.PRO is an exclusive top-level domain reserved for use by licensed business and service professionals internationally. It has created a dedicated online community for professionals to communicate, interact and promote themselves to the public. To be eligible to register a .PRO domain, applicants will need to provide a license issued by a government certifying body or a jurisdictional licensing entity.

Andrew Barton, Chief Operating Officer of Instra Corporation, is excited about receiving another accreditation, this time from RegistryPro. “Instra is focused on developing a single point, one-stop domain offering. Instra has a strong corporate base and this is further evidence of our commitment to providing our valued customers with a complete domain offering. In this instance .PRO has expanded our portfolio to serve these professional-tailored needs.”

Chloe Li commented, “As the only top-level domain designed for professionals, .PRO helps our clients to establish trust with their customers in what can be a crowded online world. Being the first accredited registrar in Asia, we are planning to work closely with global professional communities to utilize the benefits of a .PRO domain.”

For more information on .PRO, please visit http://www.registrypro.pro/
For more information about Instra Corporation, please visit http://www.instra.com
For Media Enquiries, please contact: media@instra.com

Background and Explanation

Stakeholder Groups are integral elements of a new, restructured GNSO, and are intended to be lightweight “caucuses” bringing together like-minded international groups (Constituencies) to elect the best representatives to fill the SG’s allotted Council seats. Stakeholder Groups ensure that the ratio of Council seats among SGs remains the same while encouraging the formation of new Constituencies and the continued growth and diversification of the GNSO community. The overall GNSO Improvements effort and the role SGs will play in that arena is more fully described in the Stakeholder Group section of the GNSO Improvements Information Web Page.

The SIC provided the community with the revised charters linked below and discussed these documents during ICANN’s recent Sydney meeting. The revised charters are posted to further encourage public comment via email to gnso-stakeholder-charters@icann.org by 21 July 2009.

• Commercial SG Charter [PDF, 29K]
• Non-Commercial SG Charter [PDF, 59K]
• Registrars SG Charter [PDF, 60K]
• Registries SG Charter [PDF, 117K]

Relevant Board Resolutions, Bylaws and Constituency Submissions

• GNSO Improvements Information Web Page: gnso.icann.org/en/improvements/
• GNSO Improvements Report adopted by the Board (3 February 2008): icann.org/topics/gnso-improvements/gnso-improvements-report-03feb08.pdf
• Resolution of 26 June 2009 Board Meeting: icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-26jun09.htm#2
• Minutes of 28 August 2008 Board Meeting: icann.org/en/minutes/minutes-28aug08.htm
• Minutes of 1 October 2008 ICANN Board Meeting: icann.org/en/minutes/minutes-01oct08.htm
• Five Stakeholder Group Submissions received from the community: gnso.icann.org/en/improvements/stakeholder-process-en.htm

The Process From Here

At the end of this public comment forum period, the ICANN Staff will provide a summary/analysis of the comments submitted regarding each Stakeholder Group submission. That summary/analysis will be shared with the community and the Board. The Board will subsequently take action on each Stakeholder Group petition and charter as it deems appropriate.

Deadline and How to Submit Comments

A 21-day public consultation forum has been opened from 30 June through 21 July 2009. The formal Public Comment Forum Box is located here: icann.org/en/public-comment/#stakeholder

To submit comments: Comments on the documents are welcome via email to gnso-stakeholder-charters@icann.org.

To view comments: An archive of all comments received will be publicly posted at forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-stakeholder-charters/.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-01jul09-en.htm

Of these domains, 268,844 (86.97%) were COM.MX domains while the remainder were spread between GOB.MX, NET.MX, EDU.MX, ORG.MX and .MX domains.

“With more than 20 years of experience, NIC Mexico has developed a robust technological infrastructure in order to attend our costumer’s specific needs and also to offer them variety on the available services,” said Oscar Robles, NIC Mexico ’s CEO. “It is always the intention to support and promote the development of the Internet in our country, building along solid bases to achieve each of the drawn up objectives,” he added.

In addition to the number of .MX domain name registrations, NIC México reports that as of the beginning of June there have been more than 17,000 requests for registrations directly under .MX (since May 1st, starting date of .MX Reopening Process). This process is divided in 3 phases, Pre-Registration Period finishes on July 31st of 2009.

To register your .MX domain name, check out America Registry here.

This means it will be possible for internet users and businesses to register domain names under .EU using the characters of all the 23 official languages of the European Union, now including Cyrillic and Greek scripts.

Now, it is only possible to register domain names in ASCII characters for all Top Level Domains. Making domain names available to internet users in their own language, called internationalised domain names, is being pushed by ICANN in a separate project. The end result of this will see domain names being made available in scripts from all languages throughout the world, most likely within the next one to two years.

Later this year .EU will also be available in the alphabets used by Bulgarians, Greeks and Cypriots and special characters used in other languages. Until now, Czechs could only use 27 of 42 characters, and Lithuanians 23 of 32. A new report of the Commission on the development of Europe’s top level domain, published today, shows that the number of .EU domain names registered (currently at around 3 million) grew by 11 per cent in both 2007 and 2008.

“Three years after its launch, .EU has become the valued option for an increasing number of businesses and citizens who want to choose a European internet identity. Opting for .EU is a very simple way for businesses to show that they are established in one of the 27 EU countries and subject to the high standards of EU legislation, particularly when it comes to data protection, consumer rules or the EU’s financial market regulations,” said Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

“It is only natural then that the domain names chosen by Europeans be permitted to be as diverse as Europe itself. This is why we have decided that .eu should become available in all alphabets used in the Member States and allow for all characters used in the 23 official languages of the European Union.”

Until now, domain names registered under the .eu top level domain could only contain the characters “a” to “z”, digits “0″ to “9″ and “-”. In future, it will be possible to register names using characters such as “à”, “ą”, “ä”, “ψ” or “д” under “.eu”. EU citizens and businesses will be able to register domain names in non-Latin scripts, which is essential for languages such as Greek and Bulgarian. At present, Bulgaria has one of the lowest number of registered .eu domains with 9, 578 registered.

To register your .EU domain name, check out Europe Registry here.

The article refers to domainers as both those who legitimately register many generic domain names and those who are actually cybersquatting. But it does explain that there are those who register generic names and “others use names that exploit trademarked brands in order to attract traffic and generate ad revenue.”

To read this Computerworld article in full, see:
www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134610

The article looks at the processes involved as “Lego didn’t go to court. Instead it filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center, which ruled in its favor. The domain registrar for FreeLegoPorn.com, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based GoDaddy.com Inc., eventually shut down the site and transferred the domain name to Lego, in compliance with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (often called the UDRP), a procedure set up by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to address domain-name brand abuse.”

To read this quite long article from Computerworld in full, go to:
www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134605

Their seven suggestions come about from asking for tips from “professionals, as well as from experts at brand-abuse monitoring vendors and companies such as Lego Juris AS and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) that have successfully fought cybersquatters.”

As a result, their seven suggestions are:

• Establish a policy to deal with the problem
• Monitor new domain registrations
• Build a portfolio of defensive domain-name registrations
• Check your trademarks
• Choose your battles
• Pursue violators such as through suing under the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act or the Lanham (Trademark) Act.
• Get involved in efforts to thwart cybersquatters.

To read the detail of the seven suggestions, see the Computerworld article at:
www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134654

It is concluded in the paper that, with the globalization of Internet, a cluster of new players entered the field, such as the developing countries governments, and, in the UN WSIS setting, the concerns of “protecting the public interest” reconnected with the familiar international arrangements.

To download this paper [PDF] by Slavka Antonova from the International Journal of Communications Law & Policy, go to:
ijclp.net/files/ijclp_web-doc_1-12-2008.pdf

“Rod Beckstrom has exactly the sort of strong personal and technical background that ICANN needs, as we enter a period of unprecedented growth and change for the Internet,” said ICANN’s Board Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush, in announcing the appointment. “In addition to his cyber security expertise, he’s been a successful CEO of a global enterprise, done NGO work and volunteer work and a bestselling author. It’s an extreme understatement to say we are enthused.”

“The importance of the internet as a free flowing source of information is being underscored right now by the events in Iran,” said Beckstrom. “It shows the power of human expression through a free and open Net.”

Beckstrom said he was really looking forward to the challenge and sees similarities to his role when he started the Peace Network, also a bottom up organisation, that grew from two to eventually over 1,000 people.

Commenting on the appointment, Vint Cerf, father of the internet, said “Rod Beckstrom is strikingly well-prepared to undertake a new role as CEO of ICANN. His experience in industry and government equip him for this global and very challenging job.”

Prior to this appointment, Beckstrom was the first director at the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Center, which was formed in 2008, having resigned over battles over money and clashes over whether the National Security Agency should control Internet-security efforts, reports Associated Press.

Other activities Beckstrom has been an active participant in the non-profit arena are serving on the board of trustees of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Jamii Bora Trust, a micro-lending group based in Nairobi, Kenya with more than 210,000 members.

A co-author of four books, Beckstrom’s most recent, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, details how diverse and untraditional organizations, can become virtually self-perpetuating, regardless of the status of their respective leadership.

“The Internet has changed the way the world communicates and conducts commerce,” said Beckstrom. “And in no small way, this multi-stakeholder, bottom-up organization has been and will continue to be at the core of the Internet’s on-going evolution. Quite simply, the proof that ICANN works, is that the Internet works.”

An interview with Rod Beckstrom by Brian Krebs of the Washington Post is available from:
voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/06/ex-dhs_cyber_chief_tapped_as_p.html

The report says ICANN is expected to announce Beckstrom as the successor to Dr Twomey on Friday at its meeting in Sydney that has been attended by over 1,000 people this week.

The report also notes “Mr Beckstrom is in Sydney and will this morning meet members of ICANN’s governmental advisory panel as the ‘preferred candidate for the role’”.

The announcement has been highly rumoured all week with discussion in the corridors at the meeting focussing on Mr Beckstrom taking over the role.

Mr Beckstrom, previously the United States’ cyber security chief, resigned in March in what could be described following battles over turf. He has also been attending several of the sessions at the ICANN meeting this week in a personal capacity.

Dr Twomey, who announced he will be stepping down on June 30 at the ICANN meeting in Mexico City in March, became CEO and president in March 2003 and was the third and longest serving CEO and president in the organisation’s history.

The announcement is expected during the board meeting on Friday that commences at 10.30 local time.

.FOOD is the brainchild of Wolfgang Puck, a world-renowned master chef and restaurateur, and Minds+Machines, a consultancy dealing with proposals for new gTLDS.

At the meeting in Sydney today, Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President, Services at ICANN said the organisation now intends to begin accepting applications for new gTLDs in April 2010.

Should the consortium be successful in their bid for the gTLD it will allow for domain names and email addresses ending in .FOOD – such as www.wolfgangpuck.food, www.spagorestaurant.food, www.yourname.food and millions more, giving restaurants, food retailers, caterers, food-lovers and chefs worldwide a unique opportunity to own meaningful new domain name.

“This is a great way for the finest food enterprises to stand out from the crowd on the Internet,” said Puck, who owns more than 100 fine dining and casual restaurants in the United States as well as a national catering company and several consumer product lines. “Owning a .FOOD address is like opening a business on the best street in any city in the world.”

Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Minds+Machines, said: “We are thrilled that a celebrated master chef like Wolfgang is helping to create the .FOOD web address. His name has been synonymous with quality and innovation for over 25 years. Thanks to his leadership .FOOD will help bring the international community of people and businesses with a shared interest in food together on the Internet.”

Speaking at the ICANN conference in Sydney, Australia, Puck announced that a portion of the proceeds from .FOOD will be donated to funding philanthropic organisations like Meals on Wheels and scholarships at the Culinary Institute of America, among others.

Praising the private-sector nature of ICANN, the Commission said it “agrees that private companies should continue to take the lead in the day-to-day management of the operation of the internet, as long as they are accountable and independent. The Commission also believes that decisions about the internet, especially those about openness and security, should be taken in a transparent and accountable manner because they affect everyone around the globe. ICANN currently operates under a Joint Project Agreement with the US Department of Commerce which expires on 30 September 2009. In the view of the European Commission, future internet governance arrangements should reflect the key role that the global network has come to play for all countries.”

On the future of ICANN, Viviane Reding, the EU’s Commissioner for Information Society and Media said that as ICANN approaches an “historic point in its development,” she asks if ICANN will “become a fully independent organisation, accountable to the global internet community?” Reding says Europeans would expect so and this is what Reding will push for, calling on the U.S. government and the E.U. to work together to achieve this.

In a communication entitled “Internet governance: the next steps,” the Commission “made proposals for the governance of the internet to be more open, transparent and inclusive,” with a key objective being “that of accountability.”

“Internet usage and penetration is now so high, especially in developed countries such as those of the EU, that it has become a critical resource, where any serious disruption in service can have potentially catastrophic effects on society and the economy,” the communication said.

“The EU has also always given political priority to the developmental aspects of Internet governance, and the importance of bridging the ‘digital divide’, the communication goes on to say. “The first billion Internet users have been largely from the developed world, and the initial governance decisions and structures were, not surprisingly, mostly made by participants from developed countries. The next billion users will mostly come from the developing world, however, and their interests must be taken into account in any governance arrangements made for the future.”

The statement was described as “encouraging in part, but mostly disappointing” by Milton Mueller on the Internet Governance blog. While Mueller writes “we appreciate the willingness of the EU to put some pressure on the U.S. to solve ICANN’s problems in a more globally inclusive way,” he writes “the statement seems to propose a move backwards to a more traditional intergovernmental process, rather than a more open transnational, multistakeholder approach.”

Meanwhile a report in OS News says “There are two sides to this issue: a practical one, and a philosophical one. Practically, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to change all that much about how the internet is governed. ICANN and the US government have ensured that the internet has a free flow of information - no matter how objectionable (but still legal) some content may be. This is intrinsically a good thing, as that’s what the internet is all about.”

To read more on this see:
europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/951
blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/6/18/4226351.html
www.osnews.com/story/21694/EU_Admits_ICANN_Is_Doing_Fine_But_Wants_Change_Anyway

ICANN is using Adobe’s Connect software, which allows people to see everything in a particular session on one screen: live video, live audio, a live transcript, a chatroom, and presentation slides updated as they are in the room.

This should provide everyone with the best remote participation we have ever been able to provide — and we will archive the entire session for later viewing. See mex.icann.org/ccnso-sessions for examples of the ccNSO sessions from Mexico City.

In order to get some idea of who is using this new service, you will need to fill in a quick two-minute registration form and then you are free to log in and view all the main sessions.

If you indicate on the registration form, that you are interested in learning more about ICANN’s remote participation efforts, we will get back to you, ask for feedback, and supply updates on future events and plans. Thank you and all the best with ICANN 35.

Related links:

Registration Form: icann.na3.acrobat.com/e25733704/event/registration.html

Event Login: icann.na3.acrobat.com/e25733704/event/login.html

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-20jun09-en.htm

RegistryPro has paid fees of US$121,900/year for the last several years which are significantly higher than other comparably sized TLDs. RegistryPro has stated the reduction in fees would enable them to invest in growth strategies that might make .PRO names more accessible to the community. The amendment would result in a fixed annual fee plus a transactional fee once the registry exceeds 50,000 domain registrations. If approved by the ICANN Board, the amendment would change the amount of fees paid by RegistryPro to ICANN.

The current .PRO Registry Agreement is due to expire on 27 May 2010. This amendment would bring .PRO’s fees in line with other TLDs during the remaining term of its agreement. ICANN and RegistryPro expect the renewal agreement will provide during its term fees that will come into line with those in the current draft base agreement for new gTLDs.

Comments on the proposed amendment can be posted to pro-tld-amendment@icann.org no later than 5:00 PM UTC, 17 July 2009, and be viewed at forum.icann.org/lists/pro-tld-amendment.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-17jun09-en.htm

The auction will feature many sought after domains including:

• HighDefinition.com
• MultiVitamin.com
• WeightTraining.com
• CustomBoots.com
• 3GPhones.com

Early bidding will continue until the LIVE auction event at 4:00 EDT (U.S. time) on June 16. You won’t want to miss this opportunity to bid on quality domains at reasonable price points.

Domain Roundtable 2009 offers domain industry professionals the opportunity to connect with external industry professionals to reflect and debate on the future of our industry. By reaching beyond the borders of the domain industry, conference attendees will discuss critical issues facing the future of the industry and together outline a path that will lead us into the next chapter of domaining.

Domain Roundtable 2009 will be held from June 14 to 17, 2009 at the Grand Washington Hyatt in Washington D.C. for a premier conference. Whether you’ve attended a Domain Roundtable conference before or you’re new to the domain industry, Thought Convergence cordially invites you to join us for an event that will leave you informed, connected and ready to shape the future.

Jonathan Zuck, President of the Association for Competitive Technology will be the keynote speaker at Domain Roundtable. Zuck is a professional software developer and IT executive with more than 15 years of experience. He brings an insider’s perspective to his role as President of the Association for Competitive Technology.

For more information on Domain Roundtable 2009 go to www.aftermarket.com where you can bid, check out the auction catalogue and check out the stats of the domain names up for auction.