ICANN have announced they are seeking volunteers to assist in the evaluation of those organisations seeking financial support to apply for a gTLD.

“These volunteers will be key to ICANN’s effort to assure that the less-developed parts of the world are able to participate in the new Domain name program,” said Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President. “The panel members will make a real impact in ensuring that the opportunities for innovation and economic development created by the Internet are open to everyone.”

The volunteers will be chosen for their background and experience in areas such as running a small business, operating in developing economies, analysing business plans, serving in the public interest, managing a domain name registry service, or awarding grants.

The financial assistance component of the Applicant Support Program offers a limited number of qualifying applicants the opportunity to pay a reduced evaluation fee of $47,000 instead of the full evaluation fee of $185,000.

The selected volunteers will assist in the evaluation of financial support applicants in the context of established public interest, financial capabilities and financial need criteria as outlined in the “Financial Assistance Handbook.”

For anyone interested in applying, review the criteria, work out if you can commit the time required and check out any other expectations at newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support/sarp-eoi-request-03feb12-en.pdf.

While there are very good reasons for a business to have a gTLD, there has to be a plan by the company to use it, and to get some benefits. To spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to protect against someone else registering a gTLD is nigh on a waste of money.

The gTLD process also has procedures built into the programme, outlined in its 300+ page applicant guidebook that are designed to protect brand owner’s interests through independent objection and dispute resolution processes (and other processes).

However ICANN is now concerned that as the time of the opening of the new gTLD application window drew near, parties stated their perception that they will need to submit “defensive” gTLD applications as a means to protect their trademarks.

ICANN is now seeking public comment on the sources of this perception and how it can be addressed.

The public comment period is now open and the Public Comment Box Link is www.icann.org/en/public-comment/newgtlds-defensive-applications-06feb12-en.htm.

During a transitional period, registrants may face both the old routines with paper declarations that must be sent to Norid, and the new, paperless routine. This depends on whether your registrar has signed the new Norid agreement.

By 1 August 2012, all registrars will offer the new paperless scheme.

For more information on .NO domain names, see www.norid.no.

To register your .NO domain name, check out Europe Registry here.

As expected, .COM domain names dominate the sales for the year, accounting for 44 per cent of all sales, while .DE came next accounting for 18 per cent. Third with six per cent of sales was co.uk then .NET (5%) and .EU (4%).

When looking at statistics provided by Verisign and HosterStats, the sales for .COM domains were also in proportion to their global share of registrations, with .COM accounting for around 44 per cent of all registrations using figures for the end of the third quarter in 2011. However .DE accounted for around 6.5 per cent of registrations.

Sedo also reports .CO and .ME entering the top ten sold top TLDs for the very first time, which they believe supports the case for new gTLDs and their potential for success. While these newer extensions increased in value, the traditionally strong .COM also increased, demonstrating that while there is promise for newcomers, .COM domains will retain their value.

Interestingly, the country with the most buyers of domain names through Sedo was Germany with 27 per cent of all buyers, followed by the United States (24%) and the United Kingdom (11%). Sedo’s German origins would have an impact here, but nonetheless it is still surprising as Sedo has a significant presence in the US.

The report also shows the most common sales types are marketplace negotiations (offer/counter-offer), which accounted for 40 per cent of all sales for the year, while Buy Now sales accounted for 30 per cent of sales, up from 25 per cent in 2010. Sedo notes a strong growth in Buy Now sales can be traced to the growth of the promotion of the SedoMLS Promotion Network. And Buy Now could become the dominant form of domain purchase soon as in the fourth quarter this type of sale accounted for close to 40 per cent of all sales.

The continued increase in Buy Now sales, as well as growth in median prices for sales made over the SedoMLS Network, reveal a shift in end user behaviour. More buyers are interested in fast domain purchases, as well as the ability to purchase premium domain names from a recognisable environment, such as their preferred registrar.

“This year we saw domain buyers increasingly turn to sources like registrars to purchase their domains, so we’re excited to be playing a key role in providing these buyers with the greatest choice of domains names,” said Liesbeth Mack-de Boer, Chief Sales Officer at Sedo. “SedoMLS places sellers’ domains in front of millions of potential new buyers, and our goal for 2012 is to make buying a domain as easy as registering one for the first time.”

Almost half (47%) of all sales were sold in the price range up to $500, while 38 per cent of sales were in the $500 to $2,500 category. While the $2,500 to $5,000 category was next (8%), the proportion of sales in the $50,000 and up category accounted for four cent of sales, edging out the remaining two categories combined.

Length of a domain name is also an important characteristic, and it was domains with eight characters that were the most popular with 3,500 sales, including Sedo’s biggest sale of 2011, gambling.com. There were over 3,500 domain names sold for domains with over nine and ten characters as well.

Average prices for various TLDs were mixed. The average price for .COM dropped, largely due to the record breaking sex.com sale, from $3185 in 2010 to $2775 in 2011. However .NET sales were stable, .ORG dropped dramatically from $2217 to $1289 and .INFO increased from $795 to $990.

Among the top six ccTLDs there was again no consistency with average prices of .DE domains increasing slightly from 2010 to 2011 ($1514 to $1530), while .AT domains increased from $1000 to $1177. But .FR more than halved in the average sale value from $6768 to $2386 while co.uk also dropped significantly ($2008 to $1273). Sales of .EU domains increased from $706 per domain to $1169.

Median sales of domains showed more consistency, as .COM showed a steady increase, with the median price of domains increasing from $550 to $650. There were decreases in the median value of .NET ($590 to $555) and .ORG ($591 to $510), while there were increases for .BIZ ($407 to $424) and .INFO ($416 to $418).

Among the abovementioned ccTLDs, the median prices increased for all with the exception of .DE. The .FR domains continued to have the highest median price of all reported TLDs as it has done for the last three years, with an average of $1075 per domain.

To download the full Sedo 2011 Annual Domain Market Study, see:
sedo.com/fileadmin/documents/pressdownload/Q4_2011_DomainMarketStudy_US.pdf

Sales of .COM domains dominated the week, taking out the first 12 places and 19 of the top 20, with the only other domain being whi.ch (£14,000/$21,840) in 13th place.

It was a quiet week for Sedo at the top of the charts with only three sales in the top 20. Moniker/SnapNames was responsible for six of the sales while GoDaddy Auctions was responsible for five, with another in cooperation with AfternicDLS.

To check out the Domain Name Journal list of top reported sales in the week to 1 January, see:
dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2011/20120111.htm

In addition, ICANN has established a range of mechanisms available for use once a new gTLD has been approved and becomes operational, including a Trademark Clearinghouse (for use with Sunrise periods and Trademark Claims services), a Uniform Rapid Suspension system (URS), and a Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure (PDDRP). The existing Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) will also apply to all new gTLDs. A WIPO summary of each such RPM follows; policy background is available in the overview of WIPO Observations on New gTLD Dispute Resolution Mechanisms.

Trademark Clearinghouse

The Trademark Clearinghouse is a centralized database of verified data on registered (or court-validated, or treaty-protected) trademarks. The Clearinghouse is intended to minimize burdens on bona fide trademark owners by allowing them to deposit, for a (yet-to-be-determined) fee, their trademark data with one centralized source, rather than with each new gTLD registry; new gTLD registries will be able to retrieve such centralized data from the Clearinghouse.

The Clearinghouse is not itself an RPM, but rather facilitates use of RPMs such as Sunrise registration periods (during which trademark owners can purchase domain names before the general public, usually for a premium fee), Trademark Claims services (notice to a prospective domain name registrant of a potential conflict between the domain name and an existing trademark, with a notice to the trademark owner if the domain name is registered following the registrant’s representation of non infringement), and URS proceedings (described below).

It is important to note that, as adopted by ICANN, Sunrise periods (available for at least 30 days) and Claims services (available only for 60 days) are limited to exact matches of a domain name to a word mark, i.e., these services will not cover typos or “mark + term” scenarios.

URS

The URS is intended to be a lighter, quicker complement to the existing UDRP. Like the UDRP, it is intended for clear-cut cases of trademark abuse. Under the URS, the only remedy which a panel may grant is the temporary suspension of a domain name for the duration of the registration period (which may be extended by the prevailing complainant for one year, at commercial rates). Initial URS timelines, at least from filing to a determination, are similar to those of the UDRP; also, the URS substantive criteria mirror those of the UDRP (but with additional registrant defenses).

It is important to note that, as adopted by ICANN, once a determination is rendered, a losing registrant has several appeal possibilities (from 30 days up to one year); trademark owners may consider this in deciding whether to use the URS or the UDRP, which provides a transfer, and thus does not carry a monitoring burden with it. (Either party may file a de novo appeal (for a fee) within 14 days.) There are also penalties for filing “abusive complaints” which may result in a ban on future URS filings.

PDDRP

The PDDRP is an administrative (court alternative) option for trademark owners to file an objection against a registry whose “affirmative conduct” in its operation or use of its gTLD is alleged to cause or materially contribute to trademark abuse. In this way, the PDDRP is intended to act as a higher-level enforcement tool to assist ICANN compliance activities, where rights holders may not be able to continue to turn solely to lower-level multijurisdictional enforcement options in a vastly expanded DNS.

It is important to note that, as adopted by ICANN, the PDDRP involves a number of procedural layers, such as an administrative compliance review, appointment of a “threshold review panel,” an expert determination as to liability under the procedure (with implementation of any remedies at ICANN’s discretion), a possible de novo appeal (under the same process), and further appeal to arbitration under ICANN’s registry terms. Beyond this, any PDDRP remedy specifically excludes third-party-registered second-level infringing names (which may have been the basis for filing the PDDRP case), and requires specific bad-faith conduct including profit from encouraging infringement in addition to “the typical registration fee.” Also, attorney fees are available against complainants only.

UDRP

The UDRP is an out-of-court dispute resolution mechanism for trademark owners to resolve clear cases of bad-faith, abusive registration and use of domain names. The UDRP applies (by contract) to all domain name registrations in ICANN-approved gTLDs (e.g., .com, .net, .org). The UDRP or a variant also applies to a number of ccTLDs (more information). Standing to file a UDRP complaint is limited to trademark owners, who must demonstrate their rights. To prevail in a UDRP complaint, the complainant must further demonstrate that the domain name registrant has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name, and that the disputed domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith. In the event of a successful claim, the infringing domain name registration is transferred to the complainant’s control.

More detailed UDRP background information is available in the WIPO Center’s publication: The UDRP and WIPO – INTA Conference Paper 2011, and on the Center’s UDRP resources page.

Complementing the WIPO UDRP Search Facility are a Legal Index of WIPO UDRP Panel Decisions and a globally used jurisprudential overview of UDRP cases available in the Center’s WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, Second Edition (“WIPO Overview 2.0″).

This WIPO announcement was sourced from:
wipo.int/amc/en/domains/rpm/

ARI Registry Services, a leading global provider of technical services for new Top-Level Domains, will host a special free webinar this Tuesday 7 February highlighting the implications of .brand for the corporate world.

The webinar will be one of the last opportunities for interested parties to gather valuable expert advice and ask questions about the program before ICANN closes the application window on 12 April 2012.

For those unfamiliar with the program, it will allow companies to apply for their own branded slice of Internet real estate which will deliver clear marketing and advertising benefits, such as improved online brand recall, potential Search Engine Optimisation benefits and a more intuitive consumer experience with easy to remember domain names.

The webinar will be hosted by Adrian Kinderis, a leading authority on the new Top-Level Domain program and CEO of ARI Registry Services. Mr Kinderis was a member of the ICANN advisory council which helped establish the program and he has unrivalled knowledge of the opportunities and risks associated with it.

To secure your place, please register here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/936400350

Webinar agenda – Moving from .com to .brand:

By attending this exclusive webinar, you will:

• Gain an insight into TLD utilisation and implementation
• Unveil both the risks and opportunities presented by this revolutionary transformation
• Gather crucial knowledge that will determine if .brand is right for you
• Understand the options available to business with respect to brand protection
• Discover the key components required for building a successful application before it’s too late

This ARI Registry Services news release was sourced from:
www.ariservices.com/news-webinar_understanding_.brand_for_your_business.php

As new gTLDs are ushering in the biggest change to the Internet in years, SARP volunteers will be on the front line of the effort to lessen the digital divide by expanding the Internet to less-developed parts of the world. They will be part of an exclusive group of individuals chosen for their background and experience in areas such as running a small business, operating in developing economies, analyzing business plans, serving in the public interest, managing a domain name registry service, or awarding grants. SARP volunteers will make a real and lasting contribution to ensuring that the opportunities for innovation and economic development created by the Internet are open to all.

The financial assistance component of the Applicant Support Program offers a limited number of qualifying applicants the opportunity to pay a reduced evaluation fee of USD 47,000 instead of the full evaluation fee of USD 185,000.

SARP members will evaluate support applications against the established public interest, financial capabilities and financial need criteria outlined in the Financial Assistance Handbook [PDF, 710 KB] and as a group they will score each applicant.  It is important to note that panelists will not weigh the relative merits of overall gTLD applications.

If you are interested in applying to be a SARP member, please review the criteria, time commitment and other expectations as detailed in the posted EOI [PDF, 172 KB].

Useful References

• Applicant Support Program: newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support
• New gTLD Financial Assistance Handbook: newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support/financial-assistance-handbook-11jan12-en.pdf [PDF, 710 KB]
• Basic informational materials about the New gTLD program: newgtlds.icann.org/en/about/program/materials
• New gTLD Applicant Guidebook: newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/agb/guidebook-full-11jan12-en.pdf [PDF, 3.79 MB]
• About ICANN: www.icann.org/en/about/

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-3-03feb12-en.htm

Whether you plan to participate in the upcoming ICANN meeting in Costa Rica remotely or in person, you’re invited to a quick reminder of the background and current status of each major policy issue currently under discussion in ICANN.

The ICANN Policy Staff will provide a briefing on Thursday 1 March at 13.00 UTC and Thursday

1 March at 20.00 UTC, summarizing policy issues across the different ICANN Supporting Organizations, namely the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and Address Supporting Organization (ASO). Amongst other topics, updates will be provided on:

• Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy
• RAA Improvements
• Consumer Choice, Competition and Innovation
• Study Group on Use of Names for Countries and Territories
• Framework of Interpretation Working Group for the delegation and re-delegation of ccTLDs
• Joint DNS Security and Stability Analysis Working Group
• Participation and Engagement activities in Costa Rica

The two sessions are duplicates, scheduled to accommodate different time zones. Each session, scheduled to run for 90 minutes, will be conducted in English only. The meeting will be run in Adobe Connect with a slide presentation along with a dial-in conference bridge for audio.

Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of each session. During the course of the webinar, questions may be submitted using the chat function of Adobe Connect. If you are not able to participate in either of the live sessions, the recording of the session will be made available shortly after the meeting. The policy staff is always available to answer any questions that you email to policy-staff@icann.org.

In order to participate, please RSVP via email to the GNSO Secretariat (gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org) to receive the call details. Please indicate which call you would like to join, Thursday at 13.00 UTC or Thursday at 20.00 UTC (to convert those times into your local time, see: www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html). We will send you an e-mail reminder before the event with log-in and dial-in details. Please DO NOT RSVP to any other ICANN staff members e-mail address.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-03feb12-en.htm

IPv6 vastly increases the number of available Internet addresses. The architecture of IPv4 allowed for four billion Internet addresses. That’s no longer sufficient on a planet of 7 billion humans, where many of those humans have multiple devices attached to the Internet. Every device connected to the Internet needs an IP address, whether it is a smartphone, mail server, laptop or web server.

Almost 6,700 IPv6 networks were publicly routed on the Internet in January 2012, and more are expected in the months leading up to World IPv6 Launch on 6 June 2012. On that day, Internet service providers, web companies and home networking equipment manufacturers around the world are asked to permanently enable IPv6.

More Information

• Beginner’s Guide to Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses
• IPv6 – How to Act Now
• AfriNIC IPv6 Resources
• IPv6 @ APNIC
• ARIN IPv6 Wiki
• Portal IPv6 LACNIC
• IPv6 RIPE Network Coordination Centre

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org

Verisign note they have a number of security mechanisms deployed in their network to ensure the integrity of the zone files we publish. In 2005, Verisign engineered real-time validation systems that were designed to detect and mitigate both internal and external attacks that might attempt to compromise the integrity of the DNS.

All DNS zone files were and are protected by a series of integrity checks including real-time monitoring and validation. Verisign places the highest priority on security and the reliable operation of the DNS.

“The purchase of these two leaders in the domain aftermarket perfectly fits our global growth strategy”, said Alexander Siffrin, Chairman of the KeyDrive S.A., and CEO and founder of Key-Systems. “We now have the opportunity to extend our global outreach, target a broader customer base and cross-sell our services. Furthermore, our European clients will gain access to US buyers and sellers of domain names. We’re delighted to welcome the Moniker and SnapNames teams to KeyDrive S.A.”

“The sale of these assets allows us to focus more on our core monetisation and vertical markets divisions which are the fundamental building blocks of our global performance marketing network,” noted Debra Domeyer, Co-CEO of Oversee.

“As the domain industry landscape changes, it is essential that we invest in new technologies that leverage our existing platform and unlock the potential of domain traffic. Our focus is on developing new monetisation alternatives for both publishers and advertisers. We also want to thank Craig Snyder and the Moniker and SnapNames teams for their years of dedicated service.”

With the takeover of Moniker the group has more than 6 million domains under management and more than 160 employees.

The Reuters report notes that the previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the Reston, Virginia-based company.

“VeriSign said its executives ‘do not believe these attacks breached the servers that support our Domain Name System network,’ which ensures people land at the right numeric Internet Protocol address when they type in a name such as Google.com, but it did not rule anything out.”

Potentially the “pilfered information from it could let hackers direct people to faked sites and intercept email from federal employees or corporate executives, though classified government data moves through more secure channels.”

The hacks “could allow people to imitate almost any company on the Net,” Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and before that the top lawyer at the National Security Agency told Reuters.

Baker further told Reuters that VeriSign’s description will lead people to “assume that it was a nation-state attack that is persistent, very difficult to eradicate and very difficult to put your hands around, so you can’t tell where they went undetected.”

However Ken Silva, formerly VeriSign’s chief technology officer, was a little more cautious, noting that “given the time elapsed since the attack and the vague language in the SEC filing, he said VeriSign ‘probably can’t draw an accurate assessment’ of the damage.”

In the SEC filing “in a section of its filing devoted to risk factors, VeriSign said it was a frequent subject of ‘the most sophisticated form of attacks,’ including some that are ‘virtually impossible to anticipate and defend against.’”

Meanwhile the Irish registrar and hosting company Blacknight was prompt in alerting clients about a security breach on 31 January where up to 40,000 customers may have had their contact details such as email addresses and telephone numbers compromised. The company notes that no financial data has been compromised and the damages are minimal.

Blacknight is investigating the issue further and taking appropriate steps to prevent a re-occurrence of the issue. Blacknight have already been in touch with Dataprotection.ie and Iriss.ie in regard to this matter. Blacknight will also be in contact with Gardai (Irish police) for a further investigation.

“We take our responsibilities to our customers very seriously and have already been in touch with the Data Protection Commissioner and have informed them of the breach,” said Blacknight’s Michele Neylon. “Blacknight is a secure company, however data breaches are a reality that almost every online company must face. We are taking this opportunity to increase our security even further and apologize to our customers for any inconvenience this may cause.”

One of those arrested, Yonjo Quiroa from Michigan, was arrested Wednesday by special agents with HSI. He is charged with one count of criminal infringement of a copyright related to his operation of websites that illegally streamed live sporting event telecasts and pay-per-view events over the Internet. Quiroa operated nine of the 16 streaming websites that were seized, and he operated them from his home in until his arrest.

The website seizures during Operation Fake Sweep represent the tenth phase of Operation In Our Sites, a sustained law enforcement initiative targeting counterfeiting and piracy on the internet. The 307 websites are in the process of being seized by law enforcement, and will soon be in the custody of the federal government. Visitors to these websites will then find a seizure banner that notifies them that the domain name has been seized by federal authorities and educates them that wilful copyright infringement is a federal crime.

To assist in justifying the seizures, the authorities note that “American business is threatened by those who pirate copyrighted material and produce counterfeit trademarked goods. Criminals are attempting to steal American ideas and products and sell them over the Internet, in flea markets, in legitimate retail outlets and elsewhere. Intellectual property (IP) thieves undermine the U.S. economy and jeopardise public safety. American jobs are being lost, American innovation is being diluted and organised criminal enterprises are profiting from their increasing involvement in IP theft.”

The seizures mostly involved .COM, .NET and .ORG domain names, which were targeted “under the same civil-seizure law the government invokes to seize brick-and-mortar drug houses, bank accounts, and other property tied to alleged illegal activity,” ars technica reports. “The feds are able to seize the domains because Verisign, which controls the .net and .com names, and the Public Interest Registry, which runs .org, are US-based organisations. Under civil forfeiture laws, the person losing the property has to prove that the items were not used to commit crimes.”

However this round of seizures also included Firstrowsports.tv, the first time including a domain name for the .TV ccTLD for Tuvalu, operated by the US-based company Verisign, reports TorrentFreak.

Since the launch of Operation In Our Sites in June 2010, the HSI-led National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) has seized a total of 669 domain names.

The 100 million mark was passed in January both websites revealed in their counts of various top level domain name registrations. According to RegistrarStats, there were a total of 100,052,046 domains while HosterStats claimed there were a total of 100,045,666 registrations on 1 February out of a total base of 134,613,318 for all generic Top Level Domains.

Verisign publicly announce combined domain name registrations for .COM and .NET in their quarterly reports, but do not separate out individual statistics.

Meanwhile the latest publicly available .COM Registry Monthly Report that Verisign is obliged to prepare for ICANN notes that there were a total of 100,540,971 domain names in the .COM zone as of 31 October 2011.

The difference was explained by DomainIncite that said “domains which do not have name servers or are in special registry status codes such as Pending Delete do not show up in the zone file.”

The next gTLD milestone to be passed is likely to be .ORG, which could pass the ten million registration mark in May 2012.