On Thursday, December 15th The .US Registry opened two issues up for requests for public comment.
All comment should be emailed to stakeholdercouncil@neustar.us
The first issue relates to the potential release of 1 and 2 character .US domains.
The second relates to the potential allowance of .US registrants to utilize privacy protection services.
The comment period for both requests closes on January 16, 2017 and you are free to comment on either or both.
The usTLD Stakeholder Council (“Council”) and Neustar, Inc. (“Neustar”), the registry operator for the usTLD, is seeking public comment on the Council’s recommendation to Neustar to release one and two character domain names in connection with the usTLD Premium Domain Name (“PDN”) plan.
“The primary goal of the proposed PDN Plan is to increase the use and awareness of the .US brand in the consumer marketplace.
Additionally, the PDN Plan provides the opportunity for Neustar to allocate .US Premium Names to support organizations or activities that will help spread awareness or encourage growth of the .US domain.
As part of an overall effort by Neustar, to raise awareness and use of the .US domain, the PDN Plan would make available to the public at a premium price certain high-value, highly-visible, premium .US domain names (“.US Premium Domains”), some of which are currently designated as “reserved” (including one- and two-character .US domain names), and others that would be newly designated as such.
While intended to protect existing intellectual property rights and preserve the legacy locality namespace, the release and implementation of a premium name space will foster new growth for the .US domain extension using current best practices and allocation standards. Throughout the plan, all policies and restrictions regarding two-character state and territorial abbreviations or numbered domain names are recommended to still be in effect in particular opinions are being sort on:
Should the usTLD policy be revised to allow the release of 1 and 2 character domains?
- Should the usTLD registry operator include currently unregistered and registered name as premium names? (The premium plan will not affect existing registrants’ domain names, nor will it affect transfers of existing names.)?
- What, if any, impact would the introduction of 2 character names at the second level have on the legacy city.state.us registrations in .US? Please explain any concerns you have in detail.?
Neustar, Inc. (“Neustar”), is also seeking public comment on its recommendation to allow for the implementation of a registry-based wholesale privacy registration service in the .US Top Level Domain. Stakeholders at the 2015 usTLD Stakeholder Town Hall identified the lack of privacy services as a key issue suppressing domain name registration in the .US TLD. In an increasingly competitive landscape, in which many of the competitors to .US allow some type of privacy or proxy service, Neustar and the Council want to increase domain name registrations to ensure a robust, healthy namespace and believe that the implementation of such services will put .US on an equal footing with its closest competitors in both the generic and country code top-level domain namespaces.
The Council is seeking public comments on the following questions:
- Do you support the implementation of privacy services for .US domain name holders?
- What issues, if any, will registrars have with implementing privacy services as set forth in the plan?
- Does the plan adequately address the concerns of law enforcement while preserving the expected level of privacy of registrants who request the service?
When a registrant buys a domain name, registry policy in line with industry standards require registrars to obtain and provide to the registry, the registrant’s contact information, including name, physical address, email address, and phone number. This information is publicly available in the WHOIS database, a searchable directory that holds all the contact information for domain name registrants. The WHOIS database is freely searchable by anyone with access to the internet. In these times of increased awareness of the dangers of identity theft and other threats, many registries and registrars offer privacy services to their registrants. A privacy service lists alternative, reliable registrant contact information in WHOIS, while keeping the domain name registered to its beneficial user, the registrant.
The Council is requesting your comments on a plan that will be submitted to the Department of Commerce that will request authority under the contract to allow privacy services to be implemented for .US.”
Of course .US domain names are eligible to be owned by United States citizens, residents, or organizations, or a foreign entity with a presence in the United States.
I’m not sure how you can keep enforce the nexus requirement when domain names are under privacy.
Although the registrars will know the owners account info I assume .US would have to ask for the real ownership information for each domain going through a ton of registrars.
“I’m not sure how you can keep enforce the nexus requirement when domain names are under privacy.
Although the registrars will know the owners account info I assume .US would have to ask for the real ownership information for each domain going through a ton of registrars.”
Many ccTLDs require full identification of the registrant (through their registrar). But the public whois doesn’t list all the details, sometimes a registrant name, sometimes an E-mail, sometimes nothing.
Example: .ca (Canada)
They aren’t enforced NOW. Tons of registrations are being done Indians, with no connection or under a fake name, every day.
Kate see what wrote below as well.
1. Privacy:
A. Nexus requirement: As near as I can tell, it is never enforced to begin with unless someone makes a report based on what they find in whois.
1. “I’m not sure how you can keep enforce the nexus requirement when domain names are under privacy”:
Anyone who has IT experience relating to database and database application development and implementation knows how easy this is, even ridiculously easy. The whois data resides in a database. If the data is received and processed in a central database after being provided by the registrars, then few things in the world are easier – if anybody really wants to do it, that is – than to run any number of simple queries designed to evaluate the data for nexus violation. It can even easily be done in Microsoft Access 2002 (XP), let alone the far more powerful systems available today like Oracle, SQL Server, etc.
B. Does privacy already occur anyway? In my observation, people are already “getting away with” .US privacy with some registrars. For example, if you ever find a .US domain registered with Safenames.net, you will very likely see that the information appearing in whois for all intents and purposes amounts to getting away with whois privacy/proxy even though it is technically not yet even allowed. I’ll go out on a limb and say I suspect there is at least one other registrar I won’t name that big deep pocketed brands use which also does that.
C. Law enforcement: Everything about how easy it is to review data mentioned for nexus above also applies. Privacy already occurs and is allowed for other TLDs, so there is no special reason to prevent it for .US. But the same reasons which make it an important option for many law-abiding registrants to have to begin with persist while it is not an option.
D. Some additional thoughts: Not having a privacy option like with other TLDs imposes a “chilling effect” on the registration and use of .US. It is bad for society, and bad for business, bad for .US. The true ease with which underlying whois data can be stored and processed renders renders any concerns about access to data by duly appointed authorities moot.
2. Release of 1 and 2 character .US domains:
A. When .US was released, it was nice that there was relative equality of opportunity. Not perfect equality, but something approaching equality. It did not favor those with deep pockets, except for initial releases that went to auction, and the “little guy” had a decent chance to secure some of the best and most valuable .US domains that might afford him or her great opportunities, perhaps even life-changing opportunities especially if .US had awoken from “sleeping giant” status. Since then we have all seen the great big money grab that has been new gTLDs, and we all understand that is the way of the world. But I say the urge to do that should be resisted for .US. Let it go. Resist the urge to make it yet another arena of “survival of the richest” and those with the deepest pockets win. Let it have as much relatively equality of opportunity as it had before, even more if possible.
(Space indentations before numbers and letters above were removed upon posting.)
And as for point 2 above, isn’t that what the US is supposed to be about to begin with, or are we all supposed to not think such things anymore?
Maybe they should consider getting it approved in China first such as .xyz just did if they want to expand the brand.
I don’t know if you’re joking or not, but we are allowed to register .CN here in the US.
Registrars used to keep these super premium domains expecting they would be valuable in the future. Now they see all domains are declinig in value and are trying to sell.
Oh no, I would definitely say the opposite is the case. There was never any “premium” model with .US, for instance. All domains were equal, and people had an opportunity to obtain the best for reg fee. It’s only now that in recent years it has become apparent how valuable certain reserved ones can be and what kind of high prices they can receive that such a release is being considered. So we are talking about more potentially valuable now than before, not less.