NEW YORK – The Associated Press reports that the Internet’s key oversight agency, ICANN, is investigating suspicions that insider information is being used to snatch desired domain names before an individual or business can register them.
The Security and Stability Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers termed the practice “domain name front running” and likened it to a stock broker buying or selling shares ahead of a client’s trade, in anticipation of a movement in price. (Read more…)
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The French territories of Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin in the Caribbean Sea were recently allocated a new ISO country code, and with that came a new ccTLD reports DomainesInfo.
The French territories of Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin recently gained independence, meaning they were added to the ISO list with their own country codes. They were allocated the codes BL and MF respectively. (Read more…)
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ICANN today posts the next version of the Frameworks and Principles for consultation
These documents have been in development since late 2006. The process began with a consultation which asked the community for their views on accountability and transparency at ICANN. An issues paper summarising these comments was posted in January this year (icann.org/announcements/announcement-26jan07b.htm). Based on the feedback that was received and the input from the One World Trust report on accountability and transparency (icann.org/announcements/announcement-4-29mar07.htm), a draft set of Frameworks and principles was released for comment in June. (Read more…)
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As recommended by the GNSO Council, ICANN is commencing a forum on potential allocation methods for single-letter and single-digit domain names at the second level in gTLD registries. Examples include a.com, i.info, 4.mobi, 8.org. Since revenue will result from this allocation, comments regarding the potential uses for this revenue are also requested.
ICANN intends to synthesize responses to the forum and present proposed methods for allocation of single-letter and single-digit domain names at the second level for community consideration. (Read more…)
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Last week the Wall Street Journal had a detailed looked at Internationalised Domain Names (IDN) and the then impending launch this week of the evaluation by ICANN. As the report notes, people with English keyboards, or as they neglect to say also those not with a keyboard in the language of the IDN, won’t be able to type in the address, rather, they will be able to access these IDNs through links from other sites or search engines.
IDNs have come about as “Internet users outside the U.S. in recent years have clamored for the right to have domain names in their own language. They argue their Internet culture and usage are hindered by the requirement to learn English.” (Read more…)
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ICANN launches global test of Internationalized Domain Names
Internet users around the globe can now experiment with their name in their language on their Internet with today’s launch of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers live testing of Internationalized Domain Names in 11 languages.
“This is one of the most exciting times yet in the development of IDNs,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “Internet users who speak the 11 languages of the test can play a key role in testing how IDNs operate, and help us move toward full implementation for all the languages of the world.” (Read more…)
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ICANN reports on their bolg site that earlier this week, they inserted eleven new top-level domains in the DNS root zone. These represent the term “test” translated into ten languages, in ten different scripts (Chinese is represented in two different scripts, and Arabic script is used by two different languages).
The blog discusses some of the difficulties faced today in expressing scripts in a consistent way over the Internet. The fact is, whilst we are at the best time in history for having computers represent many different languages clearly and consistently, we are still a long way from the level of support needed to give us strong confidence that people can always see what we intend them to see.
Source: Full Blog at http://blog.icann.org/?p=208#more-208
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The Washington Post is reporting that ICANN is testing out fully multilingual domain names. These won’t just be [non-western-language].com, but would have TLDs translated into other scripts, fixing annoyances for non-English speaking audiences.
An example: ‘Speakers of Hebrew, Arabic and any other language written from right to left must type half of the URL in one direction and the other half — the .com, .net or .org postscript — the opposite way.’ Let’s hope it goes better this time around: ‘Next week’s experiments use the domain name “example.test” translated into 11 languages. A previous model, however, used “hippopotamus” instead of “test.” These plans went awry when an Israeli registrar realized the Hebrew word ICANN thought meant “hippopotamus” was an expletive and threatened to involve the Israeli government.”
Source: Washington Post Article – October 11th, 2008
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Yesterday IASON detected the presence of 11 new top-level domains (TLD) in the ICANN/IANA namespace:
XN–0ZWM56D (or 测试) XN–11B5BS3A9AJ6G (or परीक्षा) XN–80AKHBYKNJ4F (or испытание) XN–9T4B11YI5A (or 테스트) XN–DEBA0AD (or טעסט) XN–G6W251D (or 測試) XN–HGBK6AJ7F53BBA (or آزمایشی) XN–HLCJ6AYA9ESC7A (or பரிட்சை) XN–JXALPDLP (or δοκιμή) XN–KGBECHTV (or إختبار)
XN–ZCKZAH (or テスト)
Well, these are not normal (ASCII) TLDs, but TLDs in Punycode form, and representing different, non-Roman, foreign character sets (Chinese, Hindi, Russian, Korean, Hebrew, Chinese, Persian, Tamil, Modern Greek, Arabic, and Japanese respectively). (Read more…)
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The launch of the IDN test by ICANN has been widely reported around the world in many languages. The Washington Post was one of the few to have a detailed story, saying the long wait “has left many in the non-English-speaking world impatient and angry. Questions of political and linguistic sovereignty, alongside accusations of American ‘digital colonialism,’ have motivated some countries to create their own Internets, effectively mounting a challenge to the World Wide Web.” (Read more…)
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One of the most important ways for ICANN to be both transparent and accountable is the public comment period.
ICANN is very unusual as an organisation in that all of its work – even when in draft form – is put out for public review. Unfortunately that review system has been under-used for years. And so we have been trying for several months to make the process simpler, easier and more effective. We produced a set of Consulting Principles to make it clear what the system is, and a single public comment webpage to make it extremely easy to see what was going on at any given time. This has, we are very pleased to note, caused a jump in the quantity and quality of comments. (Read more…)
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Associated Press is reporting ICANN has announced a trial of internationalised domain names (IDNs), with sample addresses to be added to central directories as early as next week.
There are eleven domain names being trialled, aimed primarily at “software developers and web site designers to test the new system, but they are the first such names entered in the 13 key domain name directories, known as root servers, after years of discussions and limited-access tests.” (Read more…)
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Kieren McCarthy writing on the ICANN Blog says, “There is a letter from the Universal Postal Union (UPU) to ICANN concerning the use of their sTLD .post that may well have important implications for the future evolution of the domain name system.” (Read more…)
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Meet the Irishman whose key decisions in the Eighties led to the web as we know it today
Dennis Jennings has been appointed to the board of ICANN, and the Irish Independent has a profile on Dennis, talking about his background and the background to the internet in Ireland:
When people think of the founding fathers of the internet, they think of inventors such as Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf who created TCP/IP protocols that the internet runs on, as well as creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.
Few realise that it was an Irishman whose strategic decision in the Eighties with the US National Science Foundation (NST) that led to the creation of the internet as we know it. (Read more…)
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“ICANN staff has published a draft report on dispute resolution procedures for IGO (inter-governmental organization) domain names” writes George Kirikos. “This proposal has deep flaws and should be rejected by the community, as it does not have the balance and protection of registrant rights present in the existing UDRP.”
George believes “that in the proposed policy, the domain registrant (respondent) has much weaker protection compared to the UDRP because the complainant need only prove a single element is present.” (Read more…)
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