Domain tasting report shows massive drop

Got this from Alan, whose hard work started and pushed this initiative through the complex processes of ICANN. Congrats to Alan, ALAC and ICANN, for actually following through on an ALAC advisory and proposal!

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm

ICANN posted today about the impact of the AGP Budget Provision and the AGP Limits Policy on Domain Tasting.

In short, the changes are dramatic. There were 17,668750 AGP deletes in June 2008. Following the ICANN budget levy on excessive deletes, the number decreased to 2,785,605. With the implementation of the AGP limit policy in April 2009, the total number of AGP deletes was 58,218, an overall decrease of 99.7%.

Put another way, in June 2008, for .COM, there were 2,122,794 net new domains added, and an additional 15,738,292 domain names added and then AGP-deleted for an AGP delete rate of 741%

In April 2009, there were 2,084,868 net new domains added, and an additional 37,519 domain names added and then AGP-deleted for an AGP delete rate of under 2%.

Under the policy, an AGP-delete rate of 10% is allowed without financial penalty, per registrar, to allow for exceptional conditions. It was expected that few registrars would exceed this 10% and in fact in April only 22 registrars exceeded 10%, and there were only 432 excessive AGP-deletes.

As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results.

Nominet given three months to live

Interesting article from Keiren McCarthy's blog. Nominet has generally been held up as one of the best and most successful ccTLD managers. Let's hope they get their act together.

April 30, 2009 ·

For the past year, the company that runs the UK’s Internet registry has been the unlikely location for a corporate soap opera, complete with scandals, villains, twists and turns, allegations of corruption, resignations, grand plans thwarted at the last minute and some nasty in-fighting that has left people alternatively amazed, entertained and worried.

Spam Volumes Drop by Two-Thirds After Firm Goes Offline

Cool! They will of course come back somewhere, but in the meantime, that's good news!

The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted on Tuesday after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity was taken offline.

Read the full article here

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Which region is taking the lead in IPv6 deployment?

Surprise, percentage wise, it's Africa!
Of course that's maybe because its now building out Internet? So might as well build out in v6. Read more on the ICANN blog here - Which region is taking the lead in IPv6 deployment?

.car gTLD Proposal Launched - Domain Names

The .car proposal aims to address how to safely access internet content through embedded and nomadic devices in motor vehicles. The proposal would do for websites for motor vehicles much like .mobi aims to do for mobile devices.
.car gTLD Proposal Launched
So why does it have to be .car and not .auto or .motor? .auto would be more universal for motor vehicles, I'd think...

There are not 13 root servers

ICANN Blog » Blog Archive » There are not 13 root servers

Nice post clarifying this persistent error...

We're going to IPv6 the Irish Internet! - Blacknight Blog

"we want to get as many websites on our IPv6 platform before the end of 2008"

They said it so much better than I could!! I wish more ISPs could be so proactive.

Women not participating in IG processes?

This is an update on the 2007 ICANN Nominating Committee (Nom Com).
The Nom Com received 93 Statements of Interest from candidates worldwide during an open nomination period that ran from 1 February 2007 to 18 May 2007. 12 candidates are female, 81 are male.

That is a ratio of 0.14 female applicant to every 1 male applicant in the technical governing body for the Internet.

This is a serious problem. The Internet is a vital part of the infrastructure for development. We cannot afford to have such a large gender gap - it will result in policies and processes that are not adequate and relevant to 50% of the world's population.

I know that women are grossly underrepresented in the technical community, and in the international internet governance arena as well. In IG, we tend to cluster in the ICT4D space, and not involve ourselves in the technical areas. But these areas are where policies that will shape the future Internet re being debated and implemented RIGHT NOW! We need to participate in these areas.

The NomCom this year had many issues getting candidates. Vint Cerf even posted a plea on YouTube and discussed it in the International Herald Tribune. Despite this, we get 81 male and only 12 female applicants for 9 open positions.

What can we do to get more women involved? I am out of ideas.

GoDaddy.com Reaches Agreement to Help RegisterFly Customers

GoDaddy.com Reaches Agreement to Help RegisterFly Customers

Finally! In a week or so the domains will be sorted. And hopefully ICANN can work on the process to improve the handling of any similar situations.

Good News from ICANN

Larry Seltzer at eWeek in this article finally shows ICANN some good press. ICANN has been doing good stuff, but seems as if the nay-sayers were much louder in public.
Finally some good news may get out.

Euralo selects first board and ALAC representatives

The EURALO has finally voted and chosen its representatives and Board members. It has been a long and sometime acrimonious process, and some participants have been very disappointed.

Here's Thomas' blog entry:

And here's Patrick's

Here's my response to the disappointed members:


I understand that it may seem as if the signing ceremonies are pure PR, but really, the idea that we had in ALAC was to get going on the primary task of the Interim ALAC which was to form the REAL ALAC. We want this to happen so that we can STOP spending time and effort on getting the regions organised (this has been dragging on and distracting everyone for over 3 years), and start getting going on the policy issues and getting user feedback. In my first 3 meetings with the Board as a member of ALAC, they really didn't want to hear anything coming from the Interim, they wanted us to tell them what the global users thought, and how we knew what they thought. Implementing the structure seemed to be the best way to get that legitimacy in the eyes of the Board and the rest of ICANN.

I think that if we can get a position on a policy issue that we can show is backed by 100,000 or more internet users from all over the world, then we will be able to get a better hearing than if we continued to be the interim committee, with 15 people who have no linkage to the end users globally.

I think that the RALOS will give the ALAC some legitimacy and will, with some work, give us more people to do policy work, more views on the issues, and more ability to effect some sort of change.

We will see if I'm right or wrong, but it's early days yet.

I agree that the NA and EU regions have not started off well, but I hope that when the voting is done people can put aside the bitterness and work together on the issues that brought them together in the first place.

Given that you have been active for so long and are such a valuable member of the community, I hope that you can put aside the bitterness and disappointment that you feel and continue to make your valuable contributions to the AtLarge community in ICANN. Personally, I hope that you will continue to give me and the rest of the ALAC the benefit of your knowledge, intelligence and expertise.

Domain Tasting lawsuit

Check out this story from MSNBC. Nieman Marcus is suing people for domain tasting on names that are similar to theirs! 5 day add/grace a good idea? The AtLarge Advisory Committee of ALAC will be requesting an investigation into this process very soon.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17762760/

Neiman Marcus sues over domain names
Retailer accuses companies of registering over 40 Internet addresses
By Anick Jesdanun
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:03 p.m. ET March 23, 2007
NEW YORK - Neiman Marcus Group Inc. is suing a pair of domain name companies, accusing them of improperly registering more than 40 Internet addresses that resemble the department store chain's trademarks.
The lawsuit accuses the companies of domain name tasting, or taking advantage of a five-day refund period to sample which of the addresses might generate traffic — and thus potential ad revenues, before committing to buying them.
Name.com LLC and Spot Domains LLC, two Denver-based companies that share offices and employees, were named as defendants. The companies told The Associated Press on Friday they do not comment on pending litigation.
The complaint, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Denver, seeks injunctions and damages of at least $100,000 per name.
The lawsuit comes weeks after Neiman Marcus settled a similar lawsuit against Dotster Inc., in which Neiman Marcus accused the registration company of tasting hundreds of names meant to lure Internet users who mistype Web addresses. At one point, the lawsuit said, the misspelled NeimuMarcus.com featured ads for Target, Nordstrom and other rivals.
As part of the settlement, Dotster agreed to stop registering names similar to Neiman Marcus or sister chain Bergdorf Goodman. The registration company also agreed to suspend use of automation to register domain names in bulk.
Experts estimate that up to 6 million names are tied up at any given time through domain name tasting, thanks to computer automation and a burgeoning online advertising market.
The practice takes advantage of a grace period originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. During the grace period, registrants generally put up a generic search site with advertising and keep the ones that might make more than the $6 annual cost of a name.
Neiman Marcus isn't alone in fighting back.
Earlier this month, Microsoft Corp. filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Mountain View, Calif.-based Maltuzi LLC, which, according to its Web site, registers large numbers of Web domain names using automated processes, and profits from ads placed on those pages.
Maltuzi did not return an e-mail seeing comment, but its Web site says, "We deliberately exclude registered trademarks and known common law trademarks from our buying program."
Microsoft filed another suit, in Seattle, naming as defendants unknown "John Does." Lawyers often use such suits as the basis for obtaining identities through subpoenas and other means.

URL:

ICANN Lisboa - Day 1-3

SO I got to Lisbon, but my luggage remained in Heathrow. This seems to be a major problem with this meeting - I've met more than 30 people whose luggage decided not to come with them to Portugal! However, I was lucky and only lost my luggage for 1 day. It was finally delivered on Sunday. In the mentime, it was cool that we got ICANN tshirts in our registration pack. Socks and undies would also have been useful!
ICANN Lisboa has some really cool giveaways in the participant pack. I even got a full length apron - to wear while I see what .cat is "cooking up"! :)
Now I'm in the Registerfly session. This is really important to the end users that ALAC is reponsible to. I have to do a whole post on that - it's important.
Now - ICANN now has loads of really cool innoovatins specially for people who cannot make it to the meetings in far-flung areas of the world. There's the public participation website at http://public.icann.org and they are also webcasting the meetings.
Documents are often translated, and there is simultaneous interpretation for people who do not speak English (something that esp LAC has been asking for)
We'll see how the whole thing pans out. There are some very very important issues on the table at this meeting.
All for now!

ICANN and online morality?

A friend of mine wrote:
>> I don't think that I can agree with Milton Mueller's statement that ICANN
>> should stick to it historically technical role. This might have been
>> possible when no one cared but is no longer possible or desirable. Someone
>> has to do policy and politics. If not ICANN then ...?

The answer to this after WSIS II was "the Internet Governance Forum" which met in Athens last November, and will meet in Rio in June 2007. That, and the many many legitimate organisations that are set up to deal with things such as legality and morality in different jurisdictions.

The GAC is flexing its muscles. It's up to us to stand up and balance the scales.
It is unacceptable that ICANN, a US corporation, which is responsible in the final account to the US government, and is not a representative body, with no legitimacy other than that given by the US govt and what we choose to give them, should make decisions of this nature.


It is equally unacceptable that the GAC should bully the Board of ICANN into accepting a defacto veto from ANY country. To show the absurdity of it - it's like Saudi Arabia deciding that a Brazilian or Trinidadian website cannot show half-naked women at Carnival? So a culture that has nothing to do with us can determine that we may not do something that is totally legal and permissible in our society? If I wanted to live by the laws of another culture, I would MOVE there!


What we need to do is have discussion on these sorts of topics on these lists, and develop a position that can be presented to ICANN. As individual Internet users, we need to become active in the management of OUR Internet. Otherwise, one day we';ll wake up and find that hartscarnival.com or even trinidadexpress.com has been taken down from the Internet because someone in another part of the world with a different culture has determined that it is "immoral".

Domain tasting - what it's about and why it's bad

This blog talks about the domain tasting scheme. Basically, ICANN allows refunds on domain registrations that are dropped within 5 days. This is cool, cause sometimes you make a mistake, a misspelling or something when registering a domain name.

BUT, what has happened is that people have decided to scam this, by registering thousands of domain names, putting up ad sites, dropping the domain before the 5 days, and keeping the ad revenue.

And what happens now, is that groups of people are rotating domain names and using serious computing power to do this. So if I look up a domain on a registrar's site that participates in this, and don't register it right away, I may come back in a hour or 2 and realise that the name is gone. If I check, it'll be an ad site. And of course, I can't keep checking to see exactly when it's released to be able to register it, so that's it for me and my domain name. However, they can cycle among themselves...

And of course, when I am just searching online for something, often the first page of results is full of these ad or link farms. So, I waste time and bandwidth to find what I want.

Joi Ito has a nice blog entry on this with some cool links. He's an ICANN Board member. I'm an ALAC member, and ALAC is looking into the impact of this on the Internet User Community.

More on this in the future

NTIA: NOI: DNS Transition Comments

NTIA: NOI: DNS Transition Comments

This is really important in the next week, comments are due by uly 7, with a public consultation to happen July 26.

You can also comment on the ALAC's submission.