Category Archive

During the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, ICANN CEO engaged in an interview in which he touted the purported benefits of the new gTLD program. Unfortunately, in the course of those remarks he appeared to accuse domain portfolio owners of “hogging names” as well as equate them with “cybersquatters”. Many ICA members felt that these remarks were …

Elections do have consequences. Last year outgoing Senate Commerce Committee Chairman (D-WV) Jay Rockefeller resisted member requests to engage in oversight on the Obama Administration’s March 2014 announcement that it intended to end the U.S. counterparty role on the IANA functions contract and turn the responsibility over to the global multistakeholder community. But incoming Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) will …

The ICA, speaking on behalf of domain investors and developers, has joined with other organizations representing civil society, internet domain registries, internet service providers and internet companies to communicate their joint concerns regarding a “trademark package” currently being considered by the Council of the European Union. Adoption of language under consideration could lead to adverse judicial actions brought against domain …

ICA Counsel Philip Corwin has been elected by the members of ICANN’s Business Constituency to be one of the two Councilors representing it on the GNSO Council. The Council is the policymaking body for all gTLD-related issues. It will review and decide whether to endorse the proposals eventually produced by the two cross community working groups currently focused on the …

The Congressional Internet Caucus held its 15th annual State of the Net conference today at The Newseum in Washington, DC. This is traditionally a start the new year networking and information update day for the capital’s technology policy set. Immediately following the lunch break, at a session titled “Internet Functions in Transition: Is the US and the World Ready?”, NTIA …

ICANN staff have requested a six-month delay in the delivery date of a Preliminary Issue Report on the “current state of all rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) implemented for both existing and new gTLDs, including but not limited to the UDRP and the URS”.  The request is contained in a January 5, 2015 e-mail sent by ICANN  Senior Policy Director Mary …

While the debate continues as to whether most new gTLDs are a sound long-term investment for their registry operators, there’s no disputing that the program has been an economic boom for ICANN. The 1,930 first round applications each required an application fee of $185,000, which added up to a tidy $357 million. Even after refunds for withdrawn applications ICANN still …

While we are not privy to the details, we have received word that there has been a settlement in the litigation brought by Chan Luu against Grant Shellhammer and Online Growth. As we first reported in early October, more than 5,000 domain names were said to have been transferred by VeriSign to Uniregistrar after it was served with a sealed …

ICA Counsel Philip Corwin has been appointed to the first Stakeholder Council ever established for .US, the country code top level domain (ccTLD) of the United States. The Charter of this new Council sets its Scope of Work as follows: The Council will address matters related to the operation of the usTLD in the interest of the usTLD user community. …

ICANN 51 taking place in Los Angeles this week may not have its customary evening Gala, but it opened with rousing remarks by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker in the first-ever ICANN appearance of the head of the Cabinet agency from which it was born and which has exercised continuous oversight of its key IANA functions. The themes of …