Registries

Just been talking numbers with ICM Registry supremo Stuart Lawley, who is addressing the ICANN community in an open letter posted on CircleID.

And whatever opinions you have on the .XXX saga, you have to admit that the costs are simply staggering and show that there's obviously something wrong with the whole process when a business that was initially given a green light has to go though so much time and expense just to get what it was promised.

In saying this, I am merely repeating what ICANN's own Independent Review Panel thought a few months ago.

The costs of that review alone are staggering, for ICM and ICANN (i.e. the Internet community, or you and I if you prefer). "We spent $1 million in the first round in 2000," says Lawley. "Then another $1.5 million to get to the June 2005 approval stage. Then another $1.5 million to get to the Lisbon ICANN meeting. And the IRP review cost us over $5 million… so that's $9 million plus already."

Incredible isn't it. Lawley says that total costs for ICM have now risen above $10 million. "And the clock still keeps ticking," he adds.

ICANN's legal costs on the .XXX review are said to be around $2 million.

Afilias, the registry for .INFO and several other TLDs, has just announced its purchase of mTLD, the registry for .MOBI.

Afilias was already running the back-end registry service for .MOBI, which today boasts nearly one million registered names.

Afilias say they will continue to run .MOBI as a separate entity.

Read the Afilias announcement here.

What can ccTLD (national suffix) managers do to reduce the risk of fraud for the users of online banking services? The Swedish Post and Telecom Agency's (PTS) answer: restrict domain name registrations containing the word "bank".

On August 27th, PTS requested that Sweden's registry proactively block all such domain registrations. From now on, those applying for a .SE domain name containing the word "bank" will have to undergo validation.

A new rule which could make life difficult for bona fide domain name registrants who simply wish to use the word bank. Except that the .SE registry is prepared to allow registrations where it is clear that the requested domain name will not lead to any misunderstandings for Internet users.

Bank being a protected term in several countries, including Sweden, it should only be used by entities with the right to call themselves banks. PTS' new rule therefore makes perfect sense and seems like a good way to protect both the banks themselves and their customers.

My good friend Francesco has been following the Danish IT authority's bid to select a new registry for the country very closely. And according to him, the current registry is about to be replaced!

The new registry is a consortium called DotDK inside of which you'll find usual registry back-end operator Afilias. It seems the incumbent registry had grown complacent and was unwilling to move with the times by offering registrars standardized services and systems such as EPP. That may be all about to change.

Why I am interested in this? Because the process is extremely close to what's going on in France at the moment, with the government about to put the .FR registry position out to tender. Just as was the case for .DK, .FR has been managed almost since its inception by the same registry, AFNIC. And just like Hostmaster DK, AFNIC has historically been slow to update its systems and unwilling to work closely with its registrars.

This has changed a lot in recent years, probably in part because AFNIC knew it had to modernize to have a hope of keeping .FR. Will it? No doubt people at the French registry will be following the events unfolding in Denmark very closely…

They're considered the most precious of all domain commodities: 1-character names.

But they've been unavailable for years in all the major generic extensions (GTLDs). In fact, all 16 gTLD registries are obligated under the terms of their contracts with ICANN to reserve single character names so that they may not be registered.

But there are plans afoot to change that. Last year, ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) recommended that 1 and 2 character domains be released in existing and future gTLDs. ICANN itself controls all but 6 of the possible 144 single character names (letters and numbers) in .COM, .NET, .EDU and .ORG (the exceptions are q.com, x.com, z.com, i.net, q.net, and x.org) and is known to be considering auctioning off the single character .COMs.

Can't say I'm a big fan of registry-run auctions, or auctions run by others with a monopoly over the resource they're selling, which is why I was encouraged to read .MOBI and .COOP's May 29th registry requests to ICANN for the release of single character (and 2 character in .COOP's case) domains.

C'est le Sacré Graal des noms de domaine : les noms à un caractère de type "a.com". Considérés comme les plus désirables de tous, ils ont selon certains experts une valeur parfois inestimable. Traditionnellement, ces noms sont néanmoins bloqués par les registres eux-mêmes, ce qui ajoute bien entendu à l'effet spéculatif. C'est une obligation contractuelle entre les 16 registres d'extensions génériques (gTLD) et l'ICANN.

Mais il y a depuis quelques temps un courant vers leur déblocage. Ainsi en mai 2007, le Comité de Soutien Générique de l'ICANN (GNSO) avait-il conseillé au Conseil d'administration d'autoriser le déblocage des noms à un et deux caractères (généralement également bloqués) pour les gTLDs actuels et futurs. L'ICANN étudie d'ailleurs un projet d'enchères sur les noms mono-caractère en .COM puisque 138 des 144 noms de ce type possibles (lettre ou chiffre) pour chacune des extensions .COM, .NET, .EDU et .ORG sont directement sous son contrôle (les six exceptions étant : q.com, x.com, z.com, i.net, q.net, and x.org).