Registrar banned from Swedish namespace

A Danish registrar has been banned from selling .se domain names for 30 days after it registered a “large number” of names on behalf of customers but without their permission.
The Internet Infrastructure Foundation, which runs .se, had this to say (translated from Swedish):

One.com has registered during the summer a large number of domain names without having a mandate from customers. In several cases, inaccurate customer data has been used. This means that today there may be customers who are not aware that domain names are registered on their behalf.

One.com reportedly defended itself by saying it merely renewed names on its customers’ behalf, to prevent them losing their domains.
The company needs to rectify the situation within the month, or it faces a permanent ban.
UPDATE: One.com has released a statement explaining its side of the story.
It seems the company made its unauthorized renewals following a little customer confusion over recent billing changes made at the registry end. Here’s a PDF explaining its position. (thanks @findub)

1 Comment Tagged: .se, internet infrastructure foundation, one.com

Pornographers rally to decry .xxx

The Free Speech Coalition has issued an official call to action to rally its members against the .xxx top-level domain application.
It’s been on the front page of the porn trade group’s web site since yesterday, but has been slow to take off judging by the number of responses filed with ICANN in the last 24 hours.
The FSC wants it members to write to ICANN to ask for the TLD to be rejected. It hits seven major points, but essentially just backs up what FSC chair Diane Duke told ICANN last week, which I reported on here.
There’s also a Zoomerang survey that industry members can take. It asks users to merely answer two questions in the affirmative:

I am a member of the online adult entertainment community and I oppose ICM’s application for a .XXX sTL
I have have defensively pre-registered .XXX domain names and I oppose .XXX

The idea is to show that many .xxx pre-registrations are made by people who would prefer that the TLD never sees the light of day.

Comment Tagged: free speech coalition, ICANN, icm registry, xxx

IPv4 pool to dry up in 2011

ICANN has confirmed that it will run out of unassigned IPv4 address space some time next year.
In an update to its Plan for Enhancing Internet Security, Stability and Resiliency, published yesterday, ICANN said it “expects to make the last allocations of IPv4 unicast space to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) during the calendar year 2011.”
While this means ICANN will largely be out of the IPv4 business, it does not of course mean that there will be no IPv4 address space left to be allocated to ISPs and businesses.
ICANN points out that the RIRs will still have their pools of unallocated addresses, and that they’ve been drawing up plans to hand out smaller blocks to new ISPs as well as allowing the transfer of IPv4 addresses between networks.
The confirmation that 2011 is the year that IPv4 dries up is not unanticipated. ICANN has been flagging it up as the likely timeframe for a few years now.
The solution to the problem is IPv6, which is large enough to never run out of addresses. The trick is making sure the new protocol is universally supported, so IPv6 networks can talk to IPv4 networks and vice versa.
The updated security plan document contains a few other nibbles of interest.
For instance, the security budget for the next year is down slightly on the last, $11.52 million versus $12.8 million, largely due to a requirement last year to build out a secure data center.
There’s also the admission that ICANN has developed an as-yet unpublished “Meetings Security Plan”, presumably in response to the terrorism fears that kept many constituents at home for the Nairobi meeting in March.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, ipv4, ipv6, nairobi, security

Nominet to release ultra-short .uk domains this year

Nominet, the .uk registry, today outlined its plan to start releasing one and two-character .co.uk domains before the end of 2010.
The launch plan comprises two sunrise periods and a landrush. Contested applications in all three phases will be settled by an auction, with profits going to the Nominet Trust.
The first sunrise is for holders of UK-enforceable trademarks, when the mark was registered and in use in the UK before January 1, 2008. The second will allow holders of unregistered rights to participate.
The landrush will be open to all. Applications will be handled by approved .uk registrars.
Nominet said it plans to publish the launch timeline in more detail on November 1, but that the first sunrise will open before the end of the year.
The list of names to be released is published here (pdf). It includes all 10 digits and all 26 letters of the alphabet under .co.uk, .net.uk, .org.uk and .me.uk, with the exception of u.net.uk, which is already registered.
The vast majority of two-character combinations will also be released under all four of these 2LDs, with the exception of a handful of old registrations such as bt.co.uk and existing 3LD namespaces such as ac.net.uk.
Domains matching existing two-letter country-code TLDs do not appear to be exempt.

8 Comments Tagged: .uk, auctions, landrush, nominet, sunrise

Breaking: ICANN to name Atallah new COO

ICANN has appointed technology industry executive Akram Atallah to the position of chief operating officer, according to a reliable source.
Atallah previously held the same position at CoreObjects for a year, and before that was a vice president at semiconductor firm Conexant, according to his LinkedIn profile.
His well-regarded predecessor, Doug Brent, stepped down in April citing family reasons.
More updates when I have them.
UPDATE: ICANN has now officially announced Atallah’s appointment.
The press release (pdf) contains this quote from CEO Rod Beckstrom:

This is a perfect fit, not only because Akram brings to ICANN an amazing understanding of the online and high tech worlds, but because he also brings an intuitive grasp of our unique global role in the Internet ecosystem. The fact that he is fluent in French and Arabic will add to our ability to reach out more effectively to the international community.

The release also notes that Atallah has a Masters degree in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado.
He will start his work at ICANN September 20.

2 Comments Tagged: Akram Atallah, coo, doug brent, ICANN

Muslim.co auction won by a Christian ministry?

Whois data for the domain muslim.co, which recently sold for $2,650 during the .co landrush auction, suggests it was won by a US-based Christian ministry.
The organization listed as the registrant and administrative contact is Theandric Ministry, the address a postbox at a strip-mall in Reno, Nevada.
While Google sheds no light on this purported organization, the term “theandric” refers to the notion that Christ was both god and man, not a theory you’d expect the typical Muslim to promote.
The domain is currently pointing to Go Daddy’s default parking page. I’ll be interested to see what content, if any, it eventually contains. The equivalent .com domain is also parked.
(UPDATE: the registrant tells me he’s not a ministry and that the Whois data is out of date. He plans to resell or develop the domain.)
The alternate English spelling, moslem.co, appears to have been registered on the first day of .co general availability by a Canadian with a Muslim-sounding name.
Islam.co is on .CO Internet’s reserved list, with the Whois suggesting it is considered a “premium” domain to be auctioned at a later date. Christian.co is also on this list.
That’s not the case for catholic.co and christianity.co, however. Those domains sold for $3,700 and $725 respectively during the landrush auctions.
Hindu.co, hinduism.co, buddhist.co and buddhism.co all appear to have been registered on or around July 20, the first day of general availability.
The three main English spellings of the name of the prophet Mohammed are registered to Dubai or Saudi-based individuals.
Jesus.co is on the premium list. Christ.co appears to have been won at auction last week, but the registry has not yet disclosed the sale price.

3 Comments Tagged: .co, .co internet, auctions, landrush, muslim.co

.XXX registry goes on the counter-attack

ICM Registry has issued a strongly worded response to its critics at the Free Speech Coalition, questioning the porn trade group’s relevance.
As I blogged yesterday, the FSC has asked ICANN to release documents disclosing the level of support the .xxx domain, so it can more effectively argue against its approval.
ICM has responded with a letter to ICANN that paints the FSC as overly US-centric and says its arguments deal with issues that have long been resolved.

We understand that the FSC currently has approximately 1,000 members. We further understand that both its leadership and its members are almost exclusively U.S.-based.
…
The bottom line is that the FSC’s comments simply restate the arguments they have made in the past. Their claims were inaccurate, unsupportable, untimely, and irrelevant when first made, and remain so today.

The would-be registry claims that, contrary to the FSC’s claims, only a tiny portion of its 179,000 pre-registrations are defensive in nature, 6,435 in total.

3 Comments Tagged: free speech coalition, ICANN, icm registry, xxx

Porn group tries to delay .xxx bid

The Free Speech Coalition has asked ICANN to prove that the .xxx top-level domain application has the level of support that ICM Registry claims it has.
The FSC, which represents thousands of porn webmasters, has filed a request under ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy for a list of the people who have already pre-registered .xxx domains, among other items.
The organization wants to prove that .xxx has no support among the adult community, and that most of ICM’s 179,000 pre-registrations are made by domainers or are defensive, made by pornographers who really don’t want .xxx.
FSC president Diane Duke wrote to ICANN general counsel John Jeffrey (pdf):

The adult entertainment community – the community which would be most impacted by the introduction of a .xxx sTLD – requires more information about the application in order to provide the appropriate level of feedback to the ICANN Board for it to make an informed decision.

The FSC also wants ICANN to add another 30 days to the current public comment period after the disclosure is made, to give it a chance to respond properly to the new data.
This would, of course, add further delay to the .xxx application.
The FSC also wants to know more about IFFOR, the International Foundation For Online Responsibility, the policy body that would oversee .xxx.
Specifically, the DIDP request covers the names of IFFOR’s board of directors, policy council members, business plans and financial projections.
ICM is opposed to the request and will be officially responding shortly. Its president, Stuart Lawley, told me the information the FSC has requested is known to ICANN, but that it’s confidential.
He also said that the issue of community support is already closed; ICANN made that decision five years ago, a decision that was reinforced earlier this year by an Independent Review Panel.

8 Comments Tagged: diane duke, free speech coalition, icm registry, iffor, stuart lawley, xxx

Afilias adds DNSSEC to .info zone

The .info domain has become the latest gTLD to be signed with DNSSEC, the security standard for domain name lookups.
Afilias, which runs the .info registry, said today that it has signed its zone and added the necessary records to the DNS root.
DNSSEC is designed to prevent cache poisoning attacks, which can be used to hijack domain names and carry out phishing campaigns.
For registrants, DNSSEC in .info doesn’t mean much in practical terms yet. If you have a .info, you’ll have to wait for registrars to start to support the standard.
At the moment, only 19 second-level .info domains, including afilias.info and comcast.info, have been signed, as part of a “friends and family” testbed program.
The .org zone, which Afilias also provides the back-end for, was signed in June.
Neustar added full DNSSEC support for .biz in August, according to an announcement this week.
For .com and .net, VeriSign is currently planning to roll out the technology in the first quarter of 2011.

1 Comment Tagged: .biz, .info, afilias, DNSSEC, neustar, verisign

Sex.com sale gets September 28 deadline

The private sale of sex.com will close by September 28, Sedo announced today.
I believe this is the first time the company has put a hard deadline for a deal to be made. It’s been handling the sale since May.
The company is still soliciting buyers, which makes me wonder whether it’s struggling to find a buyer with sufficiently deep pockets.
Sedo director of sales Kathy Nielsen said in a press release:

Sex.com has a proven revenue model that will enable its next owner to quickly build on past success. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a domain that will instantly expand the visibility of a brand, position a company as a leader in its market, and generate tremendous natural traffic.

The company has previously told buyers that they need to stump up a $1 million deposit in order to enter negotiations.
The last time the storied domain changed hands, the price tag was a cool $14 million.

2 Comments Tagged: escom, sedo, sex.com