Welcome:
Login
|
Sign Up
|
About CircleID
Follow:
|
|
|
Domain Names |
Sponsored by |
|
On 6 March 2024, the ICANN At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) held a plenary session entitled "Building Trust on the Internet Through Registrant Verification" at the ICANN79 Community Forum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that Michael Palage and Avri Doria co-moderated. This session was inspired in part by a recent World Economic Forum report entitled "Reimagining Digital ID"... more
On March 25th, 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially posted its revisions to the "Chinese Measures for the Administration of Domain Names" (2016 edition) for public comment. A decade has gone by since the latest administration measures were introduced in 2004 (2004 edition). Registries and registrars have been longing to see this update for a while, and it is therefore no surprise that the new edition has drawn substantial attention at home and abroad. more
There is an urgent need to clarify the GDPR's territorial scope. Of the many changes the GDPR will usher in this May, the expansion of EU privacy law's territorial scope is one of the most important. The GDPR provides for broad application of its provisions both within the EU and globally. But the fact that the GDPR has a broad territorial scope does not mean that every company, or all data processing activities, are subject to it. more
One of the fallouts of disruptive inventions is the need for new laws to counter their unexpected consequences. As it concerned the Internet, these consequences included a new tort of registering domain names identical or confusingly similar to trademarks and service marks with the intention of taking unlawful advantage of rights owners. Prior to 2000 the only civil remedy for "cybersquatting" or "cyber piracy" was expensive and time-consuming plenary actions in courts of competent jurisdiction under national trademark laws. more
This week, the ICANN Board will vote on whether to approve the transfer of control of the .ORG domain to a private equity firm called Ethos Capital. This is a weighty decision for ICANN, since in order to approve the sale, it will have to convince itself that this is the right choice in the face of tremendous and widespread opposition, including from those who will be most affected by the sale. more
My new essay, "Valuing Trademarks in Domain Names," outlines the various approaches to valuing trademarks, pointing out the approaches’ different strengths and weaknesses, with emphasis on domain names. Using court cases, the essay points out that there is no one right way to value intangible assets but there are wrong ways. more
After reading Steve Delbianco's recent CircleID article entitled The Tale of Two Governance Models I was torn. On one hand I agreed and supported Steve's comments about the strength of the bottom-up consensus driven model upon which ICANN was originally founded. As I am about to begin my thirty fifth ICANN regional meeting over the last eleven years, it is a model which I still believe in and fiercely fight to defend. However, on the other hand I look back over the last eleven years... more
ICANN organized a meeting on 15-16 November 2012 in Los Angeles, the Trademark Clearinghouse policy negotiations... I participated on behalf of noncommercial users in the policy meeting in person in LA on 15 November, and then for part of the discussion on 16 November via telephone. Here is my personal evaluation of the meeting and my initial reactions to the output of the meeting pending further discussion with the NCSG Policy Committee. more
When he wanted to show the transformative and unifying power of the Internet to open this week's ICANN meeting in Seoul, ICANN President Rod Beckstrom had an ace in the hole: Korean guitarist Jay (Jeong-hyun Lim), who became a global YouTube sensation with his hard-rocking version of Pachelbel's Canon. As I watched Jay wail on his gold-plated guitar to standing ovations, I couldn't help but think of Rod waxing that the Internet was a "symphony" of ideas and voices from around the world. more
There is a definite advantage to knowing what users look for when typing in domain names that they think should work. This article from Government Computer News shows an excellent example in .gov. "600,000 visitors a year to FirstGov try to find the federal government's Web site by typing USA.gov into their browser", so they switched from firstgov.gov to usa.gov. It wasn't mentioned in the article, but firstgov.gov redirects automatically; this is more intelligence than I normally expect from US government web sites. more
This post provides an overview of The 2016 New gTLD Year in Review infographic, reflecting on some of the intriguing highlights of the gTLD industry. The data analyzed within the infographic is based on the following: New Top Level Domains (TLDs) contained in the data set reflect open TLDs and exclude single registrants such as brands; For greater insight, TLDs have been separated into four quartiles or 'tiers' with tier 1 being the top 25% and tier 4 being the bottom 25%... more
EFF and 26 other organizations, including Wikimedia Foundation, Public Knowledge, National Council of Nonprofits, YWCA and YMCA, sent a letter today to the Internet Society (ISOC), urging it to stop the sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR) -- operator of .ORG top-level domain -- to private equity firm Ethos Capital. more
With solution providers such as Unstoppable Domains or Handshake, and blockchain technology-friendly browsers, such as Brave, that are more than happy to assist on the implementation front, decentralized alternatives to the traditional Domain Name System has been receiving more and more attention lately. Centralized vs. decentralized... what will it be? 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
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
A World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments. Serving Since 2002.