Domain Names

Collisions Ahead: Look Both Ways before Crossing

Many years ago on my first trip to London, I encountered for the first time signs that warned pedestrians that vehicles might be approaching in a different direction than they were accustomed to in their home countries, given the left-versus-right-side driving patterns around the world. (I wrote a while back about one notable change from left-to-right, the Swedish "H Day," as a comment on the IPv6 transition.) more

New Report of Afnic on the Global Domain Name Market: Strong Contrasts and Disparate Regional Dynamics

Afnic, the association responsible for several Internet Top Level Domains, including the .fr country-code TLD, shares its annual global domain name market analysis. In this new report, the association deciphers global trends and highlights the specific characteristics of the different segments and the regional particularities. more

Recognizing ICANN’s Failures

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has failed on a number of fronts, resulting in sub-par products and services in a global monopolistic environment. Failures will continue if not recognized and immediately addressed. Leadership is about the future, a journey into uncharted territory, and it requires vision supported by technical, operational, and mind-changing competencies. ... It does not require a rocket scientist to recognize that ICANN has fallen short because it lacks... more

Undesirable Consequences of Empirical Studies on Cybersquatting

Empirical studies on cyber- and typosquatting (for example, Moore and Edelman's "Measuring the Perpetrators and Funds of Typosquatting") may inadvertently encourage bad behavior. People tend to do what most other people are doing, even when the given act is presented to them as something wrong. more

Africa Infrastructure Growth Supporting ccTLDs and New gTLD Growth

This month, France Telecom's Lower Indian Ocean Network 2 "LION2" fiber optic cable has been put in service, bringing the total number of cables in East Africa to four. In South Africa it is expecting West Africa Cable System to go live next month. This huge growth in fiber optic cables connecting Africa means that bandwidth costs can go further down but there are many questions for internet service providers, regulators and policy makers... more

ICANN to Extend Verisign .COM Registry Contract for Another Six Years

"Verisign to get .com for six more years, but prices to stay frozen," Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite: "ICANN and Verisign have agreed to extend their .com registry contract for another six years, but there are no big changes in store for .com owners." more

New TLD Vertical Integration, Market Forces and the Path of Least Compliance

The ICANN Board will soon make many decisions, one of which is to decide whether to continue or reverse ICANN's longstanding policy of vertical separation of registries and registrars. Since new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) are supposed to benefit registrants with lower prices, choice and what we trust will be a decision for 'market-differentiated' competition, the Board will no doubt consider market forces as well as compliance and enforcement issues in choosing the path that can maximize these goals. more

Registration Numbers Not the Only Success Measure for New TLDs

Like many, I've been watching the rollout of the first 150+ new Top-Level Domains (TLD) with interest. Since the delegation of ????. back in October, we've seen all sorts of TLDs launched -- from brands like .monash to generics like .build. There has been intense scrutiny within our industry on the zone file registration numbers of these delegated TLDs to measure whether or not they are successful. To be fair, this is not a surprise. We've been conditioned by past generic TLD launches to focus on registration numbers. more

Satisfying the Evidentiary Demands of the UDRP

It continues to surprise that some counsel in proceedings under the Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) are unaware or oblivious of its evidentiary demands, by which I mean they file and certify complaints with insufficient evidence either of their clients' rights or their claims. Because the UDRP requires conjunctive proof of bad faith registration and bad faith use (as opposed to the disjunctive model of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act), it should be ingrained for counsel experienced in the jurisprudence to know they cannot hope to succeed with marks postdating registration of domain names. more

Charting the Balance between Trademark Owners and Domain Name Holders: A Jurisprudential Overview

Efforts to combat cybersquatting began in earnest in 1998 when the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (at the request of the United States Government supported by all member states) began an extensive process of international consultations "to address cross-border trademark-abusive domain name registrations." ... The extensive process concluded in the Spring of 1999 with WIPO publishing a detailed report... more

Who Pays When .Org Prices Rise?

When .org prices rise, who suffers – nonprofits or speculators? Will Ethos Capital raise prices more aggressively than ISOC would? Vint Cerf attributed concerns about higher prices to speculators: "Of course, companies that hold domain names in the tens of thousands for speculative purposes might find such increases more troubling, but I don't have much sympathy for that business model in the context of the organizations the .org brand is intended to serve." more

DNA Auction Plan to Reinvest Money Into Industry

Love them or hate them, auctions are an unavoidable reality of the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) Program. By their very nature, they create winners and losers. All that is in doubt is where the money goes -- to the losing parties under a private auction model or to ICANN under their auction of last resort. There are pros and cons for both models. But what if there was another way? more

ICANN Approves At-Large Framework for Latin America

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently launched organizing of the individual Internet user community (At-Large) for increasing global participation and representation in ICANN. Under a framework approved by ICANN's Board of Directors, local and regional groups may now form in Latin America to involve their members in critical issues that effect their use of the Internet's domain name system. more

SOPA Could Shutter Registrars and other Domain Name Industry Intermediaries

The Internet Commerce Association has just sent a letter to senior members of the House Judiciary Committee regarding the likely unintended but potentially devastating impact of H.R. 3261 ("SOPA") as introduced upon ICANN-accredited registrars and other participants in the broad domain name industry, as well as upon the domain registrants who use those services. more

Conclusion: SLD Blocking Is Too Risky Without TLD Rollback (Part 4 of 4)

ICANN's second level domain (SLD) blocking proposal includes a provision that a party may demonstrate that an SLD not in the initial sample set could cause "severe harm," and that SLD can potentially be blocked for a certain period of time. The extent to which that provision would need to be exercised remains to be determined. However, given the concerns outlined in Part 2 and Part 3 of this series, it seems likely that there could be many additions (and deletions!) from the blocked list given the lack of correlation between the DITL data and actual at-risk queries. more