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The company that manages the U.K.'s top-level domain has struck a truce with the U.S.-based organization responsible for overseeing Internet domain names, cooling ongoing disagreements over administrative control of the Internet.
On Friday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced at a conference in Marrakech, Morocco, that it had exchanged letters with Nominet UK, a sign of future cooperation on managing the name and number system that makes Web browsing possible. more»
While Congress continues to consider the merits of so-called Net neutrality, an even more soporific but vital Internet legal issue looms, with ramifications for every business online and every user of the World Wide Web: What is the purpose of the database that contains information on every domain name registrant?
This question is being quietly debated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- the Net's keeper of the all-important addressing system -- which is meeting June 26-30 in Marrakech, Morocco.
Today, cybersquatters have rebranded themselves as "domainers," says Doug Isenberg, the author of the article over at CNet News. more»
A venture-backed Waltham company that's quietly amassed more than 650,000 Internet domain names is stepping out of stealth mode today and unveiling its plans to build a substantial Boston-area Web 2.0 business around the emerging field of "direct navigation."
The company, called NameMedia, is being led by Kelly P. Conlin , 46, a veteran media executive who previously had been chief executive of International Data Corp. in Boston and Primemedia Inc. in New York. NameMedia has already hired 75 people in its office near Route 128 to buy, sell, and develop businesses around Internet domain names. more»
A dispute over the cost of Internet domain names has spilled over onto Capitol Hill, where allegations of monopolization and unreasonable price hikes surfaced in a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
The dispute arises out of a lawsuit settlement reached on March 1 in which the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) gave VeriSign the right to raise fees on .com domains by 7 percent annually. The settlement, approved by ICANN's board by a 9-5 vote, ended a legal spat that started with VeriSign's controversial move to take control of all unassigned .com and .net domain names in 2003. Those guaranteed price hikes struck some members of the House of Representatives' Small Business Committee as unreasonable. more»
Bob Parsons of Godaddy has a piece on BusinessWeek today discussing the "loophole in the process" of domain name registrations often referred to as "domain tasting":
This scheme is so lucrative that more companies are joining every day. It is affecting .net and .org, too. Unless the add/drop scheme is checked, the problem will assume gigantic proportions.
Writing about this won't win me many friends in the industry, but my primary concern is for the protection of legitimate Internet domain name registrations. more»
Baroness Penelope Cat of Nash DCB, who is listed as the owner of mymorganstanleyplatinum.com and was given some assistance in the case by Michael Woods, lost control of the domain to Morgan Stanley.
A key part of the case rested on whether or not Baroness Penelope was truly the owner of the domain... "Respondent maintains that it is a cat, that is, a well-known carnivorous quadruped which has long been domesticated," summarised Richard Hill. "However, it is equally well-known that the common cat, whose scientific name is Felis domesticus, cannot speak or read or write." more»
Nominet has issued a warning about commercial companies that are swiping copyrighted information on domain name owners from its Whois database.
Several weeks ago, the UK internet registry owner noticed a sharp increase in the number of people accessing its Whois service, an online searchable database that provides ownership details for individual .uk internet addresses, including the name of the individual and sometimes their home address. more»
Swiss authorities have won the rights to their country's name in cyberspace after a ruling by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the UN agency announced.
A WIPO arbitrator awarded the Swiss Confederation control of the Internet domain names schweiz.ch, suisse.ch and svizzera.ch -- "Switzerland" in the Alpine country's majority German, and minority French and Italian respectively. more»
Ostrofsky's company, which recently received funding from Perot Investments and Starbucks boss Howard Schultz's firm Maveron, isn't the only company hoping to cash in on domain name traffic trends. Last month, startup Demand Media surfaced with 150,000 names and $120 million in investments led by Richard Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt was formerly the chairman of Intermix Media, the company that owned MySpace before it was acquired by News Corp. Ostrofsky and Internet REIT Chief Executive Bob Martin talked with Forbes.com about whether buying up Website names for the sole purpose of selling ad space is similar to investing in highway-adjacent land and filling it with billboards.
"If you go to Google and search for "E-Tickets" you're going to get a listing of ten ads. If you go to our site, Etickets.com, you're going to see that same listing, but presented in a slightly different way. Are people criticizing Google for the way they make money? It is the same way we make money. We're supplying some of that traffic to Google." more»
Surfing the Web on a cellphone can be as difficult as surfing the ocean on a tiny board. Now, a company founded by Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Vodafone Group PLC, Nokia Corp., and several other companies, aims to make it easier to browse the Internet on wireless devices such as cellphones or BlackBerries...
Many sites can't be displayed on tiny cellphone screens, and most would take a much longer time to download than on a PC. Mobile Top Level Domain aims to change that in part by setting up a new domain name specifically for wireless Internet Web sites called dot-mobi. more»
AOL is testing a program to let its members customize their AOL Mail address by using a domain name of their choice instead of the default aol.com... The move is another attempt by AOL to increase the allure of the services it provides paying customers, who have been cancelling their AOL subscriptions at an alarming rate in the past several years.
Google has been conducting a similar test on its Gmail service. more»
Fed up with the lack of an international system for internet addresses using non-western scripts, many countries are joining China in creating their own.
These moves are seen as a direct challenge to the authority of the US-based body that runs the international domain name system and a potential threat to the universality of the worldwide web. more»
Faced with opposition from conservative groups and some pornography Web sites, the Internet's key oversight agency voted Wednesday to reject a proposal to create a red-light district on the Internet.
The decision from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers reverses its preliminary approval last June to create a ".xxx" domain name for voluntary use by the adult entertainment industry. Paul Twomey, ICANN'S chief executive, said the decision largely came down to whether by creating an "xxx" domain ICANN might be put in a position of having to enforce all of the world's laws governing pornography.
He said board members were aware of the controversy but "the heart of the decision today was not driven by a political consideration." more»
The matter, which could be voted on as early as today by the organization that governs domain names, has triggered a rancorous global debate involving freedom-of-speech advocates, child-protection groups, adult-content providers, foreign governments and conservative Christian groups.
Mr. Lawley's proposal also raises thorny issues for the U.S. government, which funded the creation of the Internet and has long played a behind-the-scenes role in running it. As the Internet grows as a place of business and a forum for exchanging ideas, some have argued that it shouldn't be dominated by any one country. more»
"It's a long-term investment, like owning a home," says Lawrence Fischer, vice president of business development at SmartName.com, a company that owns and manages thousands of domain names, including Stockquotes.com. "But if a major brokerage firm came along with a big offer, I would be willing to listen."
Plenty have been willing to pay. Sales of 5,851 domain names generated $29 million in 2005, compared with the sale of 3,813 names for $15 million in 2004, market researcher Zetetic says. Venture-capital firms, too, are betting on domains. Last year, Highland Capital Partners plunked down more than $20 million on YesDirect, a holding company with 600,000 domain names. YesDirect is developing content for websites using the names, says Bob Davis, a managing general partner at Highland. more»
