Brazil seeks India for global summit to discuss U.S. surveillance

Multistakeholder participation, processes and agenda await clarity Global outrage against recent revelations of mass surveillance by the U.S. government, which sparked discussions for a review of global surveillance guidelines, has led the Brazilian government to reach out to the Indian government for support for its proposal to host a one-off global summit, scheduled for early …

New GTLD Website Domain Name Buyers Could Be Paying Thousands in Registration and Renewal Fees

A GTLD domain name news article on the DomainIncite.com domain industry blog reveal interesting information about the cost of buying some of the new GTLD names that are soon to be available for business use. According to the article “There’s a provision in section 2.10 of the contract that is designed to “prohibit abusive and/or …

New TLD applicants stumped by objection results

Applicants ask ICANN to intervene in objection process. A dozen applicants for new top level domain names have sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN urging the group to step in and fix what they believe are flawed new top level domain objection results. The applicants are questioning the rhyme or reason to objection decisions, including …

“Coalition of the Willing” website launches! Who is behind it?

A website www.1net.org “Coalition of the Willing” website launches. This comes at a time when internet governance discussions are increasing, and also when internet privacy is being viewed as vulnerable especially following the NSA PRISM exposure. The website just launched but who is behind this new formation? Here is a post on the website: /1net …

NGPC Accepts GAC Category 1 and 2 Safeguard Advice

ICANN New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) has finally given its safeguard advice response to Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) The result of the NPGC action is that some new gTLD’s in the same vertical will be open to anyone who wants to register a domain name, while others will fall into the highly restricted category and can …

Goldman Sachs: Technology SA’s biggest area of underperformance

Technology is South Africa’s biggest area of economic underperformance, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. The report, entitled ‘Two Decades of Freedom’, highlights South Africa’s achievements since the establishment of democracy in 1994 and the challenges the country still faces. Though it said South Africa has made significant advancements in the last 20 …

Rwanda: DotConnectAfrica updates Transform Africa 2013 on the .africa Status

“We want the summit to acknowledge our success”. DotConnectAfrica was among over 1,500 delegates that included Seven African Heads of State Ministers and CEO’s of blue chip firms. The summit was Co-hosted by President Paul Kagame and Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with the aim of pooling together …

Technical Viability of Dotless Domain Names

“Dotless” TLDs Within the evaluation process there have evidently been a number of proposals that propose relatively novel use of these top level DNS labels, and the one I’d like to look at here is that of the so-called “dotless” domains proposed for the DNS root zone. It’s as if I had decided to revive …