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For ccTLD Registries: 4 Steps to Guaranteed Success

The introduction of New gTLDs has increased the rate at which individuals and businesses are getting online today and we're already seeing mainstream adoption of New gTLDs. By going the extra mile to spread awareness about their extensions among the masses, New gTLD Registries are bringing attention to their value propositions and, more importantly, are sharing the idea of 'getting online' to audiences. more

The .BEST Brand Protection (Interview)

Launching a social network based on a single domain name extension is seriously innovative, but such a concept also implies to give Trademarks a chance to protect themselves. I recently interviewed Cyril Fremont, the new operator of the .BEST Registry and also CEO of "THE.BEST Social Network" on his plan to allow Trademarks to protect their assets prior to the launching of the review network. more

Another Look at the Latest Domain Name Numbers and Trends

There are now 177 million domain names across all top-level domains, which is an increase by 16% (24 million domain names) compared to a year ago. These numbers are from the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, a quarterly report from VeriSign about the growth of the domain name industry. In this review, Royal Pingdom has broken down the numbers in order to demonstrate the growth of both gTLDs (generic TLDs, such as .com and .net) and ccTLDs (country-code TLDs, such as .cn, .se, .uk and .us). more

ICANN Publishes gTLD Statistics and Trends Report, Asks for Community Feedback

The gTLD Marketplace Health Index presents statistics and trends related to generic top-level domains. ICANN intends to publish these statistics biannually to track progress against its goal of supporting the evolution of the domain name marketplace to be robust, stable, and trusted. more

At the NCPH Intersessional, Compliance Concerns Take Centre Stage

The non-contracted parties of the ICANN community met in Reykjavík last week for their annual intersessional meeting, where at the top of the agenda were calls for more transparency, operational consistency, and procedural fairness in how ICANN ensures contractual compliance. ICANN, as a quasi-private cooperative, derives its legitimacy from its ability to enforce its contracts with domain name registries and registrars... more

Newer Cryptographic Advances for the Domain Name System: NSEC5 and Tokenized Queries

In my last post, I looked at what happens when a DNS query renders a "negative" response -- i.e., when a domain name doesn't exist. I then examined two cryptographic approaches to handling negative responses: NSEC and NSEC3. In this post, I will examine a third approach, NSEC5, and a related concept that protects client information, tokenized queries. The concepts I discuss below are topics we've studied in our long-term research program as we evaluate new technologies. more

Online Businesses to Benefit from Supreme Court “Booking.com” Ruling

Today, in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com, the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed that generic terms including .com domain names may be trademarked when consumers do not perceive the mark to signify the class of services, with heightened distinctiveness and recognition attributable to top-level domains that add meaning like .club, .guru, and .vip. more

Change of Leadership at ICANN as Cerf Makes Way for Intellectual Property Expert

Intellectual property and computer law barrister Peter Dengate-Thrush has been elected as new Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The former chairman of InternetNZ, the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry for New Zealand (.nz), and cofounder of the Association of Asian Pacific ccTLDs, succeeds the legendary Vinton Cerf... more

EURid Updates Post-Brexit

Brexit will impact many things. One that has not been getting much attention, however, is domain names and more specifically .eu domains. Under the current regulations, you need to be a resident of the European Union to register a .eu domain name. As I covered in a blog post last year, there is the potential for hundreds of thousand of .eu domain names being pulled overnight. more

The Challenge Facing African TLDs

Africa's digital ecosystem is growing rapidly, with internet access becoming a central driver for innovation, business, and socio-economic development. As this digital adoption expands, so too does the importance of domain governance, particularly the effective management of Top-Level Domains (TLDs). Unfortunately, over the years, African registries have struggled to manage their TLDs, often leading to missed opportunities, inefficiencies, and a loss of competitive edge in the global domain market. more

Domaining Europe Returning Home to Valencia, Spain for 10th Anniversary Show Next Spring

The Domaining Europe conference began in Valencia, Spain almost a decade ago and the first seven shows in the annual series were staged at the Hotel Sorolla Palace there. In 2016 conference founder Dietmar Stefitz decided to take the show on the road, staging that year's event in The Hague, Netherlands, followed by the 2017 show in Berlin, Germany this past May. more

Suggestions on IDN Variant Management

To some applicants, ICANN's variant management policy in DAG4 has become a big obstacle to the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) application. The policy is to delegate the string while reserving the variants, and these variants will not be delegated until a sound mechanism is developed and the desired variants are evaluated. But for some languages, Chinese for example, the so called string and its variant, namely simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, are equivalent and must be simultaneously delegated. more

Sites Under gb.com Go Offline Amidst Legal Battle Over Domain

Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: "Thousands of companies that use the pseudo-top-level-domain .gb.com have gone offline due to a legal fight between the registry and its founder. CentralNIC sells third-level gb.com domains as a 'Great Britain' alternative to .co.uk. A Google search reveals a great many small businesses use the extension for their web sites. They're all out of luck today."
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When a Domain Name Dispute is ‘Plan B’

While having a backup plan is usually a good idea, it's often not an effective way to obtain someone else's domain name - at least not when Plan B consists of a company filing a UDRP complaint with the hope of getting a domain name to which it is not entitled and could not acquire via a negotiated purchase. "Plan B" as a derogatory way of describing an attempted domain name acquisition usually arises in the context of a domain name that is not protected by exclusive (or any) trademark rights, or where the complainant clearly could not prevail in a UDRP proceeding. more

Highlights from ICANN67 Public Forum – Community Dialogue on Proposed Transfer of PIR Ownership

Ethos CEO Erik Brooks and I are grateful to ICANN for hosting this important community dialogue on the future of PIR and .ORG earlier this week, and we listened intently to the questions posed. To echo what John Jeffrey said in his opening remarks, we are very interested in the community's input. We appreciate the openness and candor that was expressed during the Public Forum, and we would like to take this opportunity to recap a few of the overarching themes and questions asked. more