The .BEST new gTLD Registry was acquired 3 months ago by Cyril Fremont, a French Entrepreneur from Paris, and a team of investors. I took the time to meet with Cyril in the latest ICANN63 meeting in Barcelona to ask him a few questions about his future new gTLD project, three months after it was acquired from the previous owner... .best has just released the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of the social network. The ".best" social network will be officially present at the next Namescon... more
Symantec today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire VeriSign's identity and authentication business, which includes the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Services, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Services, the VeriSign Trust Services and the VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service. more
Traditionally, top-level domains (TLDs) have been almost exclusively marketed by registries through their registrar channel. In a never-ending cycle of driving and sustaining sales, registries often resort to discounting and "promotional pricing." The competition for prime shelf space for a TLD is fierce, with sales and distribution largely controlled by the channel... In this chaotic and cluttered channel, it's not surprising that TLDs have traditionally been less than successful in defining their brand and delivering a unique value story for their product. more
Ali's invitation to post reflections on the past 25 years of ICANN is very welcome. No doubt, some will write about major shifts in how ICANN is governed, for example, the end of United States government oversight. While others will write about changes to the industry that ICANN has catalyzed, for example, the 2012 round of new gTLDs and the upcoming next application process. more
Wikipedia defines a Mexican standoff as "a confrontation in which no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory. As a result, all participants need to maintain the strategic tension, which remains unresolved until some outside event makes it possible to resolve it." This would be an apt way to describe what may be possibly occurring presently between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its largest ratepayer, VeriSign. more
The domain name system is not the place to police speech. ICANN is legally bound not to act as the Internet's speech police, but its legal commitments are riddled with exceptions, and aspiring censors have already used those exceptions in harmful ways. This was one factor that made the failed takeover of the .ORG registry such a dangerous situation. But now, ICANN has an opportunity to curb this abuse and recommit to its narrow mission of keeping the DNS running... more
.CO Internet closed its chapter as an independent company and became part of the publicly traded Neustar on Monday afternoon. The Sterling, Va.-based provider of real-time analytics and registry services was also already providing a critical piece of .CO Internet's technology infrastructure. more
In order to provide more security for the Domain Name System (DNS), a group of large domain-name registries and registrars has got together with IT security providers and government agencies to launch a new workgroup: the "Registry Internet Safety Group" (RISG). The announcement was made by the Public Internet Registry, which operates the .org domain, and its backend provider Afilias. more
In part two of The [Dot] Brand Tribes we argued that introducing new branded generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) would bring value to brand owners and have positive effects on customer recognition. In this last post we'll continue that theme and talk about how brand owners can come together to provide shared spaces using the banking industry as an example. more
Would you be interested in helping guide the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for three positions on the PIR Board of Directors. The nominations deadline is 23:00 UTC on Thursday, February 1, 2018. Find out more about the positions and the required qualifications. more
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. more
It has been reported that Jay Westerdal, CEO of ‘.feedback’, has confirmed the registry has cured the breached in response to ICANN ruling reported last month. more
Today the DNS Abuse Institute (“DNSAI” or the “ Institute”) adds a new level of reporting for our measurement project: DNSAI Compass™ (“Compass”). With this new level of reporting, we intend to show the spectrum of how malicious phishing and malware is distributed across the DNS registration ecosystem.1 To demonstrate this, we are identifying registrars and TLDs with high and low volumes of malicious domain registrations in their Domains Under Management (DUM), or new registrations. more
Every few months, an important ceremony takes place. It's not splashed all over the news, and it's not attended by global dignitaries. It goes unnoticed by many, but its effects are felt across the globe. This ceremony helps make the internet more secure for billions of people. This unique ceremony began in 2010 when Verisign, ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration collaborated... more
Just recently, Bluesky -- the decentralized social network running on an open protocol called AT Protocol -- announced that as a mechanism for supporting its business financially, it will directly sell domain names as handles for its users. The sales will be processed through an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accredited registrar, called Namecheap. Currently, the handles on social media platforms are internal handles and not independent domain names. more
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