CENTR, the body which represent of European domain registries, will be holding its annual awards again this year. What's different for 2017 however is that they've added a new category: "Registry of the Year Award" ... And unlike with the other award categories, this one is open for voting to the registrar channel. The online voting or ranking is open now and is open to registrars who have a direct relationship with the registries. more
Donuts Inc., a leading domain name registry for new top-level domains and Rightside Group today announced a merger agreement; Donuts has agreed to acquire Rightside for $10.60 per share in an all-cash tender offer, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $213MM. more
Among the many issues affecting ICANN's thousand new TLDs is collisions, that is, the same name already used elsewhere. The other uses are non-standard and unofficial, but some names turn out to have been used a lot. One approach to see how bad the collisions are is controlled interruption, in which the TLD publishes wildcard records with obvious impossible values, in the hope that systems that use colliding names see them and do something about it. more
The Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) was conceived as an informal industry conference that would provide a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of registration operations in the domain name system. The 6th ROW will be held in Madrid, on Friday May 12th 2017 in the afternoon, immediately after the GDD Industry Summit and prior to ICANN DNS Symposium and OARC 26, using the same venue as all above-mentioned events. more
It has been reported that Jay Westerdal, CEO of ‘.feedback’, has confirmed the registry has cured the breached in response to ICANN ruling reported last month. more
After ten hectic days, the young Clemson civil engineer turned MBA entrepreneur -- who turned a passion for helping equestrians care for their horses into a website enterprise -- had the HorseDVM.com domain, and its IPR returned to HorseDVM LLC. Ultimately, however, it was the registrant who realized the registrar had wrongfully sold him the domain and the unfairness of what had occurred, who facilitated the return. The culpable registrar ultimately did nothing but unfailingly support its auction subsidiary's sale... more
Under a draft legislation approved by the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee on Tuesday, national enforcement authorities would be required to have a set of powers to detect and halt online breaches of consumers' rights across the European Union. more
There are several perspectives from which one can give various answers to the question of 'what are domain names?'. Originally the domain name system started and continues to be a human-friendly way of addressing to a set of machines or specific machine connected to the Internet. Hence, from the technical perspective, a domain name is simply an address consisting of a combination of alphanumeric and symbols to communicate with a machine which also happens to be hosting certain services in form of data and information on it. more
"The domain name industry is kicking off one of its most fundamental shifts in its plumbing this week," Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite. more
Would you be interested in helping guide the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for three positions on the PIR Board of Directors. The nominations deadline is Sunday, December 11, 2016.,,, In 2017 there are three positions opening on the PIR Board. Directors will serve a 3-year term that begins in April 2017 and expires in April 2020. more
"The non-profit that runs all .org domains and provides the bulk of the funding for the Internet Society and Internet Engineering Task Force has just saved itself millions of dollars a year," reports Kieren McCarthy in The Register. more
The domain name industry descends on Hyderabad this week for ICANN's 57th annual public meeting, with a mixed sentiment of excitement and determination as ICANN stands on its own two feet absent US Government oversight. We'll have to get used some new acronyms as a result: PTI -- Public Technical Identifier; and the CSC -- Customer Standing Committee, but otherwise I don't think many of us will notice the difference. more
A team of researchers from Princeton University and the University of California has developed a machine-learning algorithm named PREDATOR that can accurately establish domain reputation at the time of domain registration. more
Following a very successful series of workshops held during IETF meetings, the next Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) is now being held during the upcoming ICANN meeting in Hyderabad, India. While the previous workshops were of advanced topics attended by industry experts, the current one will be more of a tutorial and is open to all interested parties. more
Google announced Nomulus: a tool to operate a new generic Top-Level Domains technically. In the world of new gTLDs, this announcement sounds like it is going to replace, or come as an alternative to backend registries. It could, but this sounding is incomplete... To create domain names ending in a brand new Top-Level Domain, an applicant had to submit an application to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) during the first round of the new gTLD program... more
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