So what are the characteristics of a "Brand TLD"? Please note that by "Brand TLD", I do not mean gTLDs applied for by brands. I mean TLDs whose registrants tend to use them as their primary site and identity. They have either created themselves as, or have become a brand in the eyes of their registrants. These TLDs tend to be in the minority. more
Yesterday ICANN announced that its new CEO Fadi Chehade accepted ICANN Chief Strategy Officer Kurt Pritz's resignation over conflict of Interests -- will a transparent investigation follow? Otherwise, what else and what next? In a statement on its ICANN website, Fadi Chehade states: "Kurt has submitted his resignation because of a recently identified conflict of interest". more
There was a meeting in Geneva a few weeks ago dealing with Internet names and addresses. Known as the Second Informal Expert Group Meeting of the Fifth World Telecommunication / Information and Communication Technologies Policy Forum, it was yet another of the endless blathering bodies on this subject that have met for the past fourteen years. more
Forty days. That's how long Fadi Chehade has had to get a handle on the most complex, diverse and important non-profit corporation the world has ever known. The last guy to face such an unforgiving timeline was measuring timber in cubits. So if Cheade is Noah, I guess that makes ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker God, telling Fadi to wrangle all these diverse (and often diverging) constituencies and march them two-by-two into the boat, ahead of the coming storm. more
Question: why has air travel become so painful? Because the threat posed by bad actors requires making everyone jump through hoops before letting them board a plane. To the point that, despite obvious requirements to ensure air safety, some are now openly questioning if the cure is not worse than the disease. Registering a domain name could be about to go the same way. more
Forbes just published this article that's being shared all over my facebook friends feed. I left a comment on the article that I've copied and pasted here, as it is just about long enough to qualify as a CircleID post by itself... The problem is that peering isn't always settlement free -- and even if it is, if and only if there's an equitable amount of traffic exchanged between two ISPs. And then there's transit, where you pay another network to carry your packets for you. more
ICANN held its second international meeting of 2012 last week in Prague, Czech Republic. While the agenda focused heavily on issues related to new gTLDs and on welcoming incoming CEO Fadi Chehade, ICANN also conducted a community consultation on its accountability and transparency reviews. more
Over the last week at ICANN the arguably best idea coming out of the ICANN meeting is the concept that applicants for new gTLD strings with more than one application, hold a private auction amongst themselves with the winning amount going to the other losing applicants instead of to ICANN. As a backdrop, under the Guidebook multiple applicants for a new gTLD extension are encouraged to work together and come to an agreement to resolve the conflict. more
There has been a lot of excitement since ICANN revealed the list of 1930 applications for new gTLD yesterday at an event in London yesterday. Even some of the strongest opponents of the ICANN's new gTLD program have acknowledged there is a case to open up new gTLDs for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). I am going to focus here on the analysis of the IDN applicants. more
Adolescents were fascinated by the book and film called "Hunger Games". The plot is about a government forcing people to watch, and forcing some to play, a cruel game for life and death. ICANN's own Hunger Games, the so-called "digital archery" or "batching" process, is not lethal to people, but shares all other features: it is forced upon the participants, it is destructive, unfair and unnecessary. more
Crime, fraud, scams etc., they're all very bad things. They're also not going to go away anytime soon. As a domain name registrar and hosting provider we're constantly "at risk", as we sell a lot of services that are both cost-effective and also give criminals the tools they need to attack 3rd parties. Again, this isn't exactly news. We've always taken a very pro-active approach to dealing with criminal activity and network abuse... But recently I've been losing sleep. more
Only two years after signing the DNS root zone, the powerful lure of a secure global infrastructure for data distribution is starting to reveal itself. It is illustrated clearly by two proposed technical standardizations that seek to leverage secure DNS. To some degree these developments highlight the strength of DNS institutions and how they might fill gaps elsewhere in the Internet's governance. But an increasing reliance upon and concentration of power in the DNS also makes getting its global governance correct even more important. more
Over the course of the last week, ICANN has released several pieces of information that taken together begin to allow us to piece together the overall gTLD landscape. ICANN is releasing partial information, without explanation or context, in dribs and drabs, and rumors are flying that we won't get the "Reveal" until the ICANN meeting in Prague at the end of June. This partial information and delay from ICANN is creating consternation and confusion among the many applicants and those watching the new gTLD scene. more
Like everyone else applying for new gTLDs, the Donuts team thought it would now be poring over a list of applicant names and strings, nodding heads and at times raising eyebrows. The timing didn't work out that way. ICANN did the right thing by closing TAS temporarily in order to understand what it was dealing with. It's easy enough for applicants to get rattled by what they think may have happened... more
ICANN has just announced that, starting with the June meeting in Prague, the ICANN Board will no longer meet and cast votes on the final day of its three annual public meetings. We think this is an ill-advised step backwards from ICANN's commitment to transparency and the accountability that accompanies it. We also believe that ICANN should have told "the community" it was considering this major change and asked for public comment before making such a decision. more
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