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Home :: ICANN 16 Dec 2011 Who's registering .XXX domains ICANN ICANN has an obscure process called Zone File Access, which lets you get access to each top-level domain's zone file, which lists all of its second-level domains. I asked for access to .XXX several months ago, and my password arrived this afternoon. See more ... posted at: 00:42 :: permanent link to this entry :: 3 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/xxxzone.trackback 20 Nov 2011 A serious antitrust challenge to .XXX ICANN Manwin Licensing is a Luxembourg company that turns out to manage a large fraction of the mainstream porn available on the Internet. They run websites including youporn.com (widely agreed to be the most popular porn site on the Net) as well as Playboy's online and TV properties. This week they and Digital Playground, a producer of porn video, sued ICANN and the ICM registry, which runs .XXX, on anti-trust grounds. In theory, .XXX was authorized by ICANN following the same rules as all of the other sponsored TLDs such as the uncontroversial .COOP and .AERO. Do they have a case? See more ... posted at: 22:22 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/manwinsuit.trackback 15 Nov 2011 Heavy hitters come out against new GTLDs ICANN In a press release earlier this week, a long list of large US businesses and trade associations announced the formation of the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight or CRIDO. It has long been apparent to me that ICANN stopped listening to all of the reasons that a flood of new TLDs is a bad idea, mesmerized by a combination of lobbying by parties that stand to profit from them, and the prospect of a torrent of cash for ICANN itself. It is a complete waste of time to try to use ICANN's own processes to make them stop and reconsider or even slow down a little. Although ICANN fancies itself to be a global-scope bottom-up, multi-stakeholder, consensus-based (is that enough hyphens?) organization, in fact it is a California not-for-profit corporation subject to US law. So the key facts about CRIDO are that a) they're in the US, and b) they represent organizations with a great deal of money and a great deal to lose from new TLDs. CRIDO clearly exists to force ICANN to defend its new TLD plans in US courts, and I look forward to the discovery stage in which we will with any luck learn more about the conflicts of interest by ICANN board and staff. Will we, for example, find out whether former ICANN board chair Peter Dengate Thrush already had a job offer from domain consultants Minds+Machines when he voted to approve new TLDs? Stay tuned. posted at: 10:14 :: permanent link to this entry :: 2 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/crido.trackback 23 Jun 2011 The New gTLD Chess Game ICANN On June 20th, the ICANN board voted to move ahead with the New gTLDs program, intended to add hundreds if not thousands of new names to the DNS root. Now what? Not even the most enthusiastic ICANN supporters think that any new TLDs will be added before the end of 2012, but there are other things going on that greatly complicate the outlook. See more ... posted at: 00:09 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/tldchess.trackback 29 May 2011 The gTLD Boondoggle ICANN I've been watching at the excitement build in the domain community, where a lot of people seem to believe that at next month's Singapore meeting, by golly, this time ICANN will really truly open the floodgates and start adding lots of new TLDs. I have my doubts, because there's still significant issues with the GAC and the US Government and ICANN hasn't yet grasped the fact that governments do not defer to NGOs, but let's back up a little and ask whether this is a good idea. I see four arguments in favor of new TLDs: More competition More Innovation! ICANN promised they would in 1998 Lots of money See more ... posted at: 14:35 :: permanent link to this entry :: 2 comments Trackback link is http://www.jl.ly/ICANN/boondoggle.trackback

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