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Several major Chinese tech organizations have urged ICANN not to lift its ban on single-character gTLDs, saying the risk of confusion is too great. Allowing single-character gTLDs in Han script was the most objected-to part of the draft Applicant Guidebook in ICANN's just-closed public comment period, with the objections all coming from China. Han ...
The new gTLD program is an existential threat to ICANN if it continues to ignore the concerns of IP interests, according to the International Trademark Association. Trademark owners are becoming disillusioned with the ICANN process and "instead have opted to pursue more balanced outcomes through regulators, legislatures, and courts", INTA said in c...
Namecheap's lawsuit over ICANN's decision to lift price caps in .org and .info will be allowed to proceed, a California judge has ruled. The Superior Court in Los Angeles recently threw out ICANN's attempt to get the case dismissed, according to court documents released by ICANN. There will now be a hearing in January. Namecheap's […] The pos...
Some Guy has noticed that domain name prices keep going up and has offered to take over the .com and .net registries from Verisign. The Some Guy recently filed a formal Request for Reconsideration with ICANN, asking it to overturn its recent decision to renew Verisign's .com contract and award it to him instead. The […] The post Some guy want...
ICANN has published the first, early draft of rules for new gTLD applicants that want to change their applied-for strings at the thirteenth hour. In a shock move last month, ICANN's board of directors said that applicants would be able to nominate a second-choice gTLD, as a means to reduce the number of contention sets […] The post Second-sho...
Ashley La Bolle and Rex Wickham have been named Nominet non-executive directors after an election that saw the top three candidates finish with very close numbers. Nominet said La Bolle, who works for Tucows, and Wickham, who works for 2020Media, were elected after three rounds of votes and took their seats immediately at the company's […] Th...
Tell us who you're working for, or get out. That's the message, mainly targeting lawyers in private practice, underpinning a proposed change to the rules governing participating in ICANN policy-making proceedings. The Org has published a new "discussion draft" of a Community Participant Code of Conduct Concerning Statements of Interest, which propo...
Identity Digital is to take over the running of .ai, following a deal with the Government of Anguilla announced today. The two parties said they "plan to build a world-class registry management program that prioritizes quality domains and instills trust in .AI domain names for years to come". It looks like a back-end deal. There's […] The pos...
The Internet Commerce Association and WIPO are jointly chairing an off-the-books review of the UDRP, ahead of a likely ICANN review of the anti-cybersquatting policy next year. WIPO said today that the review is being coordinated by Brian Beckham of WIPO and Zak Muscovitch of the ICA, and comprises another 16 participants, mostly UDRP lawyers, [...
ICANN's response to a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former long-serving employee was "inadequate" and failed to address "pervasive and obvious problems" women experience in the community, some veteran community members have said. In a letter to chair Tripti Sinha, 15 people, not exclusively female, also say that previous responses to reports...
Unstoppable Domains says it has now registered over four million names on its collection of blockchain-based alternative naming systems. The volume appears to spread across multiple extensions. Unstoppable runs names such as .crypto, .x, .wallet and .nft, as well as dozens of more obscure branded strings, such as .pudgy and .bald, with its partners...
Amazon appears to be dusting off two of its long-dormant gTLDs, targeting the books and fashion industries ahead of launch next year. But it's probably not worth getting too excited about if you only speak English. The TLDs are . (.xn--bck1b9a5dre4c), which is Japanese for "fashion" and . (.xn--rovu88b), which is Chinese for "books". Updated [̷...
With the future of .io coming into question this week, with the news that the UK will return sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, I thought it would be a good time to see how ICANN has treated disappearing countries and territories in the past. As far as I can tell, ccTLDs […] The post Five times ICANN deleted a ccT...
The future of the .io ccTLD is up in the air today with the announcement that the UK is to hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory, also known as the Chagos Archipelago, to Mauritius. The two governments announced today that they will sign a treaty agreeing "that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago". […] The post Future of...
Anguilla's .ai ccTLD added 54,372 domain names in the last quarter, according to the registry's web site. The total today is 533,068 domains, compared to 478,696 on July 1, according to an update posted this afternoon. The .ai domains under management number was 306,861 about a year ago. .ai now has about as many registered […] The post .ai n...
The ccTLD registries for UK and Israel cut their funding to ICANN by the largest amounts in the Org's last financial year, according to the latest numbers. ICANN received mostly voluntary ccTLD contributions totaling $2,135,937 in its fiscal 2024, which ended June 30, according to its report, which was published (pdf) a couple weeks ago. […] ...
Twitter appears to have dragged itself into the 2020s with the linkification function of its service, after years of complaints. On the web version of its service at least, Twitter now correctly makes domains in all the newest TLDs into clickable links automatically, with no http:// prefix required. This means users are able to share […] The ...
After a wait of over 15 years, startup registry DotMusic is bringing .music domains to general availability today. A week-long Early Access Period is due to start this afternoon, with prices initially measured in the thousands of dollars, before regular GA with standard pricing — around $60 retail — kicks off October 8. Participating re...
Good news, everyone! ICANN knows what a domain name is! The Org has quietly corrected a slide deck, designed as a high-level introduction to the new gTLD program's Next Round, that seemed to mislabel the components of a domain name. When it was first published in early September, the offending slide looked like this: When […] The post ICANN f...
Kuwait has become the latest country to make second-level domain registrations possible directly under its national ccTLD. The registry, government regulator the Communication and Information Technology Regulatory Authority (CITRA), said last week that it's launching direct 2LD regs under .kw with an initial six-month sunrise period that has alread...
A BBC journalist is believed to have become the first reporter to visit Diego Garcia, the main island of the contested British Indian Ocean Territory that owns the .io domain, in decades. Alice Cuddy was given access to the island after a court battle as part of the Beeb's coverage of litigation against the UK […] The post Reporter gains firs...
.io is now a $40-million-a-year domain, after a few years of impressive growth, judging by the registry's latest financial reports. UK-based Internet Computer Bureau, a subsidiary of Identity Digital, recently reported turnover of 29.6 million ($39.6 million) for 2023, up 13.9% on the 26.1 million it reported in 2022. While that's respectable growt...
An IDN ccTLD criticized as "useless" by locals when it was approved five years ago has fewer domains today than it did at launch, and a portfolio of web sites even a Simpson could count on one hand (twice). The Greek-script . (.xn--qxa6a) is one of two internationalized domain name versions of the European Union's […] The post After five year...
Verisign has agreed to take down abusive .com domains under the next version of its registry contract with ICANN. The proposed deal, published for public comment yesterday, could have financial implications for the entire domain industry, but it also contains a range of changes covering the technical management of .com. Key among them is the [̷...
Verisign will retain its power to increase .com prices by 7% a year, and prices in other gTLDs could well go up too, under a new proposed registry contract designed to help patch up ICANN's budget. The proposed .com Registry Agreement was posted for public comment this evening, and the pricing terms within could have […] The post New .com con...
Domain investors may shoulder additional risk when they register domains in the relaunching .ad TLD, judging by the registry's new cybersquatting policy. Andorra Telecom, which will make .ad names generally available globally October 22, has signed up with WIPO to implement an adapted version of the UDRP that is a lot less friendly to domainers. [&...
The GNSO Council has approved a blanket ban on singular and plural versions of the same word being delegated as gTLDs in future and passed it to the ICANN board of directors for final consideration. The proposed policy would prevent anyone applying for the singular/plural equivalent of an existing gTLD, and would put future applications […] T...
Amazon's Early Access Periods for the new .now and .deal gTLDs have so far netted at least three premium-priced sales. Zone files reveal that so far .now has three new EAP domains but .deal has none. The .now domains are, perhaps predictably, porn.now and news.now, which were both registered via Gandi, and free.now, which was […] The post Thr...
It's $227,000. That's the minimum ICANN expects to charge for each new gTLD application in the Next Round. The Org confirmed the price, which is $42,000 more than it charged in 2012, in a blog post this afternoon. It's toward the low end of the $208,000 to $293,000 range discussed in June, but up on […] The post ICANN confirms new gTLD applic...
ICANN has upped its expected new gTLD application fee after approving a costly new plan to tack name collisions. The baseline price of applying for a single string, most recently pegged at $220,000, is now expected to go up by $5,000, according to a recent resolution of the ICANN board of directors. The board earlier […] The post New gTLD app...
The Neustar spin-off that once operated the .co TLD reportedly has lost a case against the Colombian government in which it had sought $350 million in damages over the acrimonious renewal of its registry contract. According to local reports, the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, part of the World Bank, last week [̷...
It had to happen sooner or later. With a few dozen would-be new gTLD applicants breaking cover over the last year or so, we seem to have our first clash and our first potential 2026-round contention set. The sought-after contested gTLD is .chain, which now has two announced hopefuls after blockchain-based alternative naming system Freename.io [R...
SK-NIC, part of Team Internet, says it plans to auction off all 36 single-character .sk domains over the coming months. The auction plans also include releasing all the 200-odd two-letter domains that match existing ccTLDs, as well as .com.sk and .net.sk, which have all been registry-reserved to date. The registry said it plans to hold […] Th...
One of the outstanding contested gTLDs from the 2012 application round looks set to be delegated finally, after the winning bidder signed its Registry Agreement with ICANN. Merck Registry Holdings Inc is now the officially contracted registry for .merck, and it appears the intent is to be a dot-brand jointly controlled by two unaffiliated chemical ...
GoDaddy seems set to get a renewed and relaxed .xxx registry contract, after ICANN dismissed the concerns of critics of the deal. In a much-delayed analysis of submissions to a recent public comment period, Org indicated that it is in favor of GoDaddy, via subsidiary ICM Registry, migrating to a Registry Agreement much more in […] The post Go...
Australian ccTLD overseer auDA has appointed industry veteran Bruce Tonkin to CEO. It's an internal promotion; Tonkin has been chief operating officer at auDA since 2018. He's replacing Rosemary Sinclair, who intends to leave at the end of the year. Tonkin was formerly CEO of Melbourne IT, one of the very first batch of registrars […] The pos...
ICANN has named its new Ombuds, who will take over the role vacated by Herb Waye almost a year ago. She's Liz Field, a HR specialist who spent most of her career at Amnesty International but most recently has been working for WIPO as an independent outside consultant, according to her LinkedIn. After almost two […] The post ICANN hires new Om...
ICANN is to ban new gTLD applicants from paying each other off if they apply for the same strings, removing a business model that saw tens of millions of dollars change hands in the 2012 application round. But, in a twist, applicants will be able to submit second-choice strings along with their main application, allowing […] The post Big twis...
ICANN has revealed it is to "strengthen" its anti-harassment policy, but the announcement came the same day as it picked another public meeting host country where being gay can lead to jail time. "The Board Anti-Harassment Working Group has recently worked to evaluate and strengthen the ICANN Community Anti-Harassment Policy," chair Tripti Sinha po...
Malaysia's .my ccTLD has so far failed to attract the hoped-for thousands of new registrations since it relaunched to a global audience a few months ago, according to registry statistics. MYNIC puts the total number of .my domains, including third-levels under the likes of .com.my and .biz.my, at 313,588 at the end of August, barely […] The p...
It's probably a bad idea to let a critical infrastructure domain expire, even if you don't use it any more, as Identity Digital seems to be discovering this week. White-hat hackers at WatchTowr today published research showing how they managed to undermine SSL security in the entire .mobi TLD, by registering an expired domain previously […] T...
"The goal is for the next application round to begin within one year of the close of the application submission period for the initial round." Believe it or not, that sentence appears in the new gTLD program's Applicant Guidebook that ICANN published in June 2012, 12 years of seemingly interminable review and revision ago. Ah, […] The post Th...
Squarespace looks set to be acquired by private equity firm Permira in a sweetened cash deal valuing the registrar at about $7.2 billion. The new $46.50 per share offer is an improvement over Permira's initial May offer of $44 and represents a 36.4% premium over Squarespace's share price the day before the takeover way announced. […] The post...
If you noticed ICANN's web site acting sluggishly or failing to respond at all last week, now you know why. The site at icann.org was hit by a distributed denial of service attack on September 3 through September 4, according to a brief statement on the Org's now-functional site. ICANN identified a Distributed Denial of […] The post ICANN hit...
The Russian government has called on ICANN to further distance itself from US legal jurisdiction, complaining that the current war-related sanctions could prevent its companies from applying for new gTLDs. In recent comments, Russia said that "no single state or group of states should have the right to interfere in the operation of critical Interne...
The Chinese ccTLD .cn shrunk by over half a million domains in the first half of the year, according to the latest semiannual report from the local registry. There were 19,562,007 registered .cn names at the end of June, down from 20,125,764 at the end of 2023, a decline of 563,757 domains, according to the […] The post China loses over half ...
ICANN's board of directors will be down one person for six months or more after last month's unexpected resignation of Katrina Sataki. The ccNSO, which selected Sataki and is charged with picking her successor, does not expect to be able to name a new director until well into next year, and the vacant seat will […] The post ICANN to be direct...
The FBI has seized 32 domain names it says were being used by Russian-government-backed interests to peddle fake news to influence the war in Ukraine and the upcoming US presidential elections. The agency named three sanctioned Russian companies as the owners of the domains, which it said "covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim ...
A collection of six registrars in the XZ.com stable are back on the ICANN naughty step, facing more Compliance action just a couple of years after a sister company was suspended over UDRP failures. ICANN has published breach notices against DotMedia and five other registrars under common ownership, claiming that they are failing to send […] T...
Katrina Sataki has abruptly resigned from the ICANN board of directors. In a letter last week to the ICANN brass and to the Country Code Names Supporting Organization, which elected her to the post three years ago, Sataki wrote: I am writing to hand in my resignation as a member of the Board of Directors […] The post Sataki quits ICANN board ...
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