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Most people take it for granted that domain names are property. As such, there shouldn't be much dispute that domain names are subject to the claims of judgment creditors. But I've seen enough resistance to this position that I thought a recent case was worth a quick mention. more
An independent review of the .XXX Top-Level Domain application by ICM Reegistry was held in Washington DC last month, September 2009. All the documents from the hearing have now been posted online including witness statements from Vint Cerf, VP and chief Internet evangelist for Google and former Chairman of ICANN; Milton Meuller, Professor and Director of the Telecommunications Network Management Program at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies; Stuart Lawley, Chairman and President of ICM Registry and others. more
In 1999, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) developed a policy to resolve disputes between trademark owners and registrants of domain names. This policy, the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was made available for disputes concerning an alleged abusive registration of a domain name. In the past 10 years alone, more than 16,000 disputes have been filed resulting in more than 10,000 domain name transfers. more
Rod Beckstrom took over as ICANN President/CEO on July 1, 2009, so October 9th marked his 100th day in office -- and a good opportunity to examine the progress made by ICANN during his short tenure. ...to borrow an analogy from American football: when you have the ball in the Red Zone, you need to score touchdowns, not field goals. So far, under Rod's leadership, ICANN has moved down the field on a number of issues. In particular, ICANN scored a "touchdown heard round the world" by bringing the MoU/JPA to a successful conclusion. more
The US Department of Commerce and ICANN announced today an Affirmation of Commitments. One of the important elements of that document was in section 4, namely that "ICANN and DOC recognize that there is a group of participants that engage in ICANN's processes to a greater extent than Internet users generally." more
There has been much said and written recently about the issue of registry-registrar cross ownership with regard to New Top Level Domains ("New TLDs"). It is clear that there appears to be a fair amount of confusion about the issue and the positions espoused by various parties. To assist the ICANN community in understanding the issue -- the points of agreement and debate -- I offer the following overview on behalf of Network Solutions and Central Registry Solutions... more
Offensive domain-name registrations require strategic corporate decisions. Second, they require different strategic and tactical remedies when third parties register desired names. Thus, different organizational approaches are necessary to manage domain name risks and rewards. The essay identifies the strategic differences and remedies for the two types of domain names, and outlines the implications for internal work-flow organizational structures. more
In a recent post to CircleID entitled New Domains and ICANN Accountability, Steve DelBianco paints himself as "frustrated" that ICANN didn't take a different path toward new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). Mr. DelBianco was one of four witnesses at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts and Competition on September 23, 2009. He is a creative advocate for his clients, an engaging speaker, and a skillful writer, and he produced a synopsis of the hearing which sounded convincing -- until I tried to make sense of it. more
An open letter signed by various members of the domain name industry, including heads of some of the top domain name registries and registrars, was sent today to ICANN CEO and Board of Directors urging them to direct their staff to implement the introduction of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) without further delay. "The time to act is now," says the letter for "many reason" including: Consumer Demand; Safety Considerations; Internet Stability; Innovation; ICANN’s own credibility more
VeriSign today released its second quarter 2009 Domain Name Industry Brief where it reports that the total base of domain name registrations across all of the Top-Level Domains [TLDs] has now reached 184 million. However the report also indicates that there has been a 15% decline compared to the same quarter last year. The largest TLDs in terms of base size are reported to be: .com, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .info, .nl (Netherlands), .eu (European Union), and .biz.
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Today, four years after the launch of the Catalan linguistic and cultural registry, Google reports that there are 90 million pages of Catalan content under the some 36 thousand .CAT domains. As imperfect as Google's tools are as a metric, the correct observation is that the use of .CAT by Catalans vastly exceeds the expectations of its initial proponents... more
An open letter from nearly 150 individual and organizational members of ICANN's Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) has been submitted to ICANN's board of directors and CEO. The letter has expresses serious concern over a recent ICANN Board decision regarding the restructuring of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO). From the letter: "We believe that the Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) chartering process has been seriously flawed on both procedural and substantive grounds. We appeal to you to address these problems before permanent damage is done to ICANN's reputation, to the GNSO reform process, and to the interests of noncommercial users of the Internet." more
Oh, Internet. You had such potential when you were born — darling of the research community, supported by the wealthiest military the world has ever known. And you married well, into a powerful merchant family. Why are you so lost? Is it a midlife crisis? You were born, some say, 40 years ago this week in a lab at UCLA — one of ARPA's many children. It wasn't until nearly two months later that you first spoke, transmitting the letters "L" and "O" before crashing... more
Domain names registered under United Arab Emirates' recently liberalized county code Top-Level Domain (.ae) have attracted such high level speculative interests that red flags have been raised within the country's regulatory agency. Domain names such as 'vip.ae' and 'vips.ae' registered only a little over a year ago are currently receiving multi-million dollar offers according to reports. Abu Dhabi's newspaper, The National, reported last week that the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), the .ae administrator, has stated "registering a UAE domain with no intention other than to resell it could hurt the registrants if they are later accused of registering the site in bad faith, something forbidden by its rules." more
Congratulations and thanks to ICANN for hosting the North America Regional meeting at the Sheraton in downtown Toronto, Canada. This event was done first class and was in my opinion a highly successful meeting... At this regional ICANN meeting many interesting topics were covered. Some topics though not at the foremost of my mind, surprisingly were not only highly interesting but very informative. more