Posted 11/16/09 at 11:04:58 AM by Paul Lilly

Egypt is making a bit of history by being the first country to launch an Internet domain name using the Aribc script. The announcement comes not long after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to allow non-Latin top level domains.

Casting a cloud over Egypt's run towards the record books, Reporters Sans Frontieres, which campaigns for freedom of press, had some harsh words for the Egyptian government as it relates to Internet censorship.

"Egypt is one of the enemies of the Internet and if Internet governance requires a degree of regulation, it should be of a liberal nature and not the kind that the Egyptian government would like to impose," Reporters wrote.

The group went on to say that Egyptian police recently arrested and beat two young bloggers, Mohamed Adel, 20, and Amr Osama, 19, along with their lawyer, Amr Ezz, for "spreading false news and rumors liable to disturb the peace."

About 15 million of Eypt's 80 million residents are Internet users. And according to Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, even though there are over 300 million Arabic speakers worldwide, fewer than one percent of online content is in Arabic.

Read More

Posted 10/26/09 at 05:00:52 PM by Bart Salisbury

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the prevailing lords of Internet naming, have decided it’s time make the web a little less English-centric. It is expected that during it’s meeting in Seoul, ICANN will allow Internet addresses to be in non-Latin scripts. This would permit addresses in languages such as Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Greek, Korean, and Cyrillic.

The Internet presently has 1.6 billion users worldwide, with more than half using languages based on alphabets not using Latin characters. “This is the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was invented 40 years ago," Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the ICANN board, told reporters, calling it a "fantastically complicated technical feature."

The change is expected to be approved Friday, after which ICANN would start accepting applications for non-English domain names. The first such names would appear in the system mid-2010, along with a translation system which allows the different scripts to be converted to the right address.

Read More

Posted 10/02/09 at 09:08:53 AM by Paul Lilly

ICANN, the non-profit group who oversees a number of Internet-related tasks, including IP address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, making decisions on root server systems, and pretty much everything else that has to do with the Web, has signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) that puts the organization in the hands of an international committee.

According to the Affirmation Agreement, the international committee of parties who will now run ICANN will be chosen by the chairman of its Governmental Advisory Committee, who represents 100 countries around the globe.

"One world, one Internet, everyone connected -- this is our goal at ICANN," said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive office of ICANN. "This agreement gives international stakeholders an even more powerful voice in our activities moving forward."

The move, which was universally praised across the industry, doesn't completely remove the U.S. government's influence, but it does give other countries a much bigger say in how ICANN's policies moving forward.

Read More

Posted 03/19/09 at 11:00:00 AM by Paul Lilly

Cybersquatting, which describes trying to profit by registering a domain name that uses a trademarked name or word to either attract visitors to the website and/or sell the site to the trademark owner, has been illegal for a decade now, but that doesn't mean the practice is slowing up. On the contrary, more complaints and legal action were filed in 2008 than ever before.

And it's not just businesses that are being targeted, either. In addition to the likes of Google, Nestle, and Ebay, complaints resonated from the likes of actress Scarlett Johansson. Going forward, some feel the problem will only worsen once ICANN launches new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

"The creation of an unknowable and potentially vast number of new gTLDs raises significant issues for rights holders, as well as internet users generally," World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) director-general Francis Gurry said in a statement.

Gurry went on to say that his U.N. agency was working with ICANN on "pre- and post-delegation procedures" to look over proposed suffixes and prevent disputes.

Read More

Posted 02/26/09 at 02:08:11 PM by Paul Lilly

It's been eight months almost to the day since ICANN members voted to allow the freeing up of top level domains (gTLD), and it could be eight more months (or longer) before you can actually register one. Why the hold up, you ask?

ICANN's first-draft guidelines sparked a flurry of critical comments, including the exact opposite of a ringing endorsement from the U.S. government, and now a second draft has been released. Also accompanying the revised draft is a 154-page analysis of the comments already received, and ICANN expects to delay implementing the plan to at least September to give itself time to review all the feedback.

One of the primary concerns is that gTLDs could lead to confusion, and some companies fear they may be forced to invest in several new domain names. With an application fee of $180,000 and annual maintenance charges of $25,000 per gTLD (recently reduced for $75,000), that could turn into a costly affair. One solution is to place a hold on protected terms, but that raises the question of whether or not it would extend trademark holders' rights beyond what trademark law allows.

Comments on the revised proposal will be heard through April 13, 2009.

Read More

Posted 06/27/08 at 01:00:49 AM by Pulkit Chandna

 ICANN members have approved the most drastic and liberating changes to the very quintessence of the internet that has survived impregnably for the past 25 years. The internet, dear Maximum PC readers, will never be the same again. ICANN members in a watershed vote finally allowed the freeing up of top level domains.

Now anyone including individuals and organizations can register top level domains of their choosing. Soon there will be domain names like YA.HOO, BLOG.JOHN and I.LIKE.MATT etc. In fact, the governing body has also permitted domain names in Arabic and other Asian languages.

Read More

Posted 06/25/08 at 06:04:09 AM by Pulkit Chandna

The internet’s guardian of sorts ICANN will vote on relaxing rigid norms that currently govern top level domains like the ubiquitous .com domain. ICANN members will cast their vote on Thursday (June 26th, 2008) on a wide array of changes. If the members uphold the proposed steps then there will be sweeping changes that will surely augur well for freedom on the internet.

There are plans for laxer norms for top level domains that are currently assigned only to countries. Under the proposed arrangement, companies would be able to extend their brands to the internet in the best way possible by turning them to a top level domain. To boot, there is a possibility of top level domains in languages other than English, and the .xxx domain might finally be round the corner. Will ICANN vote for a new era of domains – Domain 2.0? Let’s see.

Read More