. domain names where either the left of the dot, the right of the dot or the entire string is in characters other than Latin ones, do exist and have existed for a number of years not all services work well with them. more
The .uk launch today has been getting quite a bit of press coverage. Getting a big name celebrity like Stephen Fry to endorse the shorter namespace is also a nice win for Nominet. As part of the PR around the launch they've also put out a big welcome sign near Heathrow airport... It'a a bit ironic though as .uk isn't exactly welcoming to non-UK individuals or companies. more
Last night there was apparently a big event in Paris at the Eiffel Tower (Champs de Mars) and there were plenty of photos shared by the brands, companies and people in attendance.
But what's really impressive is that they were able to get the message up on the side of one of Paris' best known monuments -- the Eiffel Tower. How? The City of Paris is behind the domain extension - so that's "how". more
ICANN has opened a comment period in relation to whois conflicts with local law / data privacy law. Of course anytime ICANN, or anyone else, tries to make any changes to whois policy there are issues. Whois is, for a variety of reasons, an emotive subject... under EU law many feel that registration details for domain name registrants need to be handled in a manner that is more compatible with the EU Directives and local law more
Karl Auerbach has written a quite long but very detailed and well thought out letter to Congress. It's not clear which members of Congress were sent the letter. Karl Auerbach is a former member of ICANN's board and is probably best remembered by many as having taken ICANN to court (and winning) in order to gain access to the organisation's financial records. more
ICANN has been sent a letter by the European Data Protection Supervisor calling them out with respect to both data collection, retention and privacy within the context of the 2013 Registrar contract (RAA). The letter is the first instance of one, to my knowledge, which makes reference to the ECJ's recent ruling that rendered the data retention directive null and void. more
Over the past couple of years I've posted several times on the issue of "closed generics". In essence these are new TLD applications where the string is a "generic term" AND the applicant wanted to keep all domains in the registry for their own use. The baseline registry agreement with ICANN now contains language that resolves the issue, or at least it would appear to do so. more
Kevin reported on this last night. As you can see from the reactions to his post a lot of people are surprised, shocked and even quite upset that the DotGreen application has been withdrawn. It's not the only application for the string, which is why it was withdrawn, but to many people in the ICANN space it was the applicant everyone associated with the string. The unfortunate reality of the new TLD process is that money speaks more loudly than anything else. more
I've written about "closed generic" new TLD applications several times over the last year. I'm opposed to them, as I've said in the past and continue to say today. However I've generally been supportive of "restricted" TLDs. The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) has serious concerns about Google's application for .app and want ICANN's board of directors to treat as a "closed generic". more
As some readers probably know, I spend quite a bit of my time working on Internet policy related matters. Some of it may appear incredibly boring, but it matters. (If you really want me to explain why it matters I'd be happy to do so!) Since earlier this year I've been part of a small team of people drawn from the four corners of the globe and asked to re-examine "whois". more
Earlier this week dns.be launched Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). The Belgian registry opted to support the accented characters for Dutch, French and German. In so doing they've also ended up providing support for other European languages, such as Swedish, Finnish and Danish... The registry reported quite a bit of interest in the launch with over 3000 IDN domains being registered in the first hour. That number had practically doubled by close of business on the first day. more
Over the last few months one of the areas of attention in the new TLD project has been "closed generics". I've written about this several times in the past and I've also raised the issue in as many fora as possible. Yesterday ICANN published a letter they'd received from Google with respect to several of their new TLD applications. more
The debate surrounding "closed generics", which has been covered several times in the past, has attracted a lot of attention in recent weeks. At the centre of the debate were a number of new TLD applications from large companies including Google, Amazon and others. Google had stated that they planned to establish a number of domain extensions and operate them as "walled gardens". At the ICANN public meeting in Toronto Google attempted to defend their plans and their position until today was unchanged. more
Some pretty big companies are beginning to show an active interest in ICANN's new TLD project. The most recent of them is bookseller Barnes & Noble. The letter, which is available both on the ICANN website, is quite narrow and pointed in its scope and focusses on the perceived competition issues with Amazon's bids for several "closed generics". more
I'm on the record multiple times over the last few months for my opinions on "closed generics"... Since then I've sent several letters to ICANN (supported by many others) and have been quoted and referenced in several articles on the subject including Politico.com... If you're not a domain "geek" then the danger of this issue might not be that easy to understand, so here are five reasons why "closed generics" are a really bad idea. more
Back in September a number of domain name industry leaders wrote to ICANN to express deep-felt concerns about some companies' declared plans for generic domain name extensions. We have sent ICANN another letter this week which is also planned to be distributed in a press release included here in this post. more
We have been taking an active interest in the development of the new TLD program by ICANN and excited by the many opportunities and challenges that this "opening up" will bring to us, our customers and the internet ecosystem as a whole. However, we also have our concerns about how some entities wish to use generic domain name extensions as "walled gardens". more
ICANN's 44th public meeting is about to start in a few days with a number of topics on the agenda. Some of them are new, while some of them are ongoing. First off, ICANN will be announcing the new CEO this Friday afternoon in Prague. Whoever it is will be coming to the organisation at a time when it faces a number of significant challenges. While the actual official meeting does not start until Monday morning there will be plenty of meetings on over the weekend as well... So what's on the "menu" for Prague? more
Trying to make sense of the nearly 2000 new TLD applications is not something that anyone can do quickly. Sure, you can look at the list and see who has applied for what, but it's only when you actually read the "public" part of their submission that you can get an insight into their plans. Let's call a spade a spade. If a big brand wants to get its own TLD then it's pretty much their own business how they use it, as long as they don't do any "harm" to the rest of the internet ecosystem... more
Crime, fraud, scams etc., they're all very bad things. They're also not going to go away anytime soon. As a domain name registrar and hosting provider we're constantly "at risk", as we sell a lot of services that are both cost-effective and also give criminals the tools they need to attack 3rd parties. Again, this isn't exactly news. We've always taken a very pro-active approach to dealing with criminal activity and network abuse... But recently I've been losing sleep. more
Today is April 12 2012. It's also meant to be the day that the new TLD application window closes. Now it's not. ICANN has spectacularly failed to manage the new TLD process and will miss its own deadline by over a week... In a rather badly worded announcement ICANN states that it's extending the deadline for online applications (the only way to apply) until April 20th at 23:59 UTC. more
In a recent press release ICANN has stated that they will publish the list of applicants for new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) on April 30th. Previously many had spoken of a "big reveal" on May 1st, though that would have coincided with a public holiday in many countries and might have been "missed". However ICANN CEO, Rod Beckstrom, claims that the organisation had always planned to publish the list two weeks after the application window closed. more
In the run up to the launch of new TLDs there were a lot of rumours about which organisations would apply for which strings. Detractors might pick holes in the entire project, but it's very hard to argue against the merits of new TLDs specifically in the context of cultural linguistic communities that fall outside the realm of ccTLDs (country code top level domains). The case of Catalonia and .cat is probably the best one and has been vaunted as the poster child for new TLDs in some circles. more
Tomorrow, January 12th 2012 ICANN will open the application window for new TLDs. This post includes answers to some of the based frequently asked questions. If you have any other questions/queries, or if something is unclear please let me know via the comment at the end of the post. more
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is running a trial service that gives users access to historical IP whois data – that is, it will tell you who was responsible for an IP address or block of IPs. The service is not automated and if you want to access it you will need to submit a request via email with information about not only what you want to know, but why you are interested in accessing the information. more
In a move that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, the EU Commission has given a rather mixed welcome to the IANA bid. While they obviously like a lot of what they are seeing, they're also not overly impressed with the contract only being open to US companies. more
RIPE 63 is on this week in Vienna, Austria. Yesterday evening saw the General Meeting where members were asked to vote on a number of motions. While some of the motions were more formalities than anything else, the votes on RPKI and the membership fee structure for 2012 provoked some emotive debate. more
ICANN's CEO and President, Rod Beckstrom, has announced that he will be stepping down in July of next year. The announcement came via Twitter of all places, with a press release, presumably with more details, due sometime soon... With the launch of the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program scheduled to officially launch early in 2012 maybe Beckstrom feels that his job "is done", or maybe there's another motive behind his departure. more
The "hot topic" at the upcoming ICANN meeting in Singapore will, of course, be whether or not the new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) will actually launch or not. Sure, they'll launch at some point, but ICANN has been pushing to make the big announcement at Singapore. There has been a lot written over the last couple of years about new TLDs over the last couple of years. We are now coming into what might be called the "end game". more
ICANN has apparently hired Jeff Moss (aka Dark Tangent) as CSO. Moss is a well known figure in the internet security community and was founder of Black Hat and the Def Con conferences. However isn't Moss a bit conflicted? Isn't he on one of the review teams? more
DotCo, which is the ccTLD for Colombia, is opening up to general public registration today. According to official sources from both Neustar and CoInternet the registry has handled over 90 thousand registrations in the first 15 minutes! ... While the initial registration phase of any new domain extension can attract a lot of media interest and a flood of registrations you need to look at the "big picture". more
ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) has formed a working group to consider changes to the domain transfer process to enhance security and reduce hijacking. The working group consists of registrars, aftermarket players, domainers and other members of the ICANN Community. The group published its preliminary recommendations at the ICANN meeting in Brussels two weeks ago and the 20-day comment period has just begun. more
The ICANN meeting in Nairobi starts officially next Monday. However, as is normally the case, by the time Monday rolls around people will already have been working since Saturday morning (if not earlier). All ICANN meetings seem to be surrounded by some bit of controversy and excitement, but the Nairobi meeting is possibly more dramatic than many others. The last attempt to hold a meeting in Nairobi failed, with ICANN opting to hold the meeting near LA's airport, LAX, instead. more
Sex and the internet. Put the two together and you are bound to find an interesting story. While the saga surrounding sex.com took a new twist in the last couple of days, with the current owners going dotbomb, the .xxx story also took an interesting turn... For several years ICM and ICANN tangoed. more
Again on the subject of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) ... One of the "issues" that concerned a number of people is the concept of "vertical separation". The basic idea is that domain name registries and registrars should be kept separate. While that is a wonderful Utopian ideal, the reality is that in the real world companies own other companies, people trade in stocks and shares etc., etc. So it's far from being a simple "cut and dried" situation. more
One of the topics that keeps coming up in ICANN policy discussions and as part of the new TLD application process is "transparency". ICANN, and the internet community in general, has had plenty of issues in the past with "bad actors" who have caused a lot of issues for everyone (think of many of the registrars who have lost accreditation in the last couple of years for example). On more than one conference call or policy discussion the issue of a company or a person's track record has come up. more
Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) might be a slightly "hot" topic at the moment following on from ICANN's launch of the IDN country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) program recently. However, IDNs are NOT a new topic. Far from it. They've been around for quite some time. Unfortunately neither The Times Online or Mashable seem to have done any homework. more
If you've been following the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) process within ICANN over the last year or so you will have probably been aware of how slow and tortuous development has been. To recap, ICANN, which oversees domain names globally, announced that it was "opening up" the internet so that "anyone" could get the domain extension they wanted. Of course it's not really "everyone" and the process to date has been far from smooth. more
Earlier today Google announced the launch of their new DNS service. They're pushing it as part of their "better experience" and "speed" drive that Matt Cutts and Co have been harping on about for the last while. OpenDNS, however, has been offering a similar service for quite some time... So it was quite interesting to read OpenDNS' response to the Google service. more
In an interesting move several members of the ICANN community formed an "informal" Working Group to discuss the concept of "expressions of interest" in new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). This all happened very quickly, which is more or less the opposite to how most ICANN related activities progress. ...The report, which runs to about 11 pages, is concise and seems to have covered most of the areas of interest. more
The new Top-Level Domain (TLD) process is occupying a lot of people in the domain name industry at present. While some people are obviously very much against the entire concept of new TLDs, there are plenty of people and organisations who support the project. But what happens when you have more than one organisation vying for the same namespace? ...Seemingly the competition between two rival bids for .eco (doteco) has been getting more than a little dirty in the past few weeks. more
ICANN has announced that three more domain name registrars have lost their accreditation due to non-compliance with the RAA. The three registrars have been informed that their agreements with ICANN will not be renewed. South American Domains (NameFrog), Simply Named and Tahoe Domains have been sent letters by ICANN outlining the decision and the reasons for it. So what now? more
A few weeks ago the EU Commissioner Viviane Reding published a video where she talked about the EU's views towards ICANN and internet governance. The video received quite a bit of attention at the time, but it wasn't an official position of the EU at that juncture i.e. it was Ms Reding's. Earlier today that changed when the EU issued an official release on the subject calling for "a more open, independent and accountable governance of the Internet". more
There's been a lot of media attention on the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) process in the last few days, which is a good thing. Unfortunately most of it is badly written, misleading or simply misinformed. Let's look at the reality. To start with, there are currently 20 gTLDs i.e. "global" Top-Level Domains (extensions)... more
ICANN is currently going through a complicated process in order to introduce more Top-Level Domains (TLDs). While the launch of new TLDs is something that a lot of people will welcome it is not without its issues. One of the areas that has been receiving quite a bit of attention is in relation to intellectual property rights. So what has this got to do with privacy? more
One of the WIPO decisions published today relates to gillette.ro. The registrant (respondent) didn't make any submissions in their defence, so the decision could have been quite banal. However some of the panelist's comments under the "Registered and Used in Bad Faith" section are quite interesting... more
The Intellectual Property Constituency's draft report on trademark issues is now available for comment. The draft report was put together behind closed doors, which would appear to go against the normal policy development process at ICANN, which is quite worrying. Its contents, however, are even more disturbing... more
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been holding a public comment period on the second draft of the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) handbook. This period was due to close yesterday. Prior to yesterday afternoon there was a healthy number of comments, but in the past 24 hours a significant number of new comments have been submitted... more
I don't want to get into the entire Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) vs Eircom and IRMA vs ISPs debacle. The only reason I'm even writing this is because I'm getting a bit tired of all the "quotes" of "quotes" and other unclear and misleading things that people have been saying about ISPs over the last few weeks. more
During the sunrise period for .eu domains there was quite a bit of controversy, as a number of high profile names were grabbed by companies that had no legitimate right to them. One of the domains that caught my attention at the time was dublin.eu (see Irish Times article). So what about the .tel sunrise?
Were companies like Lantec, who grabbed the dublin.eu domain, actively seeking high profile names this time round? more
If you have rules and regulations but don't enforce them then there's little point in having any rules or regulations in the first place. One of the criticisms that is often leveled at ICANN is with regard to compliance issues. There are a number of areas where ICANN accredited registrars may be flounting the rules, but if nobody does anything about it then none of the registrars will have any incentive to actually comply. more
I've written extensively about Ireland's country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) '.ie' and its current registry operator IE Domain Registry (IEDR) in the past. While I've always tried to be fair and balanced in my coverage of the issues facing the IE namespace, I'm afraid my patience with the current registry operator has worn thin. While things may have improved over the course of the last few years, it is becoming abundantly clear that the current registry operator is probably not the best organisation to manage the ccTLD in the future. more
There must be something in the air. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but there are a lot of things going on in the ccTLD world at the moment. In the UK Nominet's Annual General Meeting (AGM) is being held this week. This would normally provoke a yawn from most people -- it's an AGM -- how exciting can that be? This year's AGM looks like it could be quite entertaining, although it probably isn't going to be particularly beneficial for its membership. more
Nominet has published a very detailed and comprehensive position paper on "front running". Although the paper is a mere 5 pages long it covers all the areas that the topic encompasses very well and is well worth a read. The topic of "front running" has received some publicity in the last few months. If you're not familiar with the concept Nominet's definition is helpful... more
Businesses may rely on domain names to conduct their day to day work, but that does not mean that they really understand what they are using or how important they are. Of course those of us in industry may feel tempted to either scoff at people's naivety or feel terribly frustrated with their ignorance, however neither action is particularly productive. Loic Damilaville, however, has tried to take a more practical and positive approach by publishing a white paper on domain name management. The document was published a few months ago in French and has since been made available in English. more
EURid, the entity charged with managing the .eu namespace, is reported to have taken action against an alleged cybersquatter based in China, Zheng Qingying... The last suspension "en masse" was directed against Ovidio when over 74 thousand domains were suspended. This time round the number is much lower -- a paltry ten thousand! In this instance there seems to have been a pattern of cybersquatting, with over a dozen ADR proceedings against the registrant in question. more
ICANN has announced that it is seeking input and feedback on the topic of domain tasting. (See their announcement for full details) Interestingly enough Michael Gilmour published an article a couple of days ago covering the same topic - "Why domain tasting is great!", which will probably raise a few hackles! One point that in particular caught my eye... more
One of the key elements in any domain space is usage. It doesn't matter how potentially "cool" or "interesting" a Top-Level Domain (TLD) is if nobody is actually using it to provide content. It may be overused and totally abused, but "content is king"! The guys in dotMobi posted yesterday about some of the more interesting domains that they had come across recently. What did that lead to? Well I actually got out my phone and browsed the sites to see what all the fuss was about and I was truly impressed. more
The European Union's .eu Top-Level Domain (TLD) sunrise and landrush has probably been discussed to death, but what is the landscape like over a year later? A lot of industry insiders were right to express their doubts about the stability of .eu following on from the high profile squats that have been discussed here at length. Of course any discussion on a new TLD would have to wait until after the first wave of renewals. That happened in April, so now, in July, it's a good as time to take stock of the situation... more
I've mentioned the topic of personal IE domains on here more than once in the past [also discussed here on CircleID] and in my conversations with the IE Domain Registry. Just to recap; Under the current rules you cannot register johndoe.ie if your name is John Doe. You would have to add a number to the name, thus rendering it totally useless eg. johndoe7.ie or something of that style... more
As the year progresses the number of mergers and acquisitions in the domain industry is increasing at an impressive rate. Hot on the heels of GoDaddy's acquisition (saving?) of RegisterFly another media company acquires a domain company. Is anyone beginning to see a pattern emerging? Oversee.net has acquired SnapNames... It's an interesting acquisition for Oversee.net which already owns DomainSponsor as well as a very interesting portfolio of domains. more
While I was in LA last week John sent me details of the Communications Regulation (Amendment) Bill 2007. While there are some potentially positive aspects in the Bill some of the Bill's contents are, for lack of better word, simply crazy... more
In my day job I run one of the largest registrars / resellers of IE domains (the IE ccTLD is the domain name for Ireland). In the course of doing that I have spent quite a lot of time becoming accustomed to the rules and regulations that govern both the naming and general registration criteria of IE domains. In some cases I can understand why rules are the way they are, whereas in others I am completely baffled... more
The Irish domain registry (IEDR) is to come under the control of the Commission for Communications Regulation ComReg. At present the registry is managed by a "not-for-profit" company, however it has come under increasing criticism with regard to both its management and policies. Although there are approximately 40,000 IE domains currently registered, it is still one of the strictest and most expensive ccTLDs in the world. more
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