New York Plan to Seek .NYC Web Address

October 7, 2009

New York City has become the first American city to openly state it will seek a generic Top Level Domain. The City of New York will seek the .NYC gTLD working with dotNYC LLC, a private company that for the last year has been meeting with city officials about the plan for the .NYC web address.

ICANN, which has just released Version Three of its New gTLD Applicant Guidebook, is likely to call for applications for new gTLDs in 2010. While early 2010 was the date being aimed for by ICANN it is likely the date when applications will be called for will be pushed back to later in the year. There are still a number of contentious issues including security and protection for trademark holders that are to be finalized.

The Guidebook has been changed significantly and the changes will be discussed at the ICANN meeting in Seoul in late October. As indicated by ICANN Chief Operating Officer, Doug Brent, “this third version of draft guidebook represents months of outstanding effort by many in the ICANN community working to resolve the few, challenging remaining issues. This version is being released with materials that describe how public comment has influenced the changes presented in it.”

The .NYC proposal has gained the support of several prominent New York identities including former Mayor Ed Koch, who supports the dotNYC effort to operate .NYC on the city’s behalf: “.NYC is the best real estate deal since the Dutch bought Manhattan,” Koch said.

ICANN gTLD Program Adopts Key Trademark Protection Measures

October 7, 2009

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has tentatively adopted measures proposed by a team of trademark experts to protect trademark rights as the body begins accepting applications for unlimited generic top level domains (gTLDs).

The ICANN board has accepted two key recommendations made by the Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT), a panel made up of senior in house trademark counsel, private practitioners, domain experts and academics. However, the full implementation of the measures is still questionable, as ICANN’s board has requested that the Generic Names Supporting Organization decide whether the rights protection mechanisms “are consistent with the GNSO’s proposed policy on the introduction of new gTLDs, and are an appropriate and effective option for achieving the GNSO’s stated principles and objectives”.

The measures, open for comment until November 22 2009, are:

  • the creation of an IP Clearinghouse, which is a database of validated trademarks to be utilized by new gTLD registry operators in implementing either an IP claims service or sunrise process during TLD launch; and
  • the creation of a Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) process for use in clear cut, blatant cases of  trademark infringement.

Dubai Leads as .ae Domain Name Registrations Rise by 30% in UAE

October 5, 2009

The Telecommunication Regulation Authority (TRA) told Emirates Business it had witnessed growth this year mainly because of the new policy framework and a non monopolistic environment among registrars.

“In the period [August 2008 to August 2009], the number of new registrations increased by 30% compared to the corresponding period the year before. There are more registrars [no monopoly] providing .ae domain name registration. Customers have the choice to select their registrar as competition leads to better service. The registration process brought online has also made it easier,” said TRA.

In fact, during the second quarter in 2009, country code TLDs (ccTLDs) globally rose by 14% year over year to 74.4 million domain names.

This represents an increase of 1% from the first quarter, according to the Q2 2009 Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign, the provider of internet infrastructure services.

Kamal Nasser, CEO of Conservus International, based in Dubai, said: “It’s the only way forward. However, unfortunately e commerce sites are practically non existent in the region although statistics show more than $1 billion was spent on e commerce in Saudi Arabia through purchase of goods from American and European sites.”

“Companies in the UAE must register considering it part of their identity,” said Nasser.

Yugoslavia Domain Name Disappears

October 2, 2009

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has replaced the .yu country code top level domain from the Internet for Yugoslavia.

The .yu domain, which was scheduled to be turned off by ICANN on Sept. 30, was replaced most recently by .rs for Serbia and .me for Montenegro.

Unfortunately, ICANN has not issued a country code top level domain for Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008. Yugoslavia was dissolved in 2003 and was replaced by Serbia and Montenegro, both of which became separately independent in 2006.

It was estimated that as many as 4000 websites had not transitioned from the .yu domain name.

Marcaria.com provides domain registration in Serbia (.rs) and Montenegro (.me) , and other European countries.

Peru Telco Seeks to Promote .PE to SMEs

September 30, 2009

The Peruvian telecommunications company, Red Cientifica Peruana (RCP), is planning to assist one million small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to gain a web presence in the next 3 years using .PE domain names. The idea is by getting more Peruvian businesses online their competitiveness will be enhanced.

90% of SMEs do not have identity on the Internet. We want all to use the domain .PE as a DNS symbol. We hope to have this program well underway in 2010, said Rolando Toledo, general manager of RCP.

We will grow 10% this year. The second semester of 2009 will be very interesting although our predictions are conservative. We hope to have a turnover of almost US$ 5 million.

Toledo estimated that by the end of the year they would have given their clients close to 50 thousand domain names and said this includes several thousand bloggers in their free blogs service.

This is a long term marketing plan. Just by developing the blog platform and being successful will benefit us as business through the publicity that is put in these spaces, Toledo concluded.

Birthday of .SU

September 28, 2009

On September 19, domain SU (the Soviet Union) celebrated its 19 years’ anniversary. Domain SU has been delegated to the USSR in 1990 a year before the collapse of the Soviet Union and 3,5 years before the creation of Russian ccTLD RU, that is considered as “.SU successor”.

“Domain SU was not delegated to the Soviet Union (although technically it was so). At that time, when the Soviet Union began to collapse, delegation meant the birth of new Internet community. So in fact, domain SU was like a guide and even a symbol of democratic development”, says Alexei Platonov, Director of Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN), which is still playing the role of the Technical Center of domain SU.

During its history domain SU had several key milestones. It is important to remember the 5 fold reduction in the cost of registration in 2007, implementation of IDN support in 2008 and then conferring to the official international “SU code” status “exclusively reserved” by ISO. All events mentioned above caused the quantitative growth in number of registrations in 2007 2008.

According to the statistics provided by web site Stat.nic.ru, today more than 80,000 names are registered in ccTLD SU. The domain demonstrated 600% increase in 2008. Unfortunately, last year the growth of registrations in domain SU significantly decreased. The overwhelming majority of domain names in ccTLD SU are registered by the residents of Moscow (nearly 52%), Moscow Region (10%) and St. Petersburg (8%). By the way, the largest number of .SU names (92%) are registered by Russian residents, remaining 8% by foreigners and international companies from USA, Ukraine, Belize, Kazakhstan, Belarus, France, UK, etc.

Names in “The Soviet Union domain” can be registered using the symbols of 250 national languages. About 18,000 IDN domains already exist in ccTLD SU, most of them in Russian 14,500. Among popular symbols are also Greek, Arabic and Hebrew.

184 Million Domain Names Registered

September 28, 2009

There are now 184 million domain name registered, according to the he second quarter 2009 Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign.

This represents a 1% growth over the first quarter of 2009 and a 9% growth over the same quarter of 2008.

The base of country domain names (ccTLDs) rose to 74.4 million domains, a 14% increase year over year and a 1% increase quarter over quarter. In terms of total registrations, .com continues to have the highest base followed by .cn (China), .de (Germany) and .net.

Around 9 million new domain names were registered in the second quarter of 2009. This reflects a reduction in new registrations with a 14% decline from the first quarter 2009 and a 15% decline from the same quarter in 2008.

As seen in past years, there is seasonality in domain name registrations with the second quarter of the year dropping from the first quarter. In second quarter 2009, the impact of seasonality as well as the overall weak economic conditions impacted the number of new registrations.

The composition of the domain name industry and rank order in terms of base size remained consistent with that of first quarter 2009. The largest TLDs in terms of base size were .com, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .info, .nl (Netherlands), .eu (European Union), and .biz.

The size of the base for .cn and .de were nearly equal at the end of the second quarter with .cn just edging out .de.

ccTLD Breakdown

The second quarter of 2009 ended with 74.4 million country domain registrations, representing a 14% increase over the same quarter of 2008 and a 1% increase from the previous quarter.

There are more than 240 ccTLD extensions globally, but the top 10 ccTLDs comprise 66% of the total number of registrations.

Registrations for .ar (Argentina) domain names grew the fastest with an 8% growth quarter over quarter, which may be related to the opening of IDN registrations at the end of March.

Russian Federation (.ru) domain name registrations grew by 7%, a slightly slower trend than previous quarters but still the second fastest growing among the largest ccTLDs.

The Brazilian ccTLD, .br, also saw domain name registrations grow by 7% over the quarter which was likely due to liberalization of registration requirements for .net.br in April 2009 and .com.br in May 2008.

The Chinese ccTLD, .cn, which had been experiencing notable growth, saw the overall base of registrations decline 8% quarter over quarter.

Only four, .ar, .au (Australia), .br (Brazil), .pl (Poland) of the top 25 largest ccTLDs experienced quarterly growth rates in the second quarter of 2009 that were higher than the growth rates in the first quarter of 2009. Four of the top 25 largest ccTLDs, .ru, .pl, .br, and .fr (France), experienced growth rates year over year in excess of 25%.

In terms of the total base of domain name registrations, .cn, .de and .uk were the largest ccTLDs. Year over year, .cn growth rate was 9%. Rounding out the top three ccTLDs were .de and .uk, at 6% and 11% growth year over year,  respectively.  Together, the bases of domain name registrations for these three ccTLDs represented 45% of all ccTLD domain name registrations.