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US Senate Committee Holds Hearing on ICANN’s New TLD Expansion

As previously noted, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation today held a full committee hearing on ICANN's expansion of top level domains (TLDs). The hearing was held to examine the merits and implications of the program and ICANN's efforts to address concerns raised. ICANN will begin accepting applications for new TLDs on January 12, 2012. more

Information Protection for the Domain Name System: Encryption and Minimization

In previous posts in this series, I've discussed a number of applications of cryptography to the DNS, many of them related to the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). In this final blog post, I'll turn attention to another application that may appear at first to be the most natural, though as it turns out, may not always be the most necessary: DNS encryption. (I've also written about DNS encryption as well as minimization in a separate post on DNS information protection.) more

Enterprise Domain Stargazing: Understanding Your Company’s Galaxy of Domains

In CSC's recent insight paper, we address the trend that many business leaders today don't realize the extent to which their modern enterprise -- and its millions of digital assets -- rely on. It's a vast domain ecosystem that needs to be protected from online threats. Often, to better understand this need for domain security, we need to understand how critical and interconnected domains are within a business. more

Google: Not All ccTLD’s Are Created Equally in Generic Search Rankings

There is a very interesting video posted on YouTube.com from Matt Cutts of Google who answered the question about how ccTLD's are viewed by Google especially when they are being used as domain hacks. Here is the question: "We have a vanity domain (http://ran.ge) that unfortunately isn't one of the generic TLDs, which means we can't set our geographic target in Webmaster Tools. Is there any way to still target our proper location?" more

Making IDN gTLDs Attractive and Safe

The primary focus of this article is to illustrate that the Applicant Guidebook is not supplying sufficient protection mechanisms, and creates too high financial barrier for those who are interested in applying for multiple Top-Level Domains (TLDs) that are translations/transliterations of each other and/or of an existing generic Top-Level Domains (tt-gTLDs). more

Gruber Gives Up On His IDN

Tech pundit John Gruber threw in the towel on his domain ?df.ws. He writes: "What I didn't foresee was the tremendous amount of software out there that does not properly parse non-ASCII characters in URLs, particularly IDN domain names." more

How the Registrar Cash Flow Model Could Collapse with New ICANN gTLDs

New top-level domain applicants are getting plenty of advice nowadays about how to launch their new Registry. In addition to thinking about their branding and distribution, they should also be thinking about their business practices with Registrars. What many of them do not realize is that their cash flow practices, with respect to Registrars, may be a factor of whether ICANN Registrars even support their Registry. more

New Regime for Registration of .fr

Association Francaise pour le Nommage Internet en Cooperation ("AFNIC"), the domain name authority managing the French country code top level domain, is introducing a new regime for registration of .fr domain names. Among the main changes, the new regime abolishes any "right to the name". Until now an applicant for registration of a .fr domain name must prove that the domain name reflects its company name, business name or trade mark that is in force in France. more

The Rise of a Secondary Market for Domain Names (Part 4/4): Facilitating the Secondary Market

The defining of rights in the UDRP process is precisely what WIPO and ICANN contemplated, but it is unlikely they foresaw the destination of the jurisprudence. Since its inception, UDRP Panels have adjudicated over 75,000 disputes, some involving multiple domain names. (These numbers, incidentally, are a tiny fraction of the number of registered domain names in legacy and new top-level domains, which exceeded 320 million in the first quarter 2017). more

1770 Domain Disputes Filed with National Arbitration Forum in 2008, Over 12K Since 1999

The National Arbitration Forum today announced that a total of 1,770 cases were filed in its domain name dispute resolution program in 2008. The National Arbitration Forum, approved by ICANN, provides domain name dispute resolution services under policies like the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Nearly all 1,770 cases filed (98%) in 2008 involved UDRP domain names, like .com and .org and the rest involved usDRP domain names with the .us extension, according to the announcement... more

Balancing Digital Integrity: CENTR Critiques EU’s Insolvency Proposal

CENTR, the leading body representing European national domain registries, has voiced concerns over the European Union's insolvency proposal. The group emphasizes that the current proposal places an undue strain on country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries by demanding excessive data about domain name holders. more

Interview: Antony Van Couvering on the New TLD Opportunity

I recently caught up with a former colleague Antony Van Couvering. Many here on CircleID probably know him, he's been active in the domain name business since the late 1990's. With the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) issue so white hot and with Antony's firm right in the mix, I thought it was time to get his take via an interview. If anyone has questions (or challenges perhaps?) to anything below, I'm happy to forward to Antony for a response. more

CENTR Statement on IDN Homograph Attacks

Recently a proof of concept attack was announced on the Internet that demonstrated how a web address could be constructed that looked in some web browsers identical to that of a well known website. This technique could be used to trick a user into going to a website that they did not plan on visiting, and possibly provide sensitive information to a third party. As a result of this demonstration, there has been a number of voices calling for web browsers to disable or remove support for IDNs by default. ...CENTR, a group of many of the world's domain registries - representing over 98% of domain registrations worldwide - believes such strong reactions are heavily detrimental... more

Anticompetitive and Predatory Misconduct by ICANN and Contracted Parties Must End

On May 26, 2021, I submitted a complaint to ICANN's Complaints Officer, Krista Papac. In a nutshell, my complaint centers on ICANN's blatant violation of its Bylaws, specifically Section 2.2, named Restrictions, which expressly prohibits ICANN from acting as a registrar. However, despite the absence of any exceptions to this unambiguous prohibition, ICANN is acting improperly as a registrar for the purposes of warehousing and cybersquatting on certain domain names in the .com and .net registries. more

Domain Enforcement in a Post-GDPR World

The implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and ICANN's conservative temporary policy, which favors privacy and limits registrar liability, has made domain enforcement against cybersquatters, cyber criminals and infringement more difficult, expensive and slow. With heightened concerns over privacy following high-profile breaches of consumer data and its subsequent illicit use and distribution, there is no question that consumer data protection practices would come under scrutiny. more