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- .au prices going up
- Nominet names director hopefuls
- Crowdstrike screw-up took down ICANN’s email
- We grassed up .TOP, says free abuse outfit
- ICANN to earmark $10 million for new gTLD subsidies
- TV network rebrands on single-letter domain
- First registry gets breach notice over new abuse rules
- Americans and ICANNers avoid Kigali in droves
- RDRS stats improve a little in June
- Unstoppable Domains goes down after domain hijack
- Four more gTLDs in emergency measures
- New gTLDs and ccTLDs drive domain universe growth
- Eight interesting recent dot-brand registrations
- .me premium sales down
- Pride fails to reverse gay domains decline
- Unstoppable announces another new gTLD bid
- Blockchain naming firm gets ICANN accreditation
- ICANN takes over gTLD after Whois failures
- Verisign: would-be .com contract killers are “wrong”
- Five gTLDs at risk as registry goes AWOL
- Groups make flawed case that .com is a cartel
- RDRS usage hits all-time low
- A dot-brand so unloved they killed it twice
- PorkBun hits two million domain milestone
- Crawford returns to industry to head up Com Laude
- ICANN financial data dump a damp squib?
- Unstoppable plotting manga-themed gTLDs
- Governments call for new gTLD auctions ban
- ICANN names new CEO, and it isn’t Costerton
- ICANN: We will NOT police content
- More sticker shock as new gTLD fees could top $300,000
- ICANN slashes staff and domain prices could rise
- Secret new gTLD application revealed
- WhatsApp now linkifying new gTLDs, but…
- Outrage over ICANN’s new gTLD fees
- Barrett gets second term on ICANN board
- DotMusic delays gTLD launch again
- .tm prices to skyrocket next week
- Bitcoin gTLD gets launch dates
- First metaverse gTLD is announced
- Alibaba off the naughty step
- ICANN to kill auction fund bylaws change
- The people have spoken on RDRS and they said “Meh”
- ICANN restarts work on controversial Whois privacy rules
- GNSO mulls lawyering up over auction fund dispute
- Jury still out on ICANN’s content policing powers
- It now takes TWO WEEKS to get a Whois record with RDRS
- Travel expenses push ICANN into the red again
- ICANN preparing for ONE HUNDRED registry back-ends
- DNS Abuse Institute changes name
- A new way to game the new gTLD program
- .home, .mail and .corp could get unbanned
- Unstoppable to apply for Women in Tech gTLD
- Bob Parsons publishes autobiography
- GoDaddy getting a free pass from porn jail?
- Correction: Sinha’s seat is safe
- Chinese domains plummet again in 2023
- GoDaddy price increases lead to revenue growth
- D3 announces seventh blockchain gTLD client
- Taylor Swift applies for her .post domain
- .ad domains to go global soon
- Single-letter .com case back in court
- ICANN to slash costs as Verisign’s magic money tree dries up
- Community revolts over ICANN’s auction proceeds power grab
- Two seats up for grabs on Nominet board
- War takes steep toll on .ua domains
- .de worst TLD for CSAM — report
- .com still shrinking because of China
- ICANN publishes its Woke Manifesto. Here’s my hot take
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- .my domains to be sold globally next month
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
- A million “free” .music domains up for grabs
- D3 to get $5 million in crypto to apply for .ape gTLD
- Alibaba hit with ICANN breach notice
- New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
- Cable company unplugs its dot-brand after acquisition
- Germany crosses 10,000 dot-brand domains milestone
- Founders out as Com Laude gets equity injection
- PIR’s Diaz to leave domain industry
- Some registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
- ICANN opens $217 million Grant Program
- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
- Amazon and Google among .internal TLD ban backers
- .ai registry advises buyers not to use GoDaddy
- .post liberalizes with new sunrise period
- Team Internet spends $41 million on content farm
- Epik backtracks on Kiwi Farms claim after legal threat
- .austin names launch on blockchain
- Freenom shuts down 12.6 million domains — report
- GoDaddy’s next .xxx contract may not be a done deal
- GlobalBlock blocking 2.5 million domains
- Microsoft moving its cloud apps from .com to .microsoft
- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
- ICANN scores win in single-letter .com lawsuit
- Cosmetics brand terminates its gTLD
- Up to 70 jobs on the line at Nominet as .uk regs dwindle
- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
- Private auctions could be banned in new gTLD next round
- ICANN meeting venue “insensitive and hurtful”
- GoDaddy to start selling graphic.design domains
- GAC spinning up new gTLD curveball at ICANN 79?
- GoDaddy’s GlobalBlock supports blockchain names
- Police .uk domain takedowns dive in 2023
- GoDaddy wants to cut the bullshit from .xxx
- Dueling domain blocking services to launch at ICANN 79
- Freename tries to bridge DNS and blockchain
- Olive retires from ICANN
- Whois policy published without life-saving disclosure rule
- UK gov takes its lead from ICANN on DNS abuse
- Tucows reports 2023 results
- Twitter “completely unresponsive” on clickable domains
- ICANN spends $5 million more than planned in first fiscal half
- .art takes a million domains off its premium list
- KeyTrap ‘the most devastating vulnerability ever found in DNSSEC’
- Freenom settles $500 million Meta lawsuit and will exit domain business
- New gTLD lottery to return in 2026
- First GlobalBlock prices revealed — they ain’t cheap
- Domain universe grows on new gTLDs despite .com shrinkage
- D3 signs up crypto gTLD client number five
- GoDaddy reports strong domains growth
- How to qualify for a $40,000 gTLD
ICANN publishes Whois reform wish-list
ICANN’s latest stab at reforming Whois could lead to lots of useful new features, from more comprehensive search to more uniform privacy services.
The organization has released a staff report, “Inventory of WHOIS Service Requirements”, outlining 12 technical areas where Whois could be improved.
If the ideas were implemented, Whois records could one day contain your Twitter address or instant messaging screen name, as well as the current set of data.
The proposals could also lead to registrant search features in Whois as standard, allowing users to pull up a list of all the domains registered by any given individual.
That kind of service is only currently available at a premium price from the likes of DomainTools. The ICANN proposals could bake it into the spec.
The new paper, apparently released yesterday, was designed to outline technical requirements that might be needed to support future policies on Whois.
So while it’s not policy, it’s a good indicator of where ICANN thinks policy may head.
It concludes with a list of 12 “possible requirements” for the GNSO and other stakeholders to consider over the next couple of months before the Brussels meeting.
Here are the highlights: (continue reading)
.jobs aiming to become a gTLD by the back door?
Employ Media, the company behind the sponsored TLD .jobs, looks like it’s making a play to become a significantly more open gTLD.
The company has proposed a substantial relaxation of its registration policies, based on what may be a loophole in its ICANN registry contract.
Currently, the .jobs namespace is one of the most restrictive TLDs. Only company names can be registered, and registrants have to be approved HR professionals at those companies.
As you might imagine, it’s been phenomenally unsuccessful from a business point of view, with only about 15,000 domains registered since it went live five years ago.
Employ Media now wants to be able to register “non-companyname” domains, and is to apply to its sponsorship body, the Society for Human Resource Management, for permission.
At least, that’s what it looks like. The documents posted over at policy.jobs are pretty opaque.
Indeed, as ERE.net points out, the “proposed amendment” to its charter reads more like a claim that no amendment is required.
The company appears to be pursuing a business model whereby it could auction off (continue reading)
Verizon seeks another registrar scalp
After killing off small Indian registrar Lead Networks last week, Verizon wasted no time in gunning for a larger target, DirectNIC.
The carrier sued DirectNIC on Friday, claiming the company has been involved in the systematic typosquatting of hundreds of thousands of domains, including at least 288 belonging to Verizon.
There appears to be at least two things going on here.
First, Verizon is claiming that the common registrar practice of parking expired, pre-delete domains, somehow falls foul of US anti-cybersquatting laws if the parked domains are typosquats.
DomainNameWire addresses the possibly discomforting precedents this could set over here.
Second, the Verizon complaint resurrects the theory that DirectNIC’s owners, including CEO Sigmund Solares, are or were themselves typosquatters, using shell (continue reading)
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)
Cyber cop wants Whois privacy shake-up
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)
Was dynamic DNS Mariposa’s undoing?
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)
Gossip: DNS incest T-shirts, etc…
Eight domain name stories I would loved to have looked into in more detail today:
- Cricket Liu of Infoblox: DNSCurve is a distraction. David Ulevitch of OpenDNS: DNSSEC community is “embarrassing” and “incestuous”. Liu demands T-shirt reflecting same.
- Bored? Want to make enemies and influence people? Why not apply to join the ICANN board? Attractive package includes three all-expenses (continue reading)
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