Interactive Investor Interviews Antony Van Couvering and Peter Dengate Thrush
The new gTLD program is not going to be undone. For that to happen would mean jettisoning 10 years of the ICANN experiment and all the work that has gone into it.
In light of some changes contained in the most recent Applicant Guidebook as well as some of the proposed contractual provisions contained in the recent IANA Statement of Work, there is a potential growing justification to make some necessary last minute changes to the legal terms and conditions contained in Module 6 of the Applicant Guidebook. Specifically, the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and its individual members have a clearly defined role in the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) process... more»
In the run up to the launch of new TLDs there were a lot of rumours about which organisations would apply for which strings. Detractors might pick holes in the entire project, but it's very hard to argue against the merits of new TLDs specifically in the context of cultural linguistic communities that fall outside the realm of ccTLDs (country code top level domains). The case of Catalonia and .cat is probably the best one and has been vaunted as the poster child for new TLDs in some circles. more»
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently issued a detailed press release regarding Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) cases for which it provided arbitration services in 2011 and, once again, the number of WIPO filings was up. According to WIPO: "In 2011, trademark holders filed a record 2,764 cybersquatting cases covering 4,781 domain names with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (WIPO Center) under procedures based on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), an increase of 2.5% and 9.4% over the previous highest levels in 2010 and 2009, respectively." Yet that's an incomplete picture. more»
The eccentricities of California-based ICANN, the allocator of domain names, know few bounds. Based on the best of legal advice, though perhaps not the best of PR advice, it's Board has announced the system for allocating priority in the processing of around 1000 weighty applications for new top-level domain names. It has described the system, with all seriousness, as Digital Archery. A description that just begs for comparison with the English folk hero, Robin Hood. more»
In a hugely significant move, .uk registry Nominet has signed up to internet overseeing organisation ICANN and put to bed a historic battle between the US not-for-profit company and managers of country-specific internet domains.
The decision to go through with an "exchange of letters" where ICANN recognises Nominet as the owner of the .uk registry and Nominet recognises ICANN as the global technical body of the internet follows a decision by the ICANN Board to give ccTLDs greater autonomy within ICANN. more»
Over the course of the last year, the ICANN Board and Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) have constructively worked through a long list of their differences contained in the GAC scorecard. As we near the finish line with Monday's scheduled ICANN Board meeting to approve the Applicant Guidebook, there remains a small handful of issues that will hopefully be resolved in a similar responsible manner during Sunday's ICANN Board/GAC consultation. more»
"At every crossroad on the road that leads to the future, tradition has placed against us ten thousand men to guard the past". These were the words of Stanley Prusiner in 1992 describing the opposition to his radical discovery of what he called prions, the causative agents of a clutch of baffling brain diseases. These include kuru, affecting New Guinea cannibals, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), and BSE or mad cow disease. And today these guardians of the past are in place again at the crossroad that leads to a future of thousands of top-level Internet domain names. more»
"The current Board-GAC relationship is dysfunctional and has been so for several years." Never has this line from the ATRT Report seemed so apt as now, when the ICANN board and the GAC are preparing to meet in Brussels. Part 1 of this blog will describe their impasse over the introduction of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). Part 2 will analyze that impasse and offer recommendations to begin resolving it. more»
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»
Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: "NTIA boss Larry Strickling has come out in support of ICANN and its new top-level domains program, warning that its opponents 'provide ammunition' to authoritarian regimes. Speaking in Washington DC yesterday, Strickling warned that organizations fighting to put a stop to the new gTLD program risk provoking a UN takeover of the internet." more»
Senator Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, questioned why VeriSign should have what critics have called a guaranteed perpetual income stream from .com domain registrations. The company currently receives $6 per domain, or about $323.4 million a year, from .com fees alone. more»
I read with interest that ICANN opened up yet another comment period on new TLDs. I believe that I speak for many when I question whether ICANN is opening up these comment periods in good faith, or instead whether these are smokescreens, mere distractions to pretend that ICANN is "listening" to the public while staff and insiders proceed with predetermined outcomes. more»
Obviously, the market will explode if there were a few hundred new gTLDs creating global excitement and building new platforms on ecommerce and cyber-branding. The media hype and breakaway stories will create a boom to the traffic; all types of new and old names will be registered under current and re-registered under new gTLDs wherever possible. more»
Welsh websites could soon choose a .cym address rather than .uk, if a campaign backed by assembly members succeeds. The assembly's house committee voted to support efforts to get .cym accepted as a top-level domain (TLD) name root on websites with a Welsh interest. more»
Andrew Colley of Australian IT reports the AusRegistry, the operator of Australia's Top-Level Domain (.au), has revealed that it has been approached by various groups planning to submit applications to ICANN for the creation of adult-themed generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .xxx and .sex. According to the report, the Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has opposed the idea syaing: "The government does not support the creation of the .xxx TLD." As it has been reported extensively on CircleID, previous attempts to create adult related TLDs (such as .xxx) have so far been rejected by ICANN. more»
