Instra Corporation, a global domain name and ENUM provider, is pleased to announce that it has become one of the first accredited Registrars in Asia by RegistryPro, the official registry for .PRO domains. Chloe Li, the Registry Liaison Manager of Instra, was pleased to accept our accreditation from Matt Buckland, the Director of Operations of RegistryPro, at the recent 35th ICANN meeting in Sydney. … more

As part of the comprehensive GNSO Improvements effort, last year the ICANN Board approved the formation of four new GNSO Stakeholder Groups (SGs). After considering proposed SG Charters that were submitted by the community and posted for public comment , the ICANN Board passed a Resolution in May directing its Structural Improvements Committee (SIC) and ICANN Staff to revise the SG Charters to make them consistent with the Board’s GNSO Improvements Report (and related Resolutions). … more

NIC México has announced the .MX country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) reached 300,000 registered domain names recently, with the number of registrations today standing at 309,112. Of these, 58,000 domain names registered in 2009 alone showing a rapid growth for the ccTLD. … more

In a move to allow domain names to be registered and accessible to as many people in the European Union as possible, the European Commission has announced speakers of Bulgarian and Greek will soon be able to have .eu websites in their own languages. … more

Sarah Deutsche is on a crusade against cybersquatters. Deutsche has sued many businesses involved in the illicit activity, recovering thousands of domain names that play off of Verizon’s brands. But what really irritates her, the Computerworld article says, is who the perpetrators are. All of the companies Verizon has sued for cybersquatting are domain-name registrars that have been accredited by ICANN. … more

In a detailed look at the problem of cybersquatters, Computerworld begins by looking at the case of the website FreeLegoPorn.com that “began publishing pornographic images created with Lego toys, trademark owner Lego Juris AS, which sells the popular plastic building blocks for children, acted quickly. ‘The content available on the site consisted of animated mini-figures doing very explicit things. We were not amused,’” Peter Kjaer, an attorney for Billund, Denmark-based Lego, told Computerworld. … more

With cybersquatters increasingly infringing on trademarks, business names and product names, as well as celebrity names, Computerworld has published their seven ways to avoid falling afoul of cybersquatters. … more

Abstract: This paper examines what was lost during the four years of experimenting with “multistakeholderism” in ICANN and what the stakes of the parties that influenced the policymaking process the most were. Building on Governmentality Studies’ understanding of the neo-liberal project of self-governance and Organization Studies’ collaboration theory, the document and discourse analysis of ICANN’s practices deconstructs the original model of a collaborative policymaking process conducted by a private multistakeholder corporation and formulates the expectations, stakes and strategies of the participating parties. Thus, it is suggested in the paper that, because the Internet technical elite was granted the managerial role in ICANN, the experts were able to influence the agenda of the policymaking process and its pace, and ultimately to take over the policy-proposal accumulation task and eliminate the working groups, which were open to all participants. … more

Rod Beckstrom was confirmed on Friday as the head of ICANN at the board meeting that concluded the week-long meeting. In his acceptance speech thanking the board for their appointment, Beckstrom described the organisation as “beautifully complex”, while he also described the position as CEO and president as “massively complex”. … more

ICANN has chosen security expert Rod Beckstrom as its preferred candidate to take over the role of chief executive and president, replacing Paul Twomey reports Australian IT. … more

Internationally-renowned chef Wolfgang Puck launched a bid for the .FOOD generic Top Level Domain at the ICANN Sydney meeting today. … more

The European Commission last week called for more transparency and multilateral accountability in the governance of the internet while praising ICANN saying that the organisation has worked well. … more

Following a very successful experiment with remote participation at the last meeting in Mexico City, ICANN have expanded its use to the main room for the Sydney meeting. … more

On 17 June 2009, ICANN received the attached communication from Catherine Sigmar, General Manager at Registry Services Corporation (dba RegistryPro) (see, icann.org/correspondence/sigmar-to-pritz-17jun09-en.pdf) requesting an amendment to the .PRO Registry Agreement (see, icann.org/en/tlds/agreements/pro/). … more

The Domain Roundtable Aftermarket.com auction catalogue has been posted and is available for early bidding at Aftermarket.com. Be the first to bid on a catalogue of high-quality premium domains before the LIVE auction on June 16th. … more