Blocking of a TLD by a local government is not going to lead to the fracturing of the Internet. If the case of Egypt is any guide, it's more likely to lead to the fracturing of the local government.
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.
Interactive Investor Interviews Antony Van Couvering and Peter Dengate Thrush
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the first top-level domain registry based in the Asia-Pacific region.
The .asia top-level domain will join other Asian-Pacific Internet domains, such as Japan, China, and South Korea already managed by DotAsia Organization. The addition brings the total number of Internet domain suffixes to 266. more»
Meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil, ICANN began accepting public comments this week on how best to revoke outdated suffixes, primarily assigned to countries that no longer exist.
The Soviet Union's ".su" is the leading candidate for deletion, although the former Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro are transitioning from ".yu" to their own country codes. A Google search generated millions of ".su" and ".yu" sites. more»
Approval of the new .com contract between VeriSign and ICANN means VeriSign gets to run .com until at least 2012, and very probably indefinitely. In four of the next six years, the company will be able to unilaterally raise the wholesale price of a .com by 7%.
...VeriSign spokesperson Tom Galvin said that the company currently has no plans to raise prices, but added "pricing flexibility is important so registry operators have the means to invest in their infrastructure". more»
ICANN said it has rejected a proposed search service to help guide people who mistype ".travel" Web addresses or seek nonexistent ones.
The decision comes after a review panel warned that the proposal from Tralliance Corp., which operates ".travel," could hinder spam filters and other applications that rely on the Internet's Domain Name System. 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»
I'm in attendance at the the TRAFFIC EAST 2006 show, in Hollywood [Miami], Florida. There has been a lot of buzz here about the .Mobi top level domain, ranging from the talk of early registrants hoping to create the next big mobile portal to those that were keen to see implementations of mobile content. There was a domain name auction this evening where flowers.mobi sold for $200,000.00 (USD), and fun.mobi for $100,000.00 (USD) from a long list of domain names in the com, net, info, org, us and mobi extensions. more»
ICANN has agreed that only registrars can suspend individual domain names. It believes that there is no way it could enforce the proposed court order. But as the organization responsible for the Internet's top-level domains, ICANN does have the authority to accredit registrars like Tucows, based in Toronto.
Princeton University's Edward Felten believes it is possible that ICANN could be forced to comply with this type of court order. more»
Registrars who support .com domain names will use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) system by October 28. ...There will be an additional step when trying to transfer a .com domain name among registrars. Specifically, a piece of information called an EPP code (aka auth code, EPP key, transfer secret) must be obtained from the current registrar and submitted to the gaining one prior to approving with the latter. more»
Internet domain name arbitration disputes have risen by more than a quarter since January 2005 -- despite the expansion of generic top-level domain addresses like .biz and .info -- as cybersquatters find more sophisticated ways of encroaching on legitimate Web sites.
...Typosquatting, a form of cybersquatting that involves capturing another company's Web traffic by registering misspelled versions of a well-known Internet site or brand name, is driving much of the growth in domain-name disputes, according to intellectual property lawyers. 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»
Companies owning thousands of common names for Internet use will hold back the spread of .eu, Europe's attempt to rival .com, campaigners said on Tuesday. ...campaigners and European Parliament members say a few firms bought 200,000 to 300,000 generic names that people often use to search for information on the Web. more»
A VeriSign Inc. official defended its contract to operate the .com domain Monday, after Network Solutions accused the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of not requiring adequate security safeguards in its registry agreements. Network Solutions, a domain-name registrar, released a report last week saying ICANN has "failed" to address security in its latest proposals for the .com, .biz, .info and .org top-level domains. more»
Last month, there was an exchange of letters between a gTLD administration and ICANN about DNSSEC deployment. This gTLD administration is PIR or Public Interest Registry, the gTLD administration for the .org TLD. Interestingly, PIR is a non-profit organization that makes significant contributions to ISOC (Internet Society) initiatives: thus, both ICANN and PIR are organizations dedicated to the well-being of the Internet. more»
A botched software update at Spain's central domain registry knocked as many as 400,000 sites offline for several hours Tuesday, according to the Esnic registry. The error left Internet users unable to access domains using .es, the country code top-level domain for Spain. more»
"In many parts of the world, dot-com is not the preferred domain suffix. In Germany, for instance, companies advertise their .de Web addresses more prominently than their .com addresses." ...Even with Google and Yahoo's best efforts, the Internet advertising revolution is still in its early stages, especially overseas. But if they're successful at bringing online ads to more countries, overseas domain owners are going to find themselves sitting on prime property. more»
