News Briefs

Berlin May Get Its Own Domain

A German entrepreneur sometime next year hopes he will be able to boast, "Ich bin ein dot-Berliner."

The businessman, Dirk Krischenowski, is bidding to make his city the first in the world with its own domain name: .berlin. Berlin's businesses and citizens will flock to the domain because millions of people regard the hip European city as a part of their identities, he believes. more

Cyberspace Unity Eludes Europeans

They couldn't agree on a single constitution, and now it looks like Europeans can't agree on the best way to identify themselves on the Internet. For the first time on Wednesday, residents of the 25-nation European Union can register Internet addresses ending in ".eu". The move, which lifts .eu to the same prominence as the Web site suffixes .com, .org and .net, is intended to allow the expression of a single European identity in cyberspace. more

US Warns of Fake Net Domain Data

More than 5% of the net's most popular domains have been registered using "patently false" data, research shows.

A US congressional report into who owns .com, .net and .org domains found that many owners were hiding their true identity. The findings could mean that many websites are fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals. more

ICANN Gives Tentative OK on '.asia' Domain

The quasi-governmental organization that oversees the Internet has tentatively approved a ".asia" Web domain to unify the Asia-Pacific community, but the group has delayed a decision on whether to move forward with a ".xxx" zone for pornography sites.

At its annual meeting this past weekend in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers took up several topics related to the global administration of the Internet, which has become a heated topic because the U.S. has insisted on maintaining oversight. more

Investigations into ICANN transparency continue

A new lobbying body calling itself the Campaign for ICANN Transparency (CFIT) has expanded its investigation into the internet overseeing organisation with a freedom of information request served on the US Department of Commerce.

The organisation has already served ICANN with a lawsuit in its home state of California claiming anti-trust abuses, and caused the EC to open an anti-competition investigation following a formal complaint. Now it hopes to discover examples of ICANN being less than truthful by requesting "materials related to discussions, memos and meetings and related contact that the government agency has had with the Internet Corporation for Assigned and Numbers (ICANN) on matters relating to the .net and .com registry agreements". more

ICANN Considers Freeing Up Single-Letter Domains

Although Internet domain names may be getting longer or more complex as Web sites creatively squeeze into the crowded ".com" address space, most single-letter names like "a.com" and "b.com" remain unused.

That may soon change as the Internet's key oversight agency considers lifting restrictions on the simplest of names. more