.US is the top-level domain for the United States of America. As stakeholders in the .US ccTLD, we all share a vested interest in making sure that .US continues to be a vibrant namespace that reflects the diversity, creativity and success of our people. As the Internet continues to grow and evolve, it's important that the .US domain does too. To meet these needs, Neustar and the usTLD Stakeholder Council plan to hold a virtual .US Public Stakeholder Town Hall Meeting. more
The next Registration Operations Workshop will take place at the start of IETF-92 on Sunday, March 22, 2015, at The Fairmont Dallas Hotel. The workshop will start at 12:30 p.m. CDT and will finish at 4:30 p.m. CDT. We are seeking proposals for Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) extensions to be featured as part of the workshop, including existing extensions that people wish to register with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)... more
The new gTLDs won't survive unless registries learn simulation techniques, the only way to understand how sales drivers interact. Some of the new gTLDs have done dismally. Registry critics, including insiders, blame high registration prices, limited supply, and restrictions on usage, competition, and marketing messages. But these drivers connect with each other. You can't talk about prices without talking about price-setting mechanisms and the number of registrations. more
The first 12 domain registries have been scheduled for the first special Sunrise Period mandated by ICANN for trademarks on the blocked collision lists. A total of 328 new domain extensions have launched so far in 2014. Each one of these has its own unique collision list of names that were found to be already in use on private computer networks. Some of these lists have over 100,000 names. All of these registries were required to block these names from being allocated until a policy for their allocation could be developed by ICANN. more
Would you be interested in helping guide the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .ORG domain? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for three positions on the PIR Board of Directors. The nominations deadline is Monday, November 24, 2014. More information, qualification requirements and the submission form can be found here. more
There has been a lot of back and forth recently in the ICANN world on what constitutes domain abuse; how it should be identified and reported AND how it should be addressed. On one side of the camp, we have people advocating for taking down a domain that has any hint of misbehaviour about it, and on the other side we have those that still feel Registries and Registrars have no responsibility towards a clean domain space. (Although that side of the camp is in steady decline and moving toward the middle ground). more
Earlier this month, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held its 51st public meeting in Los Angeles. Once again, MarkMonitor joined stakeholders from across the globe to discuss issues ranging from government control over the Internet, to key lessons learned thus far from the new gTLD rollout. This coming year promises to be a big one for ICANN, and for the business and brand community as a result. more
A major concern about the present WHOIS is the level of data inaccuracy. The Expert Working Group (EWG) on Registration Directory Service (RDS), of which I had the pleasure of being a member, spent considerable time figuring out how to improve WHOIS data accuracy. The EWG in its final report proposed a new system, the RDS, which we believe will significantly address the flaws in the current WHOIS, including the data inaccuracy challenge. more
With lessons learnt from the first Round, what does a new applicant need to know to prepare for the coming Round? Which example should he follow to increase his chances of success? I have had the chance to read about new domain names sales figure expectations, prior to the launching of Round one of the ICANN new gTLD program. Comments that I read and feed-backs that I have today are: "our expectations are the one we wrote on the paper and we are happy with them". more
The first Registration Operations Association Workshop took place on Thursday, 16 October 2014, at the Los Angeles Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel. I'd like to thank the 64 people that took the time to attend and participate in the discussion, both in-person and remote. I started the workshop with an introduction to some of the technical challenges being faced by the domain registration industry. more
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