John Demco
VeriSign has released its quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief. There were 174 million domain name registrations at the end of the third quarter of 2008, a 19% annual increase. Last quarter the annual increase was 22%, and the quarter before that it was 26%. Registrations from the ccTLDs totaled almost 69 million, a 26% annual increase. The largest domains are .com, .cn, .de, .net, .uk, .org, .info, .nl, .eu, and .biz.
Among the comments submitted to ICANN concerning the draft Applicant Guidebook for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) is a letter from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Concerned with the difficulty and expense of protecting its intellectual property rights, the IOC “opposes the proposed Top-Level Domain project as a whole.” Should ICANN move forward with its proposal, the IOC takes the position that “it is ICANN’s responsibility to find a solution in order to address the concerns of the IOC in a manner satisfactory to the IOC.” It further “stresses that many other entities outside the Olympic Movement will most certainly have concerns regarding potential abuses of their Intellectual Property rights, similar to those expressed by the IOC. It is essential that ICANN addresses those concerns in a responsible manner in order to avoid the proliferation of unauthorized uses of Intellectual Property and the resulting waste in time, resources and money.”
A coalition of TLD registries and industry security experts has come together to form the DNSSEC Industry Coalition. Its mission is “to work collaboratively to facilitate adoption of Domain Name Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and streamline the implementations across Domain Name Registries.”
The agenda of the December 10, 2008 meeting of the CIRA Board of Directors has been posted.
Best Buy Enterprises Services Inc. wins a dispute over computergeeksquad.ca.
Timeline
- Mon, Dec 8: last day for comments on gTLD Registries and Registrars report
- Mon, Dec 15: last day for comments on new gTLD Applicant Handbook
- Mon, Feb 2: last day for .tel sunrise applications for trademark holders
- Tue, Feb 3 – Mon, Mar 23: .tel domain registrations commence at a premium price
- Sun, Mar 1 – Fri, Mar 6: ICANN meetings in Mexico City, Mexico
- Tue, Mar 24: .tel domain registrations open to all