ICANN

A Thought About Not-Quite-ASCII Top Level Domains

ICANN has opened their new fast track process for "countries and territories that use languages based on scripts other than Latin" to get domain names that identify the country or territory in its own language. It's not clear to me what the policy is supposed to be for countries whose languages use extended Latin with accents and other marks that aren't in the ASCII set. more

Is This Only Sloppy Wording by ICANN?

So I wrote earlier that I though it was good stuff when ICANN released a paper on DNS Security. Yes, I think it was good this paper was released, and yes it points out correctly how important DNSSEC is. But, now when reading it in detail, I find two things that troubles me. And it has to do with management of .ARPA. A top level domain that is used for infrastructural purposes. Like IP-addresses and E.164 numbers... more

India: One Country, Many Internationalized Domain Names

If you're interested in learning more about Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), UNESCO and EURid recently released a report on the evolution and challenges of IDNs. It's a good read and it highlights some of the struggles that countries and registries face and taking IDNs mainstream. Though Russia has so far proven to be a major success story - with more than 800,000 IDN registrations so far (and counting) - most other IDNs are have a long ways to go yet. more

ICANN’s Weak Accountability Remains a Problem

The JPA is dead, and in its place is the Affirmation of Commitments. Much debated, this change is anticipated to bring more global participation into ICANN's governance. Increased globalization may turn out to be beneficial for the Internet community, if it helps to shore up ICANN's institutional weaknesses. But the Affirmation leaves important questions unanswered... more

Don’t Make Us Treat Our Customers Like Criminals!

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

ICANN 36 Preview: What’s ‘On Sale’ in Seoul

Last time the ICANN faithful gathered in Sydney, there was a fair bit of unrest and some big unknowns. The Implementation Recommendation Taskforce (IRT) report on how Intellectual Property (IP) could be protected in the era of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) stirred the pot as did, to a lesser extent, the issue of Registry-Registrar separation in new TLDs. Additionally, everyone had big questions on their minds - when the root would be signed (and DNSSEC fully implemented)... Four months later and five thousand miles almost due north, the netizens gathering at ICANN 36 in Seoul know the answers to some of those very important questions. more

ICANN to RegisterFly: We Really REALLY Mean It This Time

ICANN's web site has a press release saying that the were granted a temporary restraining order on Monday requiring that Registerfly cough up all the info on their registrants, or else.

My assumption all along has been that the reason that Registerfly hasn't provided full info is because they don't have it. ICANN agrees that they got partial data last month, and it's hard to imagine a reason that Registerfly would have given them some of the data but deliberately held back the rest. I guess we'll know soon enough.

By the way, I hear that ICANN plans to implement their registrar escrow policy, the one that's been in the contracts since 2000, pretty soon. more

Booksellers Weigh In On Amazon’s New TLDs

Some pretty big companies are beginning to show an active interest in ICANN's new TLD project. The most recent of them is bookseller Barnes & Noble. The letter, which is available both on the ICANN website, is quite narrow and pointed in its scope and focusses on the perceived competition issues with Amazon's bids for several "closed generics". more

Examining Stuart Lynn’s Domain Name Plans - Part II

In the last article we examined the language in Stuart Lynn's A Plan for Action Regarding New gTLDs, and I addressed concerns about specific language in that document. In this article, I will examine several questions of importance that need to be addressed when discussing new gTLD policy; questions that Mr. Lynn leaves unanswered in his proposal... more

Internet Governance and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Part 7: Articles 20-21

Internet Governance, like all governance, needs to be founded on guiding principles from which all policymaking is derived. There are no more fundamental principles to guide policymaking than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This article, Part 7 of a series, looks at Articles 20 and 21 and explores how principles in the UDHR and lessons learned over the last half-century help define the rights and duties of one's engagement in the digital spaces of the Internet ecosystem. more

“ICANN Urged to Rule on .LLP ‘Breach’”

There is probably no worldwide community without at least one member located in the US. But does this qualify the closing of a community to only US based members and, by extension, to exclude all other eligible entities from around the world solely because of arbitrary geographical circumstances based upon company whims? more

The U.S. “Scorecard” for Brussels: Draconian Trademark Rules & The End of Private-Sector Leaders

The U.S. "Scorecard" for Brussels Proposes Draconian Trademark Rules - And May Mean the End of Unlimited New gTLDs and/or the ICANN Experiment in Private Sector-Led Internet Governance... On Friday, January 28th the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) circulated its submission to ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) containing suggestions for what positions the GAC should push for at its February 28 - March 1 meeting with ICANN's Board to air disagreements over provisions of the Proposed Final Applicant Guidebook (AG) for new gTLDs. more

ICANN New gTLD Auction Proceeds Approaching $30 Million

While the debate continues as to whether most new gTLDs are a sound long-term investment for their registry operators, there's no disputing that the program has been an economic boom for ICANN. The 1,930 first round applications each required an application fee of $185,000, which added up to a tidy $357 million. Even after refunds for withdrawn applications ICANN still cleared about a third of a billion dollars from the first round before a single string was delegated. more

U.S. Bypassing ICANN on Whois Privacy With Closed-Door Meeting in Paris

Despite positive discussions currently underway at the ICANN54 meetings in Dublin regarding protection of privacy services for domain name registrants, another meeting in Paris seems to be contradicting the efforts. more

The Great ITU Internet Heist

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