In the earnings call today, Verisign (VRSN) announced that it was in "in the final stages of drafting the new Root Zone Maintainer Agreement with ICANN "to perform this Root Zone Maintainer role as a commercial service for ICANN upon the successful transition of the IANA functions." "To ensure that root operations continue to perform at the same high level during the expected 10-year term of … [Read more...]
The ICA Is Having a Coming Out Party At Namescon; Come Join US
Most of you know that I have been a long-time member and strong supporter of the Internet Commerce Association. Anyone who has had to face a UDRP, or seen the policies that are proposed at ICANN, knows that the rights of domain owners are always under threat. Fortunately a group of members from the domain industry has banded together to create the ICA to represent the interests of the domain … [Read more...]
Donuts: We are not Going To Delete New gTLD Extensions
Donuts has responded to last Friday's cybersecurity consulting firm Internet Identity (IID) report predicting "the eventual demise of any number of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and the websites populated within them—primarily due to financial underperformance". Donuts has responded strongly to debunk the report saying as the largest new gTLD operator they will not be closing down any … [Read more...]
Former VP of ICANN Hired By Facebook For “New Domain Name System Strategy & Management Team”
Denise Michel who was formerly with ICANN as VP of Strategic Initiatives and Advisor to the President, has been hired by Facebook to work on Facebook's new "Domain Name System Strategy and Management Team" which she says "will help improve the global framework for domain names, IP addresses, numbers and related elements." Denise "will be working across Facebook departments and collaborating … [Read more...]
Godaddy May Be The World’s Largest Domain Registrar But Not For New gTLD’s
Godaddy.com, which is the world's largest domain name registrar (having the most domain names under management) is no longer the number 1 domain name registrar for new gTLD domains. According to ntldstats.com, Godaddy.com has fallen into the 2nd position worldwide when it comes to domain registered with new domain extensions, known as new gTLD's. A China based domain registrar, Chengdu West … [Read more...]
.XYZ Did Not Block 12K Domains on Request of China; Liberty.xyz is Owned & We Have His email
Its been an interesting couple of weeks for the .XYZ registry. It all started when Domainincite.com published a post on October 12th, talking about that .XYZ might block almost 40,000 domain names at the registry level on the request of China. That number of 40,000 words and phrases seemed to be reduced down to 12K in a Twitter post that now seems to have been deleted. Since the Domainincite … [Read more...]
3 Applicants For New gTLD .Radio File For Independent Review Process
According to a press release out today, BRS Media, has filed, in conjunction with two other applicants, an Independent Review Process in accordance with Article IV, section 3 of the ICANN Bylaws re: The .RADIO gTLD and .RADIO Community Priority Evaluation Results. Although not mentioned in the press release the other two applicants are Afilias and Donuts. ""On Sept. 10, 2014 ICANN … [Read more...]