ICANN Legal Rights Objections: What’s Past Is Prologue

As of today, panelists at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Arbitration and Mediation Center have decided 12 trademark-based legal rights objections to a proposed top-level domain under the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ new gTLD initiative. They rejected every one, almost categorically so. With 53 legal rights objections remaining to be decided, the …

ICANN Launches Digital Innovation Platform, ICANNLabs

Los Angeles, California… ICANN has unveiled a new digital platform intended to foster collective experimentation and innovation to increase the levels of community-wide engagement. The platform, called ICANNLabs, can be accessed at labs.icann.org. Anyone can sign up to receive updates and provide feedback. The platform will create a truly transparent process, essential to ICANN and …

ICANN’s Durban Meeting saw the Signing of New Registrar and Registry Agreements

This is a huge accomplishment,” said Fadi Chehadé, ICANN President and CEO. “We can see the last mile before the first new TLD is activated in the Internet’s root.”  Chehadé made the comments during a ceremonial signing at the opening session of ICANN’s 47th Public Meeting in Durban, South Africa. Three companies signed the Registry …

DotConnectAfrica requests for re-consideration of the NGPC Decision on its .africa application to the ICANN Governance Board

DotConnectAfrica is anticipating a review and reinstatement of their application for .africa gTLD string that has been in the center of controversy in the past two years since ICANN announced the major expansion of the Internet name space in Singapore. DotConnectAfrica’s application has been through enough hurdles that they have overcome. These include the change …

US Senate takes leadership of the ICANN new gTLD program

The US Senate has added its voice to the new gTLD process procedures. In a 26th June 2013 letter to ICANN, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the head  of the Senate Commerce Committee told ICANN to “tread carefully” in opening up new gTLD’s follow GAC advice and consider a limited roll out of first round gTLD’s: Most …

ICANN suspends closed generic top level domain bids

Temporarily freezes move that could have led to global corporates monopolising the WWW by privatising domains like .beauty or .book   The Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN) has put on hold a controversial decision to allot closed generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) to applicants. Governments and activists had feared that allotting such …

ICANN working group seeks to kill WHOIS

An ICANN working group is seeking input on a replacement for the current WHOIS system for retrieving details of domain name registrations An Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) working group is seeking public input on a successor to the current WHOIS system used to retrieve domain name information. The Expert Working Group …

ICANN Whois to be reinvented

ICANN has embarked on an effort to reinvent today’s WHOIS system. Be part of the solution and join the discussion…online and at ICANN‘s Durban meeting. As the Expert Working Group on gTLD Directory Services (EWG), we have proposed a paradigm shift – a new system in which gTLD registration data is collected, validated and disclosed …

ICANN warns AsiaRegister over late payments

Hong Kong based domain name registrar at risk of losing ICANN accreditation. ICANN has sent a breach notice to AsiaRegister, Inc. for its failure to pay past due accreditation fees. According to the breach notice sent yesterday, the Hong Kong registrar owes past due accreditation fees of $16,362.64. ICANN also says the registrar is not …