.Africa Founder Sophia Bekele Named Industry Trailblazer & Internet Governance Pioneer, by CIO

“Inspired to set up DotConnectAfrica, as its name aimes, to Connect Africa through a Single Pan-African domain name“ The CIO East Africa, an influential IT, Business and Leadership News Magazine talked to Sophia Bekele about her journey, taking stock of a decade of professional activities and achievements to date, in the ICT and DNS Industry, …

ccTLDs that have adopted the UDRP

The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) is certainly the most frequently used tool to combat cybersquatting — but, it is not always an option. Many countries have adopted their own domain name dispute policies — or none at all — in lieu of the UDRP.  Since the launch of the WIPO ccTLD Program …

XYZ acquires .Storage top level domain name

The company that runs the .xyz domain name, has added the 10th domain in its portfolio. XYZ has announced that it has acquired the .storage top level domain name. Self Storage Co., a subsidiary of self-storage giant Extra Space Storage, Inc., assigned rights to the TLD effective April 18. Self Storage Co. owns the domain …

Record labels win against ISPs to block piracy website KickassTorrent

Record labels have won against internet service providers to have piracy website KickassTorrent blocked. In Friday’s ruling, Justice Stephen Burley ordered ISPs including TPG, iiNet, Optus and Telstra to block KickassTorrent by blocking seven domain names including kat.al, kickass.cd and kickass.ukbypss.download. However, the record labels will have to pay $50 per domain name to have the piracy websites blocked. The ISPs have …

.feedback registry lacks transparency

.Feedback registry owner Top Level Spectrum (TLS) is in breach of its registry agreement says ICANN. In 2016, Adobe and Facebook among several other brands demanded an investigation into TLS arguing that the registry had perpetrated “deceptive practices in the .feedback top level domain in violation of its public interest commitments”. .feedback’ TLD, aims to …

Verisign 2016 4th Quarter Industry Brief Shows Registrations Expanding in All Categories

Verisign released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief, which covers th e last quarter of 2016, this week. The fourth quarter of 2016 closed with approximately 329.3 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of approximately 2.3 million domain name registrations, or 0.7 percent over the third quarter of 2016. …