Author: John Demco

CIRA Announces 2014 Board of Directors Election Results – The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced that Kerry Brown, Susan Mehinagic, Faye West, and Andrew Escobar have been elected to its Board of Directors. A total of 706 votes were cast, and a complete list of candidates and vote counts has been posted. Picks…

CIRA Board of Directors Election Campaign Forum Starts on September 10 – The campaign forum for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) Board of Directors election starts on Wednesday, September 10. The list of final candidates will be announced at that time. The forum runs until September 17, to be followed by the voting period.…

Domain Name Registrations Reach 276 Million Worldwide – According to VeriSign’s recent Domain Name Industry Brief, the first quarter of 2014 closed with more than 276 million domain name registrations worldwide, an annual growth rate of 7.5%. The rate as reported three months ago was 7.3%. Total ccTLD registrations were 127.1 million, a 13.1% year-over-year…

In this year’s Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) Board of Directors election, three Directors will be elected from the Nomination Committee slate, and one Director will be elected from the Members’ slate. The Nomination Committee slate, announced on July 28, consists of Joseph Abley, Bill Baines, Karima Bawa, Kerry Brown, Monique Létourneau, Susan Mehinagic, Paula…

The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) met in London last week. The group is responsible for preparing a proposal to the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Adminstration (NTIA) for transitioning NTIA’s stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions to the Internet community. The IANA functions can be divided into three main categories:…

ICANN meetings take place this week in London, with more than 2000 people in attendance. Here are a few of the topics to be discussed: The new gTLD program, and especially the .wine and .vin top-level domain applications, continue to draw much attention. ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has not reached consensus on additional safeguards…

CIRA Seeks Board of Directors Applicants – The Nomination Committee of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is calling for qualified individuals to be put forward as possible candidates for this year’s CIRA Board of Directors election. The Committee will select a slate of candidates from which the Members will elect three Directors this September.…

CIRA Announces Community Investment Program Recipients – The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced the first recipients in its Community Investment Program. The program was launched earlier this year “to provide funding to community groups, not-for-profits and academic institutions for projects they could demonstrate would enhance the Internet for the benefit of all Canadians.”…

CIRA Launches Registry Lock for .CA – The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced the launch of Registry Lock, a service “of particular value to high-traffic, high-transaction websites”. According to CIRA: “With Registry Lock, a domain name is locked at the registry level. Any request to have the domain name redirected, its information altered,…

ICANN’s 49th meeting was held in Singapore last week. As described in ICANN’s press release, the meeting “was dominated by discussions stemming from the recent announcement by the U.S. Government that it wants to transfer stewardship of some vital Internet technical functions to provide for global accountability.” Also at the meeting, CIRA President and CEO…

U.S. Government To Transition Key Internet Domain Name Functions – The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has announced “its intent to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community.” NTIA’s responsibility includes “the procedural role of administering changes to the authoritative root zone…

CIRA To Fund Canadian Internet Enhancement Projects – As part of its Community Investment Program, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced that it will provide up to $1,000,000 this year to community groups, not-for-profits, and academic institutions for “projects they can demonstrate will enhance the Internet for the benefit of all Canadians.” Qualifying…

.UK Registry To Introduce Post-Registration Domain Name Screening – Nominet, the .uk registry, has announced that it will institute “a system of post-registration domain name screening, within 48 hours of registration, for domain names that appear to signal or encourage serious sexual offences.” The change follows from a recent policy review by the UK’s former…

New gTLD Delegations Continue, First City TLD Activated – The activation of new generic Top Level Domains continues. As of January 3, 82 new gTLDs have been delegated into the root zone, an increase of 47 since December 10. Included in the most recent batch is the first city gTLD, .wien, for the Austrian capital…