Category Archive

  As we had noted last month, the .US ccTLD, which has been operated by Neustar under an NTIA contract since 2001, had solicited comment on proposals to release one and two character domains and to begin offering a privacy service to .US registrants – as well as to re-designate certain existing domains as “premium”. After some spirited internal discussion …

Once again, staff of ICANN’s Global Domains Division (GDD) has used a legacy gTLD’s contract renewal process to impose Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) on that gTLD — despite the fact that the URS is not an ICANN consensus policy applicable to legacy gTLDs. And, once again, the registry operator acquiescing to URS is reaping significant financial benefits as a reward …

It has been my honor for the past two years to have been a member of the .US TLD Stakeholder Council http://www.neustar.us/ustld-stakeholder-council and, in that capacity, to provide the perspective of domain investors and developers to the operation of the USA’s ccTLD. On Thursday, December 15th .US issued two important requests for public comment. The first relates to the potential …

Following up on its critical statement delivered to the ICANN Board at the recent Hyderabad public meeting, ICA submitted a Thanksgiving Day comment letter decrying the insertion of URS into the .XXX Registry Agreement (RA) via contract negotiation and declaring— “GDD staff should demonstrate their clear commitment to ICANN’s bottom-up policymaking process by ceasing and desisting from seeking top-down imposition …

At the recent ICANN 57 meeting held in Hyderabad, India a full Public Forum session was held on Tuesday, November 8th. Utilizing the open mike, ICA Counsel Philip Corwin addressed the ICANN Board regarding the recent announcement that ICM Registry had agreed to adopt the new gTLD rights protection mechanism (RPM) of Uniform rapid Suspension (URS) at the .xxx adult …

ICANN Global Domain Division (GDD) staff are at it again, engaging in top down policy decision-making through contract negotiations with older registries that pre-date the new gTLD program. The latest example is the announcement of a “Proposed Amendment to .XXX Registry Agreement to Transition to New Fee Structure and to Adopt Additional Safeguards” that would provide the adult content gTLD …

Verisign has just filed a Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealing that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved the extension of the .Com registry Agreement through November 30, 2024. We previously reported that, on September 15th, ICANN’s Board approved the .Com RA extension’ and simultaneously approved an extension of the existing $7.85 …

Earlier today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued its decision in Weinstein vs. Iran, a case in which families of terror victims sought to have ICANN turn over control of Iran’s .IR ccTLD to plaintiffs. In a unanimous decision the three judge panel stated, “On ICANN’s motion, the district court quashed the writs, finding the data …

On July 25th ICANN announced the publication of the Draft Report of the Independent Review of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). This study was coordinated for ICANN by the Analysis Group, in conjunction with researchers from the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford as well the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The Report’s Executive Summary provides a background on its …

It’s been almost six weeks since the NTIA announced “that the proposal developed by the global Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria NTIA outlined in March 2014 when it stated its intent to transition the U.S. Government’s stewardship role for the Internet domain name system (DNS) technical functions, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions”, and thereby signaled …