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Domain Name Registration Now 192 Million Worldwide


New domain name registrations in the fourth quarter of 2009 reached 3.7 million domain name registrations per month totaling close to 11 million new domain name registrations across all of the Top-Level Domains (TLDs) in the last quarter of 2009, according the latest Domain Name Industry Brief by VeriSign. "The base of country code Top-Level Domain Names (ccTLDs) rose to 78.6 million domain names, a three percent increase quarter over quarter and a 10 percent increase year over year. In terms of total registrations, .com continues to have the highest base followed by .cn (China), .de (Germany), .net and .uk (United Kingdom)." more»

Study Suggests New gTLD Cybersquatting, Defensive Registrations Overestimated

According to recent study conducted by Minds + Machines, historical data analysis suggests brand owners do not necessarily register their brands when it comes to new generic Top-Level Domains. From the report: "A survey of the domain registration behavior of Fortune 100 companies reveals that they have not registered many of their trademarks in recently created generic top-level domains (gTLDs). A sample of 1043 brands were registered in less than 30% of the eight new open gTLDs created after 2001. If historical registration data is a guide, brands are unlikely to undertake many defensive domain name registrations in the proposed new gTLDs, and furthermore are unlikely to be the victims of cybersquatting." more»

Comcast Announces Aggressive Plan to Deploy DNSSEC, Launches First Public Trial

Leading US ISP, Comcast, has announced today its aggressive plans to deploy DNSSEC through out its netowrk. Chris Griffiths, Manager of DNS Engineering, writes: "We plan to implement DNSSEC for the websites we manage, such as comcast.com, comcast.net and xfinity.com, by the first quarter of 2011, if not sooner. By the end of 2011, we plan to implement DNSSEC validation for all of our customers." more»

25 Years of .COM, Clinton to Address Policy Makers for the Occasion

On March 15, 1985, symbolics.com was the first .com registered in what had yet to be labeled the "world wide web." While it took nearly a decade for the domain -- and the consumer Internet -- to take off, today there are over 80 million .com websites and the domain is a prominent feature of one of our culture's most iconic developments. While its economic and social impact is undisputed, for the first time the economic impact of .com has been quantified in a new study that found that the domain serves as a platform for $400 billion in annual economic activity. more»

German High Court Says No to Retaining Telecom, Email Data for Tracking Criminal Networks

The highest court in Germany has ruled against telephone and email data retention used to track criminal networks. Melissa Eddy of the Global and Mail reports: "A law ordering data on calls made from mobile or landline telephones and e-mail exchanges be retained for six months for possible use by criminal authorities violated Germans' constitutional right to private correspondence, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled. In its ruling, the court said the law failed to sufficiently balance the need for personal privacy against that for providing security."
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AFNIC CEO Elected as New CENTR Chair

CENTR is the Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries, gathering more than 50 registries such as DENIC for Germany (.de), Nominet for the United Kingdom (.uk) or Switch for Switzerland (.ch). The election took place during CENTR's General Assembly held in Warsaw on February 25 and 26. Mathieu Weill, AFNIC's CEO, replaces Andrzej Bartosiewicz, from the Polish registry, NASK, whose term was coming to an end. more»

ICANN to Reconsider the .XXX Decision on March 12

ICANN had previously given the domain the go ahead in 2005, but reversed the decision two years later amidst protests from US conservative groups. An independent review recently concluded that decision was unfair and that the plan should be reconsidered. more»

ICANN CEO Urges African Telcos to Shatter Monopolies

ICANN CEO, Rod Beckstrom, urges African leaders to "shatter" telecommunications monopolies in their nations in order to help lower the price of Internet access to their citizens during his opening remarks at the start of the 37th ICANN meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. Beckstrom noted that while 15 percent of the world's population lives in Africa, Africans make up less than 7 percent of all Internet users. more»

Egypt Begins Enforcing Ban on International Calls Through Mobile Internet Connections

Egypt has banned international calls via mobile internet connections in an apparent reaction to a drop in international call volumes made through country's landline monopoly Telecom Egypt. "The ban is on Skype on mobile internet, not on fixed, and this is due to the fact it is against the law since it bypasses the legal gateway," said Amr Badawy, the executive president of the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA). more»

Google Beats Facebook in Popularity Because it Supports More Languages (For Now)

John Yunker co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of The Web Globalization Report Card writes: "The big story this year is that Facebook and Google finished in a numerical tie. But because Google supports more languages (for now), it edged out as the winner. ... Even as we look across all 225 web sites, the number of languages continues to increase. Although the rate of language growth slowed over the past two years -- due in large part to the global recession -- growth continues. This year, the average number of languages increased to 22, up from 20 languages in 2008." more»

ICANN Meeting in Nairobi Begins Despite Security Concerns

After a series of board meetings on whether to cancel or not due to security issues, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting kicked off in Nairobi. The meeting was overshadowed by security concerns and some ICANN members reportedly boycotted the meeting, choosing to hold parallel sessions in New York and Washington, D.C., instead of risking coming to Nairobi. more»

Survey Says Internet Won't Make Us Stupid

Or at least majority of 895 technology stakeholders' and critics' that were recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center. Some of the quantitative results from the expert group include the following... more»

The Internet Among Nominees for Nobel Peace Prize

The internet is among a record 237 individuals and organizations nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The number of nominations surpasses last year's record of 205 nominations. The internet's nomination has been championed by the Italian version of Wired magazine for helping advance "dialogue, debate and consensus". more»

F.C.C. Questioned on Plan to Expand Broadband Access

Federal regulators on Tuesday made public the details of their ambitious policy to encourage the spread of high-speed Internet access. But their 376-page proposal, the National Broadband Plan, was met with a chorus of questions, even from the staunchest advocates of its goals. Telecommunications companies praised the intent but worried that new regulations might impede rather than encourage their progress in expanding Internet access. more»

Memory Cards of 3,000 Vodafone Mobiles Infected With Malware

Close to 3,000 memory cards in HTC Magic phones may be infected with malware after initial assumption by the company, Vodafone, that it was an isolated incident when first discovered by a customer. "It is unclear how the batch of memory cards became infected and an investigation is under way, said a spokesman for Vodafone in Spain. There are no problems with either the HTC Magic phone or its Android OS. The malware only affected phones sold in Spain." more»

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