Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Oscar winners show desire for .movie

As a bit of a film buff, I’ve always thought the case for a .movie gTLD was a slam-dunk.
I’d really rather see movie posters containing URLs like sherlock.movie rather than sherlock-holmes-movie.warnerbros.com.
I thought I’d figure out how many of last night’s Oscar nominees managed to secure movietitle.tld for their official web sites and how many went for other options. …continue reading

4 Comments Tagged: , , , ,

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

Comment Tagged: , , , , ,

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

Comment Tagged: , , , , ,

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

Comment Tagged: , , , , ,

Political hell to descend on ICANN meeting

Kevin Murphy, March 5, 2010, Domain Policy

Forget terrorists, in-person attendees at ICANN’s Nairobi meeting will now have to contend with something potentially much worse: politicians.
About 200 civil servants and security goons from six east-African nations will descend on the Kenyatta International Conference Centre on Monday, just as ICANN’s 37th get-together gets together …continue reading

1 Comment Tagged: , ,

Gossip: No booth babes for domainers

Kevin Murphy, March 4, 2010, Gossip

Eight interesting things collected from interesting web sites:

  • No booth babes? No magicians? No speakers? No Powerpoint malfunctions? What the hell kind of tech conference is DOMAINFest Europe? At least the beer will be cheap.
  • Speaking of Prague, you can add UDRP to …continue reading

Comment Tagged: , , , ,

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

7 Comments Tagged: , , ,

Will .xxx be a slam dunk in Nairobi?

When .xxx appeared on the agenda (kinda) for ICANN’s Nairobi board meeting, it didn’t look to me like particularly spiriting news for ICM Registry.
The agenda item coyly reads “Consideration of the Independent Review Panel Declaration ICM Registry v. ICANN”.
This could quite be easily interpreted as a rather dry picking-over of the legal implications of the IRP’s findings; the board could still brush the ruling aside as “advisory” and hope Stuart Lawley isn’t waiting outside with a gang of armed …continue reading

Comment Tagged: , , ,

Was dynamic DNS Mariposa’s undoing?

Kevin Murphy, March 3, 2010, Domain Services

Spanish cops have arrested three people they suspect of building and running the “Mariposa” botnet, and it looks like they were tracked down through dynamic DNS services.
Mariposa spread into 190 countries and had 12.7 million infected PCs on it, according to this PDF report from Defence Intelligence. Over half of the Fortune 1000 were compromised.
According to the AP, “the suspects used Internet services that wound up cooperating …continue reading

Comment Tagged: , , ,

Gossip: DNS incest T-shirts, etc…

Kevin Murphy, March 2, 2010, Gossip

Eight domain name stories I would loved to have looked into in more detail today:

Comment Tagged: , , , , , ,