John Demco
ICANN GNSO Passes Anti-Tasting Resolution – The Council of ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization has passed a resolution which could effectively kill domain tasting, the practice of registering many domain names and then using the five-day Add Grace Period to cancel for refund those which don’t get enough traffic. The new policy would limit the number of refunds allowed monthly by each registrar. According to ICANN’s bylaws, the resolution is to be discussed by the ICANN Board as soon as is feasible, and is to be adopted unless at least two thirds of the Board votes against it.
Top-Level Domain Name for Quebec Sought – A Parti Quebecois member of the National Assembly of Quebec has launched an online petition supporting the assignment of .qc as a new ccTLD for Quebec. ICANN relies on an official list of two-letter country codes as adopted by the International Organization for Standardization, and Quebec is not on that list.
Plans Advance For Internationalized Domain Names Under .NZ – Plans are advancing for the introduction of Internationalized Domain Names under New Zealand’s .nz domain. Among the proposed courses of action are: IDN policies will be in line with existing .nz policies, the cost to register an IDN will be the same as for an ASCII .nz name, there will be no automatic assignment of IDN variants to current .nz registrants, and there will be a sunrise period for registration of IDN variants by current .nz registrants. Comments are being sought until July 17.
Picks To Click
- A CBC News article: “One in a million: that’s upei.ca”.
- Germany’s .de domain surpasses 12 million registrations.
- The old Soviet Union’s .su domain lives on.
- The University of Toronto wins a dispute over utemp.ca.
- Canderel Stoneridge Equity Group wins a dispute over canderelstoneridge.ca.
- The .coop registry adopts a bulk registration offer policy and a name category policy.
Timeline
- Fri, Apr 25: last day for comments on discussion draft on fast tracking IDN ccTLDs
- Thu, May 1: nominations open for CIRA Board of Directors election
- Sun, Jun 1: new .au transfers policy takes effect
- Sun, Jun 22 – Thu, Jun 26: ICANN meetings in Paris, France
- Thu, Jul 17: last day for comments on proposed IDN plan for .nz
- Wed, Sep 10: CIRA Annual General Meeting in Vancouver
- Thu, Sep 18 – Thu, Sep 25: voting period for CIRA Board of Directors election