Chinese Community Steps Forward for Chinese TLDs – Forms Generation Panel for Root Zone Label Generation Ruleset (LGR)

ICANN announces that the Generation Panel for the Chinese Script Root Zone Label Generation Rules (LGR) has been seated. Following the Call for Generation Panels to Develop Root Zone Label Generation Rules published on 11 July 2013, the Chinese script community has developed and submitted to ICANN, on 27 August 2014, the Proposal for the …

.SCOT: Scotland’s Internet Identity in the Face of Independence

Scotland’s vote for independence this Thursday brings with it a stack of issues to consider, including the potentially sovereign nation’s currency, economic stability, budget deficits, taxes and involvement in the European Union. But Scotland also faces another kind of fight: a digital one, involving its country code TLD. If Scotland decides to leave the United …

Staff vs Stakeholders as ICANN’s accountability comes under the radar

This weekend ICANN launched a new public comment period on enhancing its accountability and governance. However, its approach to the issue has come under fire, with questions raised over the lack of community input into the current process. In June, World Trademark Review reported on a call from the Generic Names Supporting Organisation’s (GNSO) various …

The 9th Internet Governance Forum to be held in Istanbul, Turkey

The 2014 and 9th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting will be held in Istanbul, Turkey from 2 to 5 September 2014.. The overarching theme of the Istanbul meeting is: Connecting Continents for Enhanced Multistakeholder Internet Governance. This year’s meeting will build on previous IGFs and further the dialogue on Internet governance and emerging Internet issues. …

Panel interprets Declarations as binding on the .Africa IRP, Lectures ICANN on core accountability implications

The IRP Panel has made yet the boldest statement that is set to shake ICANN’s legal team. These statements have been made explicitly in the latest IRP Procedural ruling that states Based on the foregoing and the language and content of the IRP Procedure, the Panel concludes that this Declaration and its future Declaration on …

Verisign Study reveals new gTLD usage patterns, but treat figures with caution

A recent study, by EURid and the Leuven Statistics Research Centre, set out to better understand the most common usage of websites that are linked to domains, and we thought it would be an interesting exercise to extend similar analysis to the new gTLD market.  So, we analyzed all second-level domains registered in new gTLDs …

Internet ‘global stakeholders’ handover sparks controversy

NOBODY owns the entire Internet, but forthcoming changes will have worldwide impact on its use for everything from commerce to political speech, writes Dr James Jay Carafano. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit private American company, currently manages core functions including assigning and managing domain names and IP addresses, under …