IQ Domain For Iraq?

The nation of Iraq may make a leap into the Internet community with the extension .iq. Iraqi chairman of The National Communications & Media Commission (Siyamend Othmend) said the domain name would allow Iraqis to “stake a virtual flag” in the world of the Web.

The chairman also stated in a letter to ICANN, “It is “an important tangible and symbolic milestone for this nation, as well as the freedom and hopes of the Iraqi people”.

A recent survey cited by the U.S.-led administration in Iraq found that about 6% of Iraqis say they have access to the Internet but fewer than 2% use it regularly.

Source: USA Today

[Live Video] House Subcommittee Grills ICANN

This is the live video webcast of the ICANN hearing. Check it out NOW.

ICANN: Just Add Sugar, Can Of Paint, High Gloss = Ohh Sparkly Whitewash

I wanted to draw your attention to ICANNs “truly independent economic study” of the proposed new TLD’s.

For those reading this, we are going to play a game. When you see the word “independent”, substitute that for the words “seriously conflicted, ICANN sponsored propaganda, marketing piece”. Ok, lets go….

ICANN allegedly commissioned these two independent reports:

• Impact of New gTLDs on Consumer Welfare
• Price Caps for New gTLD Internet Registries

Based on feedback from the whole world, ICANN allegedly went back and asked the person who wrote the reports to “supplement his work”.  At this point, lets look at part of some feedback given by the European-American Business Council who represent 65 US and European-based global companies.

ICANN should re-evaluate the current plan for new gTLDs, at least insofar as it involves the award of any new gTLDs that comprise trademarks.

In particular, ICANN should pay for a truly independent economic study of the market (instead of commissioning an economic advocacy paper designed to support its wish to rollout new TLDs).

In view of this market analysis, it could be determined whether the goal of the scheme is proportionate to the potential effects of new TLDs on consumers and business owners.

In addition, such an analysis may show that a gTLD expansion (if any) should be limited until adequate, low or no cost safeguards are in place to protect consumers, businesses, and brand owners from brand abuse, confusion and cyber fraud threats.

I’m pretty sure that I don’t have to look too deep into my crystal ball to see what’s going to happen here. It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…. OMG, you’ll never guess what!

Maybe I’m being overly critical? What do you think?

Thanks to the original post made by Andrew Allemann that inspired me to write this.

Happy Birthday Australia – .com.au Market Turns One!

Its been a year since auDA changed the rules to allow people to buy and sell Australian domains names.

So, what’s happened since then? My friends at Netfleet clocked up 30,000 domains, 1,500 offers and 105 transactions. Not bad when 99.9% of the population doesn’t understand the basic concept that you can buy/sell these things.

Just to put the icing on the cake; this week mortgage.net.au apparently sold for $13,500! I nearly fell off my chair when I read this – FOR A .NET.AU ? What the? Others include jeweller.com.au for $14,767 and freestuff.com.au for $18,700.

So, at least we are off to a start. It certainly wasn’t the big bang that people said it would be. Why am I not surprised? Despite being an Aussie, I personally haven’t been a fan of the .com.au namespace, but I am warming up to it….

Of course things would be better if the Australian government changed the backward, dysfunctional, judge, jury and executioner, “regulator” who is continuously in the media for all the wrong reasons, making Australia a complete joke on the world stage. Here are a few quotes from recent articles:

• Bolton dusts off for another courtroom scrap

“Cheyne Jonstone, of Cove Business Technology, has also called on Senator Conroy to sort out the mess….Senator Stephen Conroy needs to act now and act quickly. The government appointed this body to implement policy and regulate the .au domain name space, but their actions of late demonstrate that they are failing to do that adequately, or more importantly, the actions of their CEO, Chris Disspain.”

• Opinion: auDA recklessness damages Australian domain industry

“Larry Bloch, CEO and co-founder of Netregistry says Chris Disspain of auDA has acted as judge, jury and executioner by cancelling Bottle Domains’ accreditation so suddenly, here he talks to CRN about how this action is now proving to be grossly negligent.”

• Bottle Domains settlement talk scuttled as damages loom

“auDA chief Chris Disspain gave iTnews a categoric “no” when asked if the regulator would consider settling the case before it goes to trial on 24th June….. He also said the regulator had a strong enough cash position – some $4.3 million in reserves – to back up a further unfavourable ruling from the Victorian Supreme Court.”

Should auDA exist in its current form? Should there be protests at ICANN’s 35th meeting in Sydney this month, calling for the Australian government to step in, use their reserve powers in relation to domain names (under the Telecommunications Act 1997) and remove auDA? Perhaps transfer it to ACMA or another body, with more experience, that’s truly representative of the industry.

Post and let me know what you think.

ICANN To Spend $1M On Ads – Reports $4.7M Investment Loss

ICANN is apparently embarking on a million dollar campaign to convince us to buy their story on generic domains. Its reported that the campaign will start in Q4 2009 with a series of announcements and PR.

The Australian is reporting that Dr Twomey said an independent panel would be appointed to decide who would be allowed to register a disputed domain, but no details were available about who might be on it. I’m sure its going to be “fair and balanced” – just like Fox news.

Best of luck to the ICANN Executive who are no doubt practicing their Jedi mind tricks – “these arent the domains droids your looking for”.

What do you think? Is $1million a waste of funds? After all, its 5,000,000 ICANN .20 cent fees for a .com!

Add this to the “Realized and unrealized investment losses of $4.7 mil thru year to date” which was very quietly disclosed in the unaudited financial results. Click on the down arrow on the left hand side of the graph and you will see a little pop-up that mentions this little gem!

Who in ICANN is being made accountable for this investment loss?

WIPO To Go Paperless For UDRP – Saves HOW MUCH Paper?

WIPO has sent a letter to ICANN to “seriously consider moving towards an essentially paperless UDRP”. Here are some interesting stats that appear in the letter:

• Over the lifespan of the UDRP, the total number of pages filed with WIPO alone is estimated at some ten million (roughly equivalent to over one thousand trees).

• The approximate number of paper pages from Respondents is over 300,000.

The letter outlines a number of reasons including:

1. Environmentally friendly
2. Efficient – leading to cost savings
3. Most already file electronically anyway
4. 4% email bounce back in 2008
5. The average time that elapsed between WIPO’s receipt of the electronic Compalint and its receipt of the hard copies was four days. “A delay in receipt of a Response in hard copy may also delay the Panel’s review of the complete record“.

I think this is a great move. Although I’m not surprised that its WIPO taking the initiative to suggest an improvement to an ICANN process. It just goes to show how inefficient ICANN is.

Although this week I did have similar, strange technology interactions with two companies:

1. Company A – a webhost asked me to print out, scan in and email them a copy of an invoice that I received via email. Apparently their process said that email (text) wasn’t good enough.
2. Company B – asked me to email them, post a hardcopy and fax them the same document.

Its 2009 and we are still using fax machines and printing stuff out – unbelievable. Shouldn’t we all have jet-packs by now?

Commerce Dept Criticizes ICANN On New TLDs

In a letter sent to ICANN last week, Meredith Baker, the head of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration stated that is not clear “whether the potential consumer benefits outweigh the potential costs“.

It also goes on to say that “ICANN needs to ensure that the plan would not jeopardize the stability and security of the Internet addressing system.”

Finally, we have someone in the Commerce Department who can see this obvious fundamental problems with what ICANN is proposing. Lets hope this letter is the precursor to stopping this really stupid idea. Keep up the good work Meredith.

More information: USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Arizona Daily Star, The Salt Lake Tribune, Las Vegas Sun.

ICANN Publishes AGP Limits Policy = Registrar Pricing Models Change

We all knew it was coming. ICANN has released their Add Grace Period Policy and as a direct result registrars are looking at changing their pricing models.

Here is an extract from the new ICANN Policy:

“During any given month, an Operator shall not offer any refund to an ICANN-accredited registrar (hereinafter referred to as “Registrar”) for any domain names deleted during the AGP that exceed (i) 10% of that Registrar’s net new registrations (calculated as the total number of net adds of one-year through ten-year registrations as defined in the monthly reporting requirement of Operator Agreements) in that month, or (ii) fifty (50) domain names, whichever is greater, unless an exemption has been granted by an Operator.”

In an email to me yesterday, Dynadot stated “Due to this change, we may have to raise grace deletion fees substantially or remove grace deletions altogether.” This really means “We don’t know what we are going to do yet”. It will be interesting to see what some of the larger registrars do, in particular Moniker. Lets wait and see.

Cry Baby Domainers Locate Godaddys Warehouse

To the left is a secret photo taken inside a leading domainers office. The photo was taken after a recent blog post which alleged that GoDaddy is warehousing domains.

If you look at clause 9 in the ICANN Registrar Agreement it states “Registrar shall abide by any ICANN-adopted policy prohibiting or restricting warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars.” As ICANN does not have any adopted policies in this regard, it can’t actually enforce anything.

So, welcome to the world of commercial reality where companies set up subsidiaries to hold their assets. In the case of Godaddy, its been alleged that Standard Tactics LLC performs this activity.

DomainerIncome has recently learned that a rogue group of blonde domainers is heading down to New Mexico to find the actual warehouse belonging to Standard Tactics LLC. Best of luck with the trip.

Will Obama Shape The Future Of The Internet?

2009 is going to be a big year for all of us. ICANN wants to divorce the US government and screw up the Internet with 50 companies running new top-level domains, and application fees at $185,000 each.  This gives them a mere $9,250,000 in cash; then cometh the domain registrations. Can we stop this? Yes we can!

The WSJ is reporting that companies are protesting about the proposed new domain names. Who is going to own .hotel or .bank and how much will they charge for a domain name in those TLD’s? Think about all the brands, variants, trademarks – this is going to be a very costly nightmare for business and lead to mass confusion on the part of the consumer.

ICANN‘s pathetic reason for existence is based on a deal with the US Government which expires in September 2009. The agreement is through the Department of Commerce and is known as the Joint Project Agreement (JPA). Will Obama renew it? What are some of the alternatives to ICANN? Running it through/with the Internet Governance Forum at the United Nations?