Domain Names

Domain Seizures for Copyright Infringement Likely to Move Beyond U.S. Based Registries

Efforts to take down websites for copyright infringement are likely to move beyond U.S.-based domain name registries, with ICANN promising to more closely cooperate with global law enforcement agencies and governments. During an open session with the Government Advisory Committee (GAC), the ICANN board confirmed that it will enforce its contracts with registrars more effectively in order to meet expectations from governments and law enforcement authorities. more

Project dotVinum for .WINE Domain Names

This article is a feedback on the sensitive .WINE dotVinum project which aims to create an extension for the wine community on Internet. Questions to Be Answered: Protection of rights at an international level: how to protect trademarks? Funding: who has the financial capacity to invest in such a project?... more

Is It Time for a Registration Operations Industry Association? (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series of blog posts I described the need for an industry association of operators to discuss the technical tasks, such as the development, deployment, and ongoing systems administration of the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), performed by registries and registrars to ensure interoperability and share best practices when providing registration services. In this blog post I'll describe a way to make that happen. more

ICANN Compliance Lends a Hand to a Violent Criminal While Trashing a Legitimate Business

Imagine a California non-profit corporation providing material assistance to a criminal wanting to do you physical and financial harm. Then, imagine that corporation is ICANN. Imagine no longer, because that is precisely what the ICANN Compliance department managed to pull off this week, in an all-too-common demonstration of the havoc they can cause by sheer ineptitude, without apology or concern. This is the situation which crossed my desk this week. more

Next gTLD Round - A Seven Year Itch?

Five years ago today, the ICANN Board committed to opening a second application window for the New gTLD Program as expeditiously as possible. The same resolution also directed the ICANN CEO to publish a document describing the work plan required prior to initiating a second application window. Ask a Board member or ICANN staff when they expect the next application window to open, and they will inevitably suggest 2020 -- another three years away. more

URL Shorteners, Domain Hacks and Quasi-gTLDs: What are ccTLDs Really About?

The Twitterverse is awash with catchy URL shortening services, which allow what would otherwise be long URLs to fit within the strict character limit of individual Tweets. Before the Twitter phenomenon really took hold, tinyurl.com was one of the more popular services; now much shorter options are available, using various Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) which have the significant advantage of being only two characters after the last dot. more

Where Do You Register New Domain Names?

Most users who already use websites have heard about domain names and they know what they are. Although .COM domains are already very popular, they are no longer as appealing as they once were, because they don't mean anything as such and all of the cool, short names have long since been registered. In 2014, this will change with the emerging new domain names. I like to think that it is possible that, with the increased communications that exists around new gTLD and the fact that many of these new domain names actually mean something, people will start paying more attention. more

The Value of Trust in 2007

Applications and devices like cell phones, email, search engines, and automated programs handle the error messages differently; it would be naive for VeriSign to think only humans with browsers rely on DNS. When a user enters a non-exist domain name on their cell phone the DNS error message would prevent downloading. Now cell phones download VeriSign's SiteFinder webpage and Service Providers bill the cell phone user for that extra usage. SPAM prevention programs also rely on this error message to check to see if the domain is real. more

Analysis of the IDN New gTLD Applications

There has been a lot of excitement since ICANN revealed the list of 1930 applications for new gTLD yesterday at an event in London yesterday. Even some of the strongest opponents of the ICANN's new gTLD program have acknowledged there is a case to open up new gTLDs for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). I am going to focus here on the analysis of the IDN applicants. more

2014 Domain Name Year in Review

It's hard to believe that another year has come and gone and that I'm now publishing my 5th Annual Domain Name Year in Review. It's sort of fun to look back 5 years ago to see how much things have changed, especially as focus has shifted to issues related to the launch and use of new gTLDs. Of course, much has stayed the same too. Concerns related to domain name security and domain portfolio management are still important. more

UDRP Failure Endangers Consumers

Yesterday I participated in a panel at the International Consumer Product Safety Conference sponsored by the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO) held at the European Commission in Brussels Belgium. This conference brings together the global community of product safety engineers, manufacturers, retailers, regulators, inspectors, and counterfeiting investigators. The role of online fraud and illicit product traffic is clearly one of the conference priorities. more

Will Anyone Qualify As a Community TLD?

Some Top-Level Domain (TLD) applicants have been saying that they're "community" applications, which means that would avoid an auction and prevail over even deep-pocketed competitors. But according to ICANN's Applicant Guidebook, very few if any applications will qualify as a community. If you're an applicant who's been telling your supporters or investors that you're going to win because you're a community, you might want to take a step back. more

Who is ICANN and Where Does it Fit With Internet Governance?

You'd be surprised how many people are asking that question at the moment, but you won't be surprised to know that the only thing they agree on is that they either don't know, or that they disagree with the people that believe they do. I am not going to attempt to provide my own answer, but I will point to a paper just released by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST). POST, among other things, produces regular, concise briefings for the UK Parliament on whatever are the important topics of the time. And they have now done one on Internet Governance. more

NTIA Objects to Planned o.com Auction

According to media sources, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) wrote to Verisign last Friday, objecting to the company's plan to auction o.com to the highest bidder. The planned release for o.com - described by the Second Amendment to the .com Registry Agreement and intended as a pilot for the remaining reserved single-character .com names - involved an opaque consideration process that ignored community input and set aside hard-won trademark protections developed by stakeholders in order to maximize dollars earmarked for an unidentified cadre of non-profit organizations. more

Study Finds Some 4000 Domains Expired After Being Won in Court, Some Disputed Again by Same Company

According to a recent study on trends of disputed domain names, companies could save millions on legal costs by being more proactive about registering the names first. "The results indicate more than $220 million was spent on reclaiming domain names from third parties through the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)," says Corporation Service Company (CSC). "If brand owners had registered these domain names proactively, it would have only cost them $1.1 million (£600K), yielding a cost savings of $219 million." more