U.S. senators proposed legislation that would establish a new ".XXX" domain for racy or sexually explicit websites.
The bill proposed by senators Mark Pryor and Max Baucus, both Democrats, calls upon the US Department of Commerce to exclude sexually charged content from established website domain names such as .gov, .com, .org, .net, and .edu.
Bonus Links:
ICM Registry's Response on the Issue
More from CNET News more»
This is a debate that will make plenty of money for Washington lobbyists for years to come.
But there is less talk about another infrastructure issue that could also have a major effect on the Internet. This issue is whether the .com domain name will remain reliable and secure. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that manages the technical aspects of the Internet, has decided to allow the cost of .com domain names to increase by a little less than $2 over the next five years. The additional funds will allow more investment in managing and protecting the .com domain. more»
Nineteen internet companies, including Network Solutions, have asked ICANN's Board of Directors to reconsider a controversial agreement giving VeriSign control of the .com top-level domain until 2012.
Domain name registrar GoDaddy has also petitioned the US Department of Commerce, which has yet to approve the agreement, asking that the deal be sent back to the ICANN Board. more»
The Internet's key oversight agency has outlined a plan for testing domain names entirely in non-English characters, bringing closer to reality a change highly sought by Asian and Arabic Internet users.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced a tentative timetable Tuesday that calls for tests to begin in the second half of the year. The tests would help ensure that introducing non-English suffixes wouldn't wreck a global addressing system that millions of Internet users rely upon every day. more»
ICANN will start the trial testing of internationalized domain names (IDN) in the Top-Level Domain (TLD) system, in the third quarter of 2006, Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN, told Interfax in an interview Tuesday. Once IDN domain names are implemented Internet sites will able to have domain names in foreign languages, and foreign character sets -- such as Chinese.
"The preparation for the testing is already underway, and it will be a testing on the top of the root," said Twomey. "We are presently moving to introduce the IDNs of TLD, and are much closer to the end for the answer." But the exact date for the launch of the IDN is not yet available. more»
Volkswagen has scooped the polo.eu domain name, despite fierce competition from Ralph Lauren and Polo-mint maker Nestle, a leading registrar reveals.
NetNames said the trio applied within five minutes of each other, and Ralph Lauren, owner of polo.com, missed out by only three minutes and 24 seconds. The .eu domain was launched in December and opens to the public in four weeks. more»
China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has made adjustment to China's Internet domain name system in accordance with Article 6 of China Internet Domain Names Regulations.
After the adjustment, ".MIL" will be added under the top-level domain (TLD) name of "CN". A new Internet domain name system will take effect as of March 1 in China. Under the new system, besides "CN", three Chinese TLD names "CN", "COM" and "NET" are temporarily set. more»
The US government wants to hear from organizations interested in running some of the internet's key resources, including the master lists of IP address space and domain names.
The Department of Commerce last week published a request for information, a step before potentially putting a contract out to bidding, soliciting interest from anybody interested in taking over the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. more»
Eight of the world's largest domain registrars have sent an open letter to ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf, stating their formal opposition to the revised proposition with VeriSign for continued control of the Internet registry.
The eight signatories, which lay claim to 25 million domain names, or 57 percent of those currently registered, are GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Tucows, Register.com, BulkRegister, Schlund + Partner AG, Melbourne IT and Intercosmos Media Group.
more»
There has been a flurry of activity among businesses and other domain-name holders in Europe following Tuesday's launch of the new ".eu" Internet domain by the European Union.
As of Thursday morning, some 270,000 applications for 198,000 different names using the new .eu tag had been received by the European Registry of Internet Domain Names (Eurid), which is authorized by the EU to operate the .eu registry, according to organization spokesperson Patrik Linden. more»
Malicious hackers who are able to hijack an organization's Web domain may be able to steal traffic from the legitimate Web site long after the domain has been restored to its owner, according to a recent report.
Design flaws in the way Web browsers and proxy servers store data about Web sites allow malicious hackers to continue directing Web surfers to malicious Web pages for days or even months after the initial domain hijacking. more»
New regulations will make it more difficult for companies to protect their domain names from cybersquatters in China.
Under the new rules, foreign and local firms will need to prove malicious intent and act quickly to have any hope of retrieving stolen domain names, according to a regulatory official interviewed by Chinese news site Sina. The new rules appear to give a green light to cybersquatters who buy up domain names which are similar to brand names in the hope of selling later for a profit. more»
Luke Seeley, 22 months, has two Web sites of his own, including lukeseeley.com, a domain his father purchased soon after an ultrasound showed that his first child was a boy, four months before the baby was born.
"It's like owning a piece of real estate online for him," said Seeley, 34, who lives in Vancouver, Wash., and specializes in Internet sales for an advertising firm. "By the time he's a teenager and he's really into the Internet, who knows what's going to be left in terms of domains?" more»
The infamous and controversial domain Sex.com has officially been sold to Boston-based Escom LLC for a reported $14 million, as reported by XBiz.
Prior to learning of the sale of Sex.com, numerous adult industry message board postings had already begun speculating on the sale after noticing the radical change in the appearance of the Sex.com website. On the homepage of the updated website, the new owners refer to the site as "the new Sex.com," and the appearance is radically different from the former site. The site is copyrighted by Escom. more»
The number of registered .cn domain names has topped 1 million for the first time, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which oversees the administration of the top-level domain for China.
At the end of December, nearly 1.1 million domain names had been registered under the .cn top-level domain, CNNIC said in a statement. That represents an annual increase of 154 percent and makes the .cn top-level domain the largest in Asia and the sixth-largest in the world, it said. more»
