Domain Names

Sponsored
by

Domain Names / Most Viewed

Developing Internet Standards: How Can the Engineering Community and the Users Meet?

There is currently a discussion going on between Milton Mueller and Patrik Fältström over the deployment of DNSSEC on the root servers. I think the discussion exemplifies the difficult relation between those who develop standards and those who use them. On the one hand, Milton points out that the way the signing of the root zone will be done will have a great influence on the subjective trust people and nation states will have towards the system. On the other hand, Patrik states that "DNSSEC is just digital signatures on records in this database". Both are right, of course, but they do not speak the same language... more

Disconnecting Finance: The EU’s Risky Use of Domain Takedowns as Regulatory Weapon

The European Union is increasingly wielding domain name deletions as a tool of financial enforcement - a trend sparked by the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and now spreading across other legislative efforts such as the Financial Data Access Framework (FiDA) and the Payment Services Regulation (PSR).  more

Site Finder: The Technical, Legal & Privacy Concerns

It is openly admitted , in the same Implementation PDF file, that all accesses to the Site Finder service are monitored and archived. A further worry for users is the privacy policy and terms of service posted on the Site Finder service. Not only does the simple act of mistyping a URL implicitly cause you, the end user, to accept VeriSign's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy without the chance to review and accept or decline either, but critical information as described above is not disclosed in either policy (as of this writing). The Privacy Policy clearly states... more

DNS Inventor Impressed With Innovative Effort Behind .LUXE TLD to Integrate DNS With Blockchain

The company running the new .LUXE top-level domain (TLD) recently issued an update on its progress with the innovative effort to tie the TLD with blockchain. more

Closer Look at Domain Name Transfer Policy and the Hijacking of Panix.com

Given the recent panix.com hijacking, I will give an outline of the current ICANN transfers process for gtlds. In the case of panix.com, evidence so far indicates that a third party that holds an account with a reseller of Melbourne IT, fraudulently initiated the transfer. The third party appears to have used stolen credit cards to establish this account and pay for the transfer. That reseller is analyzing its logs and cooperating with law enforcement. more

PayPal Sells X.com Back to Its Previous Owner, Elon Musk

PayPal's corporate communications director confirmed that the company has sold the domain X.com back to its previous owner, Elon Musk. more

First “Africa DNS Forum” To Be Streamed Live July 12 and 13 From Durban, South Africa

The first Africa DNS Forum will take place on Friday, July 12, and Saturday, July 13, 2013, in Durban, South Africa, in advance of next week's ICANN 47 meeting. Jointly organized by AfTLD, ICANN and the Internet Society, the Africa DNS Forum "aims to establish a platform for the DNS community across Africa and to advance the domain name industry and domain name registrations on the continent."  more

New gTLDs Will Work Way Better Than Vanity Domains Did

There are updates in the domain name business that I have never been able to understand: one of them is called "vanity domain names". A vanity domain name is a domain that keeps on using the first and the second level domain, to form a keyword; the third level domain is sometimes used too. Good examples of these would be: webc.am or marmala.de, aud.it or del.icio.us. more

ICANN Does Something Technical!

I've often said that ICANN regulates the business of buying and selling of domain names and that ICANN's claim that it coordinates technical matters to preserve the stability of DNS is a fantasy. Well I am proven wrong. ICANN has done something technical. ICANN has issued Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names, Draft Version 2 [PDF] (pending approval by the ICANN board.) It's only four pages long, but those few pages contain a lot of significant material. more

EFF Warns ICANN Not to Engage in Censorship, Says It Should Stick to Technical Role

A series of articles published by EFF, coinciding with ICANN's 60th meeting in Abu Dhabi this week, Jeremy Malcolm warns that domain name registrars, registries and ICANN can become "free speech week leaks" for online censorship. more

Chinese and Japanese IDN in .BIZ

I just got back this morning from attending the OASIS XRI TC face-to-face meeting with Bill Barnhill, Drummond Reed, Laurie Rae, Les Chasen, Markus Sabadello, Marty Schleiff. A number of good things came out of the meeting, which I'll leave for another blog because this post is about Internationalized Domain Names, not XRI. So we just opened the flood gates for Chinese and Japanese IDNs for .BIZ. This has been my brainchild for the past half a year or so, and represents a significant step forward for our registry in terms of internationalization. more

WIPO Panel Splits on Descriptiveness of bocaresorts.com

An arbitration panel of the World Intellectual Property Organization has decided 2-1 in favor of Complainant Boca Raton Resort & Club in an action under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy over the domain name bocaresorts.com. ...The Presiding Panelist, Dennis Foster, disagreed with the majority's conclusion, and issued a dissent that addressed the issue of bad faith. Foster asserted that the Respondent was "entitled to believe that the phrase 'Boca Resorts' is geographically descriptive and means resorts in the city of Boca Raton, Florida... more

What Do Bitcoin, Cloud Computing and the New gTLDs All Have in Common?

I am a student of life, learning one hard lesson at a time. In fact, I actually dropped out of my last year of college to start a tech company in a new space called the internet. I was an entrepreneur running an online service prior to the advent of the world wide web in 1992, back when Pine, Usenet, and Gopher ruled the information superhighway. Over the last 25 years, I have learned a great deal about technology adoption cycles by launching six internet companies, each at the forefront of a new technology wave. more

The Technical Impact of New gTLDs: Are We Pushing on Regardless?

Have some security aspects been overlooked in the rush to conclude the new gTLD program and "give birth to the baby before it starts to get really sick" as ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé put it at a briefing jointly organised by ICANN and the European Commission a few days ago? Ever since 2008 when the ICANN Board approved the GNSO-evolved policy that became the new gTLD program, it has been reworked so much that it's difficult to imagine any stone has been left unturned. Yet a recent letter threatens to open up a new can of worms. more

Blockchain Domains and What They Could Mean for Online Scams and Brand Protection

Blockchain domain names, domains that are stored on blockchain or cryptocurrency exchanges, are part of a growing, unregulated, and decentralized internet. Right now, blockchain domains are used mostly by cryptocurrency users, but they are growing in popularity - the Ethereum name service reported over 2.2 million .eth domain name registrations in 2022. At the same time, crypto scams are also exploding, reaching a total of $3.5 billion in losses in 2022. more