Com Laude Newsletter Winter 2012

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Jan 1, 2013 ... applications for .blog, .cloud and .search while L'Oréal received a ... against any of the gTLDs related to sex or sexuality (.porn, .sex, .adult and ...
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Domain Name Developments:

Briefing Note for

Com Laude & Valideus clients

and contacts

December 2012

Domain Name Registration & Management

Christmas Message

As 2012 draws to a close, we wish you a peaceful Christmas and a very happy New Year. We have chosen to support the British Heart Foundation as our seasonal charity and are making a donation which relates to the number of domains we have under management. We are pleased to report that this is up nearly 20% on last year so thank you for your support. Although our offices will be closed from 12.45pm GMT on Monday 24 December, we will of course maintain 24/7 emergency cover throughout the festivities for our servers and we will also provide assistance with urgent requests such as domain registrations and re-pointings every weekday except 25 and 26 December 2012 and 1 January 2013 which are UK public holidays. Please send any urgent requests to [email protected] as this is the email box which the team providing cover will be checking. Don’t forget to copy in your Client Manager. Nick Wood, Managing Director

Lorna Gradden, Operations Director

Part One: New gTLDs Update Under the stewardship of new ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, ICANN is pressing ahead with the new gTLD programme which from the summer of 2013 will see nearly 1400 registries launch in a rolling programme that is expected to take around 18 months. Operational effectiveness is ICANN’s Number One priority, so Chehade declared at the 45th ICANN Open Meeting in Toronto last October, adding, “We must deliver on every aspect of the new gTLD program launch….As a first step, we are working to advance the dialogue on implementation of the Trademark Clearing House. We must also execute the prioritisation draw, evaluations, and pre-delegation tests flawlessly.” Below is our view of what is happening.

Prioritisation Draw After many options were considered and then abandoned including “Digital Archery” and even rock-paper-scissors, ICANN’s new gTLD Prioritisation Draw took place on 17 December 2012 in Los Angeles. Attracting a global audience numbering hundreds in person and thousands on-line, the Prioritisation Draw was a milestone event shaping the future timeline for each application. The lower the number an application received, the sooner the applicant will pass www.comlaude.com

[email protected]

through the evaluation process to contract negotiation, technical testing and “go live”. The “winners” with the lowest numbers from amongst the AsCII applicants in the draw were: 1.

play

Amazon EU S.à.r.l.

2.

dog

Top Level Domain Holdings Limited

3.

dnp

Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

4.

delmonte

Del Monte International GmbH

5.

lat

ECOM-LAC Federaciòn de Latinoamèrica y el Caribe para Internet y el Comercio Electrònico

6.

blanco

BLANCO GmbH + Co KG

7.

party

Oriental Trading Company, Inc.

8.

energy

Binky Birch, LLC

9.

food

Lifestyle Domain Holdings, Inc.

10.

mormon

IRI Domain Management, LLC

Exactly 99 applicants, representing 151 applications and including 65 Dot Brand applicants, chose to stand aside from the main draw and were allocated numbers at the rear of the process through a secondary draw. These applicants did not want to be pioneers in the new gTLD programme. +44 (0)20 7421 8250

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The 116 IDN applications were awarded priority ahead of all other applications. A total of 108 chose to participate in the draw. The first three winners in the IDN draw were:

(Chinese)

(Japanese) (Arabic) The first registry launches are expected summer 2013. We had two members of our team there. They arrived two days early and queued up to purchase 120 tickets at $100 each for the 120 registries our clients applied for. Their secondary task was to make sure there were no glitches. Whether or not ICANN can administer the expansion of the domain name system remains open for discussion, but we can confirm the new management team knows how to run a prize draw. The first ticket is drawn from the drum in the ballroom of the LAX Hilton. Naturally, ICANN engaged two young women for the task.

The winning ticket drawn in Number One position was for the Vatican’s application for 天主教 (.catholic) as an IDN.

GAC Early Warnings Tuesday 20 November 2012 was “GAC Early Warning Day”. Late on this day, a burst of 242 warning notices were fired off to 218 new gTLD applicants via email from members of the “GAC” - ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee, which is formed by representatives of over a 100 national governments. These Early Warnings give governments the opportunity to open a dialogue with an applicant on an issue of concern. Early Warnings that are ignored or not “remediated” could result in consensus GAC Advice to the www.comlaude.com

ICANN Board in April (or, allowing a little longer for the inevitable delays, May 2013), that an application should not proceed. In total, 56 different governments issued 242 Early Warnings. The most Early Warnings were filed by Australia (129), followed by Germany (20), France (19), India (9), Mali (7), and China (5); a number of other governments filed 1 or 2 warnings. Most of Australia’s filings concerned one of two issues: competition (81 filings) or consumer protection (38 filings). For example, Google received a warning from Australia on its applications for .blog, .cloud and .search while L'Oréal received a similar warning on .beauty, .salon and .skin (both applicants intend to use these gTLDs exclusively). Donuts, Inc., the domain speculator behind 307 new gTLD applications, received consumer protection warnings from Australia on 24 of its applications, including .casino, .doctor and .loans. The most-warned application, with 17 warnings, was DotConnect Africa’s bid for .africa, which does not have the support of governments within the African Union Commission. A total of 10 warnings were filed on all of the four applicants for .health (based on consumer interest and public interest grounds), while Donuts received six warnings on .sarl (due to a lack of protections for sARL registered companies). surprisingly, there were no warnings filed against any of the gTLDs related to sex or sexuality (.porn, .sex, .adult and .gay). It’s not clear whether we’ll see more warnings filed before the GAC issues consensus advice next spring. In a letter sent to the ICANN Board on 27 November 2012, the European Commission has made it clear that it does not consider itself bound by the formal ICANN process, and may take “further action…in order to safeguard the rights and interests of the European Union and its citizens”.

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Between now and April 2013, some of the warned applicants may choose to withdraw their applications for a partial refund (80% of the $185,000 application fee, if withdrawal takes place within 21 days of receiving an Early Warning). some applicants, following discussions with the GAC, may amend their applications to “remediate” the concerns raised in the warnings. Others will do nothing, having either assured the issuing GAC member(s) sufficiently, or having come to conclusion that the warning will not materialise into detrimental GAC consensus advice.

guidance is being sought from the GNsO Council here. As Brian Beckham, Valideus’ Head of Legal Policy said to a gathering of rights owners in London recently, “While it’s encouraging to see ICANN’s new leadership responding to legitimate trademark concerns, the strawman discussions underscore the fact that even after years of debate with the launch of the new gTLDs imminent, a series of ICANN compromises has produced trademark rights protection mechanisms that are still perceived as inadequate”.

If one thing is clear, it is that these Early Warnings mark the beginning, and not the end, of a process which will see governments play an important role in the policy implementation of new gTLDs. The next battle ground is likely to be the contract process. some GAC members are already asking ICANN how they will ensure that the promises made by applicants in their applications will be reflected in the registry agreements.

ICANN has always listened to experts on security when it comes to matters of technical stability. It has always listened to experts on IDNs when it comes to matters of non-AsCII domains. Unfortunately, when it comes to matters of IP protection, it has seemingly prioritised the operational needs of the registry operators and registrars which pay ICANN annual fees over the concerns of the IP community. Perhaps things will change when the 892 Dot Brand applicants become Contracted Parties with ICANN.

RPM Strawman

Dispute Resolution in the ngTLDs

ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) and Business Constituency (BC) seized the opportunity presented by the appointment of ICANN’s new CEO to pitch an eight-point proposal for“Improvements and Enhancements on the RPMs (Rights Protection Measures) for new gTLDs”. ICANN and its stakeholder groups discussed this IPC/BC proposal during small invitation-based meetings held in Brussels and Los Angeles in October and November 2012. As a result, ICANN devised a so-called strawman solution incorporating some aspects of the original IPC/BC proposal. The strawman solution is out for public comment to 15 January 2013, with a reply opportunity through 5 February 2013.

ICANN have confirmed that the formal Objection Period for ngTLDs will close on 13 March 2013, ten days before the publication of the first Initial Evaluation results.

The strawman proposal is to be debated by ICANN’s GNsO (policy body). Don’t expect them to be over-enthusiastic. If you care about rights protection in the domain name system, make sure you submit a comment. Go to http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/tmch-stra wman-30nov12-en.htm. The strawman solution includes improvements such as a requirement for 30 days advance notice of each new gTLD sunrise period; an extension of the required Trademark Claims service to the first 90 days (now 60) of general registration; a lightweight “Claims 2” period of 6-12 months that is an additional fee-based option for rights holders; and inclusion of previously-abused variations of trademarks in both types of Trademark Claims services. In addition, the IPC/BC proposal includes a “Limited Preventative Registration” mechanism to address the need for second-level defensive registrations;

www.comlaude.com

Formal Objections can be filed on four grounds: (i) string Confusion, (ii) Legal Rights, (iii) Limited Public Interest, and (iv) Community. Currently, there are no objections filed against any applications. An ICANN webinar will be held in January 2013 on the objection process. More information can be found on ICANN’s microsite: http://newgtlds.icann.org /en/program-status/objection-dispute-resolution. ICANN have confirmed that they have received several responses to its Request for Information (RFI) for the Uniform Rapid suspension (URs) mechanism, and that these responses have been reviewed and all potential providers have been interviewed. We are hoping to learn more in the New Year. A fast and cost-effective method for rights owners to challenge abusive registrations is a cornerstone of the ngTLD programme.

Timeline for the new gTLDs The new gTLD programme may have been blighted by delays, glitches and indecisiveness, but if we can believe the new ICANN management, the worst of it is behind us and the first new gTLD registries should finally go live from mid-2013. By the end of 2014 the domain landscape will be changed forever with up to 1400 new registries to challenge us. We hope that the timeline below will help you to anticipate these

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changes. For non-applicants, look out for the opening of the Trademark Clearinghouse, the closing date for Objections and

the introduction of the Uniform Rapid suspension scheme and don’t forget to budget.

Activity

Dates

GAC Issues Early Warnings

20 November 2012

The GAC has issued 242 Early Warnings, raising concerns about the nature or implementation of over 180 applications.

Applicants who received an Early Warning should engage with the GAC to come to a mutual agreement over the application; affected applicants had until 11 December 2012 to withdraw their application and receive an 80% refund.

Geographic Clarifying Questions (GCQs)

26 November 2012

Applications determined to be Geographic by the Geo Names Panel received a GCQ requesting their letter of support from the relevant jurisdictional authority, if not previously provided.

Applicants who receive a GCQ should ensure that they provide the relevant authorising letter to ICANN within four weeks, before the posting of the application’s Initial Evaluation result, or risk their application being rejected. All other CQs will be released from January.

Contention Sets to be published

December 2012

The String Review Panel have completed their review of all strings and determined the provisional contention sets; these are being reviewed before being passed to ICANN for publication.

Applicants should monitor to see which (if any) of their applications have been placed into a Contention Set.

Prioritisation Draw

17 December 2012

ICANN has held an opt-in randomised ticket draw to determine when an applicant receives CQs and the order of evaluation. This in turn decides the order in which strings will be delegated.

Valideus purchased tickets and attended the Draw on behalf of its clients who wished to opt in.

Clarifying Questions (CQs)

From January 2013

We expect that most questions will be focussed on the technical and financial sections of each application. CQs, will be sent out from January May 2013, in order of draw number.

Provide answers to CQs within four weeks of receipt. Engage relevant third parties, e.g., registry services provider (RSP), to assist where required.

Trademark Clearinghouse targeted to “go live”

January 2013

TMCH target to start receiving trademark entries.

Begin to enter trademarks which you may wish to register/protect at the second level of any new gTLD registry. You must demonstrate proof of use for each mark to be eligible for Sunrises.

Objection filing period ends

13 March 2013

Closure triggers the 135-day (approx. 5 months long) dispute resolution processes for Legal Rights Objections; String Confusion Objections; Community Objections and Limited Public Interest Objections.

File any necessary objections before the deadline. Monitor to see whether any objections have been filed against your application so that a response can be prepared.

Initial Evaluation results

March 2013 to August 2013

ICANN expects to start posting all Initial Evaluation results from 23 March until August 2013 based on draw number.

Monitor to check that your application has passed Initial Evaluation. If it has, engage RSP to prepare for pre-delegation technical testing and begin negotiations with ICANN over Registry Agreement. Communicate with relevant internal business units to compile a list of terms to register in your registry at launch.

ICANN 46

7-11 April 2013

Beijing, China.

Consider attending to meet with partners and hear updates on the latest ICANN issues.

GAC issues GAC Advice

From 12 April 2013 onwards (proposed)

The GAC does not foresee issuing GAC Advice before ICANN 46.

Applicants should monitor for any GAC Advice against their applications.

ICANN Contract Execution and Pre-Delegation Testing

From 12 April 2013 onwards (proposed)

ICANN’s process will allow for batches of 20 applications per week to go through contracting, pre-delegation testing and then delegation.

Negotiate with ICANN over the Registry Contract and then work with RSP to conduct pre-delegation technical testing. Once the Contract has been executed with ICANN the final Data Escrow agreement should be executed with the Data Escrow provider and ICANN. Your registry website should be created, with full registry and Sunrise policies, a searchable Whois, contact details, etc.

Possible “Go Live”

From late April/May 2013

If contract negotiation and technical testing go smoothly the Registry can launch at this time (for those with the earliest draw numbers), starting with a mandatory Sunrise for trademark holders.

Ensure Sunrise policies are in place well in advance and prepare internal communication for the launch.

ICANN 47

14-18 July 2013

Durban, South Africa.

Consider attending to meet with partners and hear updates on the latest ICANN issues.

www.comlaude.com

Notes

Actions/Considerations for Applicant

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Part Two: Other gTLD News All about the Trademark Clearinghouse The Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) is a database of verified trademark information. Often mis-represented as a Rights Protection Mechanism, it is better to think of the TMCH as a platform for RPMs in the ngTLDs, designed to minimise costs. The TMCH will allow trademark owners to deposit their trademark information into one centralised register for one fee, rather than with each of potentially hundreds of individual registries during their sunrise periods.

In order to receive Trademark Claims notifications, no proof of use has to be submitted. To participate in sunrises, a trademark owner must also provide proof that the mark is in use. Proof of use will be re-verified every five years. Proof of use requires the provision of a signed declaration and a sample of use. Deloitte has given some initial guidance on what is an acceptable sample:

Acceptable

Unacceptable

Labels

Inclusion of a mark in a domain name

Tags Containers from a product

Validation of marks for entry into the TMCH will be undertaken by Deloitte Belgium, which has a contract to be the exclusive provider of validation services for an initial period which will be revealed when their contract with ICANN is published online in the near future. The technical operator of the TMCH is IBM who will receive validated marks from Deloitte and, in the future, other validation providers. IBM is currently negotiating a contract with ICANN that is likely to include multiple statements of Work and High Availability service levels. ICANN will retain all rights in the IP in the TMCH and will be undertaking a monitoring programme to ensure that windfall profits are not made by either provider. Registration in the TMCH is important for brand owners because it is the central platform for cost-effective participation in sunrises (a period during which a trademark owner can apply to a new gTLD registry to obtain a domain name matching its trademark) and the operation of the Trademark Claims service (whereby a trademark owner is notified by the TMCH of any registrations matching its marks in any new gTLD). We expect the TMCH to open for the receipt of trademark data in January or February 2013. When the new gTLD registries launch, they must link to the TMCH for a minimum period of 30 days for the sunrise and for a minimum of 60 days for the Trademark Claims service. (The strawman proposal discussed above has suggested extending these periods). To be eligible for inclusion in the TMCH, a mark must be registered, validated by a court, or protected by a statute or treaty. ICANN has indicated that “other marks” may also be included provided that they can be represented within and verified by the TMCH. As is customary in sunrises, spaces and punctuation such as asterisks or exclamation marks in the trademark may be omitted or replaced with hyphens in the domain name. In addition, the & and @ symbols may be transcribed as ‘and’ or ‘at’ in the language(s) of the relevant trademark jurisdiction. However, marks containing a full stop are not eligible at all (to the chagrin of Dr. Pepper and the Mr. Men). www.comlaude.com

Advertising and marketing materials (including brochures, pamphlets, catalogues, product manuals, displays or signage, press releases, screen shots, or social media marketing materials)

Email messages Licenses to use a mark Business cards

The official fees for placing one trademark in the TMCH will be $150. The annual re-validation fee is still to be determined but may be as much as another $150. There will be discounts for volume and for multiple year entries paid in advance. We have developed a full service to assist you to place your marks in the TMCH, building upon our 100% success with the .XXX Blocking programme. We will help you to select the right marks to insert and can also help you to identify which of the 600+ “Open” ngTLD registries or 139 community/geographic registries may be of interest to you and what the costs of a filing programme might be. Have a look at our New gTLD Defensive Registration Cost Calculator tool at https://gtldsearch.valideus.com/documents. We will be monitoring the launch dates of every ngTLD registry so that we only submit an application for you at an appropriate time, saving you unnecessary costs in applying for and renewing a mark. For further information contact [email protected].

Part Three - ccTLD News .中国 - .cn - GA for IDNs .中国, the IDN equivalent of .CN, is now available for registration under General Availability in China. Domains under .中国 can be registered with AsCII characters under the same (but forever evolving) rules as regular general-use .CN registrations. A recent report in the National Business Daily, shanghai, that the Internet giant Google has already registered 18 such IDNs including adwords.中国,

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blogspot.中国 and chrome.中国 led to minor speculation outside the domain world that Google is clearing the way for the future development of the Chinese market. China currently has an estimated 538 million Internet users and .CN is ranked 6th in the Top ccTLD Registries by Domain Name Base, second Quarter 2012 (source: Zooknic, August 2012).

.co - Scandinavians for Colombia The .CO registry is set to launch internationalised domain names in scandinavian characters. From 15 January 2013, it will be possible to register second- and third-level domains under .CO, .COM.CO, .NET.CO and .NOM.CO (as well as under the restricted third-level .ORG.CO, .MIL.CO, .GOV.CO and .EDU.CO domains) in Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and swedish language characters. IDNs are currently only available for spanish special characters. The .CO domain was launched to the public in July 2010 and there are now nearly 1.4 million domains registered in more than 200 countries. The site with the most traffic is T.CO which redirects to TWITTER.COM.

.co.nl - new back-end service Meanwhile, CoDNs BV, the operator of the unofficial domain extensions .CO.NL (for Netherlands) and .CO.NO (for Norway), has announced it too will upgrade its .CO.NL registry system to a new back-end service by Open Registry (who are also a partner for the newly launched .sX registry). The .CO.NO system already runs on the new platform. The upgrade should not really have too much of an impact on registrants as the front-end is not affected, though in January domains will be moved to an Open Registry account unless customers choose to stay with EuroDNs.

.eg - second-level for marks The Egyptian Registry, EUN, has lifted restrictions on .EG domains for trademark holders. since 12 November 2012, second-level .EG domain names have been available for holders of trade marks registered in Egypt either regionally, through the Egyptian Trademarks Office, or internationally through WIPO. Previously a local presence was required. Domains should match the trademark registration, however they may not be used for websites which go against local traditional and conventional ethics, for example gambling, alcoholic beverages, or sexual websites. Domains must be used by the owner only and shouldn't be sold to any institution unless related to the registered owner. It is estimated that there are just under 30 million Internet users in Egypt, a country which famously severed the majority of its Internet connection amid growing unrest in January 2011. www.comlaude.com

.fr, .ca, .cz - Millionaire’s Row AFNIC, the non-profit association that manages the .FR TLD registry in France, has registered its 2.5 millionth domain name with the .FR extension. Antoine Cagnac, a dog breeder in Censerey, Bourgogne, who breeds between 40 and 60 puppies each year, became the holder of the 2.5 millionth .FR domain name BORDERs-COLLIE.FR on 6 December 2012 which he uses to find new ‘masters’ for his puppies throughout Europe. According to the Council of European National Top-level-domain Registries (CentR), the .FR TLD has a 34.1% market share in France and .FR is among the top 5 ccTLDs with a growth rate of +16% over the past year. AFNIC also manages the registries for .RE (Reunion Island), .YT (Mayotte), .WF (Wallis and Futuna), .TF (French southern Territories) and .PM (saint-Pierre and Miquelon). In the meantime, CZ.NIC has become the twelfth ccTLD EU member state to be a domain millionaire. The Czech registry celebrated its 1 millionth domain name at 5.24pm on 19 November 2012. With over 10,000 new domains now being registered under .CZ each month, CZ.NIC can thank the introduction of the FRED registration system five years ago which they believe made getting registrations cheaper and faster. Further afield, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) announced on 22 November 2012 that after taking 21 years to reach one million .CA domain names, it has hit its second millionth domain just four years later. ALGONQUINHOUsE.CA was the two millionth domain name registered by a retired schoolteacher from Toronto. Its owner Leora Rissin plans to use it for her new bed and breakfast business. This comes near the end of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the .CA domain; the first eight were registered on 12 January 1988, with the very first one, UPEI.CA, created for the University of Prince Edward Island. It’s not such a serious business, though - CIRA’s Facebook page can prove a real source of amusement with its geeky humour such as the recent, “The best thing about DNssEC jokes is that you can check if they were told wrong” and “An IPv4 address space walks into a bar: “A strong CIDR please. I'm exhausted.” “ (Well, DNs is the root of all problems…).

.hu.net - CentralNic grows unofficially larger CentralNic has added the extension .HU.NET to its lengthy list of unofficial country-related domain names, despite having no connection with the Hungarian registry. Domain names are available on a first-come, first-served basis with no restrictions. CentralNic has also announced it will release double-digit, letter or digit/letter combination domains across 27 of its extensions. Whether or not these will come at

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a premium price is yet to be determined. This follows its success at marketing two-character domains under its unofficial .UK.COM extension.

Last, but not least, RNIDs, the serbian registry operator, has acknowledged that cyber-attackers accessed the security certificates needed to access DNs records once again bringing down the local sites of well-known brands.

.id – Indonesia gets .biz.id and .my.id Indonesia has launched the extensions .BIZ.ID and .MY.ID. A sunrise Phase for holders of valid trademarks ran alongside a Grandfathering Phase for existing third-level .ID domain holders and as of 12 November 2012 registrations are available under .BIZ.ID for entities in Indonesia and .MY.ID for individuals. Domains must be similar or related to the registrant name, or registrant’s company or trademark.

.ie, .il, .pk, .ro, .rs - hit by hackers A criminal investigation by the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation is continuing following the unauthorised intrusion into IEDR’s company systems on 6 October 2012 the result of a successful exploitation of vulnerability in the Irish registry’s configuration of the web application Joomla which allowed unauthorised modifications to accounts of domain names such as GOOGLE.IE. Even while IEDR confirmed that it has taken external security advice and reset all passwords, the registries of Israel, Pakistan, Romania and serbia were hacked. PKNIC confirmed that four user accounts were compromised on the evening of 23 November 2012 which impacted nine DNs records. Numerous high-profile websites, including GOOGLE.PK were subsequently redirected by the hackers, believed to be the Turkish ‘Eboz’, to a page featuring a defaced message in Turkish language and a picture of two penguins walking across a bridge with the message "Pakistan Downed". Israeli sites including GROUPON.CO.IL, BBC.CO.IL and MsN.CO.IL were also reported to have been hacked. Hackers took advantage of Groupon’s site to post messages threatening Israeli troops against any ground attack against Gaza. The Israeli registry operator IsOC is yet to release a statement. Meanwhile, an Algerian hacker using the nickname MCA-CRB managed to deface the Romanian site of, yes you’ve guessed it, GOOGLE.RO, changing the usual content to feature a robotic face: What the Google.ro site looked like after the hackers had been to work

It is hardly surprising that 36 of the Fortune 100 which applied for their own Dot Brand registries in the ngTLD programme cited improvements to security and stability as a goal.

.jp – goes local with General Availability JPRs (Japan Registry services Co, Ltd) is aiming to help revitalise local activities and communities with the launch of its 47 new .JP extensions which coincide with the 47 Japanese prefectures (e.g., NAME.TOKYO.JP or NAME.OsAKA.JP). General Availability began on 19 November 2012. Third-level domains (the term 'NAME', in the example domains) may now be registered in both AsCII and Japanese on a first-come, firstserved basis by any person or organisation having a residential address in Japan, with AsCII character domains proving to be more popular, accounting for 4,913 of the 6,179 new prefecture-type domains registered so far. We wonder if this is a defensive move by JPRs in response to the applications for ngTLDs coinciding with Japanese city names.

.pa - Panama opens up Panama has opened registrations directly under .PA. Until now, it has only been possible to register .PA names at the third level (e.g., NAME.COM.PA). The launch has begun with a Grandfathering Period during which current owners of thirdlevel .PA names may register the equivalent name directly under .PA, provided the third-level name was registered before 31 January 2012. This is likely to continue until March 2013 when Go Live is scheduled.

.pw - relaunches as “The Professional Web” .PW, the country code extension for the archipelago Palau (which consists of several hundred volcanic and limestone islands and coral atolls, inhabited by just 21,000 people of which around 6,000 are Internet users), was officially relaunched as the extension for “The Professional Web” by Indian services company Directi at the recent ICANN meetings in Toronto. It is being marketed at individuals and businesses “who are turning to the Internet to establish a professional online presence”. A sunrise Period is now in fullswing and runs until 8 February 2013 for holders of valid trademarks registered before 1 December 2012. Domain names must be an exact or close match to their trademark, although there are allowances for the substitution of special characters, misspellings of trademarks prone to

www.comlaude.com

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typo-squatting, common abbreviations of a validated trademark and even the addition of keywords. This will be followed by a Landrush Period running from 18 February to 18 March 2013, with strings that receive multiple applications proceeding to an auction. Unrestricted .PW names will finally be available on a first-come, first-served basis from 25 March 2013.

‫ نادوس‬- Sudan passes IDN String Evaluation

and a few 1- and 2-character domains are available at premium prices.

.tel - IDNs in French Telnic, the Registry for .TEL domains, has now launched French Internationalised Domain Names (i.e., domain names including accented characters such as é or ô). As of October 2012 registrations are available on a first-come, first-served basis - pas de problème!

ICANN has announced the successful completion of the string Evaluation on the proposed Arabic IDN ccTLD string for sudan. The IDN (Internationalised Domain Name) ccTLD Fast Track Process was approved by the ICANN Board at its annual meeting in seoul, south Korea on 30 October 2009 and enables countries and territories to submit requests to ICANN for IDN ccTLDs, representing their respective country or territory names in scripts other than Latin. 31 requests have successfully passed through the string Evaluation so far, including most recently мон, the Cyrillic IDN ccTLD string for Mongolia, in June 2012.

.‫( سنوت‬.tunis) - “Go Live” begins

.sv - first-come, first-served from January

.uk - short but not sweet

The Registry in El salvador has introduced the registration of second-level domains directly under .sV on 1 October 2012. A Grandfathering/sunrise period ran from 1 October until 30 November 2012 during which owners of domains registered under the third-level, e.g., .COM.sV, could apply for the same domain name under the second-level .sV. Domain names will be assigned from 1 January 2013 and registrations will then be open on a first-come, first-served basis. The same restrictions will apply for domains registered under .sV, i.e., a local administrative contact is required.

Like the majority of European ccTLD registries which offer second-level domain registrations, Nominet wants a shorter second-level .UK namespace, with registrations such as INTERNET.UK instead of INTERNET.CO.UK. A three month consultation about the potential introduction of such a new service, known as direct.uk, is currently underway. The shorter .UK domain service would run alongside the existing thirdlevel options such as .CO.UK, .ORG.UK and .ME.UK and be specifically aimed at individuals or businesses wanting a shorter new domain name.

.sx - open without restrictions

Proposed new features include verification to ensure a registrant has a UK address, a Trustmark, daily monitoring for malicious software and viruses, as well as a digital signature to minimise the risks of a domain name being hijacked. However at a proposed cost of £20 for a one year term, much debate has arisen as to the need for these additional security features and the wisdom of diluting the well-respected .CO.UK brand.

.sX, the country code Top Level Domain of the new autonomous country of sint Maarten, has now entered the last of its launch phases with the start of General Availability. Domain names are now available to all on a first-come, firstserved basis, without any restrictions. With its ‘Now everybody can get .sX’ marketing campaign, we wait to see which brand owners step up.

.tc - relaunches registrations AdamsNames, the London-based company which operates the ccTLD registry for .TC (Turks and Caicos Islands), suspended registration of all new domains under .TC for a complete upgrade of its technical registry infrastructure in August this year. It finally relaunched on 4 December 2012. Domains are available on a first-come, first-served basis

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The Tunisian Internet Agency, ATI, is hoping to encourage the development of Arabic content and increase the visibility of local content internationally through the launch of the new Arabic IDN .‫( س نو ت‬.tunis). The Go Live Period is now open to anyone who wants to register. The new .‫ س نو ت‬extension currently accounts for 2.79% of the 16,917 domains registered in Tunisia, a country with an estimated population of just under 10.7 million.

significant opposition to the idea has developed. A coalition of domainers concerned at the devaluing of the portfolios they have developed under .CO.UK has apparently retained Paul Keating, an American attorney based in spain, to be the spokesperson for a bitter No campaign. There is widespread coverage of the iniquity of an 800% rise in the cost of a UK domain (currently .CO.UK domains are priced from £2.50 per year) whilst the benefits of security and stability are derided.

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We support our local registry and we support registration under .UK. The improvements in security are valuable (£2.50 is less than a pint of beer and no deterrent to speculators). We are a little puzzled that Nominet are not intending to offer automatic grandfathering for existing domain holders. This may be because registered third-level domains may constitute an unregistered right. It may also be because 470,000 corresponding third-level domains have different owners (e.g., APPLE.CO.UK and APPLE.ORG.UK). To get a string registered under .UK, Nominet proposes that brands will need a trademark registered in the UK or under the CTM and to prove evidence of bona fide use prior to 1 July 2012. Better for consumers and better for brands? Most certainly who wouldn’t say no to a shorter, easier name? Nominet’s research shows that 81% of Internet users in the UK prefer to use one of the 10.24 million .UK addresses instead of a .COM for online purchases. However, the speculators who dominate Nominet’s out-of-date and unwieldy Membership may sacrifice this good idea to protect the Pay Per Click revenues they generate.

Part Four: Domain Dispute News China - court rules domains are property According to a recent article in the shanghai Daily, a court in shanghai has ruled, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind, that a domain name can be seized and auctioned off to pay a debt as a type of “virtual property”. The court ruled against a company which, for five years, had avoided paying a 120,000 Yuan (Us$19,251) judgment to a local film and television company, as a result of an unpaid debt. The debtor company had claimed that it was penniless after the initial ruling in 2007, however after the film company discovered the existence of the debtor’s money-making website last year, the court agreed that the domain could be seized and auctioned.

.es - new reassignment procedure for names of general interest Red.es, the spanish registry operator, announced a new directive on 14 November 2012 governing the reassignment of domain names of “general interest” following instances of abusive registration. In exceptional circumstances, a domain can be declared of general interest by the President of Red.es. It may then be cancelled and reassigned to a rights owner. The original domain holder will only be entitled to reclaim any costs for the latest assignment or renewal. Red.es says this procedure will only be used in very specific cases in the interest of the general public.

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.fr - Happy Birthday Syreli syreli, Afnic's dispute resolution system, has celebrated its first year. Afnic has handled 157 requests and given 138 decisions since its launch on 21 November 2011 and the syreli College is now providing more than twenty decisions each month. 86% of requests for dispute resolution have come from corporate bodies (associations, trade unions, companies) with just 7% being initiated by individuals and finally 7% from corporate bodies under public law (local authorities, French institutions, public services, etc.).

Part Five: Miscellany WCIT and Internet Governance The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) held between 3 - 14 December 2012 in Dubai is not normally the kind of event that keeps us awake at night. However, thanks to some Russia-driven proposals to change the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR) administered by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to give power to the United Nations to regulate the Internet, we found ourselves anxiously watching developments. Key actors from the West including the United states and European Union along with multi-national companies like Google opposed the proposed changes and claimed that they would pose a threat to the“free and open Internet”. They argued that the changes would give the UN the power to regulate areas which are currently governed either by community-based approaches (e.g., ICANN) or largely national regulatory frameworks. There was also fear that the proposals would allow governments to restrict or block information online. When several African countries tabled a last minute amendment to bring the Internet under the control of the ITU and the representative of IRAN called for an Open Vote, the UK delegate led a walk out, followed in short order by the UsA and 53 other countries. Us Ambassador Terry Kramer said, “It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the U.s. must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form. The Internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years. All without UN regulation. We candidly cannot support an ITU Treaty that is inconsistent with the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance.”

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£6 million donated to Nominet Trust The .UK registry operator, Nominet, has donated £6 Million to the Nominet Trust. The Trust was established in January 2008 to support Internet-based projects that make a positive difference to the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. A third of the donated amount will be used for the promotion of the use of digital technology to tackle economic challenges in society, such as youth unemployment. Nice to know that renewing your domains can make a difference.

Whois experts ICANN is forming an “Expert Working Group” to reconsider Whois – what it is, how it works and how it can be improved. The Group is charged with redefining “the purpose and provision of gTLD registration data” and is due to report to ICANN’s policy body, the GNsO in April 2013. The provision of a comprehensive, accurate universal Whois service was one of the tasks ICANN was charged with on its creation back in 1999. still better late than never. If you want to volunteer to help, email [email protected] by 31 December 2012. You’ll need to demonstrate experience of matters such as Whois inaccuracy. shouldn’t be hard.

per cent during the six year life of the contract. Verisign’s share price dropped by 12%. Is this also a comment on ICANN’s ability to negotiate or control the Verisign behemoth which sits high on about 100 million domains?

How many domains are there? In its autumn domain count of domain names, undertaken by Zooknic, Verisign reported that at the end of June 2012 there were 240 million registered domains across all TLDs, an increase of 7.3 million or 3.1% over the first quarter of 2012. This represented an increase of 25.5 million over the previous year. Of the total of 240 million, 139.7m were gTLDs and 100.3m were ccTLDs. The base of ccTLDs grew by 18.5% over the previous year.

Behind closed doors ICANN’s Ombudsman Chris LaHatte is investigating a complaint from Maria Farrell, one of the Non Commercial User Constituency representatives on the GNsO, about the closed face-to-face meetings that ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadi coordinated in November and December to discuss matters such as the Trademark Clearinghouse which led to the creation of the strawman proposals outlined above. The meetings were by invitation only and, alleges Farrell, therefore neither open nor transparent. Farrell, a former ICANN staffer, may be right but for as long as the ICANN executive remain interested in furthering rights protections, we think executive implementation is better than prolonged public policy discussion which usually results in nothing we like. Total domain name registrations at end of June 2012

License to print money

(Source: Zooknic & Verisign, October 2012)

Running a successful domain registry is an interesting business. Renewal income is sustainable and high value unless you lose something as predictable as the right to automatic price increases, which has happened to Verisign, operator of the .COM registry. At the end of November 2012, the Us Department of Commerce approved the new contract ICANN had negotiated with Verisign for the operation of the .COM registry until 2018 but removed their right to make four price increases to the wholesale price of $7.85 of up to seven

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2nd Floor 28-30 Little Russell Street London WC1A 2HN Disclaimer: Information in this bulletin has been compiled from research at the domain name registries, directly from sources and over the Internet. We advise you to contact Com Laude at [email protected] before taking any action in case there are errors due to matters beyond our control. © Com Laude December 2012

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