ICANN Puts Registrar On Notice - ICANN has posted a Feb. 21 letter to registrar Registerfly.com giving formal notice of several breaches in Registerfly's accredition agreement with ICANN. The letter provides information on the breaches, and additional comments have been posted to the ICANN Ombudsman's blog. ICANN may give notice of termination of the registrar's accreditation if the breaches are not cured within 15 working days.

.EU Registry Launches Code Of Conduct Website - EURid, the .eu registry, has posted a draft registrar Code of Conduct for public comment on a new website. The optional Code is intended as an incentive for subscribing registrars to provide a high quality of service. The Code will come into effect on March 29.

dotMobi To Auction Domain Names - DotMobi, the registry operator for the .mobi domain, plans to auction these 15 .mobi names on March 7: airfare, areacodes, cam, casinos, creditscore, directions, eat, libre, loancalculator, models, newmusic, pics, pizza, realestate and singles. Prior to launching first come, first served registrations last year, dotMobi set aside a list of words and phrases to be sold by live auctions, online auctions, and Requests for Proposals.

ICANN Calls For Comments On .ORG Fee Amendment - An amendment to the .org Registry Agreement has been posted by ICANN for public comment until March 15. The amendment specifies changes, approved by the ICANN Board last November, to implement an excess delete fee of 5 cents per domain name when the number of names deleted by a registrar during the 5-day add-grace period is excessive.

Picks To Click

• The preliminary report of the February 12 meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors.
• The minutes of the January 30, 2007 meeting of the CIRA Board of Directors.
• Trailwest Online wins a dispute over trailpeak.ca.
• Registry operator Neustar loses a dispute over neu-star.com.
• Java creator James Gosling has been appointed to the Order of Canada.
• An interview with Vint Cerf.

ICANN Publishes Revision to Proposed .XXX Agreement - ICANN has posted for public comment a revised appendix to the proposed .xxx registry agreement. Acccording to the preliminary report of the recent ICANN Board meeting, "a majority of the Board has serious concerns about whether the proposed .XXX domain has the support of a clearly-defined sponsored community as per the criteria for sponsored TLDs".

British Users More Likely to Choose .UK: Survey - According to a survey carried out by YouGov, British Internet users are loyal to local websites and have higher levels of trust for the .uk domain name.

Picks To Click

• The preliminary report of the February 12 meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors.
• The ICANN Ombudsman has a blog, including an entry critical of how the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) handled an application for At-Large status.
• The agenda of the February 27, 2007 meeting of the CIRA Board of Directors.

Root Servers Attacked - On Feb. 6, root nameservers were flooded with queries due to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Reportedly three of the 13 root server clusters were significantly affected, but the attack went largely unnoticed by users.

VeriSign to Strenghen its Internet Infrastructure - VeriSign has announced an initiative to expand and diversify the capacity of its global Internet infrastructure by ten times by the year 2010. It plans to increase its DNS query capacity from 400 billion queries a day to over 4 trillion queries a day, and to increase bandwidth from over 20 Gbps to more than 200 Gbps.

Network Solutions Sold - Domain registrar and service provider Network Solutions has been sold to General Atlantic.

Picks To Click

• Craigslist wins a dispute over craigslist.ca.
• Country music star Keith Urban has filed a lawsuit against a New Jersey man named Keith D. Urban over the domain name keithurban.com.
• Geoff Huston posts an article in CircleID on "Addressing the Future Internet." Huston was a participant at the January 31 NSF/OECD workshop on Social and Economic Factors Shaping the Future of the Internet. Short position papers are available, including one from Internet pioneer David Clark.

.COM and .NET Registry Price Increases Expected This Year - VeriSign expects to increase the annual registry fees for .com and .net domain names this year, according to CEO Stratton Sclavos. Presently the annual registry or wholesale price for a .com name is USD $6.00, and the price could rise 7% to $6.42. The registry price for a .net name could increase 10% from $4.25 to $4.67. Each registrar will determine whether or not to pass on price increases to registrants and resellers. VeriSign must give six months' notice before increasing prices. (Note: By my reading of the .net agreement, the registry price consists of two components, a $3.50 service fee and a $0.75 ICANN fee, and it appears that the 10% maximum increase may apply only to the service fee. This results in an increase from $4.25 to as much as $4.60.)

Registrars Surveyed on Domain Name Suspension - CNET News.com has surveyed a number of registrars following GoDaddy's action last week to suspend service to security site Seclists.org. Among the questions was: under what circumstances will you suspend a customer's domain name based on the content of his or her Web site, in the absence of a court order? GoDaddy participated in the survey.

.UK Registry Conducts Governance Consultation - Nominet, the registry for the .uk domain, is updating its Articles of Association and is conducting two consultations on proposed changes. The first consultation runs until May 2, and concerns modifying the composition of the Board, enshrining the practice of consulting on policy matters in the articles, and giving the Board the power to make all fee changes rather than having to refer some changes to a membership vote.

Telnic Selects NeuStar To Operate .TEL Registry Systems - Telnic, registry operator for the forthcoming .tel domain, has announced that it has selected NeuStar to operate the registry and DNS systems for .tel.

Picks To Click

• The Government of Canada comments on the proposed .xxx domain agreement, expressing its concern that ICANN may venture beyond its core technical functions toward "an ongoing policy-making and oversight role governing Internet content."
• An association for UK domainers and a magazine for domainers are set to launch.
• Best Western International wins a dispute over best-western.ca.
• The CBC wins a dispute over hockeynightincanada.ca.
• The 2007 ICANN Nominating Committee issues a call for statements of interest.