Author: John Demco

VeriSign Celebrates 25 Years of .COM – VeriSign has marked the 25th anniversary of the .com domain. On March 15, 1985, symbolics.com was the first .com domain name to be registered. Showusyour.ca Voting Under Way – Voting is under way until Friday, March 26 on video entries to CIRA’s showusyour.ca contest. Canon To Apply For…

ICANN Meetings In Nairobi Conclude – Among the many announcements and resolutions during the ICANN meetings in Nairobi on March 8-12 were the following: The ICANN Board decided to withdraw a proposal for formal Expressions Of Interest (EOI) which would have been carried out in advance of the new gTLD application process. The Board resolved…

ICANN Meets This Week In Nairobi, Kenya – ICANN meetings in Nairobi, Kenya are taking place through Friday, March 12. Two of the main topics are: the status of the new gTLD process including the Expressions of Interest proposal, and consideration of the recent finding against ICANN concerning its 2007 rejection of the .XXX domain…

CIRA Asks Canadians To Showusyour.ca – The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced a contest asking Canadians to send in videos to show off their .ca websites. Videos must be submitted by March 15, and public voting on videos begins March 19. .UK Registry Members Vote For Governance Changes – Members of the .uk…

Review Panel Finds Against ICANN Board In .XXX Decision – An Independent Review Panel (IRP) has concluded that in rejecting ICM Registry’s 2004 application for a .XXX top-level domain, the ICANN Board’s decision “was not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy.” The Panel also concluded that its rulings are not…

Afilias Acquires .MOBI Domain Registry – Afilias has acquired mTLD Top-Level Domain Ltd., the operator of the .mobi domain registry, in a private deal. Afilias is the registry operator for .info, and had already been providing registry services to mTLD. There are more than 950,000 .mobi domains registered worldwide. ICANN Publishes Salary Information – In…

ICANN Begins DNSSEC Deployment In The Root Zone – ICANN has announced that DNSSEC deployment in the root zone has begun as of January 27. DNSSEC information is now being served by L-Root, one of the 13 root servers. DNSSEC deployment in the root zone is proposed to be completed by July. (DNSSEC, or Domain…

CIRA Seeks Nomination Committee Candidates – The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), registry for the .ca domain, has issued a call for new members for its Nomination Committee. The committee’s critical role is to identify and attract candidates for CIRA’s annual Board of Directors elections, to help to ensure that the Board is highly qualified…

A look back at some notable items from 2009: VeriSign reported that at the end of the third quarter of 2009, there were more than 187 million domain names worldwide, an annual increase of 8%. With the introduction of the fast track process for new IDN ccTLDs, the stage is set for the first top-level…

Some domain name items from the past week: VeriSign will increase the .com and .net registry (wholesale) fees effective July 1, 2010. The .com fee will increase from $USD 6.86 to $7.34, and the .net fee will increase from $4.23 to $4.65. Twitter.com’s DNS settings were hijacked temporarily on December 17. ICANN is seeking comments…

Some recent domain name items: The first internationalized names under the .eu domain have been registered. ICANN has signed agreements with the Universal Postal Union giving the UPU managing authority over the new .post domain, and with UNESCO to expand the adoption of IDNs. DNS creator Dr. Paul Mockapetris has been interviewed on National Public…

A collection of domain name items from the past week: Google has introduced a public DNS service. DNS service provider OpenDNS offers some thoughts on Google DNS. The .nl domain is introducing some changes, including making less personal data available from the public Whois service. The .uk domain reaches 8 million registrations. McAfee’s “Mapping the…

Some recent domain name items: ICANN has issued a paper describing the harms and concerns posed by DNS redirection, wildcards, and synthesized responses at the registry level. The .uk registry, Nominet, is conducting a consultation on “proposals to ensure continued self-regulation of the .uk domain name industry”. The domain russia.com has reportedly been purchased for…

Notable domain news items during the past week: The fast track process for new IDN ccTLDs is under way, and as of November 19, ICANN has received 10 requests spread over 5 different languages. Three people have been charged for hijacking Comcast’s domain name in May, 2008. The .asia registry has announced plans to launch…