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

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

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

Melbourne, Australia - Instra Corporation, an ICANN accredited registrar and Communications Service Provider, has revived ENUM with its commercial launch of PhNUM®.

PhNUM® was developed in-house by Instra and offers a convergence of the Internet and the Public Service Telephone Network (PSTN), to offer practical telephony and data services to the end-user.

PhNUM® is powered by ENUM technology based on specifications defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (RFC 3761). It allows users to redirect incoming phone calls to the ENUM domain to telephony, fax, email and much more. The technology is device independent and is immediately accessible from all public telephone networks upon activation. … more

Instra Corporation, a global Domain Name and ENUM provider, is pleased to announce that it has successfully received a Research & Development Grant (R&D Tax Concession) from the Australian Government.

The R&D Tax Concession was introduced in 1986 to encourage Australian industry to undertake research and development activities. It aims to make eligible companies more internationally competitive by encouraging innovative products, processes and services and by promoting technological advancement and strategic R&D planning. … more

The greatest threats to the internet are not cyber threats, but the threat of inappropriate public policy, Paul Twomey, the CEO and President of ICANN, told told the annual AusCERT in Australia last week. … more

[news release] SIDN, the .nl registry, saw its portfolio of domain names grow by 495,673 in 2008. The 18 per cent net increase in the number of registered .nl domain names brought the year-end total to 3,191,127. These figures were reported in SIDN’s annual report for 2008. … more

Nominet have announced that they have launched ENUM in the UK, a new registry service that combines telephone numbers and the Domain Name System to simplify the way that VoIP calls (telephone calls made over the Internet) work. It will allow companies and their customers and suppliers to make free or cheaper calls. … more

The ongoing GNSO Improvements process has created significant community interest in the formation of new GNSO constituencies and several groups have stepped forward to begin the process of forming a new GNSO constituency. The ICANN Board has now received its first formal petition - from the prospective CyberSafety Constituency. All members of the ICANN community and the public are now invited to review the petition and charter of the CyberSafety Constituency and share comments with the Board through 5 April 2009. … more

Documents lodged with the Supreme Court of Queensland reveal a disturbing picture of sharp practice and summary staff dismissals at Au domain name industry regulator - au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA).

The legal action brought by Melbourne registrar - Domain Directors - stopped auDA from stripping the company of a domain name it has been using for 8 years. auDA CEO Chris Disspain gave Domain Directors just 48 hours to respond before he ordered AusRegistry to delete the name and cripple the company’s web-site.But it was auDA’s compliance officer, Shayne Honey, who was summarily dismissed in the wake of the incident.

http://www.ecommercereport.com.au/login/story80.php

The Mexico City meeting is now accessible on your phone.

So if you are attending the conference next week but can’t remember which meeting is on at which time or in what room, you can now access the information directly and quickly using your cell or mobile phone. … more

[news release] Domain Invest (www.domaininvest.lu) announces the auction of the Domain Name voodoo.com on the 21st February during the Domainer Mardi Gras auction held in New Orleans, at a start price of US$300,000. … more

Domain Pulse 2009, the premier annual domain name conference for the German-speaking countries, took place this year in the beautiful Germany city of Dresden. While domain names are the focus of Domain Pulse, DENIC, this year’s organisers, diversified the conference to also include internet governance issues such as political campaigning and web 2.0, publicly financed media and the internet, the mobile internet, identity theft and advertising online. … more

ICANN is today opening a public comment forum on a proposed amendment from NeuStar to Appendix 6 and 7 of the .BIZ Registry Agreement. … more

The ALAC Review Working Group (WG) has released its draft Final Report [PDF, 309K] presenting its conclusions on ALAC improvements.

The report is posted for discussion and consultation with the ICANN Community, including at the forthcoming ICANN Meeting in Mexico City in March 2009. After the closure of the period for consultation and public comment, the Final Report will be issued and submitted to the Structural Improvements Committee for consideration and submission to the Board for decision. … more