The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is raising awareness of a recently discovered vulnerability in the domain name system (DNS). This includes releasing an FAQ and an online tool for domain operators to test their domains. … more

Milton Mueller continues his prolific pronouncements on ICANN on the Internet Governance blog. In this posting he writes of a “small working group created at the Paris meeting [that] has come to an agreement about the voting distribution in ICANN’s policy making Council for domain names (the GNSO Council). … more

ICANN is finally taking steps to figure out what to do if a registry fails says Larry Seltzer in eWeek. Seltzer writes that ICANN is looking at what would happen when one of the critical infrastructure providers on the internet, such as VeriSign, were to fail. The article gives a background and says that while gTLD operators established a Registry Failure Task Force in 2001 to look into this question, nothing much happened until last year. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but the article notes interest in the issue rose again upon the failure of RegisterFly. … more

ICANN’s recent announcement they will begin a process to approve more gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains) has generated significant interest with a number of proposals mooted. One TLD that seems to be popular is .sport with two proposals announced. The second is dotSport LLC, a consortium led by its founder and chief executive officer Ron Andruff (former CEO and founder of Tralliance Corporation, the .travel Registry). … more

Later this month, InternetNZ and APNIC will jointly host APNIC 26, one of the most important meetings in 2008 for the Asia Pacific Internet community to discuss issues relating to domain names and internet governance for the region.

APNIC 26 is being held in Christchurch from 25 to 29 August 2008. The five-day meeting will continue the ongoing policy development process for the allocation of Internet resources, such as IP addresses in the Asia Pacific region. It also gives members of the Internet technical community the opportunity to continue to contribute to the ongoing development of the Internet, the importance of which is recognised by both the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the OECD. … more

The United States Government has said it has no intention of giving up its oversight role of the authoritative root zone file, the file that stores the database of how domain names are reached on the internet. … more

Request For Information: ICANN Seeks Expressions of Interest from Registrars to Receive Bulk Transfer of Names from De-Accredited Registrar #1 Domain Names International, Inc. dba 1dni.com

As the result of the de-accreditation of #1 Domain Names International, Inc. dba 1dni.com (IANA ID 101), 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 #1 Domain Names International, Inc. dba 1dni.com. … more

ICANN’s Contractual Compliance Department publishes its second semi-annual Registrar and Registry Contractual Compliance Audit Report. This report summarizes ICANN’s audit activities from October 2007 through June 2008. During this period, ICANN conducted three registrar contractual compliance audits and one registry contractual compliance audit. ICANN conducted each audit by following consistent audit procedures established before each audit commenced. This report contains details regarding the audit methodology, findings, observations and conclusions. … more

There has been a lot of interest in the international media regarding the International Olympic Committee’s disclosure “that some of its officials had struck a deal with Beijing organisers, allowing the Communist authorities to block sensitive internet sites” as reported by The Times. … more

ICANN is posting the summary [PDF, 85K] and final report [PDF, 561K] of the Independent Review of the ALAC submitted by Westlake Consulting. These documents will be available shortly in multiple languages.

ICANN is seeking public comment on the report. Details on the public comment forum can be found here. … more

For many years, the Internet community has been developing and enhancing a Domain Name System (DNS) security technology called DNSSEC.

ICANN’s strategic and operating [PDF, 480K] plans call for ICANN to be operationally ready to deploy DNSSEC at the root level and work with relevant stakeholders to determine how this should be implemented. With input from many stakeholders, ICANN has prepared a document describing this path to operational readiness for signing the root. … more

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has received a request from the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC) to run two pilot projects related to its implementation of the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), a press release by ICANN stated.

CAC was approved as a UDRP provider at the Board meeting on January 23, 2008.

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Former Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) domain manager Carolyn Gudmundson pleaded guilty to submitting false expense claims for buying and registering domain names to the tune of $1 million, according to sentencing records from the U.S. District Court in Seattle.

… more

by Michael Park, Senior Associate, Deacons Lawyers, Australia

ICANN recently approved draft proposals that would see the biggest ever expansion of domain name choice.

Under the draft proposals anyone would be allowed to apply for a generic top level domain (gTLD), resulting in an unlimited number of gTLDs. Currently, there are a limited number of gTLDs, including .com, .net and .gov (and .com.au, .net.au and .gov.au in Australia), which are strictly controlled by ICANN and each country’s internet regulatory authority (for example, .au Domain Administration for .au domain names). ICANN has introduced several new gTLDs, such as .biz, .travel and .asia, but the draft proposals could allow gTLDs such as .ebay and .yahoo. … more

Register for this event

Date: August 6th, 2008
Time: 10 AM EDT / 3 PM BST / 4 PM CEST

Managing IP will host a free web seminar, in association with Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services covering Internet liberalization: opportunities and challenges for IP owners … more