ICANN

The Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress Announces Keynote, Speakers, Initial Partnerships

The Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress has made the following announcement for the keynote, speakers, initial sponsors, partners and dates for the inaugural event taking place March 11 & 12, 2013 in New York City.

FTC Chief Concerned Over Most New gTLD Bids

Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: The US Federal Trade Commission is still "looking at" ICANN's new gTLD program amid concerns that most of the applicants applied defensively, it has emerged. ... "We have been very, very concerned about ICANN and their dramatic expansion of the domain names, which we think will cause consumer confusion and even worse lead to more areas where malefactors can hide from the law while defrauding consumers," FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said.

ICANN Board Starts New Initiative to Tackle gTLD Registration Data Challenges

The ICANN Board of Directors has directed the Chief Executive Officer to launch a new effort to re-examine the purpose of collecting, maintaining and providing access to generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) registration data. The move follows the recommendations of a review team that examined implementation of WHOIS data policy.

ICANN Senior Executive Resigns Over Undisclosed Conflict of Interest

Senior vice president Kurt Pritz has resigned his new job as ICANN's Chief Strategy Officer over an undisclosed conflict of interest, reports Kieren McCarthy in .Nxt. "In a note posted on the organization's website earlier today, new CEO Fadi Chehade noted that Pritz had resigned 'because of a recently identified conflict of interest'. ICANN has so far refused to identify what that conflict is."

ICANN Asked by Demand Media to “Ignore” Complaints from US Republican Party for the .republican gTLD

Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: "Last month, the Republican National Committee and the Republican State Leadership Committee submitted comments to ICANN arguing that Demand would be an unsuitable custodian for the gTLD [.republican]. Demand is best known for its "unofficial, mediocre and sometimes incorrect" content farms, such as eHow, the letter (pdf) said..."

ICANN Sued by Original .web Applicant

Kevin Murphy reporting on DomainIncite: "Image Online Design, which unsuccessfully applied for the .web gTLD all the way back in 2000, has sued ICANN, alleging trademark infringement and breach of contract. IOD, which says it has over 20,000 .web domains under management in an alternate root, says ICANN never officially rejected its .web bid, and that it should not have allowed other companies to apply for it."

ICANN Makes Senior Management Restructure to Fix Organizational Weaknesses

Kieren McCarthy reporting in .Nxt: ICANN's new CEO Fadi Chehade has embarked on a bold restructure of the organization's management on his first day in the job. Announcing two new senior management members -- Sally Costerton as head of stakeholder relations and communications and Tarek Kamel as head of governmental affairs -- Chehade says his focus was on engaging at a global level with stakeholders, building relationships and improving accountability.

Rwanda Gets Control Over Its Domain .RW

After a seven-year long process of transferring Rwanda's Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), ".rw" from Belgium, finally Rwandans can now manage their national identity, reports AllAfrica.

Congress Still Raising Concerns About ICANN’s New gTLD Program

Juliana Gruenwald reporting in the NationalJournal: "Nearly six months after the program was launched, key members of Congress are still raising concerns about a plan to introduce hundreds of new Internet addresses into the domain name systems, saying they want fresh assurances that the new strings will not harm trademark holders and that the public has adequate opportunity to comment. The latest salvo came on Tuesday from the top leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees..."

NTIA Awards IANA Functions Contract to ICANN

The U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today that it has awarded the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions contract to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The IANA functions are key technical services critical to the continued operations of the Internet's underlying address book, the Domain Name System (DNS).

Fadi Chehadé Named as ICANN’s New President and CEO

Fadi Chehadé has been named as the next President and Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Chehadé, age 50, is a citizen of Lebanon, Egypt and the United States. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to Egyptian parents and left the then war-torn country in 1980 at the age of 18. He speaks fluent Arabic English, French and Italian. Chehadé succeeds current President and CEO Rod Beckstrom, who announced last August that he would leave ICANN at the end of his contract, which expires on 1 July. Chehadé will join ICANN on October 1 or earlier. Between July 1 and when Chehadé begins, Chief Operating Officer Akram Atallah will be the CEO.

ICANN Receives 67 Unique Applications for Chinese gTLDs

At the press conference held in London on June 13, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) officially announced a list of 1930 applications for the new generic top level domain (gTLD). During the 40 years since the launch of the Internet, there are only 22 gTLDs such as .com. The 1930 applications represent a historical change to the Internet; For the first time, Chinese gTLDs will become available and there are 67 unique applications for Chinese gTLDs.

Dot App, Dot Art Among Most Applied-for TLDs According to List Revealed by ICANN

ICANN announced today that it has received 1,930 applications for its new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program. 884 from US based organizations, 40 are from the UK, 303 from the Asia-Pacific region and 17 from Africa. Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's CEO, during the "Reval Day" event that took place in London today said: "The internet is about to change forever -- now a powerful change is coming."

ICANN All Set for the gTLD “Reveal Day” in London

ICANN plans to announce the long-anticipated list of applied-for domain names under its new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program tomorrow. The announcement will be made in London at 12:00PM and streamed live on ICANN's website. ICANN has received over 1,900 applications from around the world.

Greatest Internet Landgrab in History

Paul Sloan reporting in CNET: "ICANN tomorrow will reveal who is going after what new domain extensions, paving the way for a very different looking Web. Prepare for dot-madness... It's not just the hard-core denizens of the domain world that are going after new TLDs, which are also known as 'strings.' Others are jumping into the fray. The most intriguing is Google, which in late May revealed that it's applying for an undisclosed number of strings, including .Google, .YouTube, .docs, and .lol..."