During last year’s election, were you hoping to read-up on Barack Obama’s abortion stance? Too bad, if you went to Obama ForPresident.com. It featured crossword puzzles and fantasy football rather than public-policy papers. Were you looking to volunteer for U.S. Senate candidate John Sununu? If you visited JohnSununu.com, it allowed you to sign up for a free online dating service but not to sign on to a political campaign. Did you want to help finance John McCain’s bid for the presidency? During much of the 2008 campaign season, a contribution submitted through the official-looking JohnMcain.com would have supported a man in Houston, Texas, without one nickel funding McCain’s run for the White House. … more

Predictions for the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses in 2010 by IANA will not come true reports Enterprise Networking Planet, but it will happen in the next two to three years. … more

While you could call it a meaningless poll, for those who want to voice their opinion on what ccTLD will be huge in years to come there is a poll currently underway that allows you to vote. … more

Abstract: A domain name is a unique alphanumeric designation that facilitates reference to sets of numbers which actually locate a particular computer on the Internet. Domain names are a fundamental part of the Internet’s user interface. Improving the usability of the Internet depends upon effective domain name policy. This study is intended to contribute to improvement in Internet usability for the end users of domain names. Benefits of more usable domain names include: higher sales, customer satisfaction and productivity, and reduced support costs. … more

The running out of IPv4 address and the need to adopt IPv6 is being addressed around the world, although with not enough urgency. Sweden is in the same position as other countries, and the registry for .SE domain names, .SE, has found that neither the Swedish internet industry nor its business or public sector customers have done much to prepare for the transition to IPv6. This is evident in three recent surveys concerning supply and demand of IPv6 services. … more

One of the longest established candidates for a new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD), dotBERLIN, have denied reports that .BERLIN domain names will cost €30 each, assuming the gTLD is approved in ICANN’s gTLD process. … more

Abstract: Rights over Domain Names (DNs) arise from the contract that governs the relationship of the DN registrant with the registrar (the entity that undertakes DNs registration on the internet). Additionally, rights may also be established under Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) created and governed by the statute concerned. This paper provides a comparative analysis of DNs protection in the field of intellectual property law. Focus is centred upon the study of the Israeli and Palestinian law. … more

A small number of registries and registrars are responsible for three-quarters of child porn websites says the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in their annual report released this week.

The IWF found 74 per cent of child sexual abuse domains they traced are commercial operations selling indecent images of children with 76 per cent of these (some 850 unique domains) are registered with just ten unnamed domain name registries. Of these, five registries and registrars accounted for 55 per cent of all the commercial child sexual abuse domains known to IWF during 2008. … more

Telnic, the registry operator for .TEL, have launched a free Microsoft Outlook plug-in application that will enable anyone with Outlook to have their address book updated dynamically. … more

The global financial crisis has impacted on domain name registrations with global domain registrations rising 16 per cent in 2008 to a total of 177 million domain names compared to a 27 percent increase in 2007. Overall in 2008 there were approximately 300,000 less domain name registrations each quarter than there were in 2007, according to the fourth quarter 2008 Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign. … more

Michael Collins, Executive Director of the Internet Commerce Association has announced his resignation from his post with the organisation in an email to members of the ICA. … more

In Netcraft’s January 2009 survey, they received responses from 185,497,213 sites, reflecting what Netcraft has described as “an uncharacteristic monthly loss of 1.23 million sites.” … more

Abstract: In this article, Moringiello analyse’s the opinion in Network Solutions, Inc. v. Umbro International, Inc., the case that sparked much discussion about whether an internet domain name can be considered “property” of the registrant. … more

Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief shows there are now 174 million domain names registered worldwide - a 19 per cent increase over the same time last year, but only a three per cent increase over the second quarter 2008. The slowdown in growth would appear to indicate the global financial crisis is having an impact on domain name registrations. … 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