John Demco
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 Tops 180 Million – VeriSign’s first quarter 2009 Domain Name Industry Brief indicates that there are more than 180 million domain names worldwide, an annual increase of 12%. Registrations from the ccTLDs rose to 74.1 million, an annual increase of 18%. The largest domains are .com, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .info, .nl, .eu, and .biz.
Congressional Hearing On ICANN Held – A subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing on ICANN on June 4. Postings include statements from Fiona Alexander of the Department of Commerce (DOC), Paul Twomey of ICANN, and representatives from VeriSign, GoDaddy, Verizon, and the Technology Policy Institute. Two of the main issues discussed were: the upcoming expiry of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between DOC and ICANN, and the proposed introduction of new gTLDs. Almost all of the committee members were in favor of extending the JPA.
Lawsuit Against VeriSign Reinstated – A U.S. appeals court has reinstated an antitrust lawsuit by the Coalition for ICANN Transparency (CFIT) concerning VeriSign’s agreement with ICANN to operate the .com and .net domain registries. The appeals court reversed an earlier district court ruling.
Work On Signing The Root Zone To Proceed – ICANN, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and VeriSign are to work on using DNSSEC to sign the root zone of the DNS. The interim approach is to be in place by the end of 2009.
Picks To Click
- A quick guide to material for the ICANN meeting in Sydney has been posted.
- The .org zone file is now being signed.
- Andrew Alleman covers the ICANN congressional hearing here, here, and here.
- Candy.com sells for $3 million.
Timeline
- Mon, Jun 8: last day for comments to NTIA concerning ICANN agreement
- Fri, Jun 12: last day for applications to CIRA’s Nomination Committee
- Sun, Jun 21 – Fri, Jun 26: ICANN meetings in Sydney, Australia
- Mon, Jun 29: last day for comments on ICANN IRT report on trademark protection
- Fri, Jul 31: last day for comments on root server scaling study
- Tue, Aug 4 – Mon, Aug 17: call for Member Nominees for CIRA Board election
- Mon, Aug 24 – Mon, Sep 7: shows of support for Member Nominees for CIRA election
- Tue, Sep 15 – Tue, Sep 22: online forum for CIRA Board of Directors election
- Tue, Sep 22: CIRA Annual General Meeting in Toronto
- Wed, Sep 23 – Wed, Sep 30: CIRA Board of Directors election
- Sun, Oct 25 – Fri, Oct 30: ICANN meetings in Seoul, South Korea
- Sun, Mar 7 – Fri, Mar 12: ICANN meetings in Nairobi, Kenya