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ICANN's new Registry Service Technical Evaluation Service (RSTEP) process is definitely a positive step forward for ICANN. The comment period for the Tralliance proposed new service using the DNS wildcard feature closed Wednesday night. ...Ken Fockler commented "there are no right answers and no wrong answers, just judgments and decisions made on those judgments." In this light, I would be interested in hearing different perspectives on the following questions... more
While the registration policies and accreditation of registrars are yet to be finalized for the newly announced .eu TLD, the following email may find its way to your inbox, if not yet already: "We are now accepting registrations for .eu domain names. You can check on our site to see if your ideal domain has been taken yet..." more
Google News now shows more than 300 stories about Spamhaus, most about a proposed court order following a district court default judgment. To me, the most interesting is the meta-story -- why the non-event of a proposed order has the blogs scrambling with claims of constitutional crisis and even the notoriously close-lipped ICANN issuing an announcement "in response to community interest expressed on this topic." more
It was rather interesting to read this new agreement between the USDoC and ICANN talking about the mechanisms, methods and procedures necessary to effect the transition of Internet domain name and addressing system (DNS) to the private sector. What was more interesting though was to read in this very agreement the following: "...the Department continues to support the work of ICANN as the coordinator for the technical functions related to the management of the Internet DNS". OK, let's be honest! Technical? more
Apparently, at this stage, it is only a proposed ruling. But I am no lawyer. This story has been discussed before, when Spamhaus, which is located in the UK, was sued in the US by a spammer. They refused to come before the court as "they do no business in Illinois, and are located in the UK...After this court ruling, Spamhaus.org was under a DDoS attack, in my opinion for the purpose of preventing users from reaching the information it provided about the court ruling. This was done along-side a Joe Job, sending fake email appearing to come from Spamhaus's CEO... more
ICANN today issued a press release and a series of documents about its relationship with the U.S. Department of Commerce. ...ICANN is no longer bound by the specific set of milestones that were in its prior MoU with DOC. With this freedom comes great responsibility. Without detailed government oversight, and without market competition for policymaking for domain names, ICANN (and the ICANN Board) has a great obligation to be accountable to its community. more
Bret Fausett's recent assessment of Tralliance's ".museum-like" wild card is just dead wrong. If Tralliance is so focused on monetizing its search results, why, then, would we not capitalize on the cornerstone of our registry, directory.travel? The fact is .travel is a sponsored space on the Net that is designed to do one thing and one thing only: Serve its constituency. For years the community has heard me at the open forum microphone reminding the ICANN board of directors that the industry was anxious to have its own domain to enable it to improve business efficiency... more
Why shouldn't there be a .gadi TLD? Why not one for Microsoft? This post is not about alternate roots or why they are bad, this post is about something else. We do need to go over some background (from my perspective) very quickly though. ICANN has a steel-fist control over what happens in the DNS realm. They decide what is allowed, and who gets money from it. Whether it's VeriSign for .com or any registrar for the domains they sell. They decide if .gadi should exist or not. ...What I am here to discuss is why Microsoft, as a non-arbitrary choice this time, indeed, of all the world, should kick it aside, creating an alternate root while at the same time not disturbing the world's DNS. more
The 2004 new sTLD round brought about a new type of TLD in the form of .asia and .cat. As we always struggle for words to capture their nature, I call them "geoTLDs". Culture, language and ethnicity are also part of geography. Contrary to ccTLDs, geoTLDs do not have a territorial meaning. They are a wonderful addition to the Internet as they provide a way to demonstrate one's commitment to a community that is not defined by borders, yet linked to where the individual chooses to be. ...Will they be? They will, unless we do the wrong thing now. more
I finally got the "official" word from Vint Cerf of ICANN, "on the record", who confirmed that my interpretation is correct, that differential/tiered pricing on a domain-by-domain basis would not be forbidden under the .biz/info/org proposed contracts. This means that the registries could charge $100,000/yr for sex.biz, $25,000/yr for movies.org, etc. if they wanted to -- it would not be forbidden the way the proposed contracts are currently written. This would represent a powerful pricing weapon for registries, and a fundamental shift in possible domain name pricing, that could lead them to emulate .tv-style price schedules. It doesn't mean they will necessarily do it, but it's not forbidden. When a contract doesn't forbid something bad, it implicitly allows it... more
The new and proposed ICANN registry contracts contain no definite price terms, and thus permit potential tiered pricing on a per domain name basis. This has raised concern within the community that a registry operator might abuse its sole source position to engage in pricing practices detrimental to registrants. ...Notwithstanding the possibility of tiered pricing on a per domain name basis in connection with the recently executed sponsored registry contracts (.MOBI, .JOBS, .TRAVEL, .CAT, and .TEL), there have been numerous comments submitted in connection with this possibility in connection with the proposed contracts for the .BIZ, .INFO and .ORG registry contracts. There were four messages that motivate me to write this article... more
Way back in 2000-2001, ICANN approved a handful of new top level domains, and entered into agreements with their promoters. Three of the sponsored domains, are coming up for renewal next year, so they've sent in their renewal proposals. A sponsored domain is one that restricts who can register to members of a particular community, in this case respectively co-ops, museums, and the airline industry. Let's take a look and see how they're doing. more
In September 2005 ICANN approved the first top–level Internet domain to be dedicated to a particular human language and culture: '.cat'. A related paper was recently published in First Monday by Peter Gerrand, titled "The Catalan campaign to win the new .cat top level domain". As explained in its abstract, the paper explains: "While '.cat' creates a precedent for greater use on the Internet of 'minority languages', there are significant hurdles for other candidates for language–based top–level domains. The paper discusses the concomitant factors needed to support the greater use of any minority language on the Internet." more
What are the most popularly used top-level domains (TLDs), or at least, which are the ones that show up on pages indexed in Google? I wondered this yesterday after seeing a news article stating that the registration of .cn (china) top-level domain names topped 1 million for the first time ever by the end of 2005. more
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
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