International – Registrants get the ‘.club’, but are brand owners outside looking in?

With heavyweight endorser 50 Cent throwing his weight behind the ‘.club’ gTLD, the string has shot to the top of the gTLD registrations table. However, new research suggests that brand owners are shying away from making wholesale defensive registrations. At time of writing, ntldstats.com’s list of the top 10 gTLDs consists of:  ‘.club’ (61,713   domains …

Frédéric Riehl on NETmundial: ‘We’re not going to pull a rabbit out of a hat’

Brazil is playing host this week to the “World Cup of internet governance”, as technology magazine Wired put it. States, hi-tech firms and civil society players will compete over how the net is managed. A Swiss negotiator gives his insights. Frédéric Riehl, deputy director of the Federal Communication Office, is one of three Swiss negotiators …

35 U.S. Senators led by John Thune and Marco Rubio demand answers on ICANN transition

Apr 02 2014 Thune, Rubio Demand Answers from Administration on Internet Transition Washington, D.C. U.S. Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and 33 of their Senate Republican colleagues today sent a letter to Assistant Secretary of Commerce Larry Strickling, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), seeking clarification regarding the recent …

Breaking: House Republicans draft bill to block Internet oversight transition

A group of House Republicans in a press release introduced a bill Thursday that would prohibit the Obama administration from moving forward with its announced plans to relinquish oversight of the technical side of the Internet’s Web address system. “America shouldn’t surrender its leadership on the world stage to a ‘multistakeholder model’ that’s controlled by …

The African TLD .africa legal battles continues as ICANN overrides its own IRP Proceedings and signs a registry contract with ZACR

ICANN has on Monday 24 2014 signed a registry agreement with the ZA Central Registry NPC trading as Registry.Africa to operates the .africa top-level domain. The agreement comes even as DotConnectAfrica is going through ICANN’s own Independent IRP process. “Fortunately for ICANN, I think there’s a better chance of me getting elected Pope”, said DI’s …

Sarah Palin slams Obama administration’s decision to withdraw its oversight of ICANN

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday slammed the administration’s decision to withdraw its oversight of an Internet governance board, calling it a “colossal” error. The former Republican vice presidential candidate echoed concerns from other conservatives Wednesday in a Facebook post about the Obama administration’s move to cede oversight over the Internet Corporation for Assigned …