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The Associated Press reports this week on ICANN developments involving the Whois reform. The Whois database, which displays domain name registrant information including names, addresses, phone numbers, postal and email addresses, has been the subject of years of debate within ICANN as many in the Internet community have expressed concerns about the mandatory disclosure of such personal information. The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) has successfully pushed for reform, though it is uncertain how the ICANN board will respond. more
Cybersquatting is so 2000, or so we thought. The Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) at WIPO has been chugging along for several years now, methodically determining if complainants IP rights have been violated and reassigning "ownership" of domain names. Typically, the cases are fairly boring. But some recent developments in the world of 800 lb search gorillas, Google and Baidu, suggests that the regime could be faced with substantial pressure in the near future. more
As folks will recall, there was a big debate about tiered/differential pricing in the .biz/info/org contracts. Eventually those contracts were amended to prevent that. However, if folks read the .XXX proposed contractv [PDF], Appendix S, Part 2, under "delegated authority" (page 66 of the PDF), appears to give the Registry Operator total control to make policy regarding pricing. Thus, it would appear they are in a position to re-price domains that later become successful... more
It's tax time again. If you are like most domainers, you are a little hesitant about filing your tax return. This is not just because you dread paying Uncle Sam like most taxpayers. It may be because you are unsure of whether you are reporting your domain purchases and sales correctly. Despite the growth of domaining, it is still a relatively young and small industry that has not yet gained the attention of the IRS... more
From "Last Call for Whois Comments", a recent opinion piece by eWeek's Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer: "It's not a good sign when the criminals and the lawyers are on the same side of an issue; there may be no good solution to the problems of Whois service rules. Who would have imagined that so much business and so much abuse would center around Internet domain names? Certainly not the designers of the system, including those of the Whois service, which reports on ownership and some other data on domain names... more
Record-breaking domain sales, acquisitions, and growing industry credibility all highlight a critical year for the domain name industry. The domain name industry had a heck of a year. It's impossible to rank the top news stories of 2006, but I'm going to make an attempt... Let's talk about it before the end of the year; then let's look forward to a fantastic 2007. more
It has been over a year since I posted "The Non-Parity of the UDRP", how little did I know then compared to now! Since that posting, the corporations and their lawyers have given me a crash course in the law and I have learned much. There are many tricks that corporations will play on a domain name registrant in order to silence criticism of the corporation and to violate the registrants right of freedom of expression without frontiers. The UDRP Administrative Proceedings is one such trick... more
In a recent article at TechWeb, the following observations were made: "Internet addresses that appeal to identity thieves eager to rip off consumers are being posted by major domain resellers... Finnish-based F-Secure has identified more than 30 registered domain names for resale that would be of interest only to the legitimate holder of the trademark or to phishers..." more
I'm in attendance at the the TRAFFIC EAST 2006 show, in Hollywood [Miami], Florida. There has been a lot of buzz here about the .Mobi top level domain, ranging from the talk of early registrants hoping to create the next big mobile portal to those that were keen to see implementations of mobile content. There was a domain name auction this evening where flowers.mobi sold for $200,000.00 (USD), and fun.mobi for $100,000.00 (USD) from a long list of domain names in the com, net, info, org, us and mobi extensions. more
Content inspection is a poor way to recognise spam, and the proliferation of image spam recently drums this home. However if one must use these unreliable techniques, one should bring mathematical rigour to the procedure. Tools like SpamAssassin combine content inspection results, with other tests, in order to tune rule-sets to give acceptable rates of false positives (mistaking genuine emails for spam), and thus end up assigning suitable weights to different content rules. If one is going to use these approaches to filtering spam, and some see it as inevitable, one better know one's statistics... more
Registrars who support .com domain names will use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) system by October 28. ...There will be an additional step when trying to transfer a .com domain name among registrars. Specifically, a piece of information called an EPP code (aka auth code, EPP key, transfer secret) must be obtained from the current registrar and submitted to the gaining one prior to approving with the latter. more
ICANN issued a statement on the Spamhaus case: "...ICANN is not a party to this action and no order has been issued in this matter requiring any action by ICANN. Additionally, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend Spamhaus.org..." more
EURid has unfrozen 74,000 domains that were part of a dispute against domain warehousers. In July, EURid relented to outside pressure as it suspended the registration of 74,000 domains. They claimed these domains were registered directly by three registrars, not on behalf of clients, which violated EURid's terms. But the registrars have won this round... more
Though the "Techies" have been heavily involved in many initiatives like Internet Governance, Internationalized (Multi-lingual) Domain Names, Identity Management, Information Security, Access Rights Management etc., they still have to correctly apply the technologies at hand to be able to replicate many accepted norms that have matured in the physical world such as federated identities, non-repudiation, notarizing, witnessing, co-signing etc. more
Everyone knows there are many frauds linked to the growth of domain names. According to AFNIC (the French NIC), there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of slamming since the beginning of this year. ...To fight against these practices, AFNIC issued a guide where it describes different categories of slamming... more
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