In a newsletter to members, the Internet Commerce Association has expressed its “opposition and frustration” to the Kentucky Governor’s seizure of over 140 gambling-related domain names through a court order. … more

Third level registrations for the .cm ccTLD will be launched on 15 October with .com.cm, net.cm and co.cm domains all available. The launch will commence with a sunrise period for trademark holders and on 15 November registrations will be open to all.

NETCOM acknowledge .cm is a typo for .cn, but it is also a typo for .com. However with registrations at the third level, the confusion here should be somewhat minimised. … more

Are we or aren’t we running out of internet addresses? Well, the answer of course is yes, but as The Guardian’s Jack Schofield says, this story is ten years old. “What’s really happening is a too-slow transition to [IPv6]“. … more

The Greater Portland region in the United States state of Oregon has put its hand up for a gTLD with a push from the local community for the .pdx gTLD. … more

The Ministry of Communications in Colombia has prepared a resolution for regulating the management of the .co (Colombia) ccTLD. Currently the ministry is preparing a process for a tender that will see the .co ccTLD registry run by a third party. … more

An initial draft version of the RFP for new gTLDs, an “Applicant Guidebook”, is due to be published by ICANN prior to their Cairo meeting in early November. … more

Domain name registrars are being brought into the fight against child pornography in the United States, with registrars being included among those required to report child pornography. Failure to do so will be a federal crime. … more

ICANN today posted the schedule for its public Meeting to be held in Cairo 2-7 November.

The meeting, which also serves as ICANN’s 2008 annual general meeting, takes place at the InterContinental CItyStars Hotel, Cairo. … more

The Internet Commerce Association is aware of the extreme concern of ICA members regarding the action of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear ordering the seizure of 141 gaming related domain names. It appears that there may be no statutory basis for this unprecedented action, that Kentucky may lack sufficient jurisdictional grounds and that it also may violate the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. … more

Norid, the ccTLD registry for .no (Norway) announced this week there were now 400,000 registrations of .no domain names, increasing tenfold in ten years. Today there are 400,331 domain names registered. … more

Today ICANN is opening a public comment period on a proposed bylaw revision [PDF, 21K] from the ICANN Nominating Committee. The proposed revision would update the diversity requirements for selecting ICANN Board members to include domicile with country of citizenship. … more

In an effort to clamp down on illegal and unregulated online gambling, the Kentucky Govenor Steve Beshear sought and was granted an order transferring the domain names of 141 illegal online gambling sites to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

This is the first action of its type against online gambling operators that has led to the seizure of domain names. The list includes bodoglife.com, doylesroom.com and fulltiltpoker.com. The first of these, bodoglife.com, has also been in the news over disputes over the bodog.com domain name earlier this year. … more

by Darshaun Nadeau

Ever sat at one of the VeriSign “State of the domain” meetings at any of the ICANN meetings? Or read their reports about countries with the greatest opportunity in domains? Almost without question you will learn that Japan is earmarked as the country with the greatest opportunity for growth in the domain market. They take into consideration important factors such as GDP of a country, internet population, and current domain registration levels. With this they compare registrations with nations from around the world to come up with some predicted level of domain registrations a country should have. … more

Two-hundred highly desired domain names, including boys.mobi, cellphones.mobi, games.mobi, stamps.mobi and xxx.mobi to be made available

dotMobi – the company behind the .mobi internet domain designed to help consumers find mobile-friendly content – today announced a special online auction for 200 highly desired premium .mobi domain names including actors.mobi, bands.mobi, blackjack.mobi, boys.mobi, cellphones.mobi, doctors.mobi, games.mobi, homeloans.mobi, house.mobi, model.mobi, quotes.mobi, racing.mobi, stamps.mobi, vip.mobi and xxx.mobi. … more

As a result of the de-accreditation of registrar Best Registration Services, Inc. dba BestRegistrar.com (”BRS”), ICANN initiated a process to identify a gaining registrar to receive BRS’s gTLD names. In accordance with ICANN’s Interim Terminated Registrar Transition Procedure (see icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-06jun08-en.htm), on 6 June 2008, ICANN initiated a Request for Statements of Interest (RFI) from registrars interested in receiving the names. … more