Author: John Demco

Internationalized Domain Names To Be Supported Under .EU – The European Commission has amended the rules for the .eu domain to allow the use of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). They are to be available later this year. .SE Registry Supports External Projects – The registry for Sweden’s .se domain has announced financial support for 13…

The meetings of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) are taking place this week, June 21 – 26, 2009, in Sydney, Australia. As usual, there is a very diverse collection of participants and topics. Of particular interest is the prospect of the creation of a large number of new generic top-level domains…

CIRA To Conduct WHOIS Consultation – CIRA will conduct a public consultation on its WHOIS disclosure policy, launched last year. The policy restricts personal information about individual .ca domain registrants, and was designed “to achieve balance between protecting the privacy of individual Registrants and providing timely mechanisms for legitimate information requests”. Worldwide Domain Name Count…

ICANN Board Approves Changes To Registrar Contract – The ICANN Board has approved a set of 17 amendments to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), the contract ICANN has with each accredited Registrar. According to ICANN: “The changes update the RAA, which was last amended in 2001, to adapt to the modern domain name market. The…

Nominet Consults on Domain Industry Self-Regulation – Nominet, the registry for the .uk domain, is running a consultation and holding a series of open meetings on “potential changes to the self-regulation model of the domain name industry in the UK.” The consultation follows a recent independent governance review which concluded that public intervention and external…

CIRA Calls For Nominations For Board Election – The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has a issued a call for individuals seeking to become candidates in this year’s Board of Directors election. The election, to be held in September, will be a split ballot composed of candidates selected by CIRA’s Nomination Committee and nominated directly…

ICANN Anticipates New gTLD Applications to Start in Q1 of 2010 – ICANN has provided an update on the new gTLD Program, and anticipates “that applications for new top-level domains will be accepted starting in the first quarter of 2010.” Consultations and discussion, including sessions at the Sydney meeting in June, will continue on the…

Nominet Trust Announces Grants – Nominet Trust has announced its first six grants for a range of Internet-related projects, using a 5 million pound donation received in September, 2008 from the .uk registry Nominet. The six organizations to receive funding are: The British Computer Association of the Blind, The Internet Society, Childnet, The Cambridge Global…

Plans Announced for Next Generation DNS Software – Internet Systems Corporation has announced plans for BIND 10, the next generation of its open source DNS software. Patron sponsors of the effort are JPRS (.jp) and CIRA. Other sponsors are Afilias, AFNIC, DENIC, IIS.SE, Nominet, NIC.br, SIDN, and .ZA Domain Name Authority. CIRA announced plans to…

Former ICANN Board member Susan Crawford is reportedly going to the White House as special assistant to the President for science, technology and innovation policy. CIRA President and CEO Byron Holland has been appointed as a vice chair of ICANN’s country code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO). CIRA has announced its 2009 Annual General Meeting and…

ICANN Meeting in Mexico City Concludes – ICANN meetings were held in Mexico City on March 1-6. Sessions on new gTLDs, IDN ccTLDs, the structure of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), DNSSEC, IPv4 and IPv6, e-crime and abuse of the DNS, and a number of other topics took place. Among the announcements and resolutions…

ICANN Meets This Week in Mexico City – The ICANN meetings in Mexico City are under way through Friday, March 6. Among the topics to be covered are: new gTLDs, fast tracking of IDN ccTLDs, changes to the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), DNSSEC, IPv4 and IPv6, e-crime and abuse of the DNS, and improving…

Worldwide Domain Name Growth Slows – VeriSign has released its quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief, which indicates that during 2008 the number of domain names worldwide grew by 24 million to a total of 177 million, an increase of 16%. The 2007 annual increase was 27%. Registrations from the ccTLDs totaled 71.1 million. The annual…

Kentucky to Appeal Gambling Ruling – After the Kentucky Court of Appeals struck down a Circuit Court order that allowed seizure of 141 gambling-related domain names, the state administration has indicated that it will take the matter to the Kentucky Supreme Court. The appeals court had ruled that the state courts cannot seize domain names…