Three new ccTLDs (including .sx) up for grabs

IANA quietly created three new country-code top-level domains shortly before Christmas, to represent the new nations created by the breakup of the Netherlands Antilles last year.
The new ccTLDs are: .bq for Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba, .cw for Curacao and .sx for Sint Maarten (Dutch part). All three appeared in IANA’s database December 20.
None of the strings are currently delegated. The governments of the respective nations will have to apply to IANA if they want to start using their TLDs on the internet.
The days of chancers moving in to colonize island ccTLDs (eg .nu) may have passed, but there are still opportunities for domain name businesses to make a buck here.
The most recent new ccTLD, .me, was assigned to Montenegro in 2007. The registry’s partners include Go Daddy and Afilias.
I’m sure overseas domain name companies are already sniffing around the newly minted countries.
But these nations are small, and they don’t seem to have lucked out by being assigned strings with much secondary semantic value, so I can’t imagine we’re looking at high-volume TLDs.
Sint Maarten’s .sx may be an exception, due to its resemblance to “.sex”, which is quite likely, I think, to be created as a gTLD under ICANN’s upcoming new TLDs program.
If and when .sx is delegated, the country will have to bear this potential for confusion in mind when it’s designing its registration policies.
Will it want to keep its national brand respectable, or will it cash in on possible future typosquatting?
The Netherlands Antilles officially split in October. It took about three months for the three strings to be added to the ISO 3166 list (pdf), and another week for IANA to add the ccTLDs to its database.
The string AN, for the dissolved country, has also been deleted from the 3166 list. What happens to .an the ccTLD is a whole other story.

ICANN told to ban .bank or get sued

A major financial services lobby group has threatened to sue ICANN unless it puts strict limitations on “.bank” top-level domains.
BITS, the technology policy arm of the Financial Services Roundtable, said financial domains should be banned from the first round of new TLDs, until rules governing security are developed.
In a November 4 letter to ICANN chief executive Rod Beckstrom, BITS said:

If these critical issues are not fully resolved and ICANN chooses not to defer financial TLD delegation, BITS, its members and its partners are prepared to employ all available legislative, regulatory, administrative and judicial mechanisms.

BITS counts all the major US banks among its membership, as well as many large insurance companies and share-trading services.
The organization is concerned that TLDs such as .bank could lead to consumer confusion and an increase in fraud online if delegated into the wrong hands.
While BITS said that it “prefer[s] a prudent solution”, it has threatened to file “legal complaints in one or more jurisdictions” and to lobby the US Congress for legislation.
It noted that ICANN’s IANA contract, which gives it the power to create new TLDs, expires next August, and said that it may lobby Congress for legislation mandating better security as a condition of the renewal.
BITS and other financial groups have already written to members of Congress, in September, expressing disappointment with the absence of a high-security TLD policy from ICANN and adding:

In recognition of the need for higher levels of security and stability in financial services gTLDs than in gTLDs generally, we urge you to support inclusion of language in cyber security legislation language that prevents ICANN from adding financial services gTLDs to the root zone unless the IANA contract specifies higher levels of security for such gTLDs.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the US government body responsible for insuring banks, has also written to the Department of Commerce, expressing its concerns about the possible introduction of a .bank TLD.
Currently, I’m not aware of any public initiative to apply for .bank, but it’s possible that restrictions on financial services TLDs could capture the recently launched German “.insurance” project.
The BITS correspondence was published (pdf) as an attachment to an ongoing Reconsideration Request lodged by Michael Palage, chair of the High Security Top Level Domain Verification Program Advisory Group.
The HSTLD group has been working on a set of technological policy specifications for registries managing high-security TLDs.
Palage is annoyed that ICANN’s board seems to have distanced itself from the HSTLD concept before the group has even finished its work, by resolving in September that:

ICANN will not endorse or govern the program, and does not wish to be liable for issues arising from the use or non-use of the standard.

The HSTLD group, by contrast, has a “clear majority in support of ICANN retaining a continued oversight role”, according to Palage. He wrote:

The ICANN Board’s unilateral actions also have a chilling effect on future bottom up consensus efforts because participants have no basis to know when the ICANN Board will take such unilateral actions in the future.

He’s not alone in worrying about recent top-level ICANN decisions that appear to put corporate legal liability ahead of the wishes of the community. I reported on the issue last week.

IPv4 depletion “imminent”

The pool of IPv4 address space available to regional internet registries will likely expire in “early 2011”, according to the Number Resource Organization.
ICANN/IANA said today that it has allocated two more /8 blocks of IPv4, approximately 33.5 million addresses, to APNIC, the Asia-Pacific RIR.
This means there are only 12 /8 blocks left, about 5% of the total allowable addresses under IPv4.
Under IANA’s rules, the final five /8s will all be allocated at the same time, one to each of the five RIRs. So there are only seven left to be handed out under the normal process.
The NRO followed up ICANN’s blog post with a press release stressing the importance of adopting IPv6. From the release (my emphasis):

“This is a major milestone in the life of the Internet, and means that allocation of the last blocks of IPv4 to the RIRs is imminent,” states Axel Pawlik, Chairman of the Number Resource Organization (NRO), the official representative of the five RIRs. “It is critical that all Internet stakeholders take definitive action now to ensure the timely adoption of IPv6.”
…
According to current depletion rates, the last five IPv4 address blocks will be allocated to the RIRs in early 2011. The pressure to adopt IPv6 is mounting. Many worry that without adequate preparation and action, there will be a chaotic scramble for IPv6, which could increase Internet costs and threaten the stability and security of the global network.

There’s a danger that things could start getting messy over the next couple of years, as the RIRs themselves start running out of IPv4 and network managers worldwide start discovering their IPv6 capabilities are not up to scratch.

Will the internet get two new ccTLDs (and lose one)?

One country dropped off the map on Sunday, and two new countries were created. So does this mean we’re going to get two new country-code top-level domains?
The islands of Curacao and St. Maarten have reportedly become autonomous countries, after the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, a collection of former Dutch colonies off north-east coast of Venezuela.
The reorganization sees a number of other islands join the Netherlands as municipalities, while Curacao and St. Maarten become countries in the own right, albeit still tied politically tied to the motherland.
It seems quite possible that these two islands will now get their own ccTLDs, for two reasons.
First, both states are now reportedly as autonomous as fellow former Dutch Antilles territory Aruba, if not more so. Aruba acquired this status in 1986 and had .aw delegated to it by IANA in 1996.
Second, St Maarten shares a landmass with St Martin, a former French colony. The French northern side of the island is already entitled to its own ccTLD, .mf, although the domain has never been delegated.
ICANN/IANA does not make the call on what is and isn’t considered a nation for ccTLD purposes. Rather, it defers to the International Standards Organization, and a list of strings called ISO 3166-2.
The ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency in turn defers to the UN’s Statistics Division and its “Countries or areas, codes and abbreviations” list, which can be found here.
How long a new ccTLD delegation takes can vary wildly.
Montenegro, for example, declared its independence on June 3, 2006. It was added to the ISO 3166 list on September 26 that year, applied for a ccTLD on December 24, and received its delegation of .me following an ICANN board vote on September 11, 2007.
Finland’s Aland Islands got .ax less than six months after applying in 2006. North Korea, by contrast, received .kp on the same day as Montenegro got .me, but had first applied in 2004.
IANA treats the deletion of a ccTLD much more cautiously, due to the fact that some TLDs could have many second-level registrations already.
The removal of the former Yugoslavian domain, .yu, was subject to a three-year transition process under the supervision of the new .rs registry.
The Dutch Antilles has its own ccTLD, .an, which is in use and delegated to University of The Netherlands Antilles, based in Curacao.
Will we see a gradual phasing-out of .an, in favor of two new ccTLDs?

Top-level domain count likely to top 300 this year

Perusing the big stack of marketing literature that I picked up at ICANN Brussels in June, I noticed that few companies agree about how many top-level domains currently exist.
Mildly surprising really, given that the official count isn’t especially difficult to come by. According to IANA’s database, there are 292 delegated TLDs today.
That number breaks down like this:

251 ASCII ccTLDs
9 IDN ccTLDs
4 gTLDs
3 “restricted” gTLDs
1 “infrastructure” TLD
13 “sponsored” gTLDs
11 test IDN TLDs

Interestingly, according to IANA, there are only four vanilla, open gTLDs – .com, .net, .org and .info.
I wonder how many sites NeuStar has shut down because .biz is “restricted” to business users? Or how many .mobi domains have been put on hold for breaking the “sponsored” guidelines.
The list does not yet count the six IDN ccTLDs that ICANN’s board approved August 5. So there are actually 298 approved top-level domains today.
In the IDN ccTLD pipeline as of Brussels were also Qatar, Singapore and Syria, which had met string approval but were not yet delegated, and about 15 others that had not.
There are two (or three) more voting meetings for ICANN’s board this year, and so it seems likely that the delegated TLD count will break through the 300 mark before 2011.

Palestine gets its own Arabic domain names

ICANN has awarded five more non-ASCII top-level domains under its internationalized domain name fast-track process for country-code TLD managers.
Palestine, Tunisia and Jordan will all shortly receive delegations for Arabic-script versions of their existing ccTLDs. They join previous recipients including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Palestine gets فلسطين, Tunisia gets تونس and Jordan gets الاردن.
These apparently translate as “Falasteen”, “Tunis” and “al-Ordan”, respectively, and are presumably more useful to Arabic speakers than .ps, .tn and .jo.
Because they’re all Arabic, the dots appear to the right of the TLD, rather than the left.
The Occupied Palestinian Territory is, of course, a fringe case when it comes to ccTLDs.
But long ago, IANA made it a matter of policy that it would make no decision about which country or territory deserves its own ccTLD.
If it’s on the ISO 3166-1 list, which is overseen by the UN, it’s in. Palestine was added to that list in 1999, and was awarded .ps by ICANN/IANA in 2000.
The .ps registry is sponsored by the Palestinian National Authority’s telecoms ministry.
ICANN has also resolved to delegate Thailand the IDN ccTLD .ไทย and Sri Lanka both .ලංකා and .இலங்கை.
Interestingly, these two TLDs were approved as part of yesterday’s board meeting’s consent agenda.
The three Arabic names were approved separately, preceded by this:

RESOLVED (2010.08.05.13), the Board IANA Committee is directed, in coordination with ICANN’s CEO, to create improvements to the processes and new guidelines for implementation of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track process.

Bulgaria polls public for Cyrillic TLD ideas

The Bulgarian government is asking its people what Cyrillic top-level domain it should ask for if ICANN refuses to reverse its rejection of .бг.
The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology has published a poll on its web site, presenting four options for an IDN ccTLD.
Its first choice, .бг, was rejected by ICANN/IANA in May due to its visual similarity to another ccTLD, believed to be Brazil’s .br.
The four new options are .бгр, .българия, .бя and .бъл.
Bulgarians can also vote for “nothing but .бг” or declare that they do not want a Cyrillic domain at all.
The poll page, via Google Translate, suggests that the Ministry is prepared to wait for another opportunity to apply for .бг or for an ICANN appeals process to be created, if that’s what the public wants.
The Minister had previously promised to appeal the rejection of .бг.
(First reported by Novinite.)

Chinese TLDs now live, broad adoption achieved in just seven days

Check it out: 教育部。中国.
That’s one, but by no means the only, of the first live, fully Chinese-script domain names. It’s China’s Ministry of Education.
Previously, it had been announced that the .中国 internationalized country-code TLD would not go live until August.
But on Friday CNNIC said that 90% of China’s ministries have got their .中國 domains already, along with 95% of news websites, 90% of universities and 40% of China’s Top 500 enterprises.
Not only was that level of adoption achieved very quietly, it was also achieved very quickly. According to IANA, .中國 was delegated just seven days earlier, on July 9.
IANA also reports that .中國, the IDN for Hong Kong went live on July 12. Taiwan’s .中國 was delegated on July 14.
All of these Chinese-script TLDs were approved by ICANN’s board at the conclusion of the Brussels meeting last month.
It’s perhaps not surprising that ICANN did not broadly announce the latest delegations. It got burnt for pre-empting Arab nations’ publicity when the first IDN TLDs went live in May.
I wonder whether this will help CNNIC reverse the trend of declining registrations in its namespace. According to the latest statistics, the .cn has halved in size over the last year.

Bulgaria to file ICANN reconsideration appeal over rejected IDN ccTLD

Bulgaria is to appeal ICANN’s rejection of .бг, the Cyrillic version of its existing country code top-level domain, .bg.
Technology minister Alexander Tsvetkov said that the Bulgarian government will file a reconsideration request with ICANN, according to a DarikNews.bg interview.
The requested IDN ccTLD .бг was rejected because it looks quite a bit like Brazil’s existing ASCII ccTLD, .br, which could create confusion for Brazilians.
ICANN/IANA does not talk openly about ccTLD delegation issues. As far as I know, .бг is the only IDN ccTLD on the current fast-track program to be rejected on string-similarity grounds.
The Darik News interview, via Google Translate, reports Tsvetkov saying he “believes that this domain is the best way for Bulgaria” and that the government “will ask for reconsideration”.
Asked about the clash with Brazil, he said Bulgaria “will not quit” in its pursuit of its first-choice ccTLD.
Brazil has not been silent on the issue.
During the meeting on Tuesday between the ICANN board and its Governmental Advisory Committee, Brazil’s representative praised ICANN for rejecting .бг:

Brazil would like to express its support to the recent board’s decision about avoiding graphic similitude between new country codes and current country codes in Latin. This is particularly important inasmuch as any graphic confusion might facilitate phishing practices and all the problems related to it.

Many thanks to the Bulgarian reader who referred me to this Darik News interview.
For any other Bulgarians reading this, the interview also appears to contain lots of other really juicy information not related to domain names. Check it out.

ICANN staff need to get their pee tested

I imagine it’s a pretty hard job, largely thankless, working at ICANN. No matter what you do, there’s always somebody on the internet bitching at you for one reason or another.
The job may be about to get even more irksome for some staffers, if ICANN decides to implement new security recommendations made by risk management firm JAS Communications.
In a report published yesterday, JAS suggests that senior IANA staff – basically anyone with critical responsibilities over the DNS root zone – should be made to agree to personal credit checks, drug screening and even psych evaluations.
To anyone now trying to shake mental images of Rod Beckstrom peeing into a cup for the sake of the internet, I can only apologise.
This is what the report says:

JAS recommends a formal program to vet potential new hires, and to periodically re‐vet employees over time. Such a vetting program would include screening for illegal drugs, evaluation of consumer credit, and psychiatric evaluation, which are all established risk factors for unreliable and/or malicious insider activity and are routinely a part of employee screening in government and critical infrastructure providers.

I’ve gone for the cheap headline here, obviously, but there’s plenty in this report to take seriously, if you can penetrate the management consultant yadda yadda.
There are eight other recommendations not related to stoners running the root, covering contingencies such as IANA accidentally unplugging the internet and Los Angeles sinking into the Pacific.
Probably most interesting of all is the bit explaining how ICANN’s custom Root Zone Management System software, intended to reduce the possibility of errors creeping into the root after hundreds of new TLDs are added, apparently isn’t being built with security in mind.
“No formal requirements exist regarding the security and resiliency of these systems, making it impossible to know whether the system has been built to specification,” the report says.
It also notes that ICANN lacks a proper risk management strategy, and suggests that it improve communications both internally and with VeriSign.
It discloses that “nearly all critical resources are physically located in the greater Los Angeles area”, which puts the IANA function at risk of earthquake damage, if nothing else.
JAS recommends spreading the risk geographically, which should give those opposed to ICANN bloat something new to moan about.
There’s a public comment forum over here.
UPDATE (2010-06-13): As Michael Palage points out over at CircleID, ICANN has pulled the PDF from its web site for reasons unknown.
On the off-chance that there’s a good security reason for this, I shall resist the temptation to cause mischief by uploading it here. This post, however, remains unedited.