Domain Names

Bringing Order to The World’s Cybrary: New TLDs Make Sense to Organize the Chaos of the Internet

There has been considerable debate on whether the Internet needs new Top Level Domains. Advertising advocacy groups have objected to the expense of re-investment in online branding. There's a lot of work involved in telling the world .BEYONCE is where you will now find all official Beyonce related information. I'm wondering, why would anyone object to some order being applied to the internet? more

Big Brands Recognizing the Value of New gTLDs

Successful companies already understand the importance and impact of brand control in domain names. No company would ever consider using hotmail.com or gmail.com email addresses for official business. A decade ago, did companies invest in Geocities or Tripod URLs, or did they promote their own domain names? Today, if a company hosts its blog with WordPress.com, do they take the default brand.wordpress.com Web address, or do they upgrade to their own branded second-level domain name? more

The ICANN gTLD Battlefield - The Fog of War

Concerning ICANN's new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program, why is the Association of National Advertisers whose members spends 400 billion on their 10,000 brands so violently opposed? Bob Liodice President & CEO of ANA recently wrote an article "How to (Unnecessarily) Encumber The Internet And The Economy" in Forbes highly critical of ICANN but clearly missing the mark. This misunderstanding demands clarification, the fog is getting dense so let's explore some facts. more

Recent Industry Changes: Internet Standards, ARIN WHOIS Changes, Hotmail Postmaster Pages

Signing Email is now a Draft Standard! Signing email transitioned from a proposed standard to a draft standard (RFC6376 -- one of the new RFCs) over at the IETF a few days ago. The other is RFC6377. Let's go through a brief history of DKIM RFCs to refresh our memories... more

Typosquatting Continues to Pose Dangers to Enterprises, Consumers

While typosquatting is not a new phenomenon, recent research highlights that it is being used to collect sensitive corporate information from employees and lure consumers to interact with dubious websites. ... Security consultancy Godai Group recently uncovered the use of a specific type of typosquat - a "doppelganger domain" - to collect sensitive enterprise information via email-based attacks. more

The US DOJ Rogue Internet Pharmacy Settlement: Implications for Registrars

In the wake of Google's settlement with the Department of Justice for permitting advertising by illegal online pharmacies, what are the legal implications for Domain Name Registrars and ISPs in the US and elsewhere? In short, if you're a Registrar or ISP, it's a new ballgame. Here's why it's critical for you to steer clear of criminal and civil liability by making sure your registration services aren't used by rogue online pharmacy criminals. (And, here's how to do it.) more

The Association of National Advertisers Blinders on New TLDs

I read with interest the piece by the Chairman of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Garry Elliot, in Advertising Age, which was partly prompted by my commentary in the same publication describing why new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) could be an opportunity for some brands. He says: "From all I've seen, no matter how one tries to justify ICANN's process or the benefits it speculates will occur, it is simply impossible to defend the economics of the ICANN proposal. That is the Achilles' heel of this entire exercise. To paraphrase an old saying, 'It's the economics, stupid.'" more

India - The Internet’s Next Billion

Everyone seems to be talking about how the big boom is set to happen in India for domain names, and there are significant factors to ensure that this growth happens. The internet spends and E-commerce usage is fast becoming the face of modern India, a part of everyday lifestyle. Although awareness is still the biggest barrier domain name Registrars face with consumers, there are signs of significant improvement in trust, usability and the adoption of web services. more

Thinking of Applying for a Truly Generic TLD, but Restricting Ownership to a Single Registrant?

As it's coming down to brass tacks and companies are now seriously considering applying for their own .Brand Top-Level Domain (TLD), questions about whether to also apply for a truly generic TLD keep popping up. Many large corporations want to know whether it's even possible to apply for something like .Shoes AND to restrict registrations so that only a single specified registrant is allowed. After all, for the right company it seems that something like .Shoes could be a valuable namespace -- short, easy to remember, and easy to spell. more

A Made Up Fantasy and the ICANN gTLD Reality

Gary Elliot, chairman of the Association of National Advertisers and vice president of global marketing at Hewlett-Packard, wrote a column in Advertising Age titled "ICANN's Promises Aren't Simply Speculation, They're Outright Fantasy." His arguments opposing ICANN gTLDs are similar to the other heads of various advertising associations around the world. While the main powerbrokers of the global advertising sector are mum, their association heads are using the same circulated message of cyber-squatting fears without any solid proof. Here is my analysis and an open challenge to the trade. more