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Eight years after asking, Israel to get its Hebrew ccTLD

Kevin Murphy, February 3, 2021, Domain Registries

Israel is likely to be awarded the Hebrew-script version of its ccTLD, at a meeting of ICANN’s board of directors next week.

ICANN is poised to approved ישראל. (the dot goes on the right, in accordance with Hebrew writing practice), which means “Israel”, on February 8.

The beneficiary will be not-for-profit ISOC-IL, which has been running .il for the last 25 years. The Latin-script version currently has just shy of 270,000 domains under management.

ISOC-IL first expressed its interest in an internationalized domain name ccTLD (pdf) in 2012, but only received final technical approval from ICANN last May.

The proposal appears to have been held up by government delays in selecting a registry operator — government approval is a requirement under ICANN’s increasingly inappropriately named IDN ccTLD “Fast Track” program, which began in 2009.

It’s debatable how much demand there is for Hebrew domains. There are fewer than 10 million speakers in the world and most are very familiar with the Latin script.

Verisign’s gTLD קום., a transliteration of .com, has fewer than 1,700 domains in its zone file today, and is on a downward trend, two years after launch. Most are registered via local registrar Domain The Net, which had planned to compete with ISOC-IL for the IDN contract.

.bible-thumping anti-porn registrar goes titsup

Kevin Murphy, August 5, 2020, Domain Registrars

An American registrar that prided itself on promoting .bible domain names and refusing to sell to pornographers has gone out of business.

PurityNames, which called itself “the only company that refuses to profit from pornography”, ceased operations July 27 and has had its accreditation agreement with ICANN voluntarily terminated.

In a notice on its web site, the company blamed its demise on “recent increases in regulatory requirements and costs as well as economic headwinds”.

Founded by seasoned ICANN policy expert Jim Prendergast, the company’s shutdown appears to have been handled the right way.

PurityNames’ small customer base has been transferred to 20-year-old Israeli registrar Domain The Net, and pre-paid hosting packages will be honored, according to the registrar.

The company was founded in 2011 in order to give registrants a “family-friendly” venue for registering names. It refused to deal with not only porn but also gambling and other “immoral” services.

It also actively promoted .bible domain names. Prendergast is an ICANN policy consultant for the .bible registry.

But apparently there was not much demand for either. As of March, PurityNames had 288 domain names under management, down from a 2015 peak of 536, and only 10 .bible registrations.

Key-Systems sued over brand protection trademark

Kevin Murphy, January 10, 2012, Domain Registrars

Israeli domain name registrar Domain The Net Technologies has filed a preemptive lawsuit against German competitor Key-Systems over their respective brand management trademarks.
According to the complaint, Domain The Net filed for a US trademark on the term “BrandShield”, which it uses to market brand protection services at brandshield.com.
Key-Systems, which runs a similar service called BrandShelter, filed an opposition to Domain The Net’s trademark application last October, due to the alleged potential for confusion.
Anticipating a possible lawsuit, Domain The Net has therefore sued first, asking the District Court in Virginia to declare that BrandShield does not infringe the BrandShelter trademark.
The complaint lists several dozen live brand+word trademarks to demonstrate that no one company should have exclusive rights to the word “brand”.
You can view the complaint, which was filed yesterday, in PDF format here.
(Hat tip: @GeorgeKirikos)