During ICANN's public comment period on lifting price caps on .org domains, over 3200 people submitted comments, overwhelmingly opposing price cap removals. ICANN however, seemingly ignoring these comments, has granted PIR the right to raise prices on .org domains. In response, NameCheap, a well-known domain registrar, has submitted a Request for R...

ICAs recommendation is that while IGOs and INGOs should have effective access to rights protection mechanisms which reasonably meet their unique requirements not to submit to national courts, no new procedure is required because they can use the UDRP. Read the full letter: Letter to Mary Wong re GNSO Policy Development Process on IGO-INGO Access......

ICA will be holding a public webcast, with Michael Palage and Frank Cona, developers of the WIPO Model for post-GDPR access to non-public Whois data. Michael and Frank will present the model and answer your questions on WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, at 1 pm EST.Registration is now open. The call is open to anyone interested in... Read more

ICANNs decision to execute the new .org Registry Agreement despite overwhelming public opposition is greatly concerning to stakeholders and raises serious questions about the so-called bottom-up multi-stakeholder model. We have some questions. We put the questions into the attached letter to Cyrus Namazi, Vice-President of the Global Domains Divisi...

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) is profoundly disturbed by ICANN's decision to remove price caps on .org domain names despite the groundswell of opposition from stakeholders. On June 30, 2019, ICANN advised that it had executed a renewal agreement with Public Interest Registry and the renewal agreement. This was despite a nearly unprecedent...

In addition to the previously submitted comment letters on the .org and .info registry agreements, the ICA has also submitted comments to ICANN on the .biz and .asia registry agreements. ICA Comment on Asia Proposed RegistryAgreement Renewal ICA Comment on biz Proposed Registry Agreement Renewal  

In a statement released today, PIR, the operator of the .ORG domain name registry, did not rule out the possibility of substantial price hikes on .org domain names if its new proposed contract is approved by ICANN. In response to the thousands of objections submitted to ICANN by individual registrants, charities, religious groups, community organiz...

A Selection of Comments Submitted in Connection with the Renewal of the .Org Agreement These are a selection of notable comments from the over 3,000 comments submitted in response to a request for public comment on the terms of the proposed renewal of the .Org agreement. We have highlighted some phrases in bold.   From... Read more

It is three days before Comments close on ICANNs proposal to eliminate price caps on .ORG domain names, and the community of organizations is making their voices heard! At the time of writing this post, there are over 1,762 Comments all opposing the elimination of price caps. This is a striking number of Comments... Read more

The ICA has created an easy-to-use Form for you to submit your objections to ICANN regarding its proposed removal of all price caps on .org domain names. The form offers several possible objections to the terms of the agreement. You can select the ones that most closely match your concerns. The form will then create... Read more

The Internet Commerce Association (the ICA) Congratulates Australian Domain Investors on the rejection of certain Proposed Policy Changes in the Australian namespace which would have had a detrimental effect on domain name investors and on the Australian namespace. On April 15, 2018, auDA management responded to the Policy Review Panels Final Repor...

ICANN has recently announced that it intends to eliminate price caps on .org domains in the new registry contract. Under the new terms, the registry could increase prices on registrations to an unlimited amount, provided that they give advance notice. ICANN also preemptively added URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension) to the new contracts, despite the RPM...

auDA, the Australian registry, is considering some dramatic policy changes, one of which attempts to potentially devastate domain name investing in Australia. While auDA has never had domain name investment-friendly policies, these new proposed changes make things decidedly worse and threaten the very existence of investment in Australian domain na...

Andrew Rosener is an industry leading Domain Broker and is currently acting as CEO of MediaOptions.com, a boutique domain acquisition & brokerage firm. Media Options started off as a one-man operation and has grown to become one of the best know domain brokerages in the industry, completing tens of millions in domain names sales for... Read mo...

Domain owners rely on the UDRP to be implemented fairly and for transfers to be ordered only when there is clear evidence that the domain owner has violated the Policy. In an article published today on CircleID, ICA's General Counsel, Zak Muscovitch, describes a mistaken approach adopted by some panelists in cases where the domain... Read more...

In our newest article onCircleID, Zak Muscovitch asks: Is there a downside to misusing the UDRP to attempt a domain name hijacking? Read the full article on CircleID

On Friday, November 16th, ICA filed a letter addressed to Goran Marby regarding the .COM Registry Agreement, arguing that ICANN should reject any attempt by Verisign to increase its fees. Higher fees for Verisign are not justified, as demonstrated by the following four key points: a) Verisign is a provider of technical registry services, it... Read...

Shortly after the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)s recent announcement allowing Verisign to pursue increased .com registry fees, Verisign published a blog post questioning the business practices of registrars and domain name investors. The ICA, on behalf of its registrar and domain name investor members, had previo...

As the domain name community knows,the ICA has been warning of an impending price hike on .com domain name registrations. We publicized the issue, launched a website to increase awareness of the issue, created a petition that attracted over 2,000 signatures, and advocated for our position directly to David Redl, the head of NTIA, as... Read more

The ICA is happy and proud to announce that we are now accepting nominations forICA's 2019 Lonnie Borck Memorial Award! Thanks toNamesCon'sgenerous support, for the 3rd year in the row, the award will be held during the conference. The Lonnie Borck Memorial Award is granted to an individual for indelible contribution to domain investor rights,... R...

In its letter submitted to the ICANN board on October 9th, 2018, ICA pointed out the absence of any ICANN oversight over the UDRP such as an office or staff, regular review process, complaints procedure, or contracts with existing UDRP dispute resolution service providers. ICA requests that ICANN includes a budget for such oversight in... Read more

Guest post by Greg Thomas The shot clock is ticking towards expiration of the NTIA-Verisign Cooperative Agreement yet stakeholders are AWOL on completing accountability safeguards at root of the Internet. It is remarkable for all the wrong reasons that only two months remain before the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (...

Brian Harbin has been an independent domain broker with GritBrokerage for over 4 years. He is also the Director of Sales for NamePros for the past 3 1/2 years. Brian has been in sales since he was 18 (about 20 years now) when he started selling educational books door to door as a freshman at... Read more

Kate is CEO and Founder of Buckley Media. She has 23 years of experience in integrated marketing and business development, with deep experience in global domains, brand development, naming, creative strategy, storytelling, and social media. Kate's background includes big agencies (Gray and Landor) as well as 20 years experience with premium domains...

The ICA participated in responding to the United Nations, who had written a letter to the ICANN Board complaining about the IGO Working Group Final Report. The ICA was extensively involved in this Working Group and took issue with the UN's complaints about the outcome. This Working Group spent four years examining the UDRP and... Read more

  On July 17, 2018, the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) submitted its feedback to the United States' Department of Commerce in connection with theNational Telecommunications and Information Administration's Notice of Inquiry on International Internet Policy Priorities. The message was clear. Two major issues need immediate attention; 1. Ro...

Hobi Michalec graduated college at FAU with a Bachelor's in Business Management and a focus on entrepreneurship. He discovered domaining by chance after meeting John Ferber and joining Domain Holdings for a number of years. He left the company after its acquisition to help Co-found Lumis. Name: Hobi Michalec Company: Lumis Favorite Domain: fitness....

Once again, staff of ICANN's Global Domains Division (GDD) has used a legacy gTLD's contract renewal process to impose Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) on that gTLD — despite the fact that the URS is not an ICANN consensus policy applicable to legacy gTLDs. And, once again, the registry operator acquiescing to URS is reaping significant... Read...

It has been my honor for the past two years to have been a member of the .US TLD Stakeholder Council http://www.neustar.us/ustld-stakeholder-council and, in that capacity, to provide the perspective of domain investors and developers to the operation of the USA's ccTLD. On Thursday, December 15th .US issued two important requests for public comment...

Following up on its critical statement delivered to the ICANN Board at the recent Hyderabad public meeting, ICA submitted a Thanksgiving Day comment letter decrying the insertion of URS into the .XXX Registry Agreement (RA) via contract negotiation and declaring— "GDD staff should demonstrate their clear commitment to ICANN's bottom-up policy...

At the recent ICANN 57 meeting held in Hyderabad, India a full Public Forum session was held on Tuesday, November 8th. Utilizing the open mike, ICA Counsel Philip Corwin addressed the ICANN Board regarding the recent announcement that ICM Registry had agreed to adopt the new gTLD rights protection mechanism (RPM) of Uniform rapid Suspension... Read...

ICANN Global Domain Division (GDD) staff are at it again, engaging in top down policy decision-making through contract negotiations with older registries that pre-date the new gTLD program. The latest example is the announcement of a Proposed Amendment to .XXX Registry Agreement to Transition to New Fee Structure and to Adopt Additional Safeguards?...

Verisign has just filed a Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealing that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved the extension of the .Com registry Agreement through November 30, 2024. We previously reported that, on September 15th, ICANN's Board approved the .Com RA extensi...

John Colascione is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Searchen NetworksAs Inc., a consultancy and business corporation in New York State. In addition, he is Chief Executive Officer of Long Island Media Inc., a privately owned digital media company. John's qualifications in the domain space entail near fifteen years of marketing and advert...

We have previously reported that, at is September 15th meeting, ICANN's Board approved the proposed extension of the .Com registry Agreement (RA). What we did not know at the time was that the Board simultaneously approved an extension of the existing $7.85 ceiling on .Com wholesale prices through 2024.   That additional information recently b...

ICANN has just released the Approved Board Resolutions from its meeting of Thursday, September 15th, and one of its major actions was to approve the proposed extension of the .Com registry Agreement (RA) through November 2024. The complete text of the Resolution and the rationale for its adoption can be found at the end of... Read more

As  The .COM Registry Agreement Amendment? is on the Main Agenda for this Thursday's Regular Meeting of the ICANN Board. The proposed extension of the RA was announced and put out for public comment on June 30th. The public comment period closed on August 12th and ICANN staff's Report of Public Comments was due on... Read more

On July 25th ICANN announced the publication of the Draft Report of the Independent Review of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). This study was coordinated for ICANN by the Analysis Group, in conjunction with researchers from the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford as well the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. The Report's Execu...

It's been almost six weeks since the NTIA announced that the proposal developed by the global Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria NTIA outlined in March 2014 when it stated its intent to transition the U.S. Government's stewardship role for the Internet domain name system (DNS) technical functions, known as the Internet Assigned ...

Richard Lau is well known throughout the domain name industry having started many registrars, brokered numerous domain sales and quarterbacked the return of multiple high-value stolen domains. With his co-founding of NamesCon he adds to his successes in the industry, having established NamesCon as the largest commercial domain name conference world...

Ron Jackson is the Founder, Editor & Publisher of Domain Name Journal, the domain industry news magazine at DNJournal.com that has been covering industry news, people and events since launching on New Year's Day 2003. Ron spent nearly 20 years as a television reporter for ABC and CBS TV stations in Florida before beginning an... Read more

  “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis   ICA has long been an advocate for greater transparency in ICANN operations, especially in the decision-making activities of the Board. Back in May 2012, reacting to the announcement that the... Read mor...

Michael Castello is CEO and President of Castello Cities Internet Network, Inc. CCIN owns, manages and develops some of the most recognized Geo and Generic domain name brands in the world including PalmSprings.com, Nashville.com and Traveler.com. He is also the owner of Daycare.com which he and his wife Sheri Castello founded in 1997. Michael has.....

Since 1999, Andee has had a been involved with the Internet and domaining industries. Andee’s past positions include Director of Business Development with online escrow giant Escrow.com, where she managed critical business relationships and led the product development team. Later, in 2013, Andee established her own escrow company, EscrowHill.com, w...

Braden Pollock is a serial entrepreneur and domain investor who owns several companies, both online and off. Among his businesses is Legal Brand Marketing, LLC, which focuses primarily on lead generation for DUI and traffic attorneys, as well as lawyers in other legal practice areas. Under his leadership, Legal Brand Marketing has become the leadin...