English

Hope you're planning to be in Paris this June for the much-anticipated ICANN meeting. For those of you that are, I thought it might be nice for you to get an idea of where you're going and what the venue will be like. So here's a few shots of the Méridien Montparnasse, the hotel where the meeting will take place. And by the way, if you'd like to drop by and see us while you're in Paris, please do! INDOM's offices are right in the center of Paris, just next to the famous "Printemps" department store (see bottom pic).

The venue hotel's main entrance

ICANN meetings are traditionally held over a full week, starting on a Monday and ending on the following Friday with a Board meeting. But ICANN is currently considering running a shortened program for the upcoming Paris meeting, which would thus end on Thursday June 26. Watch the official Paris meeting website for confirmation.

I was initially only going to write about this story in French, mainly because I didn't really want to repeat in English the opinions I'd already voiced in a French-language post on the subject.

But an eCommerceTimes article I read since writing that post has infuriated me enough to get me going on this subject again…

Just for you non-French speakers out there, this is all about the new storm brewing around Network Solutions. This time, it's over Netsol's decision to suspend the website of controversial far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders. His site was used to promote an upcoming film about the man's obsession: showing that the Koran is a racist book and getting it banned in Holland.

Netsol suspended the website and put the message used as this post's illustration up instead. The company has explained that the domain name hasn't been locked and that Wilders can do what he wants with it. Netsol is apparently just not comfortable with hosting content which might possibly spark the similar kind of racial tensions seen around the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed

I've since read many articles critical of this decision to suspend the site, but none quite so one-sided as the eCommerceTimes. Under the heading "Domain Name Registrars: The Weakest Link in Online Free Speech", the writer of this piece argues that for people who want to take down offending content, the easiest way nowadays isn't to go after the site's publisher, but the registrar behind the website. These "usually anonymous Internet players will fold like a tent in the face of an impending storm" says ECT's Erika Morphy.

2007's Lisbon meeting was the last time the ICANN board voted against .XXX (pictured here, on the left, is current chair Peter Dengate Thrush, who had not yet replaced Vint Cerf at the time). Photo SVG.

I'd actually almost forgotten about .XXX, or "dot triple ex" as it's so often called. I won't go over the details of the Internet's proposed extension for the adult industry's sad and sorry saga, except to remind everyone that .XXX was one of the new extensions considered by ICANN as part of the last (2003) round of new gTLDs – the same that has given us the .MOBIs, .ASIAs and .TELs of this world.

Where the story got interesting was that .XXX was actually initially approved by ICANN's board in 2005. That approval was later rescinded as ICANN apparently gave in to what .XXX sponsor ICM Registry claimed was US government pressure and intervention.

Having already invested millions, the man behind ICM Registry, British entrepreneur Stuart Lawley, was never going to give up easily. And it soon became clear that the battle for .XXX would move out of Internet governance circles and into the courts.

Threatening lawsuits against ICANN, ICM got the Board to look at .XXX again. And that's where we last left .XXX: with yet another resounding NO from the ICANN board at the Lisbon, Portugal meeting, in early 2007.

DotAsia's launch process is now over, with only the go-live phase remaining (when the extension will be open to anyone on a first-come, first-served basis).

The stats show that so-called "sponsored" generic extensions (i.e. ones that are supposed to represent a community, be it business, geographical or other) can be a success… as long as their registrations requirements remain relatively open.

The registry's official numbers are 505,838 domain name applications. We are talking applications here, and not outright domains: for example, there were 45,697 names which were applied for more than once during the landrush (add to that the 1,051 names which had multiple sunrise requests) and which will now go to auction, where the highest bidding applicant will get the name. The total number of applications received during landrush was 473,633. The rest (up to that 505,838 number) were domains applied for during the previous phases (sunrise and pioneer).

Interesting to see that, although the word "sex" remained the most sought after during the .ASIA sunrise (14 prior-right claims), buy.asia became the most popular name during the landrush with over 400 applicants.

There really does seem to be no stopping the domain name market these days. A while back, I suggested that domains were immune to the current bear market environment. Well according to the latest stories from the industry, I was right.

First off there's this new high-figure sale of a domain name that was reported by Dominik Mueller. ESS Data Recovery have reportedly paid $1.7 million for dataRecovery.com. The company explained that it was buying the domain to rise above the growing mass of data recovery companies out there.

Well, there's no arguing with that logic. As unique identifiers on the world's most universal medium, domain names providing undeniable value to people and entities who want to make sure they can easily be found by anyone and everyone.

In fact, the domain market as a whole continued to rise at an impressive rate in 2007, according to figures just released by .COM registry Verisign. A total of 33 million new names were registered worldwide in 2007, for a new total name pool of 153 million.

There's definitely no bear market at the moment as far as domain names are concerned.