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In politics, as in Internet policy, the most effective weapons are also the oldest. So when it came time for hard-line intellectual property advocates to make a desperate last stand against the new gTLD program, it came as no surprise they turned to the atomic bomb of rhetorical devices: FUD. FUD stands for "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and it is the tool of last resort when change is coming and you want to stop it. The theory is simple: the human response to fear is to cling to what's familiar and oppose what's new. So if you can scare enough people about the potential effects of a new policy or law, you stand a pretty good chance of preventing it from ever going into effect. more
It's safe to say that with just a week to go before ICANN intended to sign the first contract for a new gTLD, the last thing anyone wanted was a 12-page document from the world's governments with 16 new "safeguards", six of which it wants to see applied to every new extension. But what the industry shouldn't overlook, especially in the face of the expected critical responses this week and next, is that the Governmental Advisory Committee's (GAC's) formal advice from the ICANN Beijing meeting represents an opportunity for the domain name industry to lock-in self-regulation at a critical point in its evolution. more
For the purpose of this article it is not necessary to concentrate too much on defining what a Premium domain name is and what it is useful for: all that we need to know is simple, a premium domain name is often a memorable generic name, short or medium in length and highly valuable due to its relevance in search. However, when it comes to finding out how to register a premium domain name then it becomes much more difficult because you won't necessarily know where to go. more
This is the first in a series of releases that tie extensive code injection campaigns directly to policy failures within the Internet architecture. In this report we detail a PHP injection found on dozens of university and non-profit websites which redirected visitor's browsers to illicit pharmacies controlled by the VIPMEDS/Rx-Partners affiliate network. This is not a unique problem, however the pharmacy shop sites in question: HEALTHCUBE[DOT]US and GETPILLS[DOT]US should not even exist under the .US Nexus Policy. more
Cybercriminals are leveraging the growing popularity of artificial intelligence to perpetrate attacks, capitalizing on the surge in interest following the release of chatbot technologies like ChatGPT. New research by Netcraft reports on the increasing use of .ai domain names where criminals use malicious websites around AI to draw in victims. more
I have no idea who wrote that wonderful piece, Time for Reformation of the Internet, posted by Susan Crawford. (It wasn't me - I never use the word "netizen".) Elliot Noss of Tucows wrote a partial rebuttal, I must be attending the wrong ICANN meetings. Elliot's company, Tucows, has been a leader in registrar innovation and competition. And Tucows has constantly been among the most imaginative, progressive, responsible, and socially engaged companies engaged in these debates. ...But the points made by Time for Reformation of the Internet go far beyond registries and registrars. more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has recently circulated proposed examination guidelines to allow the USPTO to begin providing Trademark Protection for Top Level Domains (TLDs). This is an important new development. TLDs today are currently ineligible for Trademark protection on the basis that they do not constitute a source-identifying mark. The USPTO is currently in the process of rectifying this situation by extending Trademark protection to Registry Service providers and has released its proposed examination procedures for that purpose. However, there are some very concerning elements to their proposed examination guidelines. more
It's easy to dismiss Verisign's antitrust suit as a ploy to push through Sitefinder. But whether one loves Sitefinder or hates Sitefinder, the complaint raises a much more significant issue that won't go away even if ICANN lets Verisign roll out Sitefinder. At the heart of Verisign's complaint is the lack of any definable process for decisionmaking, and its a complaint shared by others. A settlement between Verisign and ICANN that does not create a clear process for decisionmaking at ICANN that includes trustworthy independent review will merely delay the inevitable. Eventually, some other party will become just as frustrated and again challenge ICANN -- either in U.S. court or by enlisting the help of the U.S. Commerce Department, non-U.S. governements, or multinational treaty organizations. ICANN must recognize that the days of ad hoc decision making based on realpolitick must end and give way to stable processes that ICANN staff cannot control. more
In 2008, ICANN made it known to the community that it is finally ready to discuss Internationalized Domain Names regarding Top-Level Domains (TLDs) after several years of working groups, technical trials, studies and considerations. It was highly anticipated by the Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) community. It was also with great disappointment when the New gTLD Application Guidebook, published on 24th Oct 2008, included the following paragraph... more
Eurid, the operator of .EU, announced that it was cutting its wholesale price from 10 Euros to 5 Euros (about US$6.40 at today's rate). Is Eurid crazy? They're cutting the price in half! Eurid is acting as if unit cost should go down as sales increase! Haven't they learned the lesson... more
Public Interest Registry, the .ORG registry operator, sent a letter today to ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey concerning VeriSign's implementation of a DNS wildcard redirection service commonly known as SiteFinder. The letter says that it supports ICANN's call for VeriSign to voluntarily suspend SiteFinder and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) preliminary position paper. It goes on to say that PIR will not be implementing any DNS wildcard to the .ORG zone... more
This article is the personal analysis by a new gTLD consultant who has been following the ICANN new gTLD program from the beginning but with a Frenchman's perspective. I recently read an article which made me smile because entitled "the top 10 new gTLDs to follow in 2014". But according to what? I partially read it to find out that it was written by a professional from a certain culture and written for a certain culture. None of the top 10 new gTLDs listed in the article were of any interest to me: a French person. more
While Occupy Wall Street and other groups representing the so-called 99% are getting most of the press, the 1% is raising its profile as well, at least when it comes to gTLDs. They are complaining that introducing global choice and competition to the Internet will cost them money. The chief of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) now says that it has "spent the last few months" considering the new gTLD program, and has found it lacking. They want ICANN to shut the whole thing down. more
The Catalan government has written to the European Commission claiming that the Spanish government is in breach of EU law. In a letter from Jordi Puigneró Secretary of Telecommunications, Cybersecurity and the Digital Society at the Government of Catalonia addressed to Andrus Ansip, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, the Catalan government calls out the moves by the Madrid government as censorship. more
As an applicant in this new gTLD round with quite a few overlapping strings, I've had a keen interest in the various proposed auction platforms. In the past six months the ideas behind private auction have matured significantly and I now see it as a strong mechanism for resolving contention. Following are my observations. more
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