In 2018, ICANN, which is in charge of allocating domain names and IP addresses, confirmed DENIC eG as the data escrow agent for registrars on behalf of the ICANN organization, alongside provider Iron Mountain, which has since been taken over by NCC Group. Five years later, on July 17, following a new call for tenders, ICANN has confirmed DENIC Services as its sole accredited escrow agent for the next five years. A fine recognition for this European player and subsidiary of DENIC eG, which no... Read More
Author: Arnaud Wittersheim
Head of Operations Department
Nameregistry - Compliance - Nameshield
ICANN77: Concrete progress and the search for a future leader
Last month, the 77th Summit of ICANN, the Internet’s regulatory body, was held in Washington DC. This second summit of 2023 was once again rich in meetings and exchanges, with 90 sessions held over four days. Here is a look back at the highlights of this event. Successful outcomes While ICANN summits have often left a mixed impression due to the multitude of subjects debated and processes made more cumbersome by the consensual approach sought by the organisation, we can welcom... Read More
ICANN76, Sally Costerton, the new interim president of ICANN, makes her mark
Candidate in March 2020 and then in March 2021, the city of Cancun finally had to wait until March 2023 and the end of the COVID pandemic to see a new edition of an ICANN summit in person. 2023, a very important year for the organisation. It will indeed celebrate its 25 years of existence while it is going through a risky period with an interim presidency after the resignation of its former President on 22 December 2022. Two women at the head of ICANN Sally Costerton from the UK, who h... Read More
Afnic Registrar Day is back
On January 10, the new edition of Registrar Day was held, organized by AFNIC, the registry of the .FR extension, this event is mainly intended for registrars. While the event was usually held in December, this new edition, which was both accessible in person and remotely, and which took place after the pandemic period, was held at the beginning of this year, a way to place ourselves “in a new dynamic,” according to Pierre Bonis, AFNIC’s Director General. The Registra... Read More
ICANN75, a dense summit before the ITU plenipotentiary meeting
Barely three months after the ICANN74 summit in The Hague, the one in Kuala Lumpur, 75th edition, has just been held. A second summit in hybrid mode, a mix of face-to-face and remote that claims almost 2000 participants from 112 countries, 60% of which were present on the spot. As if to better exist, two weeks before the particularly important appointment of a new secretary general at the head of the International Telecommunication Union, the technical counterpart of ICANN, ICANN proposed a ... Read More
ICANN74 between lessons of the pandemic and awareness of the richness of the Internet
Between ICANN66 in Montreal, Canada and ICANN74 in The Hague, Netherlands, thirty-two months and seven summits will have passed exclusively online. In 2020, the prospect of a return to face-to-face meetings was already being discussed under the heading of ‘hybrid mode’, a mixture of face-to-face and remote meetings. The question remained as to when this could be implemented. A more favorable health context was needed, with all the questions posed by covid variants and its repeat... Read More
ICANN73 or the difficult equation of preserving a weakened global model
In recent years, ICANN, the regulator of a “universal resolution” of the Internet for all Internet users, has been confronted with new difficulties that are weakening the body and its model. Its mode of operation has had to be adapted to an unprecedented global pandemic and its model of a global Internet is now being questioned by the growing desire of states to emancipate themselves from it, with the tragic conflict in Ukraine pushing the Urals a little further away from the Ro... Read More
ICANN72, between prioritisation needs and fragmentation risks
At the end of October, the 72nd ICANN summit was held, devoted to the development of policies that impact the domain name system (DNS) and the global Internet community. As already announced during the past summer, this latest annual meeting was to be held by videoconference in the time zone of Seattle in the United States. “Sleepless” were therefore not in Seattle but rather in Europe. The thorn in the side of the next round of new generic extensions A month before th... Read More
Data escrow no longer escapes the concentration of the domain names industry
There is a lot of talk about the concentration that is taking place in registries and registrars, two of the key actors in the domain names ecosystem. The two companies that have been in the news the most in the last two years, are Ethos Capital and Clearlake Capital, two private equity firms that have specialised in acquisitions in this sector. Ethos Capital, founded in 2019, had proposed in November in a 1.135 billion euros deal to acquire Public Interest Registry, the registry in char... Read More
ICANN71: GAC in the spotlight
Image source : icann.org website Some 56 sessions were scheduled as part of the 71st ICANN Summit in The Hague. Held once again exclusively by video conference due to the global health situation, no less than a quarter of these sessions were organised by the GAC, the governmental advisory committee that advises ICANN on public policy issues related to ICANN’s responsibilities in the domain name system. The GAC has been very active on all current ICANN policy issues and has clearly made... Read More
