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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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:

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UK won’t drop Nominet takeover bill

The UK government has “no plans” to remove its right to oust Nominet as the .uk registry from the forthcoming Digital Economy Bill, according to ComputerWorld.
The controversial bill is best known for its draconian restrictions on peer-to-peer file sharing, but it would also give the government the right to remove Nominet …continue reading

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F**k.in beats SwearBox.com

Kevin Murphy, March 1, 2010, Domain Sales

This just in from Sedo… fuck.in has fetched 1,050 euros ($1,400) at auction.
Surprisingly low for something with such lovely pun value, I thought, but it still managed to beat the much more useful SwearBox.com, which sold last week for …continue reading

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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

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