ICANN

Suggestions on IDN Variant Management

To some applicants, ICANN's variant management policy in DAG4 has become a big obstacle to the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) application. The policy is to delegate the string while reserving the variants, and these variants will not be delegated until a sound mechanism is developed and the desired variants are evaluated. But for some languages, Chinese for example, the so called string and its variant, namely simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, are equivalent and must be simultaneously delegated.

What Does the .CO Launch Mean for New gTLDs?

The .CO top-level domain made over $10 million in just a couple of months. What do the results of the .CO re-launch mean for new gTLDs? Remember, .CO is the country-code TLD for Colombia. Until this summer, you could only register names under .com.co, .net.co, etc. You couldn't register myname.co. Now anyone in the world can register a .co name, and register it directly under the top level.

Stopping the Flow of Online Illegal Pharmaceuticals

Reading through Brian Kreb's blog last week, he has an interesting post up on the White House's call upon the industry on how to formulate a plan to stem the flow of illegal pharmaceuticals...It is unclear to me whether or not the goal of this initiative is to stem the flow of online crime in general or to reduce the flow of illegal pharmaceuticals flowing into the United States (since presumably this cuts into the profits of large pharmaceutical companies...

ICANN’s Tokyo Meeting Provides a Little More Clarity on the New gTLD Program

New gTLDs continue to be a major topic of discussion within ICANN circles, and the regional meeting currently underway in Tokyo has revealed some interesting updates for potential applicants. ICANN's Chief gTLD Registry Liaison, Craig Schwartz, delivered a great presentation on the progress being made behind closed doors at ICANN and provided the attendees with an insight into a couple of key changes that are likely to be seen in the Final Applicant Guidebook.

The Web is Dead: What This Means to ICANN, New gTLD Program and the Domain Industry

While we are spending years figuring out how to create the perfect generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) launch and guidebook, the Internet is moving along at an extraordinary pace without any care about ICANN policy-making. The fact of the matter is ICANN is a ghost to the ordinary person or Internet company. You can not imagine how many times I had to explain what ICANN is, what ICANN does and why ICANN is important.

Openness and Transparency: ICANN Takes an Important Step in the Right Direction

Over the years I have been critical of ICANN's inability on several occasions to match its words on openness, transparency and accountability with its actions. Therefore, it was a very pleasant surprise to see ICANN post the Board briefing documents in connection with two of its last three Board meetings.

Google & eBay, Keywords & Domains, & ICANN

Sell a trademark as a keyword for directed search or online auctions and make $billions. But use a trademark in a domain name for direct search and lose the domain, or worse. The gap between how trademark law treats the two species of search has grown wider in the wake of several landmark 2010 trademark law decisions -- and provides another sound reason why ICANN should not establish any new rights protections for new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) beyond those STI-RT compromise positions already included in the fourth version of its Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAGv4).

Domain Names as Second-Class Citizens

A new book by Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis (Lecturer in Law at the University of Strathclyde) provides a passionate yet legalistic and well-researched overview of the legal, institutional and ethical problems caused by the clash between domain names and trademarks. This is really the first decent book-length treatment of what is now a decade and a half of legal and political conflict between domain name registrants and trademark holders.

Putting String Similarity into Context: Bulgaria’s IDN (.??) vs. Brazil’s ccTLD (.br)

Bulgaria is a nation which is directly impacted by the current Fast Track automatic disqualification when Top-Level Domain (TLD) strings are "confusingly similar" to other TLDs, in this case an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). Bulgaria has already been declined twice (in late 2009, and in May of 2010) to register the *.?? Cyrillic IDN on the premise that it looks confusingly similar to Brazil's *.br ASCII TLD. Being a native Bulgarian, I did not see how these two strings are similar

First Leap to Secure Linguistic Internet - Arabic SSL Certificates Launched

Linguistic Internet is becoming stronger with the first leap to develop non-Latin applications, as Arabic Language SSL Certificates has been launched by M/s ArabicSSL with the support of Live Multilingual Translator and The Multilingual Internet Group. This step is highly appreciable because this will ensure the security and stability and develop trust over new Internet layers of Internationalized Domains (IDN TLDs).