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.NYC gets official support
Saturday, February 21. 2009
Last week, on February 12th, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn made it clear that New Yorkers are serious about getting their own TLD. During the State of the City speech, Quinn said that New York would soon have its own place on the web with .NYC.
There are two kinds of CityTLD initiatives. Projects like .PARIS or .BCN (for Barcelona) have the support of the local authority from the word go. .PARIS is an fine example of that. You really couldn't imagine a stronger signal than that sent by deputy Paris Mayor Jean-Louis Missika last year. He opened the Paris ICANN meeting gala event with a speech in which he expressed the city's desire to get .PARIS!
The other kind of CityTLD initiative is the one started by private enterprise. That's what happened for .BERLIN and .NYC. The latter has been championed for years by Antony Van Couvering, who rejoiced on his blog a few days ago when .NYC was elevated to official New York City project status by Christine Quinn.
Support from the local authority is a must for any CityTLD because it is a prerequisite for ICANN to accept a CityTLD application. Looks like .NYC is set now. Good for them.
Two blogs in one.
Saturday, February 21. 2009
New gTLDs: 2nd Draft Applicant Guidebook now online!
Thursday, February 19. 2009
More delays for new gTLDs?
Wednesday, February 18. 2009
New gTLDs: 2nd Draft Applicant Guidebook about to be released
Wednesday, February 18. 2009
Question ICANN's chairman on the web!
Thursday, February 12. 2009
Is the IDN ccTLDs fast-track really needed?
Wednesday, February 11. 2009
In 2007, ICANN had a run of "My name, My language, My Internet" t-shirts printed to highlight the launch of a test website for 11 IDN scripts, which made the fast-track possible. The t-shirts had "example.test" written on them in the same 11 scripts.
Last year, ICANN sent 252 letters to the governments and ccTLD managers of the world to let them know that they would soon be able to request an IDN national suffix and asking them if they were interested in obtaining one.
Of the responses received so far - a total of 74, with a small number of respondents requesting confidentiality - 31 were expressions of interest from governments or ccTLD managers (who are generally either under direct government control or affiliated with their national authority in some way).
So that means a little over 12% take-up. Is that enough to justify a special procedure? I don't really think so to be honest, even though the level of interest for IDN extensions actually doesn't seem too bad. But the fast-track that ICANN is planning in order to hasten the launch of IDN ccTLDs while its full IDN program continues to be readied leaves me with a feeling of overkill.
Continue reading "Is the IDN ccTLDs fast-track really needed?"
The registrar black list
Monday, February 9. 2009
Last year, a site called KnujOn published a list of registrars who have the most domains linked to abuse (spam, etc.) under management. A 2009 version of that list has just been published.
It makes fascinating reading as it shows that, while some registrars have obviously taken no action whatsoever following KnujOn's (pronounced without the "k", the name is actually "no junk" written backwards) 2008 publication, others have reacted strongly.
Top registrar on the KnujOn black list remains Xin Net. But the next 3 are now leading American domain registration companies eNom, Network Solutions and Register.com. This may be a dangerous place to be for those registrars.
Last year, when ICANN learned of the KnujOn top ten, it acted towards two of the highlighted registrars, Beijing Innovative and Joker. Under threat of loosing their registrar accreditation, both companies apparently did what was needed and have now disappeared from the KnujOn list altogether.
Registrars still on the list may want to react as well, lest they find themselves in breach of their accreditation agreement with ICANN…
Confirmed: new gTLD fees will be changed
Thursday, February 5. 2009
What goes on at a regional registrar meeting
Wednesday, February 4. 2009
ICANN meetings aren't all major-league gatherings of a thousand or more people. Some are more focused work meetings for a specific part of the ICANN community. Like the regional meetings that ICANN holds twice or three times a year (there's no set rhythm) for registries and registrars.
These are an invaluable opportunity for domain name professionals to meet and talk about the issues that affect them directly. Regional meetings are also a great way to explain to people who might not be familiar with the ICANN process how they can get involved.
For example, it was at the European registrar meeting in 2007 that, having listened to Registrar Constituency chair Jon Nevett give a presentation, I decided that INDOM should become an RC member. Since then, in a little over a year, I've gone from newbie to being involved in the RC Excom as Treasurer and now as the RC's European representative on the GNSO Council. So I'd say I'm living proof that outreach efforts at these regional meetings really do work ☺
ICANN obviously thinks so too as they have published the presentations made during the regional meeting we had at the end of January in Rome. This is a first and what looks like an excellent idea so that people who didn't attend may still get a grasp of what goes on during these regional meetings.
As an added personal bonus, one of the presentations being published was the one I gave to explain what being a GNSO Council rep involves and how the Council works ☺
