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Court rules domain name list should stay secret

Kevin Murphy, May 21, 2019, Domain Registries

Publishing a list of every domain name in their zone is something that most TLD registries do automatically on a daily basis, but a court in Chile has ruled that doing so is a cybersecurity risk.
NIC Chile, which runs .cl, said last week that it has won an appeal against a Transparency Council ruling that would have forced it to publish a list of the domains it manages.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the registry was within its rights to refuse to hand over an Excel spreadsheet listing the 575,430 domains in .cl to the person who requested it.
The request was just for the list of domains, with none of the other data you’d find in a zone file and no Whois information about the registrants.
Nevertheless, the court unanimously ruled that to hand over the list would present “cybersecurity risks”, according to NIC Chile attorney Margarita Valdés Cortés.
NIC Chile said in a statement:

In this particular case, it was considered that the bulk delivery of domain names to a private individual could generate risks of cybersecurity of various kinds, both in access to information as a result of those domain names as well as the possibility that, by having such a list, attacks on servers, phishing, spam or others could be made easier. Similarly, the ruling of the Court of Appeals understood that the delivery of the data affects commercial and economic rights of the holders of these .CL domains, and considered that there is a legal cause that justifies NIC Chile´s refusal to turn over the list of all registered names.

Cortés said that the case will now go to the nation’s Supreme Court for a final decision, after the Transparency Council appealed.
Access to zone files is considered by many security researchers to be an invaluable tool in the fight against cybercrime.
NIC Chile has published the ruling, in Spanish, here (pdf).

Chile opens .cl to all ICANN registrars

Kevin Murphy, January 9, 2019, Domain Registries

The Chilean ccTLD registry has opened its doors to all ICANN-accredited registrars, no matter where they are based.
NIC Chile, part of the University of Chile, this week announced its Registrar Agents Program, an effort to grow the TLD internationally.
Becoming .cl-accredited appears to be a relatively simple process, requiring a brief application, technical tests (it’s an EPP registry) and contract-signing.
A pilot program that kicked off in September 2016 has already attracted 11 ICANN-accredited registrars, mostly but not exclusively those in the corporate brand-protection space.
Chilean companies that want to act as registrars must go through a separate process and do not need ICANN accreditation.
There are no local presence requirements to register a .cl domain.
Today, the TLD has just shy of 575,000 registered domains, having broke through the half-million mark about three years ago.
It may be interesting to see if growth rates increase with a larger pool of registrars, but .cl is already quite broadly available at major retail registrars (presumably via gateway or reseller arrangements) so getting hold of one doesn’t appear to be problematic.