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In a report released today, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has announced a 20% increase in the number of cybersquatting (abusive registration of trademarks as domain names) cases filed in 2005 as compared to 2004. The report further indicates that "in 2005, a total of 1,456 cybersquatting cases were filed with WIPO's Arbitration and Mediation Center. This increase represents the highest number of cybersquatting cases handled by the WIPO Center since 2001." more
Some domains are too big to fail. Quite apart from the obvious ones like google.com and facebook.com, upon whose availability our everyday lives depends, there are many others upon which the infrastructure of the Internet (and much of the modern world itself) depends. These are domains like w3.org and ietf.org, which host the technical specifications which describe the World Wide Web and the Internet themselves. more
Most commentators on Vixie's astounding message have gotten sidetracked. People don't seem to see the most important feature of his statement: Vixie's endorsement of Open Root Server Network (ORSN) is based on explicitly political criteria. As ORSN says on its web site: "The U.S.A (under the current or any future administration) are theoretically and practically able to control "our" accesses to contents of the Internet and are also able to limit them. A manipulation of the Root zone could cause that the whole name space .DE is not attainable any more for the remaining world - outside from Germany." So ORSN sees this as a "backup"... more
The number "5" license plate sold for $6.8 million dollars in Saudi Arabia and another 300 vanity plates sold for another $56 million at last week's auction. It is estimated that the number "1" will be auctioned next month for up to $20 million dollars. Domain names and license plates share some common characteristics. Both allow only one person to own a particular word or number. Of course, the exact same license plate 'word' or 'number' can be registered in every country and, in the USA, every state... more
As the ICANN's week-long meeting in Wellington, New Zealand is now fully underway, the approval of the proposed .XXX top-level domain (TLD) continues to remain a key topic of discussion and its eventual approval yet uncertain. The .XXX TLD was widely expected to receive its final approval at the ICANN's last meeting held in Vancouver about 4 months earlier but the discussion was unexpectedly delayed as the organization and governments requested more time to review the merits of setting up such a domain. Stuart Lawley, president of the would-be .XXX operator ICM Registry LLC offers his comments from Wellington. more
The ICANN Board and GAC will be having a meeting in Geneva next month to resolve outstanding issues in connection with the new gTLD implementation process. Unfortunately to date details of whether this meeting will be open or closed to observers has not yet been publicly addressed. As a strong advocate toward openness and transparency I have drafted the following text which calls for the meeting to be open to observers. more
A recent decision by a federal court in Virginia illustrates some interesting legal issues that arise from the global nature of the domain name system. It also highlights a powerful mechanism under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA") by which a plaintiff can proceed with a legal action to recover a domain name without regard to the court's personal jurisdiction over the registrant. more
For more than 30 years, the industry has used a service and protocol named WHOIS to access the data associated with domain name and internet address registration activities... The challenge with WHOIS is that it was designed for use at a time when the community of users and service operators was much smaller and there were fewer concerns about data privacy. more
In recent weeks, thousands of what ICANN describes as "questionable" registrations have been activated... Let me illustrate: Mr. ICANN decides to hold a party. He has decided that he only wants to ask some of his professional friends to come, so they are asked to bring their party invites with them to prove they've been invited, because poor Mr. ICANN has had trouble before with people gatecrashing his parties. At a sunrise party he'd held a few years ago, all kinds of people had gatecrashed and no-one had asked to see their invites and it was dreadful. So Mr. ICANN hires a bouncer to stand guard at the front door of his house. The bouncer, Johnny Registry, assures Mr. ICANN that no-one will get in without an invite... more
Those of you familiar with the American comic series "Peanuts" by the late Charles Schultz may be familiar with the recurring theme of Lucy's football. Lucy holds a football on her toe for Charlie Brown to practice a field goal kick. Charlie Brown realizes that the last 25 times Lucy has held the ball for him to kick, she pulled the ball out of the way at the last minute, causing him to trip and fall. Charlie Brown knows full well that Lucy may not keep the ball in place for him to kick, yet his determination gets him running towards that unlikely opportunity each and every time. more
The telecommunications industry has been around for quite some time. Whether you take it as a starting date the first efforts with the wired telegraph in the 1830's, or the telephone in the 1870's, this industry has been around for quite a long time. During this periods it has made huge achievements, and there is no doubt that the impacts of this industry have changed our lives in many ways... It is literally amazing that this industry has managed to preserve dial tone on telephone handsets while completely changing the underlying network and switching fabric of the telephone system numerous times. more
Internet domain names are truly bizarre. There is nothing especially remarkable about them from a technical perspective, but from a social and political perspective they are all sorts of fun. We can have arguments over control of the DNS root, arguments over whether names are property, arguments over innate rights to specific names, arguments over a registrar's right (or lack thereof) to exploit unregistered names for private gain, and many more arguments besides. In this article, I'd like to explore the argument-space rather than defend any particular position in it. In so doing, I hope to illuminate some novel (or under-emphasised) perspectives on the matter. more
Way back in 2004, ICANN invited applications for a round of new TLDs. They got quite a few. Some were uncontroversial, such as .JOBS for the HR industry. Some were uncontroversial but took a long time, such as .POST which took five years of negotiation, entirely due to the legal peculiarities of the registry being part of the UN. But one was really controversial, .XXX. By 2005, the applicant, ICM registry, had satisfied all the criteria that ICANN set out in the 2004 round to get .XXX approved, and ICANN has been stalling them ever since... more
A new type of domain-name hijacking is being carried out unnoticed. It involves third-level domain-names associated with affiliate programs. If you had been an online affiliate of, say, company xyz.com, your affiliate Internet address could have looked like YourCompanyName.xyz.com. more
The 2011 Tax return for IFFOR has been filed and our friend George Kirikos of Leap.com found it.. IFFOR's tax return is important for two reasons. First IFFOR return shows us how how much money the non-profit, which is suppose to receive $10 for each .XXX registration, actually received from ICM the operator of the .XXX TLD and how IFFOR spent the money. Second the return is important to see how the money ICM the registry operator of the .XXX TLD paid to IFFOR matches up to ICM reported number of .XXX domain name registrations. more
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