ICANN's CEO and President, Rod Beckstrom, has announced that he will be stepping down in July of next year. The announcement came via Twitter of all places, with a press release, presumably with more details, due sometime soon... With the launch of the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program scheduled to officially launch early in 2012 maybe Beckstrom feels that his job "is done", or maybe there's another motive behind his departure. more
I think we are finally getting somewhere: ICANN is no longer fluttering flusteredly whenever a lobbying group sends a nastygram over the transom. Case in point: a Association of National Advertisers (ANA) that arrived a few days ago, full of bombast and muscle-flexing, demanding that ICANN immediately stop the new gTLD program until a long list of demands from the ANA were met, or else the ANA would be forced to take some Very Scary Actions... more
We all may have breathed a sigh of relief when the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and the Board concluded their eleventh-hour negotiations on new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) with some measure of success, but we can all agree that panicked policymaking is, at best, less than optimal. ICANN needs to integrate GAC input more effectively. The Final Report recently issued by the Joint Working Group (JWG) of the ICANN Board and the GAC contains several thoughtful and productive recommendations. more
When all you have is a hammer, everything appears to be a nail. The generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) are not just about trademark filing and battle posturing or cyber-squatting. They are about the potential to create unusual global intellectual properties offering multiple opportunities for rapid image expansion and - most importantly - the achievement of market domination via name identity. more
There are only a few occasions in any of our lifetimes where what we know and have grown used to is turned on its head. We have now lost the generation that heard radio for the first time; there are only a few who can recall the first television pictures; but many, many more saw color appear on their screens for the first time. more
When ICANN approved the New generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Program in Singapore in June 2011, it pushed the activities in this space to a new level. I think we will all agree that everyone involved are very busy working on new gTLD applications and getting organized per the Applicant Guidebook requirements. This to be ready in time for the 12th of January 2012 ICANN new TLD Program launch date. However, good activities also brings along bad activities. more
The Internet is slowly beginning to adopt the new DNSSEC domain names standard, but significant challenges remain. That was the main takeaway from a four-hour workshop on the technology held during the recent ICANN 41 public meeting in Singapore, which heard from many domain registries, registrars and other infrastructure providers. more
If you follow the Internet governance world like I do, you've no doubt had time to ponder the news of former ICANN Board Chair Peter Dengate Thrush's appointment as Executive Chairman of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (TLDH). This was a seemingly fast jump from the body that coordinates the Internet (whose most recent milestone was to approve the creation of new gTLDs) to one of the key companies that stands to actively benefit from this burgeoning part of the domain name industry. Further, he's taken up a position that, according to reports, will allow him to benefit substantially as well. more
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
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
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