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Why Colombia Is About to Make a Colossal Mistake With .CO

Ten years ago, the most effective branding exercise the internet registry market has ever seen began. And to celebrate the anniversary, its owner is going to strangle it. At the ICANN meeting in Montreal this month, the Government of Colombia booked a meeting room, prepared a Powerpoint presentation and invited representatives of the world's largest registry operators to attend. Once there, they were offered a rare and valuable opportunity: to take over running of the .co registry. more

2011 Domain Name Year In Review: Top 10 Biggest Domain Stories

Who would have ever believed that .XXX would finally be approved AND launched, total domains registrations would continue to grow at 10% year over year, ICANN would be in the process of preparing for the launch of new gTLDs in the face of harsh criticism, and that both Go Daddy and Group NBT would be acquired by private equity firms. As we look back over the past year, here are the top 10 biggest domain stories of 2011. more

New TLD Launch: Lessons Learned

In September 2017, I wrote an article [1] about the new domain extensions in German and got very good feedback and was asked to translate it into English in order to make it available for a broader audience. I wanted to comply with this request, but unfortunately, it took a while to revise and translate my article... In June 2011, ICANN gave the starting signal for about 1,400 new top-level domains (TLD) to make the existing namespace bigger and more diverse. more

DNSSEC No Longer Pie-in-the-Sky: Time to Develop a Strategy

You may have seen media reports a few weeks ago describing how servers behind the so-called Great Firewall of China were found delivering incorrect DNS information to users in the rest of the world, thereby redirecting users to edited Web pages. Reports indicate that this apparently occurred due to a caching error by a single Internet Service Provider. While the problem was fairly limited in scope, it could have entirely been prevented in a world where DNSSEC was fully deployed. more

Analyzing Data for Business and Security Signals

Domain name registries and registrars play a critical role in the functioning of the internet, serving as gatekeepers to the DNS. As such, they have an important responsibility to ensure the security and stability of the DNS but also to promote the use of a domain name in a meaningful way for the end user. To be more efficient in achieving these goals, the domain name industry has started to become more open to the idea of leveraging their own internal data to gain insights about their current business. more

Follow a Phishing Case in Real Time: postfinances.com / Swiss Post

It is just another phishing case. Why should I care? I happened to receive my own copy of the phishing email message. Most Internet users will just smile bitterly before deleting it. I checked it to see why it had gone through the spam filters. It had no URL in the text but a reply-to address. So it needed a valid domain name, and had one: postfinances.com. PostFinance (without trailing "s") is the payment system of the Swiss Post. It has millions of users. more

IDN Evolution Discussed at ICANN Cartagena

Internationalized domain names (IDNs) have been available to Internet users for many years, but this year the first fully non-Latin IDN domains have become enabled by ICANN and country-code top-level domain registries. The recent success of the launch of Russia's .?? (.rf) ccTLD shows that there is an enormous demand for domain names in Internet users' native languages. more

Mooning the Porn Stars

Steve DelBianco did a great job of discussing the rocky relationship between ICANN's Government Advisory Committee (GAC) and the Board of Directors, in his piece entitled ".XXX Exposes the Naked Truth for ICANN". I've been keeping an eye on the adult industry press to see what their reaction is to the .XXX debacle. But before we start, let's get something out of the way. more

Domain Registry Locking Program: It Is There for a Reason, So Why Not Use It?

At the beginning of last year, MarkMonitor participated in VeriSign's beta program to test server-level protections which were designed to mitigate the potential for unintended domain name changes, deletions and transfers. When VeriSign finally released their Registry Locking Program to all registrars, I expected to see the owners of highly trafficked sites flocking to this new offering. However, after a review of the top 300 most highly trafficked sites, I was shocked to uncover that less than 10% of these valuable domains were protected using these newly available security measures. more

The Real Facts & Stats About ICANN and Its gTLDs: One BIG.FAIL ... So Far?

The crème de la crème, the good, the bad, even the ugly of the Domain Name Industry are attending NamesCon in Vegas this week. 2016 will be a very challenging, absolutely critical year for those attendees and their corporate employers as the Domain Name System (DNS) faces a massive shakeup. In 2015, 287 global brands, worth $trillions headed by Google, Amazon, had their new TLD Registries delegated into the root zone of the Internet. more

A New Internet Extension Can Compete with .COM

The king of extensions is .com, and dethroning it won't be easy. But one day soon .com will have a genuine competitor, and there are two things we already know about the competition. First, the newcomer will have been sold as an underdog. Second, it will have attracted businesses that are passionate about being content-quality leaders. more

Received a Questionable Email From NABP? It May Be Illegal Spoofing

Has your organization recently received an email claiming to be from NABP's Internet Drug Outlet Identification Program (IDOI)? If so, it is possible that someone is trying to trick you. The NABP IDOI team's email account has recently been illegally "spoofed" by unaffiliated persons or organizations. Email spoofing involves the forgery of an email header so that the email appears to have originated from someone other than the actual source. more

ICANN’s Contract Not Enforceable on WHOIS Accuracy

This may or may not come as a shock to some of you, but ICANN's contract with the Domain Name Registrars, in terms of WHOIS inaccuracy is not enforceable. Bear with me. The ability of ICANN to enforce against a Registrar who fails to correct or delete a domain with false WHOIS does not exist. more

TLD Registration Enforcement: A Call for Automation - Part II

Last month, I wrote to describe the state of registration restrictions in .BIZ, .US, and .NAME. I noted trends among nonconforming registrations in these TLDs, and I suggested that certain automated enforcement systems might serve to improve compliance. But an important larger question remained unanswered: Why care about registration restrictions in the first place? Much as registries might like to ignore the restrictions, I submit that the Internet community nonetheless ought to hold them to their contracts.
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National Domain Registry Nominet Launches UK ENUM

Nominet, the national registry for .uk domain names, has announced that ENUM, a registry service combining UK telephone numbers and the Domain Name System (DNS) for VoIP calls, is live. ENUM, also known as Telephone Number Mapping, is expected to allow companies and their customers and suppliers to make free or cheaper calls. In addition to the cost savings, other value-added features that ENUM is expected to provide for corporate communications include 'follow me' type function that will allow an individual to choose how (voice, fax, mobile, email, text messaging, location-based services and websites), and when they would like to be contacted throughout the day. more

Industry Updates

2024 .US Town Hall Registration Open: Explore Industry Trends & Policy Insights

Radix Achieves Record Premium Domain Sales in H1 2024, Led by Surging Interest in .Fun

Radix Launches Linklab - a Tool for Creators to Brand Their Link-In-Bios

eCommerce Business on .Store Sees More Traffic and Visibility; 12-Month Study Indicates

Historic Sale of betting.online by Radix Sets New Record for nTLDs

Join the 2023 .US Town Hall to Discuss Top Priorities and Future Goals

Radix’s Releases H1 2023 Premium Domains Report, Reaches $4.6M in Total Premium Domain Name Retail Revenue

Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report: DNIB.com Announces 356.6 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Second Quarter of 2023

Radix Launches RFP for a Registry Service Provider (RSP)

Radix Raises the Bar for Digital Engagement With the Spotlight.online Contest

Advocacy and Recommendations from the Brand Registry Group on gTLDs, Closed Generics, and IDN Policies

Radix Releases 2022 Domain Renewals Data

New Global Initiative Aims to Strengthen Online Brand Protection

Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief: 354.0 Million Domain Name Registrations in Q1 2023

Radix Reports $7.6M in Total Premium Domain Name Retail Revenue in 2022, Highest-Ever Annual Number to Date