NeuStar wins UrbanBrain .brand contract

NeuStar has become the preferred provider of registry services to UrbanBrain, a consultancy that hopes to launch “.brand” top-level domains with major Japanese companies.

The companies said in a press release:

Under the alliance, Neustar and UrbanBrain will provide brand owners with the expertise and support required to prepare and submit their applications to ICANN, and will provide all of the registry services necessary for brands to launch and operate their own Internet extensions.

NeuStar already operates the .biz and .us registries under contract with ICANN and the US government respectively, as well as providing back-end services for a number of other TLDs.

UrbanBrain is currently associated with a proposed bid for .site.

The only formally announced commercial .brand to date is .canon. Canon is working with GMO Registry, another Japanese firm.

2 Comments Tagged: .brand, canon, gmo registry, ICANN, neustar, new TLDs, urbanbrain

Trademark holders think new TLD policies inadequate

Less than one in ten trademark holders believes ICANN’s policies go far enough to protect their rights under new top-level domains, according to a recent survey.

World Trademark Review is reporting that 71.6% of its survey respondents believe that the current Draft Applicant Guidebook goes not far enough to “prevent trademark infringement”.

Only 9.5% said they believe the DAG does contain adequate provisions.

The full survey will be published later this month, but today a few more results can be found over at the WTR blog.

The survey was conducted prior to ICANN’s recent Trondheim resolutions, which contained a few amendments to strengthen policies such as Uniform Rapid Suspension.

2 Comments Tagged: cybersquatting, draft applicant guidebook, ICANN, new TLDs, trademarks, uniform rapid suspension

US and Russia face off over ICANN veto power

The ruling body of the International Telecommunications Union this week kicked off a major policy-making meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico, and has already seen the US and Russia taking opposing stances over the future control of ICANN.

A group of former Soviet nations, chaired by the Russian Federation’s Minister of Communications, seems to have proposed that the ITU should give itself veto power over ICANN decisions.

A proposal filed by the Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications (RCC) calls for the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee to be scrapped and replaced by an ITU group.

Consideration should be given to the expediency of having the functions of GAC carried out by a specially-constituted group within ITU with the authority to veto decisions adopted by the ICANN Board of Directors. If it is so decided, the ITU Secretary-General should be instructed to consult ICANN on the matter.

The proposal was first noted by Gregory Francis at CircleID.

It says that the GAC is currently the only avenue open to governments to “defend their interests” but that it has “no decision-making authority and can do no more than express its wishes”.

It also notes that fewer than 50% of nations are members of the GAC, and that only 20% or fewer actually participate in GAC meetings.

The proposal was apparently submitted to the ongoing ITU Plenipotentiary Conference but, in contrast to ICANN’s policy of transparency, many ITU documents are only accessible to its members.

A reader was kind enough to send me text extracted from the document. I’ve been unable to verify its authenticity, but I’ve no particular reason to believe it’s bogus.

The RCC was set up in 1991 to increase cooperation between telecommunications and postal operators in the post-Soviet era. Its board is comprised of communications ministers from a dozen nations.

Its position on ICANN appears to be also held by the Russian government. Igor Shchegolev, its communications minister, is chair of the RCC board.

At the Plenipotentiary on Tuesday, Shechegolev said (via Google Translate):

We believe that the ITU is capable of such tasks to international public policy, Internet governance, its development and finally, protection of interests of countries in ICANN.

the ITU should be a place where the development of the Internet is fostered. The Internet has progressed and evolved in a remarkably successful way under the existing multi-stakeholder arrangements. Changes, especially changes involving inter-governmental controls, are likely to impair the dynamism of the Internet—something we all have an interest in avoiding.

ICANN itself has no formal presence at the Plenipotentiary, after ITU secretary-general Hamadoun Toure turned down a request by ICANN president Rod Beckstrom for observer status.

The conference carries on until October 22. It’s likely that we haven’t heard the last of the anti-ICANN rhetoric.

5 Comments Tagged: gac, governmental advisory committee, ICANN, international telecommunications union, itu, plenipotentiary, rcc, russia

Telnic wants to sell numeric domain names

Telnic, the .tel registry, wants ICANN to allow it to start taking registrations of purely numeric domain names.

While the company has not submitted a formal request, Telnic CEO Khashayar Mahdavi has asked for numbers-only domains in a separate public comment period.

VeriSign has asked ICANN for the ability to start accepting hyphens and numbers in domain names in the .name TLD, including purely numeric strings such as phone numbers.

Mahdavi, who apparently views .name as a key competitor, wrote in a comment submitted on the VeriSign request:

If ICANN decides to remove this restriction from .name then this change in policy should apply to .tel as well. Approving the release of this restriction on one TLD and leaving it in place for another provides the first with a substantial commercial advantage.

In order to avoid such an unjust result, we respectfully request that, if ICANN decides to approve VeriSign’s request to allow all-numeric strings (and strings with combinations of numbers and hyphens) to be registered as domain names in .name, it simultaneously allow Telnic to do the same in .tel.

Telnic’s charter, part of its ICANN registry contract, currently states “The .tel registry will not allow numeric-only domains to be registered at the registry level.”

I believe the restriction was conceived in order to avoid clashes with the international telephone numbering authorities and the ENUM protocol. Mahdavi wrote:

Telnic believes it is important to avoid conflict with ENUM , so it will continue to forbid the registration of single digit domain names in .tel. Such domain names would be necessary for creating an ENUM tree under .tel, so forbidding them makes a .tel-based ENUM system impossible.

When Telnic originally applied for .tel in 2000, one of the reasons it was rejected was the fact that the International Telecommunications Union wasn’t happy with the idea of phone numbers in domain names.

3 Comments Tagged: .name, .tel, ICANN, itu, telnic, verisign

Government ‘cybersquatting’ case rattles India

Cybersquatting mischief is making headlines in India today, after the nation’s main opposition party accused the government of directing a confusingly similar domain name to its own site.

According to various reports, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party served a “legal notice” on the ruling Indian National Congress party over the domain name bjp.com.

The BJP hosts its primary site at bjp.org. According to the party, the .com domain has been redirecting users to the Congress’ own site. Today, it resolves to a page parked at Sedo.

The contested domain is currently registered behind eNom’s privacy protection service. It appears to have changed hands several times over the years, most recently to an Indian.

Unless the BJP has some other evidence connecting its rival to the domain, it looks like this may be a case of cheap political point-scoring.

3 Comments Tagged: bharatiya janata party, cybersquatting, enom, indian national congress