ICANN have taken a solid stance in regards to contention sets, with those yet to be resolved soon to be forced into auctions of last resort in the coming months. As expected, this has increased the velocity of private settlements between applicants, either via deals or private auctions. It seems like most applicants (wisely) don't want to see their funds going into ICANN coffers unnecessarily. more
On the morning of Wednesday 15th October, the The Domain Name Association (the DNA) held an important working group meeting during ICANN 51 Los Angeles. The topic was to discuss several operational issues between registries and registrars. The meeting's unofficial ongoing name is the Registry-Registrar Operations Working Group. The meeting was a continuation of an inaugural meeting that was held back in June of this year, and covered in a Industry Association: An Implementation Model circulated by the DNA from September 17, by Executive Director Kurt Pritz. more
In a series of recent blog posts I've described the technical challenges in registration operations, a proposal for an industry association, and announced an interactive workshop to explore association formation. This is an update on where things stand with the workshop. The first Registration Operations Association Workshop is scheduled for Thursday, 16 October 2014 in the Pacific Palisades room at the Los Angeles Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel, the same venue being used for ICANN 51. more
Today, anyone can use WHOIS to identify the organization or person who registered a gTLD domain name, along with their postal address, email address, and telephone number. Publishing this data has long been controversial, creating a system riddled with problems. On one hand, anonymous access to all WHOIS data enables misuse by spammers and criminals and raises concerns about personal privacy. On the other hand, incomplete or false WHOIS data prolongs Internet outages and leaves crime victims with little recourse. more
The great promise of the new gTLD programme is not that it will spawn dozens of .COM clones, but rather that it will lead to the creation of a global constellation of unique names embraced by specific interest groups. As an ICANN community, our challenge now is to ensure that the policy framework we've created to manage new gTLDs advances that vision by not penalising the very sorts of domains that the programme was designed to encourage. more
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of blog posts I described the need for a registration operations industry association. At the end of Part 2, I wrote that Part 3 will describe "an opportunity for everyone that's interested in discussing this topic in a live environment." The large number of people attending ICANN 51 in Los Angeles presents the best chance of discussion with many potential participants being in the same place at the same time. Let's take advantage of that proximity. more
We read carefully Scott Hollenbeck's call to form a Domain Name Industry association to promote consistency in technical operations across the many moving parts of the industry and we, the Board and members of the Domain Name Association, largely agree. More formal coordination among registry operators and domain name registrars would improve the domain name registration experience for registrants and business operations for the domain name industry in general. more
In Part 1 of this series of blog posts I described the need for an industry association of operators to discuss the technical tasks, such as the development, deployment, and ongoing systems administration of the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), performed by registries and registrars to ensure interoperability and share best practices when providing registration services. In this blog post I'll describe a way to make that happen. more
Since 2001 there have been occasional conversations on technical mailing lists exploring the concept of creating an independent industry association or consortium of domain registration operators. My recent experiences with the evolution of extensions to the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) have convinced me to look at these suggestions more closely, and I'm now convinced that this is an idea worth exploring. "Registration Operations" refers to the technical tasks, such as the development, deployment, and ongoing systems administration of EPP, performed by registries and registrars to provide registration services. more
On August 27, 2014, the world became a bit more connected as the Internet welcomed more than 400 million Hindi language speakers in their own language. .???? (.Bharat), which means India in the Hindi language, was inaugurated on August 27 in New Delhi by Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad, India's Minister of Law & Justice and Communications & Information Technology. more
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