Nominet seeks new chair

Bob Gilbert has stepped aside as chairman of .uk registry Nominet, to be replaced temporarily by deputy chair Gordon Dick.
The news comes as Nominet seeks to draw a line under a tumultuous few years that have seen the non-profit company attempt to fight off domainers on the one hand and a power grab by the UK government on the other.
These efforts have been hit and miss.
While Nominet has successfully reformed its corporate governance to make it less vulnerable to capture by special interests, the government will still shortly enact the Digital Economy Bill, which gives the business secretary unprecedented reserve powers to appoint a new .uk registry manager.
“Having successfully updated Nominet’s constitution, a time consuming exercise for all involved, it is now time for the company to move into its next phase of development under new leadership,” Gilbert, who joined Nominet in 2005, said in a statement.

Comment Tagged: .uk, bob gilbert, digital economy bill, gordon dick, nominet

UDRP claim pits .me against .me.uk

The owner of GuestList.me.uk has filed a UDRP claim against the registrant of GuestList.me.
As far as I can tell, this is the first UDRP case to directly pit a company built on a .me.uk brand against the registrant of the .me equivalent.
GuestList.me.uk is a London, UK-based nightclub promotions site that has been using its domain since 2003.
GuestList.me, which does not currently resolve, was registered through LCM.com’s privacy service on July 18, 2008, during the first 24 hours of .me general availability.
Given that LCM is a UK-based registrar, it seems plausible that GuestList.me’s registrant is also British.
It will be interesting to see which way this decision goes. There’s plenty of opportunity for precedent.

Comment Tagged: .me, .uk, guestlist.me.uk, lcm, udrp, wipo

Apple secures iPad trademark

Apple has bought the “iPad” trademark, as it relates to handheld computers, from Fujitsu.
The deal removes any doubt, if there ever was any, that anybody registering domain names containing the string had better unload them quickly or get lawyered up.
According to PatentAuthority.com, the US trademark on iPad was transferred to Apple on March 17. Details of the deal were not disclosed.
Fujitsu filed for the trademark several years ago to cover its line of handheld retail devices.
You may recall that a music producer made headlines last week for attempting to sell the domain ipaddownloads.com and others for $1 million on eBay.

Comment Tagged: apple, cybersquatting, fujitsu, ipad

WIPO wants tougher cybersquatting rules on new gTLDs

The World Intellectual Property Organization reckons ICANN should toughen its stance against new gTLD registries that allow cybersquatting.
The “trademark post-delegation dispute resolution procedure” or Trademark PDDRP would let trademark holders try to suspend new TLDs and receive compensation when a registry allows cybersquatting.
WIPO wants the burden of proof on trademark holders relaxed, making it much easier to file complaints.
Currently, the draft process would require complainants to show registries’ “specific bad faith intent” to profit from cybersquatting.
WIPO thinks this should be broadened to include deliberate recklessness.
“In seeking to give meaning to ‘intent,’ the criteria should, without as such imposing or implying any sweeping registry policing duty, also encompass instances of willful blindness,” WIPO wrote.
The comments came in response to ICANN’s public comment period on the process, which closes on Thursday.

2 Comments Tagged: cybersquatting, ICANN, new gTLDs, wipo

ICM says ICANN’s options for .xxx are ‘unacceptable’

ICM Registry has issued a speedy response to ICANN’s .xxx approval options paper, calling it “unacceptable” and urging the ICANN board to put the issue to bed ASAP.
Late Friday, ICANN published a flowchart outlining the possible ways the board could handle .xxx in the light of February’s Independent Review Panel decision, which found ICANN acted unfairly when it rejected the TLD in 2007.
ICM president Stuart Lawley said in a letter to ICANN today that most of the paths through the flowcharts “are in many respects substantively and procedurally inconsistent with the IRP declaration”.
The company believes the IRP decision resets the approval process to prior to the 2007 decision, when the two parties were in contract talks for an already-approved TLD.
The letter claims that “it would be inappropriate, illegal and inconsistent with ICANN’s core values and model of self governance for ICANN to set up an evaluative process that is lacking in objectivity and that does not affirmatively give effect to the underlying IRP declaration”.
There are presumably few people involved with ICANN in any doubt that ICM intends to take its case to the ‘proper’ courts if needs be, which is probably why its powers-that-be have been unwilling to meet with the company.
As I reported Friday, the options paper creates the possibility of re-evaluating the .xxx application under the Draft Applicant Guidebook v4 for new gTLDs, which is not yet completed.
It also suggests that ICANN will have to ask its Governmental Advisory Committee for its current opinion on the application, a move likely to stretch out a decision for months.
It also has an option to expedite the approval based on the “sponsored” TLD process under which ICM, and others such as .post and .asia, originally applied.
ICM’s latest letter is here. ICANN’s options paper can be found here. The public comment period is open here. Unlike many ICANN comments periods, it has comments.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, icm registry, new gTLDs, rod beckstrom, stuart lawley, xxx

ICANN may kick .xxx into new gTLD round

ICANN has chosen to deal with the controversial .xxx TLD application by leaving essentially all options, including urging it into the next gTLD round, wide open.
ICM Registry had pushed for a speedy resolution to its long-running application, following the Independent Review Panel decision that went in its favour last month, but it hasn’t got one.
In Nairobi, ICANN’s board asked ICANN’s staff to tell it what its options were for dealing with the ruling, and staff today responded with this flowchart. Oh, and this flowchart.
It seems that these options are still on the table: …continue reading

4 Comments Tagged: gac, ICANN, icm registry, irp, nairobi, new gTLDs, xxx

FourSquare.com expires, reporter seeks padding

Visitors to one of the web’s hottest geo apps had a bit of a surprise today when instead of FourSquare.com’s normal site they found a Go Daddy parking page.
It’s the usual problem — the company forgot to renew its registration.
That’s pretty much all there is to say about the story, unless you’re London daily newspaper Metro, which decided to pad the piece with a big chunk of lorem ispum:

It’s free for a reason.

2 Comments Tagged: foursquare, go daddy, metro

The most confusing new gTLDs (allegedly)

I don’t know how I missed it until today, but I’ve discovered ICANN has a web-based tool that will be used to determine whether new gTLDs could be confused with existing strings.
The Sword Group algorithm compares applied-for strings with a list of existing TLDs and reserved words such as “icann” and “ripe”.
It looks for “visual similarity”, which means not only common sequences of characters but also the pixel-by-pixel similarities of each character.
Numerical scores are assigned. Any match scoring below 30 is not considered worthy of reporting.
As an experiment, I ran each of the strings on newTLDs.tv’s list of publicly announced TLD hopefuls through the available “pre-production” algorithm.
Here are my findings.
1. The algorithm is pretty much worthless. …continue reading

4 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, sword

Nominet bill set for UK law

The UK government is set to pass a controversial law that will create powers to regulate domain names more or less arbitrarily and even seize control of the .uk registry.
The Digital Economy Bill is best known for its Draconian anti-piracy provisions, but it also gives the relevant Secretary of State the power to replace Nominet as the .uk registry manager.
To oust Nominet, the secretary of state would have to decide that certain fairly broad criteria had been met. Quoting from the bill’s explanatory notes:

The registry itself, its end-users (that is, owners of or applicants for domain names) or registrars (that is, agents of end-users) have been engaging in practices prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State which are unfair or which involve the misuse of internet domain names; or
The registry’s arrangements for dealing with complaints in connection with domain names do not comply with requirements prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State.

The practices in question are expected to include: cybersquatting, drop-catching, “pressure sales tactics”, phishing, distributing malware, spamming or “intentionally misleading the public into believing there is a connection between the domain name owner and other organisations”.
Basically, the daily background noise of the internet. …continue reading

Comment Tagged: .uk, digital economy bill, nominet, peter mandelson, secretary of state

NeuStar files for patent on DNSSEC hack

NeuStar has applied for a US patent on a stop-gap technology for authenticating DNS queries without the need for DNSSEC.
The application, published today, describes a system of securing the DNS connection between authoritative name servers and recursive servers belonging to ISPs.
It appears to cover the technology underlying Cache Defender, a service it started offering via its UltraDNS brand last July.
It was created to prevent the kind of man-in-the-middle attacks permitted by the 2008 Kaminsky exploit, which let attackers poison recursive caches, redirecting users to phoney web sites.
The DNSSEC standard calls for DNS traffic to be digitally signed and was designed to significantly mitigate this kind of attack, but it has yet to be widely deployed.
Some ccTLDs are already signed, but gTLD users will have to wait until at least this summer. The .org zone will be signed in June and ICANN will sign the root in July but .com will not be signed until next year.
While Kaminsky’s vulnerability has been broadly patched, brute-force attacks are still possible, according an ISP’s experience cited in the patent filing.
“The patch that experts previously believed would provide enough time to get DNSSEC deployed literally provided the industry just a few extra weeks,” it reads.

Comment Tagged: dan kaminsky, DNSSEC, neustar, patents