Internet's oldest domain name registrar, Network Solutions, today announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Web.com. Network Solutions was founded in 1979 and pioneered the domain name registration business. In addition to domain name registration, the company also offers services such as web site design and hosting, e-commerce solutions, online security products, SSL certificates, and search engine marketing and optimization. According to Network Solutions, the company manages over 7 million domains, 3 million email boxes and more than 400,000 web sites. more»
Joly MacFie writes to report: "iBreakfast is presenting About the 'Domain' Conference: The Era of New TLDs, this Wednesday Aug 3 2011 at Herrick, Feinstein LLC in NYC. Wendy Seltzer, Esther Dyson, and Annalisa Roger, representatives of dotgay, .berlin, .xxx, plus major registries are among the participants who will discuss how the Internet will be impacted by the coming new TLD rollout." more»
Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: "Thousands of companies that use the pseudo-top-level-domain .gb.com have gone offline due to a legal fight between the registry and its founder. CentralNIC sells third-level gb.com domains as a 'Great Britain' alternative to .co.uk. A Google search reveals a great many small businesses use the extension for their web sites. They're all out of luck today."
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Dennis Fisher in ThreatPost reports: "In a rare and sweeping move, Google has removed all of the sites hosted on .co.cc domains from its search results, saying that because such a large percentage of the sites on that freehosting provider are low-quality or spammy, they decided to de-index all of them. The .co.cc domain is well-known in security and anti-spam circles for being a favorite spot for phishing and spam domains, but there also are legitimate domains hosted there." more»
ICM Registry announced this week it has struck a deal with McAfee for a free malware scan for every .XXX domain. The deal would include McAfee's "trustmark" and date stamp, ICM said. Every .XXX domain will be scanned for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, browser exploits and phishing sites, reputational analysis and malware, Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry, said in a statement. more»
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has urged a federal court to return two domain names seized in what the organization calls U.S. government's fundamentally flawed anti-infringement campaign. "This misguided intellectual property enforcement effort is causing serious collateral damage to free speech rights," said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. "These domain seizures should cease unless and until the government can fix the First Amendment flaws inherent in the program." more»
The Board of ICANN today gave final approval to the most dramatic change to the Internet in four decades -- allowing the expansion of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). This monumental decision will allow companies and organizations to turn their own brands into Internet domain extensions (that is .brand) or to create broad generic strings such as .CAR, .SPORTS or .BANK. ICANN's TLD expansion plan was first announced three years ago on June 26, 2008 at the 32nd ICANN Meeting in Paris. more»
Mike Masnick reporting in Techdirt: "This morning, we wrote about the list of sites that ICE knew was challenging its domain seizures, and some people complained that there still were no details. There's been a lot happening behind the scenes, but the first bit of public information is now available, as the company behind Rojadirecta, Puerto80 has officially filed suit against the US government, demanding the return of its domains." more»
The latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by Verisign reports 4.5 million domain names were added to the Internet in the first three months of 2011. According to the report, the first quarter of 2011 closed with a base of more than 209.8 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), or a 2.2 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2010. Registrations grew by 15.3 million, or 7.9 percent year over year. more»
New research has uncovered evidence of spammers establishing their own fake URL-shortening services for the first time. According to the latest MessageLabs Intelligence report, shortened links created on these fake URL-shortening sites are not included directly in spam messages; instead, the spam emails contain shortened URLs created on legitimate URL-shortening sites. "Rather than leading directly to the spammer's final Web site, these links actually point to a shortened URL on the spammer's fake URL-shortening Web site, which in turn redirects to the spammer's final Web site." more»
Following in Twitter (T.co) and Overstock's (O.co's) footsteps, Amazon has registered a number of domain names ending with the .CO extension including, A.Co, Z.Co, K.Co and Cloud.co in a deal made with Columbia-based .CO registry. "We're not looking for a major brand to switch over to .co, but every day new companies are starting and can't get the domain name that they want," says .CO representative Lori Anne Wardi. more»
Jennifer Baker or IDG News reports: "The U.S. and the European Union have agreed to work together to ensure that domain naming on the Internet remains in the hands of independent private-sector stakeholders, but have demanded reforms. On Thursday, E.U. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes and Larry Strickling, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, said that they will continue to support the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) system for assigning top level domains..." more»
VeriSign reports that it has reached a Settlement Agreement and Mutual Release with the Coalition for ICANN Transparency, Inc. ("CFIT"), CFIT's members, and specified related parties that resolves the over five-year long CFIT litigation. Under the terms of the Agreement, no payment will be made and the parties immediately will file a dismissal with prejudice of all claims in the litigation. Further, the parties executed mutual releases from all claims now and in the future related to the litigation. more»
Kieren McCarthy reporting in .nxt: "The European Commission has confirmed a high-level meeting with the US government tomorrow over ICANN and new Internet extensions. The meeting between vice-president Neelie Kroes and US Assistant Commerce Secretary Larry Strickling follows an extraordinary correspondence in recent weeks between the two institutions over the introduction of dot-xxx and ICANN's approach to governments while developing rules for hundreds of new extensions." more»
NameSmash has interviewed Garth Bruen, Internet security expert and creator of Knujon, on some key issues under discussion during the recent ICANN meetings in San Francisco. Topics include Whois, DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) -- issues of critical importance particularly with ICANN's expected roll-out of thousands of new gTLDs in the coming years. more»
