Domain Names

Finishing What We Started: A Level Playing Field for New gTLDs

While the Internet governance debate devours headlines, it's almost easy to forget that ICANN is in the midst of the most audacious and important policy process it has ever undertaken. And while many new generic top-level domains are now live, the process of ensuring the best opportunity to fulfill their potential is not yet complete. We recently reached the milestone of 280,000 registrations in the Donuts gTLDs that are currently generally available. more

Country and Regional TLDs Are Vital in Supporting Online Linguistic Diversity, Study Finds

A study conducted by the Oxford Information Labs in collaboration with Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR), finds that the role of country and regional TLDs is imperative in supporting diversity in global online linguistic. more

Will the Trademark Clearinghouse Fulfill its Potential?

ICANN created the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) as a way to streamline the repetitive process forced on trademark owners during the launch of new top-level-domains. With the expected tsunami of hundreds of new TLD's starting later this year, the TMCH should generate a clear benefit for trademark owners who elect to participate in Sunrise and Claims Periods. The side effect of introducing new TLDs is that the legacy TLDs will be making changes to make sure they are competitive against the new TLDs. more

Brexit Could Impact EU Domain Registrants

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

Warning, Danger Lurks Here: Exploring DKIM/ADSP Edge Cases - Missing message-id

This article is the first in an occasional series on DKIM/ADSP edge cases that may not be generally recognized or understood. Many people advocate DKIM/ADSP adoption without fully recognizing potential implementation and operational issues. The fact is that the email messaging environment is fraught with opportunities for poor outcomes because of common practices that need to be considered or poorly understood implementations that are not considered... more

Domain Pulse 2008: Internet Governance the Focus of Day One

Around 350 attendees came from Russia in the east to Ireland in the west, as well as a few people from elsewhere around the globe, to attend Domain Pulse 2008 in Vienna on February 21 and 22. Day one's focus was internet governance. The future of the DNS was one of the key issues addressed by Michael Nelson of Georgetown University in Washington DC, with domain names becoming less important, but their numbers still increasing, as online access by a myriad of devices skyrockets connect -- everything from the television, refrigerator, washing machine, pets, sprinkler systems and cars. more

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. more

The Trademark Clearinghouse: Secure, Reliable, Usable - Pick Any Two

Earlier this week, technical and legal experts from ICANN, Deloitte and IBM met in Brussels with their counterparts from registrars and registry service providers representing as much as 90% of prospective gTLD registries, to discuss the technical implementation of the Trademark Clearinghouse, the database of rights holder information that will support the mandatory rights holder protection mechanisms for new gTLDs. more

Musings on Metering: An Update from ICANN’s Latest Meeting

ICANN held another update for new gTLD applicants last week, revealing that the proposal to meter the introduction of new gTLDs received many suggestions during the open comment period. This was just the first step to what I imagine will be a long process - one that will continue on September 12 when ICANN holds a public consultation that will offer more detailed discussion on the many different options for metering. more

How to Preserve the .org Registry’s Integrity in the ISOC Sale of PIR

This article addresses the issues around the planned sale of the PIR .org registry by ISOC. It examines the history and issues plus looks at several possible paths forward, including PIR becoming a Benefit Corporation (B-Corp) and identifying possible alternative buyers who could retain PIR's non-profit status. Before Tim Bernier-Lee brought the HTML markup language to the Internet, starting in 1989, there were few registered domain names. Access for public registration started in 1986, and by December, there were about five dozen registered .com domain names.  more

Bitcoin Domain Names Become Popular - and Attract Disputes

Cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) are all the rage -- so, naturally, related domain name disputes are, too. The wild fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices (Bitcoin hit a low of close to $6,000 this week, after reaching an all-time high of more than $19,000 only two months ago, and less than $1,000 a year ago) have attracted speculators, regulators and now even cybersquatters. more

WSIS Leaving More Questions Than Answers

Two things are important to stress. First, nothing was decided in this meeting, and no actions will be taken until the next meeting in 2005. Secondly, and more importantly, as with anything the devil is in the details. Given the vagueness of the documents available, there are few reliable conclusions that can be drawn from the summit...Before any judgments can be made about the effectiveness, or feasibility of the ideas outlined in the Plan of Action more concrete information is needed. The details of these plans are currently unknown to the Internet community at large, and may even be unknown to the members of the WSIS. Based on the information that is available it appears the Plan of Action needs to be thought through a little more thoroughly. more

Registration Patterns of Deceptive Domains

A key requirement for a bad actor wanting to launch a brand attack is the registration of a carefully chosen domain name. The most convincing infringements frequently use a domain name that's deceptively similar to that of the official site of the target brand. This allows a variety of attacks to be executed, including phishing attacks... more

Is a New Set of Governance Mechanism Necessary for the New gTLDs?

In order to be able to reply to the question of whether a new set of governance mechanisms are necessary to regulate the new Global Top Level Domains (gTLDs), one should first consider how efficiently the current Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has performed and then move to the evaluation of the Implementations Recommendations Team (ITR) recommendations. more

Are Domain Names Recession Proof?

We'll only be able to tell whether domain names are recession proof by waiting for the performance of e-commerce sites during the holiday shopping season. Domain name owners and buyers have to remain in suspense a while longer. Some domainers are experiencing drops in sales and prices. However, it is not clear whether those drops are because of changes in valuations by buyers, sellers, or both. more