January 2010 Archives

Domain Pulse, which is the biggest German speaking domain industry event of the year, kicks off in Lucerne, Switzerland on Monday.

This year's event is hosted by Switch, the Swiss domain registry.

The event's programme includes topics such as DNS SEC, registrar accreditation, legal issues and IDNs.

Like so many other industries, the domain industry has a plethora of events every year.

Keeping track of all to them can be a chore, so a site worth bookmarking is Domain Name Calendar, which gives a fairly comprehensive listing of domain industry events. It's run by the same people who are behind Domain Name News

Nice work!

It's sometimes easy to forget that the domain industry is a relatively new sector.

Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows, sent an open letter to all of OpenSRS' resellers yesterday celebrating their ten years in business:

Hello,

With great pride I note that January marks the 10th anniversary of the first domain name registered through OpenSRS.

Back in the spring and summer of 1999, we started planning for a different way to sell domain names. We had two businesses at the time, the Tucows.com software libraries and a large Toronto ISP, Internet Direct.

We knew that domain names should be simple and inexpensive to sell, and were made much too difficult and expensive by the monopoly provider. We were confident that we could fix that.

We also knew something more important. With competition coming, the companies planning to launch were simply copying the monopoly and maybe dropping the price a little. Domain names would likely be offered from $35/year!

And we recognized that registrars didn't sell domain names, service providers did.

We took those beliefs and poured them into a service offering that launched in January of 2000. It was an immediate success.

Now ten years later, and we still have our very first customer still happily and actively selling domains through OpenSRS. The first domain we sold is still managed by OpenSRS. And we've grown every single year.

So much is different now than it was then. The meaning of "service provider" has changed. In 2000, what we today know as web hosts were really just evolving out of the loam, forced into existence by telcos and cablecos killing dialup ISPs through regulation. Now the whole concept of the web host is morphing into something different, and, in many ways there may be a re-integration of "ISPs" and "web hosts".

So much is the same as it was then. People still need a personal relationship to help them get the most out of the Internet. Too many people still don't have one. There is still a huge gap between what people CAN do on the Internet and what they are ABLE to do.

Most importantly, we still view service providers as the greatest distribution channel in the Internet economy. We care deeply about our relationships with them and embrace the ones that care deeply about their relationships with their customers. So many of you are still around TEN YEARS LATER! You should be proud. I know I am.

Thanks to all our customers, employees and partners. We hope and expect that the next ten years will be even better!

Sincerely,

Elliot Noss
CEO Tucows Inc.

Where will they be in ten years time?

Bob Parsons, the larger than life founder of GoDaddy, tweeted earlier this afternoon that the GoDaddy Ad for the Super Bowl had been rejected - again.

CBS rejected the advert, which can be viewed online, as being "offensive to certain viewers".

Of course the outcome of their decision will be even more PR for GoDaddy, but that was inevitable.

But what is so offensive about the advert?

Is it the lingerie or the implied sexual preferences of the main character?

As a European I can't see how anyone would be offended.

Again on the subject of new TLDs ....

One of the "issues" that concerned a number of people is the concept of "vertical separation".

The basic idea is that registries and registrars should be kept separate.

While that is a wonderful Utopian ideal, the reality is that in the real world companies own other companies, people trade in stocks and shares etc., etc. So it's far from being a simple "cut and dried" situation.

It's also a situation that I personally think has been blown out of all proportion. And of course the people who are pushing it hard are the current registry operators. Can you say "monopoly"?
Or how about "fear"?

Be that as it may, the debate has been going on for months. During the Seoul meeting there was a public debate where both sides of the argument were able to "have it out", but while that may have helped clarify things for some people it didn't resolve it.

Fast forward to January 2010.

The GNSO council has now voted that the only way to resolve this issue once and for all is via  a PDP - which is ICANN speak for a quite drawn out policy development process:

A set of formal steps, as defined in the ICANN bylaws, to guide the initiation, internal and external review, timing and approval of policies needed to coordinate the global Internet's system of unique identifiers.

In many cases a PDP can take years to go through the full process, though there have been some exceptions in the recent past (think "tasting").

The motion that the GNSO council approved sets very clear limits on the PDP, but whether or not it will be possible for a policy debate as contentious (for some people) as this to be resolved in the 16 weeks mentioned or not is a different matter.

One of the topics that keeps coming up in ICANN policy discussions and as part of the new TLD application process is "transparency".

ICANN, and the internet community in general, has had plenty of issues in the past with "bad actors" who have caused a lot of issues for everyone (think of many of the registrars who have lost accreditation in the last couple of years for example).

On more than one conference call or policy discussion the issue of a company or a person's track record has come up.

Now while I personally think that anyone who has been knowingly involved in criminal activity OR who has knowingly been involved with a serious breach of ICANN policy (or any of the contracts) should be barred from any further involvement with the DNS, a blanket ban is not without its own set of issues.

The larger the company the more likely it will have been involved with litigation or criminal law suits at some point or other in the past.

And who is pushing for all these "checks and balances" within the ICANN processes? In many cases it's the big brand owners, who live in fear of "squatters" and other "evil doers".

So why do I raise this?

Well George Kirikos has, yet again, managed to dig up some quite revealing data about some of the companies that likely to be involved in new TLDs in the future and who have been very vocal in the ICANN "space" over the last few years.

You can read the full text of what George uncovered here, but suffice to say that a lot of the big brands and companies aren't as "clean" as they'd like us all to be (and no that wasn't a typo).

Unilever, Disney, Coca-Cola, Time Warner, Yahoo! and Telstra are all named and, if you'll excuse the cliche, shamed...

If you work in the domain industry it's only natural that you would put big brands' choices under the microscope to some degree.

In the case of Apple they are a very big target.

Earlier today Apple released, to much hype, their latest product offering. The iPad.

You can read all about its features here, but where would you go to find out about the product itself and actually order one?

You would assume that ipad.com was owned by Apple.

You'd be wrong.

The owner of ipad.com will probably see a huge increase in their web traffic over the next few days, but they're just an innocent bystander.

The domain ipad.com has been registered since 1997 and so any attempt by Apple to grab the domain would have been difficult, if not futile. Having said that, however, they may have tried it!

Apple is using a simple sub-directory off their main site to provide all the info about their new product.

Of course if you are in favour of new TLDs this is just another wonderful example of how a company like Apple could make use of their own TLD. If Apple owned .apple or .mac they'd have been able to launch their new product via the more memorable ipad.apple instead of apple.com/ipad

Nominet has joined the ranks of those registry operators who have embraced the much vaunted and possibly hyped, "social media".

In the last few weeks the UK registry operator has started using two Twitter accounts and its Facebook page to interact with its members (and other interested parties).

Based on member feedback they have also started sending out technical notifications via email to supplement their existing RSS feeds.

On Twitter they are using:

@Nominet - seems to be general Nominet news and interaction
@NominetTech - technical service announcements

You can find their facebook presence here.

Obviously both the Facebook and Twitter presences are accessible to both Nominet members and members of the public, while other fora, such as the private member forum, are not.

Hopefully these new efforts towards public engagement will have a positive impact on the registry.

GoDaddy's adverts wouldn't be considered that risque to a European audience. However, for some odd reason, they've caused plenty of controversy in the US for the last few years.

This year they're obviously capitalising on the run up to the SuperBowl with trailers for their adverts.

While Hollywood loves to whet our appetites with trailers for full length movies, GoDaddy has taken the step of creating teasers of their ads!

Here's the trailer:

IDNs might be a slightly "hot" topic at the moment following on from ICANN's launch of the IDN cctld program recently.

However, IDNs are NOT a new topic.

Far from it.

They've been around for quite some time.

Unfortunately neither The Times Online or Mashable seem to have done any homework. Considering the amount of content available on IDNs that has been researched and actually proven - you know, factual information, it's pretty amazing that not one, but two respected online publications manage to get something so completely wrong.

Andrew from Domain Name Wire explains very succinctly why both Mashable and The Times are wrong.

As anyone who actually bothers doing a bit of research into IDNs could tell you, the IDN projects have been discussed at length and from every imaginable angle.

Do the authors of those two articles honestly think that the DNS community hadn't thought about potential phishing problems?

Do they think we're all idiots?

It's not as if we ever have to deal with phishing or any other DNS related attacks is it?

We're just misinformed observers, like them, aren't we?

And here I was thinking that The Times was a quality publication ..

Oh well, back to the drawing board I guess.