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.ORG, The Public Interest Registry (PIR) has announced today the launch of a new campaign aimed at educating IT professionals about securing DNS and the adoption of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). The key purpose of the "Practice Safe DNS" website, according to PIR, is to "serve as a key resource for domain holders, registrars, web developers and IT professionals to learn how they can respectively play a increasingly relevant role in providing a safer and more secure Internet." more
As I noted in my recent comments on CircleID, the recent resolutions from the Special Meeting of the ICANN Board held in Norway in late September left a few important new gTLD issues up in the air and created a little uncertainty in the marketplace. ... However, whilst sign-off on the program is still not guaranteed to occur in December, a recent interesting post on the GNSO mailing list from ICANN's Senior Vice President... more
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced today its approval of non-Latin string evaluation of Iran. This approval will allow the availability of Iran's top-level domain in its own native language, Persian, also known as Farsi (that is, the domain name .IRAN, in non-Latin characters). According to ICANN, there are currently 33 requests for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) representing 22 languages out of which 18 countries/territories have so far been approved. Other countries that have also successfully passed this string evaluation by ICANN include: India, Republic of Korea, Syrian Arab Republic and Singapore. more
A very real and potentially dangerous issue for brands is the continual reliance on obscure country code domains for URL shortening services. Recent reports have emerged that the country code domain .ly will no longer allow domains with 4 or less characters to be registered by users outside of Libya. What exactly does that mean for marketers that are using popular URL shorteners like bit.ly and ow.ly today? It means more risk. As a brand owner who is spending thousands or even millions of dollars on your social media campaigns, the solution is very simple - get your own top-level domain, and control your own destiny. more
The .LY domain is Libya, and their government recently cancelled the registration of the short and snappy VB.LY, provoking great gnashing of teeth. If you direct your attention to the address bar above this page, you'll note that it's at JL.LY, equally short and snappy. The .LY registry started allowing two letter second-level domains last year, and there was a quiet land rush. Now they restrict those domains to people actually in Libya, but say they'll let us keep the ones we have. How concerned am I that they'll take my domain away, too? more
The one-page link shortening service provider, vb.ly, has been seized with no apparent warning by the Libyan government which manages the ".ly" county code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). According to reports, Nic.ly, the registry operator of the ccTLD in Libya informed the user of the domain that the content of its website was considered offensive, obscene and illegal by the Libyan Islamic Sharia Law and therefore revoked. more
La Casa Gelato in Vancouver, Canada, is doing just fine by selling a grand total of more than 500 ice cream flavors (wild asparagus, balsamic vinegar, dandelion -- you get the idea). On the other hand, Apple Inc. has built its enviable business on the principle of the fewer options the better. So, what does the confused ICANN need to do with its proposed new top-level domains (TLDs)? My advice: Go the Apple route. more
The ICANN Board met on September 24-25 2010 in Trondheim, Norway, to consider and act on the impediments still in the way of the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program. They passed a number of resolutions that provide very clear indications of how things are going. The short version is that the news is good for new gTLDs. ICANN is nailing down the final outstanding issues and the timetable is clearer than ever. more
In a recent article at DomainNameWire.com, CitizenHawk was called out by a National Arbitration Forum (NAF) panelist for the submission of automated complaints which contained complete nonsense. Through the discussion in the comments to that article, the community discovered that the problem is far deeper. It turns out that UDRP panelists at NAF have been churning out boilerplate cut/paste decisions of their own, with utter nonsense of their own, and that this has been going on for years. more
Sometimes the heavens align. With the release of a number of resolutions from the ICANN Board on Sunday, we learnt two things: One, that there is a determined drive to get the rules for new Internet extensions, gTLDs, finalized in December at a meeting in Cartagena. And two, that the meeting immediately after that - in March 2011 - will be held in San Francisco. more
There's been some good discussion here about possible policy changes which Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) could consider. But there's more to the CIRA Board election which is underway than simply arguing about whether a PO Box satisfies a "presence" requirement. CIRA's done pretty well over the past decade, but it's not perfect. As a candidate for re-election to the CIRA Board (and currently Vice-Chair) here are some of my own personal thoughts regarding ways in which CIRA might improve. I call this (unoriginally, I know) CIRA 2.0. more
Governments have long sought ways to regulate Internet activity, whether for the purposes of taxation, content regulation, or the application of national laws. Effective regulatory measures have often proven elusive, however, since, unlike the Internet, national laws typically end at the border. Earlier this month, the United States began to move aggressively toward a new way of confronting the Internet's jurisdictional limitations - the domain name system. more
On Wednesday September 29th at 1PM there will be a meeting in the Old Executive Building in Washington D.C. with Registries and domain Registrars to discuss illegal Internet sales of prescription drugs. ICANN was originally invited but declined because citing "inappropriateness" . One "U.S." Registrar who definitely will not be in attendance is OnlineNIC more
This is the first in a series of releases that tie extensive code injection campaigns directly to policy failures within the Internet architecture. In this report we detail a PHP injection found on dozens of university and non-profit websites which redirected visitor's browsers to illicit pharmacies controlled by the VIPMEDS/Rx-Partners affiliate network. This is not a unique problem, however the pharmacy shop sites in question: HEALTHCUBE[DOT]US and GETPILLS[DOT]US should not even exist under the .US Nexus Policy. more
The ICANN Board will soon make many decisions, one of which is to decide whether to continue or reverse ICANN's longstanding policy of vertical separation of registries and registrars. Since new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) are supposed to benefit registrants with lower prices, choice and what we trust will be a decision for 'market-differentiated' competition, the Board will no doubt consider market forces as well as compliance and enforcement issues in choosing the path that can maximize these goals. more