European ccTLDs liberalize policies

Afnic, the .fr registry, will adopt new policies next week enabling organizations from outside of France to register domain names for the first time.
Under the rule change, entities in European Union countries, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, will qualify for .fr names.
The new policy (pdf), which comes into effect December 6, also applies to .re, the ccTLD for the French terrirtory Réunion, which Afnic also manages.
The registry is also discontinuing a handful of second-level domains which were previously available for third-level registration by the public.
Existing domains in .com.fr, ..tm.fr, .asso.fr, .asso.re, and .com.re will continue to function, but Afnic will no longer accept new registrations in these extensions.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Norwegian registry Norid liberalized its registration policies this morning, raising its ownership cap from 20 to 100 domain names per registrant.
Evidently anticipating a possible increase in cybersquatting disputes as a result, Norid has said it has also instituted a loser pays model for its dispute resolution process.

5 Comments Tagged: afnic, cctlds, norid

Outrage! ICANN complains about crappy hotel

Sometimes ICANN’s love of procedure defies parody.
It’s no secret that the $124-a-night Hotel des Almadies used at its recent meeting in Dakar, Senegal, was not really up to the Club Med* standards that ICANN wonks are accustomed to.
The At-Large Advisory Committee even conducted a survey of its members after the meeting and found that a whopping 68% of them had complained to hotel management for one reason or another.
ICANN’s response?
It’s sent a letter to Senegal’s telecommunications minister, complete with a 20-page illustrated ALAC report going into excruciating detail not only about the shoddy facilities but also the policy background of the complaint.
Along with reports of rats, patchy Wi-Fi, “musty smells” and inadequate security, there are references to Resolution 2010.08.05.12, the ALAC/At-Large Improvements Implementation Project Plan, and Section 3.2.2.5 of the Travel Policy of the ALAC Review Final Report.
According to the letter, from marketing chief Barbara Clay, ICANN had received assurances that the hotel rooms would be renovated before the Dakar meeting kicked off.
Clay wrote that the hotel’s failure to follow up on its promises “damaged ICANN’s reputation as well as the reputation of the Hotel and Senegal” and she asks for compensation.
I’m guessing Rod Beckstrom’s not going to be on President Wade’s Christmas card list after all.
(*As anyone who has attended more than one ICANN meeting knows, they’re nothing but a week-long orgy of beach limbo parties, $20 cocktails and sordid sexual encounters with exotic prostitutes, all paid for by the humble internet-using public.)

7 Comments Tagged: dakar, ICANN

Russian registry to apply for “.children”

The Russian .ru domain name registry has announced plans to apply for .ДЕТИ, the Russian word for “.children”, under ICANN’s new generic top-level domains program.
It’s the first public announcement of a top-level internationalized domain name that is not geographic nor a transliteration of an existing TLD.
Coordination Center for TLD RU, the registry, said that the initiative was inspired by the success of .РФ (.rf), which is on track to register its millionth domain before the end of the year.
Registry CEO Andrey Kolesnikov said in a statement: “We kicked off preparations for the applying for another top-level domain – .ДЕТИ, which should for an Internet space reserved exclusively for the youngest users.”
IDN gTLDs are one of the benefits of the new gTLD program that nobody — not even trademark interests — disputes, but until now there were no “proper” examples to cite.
VeriSign and Afilias have already announced plans for IDN versions of their existing gTLDs – .com, .net and .info – and ICANN has approved IDN ccTLDs for a couple dozen nations.

Comment Tagged: .rf, .ru, .ДЕТИ, cctld.ru, рф

Nominet approves .judiciary.uk

Nominet has approved a request to clutter up the second level under .uk with another government-oriented domain, .judiciary.uk, bringing the total number of SLDs to 15.
As you may know, the UK equivalent of .com is .co.uk, but there are other suffixes such as .org.uk, .me.uk, .plc.uk, .ltd.uk and .net.uk, each with varying restrictions.
There are also several SLDs reserved for public sector use: .gov.uk, .police.uk, .nhs.uk (National Health Service), .sch.uk (schools), .ac.uk (universities) .mod.uk (Ministry of Defence) and .parliament.uk.
The new .judiciary.uk will of course be closed, restricted to the institutions of the UK judiciary. Nominet is proposing to migrate affected registrants from their existing .gov.uk domains.
“Creating judiciary.uk will ensure that the domain name reflects the judiciary’s independence from government, as enshrined in the Constitutional Reform Act, 2005,” Nominet said.
The request was made by the Judicial Office and the Cabinet Office and “due to the unique nature of the request” did not follow the usual Nominet policy for SLD creation.

Comment Tagged: .judiciary.uk, .uk, nominet

Wanted: somebody to object to new gTLDs

ICANN is looking for somebody to object to new top-level domain applications.
It’s put out a call for an Independent Objector, whose job it will be to file formal objections to new gTLDs that he or she determines may not be in the public interest.
ICANN is looking for somebody with an in-depth knowledge of the new gTLD program and extensive experience in multinational organizations.
The IO has been a planned component of the new gTLD program for a couple of years.
The role is designed to provide a way to kill off “highly objectionable” applications in cases where the affected community may lack the resources or organization to pay for an objection.
Essentially, the IO looks at public comments filed with ICANN and decides whether opposition to a gTLD is substantial enough to warrant a formal objection.
The IO may only use two of the Applicant Guidebook’s objection mechanisms – the Community Objection and the Limited Public Interest (formerly “morality and public order”) Objection and not trademark or string confusion grounds.
My view is that we’re likely to see very few “highly objectionable” applications. And now that ICANN has agreed to fund some government objections, the IO is likely to wind up being a bit of an easy ride for whoever successfully applies for the job.
Interested parties have until December 22 to apply. The job description can be found here.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, independent objector, new gTLDs, new TLDs

US quietly revises IANA contract

ICANN will not be allowed to do business with groups designated by the US government as terrorists, according to one of many changes that have been quietly made to the IANA contract.
The IANA contract, which gives ICANN its ability to delegate top-level domains, is up for renewal following the publication of an RFP by the Department of Commerce earlier this month.
But Commerce substantially modified the RFP a week after its initial publication. It’s now about 20 pages longer than the original document, containing many new terms and conditions.
A few changes struck me as notable.
Terrorism
Among the changes is a ban on dealing with groups classified as supporting terrorism under the US Executive Order 13224, signed by President Bush in the aftermath of the the 9/11 attacks.
That Order bans US companies from working with organizations including the IRA, Hamas and Al Qaeda.
While the addition of this clause to the IANA contract doesn’t really change anything – as a US corporation ICANN is bound to comply with US trade sanctions – it may ruffle some feathers.
The new top-level domains Applicant Guidebook banned applicants involved in “terrorism” in its fourth draft, which caused complaints from some quarters.
It was revised over a year ago to instead make reference to US legal compliance and the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and its List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.
Khaled Fattal of the Mulitlingual Internet Group, who first described the unqualified Guidebook ban on “terrorism” as “racist”, continued to voice opposition to this rule, most recently at the ICANN public forum in Dakar, suggesting it betrays ICANN’s American bias.
Data Rights
The revised IANA RFP also contains a new section detailing the US government’s “unlimited rights” to data and software produced by the IANA contractor.
The new RFP states: “The Government shall have… Unlimited rights in all data delivered under this contract, and in all data first produced in the performance of this contract”
“Data,” it says, “means recorded information, regardless of form or the medium on which it may be recorded. The term includes technical data and computer software. The term does not include information incidental to contract administration, such as financial, administrative, cost or pricing, or management information.”
It’s not entirely clear what this clause could potentially cover.
By it’s very nature, much of the data produced by IANA is public – it needs to be in order for the DNS to function – but could it also cover data such as redelegation communications with other governments or private DNSSEC keys?
New gTLDs
There are no big changes to the section on new gTLDs, just one minor amendment.
Whereas the old RFP said that IANA must show that ICANN “followed its policy framework” to approve a gTLD, the new version says it must have “followed its own policy framework”, which doesn’t seem to change the meaning.
Other amendments to the RFP appear to be formatting changes or clarifications.
The more substantial additions – including the terrorism and data rights sections – appear to be standard boilerplate text designed to tick some boxes required by US procurement procedure, rather than being written specifically for ICANN’s benefit.
You can download the original and revised RFP documents here.

1 Comment Tagged: department of commerce, iana, ICANN, new gltds, ntia, terrorism

GMO wins .tokyo deal

GMO Registry says it has won local government backing to apply to ICANN for the city top-level domain .tokyo.
The company revealed the news on its Twitter feed today, linking to this Tokyo metropolitan government announcement confirming the story.
While perhaps best-known for its planned .shop application, GMO is probably the registry services company with the most announced new gTLD back-end contract wins to date.
It is also on board to provide the registry for the Japanese regional gTLDs .okinawa and .ryukyu, as well as the brand gTLDs .hitachi and .canon. It already runs Somalia’s .so and Indonesia’s .id ccTLDs.
GMO Registry parent GMO Internet is a pretty big deal in its native Japan. Publicly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, it has annual revenue of well over half a billion dollars.

Comment Tagged: .tokyo, gmo internet, gmo registry, ICANN, new gTLDs, new TLDs

Joint venture bids for Aussie city gTLDs

Cloud Registry, CoCCA and Sedari have teamed up to bid for the proposed Australian city top-level domains .melbourne and .sydney.
Sedari announced today that it has responded to the recently closed requests from proposals, which were opened by the state governments of New South Wales and Victoria a month ago.
The bid would see Cloud Registry operate the registry back-end itself, with Sedari handling back-office functions such as the ICANN contracts. CoCCA is on board for its country-code TLD experience.
While Sedari is UK-based, the venture has links to the continent.
CoCCA is based in New Zealand and has a NOC in Sydney, Cloud Registry is based in Sydney, and Sedari founder Liz Williams was once a board member of .au administrator auDA.
While no other firms have announced bids, you can expect that the usual suspects in the registry service provider market will have also applied.
I’d be surprised if local firm ARI Registry Services (formerly AusRegistry International), whose parent runs .au, is not a strong contender.

Comment Tagged: .melbourne, .sydney, ari registry services, cloud registry, cocca, sedari

CADNA asks for new gTLDs second round

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, having spent quite a lot of time and effort opposing ICANN’s new top-level domains program, wants ICANN to name the date for a second round.
In a letter to president Rod Beckstrom today, which was inspired by discussions at the recent What’s At Stake conference, CADNA president Josh Bourne writes:

We ask that the ICANN Board request an Issues Report to formally initiate a policy development process to determine when the next round of new gTLD applications will occur, thereby affirming its commitment to opening a second round in a timely manner.

As I’ve noted previously, ICANN has not named the date for the second round so far because it’s promised the Governmental Advisory Committee that it will review the first round first.
But businesses from outside the domain name industry are feeling like they’re being pressured into making a decision whether to apply for a gTLD they don’t necessarily want, Bourne says.

By not disclosing when it will open future rounds of new gTLD applications, ICANN is creating a condition of scarcity that will inevitably result in a massive land rush, where entities will scramble to apply for new gTLDs for the sole purpose of hypothetically “future-proofing” their identities in the new domain name space, without any immediate intentions to use their new gTLDs for innovative means.
Disclosing when it will open a second application round will not only alleviate the anxiety that businesses are feeling, it will give ICANN the chance to quell the animosity that has developed toward it among the business community.

The whole letter is worth a read. No matter what you think of CADNA, it’s difficult to argue with Bourne’s points (though please do so in the comments if you disagree).
Scare sales tactics are already a key source of mainstream hatred for the domain name industry at the second level. Now would be a good time to prevent the same thing happening at the top level too.
It will look very bad for ICANN in a few years’ time if the root is cluttered with useless, unused gTLDs created just because companies felt pressured into defensive applications.

1 Comment Tagged: cadna, ICANN, new gTLDs, new TLDs, second round

Another 2,000 .uk fraud domains taken down

Nominet has suspended over 2,000 .uk domain names allegedly being used to sell counterfeit goods on the instruction of the Metropolitan Police.
The Met said in a statement today that the crackdown was designed to protect online shoppers in the run-up to Christmas. It did something similar last year and the year before.
The sites were allegedly selling bootleg products purportedly from brands such as Ugg, Nike and Tiffany.
Nominet said that it worked with is registrars to coordinate the suspensions, and that the registrants were all informed before their domains were taken down.
All the registrants were in breach of terms and conditions, it said.
A Nominet working group is currently in the final stages of creating a policy that will streamline the process of law enforcement domain suspensions, as I reported for The Register today.

1 Comment Tagged: .uk, fraud, nominet, pceu, seizures