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I want to call your attention to a very important Internet free speech decision, perhaps the most significant of our domain name cases from the past several years. In Lamparello v. Falwell, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held today that the use of the domain name www.fallwell.com for a web site devoted to denouncing the views of Rev. Jerry Falwell about homosexuality neither infringes Falwell's trademark in his name nor constitutes "cybersquatting." more
The year 2010 is turning out to be the "year of DNSSEC" from Registry implementations, Registrar implementations, ISP support, to the Root being signed this summer. Because we are dealing with such critical infrastructure, it is important to not lose sight of careful implementations. more
From the perspective of the domain name industry, 2018 was strongly influenced by, among other things, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Temporary Specification and especially the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP). For the Contracted Parties House (CPH) TechOps Group, one year after its foundation, it was a very exciting and intensive time. This initiative was created to tackle technical and operational needs and challenges plus ideally to create best practices. more
Well, it's that time of year again. The time of year when I look back at all of the biggest domain news stories from the last twelve months, and also reflect on my predictions from last year. As expected, GDPR has had a major impact on the ability to access domain ownership information. And we did indeed see a number of M&A transactions over this last year. However, there wasn't a lot of new .Brand activity. This is one prediction where I may have missed the mark... more
The purpose of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, known as the UDRP (hereafter the "Policy"), is to determine disputes relating to the registration or acquisition of domain names in bad faith. To succeed in a UDRP action (i.e. to obtain cancellation or transfer of the disputed domain name) it is necessary for the party bringing the complaint (the complainant) to show that (i) the disputed domain name is identical with or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; (ii) the domain name holder (known as the respondent) has no right or legitimate interest in respect of the domain name; and (iii) the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith. Each of the aforesaid three elements must be proved by the complainant to warrant relief.
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In a recent interviewed with Roger Collins, president of ProProject and the new owner of Afternic.com, CircleID investigates the logics behind ProProject's strong belief in the domain name secondary market. Once known as a primary domain name auction site, Register.com had purchased Afteric.com in the September of 2000 for $48 million in cash and stock -- 2 years later the site was shut down as money-losing unit until ProProject came along. more
We are on the brink of the most serious threat to the open and public Internet for decades. ICANN, under pressure from domain name registrars and EU data protection authorities, has proposed an "interim" plan that will hide critical information in WHOIS. Security, threat intelligence, and anti-abuse professionals rely on WHOIS to track down bad guys and keep the Internet as safe and secure as possible. more
What better way to kick things off than to review the domain aftermarket, three years after my then infamous "Domain Aftermarket Overdue For An Asset Repricing" article which caused a bit of a stir at the time. I said then that there was a big recession coming, in it everything would suffer severe price declines, and that domain names would not be exempt. I went on to say that the low-hanging fruit in the domain industry had been picked: type-in activity would go into secular decline over time, and that domainers would face increasing competition from other avenues such as DNS resolvers, ISPs and web browsers. It didn't go over well. more
In the last three years, almost 1,000 new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) have entered the market, increasing the previous 22 options for generic domain name extensions, like .com, .net and .org, by almost 5,000 percent. While expanded choice can be good for consumers, small businesses and website owners may be overwhelmed by the many different options and have a lot of questions about which domain extension is right for them or their brand. Recently I spoke with editors at WIRED about what their readers should ask themselves when determining how to choose the right domain name and it came down to the following seven key questions. more
So my prediction from last year that "ICANN will open the new gTLD application period without any glitches" could not have been more wrong. And yes - I actually used the word 'glitches'... Regardless of my crystal-ball gazing skills, it's been another incredibly eventful year, and below are the Top 10 Domain Stories from 2012. more
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has been studying the issue of Internet navigation and the DNS. The study was undertaken at the request of Congress to "provide analysis and advice for consideration by agencies of the U.S. Government, interested international institutions, and other stakeholders." In addition to examining technological issues, the study is also considering "relevant legal, economic, political, and social issues...because technologies related to the DNS and Internet navigation do not operate in isolation, but must be deployed within a complex and challenging national and international context." more
At the December 2004 ICANN meeting in Cape Town, Vint Cerf said this to the Public Forum: "I want to go on record as saying... that I am no longer sure that I have a strong understanding of why I would be motivated to create a new TLD..." Dr. Cerf posed a question that has yet to be answered or even discussed by the DNS stakeholder community. While the technical and business cases for the introduction of new TLDs have been successfully made, what is the philosophical case for adding new TLDs? What semantics are encoded in TLDs, and how could those semantics be expanded in a consistent way? more
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been a major contextual factor of global internet governance discussions over the past year, and it appears that discussions in ICANN are no exception. Threats to the integrity and security of the DNS have become a regular topic of debate within the ICANN community. In recent months, these discussions have increasingly focused on the idea of 'DNS abuse' and, more specifically, COVID-19-related DNS abuse. more
I had the pleasure of eating breakfast with Vint Cerf, chairman of ICANN's board and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, prior to his keynote address this morning. It was great to discuss some of the issues domainers are facing with regards to registrar practices, expiring domains, etc. directly with Cerf. Cerf's keynote kept the crowd engaged. I've summarized the topics he covered... Some people have misunderstood Cerf's position with regards to adding new domains. He said he is not opposed to adding new TLDs. What he advocates, however, is having a solid rationale for adding new TLDs. Cerf believes the processes and outcomes of the first two rounds of TLD adds were not satisfactory... more
Netchoice, a lobbying group for the e-commerce industry had a strange reaction on the failure of the GNSO working group on Whois to reach a consensus. After all, they say, "Privacy concerns with Whois that were identified years ago have already been addressed by in the marketplace"... more
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