ICANN

ICANN Terminates Two Registrars as DNS Abuse and Compliance Failures Escalate

ICANN has terminated two registrar accreditation agreements after unresolved compliance failures, citing Trustname's handling of DNS abuse and IPIP's failures involving RDAP, registration data escrow, accreditation fees, and access to non-public registration data. more

ICANN’s New Data Sharpens the Picture of DNS-abuse Enforcement

ICANN's updated DNS-abuse data distinguishes allegations from actionable complaints and malicious registrations from compromised domains, offering a clearer test of whether tougher contractual requirements are strengthening enforcement or simply generating a larger volume of reports. more

ICANN to Shut Down Open Data Platform and API September 1

ICANN will retire its Open Data Platform and API on September 1, shifting datasets to downloadable CSV files and forcing researchers, registries and domain-industry organizations to update automated workflows that rely on programmatic data access. more

AI Is Rewriting the Internet. But in Whose Language?

AI is becoming a gateway to the internet, but thousands of languages remain excluded. Closing the gap requires multilingual infrastructure, representative training data and policies that make linguistic inclusion a foundation of the AI era. more

Beyond Protocol and Policy: Why Project Jake is Reshaping the Architecture of Internet Trust

Project Jake aims to bridge the divide between internet protocols and policy, offering registries, law enforcement and rights holders a decentralised framework for accessing domain-registration data securely while navigating privacy laws and institutional gridlock. more

Open-Weight AI: Open to Whom?

The push for open-weight AI promises broader access and competition, but true openness requires more than releasing model weights. Compute, infrastructure, training data, security, and control ultimately determine who can meaningfully benefit from open AI. more

After the Close: What the 2026 gTLD Round Has Already Revealed

ICANN's 2026 gTLD round drew more than 1,600 applications, led by ambitious portfolio investors. But scant brand disclosures and new rules banning private settlements could make contention costlier and reshape the economics of domain ownership. more

AFRINIC’s Constitution Is Africa’s Next Internet Stress Test

AFRINIC's proposed Constitution offers Africa's troubled internet registry a chance to turn years of litigation, disputed elections and institutional paralysis into durable governance, provided reforms constrain external capture, internal concentration and administrative overreach alike. more

ICANN Draws More Than 1,600 Applications in New gTLD Round

ICANN has received more than 1,600 applications for new generic top-level domains, setting the stage for administrative checks, public disclosure and potentially fierce competition over sought-after additions to the internet's expanding domain-name system. more

ICANN’s New gTLD Application Window Set to Close, Capping a Landmark Expansion Round

ICANN's second major domain expansion round closes August 12, with costly applications, support for 27 non-Latin scripts and stricter technical vetting setting the stage for a broader, more multilingual internet naming system. more

The 2024-2026 Root Zone KSK Rollover: Updates and Observations

Roughly a year and a half ago, Verisign and ICANN began the important, multi-year process of updating the cryptographic key that secures the authoritative DNS root zone. This work has been largely invisible to the public, but vital to the security of many everyday online activities. more

Who Registers the Domain That Steals Your Data? The Registrar Accountability Gap in India’s DNS Abuse Crisis

India's DNS abuse crisis exposes a registrar accountability gap: malicious domains remain online while vulnerable users bear the cost. Concentrated abuse patterns suggest stronger oversight and faster mitigation could significantly reduce predictable harms nationwide today. more

The Question Isn’t Whether the Harm Is Real - It’s Who Should Act

Measuring online abuse can reveal its scale, but not who should intervene. Effective policy must distinguish harm from contractual responsibility, identify the actors best placed to act, and target remedies where they can work effectively. more

.PK ccTLD Governance Issues and Pakistan’s Digital Future

Pakistan's .pk domain has long been controlled by a private company abroad, raising concerns over digital sovereignty, cybersecurity and accountability. Repeated breaches, offshore infrastructure and weak governance have left a critical national asset exposed and contested. more

When AI Writes the Scam: How Artificial Intelligence Is Making DNS Abuse Harder to Detect

Artificial intelligence is transforming phishing and DNS abuse, erasing the linguistic clues that once exposed scams. As attacks become personalised, automated and multilingual, governance frameworks are struggling to keep pace with a rapidly expanding threat surface. more