ICANN has revoked EstDomains’ right to register domain names, citing the CEO’s recent conviction on cybercrime charges for the reason for the decision. The Washington Post has been pushing this case in recent months and in an article announcing the decision by ICANN notes the move “comes less than two months after Security Fix published a report translated from Estonian into English showing that EstDomains CEO Vladimir Tsastsin was convicted in February of credit card fraud, document forgery and other cyber crime charges — and that EstDomains was a haven for cyber criminals who wanted to register Web sites that supported a range of criminal activity.” … more

Sedo wants you to join their brainstorming process by participating in this quick and painless (they hope) survey. By collecting your thoughts on Sedo’s search options, fixed pricing, and overall marketplace, they can gain a better understanding of our strengths and which areas we need to improve upon. … more

An additional explanatory memorandum [PDF, 133K] is being posted today for public comments [icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-comments-en.htm] to assist with the understanding of the implementation work related to morality and public order objections in New gTLDs. The memorandum is also available for download at the New gTLD Program webpage. … more

After two highly successful years, large and small companies continue to seek quality presence on mobile Web with .mobi

[news release] dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi Internet domain designed to help consumers find content that works on mobile phones, today announced that more than one million .mobi domains have been registered since its launch two years ago. … more

[news release] The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), in consultation with the ICANN Registrar Constituency and several domain name registrars, has published a “best practices” advisory for registrars to help them implement mechanisms to make it more difficult to register and use domains for illicit uses such as phishing, a confidence scheme used to dupe consumers out of personal financial information. … more

Internet banking in Brazil has become much safer with the launch of the new second level domain “B.br”.

Since September 24 banks in Brazil have been able to register their domain names under “B.BR”. This new second level domain is only available for financial institutions and is intended to allow safe transactions for the almost 30 million people that use internet banking in Brazil. … more

Sedo’s weekly list of their top sales has just been released, with a very topical name given the financial crisis being their number one seller last week. The domain name, MoneyWatch.com sold for US$125,000 and was more than double the second biggest .com seller (faire-part.com - €46,501/~US$58,100). … more

TRAFFIC Down Under is fast approaching and the organisers want potential visitors to note there has been a collapse in the value of the Australian dollar against the U.S. dollar. As well the Aussie dollar has fared badly against the Euro and Pound. So that trip down under has just got cheaper, especially if you haven’t paid for your accommodation yet. … more

The ICANN Board has asked for additional community input on the appropriate role and representation of individual commercial and non-commercial Internet users in the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO). Faced with a number of different recommendations stemming from various independent reviews and GNSO and user-community group efforts, the Board continues to consider this issue and believes that comments from the community, especially stakeholders in the GNSO, ALAC and At-Large groups, and any relevant applicants for new constituencies, would be particularly helpful. … more

Request For Information: ICANN Seeks Expressions of Interest from Registrars to Receive Bulk Transfer of Names from De-Accredited Registrar EstDomains

As the result of the de-accreditation of EstDomains, Inc. (IANA ID 832), ICANN is seeking Statements of Interest from ICANN-accredited registrars that are interested in assuming sponsorship of the gTLD names that had been managed by EstDomains. … more

There are significantly more domain name registrations for Barack Obama than John McCain research by IDG found using DomainTools. … more

The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is one of the main issues addressed this week at RIPE 57 in Dubai - hosted by Etisalat. This is the first meeting for the RIPE NCC (Network Coordination Centre) in Dubai. … more

ICANN’s October edition of their monthly magazine is out and features articles on the upcoming Cairo meeting, an overview of recent Board decisions, an interview with COO Doug Brent, the latest policy developments and news from around the world, and more… … more

ICANN is pleased to make the Draft Implementation Plan for the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process available for public discussions. The Draft Implementation Plan can be found here [PDF, 297K]. … more

The comedian Sarah Silverman is interviewed by the wonderful Jonathan Ross. As part of the introduction, Ross plays a stand-up clip from Silverman in which she asks how to deal with the rage of 9/11. Well, Silverman’s answer was to put it into domain names. … more