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The 2010 Domain Pulse, hosted by SWITCH (the .CH registry) was held in the snowy Swiss city of Luzern. Domain Name Security (DNS) was of particular importance in this year's meeting with DNSSEC being implemented in the root zone in 2010 by ICANN, and by many registries in the next few years.

ICANN plan to have all root servers signed with DNSSEC by mid-2010 Kim Davies, Manager, Root Zone Services at ICANN told the meeting, starting with the L root server, then A root server with the last being the J root server as all are gradually signed.

ICANN has taken a conservative approach to deploying DNSSEC to ensure there are no mistakes in its implementation, said Davies.

Meanwhile a discussion on the registration of domain names that are responsible for illegal content, such as phishing or child pornography, was hotly discussed.

A discussion with lawyers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland said in varying degrees that when it is difficult to contact the domain registrant, that using the registrar as a means of deleting the domain name was justified.

All three lawyers, Clara-Ann Gordon (Switzerland), Dr. Boris Uphoff (Germany) and Michael Pilz (Austria) said that when it is difficult to contact the domain registrant, that using the registrar as a means of deleting the domain name.

Difficulties can often occur in the event of such a domain name registration when the registrant includes false registration information.

The registries, represented by their legal counsel Stephan Welzel (DENIC), Barbara Schlossbauer (nic.at) and Nicole Beranek Zanon (SWITCH) took this discussion further and explained what happens when there are difficulties in contacting registrants such as when there is illegal use of the domain name, such as illegal content.

In the case of phishing, in Austria if the registry is certain the content is legal the domain name is deleted, in Germany the domain name is not deleted as they believe the domain name is not the problem but the content is while in Switzerland they temporarily block the domain until the legal situation is sorted out.

Videos of all presentations, mostly in German, are available on the Domain Pulse website at domainpulse.ch although without simultaneous translations as occurred during the meeting.

Update Feb.02.2010: A paragraph removed due to possible inaccuracy.

By David Goldstein, Consultant, researcher and analyst. Visit the blog maintained by David Goldstein here.

Related topics: Cyberattack, Cybercrime, Cybersquatting, DNS, DNSSEC, Domain Names, Registry Services, ICANN, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Security