.XXX gets X’d - ICANN has voted to not appove an application for establishing a .xxx domain name. .XXX has been a firestorm of controversy since its backers made another attempt to etablish the domain. The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article yesterday about the saga of the domain extension. The challenges to the domain cover a number of issues, including US “control” of ICANN and the role of the US government in ICANN policy making. From CNET: ICANN’s board on Wednesday ... read more ...

Wall Street Journal essay on Whois Privacy - Today’s Wall Street Journal discusses the fight over Whois privacy. The article on the front page of the Marketplace section starts by discussing how the American Red Cross and eBay use the Whois database to track down scammers: Last fall, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the American Red Cross used an Internet database called “Whois” that lists names and numbers of Web-site owners to shut down dozens of unauthorized Web sites that were soliciting money under ... read more ...

National Arbitration Forum press recover practices - National Arbitration Forum is ceased its questionable press release practices. I’ve been critical of National Arbitration Forum, which handles domain name UDRP disputes, for its practice of issuing press releases related to its arbitration decisions. Most (if not all) of these releases have been released when NAF has found in favor of big name companies in domain name disputes (e.g. Amazon.com, high profile celebrities). My belief is that if an arbitrator sends ... read more ...

Vint Cerf dazzles throng during Domain Roundtable - Vint Cerf’s keynote at Domain Roundtable in Seattle this morning kept the crowd engaged. I had the pleasure of eating breakfast with Vint Cerf, chairman of ICANN’s board and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, prior to his keynote address this morning. It was great to discuss some of the issues domainers are facing with regards to registrar practices, expiring domains, etc. directly with Cerf. Cerf’s keynote kept the crowd engaged. I’ve summarized the topics ... read more ...

ICANN CEO: Watch DOS attacks, IDNs - Paul Twomey, CEO and President of ICANN, gave the opening keynote at the 2006 Domain Roundtable. Reporting live from Domain Roundtable in Seattle… Paul Twomey was the first speaker at Domain Roundtable in Seattle today. He spoke to a room packed with a couple hundred players in the domain name community. I’ve summarized some of his key points: 1. Security – there are a number of concerns for domain name security right now. Domain hijacking is an obvious ... read more ...

Supreme Court won’t hear domain name case - The United States Supreme Court has refused to hear a domain name case involving evangelist Jerry Falwell. The decision by the Surpreme Court means that the owner of the Fallwell.com domain can keep the domain.It is a common typo of Falwell’s Falwell.com domain. The owner of Fallwell.com created a site critical of Jerry Falwell’s political views. According to an Associated Press article: But last year, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals…said that Lamparello ... read more ...

.Tel domain is a final thing we need - A proposal for a .tel domain name for contact information is the last thing the web needs. The newswires are running an AP story today about a proposal for a .tel new TLD: To help people manage all their contact information online, the Internet’s key oversight agency is considering a “.tel” domain name. If approved, the domain could be available this year. As proposed, individuals could use a “.tel” Web site to provide the latest contact information and ... read more ...

Microsoft releases apparatus to squish typosquatters - Microsoft has launched a tool to block ads on typosquatted domains. Typosquatting, the act of registering typos of popular domains, is a big business. Witness some recent typo domains that have sold for big bucks: Mortage.com for $242,400, CicuitCity.com for $20,250, MySpac.com for $31,600, and Porker.com for $155,000. Microsoft researched the issue and released its findings a couple months ago. One of the biggest issues is typosquatting brand names and parking ... read more ...

.EU eve - It’s kind of like New Years’ Eve – open registration for .eu domain names begins tomorrow. If you have a mailing address in the EU, that is. People without addresses in the European Union are not allowed to register .eu domains. Dotster is offering a $14.95 special on .eu domains if you use coupon code ‘1495EU’. The domain name community is watching the .eu launch — one of the biggest domain launches in history — with great curiousity. The trademark ... read more ...

Canada sentences domain name scammer - The Canadian government has slapped a domain name scammer with a $40,000 fine and a 5 years prohibation notice. Daniel Klemann tried the classic “renewal scam” in which he sent renewal notices to 73,000 businesses and non-profits in Canada. The notices implied that the recipients’ domain names were expiring and needed to be renewed. However, the domain names were not registered at Klemann’s company: The Internet Registry of Canada, which offered an Internet ... read more ...

.mobi gears up - .mobi, the new domain extension for mobile browsing, is about to enter the sunrise period. Have you ever tried to visit a web site on your mobile phone? You probably ran into all sorts of compatibility issues unless you visited a special URL like wap.yahoo.com. Soon you’ll be able to visit Yahoo.mobi instead. The .mobi domain is designed for web sites to operate on portable devices with small screens. Here’s the schedule for .mobi registrations: May 22-May ... read more ...

Interview with “Father of a Internet” - I came across an interesting interview with Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the Internet. What would Berners-Lee change about the internet addressing system if he could start from scratch? Looks like the biggest thing is to drop a slash (/): Looking back on 15 years or so of development of the Web is there anything you would do differently given the chance? I would have skipped on the double slash – there’s no need for it. Also I would have put the ... read more ...

Softsquatting a American Idols - Here’s an interesting term: “Softsquatting”, as mentioned in a recent Wired article. Look at how many American Idol finalists have been either Softsquatted or Cybersquatted! The term refers to people that register the domain names of up-and-coming stars before they become household names. The article explains that softsquatters don’t try to sell the domains to the celebrities for a king’s ransom, but try to forge a partnership with the celeb instead. With ... read more ...

Domain scams increasing - It appears that the number of domain name scam e-mails is increasing. Over the past few days I’ve received a number of emails from people that received solicitations to sell their domains but the buyers turned out to be scammers. With the large number of people entering the domain investing world I think this is a good time to send out a warning about domain scams. Two common scams that I’ve discussed on Domain Name Wire are the appraisal scam and trademark ... read more ...

Domain check finally gets press coverage - A story I discussed almost 6 weeks ago is finally hitting the mainstream press — Sen. Max Baucus of Montana has introduced a bill to require adult web sites to relocate to a .xxx domain. As I discussed on February 6, the bill is a threat to all domain name owners: This is not a decision in which the US government should have a hand. That’s why ICANN was set up-to handle policy. The notion of taking away a .com domain name from its rightful owner is shameful and ... read more ...

VeriSign Speaks - Rick White, a member of VeriSign’s Internet Advisory Board, has published an op-ed about the .com price hike agreement with ICANN on CNET. White suggests that increasing security risks demand more investment by VeriSign in the .com infrastructure, hence the opportunity to jack up registry prices by about a third: For example, security giant Symantec reports that denial-of-service attacks are up 679 percent in the past year. These attacks are increasingly hindering ... read more ...

VeriSign spin appurtenance moves into high gear - An article about denial-of-service attacks is actually a well-placed VeriSign PR campaign. Earlier today I wrote about an op-ed by a Verisign Internet Advisory Board member that suggested that VeriSign needs to hike .com prices in order to handle security. A seemingly unrelated story that hit the wires this afternoon features VeriSign talking about denial-of-service attacks that hit major web sites earlier this year. This is not a coincidence. Afterall, it mentions ... read more ...

People’s Daily new essay about Chinese domains - China’s People’s Daily has released a story including a denial by China’s Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). CNNIC, the registry of .CN ccTLD, released a statement about the story originally reported by People’s Daily that China was breaking away from ICANN’s DNS. The article in today’s People’s Daily says: In a statement issued on Friday, CNNIC points out that the report is inaccurate and “the corresponding reporter lacks the understanding ... read more ...

How we can assistance quarrel Verisign’s latest deal - The settlement between ICANN and Verisign, approved by ICANN just this week, will mean higher prices on .com domains. How can you fight this settlement? Now that ICANN has approved the deal, the arrangement must be approved by the Department of Commerce. You can help apply pressure to the Department of Commerce by contacting your representatives in Congress. Here’s where to find your representatives’ contact information: SenateHouse Bob Parson’s has an example ... read more ...

Confusion over China’s domain names - A few days after China announced new domain names there are still lingering questions. New reports suggest that China isn’t creating a new domain name system outside of the existing one. They blame an english language story in China’s People’s Daily for creating the confusion. The question is whether the new domain extensions will operate under the existing .cn extension. Although the new media reports suggest China is not creating an alternate route system, ... read more ...

New domain name scam - Beware a new take on the old registration transfer scam. If you’ve owned domain names for any period of time then you’ve surely received letters in the mail notifying you that you need to renew your domains. But if you look closely you see that the company sending the correspondence is not related to your current registrar. If you sign the form they send you then you actually are transferring your domain to a different registrar at a high price. The scam has ... read more ...

China’s .com ambitions – what does it mean? - China has announced its own internet address naming system – but what are the implications? If you haven’t already heard, China has announced that it is releasing its own domain name system. It will be used in China as competition to ICANN’s domain name system that almost 100% of the “rest of the world” uses. To rub salt in the face of the internet, China is going to offer .com, .net, and .org domains. Yep, just like the domains the rest of us use. What ... read more ...

ICANN approves Verisign Deal - ICANN’s Board of Directors has voted to approve the Verisign – ICANN agreement. The controversial agreement will give Verisign control of the .com registry through at least 2012. It also includes provisions for dramatic price increases for the wholesale price of domain names. According to ICANN: These settlement documents include a new registry agreement relating to the operation of the .COM registry. The new .COM registry agreement will now proceed to the U.S. ... read more ...