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Cyber cop wants Whois privacy shake-up

Kevin Murphy, March 7, 2010, Domain Policy

Registrars should be made to police Whois so cops can take down illegal sites faster, even if domain name prices have to go up as a result, ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee has been told.
Speaking at the GAC hearing on new gTLDs in Nairobi this afternoon, Paul Hoare of the UK’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency called for (continue reading)

Gossip: Geldof, China and Site Finder

Kevin Murphy, March 7, 2010, Gossip

Eight Sunday morning tidbits.

  • Bob Geldof was on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show this morning, via satellite from Nairobi. It seems likely he’s there in relation to to IGAD conference on east-African drought, which is being held at the same venue as the ICANN meeting, which kicked off today. Let’s hope he’s (continue reading)

Contested TLDs by the social media numbers

There are a surprising number of new TLD proposals with two or more would-be applicants. Quite a few are also playing the social media marketing game to win support.
A quick and dirty analysis of the contested TLDs show that .gay and .eco have the largest show of popular support, while some TLDs have seemingly no following at all.
The numbers are not earth-shattering, but I’ve made the table now so I may as well share it.
(continue reading)

ICANN expects 400+ gTLD applications

If you’ve been wondering how many new gTLDs could be launching under the new streamlined ICANN approval process, ICANN has provided a partial answer.
According to a report into server load by the Root Server System Advisory Committee “demand in the initial round will be (continue reading)

What’s wrong with M+M’s defensive reg report?

Kevin Murphy, February 28, 2010, Domain Policy

Minds + Machines has released a report into defensive domain name registrations by the largest 100 US companies. While I generally agree with its conclusions, I’m pretty certain I don’t trust the numbers.
The company, which has a financial interest in the new gTLD launches, plugged 1,043 Fortune 100 brands into DomainTools.com in order to figure out how many of them were registered.
(continue reading)