ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
Transparency, an ICANN watchword since day one, was a noticeable thematic undercurrent at the community’s 79th public meeting in Puerto Rico last week. The problem of lawyers representing unnamed...
View ArticleGoDaddy’s next .xxx contract may not be a done deal
ICANN has published what could be the next version of GoDaddy’s .xxx registry contract, and is framing it as very much open to challenge. The proposed Registry Agreement would scrap the “sponsored”...
View ArticleAmazon and Google among .internal TLD ban backers
Google and Amazon have publicly backed ICANN’s plan to reserve the top-level domain .internal for private behind-the-firewall uses. ICANN picked the string “internal” as the one that it will promise to...
View ArticleInternet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
ICANN is set to loosen up its restrictions on single-character gTLDs in the 2026 application round, according to draft Applicant Guidebook language. But the exemption to the usual rule applies only to...
View ArticleICANN opens $217 million Grant Program
Ten million bucks of ICANN’s money is up for grabs, starting today. The Org has opened the application window for the first stage of its Grant Program, which it hopes to eventually see hand out over...
View ArticleSome registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
ICANN’s two-year experiment in helping connect Whois users with registrars has grown its pool of participating registrars over the last few months, but it has lost a couple of not-insignificant...
View ArticleICANN content policing power grab may be dead
A move by ICANN to grant itself more formal “content policing” powers may be dead, after the community was split on the issue and governments failed to back the move. The Governmental Advisory...
View ArticleAlibaba hit with ICANN breach notice
One of the companies in the Alibaba Group, China’s biggest registrar and one of the largest technology companies in the world, has been handed a breach notice, containing a long list of complaints...
View ArticleAlibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
Eleven registrars representing millions of domain names signed up to support ICANN’s Registration Data Request Service last month. One registrar dropped out. One of Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s...
View ArticleICANN publishes its Woke Manifesto. Here’s my hot take
ICANN’s antics rarely surprise me after close to a quarter-century of coverage, but today it’s published what I can only describe as its “Woke Manifesto” and while reading through it this afternoon I...
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