I Squatted Your EU - Domains / Internet Technology News

The board has put forward a motion to decide vertical integration once and for all. There will no cross-ownership allowed.

The board's decision is very interesting.

They are, to quote Dennis Jennings, setting a baseline, but will bow to any policy decision that comes from the GNSO.

There is now a GNSO PDP (Policy Development Process) to discuss vertical integration.

This morning the ICANN board is meeting in Nairobi

On the menu this morning are a number of topics, but only a couple of them are attracting any serious attention. One of them, EOI (Expressions of Interest), was hoped, by some, to be a way to move the new TLD project forward.

The board looks set to completely reject the EOI concept this morning.

At present board members are giving their thoughts on why they are doing this (or not doing it .. )

Nominet, the registry operator that manages *.uk, is planning on releasing both single and two character domain names.

In common with a lot of other ccTLD registry operators, Nominet had blocked single and two character domain names from being registered. However they are now planning on releasing them to the public in a phased plan.

The exact details of "how" the domains will become available have not been decided, which is why the registry is now conducting a consultation period with the public.

The current proposal is not drastically different to the kind of methodology used by several of the gTLD registry operators to handle similar scenarios, although there are a few extra twists. To start with Nominet is speaking of the entire project in terms of "cost recovery", whereas other registries have used this kind of release as a revenue generator. The other thing which is quite interesting is how they plan to differentiate based on the second level ie. org.uk domains, according to their proposal, should be given to charities and not for profits, while co.uk should go to business users. While this is very logical it's still interesting to note that they've "gone back to basics" in some respects.

You can view full details of what Nominet are planning on their site and share your thoughts.

It will be interesting to see how the Nominet registrars and the public react to this news.

PIR, the registry operator for .org, has relaunched their website.

The new site is currently "beta", though that seems like an odd way to label a public-facing site that has been live for years ..

The area that interests me, of course, is the registrar list .. And I'm not overly impressed with the way it displays..

The ICANN meeting in Nairobi starts officially next Monday. However, as is normally the case, by the time Monday rolls around people will already have been working since Saturday morning (if not earlier).

All ICANN meetings seem to be surrounded by some bit of controversy and excitement, but the Nairobi meeting is possibly more dramatic than many others. The last attempt to hold a meeting in Nairobi failed, with ICANN opting to hold the meeting near LA's airport, LAX, instead. This time round there was quite a bit of controversy and tension surrounding the meeting's location.

The end result of the tension, security worries and everything else is that quite a large number of people who would normally attend the meeting will be staying at home.

Others will be travelling to Reston, VA, where Neustar has organised a US offsite location. Though with the time difference between VA and Nairobi anyone in attendance will end up working through the night!

So what's on the agenda?

New TLDs - this time round the focus will be on "EOI" - the concept of "expressions of interest" that was mooted at the last meeting in Seoul.

DNS SEC will be on the agenda again, but getting excited about it is far from easy - sorry!

IPv4 depletion will probably get a look in, but it's still a "hard sell". Until ISPs "buy in" and start deploying v6 on their public networks it's going to be nigh on impossible to make any tangible or meaningful movement in this area.

IDN ccTLDs. You can expect updates from the various countries that have applied using the "fast track". There might be more applications from other countries, as the meeting will have attracted its usual media circus.

But the real "hot potato" for ICANN is going to be .xxx

Following on from the recent decision which found that ICANN had "dropped the ball", the ICANN board will be voting on the Friday of the public meeting.

In reality you can expect to see board members being canvassed / briefed / harassed by interested parties pretty much all week. How will they vote?

Will the US government try to intervene?

If ICANN do move ahead with .xxx, will that have any impact on new TLDs?

If ICANN's board doesn't move ahead with .xxx this time round there is little or no chance that Stuart Lawley and ICM Registry are going to throw in the towel.

To start with they've no reason to. They have just won a legal battle that shows that ICANN was in the wrong. Sure, it may not be "binding", but any decision that so much as casts a doubt on ICANN's processes and procedures is a "win" for ICM - and rightly so.

So how would ICANN fare if ICM were to pursue this through to the next level?

ICANN stakeholders probably don't want to see their money being poured down a legal drain .. I know I don't ..

SIDN, the registry operator for .nl (Netherlands) have launched their new site.

The new look site gives the registry a complete visual facelift.

You can find it here.

The IEDR, which runs the registry for the .ie ccTLD, has announced an upcoming change to its registration processes.

As of April 8th 2010 pending updates and registrations will be valid for 27 days instead of the previous 30.

What this means for registrants is that they will have 3 days less to provide the supporting documentation for a .ie registration.

In any case the change is not that significant, as even 27 days is more than enough time for most people to organise the paperwork

The only problem at present, however, is that the Irish companies' office is, in common with most of the civil service, involved in an industrial dispute. This may lead to delays in processing new company and business regisrations.