Domain Management

ICANN CEO “Cautiously Optimistic” EU to Provide Clear Guidance for Domain Industry GDPR Compliance

"ICANN could invoke emergency powers in its contracts to prevent Whois becoming 'fragmented' after EU privacy laws kick in next month," reports Kevin Murphy in Domain Incite.

Microsoft, Facebook and Others Demand ICANN Take a Closer Look at Questionable Registrars

Adobe, Facebook, Microsoft and eBay are among a group of leading companies demanding ICANN to take a closer look at an "immediate and urgent matter" involving a subset of questionable domain name registrars.

EFF Warns ICANN Not to Engage in Censorship, Says It Should Stick to Technical Role

A series of articles published by EFF, coinciding with ICANN's 60th meeting in Abu Dhabi this week, Jeremy Malcolm warns that domain name registrars, registries and ICANN can become "free speech week leaks" for online censorship.

Dell Loses Key Customer Support Domain Name for a Month, Site Exposed to Questionable Content

The website designated by Dell Inc. to help customers recover from malicious software and other computer maladies may have been hijacked for a few weeks this summer by people who specialize in deploying said malware, reports Brian Krebs in KrebsOnSecurity.

Cycling Legend Greg LeMond Sues Cybersquatters Upward of $6.6 Million

A federal restraining order has been issued against a father and son accused of registering several domain names based on cycling legend Greg LeMond's name and his company.

Russian Interference More Vigorous than Assumed, Over 39 States Targeted During Election

"Voter databases and software systems in an overwhelming number of states -- 39 to be exact -- were targeted by Russian cyberattacks over the summer and fall of 2016," Allegra Kirkland reporting today in TPM

CADNA Returns to Lobby for Stronger Cybersquatting Laws

Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, the lobby group that campaigned for stronger cybersquatting laws and against new gTLDs, is back.

New Technique Detects and Eliminates Abusive Domains at Time of Registration

A team of researchers from Princeton University and the University of California has developed a machine-learning algorithm named PREDATOR that can accurately establish domain reputation at the time of domain registration.

WIPO Reports Rise in Cybersquatting Cases, Triggered by New gTLDs

According to the latest report from The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), trademark owners filed 2,754 cases under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) with the agency in 2015 - an increase of 4.6 % over the previous year.

Facebook-owned Instagram Wants Domain Deal Upheld

Facebook-owned Instagram has filed legal proceedings in the US to have a 2011 domain name purchase of 'instagram.com' upheld and block a 'sham' lawsuit in China.

Harm Caused by Typosquatting Is Still Modest, Research Suggests

Harm caused by domain name typosquatting is still modest, to both the user and the brand holder, and investment on anti-typosquatting products should be cautious, according to a paper published in Security and Privacy (SP), 2015 IEEE Symposium titled, "Every Second Counts: Quantifying the Negative Externalities of Cybercrime via Typosquatting." The paper presents a strategy for quantifying the harm caused by the cybercrime of typo squatting via an intent inference technique.

Newly Released “Domain Name Arbitration” Book Offers Guide for Navigating UDRP

Legal Corner Press, LLC recently announced the publication of Domain Name Arbitration: Asserting and Defending Claims of Cybersquatting Under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, authored by Gerald M. Levine, intellectual property attorney, with Foreword by Hon. Neil A. Brown QC, former member of the Australian Parliament and a UDRP panelist.

A Unique Seven-Month Long Study of the Typosquatting Landscape

A group of researchers from Belgian University of Leuven and US-based Stony Brook University have conducted a one of a kind content-based typosquatting experiment that studies the typosquatting phenomenon "longitudinally", i.e., in time.

WIPO Taking Screenshots of Filed UDRPs

Michael Berkens reporting in TheDomains.com: "WIPO has been taking Screenshots of whatever is on a domain name as soon as a UDRP Is filed and they have been furnishing the screenshot to the UDRP panel who has been taking the screenshot into account as evidence in making their determination... Mr. Berryhill has been working behind the scenes to confirm that WIPO has in fact has been taking a screenshot of the domain name upon receipt of a UDRP complaint and furnishing it to the panel without the knowledge of the domain holder and of course has been telling WIPO why its just plain wrong."

ICANN CEO: Top-Level Domain Expansion Has Been Anything But Rushed

In response to the Washington Post's December 11 article title "What's the .rush?", directed at the expansion of new TLDs, Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's President and CEO has replied in a letter to the Washington Post stating: ""The program of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to open the Internet to new top-level domain names (TLDs) has been anything but rushed..."