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
Never let it be said that group therapy isn't effective. Prior to hosting a new Top-Level Domain (TLD) workshop for a group of Australian applicants last week, the only therapy I would have advised for new TLD applicants was electroshock therapy - given the confidence-sapping delays and the catastrophic impact of constant changes to the program such as Digital Archery, Name Collisions and GAC Advice. more
European TLD registry, EURid has announced that it is the first TLD Registry in Europe to be registered by the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). "EURid has taken an environmentally responsible approach to operating .eu for many years. Our environmental policy is based on the principle of 'reduce, reuse and recycle' and provides a framework for making sustainable choices." more
In an unprecedented development, all stakeholder groups and constituencies comprising ICANN"s Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) unanimously endorsed a joint statement in support of the creation of an independent accountability mechanism "that provides meaningful review and adequate redress for those harmed by ICANN action or inaction in contravention of an agreed upon compact with the community". The statement was read aloud during a June 26th session on the IANA transition process held on the last day of the ICANN 50 public meeting in London. more
I've been asked a number of times recently which new gTLDs are working well. What's popular and where are some examples of them being used. Another question I have been hearing recently is what are some good examples of marketing activities that are working. We have seen a handful of examples of names with websites. Just enter site: favourite gtld in the search bar and you'll get a list of live sites for a given TLD... more
Multiple new gTLD applicant Famous Four Media is having a very good week. "FFM", the name that they now use for the company to be acknowledged, is getting closer to an important period of its development: the General Availability, also known as "GA", for three of its domain name extension. Added to this, another announcement was made to make it known. more
Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Minds + Machines, continues his series of in-depth talks with leading figures from the domain name industry with this video interview of Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows, filmed recently at ICANN 49 in Singapore. more
The talk ranges from new gTLD introductions, the role of ccTLDs in the new landscape, the relationships between registries and registrars, and some predictions for the future. more
Love them or hate them, auctions are an unavoidable reality of the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) Program. By their very nature, they create winners and losers. All that is in doubt is where the money goes -- to the losing parties under a private auction model or to ICANN under their auction of last resort. There are pros and cons for both models. But what if there was another way? more
Verisign posted preliminary public comments on the "Mitigating the Risk of DNS Namespace Collisions" Phase One Report released by ICANN earlier this month. JAS Global Advisors, authors of the report contracted by ICANN, have done solid work putting together a set of recommendations to address the name collisions problem, which is not an easy one, given the uncertainty for how installed systems actually interact with the global DNS. However, there is still much work to be done. I have outlined the four main observations... more
.CO Internet closed its chapter as an independent company and became part of the publicly traded Neustar on Monday afternoon. The Sterling, Va.-based provider of real-time analytics and registry services was also already providing a critical piece of .CO Internet's technology infrastructure. more
Here at the Anti-Phishing Working Group meeting in Hong Kong, we've just released the latest APWG Global Phishing Survey. Produced by myself and my research partner Rod Rasmussen of Internet Identity, it's an in-depth look at the global phishing problem in the second half of 2013. Overall, the picture isn't pretty. There were at least 115,565 unique phishing attacks worldwide during the period. This is one of the highest semi-annual totals we've observed since we began our studies in 2007. more
Starting Dot ("SD") is a French new gTLD applicant which applied for five strings: .ARCHI, .BIO, .DESIGN, (which has been withdrawn) .IMMO and .SKI. It is the only French applicant to have applied for several open new gTLDs. Some French brands have applied too but as closed Top-Level Domains... While Starting Dot may be one of the smaller portfolio applicants, there is a considerable difference here in the way their projects are handled when compared to some of the larger applicants. more
On Friday, 14 March 2014, the U.S. Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention to transition the IANA functions to the global multistakeholder community. As expected, the announcement has sent adrenaline coursing through the veins of Internet governance experts and government policy people the world over. I'd argue, however, that it is an important point for the Internet's technical experts to sit up and take notice, as well: the fact that you are probably saying "what problem does this solve?" is a testimony to how much works well today, and we want to make sure it continues to work well in any future arrangements. more