Since March 1st 2022, the Tanzanian registry allows the registration of .TZ.
A first phase of 3 months (until 31/05/2022) will allow the registration to the holders of .CO.TZ registered before 01/03/2022.
From 01/06/2022, it will be possible to register .TZ domain names equivalent to domain names recently registered in .CO.TZ (.co.tz registered after 01/03/2022).
A general opening is planned for July 1, 2022.
The Nameshield team is at your disposal for any questions.
The opening date for the registration of .AU domain names is announced on 24/03/2022.
As a reminder, during the first six months, the implemented priority allocation process will offer you the opportunity:
Please note: your existing domain names will continue to operate normally and in accordance with the auDA registry policy, regardless of a .AU registration.
The Nameshield team is at your disposal for any questions.
Image source : kitkatty007 via Pixabay
It is a new change that has been in preparation for a few years in the digital world of Turkey.
Indeed, the administration of extensions in Turkey (.com.tr, .net.tr and .org.tr…) has been entrusted to .TR Network Information Systems (“TRABİS”) which will be incorporated under the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (“BTK”).
With TRABIS, changes will therefore occur in the process of assigning domain names.
The allocation of domain names under the extensions com.tr, net.tr and org.tr, under this new system will be liberalized and will answer to the principle of “first come, first served” (without required supporting documents).
As a reminder, under the management of NIC.TR, it was necessary to justify a trademark or the name of the company with an official document to register a .com.tr (the most used extension).
It will be easier to register a domain name in Turkey in a few weeks.
This change of rules was initially planned for January 2022 but has not happened yet.
BTK will announce soon the official dates and we hope to be able to confirm this liberalization of .com.tr, .net.tr and .org.tr during February 2022.
Do not hesitate to prepare your orders and contact your consultants and account managers to check your .com.tr domain names portfolio.
Image source : RiZeLLi via Pixabay
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.
A month before this summit, ICANN announced the schedule for the Operational Design Phase (ODP) for one of the most anticipated topics by the contracting parties: the organisation of a future round of applications for new generic extensions. The ODP is a new mechanism now linked to the policy development process (PDP). It is similar to a project scoping exercise as it aims to identify the steps, risks, costs and resources to be allocated to implement a project, in this case a new round of generic extensions. The PDP was conducted between 2015 and 2020, with the submission of a final recommendations report to the ICANN Board in March of this year. However, it is not until February 2023, almost two years later, that the Board should consider these recommendations, the time to let the ODP conduct. Indeed, ICANN confirmed before the opening of ICANN72 that this scoping phase should last sixteen months in its entirety, including ten months for the conduct of the ODP, three months upstream to initiate the latter and in particular to constitute the teams that will conduct it and three months downstream to conclude the work. This timetable surprised many of the contracting parties and gave rise to much discontent. These discontents were particularly expressed through the Brand Registry Group that represents and promotes the interests of its members, dotBrand owners. For most members, things are not moving fast enough and the ODP would even be partly useless since some aspects overlap with the work already conducted during the previous PDP. Another aspect pointed out was the cost of the ODP estimated to $9 million, which is not a small amount.
As the other sessions scheduled during the week-long summit progressed, it was clear that the clouds continued to gather in the weather of ICANN’s policies. For example, the announcement of the launch of an expedited policy development process (ePDP) to review the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which allows for the recovery of disputed domain names, caused a great deal of misunderstanding, given that a review of all rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) has already been conducted between 2016 and 2020 and its final recommendations have not yet been examined by the ICANN Board. Now this review to validate the recommendations is scheduled to take place at best in the summer of 2022, by which time the aforementioned ePDP should be finalised. This example illustrated the gap that is being created between the community’s expectations for decisions and ICANN’s decision-making bodies, which seem to be overwhelmed by the policy negotiation processes that are piling up and stretching out over time, risking rendering decisions obsolete if they are made too late. According to some participants, this even affects ICANN’s ability to continue to carry out its mission as set out in its founding documents: To preserve and enhance the operational stability, reliability, security and global interoperability of the Internet.
On the first day of the sessions, ICANN CEO Goran Marby defended himself against the idea that the Board was slow to make decisions. He pointed out that the Board had recently examined 228 recommendations from the Competion Consumer Choice & Consumer Trust (CCT), which had just conducted a review to assess the extent to which the expansion of generic TLDs, gTLDs, had promoted competition, consumer confidence and consumer choice. 166 have been approved to date, 44 placed on hold and 18 rejected. Many of these measures are correlated with research and data collection to better understand market trends for new gTLDs.
Goran Marby also justified the delays in decision-making by the large number of ongoing and overlapping issues and by the fact that ICANN sometimes needs additional expertise to make decisions. In response to the criticisms, he also indicated that ICANN is now working on some form of prioritisation, a wish expressed by NAMESHIELD that seems to have been heard. However, Marteen Botterman of the Board nuanced this by specifying that prioritisation is not the Board’s responsibility, as it must ensure that the multi-stakeholder model is respected and must therefore maintain a certain neutrality on the subjects submitted to it.
From an organisation that has difficulty in making decisions, to its questioning, there is only one step. From the first day of the sessions, Goran Marby, who was particularly involved in the exchanges, spoke of “threats to ICANN”. ICANN is working on a risk management framework for the organisation. He also spoke of the need to talk more closely with governments as the current governance model is being challenged. Indeed, one only has to look at Russia to see that in November 2019, the Russian government introduced new regulations that create a legal framework for centralised state management of the internet within Russia’s borders. Russia has also proposed to hand over the management of the root servers to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) member states. Proof that the States are going on the offensive in terms of their legislation, recent European directives also have an impact on the governance model, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the forthcoming NIS2 (Network and Information Systems) directive, subjects which were also recalled at the summit. In China, for example, a law strengthening controls on digital services operated in China has just been adopted.
The failure of the ICANN governance model, if confirmed, could lead to a fragmentation of the DNS as we know it today, a fragmentation which takes shape as ICANN becomes bogged down in sterile debates. This summit has highlighted that the community and ICANN leadership have identified this major risk. The challenge for the future is to address it. We will watch the next ICANN summit scheduled in March 2022.
The observation that DNS regulation policies are bogged down, particularly at ICANN72, was widely shared by NAMESHIELD well before this summit. In particular, NAMESHIELD had expressed the need to prioritise topics in agreement with the community during the ICANN72 preparatory sessions. NAMESHIELD, which participates in working groups working on recommendations in the context of the periodic reviews conducted by ICANN, also advocated for re-enchanting voluntary work and helping diversify representatives in these working groups, in particular from small structures. Indeed many volunteers are now overwhelmed by the increasing volume of topics to be considered as the processes accumulate and decisions do not follow. New participants are discouraged from taking an interest in these topics by lengthy and cumbersome processes.
Image source : David Mark via Pixabay
The “Top Level Domains” also called TLD or extensions, are defined by the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) which depends on ICANN since 1998.
ICANN and IANA are in charge of allocating Internet protocol (IP) addresses space, assigning protocol identifiers and managing the top level domain names system, i.e. the “Top Level Domains”.
Find out in this “5 minutes to understand” document, available for download on the Nameshield’s website, the different types of top level domains.
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 charge of the historical extension .ORG, which then claimed some 10.5 million registrations. If this deal was not done after a surprise veto from ICANN as part of a provision of the Registry agreement that provides for an approval process for each type of transfer whether it is a change of control or a major subcontracting agreement, Ethos Capital was quickly comforted with the confirmed acquisition on March 31, 2021 of the registry Donuts, which in December 2020, had concluded the acquisition of Afilias, the registry operator of the .INFO and .MOBI gTLDs, among others. Donuts currently claims 270 generic extensions out of a total of 1268, i.e. 21% of them! It recently acquired the .watches extension from the luxury goods manufacturer Richemont.
As for Clearlake Capital Group, this company founded in 2006, acquired Endurance International in a $3 billion deal and recently took a significant stake in Web.com. The two entities were merged to form a new company called Newfold Digital. Newfold’s portfolio includes registrars such as Register.com, Network Solutions, Domain.com, BuyDomains, BigRock, PublicDomainRegistry and CrazyDomains as well as BlueHost and HostGator, two very important companies in the field of web hosting. The group claims approximately 16.5 million domain names.
Another well-known player, the American registrar GoDaddy, announced in February 2021 that it was raising 800 million dollars to make acquisitions. Since then GoDaddy seems to have gone on the offensive. The world’s largest registrar by volume is currently finalising the acquisition of Minds & Machines, a registry of new generic extensions (27 in all) in a deal worth 120 million dollars. Europe is of course not immune to the concentration phenomenon, even if the deals taking place are not as high as those mentioned above.
Indeed, these are just a few examples of a concentration that seems to be accelerating unstoppably in the domain name sector. Yet another important key players in the domain name management, the escrow operators whose critical mission is to store and safeguard domain name data for registrars and registries, rather like a bank, seemed less exposed to the phenomenon until now. However, if we look at the list of ICANN-designated agents, we recently noticed that one of them, namely Iron Mountain, has disappeared. This is not due to an error but to the fact that this actor has been absorbed by its competitor NCC Group. The deal, made in June, is estimated to be worth 165 million dollars.
Across the concentrations now taking place in all the key areas necessary for the management of domain names portfolios, questions arise about the range of services on offer, which is constantly shrinking as a few major players take over the market, and also about prices (PIR had obtained from ICANN the lifting of the ceiling on .ORG prices just before Ethos Capital made its takeover offer) and the control of the domain name data, a control that seems difficult with the globalisation of the market. It should be remembered that NAMESHIELD remains an independent French company for which all these issues are at the heart of its concerns.
Image source : Geralt via Pixabay
The .SBS (side by side) is a short, thoughtful, three-letter domain extension, perfect for social causes, charitable organisations and other philanthropic initiatives, and any progressive business, individual, or community that believes in social and financial inclusion.
It is important to note that a part of the profits linked to the registration of .SBS domain names will be donated by the ShortDot registry to a non-profit organization.
Here is the launching schedule:
For more information about your .SBS registration conditions, please contact your Nameshield consultant.
Image by truthseeker08 from Pixabay
Initially scheduled to take place in Cancun, Mexico, like ICANN67 , the recent summit on Internet governance was once again held entirely by videoconference due to the global health situation. The PDPs, the Policy Development Processes, were the main thread of this summit.
The PDP, Policy Development Process, is the central community mechanism used by the Generic Names Supporting Organization (Gnso), the body responsible for policy developments on generic domain names, to propose new requirements and revise existing rules to update them. Each PDP results in a series of reports that are ultimately forwarded to the ICANN Board of Directors, which decides on the fate of the recommendations they contain.
News on the PDP of the new generic extensions
It is with this mechanism that ICANN launched a program of new generic extensions that led to 1930 applications in Spring 2012 and 1233 delegated extensions by the end of 2020. The opportunity to consider a new round of applications was materialized by a PDP initiated by Gnso in late 2015. Five years later, this process to review and improve the Gnso recommendations for the 2012 cycle has entered its final stretch. It is now up to the ICANN Board to decide on the recommendations of the working groups that worked on this PDP. The Board of Directors should launch a last phase of consultations of the community before pronouncing on the continuation of their works. The community was expecting an announcement at this summit or perhaps even a timetable to mark out the next steps until the next round of applications, but we have to admit that hopes have been dashed. Indeed, no announcements were made, even though we know that the prospect of a future round of applications is now approaching fast. Regarding the content of the recommendations this time, the elements discussed mainly during ICANN70 were about a pre-evaluation of the future registries, the improvement of the predictability to evaluate the future applications and the ways to improve the applicants’ support.
The PDP: A solution to the impasse over malicious use of the DNS?
Another topic, related to the implementation of the PDP mentioned above, is the malicious uses of the DNS, a topic commonly referred to as DNS abuse.
ICANN’s monitoring of malicious practices in generic names covers some 205 million domain names, of which barely 11% are from the cycle of extensions created since 2012. The observation made through their analyses shows that around one million domains concentrate these infringements, that is to say 0.5% of them. Another notable fact is that the new generic extensions are more used for malicious practices than the historical generic extensions like .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ and .INFO. In fact, ICANN indicated that in February 2021, 35% of security breaches came from names created in the new generic extensions against 65% in the historical extensions, a ratio that even rose to 40% in November 2020. ICANN also said that 90% of malicious practices in the new extensions were concentrated in 23 extensions. As for the most common types of attacks, spamming is involved at 85%, phishing at 8.4%, botnets (malicious programs that operate remotely) at 3.9% and malware at 2.7%. The new generic extensions concentrate more spamming and phishing practices. Although DNS abuse has been a central topic of discussion between the bodies representing the stakeholders of the Internet community for five summits now, positions still diverge on the measures to be taken to curb these harmful practices. Here again, the expectations of the community at this summit were high.
The GAC, the body that represents governments, has already supported the idea of a dedicated PDP on this topic. It advocates for a holistic approach that addresses all extensions, existing and future. GAC highlighted the work of the SSAC, the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which advises the community and the ICANN Board on issues related to the security and integrity of the Internet’s naming and addressing systems. Indeed, it published an advisory prior to ICANN70 urging the Board before launching the next round of new gTLDs to commission a study of the causes, responses and best practices for mitigating domain name abuse proliferating in the new gTLDs in the 2012 round. To their credit, they also made a series of recommendations to the ICANN Board, ranging from the systematic presence of security experts in all future contract negotiations to an ePDP (expeditive Policy Development Process). As for Gnso, it is continuing consultations for the moment without ruling out the use of a PDP.
And the ePDP phase 1 and 2 on access to registration data
Another topic, another PDP process, the ePDP in connection with the GDPR for access to domain name registration data. Initiated in 2018, it was intended to replace a Temporary Specification that involved redacting personal data from freely available registration data of generic names. Phase 1 of the ePDP, not finalized at this time, is intended to replace the Temporary Specification with a future-proof provision. Phase 2 aims to create a standardized data access system for legitimate applications commonly referred to as SSAD. This phase has now reached the end of the roadmap, as it is now in the hands of the ICANN Board of Directors after the Gnso has approved all the provisions formulated by the working groups that have worked on this subject, even those that did not reach consensus. The Gnso assumed this position under the pretext that it was necessary to take its responsibilities and that the recommendations were a whole, a breach of the process of creating new policies that normally wants to be consensual and that led the ALAC (At-Large Advisory Committee) that represents the end users to express concerns, the IPC (Intellectual Property Constituency) that represents the interests of the intellectual property community even going so far as to ask not to continue with the review of the recommendations. The ICANN Board has simply launched an Operational Design Phase to consider the operability of the future system and intends to take a position on the recommendations at a later stage.
A new PDP on domain name transfer policies
Another PDP process was officially launched at ICANN70 to revise the rules for domain name transfers: transfers between registrars and transfers between two registrants. The latter aims to simplify, secure and make name transfers more efficient. A vast project that could extend over several years…
Concerns about the concentration of the sector
Indicative of the concerns of the Internet community, the public forum this year was marked by many questions around the concentration that is accelerating among the players of domain names. The latest is Ethos Capital, a private equity firm founded in 2019, which after buying the operator of .ORG, PIR, has just taken over Donuts, which manages no less than 242 new generic extensions and had recently acquired Afilias, which is among other things manager of the extension .INFO. The community has expressed concerns about these new players whose expectations are not necessarily in line with one of ICANN’s totems, which is to defend competition, trust and consumer choice. ICANN, for its part, does not see a problem in this phenomenon, which has become a trend, because these mergers trigger very closely supervised procedures for analyzing and approving the changes that are brought about.
ICANN70 has highlighted the fact that ICANN is looking at a number of potentially high-impact topics in domain name management, most of which are about to be materialized into new policies that Nameshield will implement for its customers. Beyond this framework, Nameshield, an independent French player, has already implemented solutions that provide answers to the problems that some of these policies must address. Do not hesitate to reach your consultant with your needs so that we can study together the solutions that we can already bring.
The .FORUM is an interesting new extension to exploit and secure.
For more information on the conditions of registration of your .FORUM, please contact your Nameshield consultant .
Launched by the Donuts registry, this .CONTACT extension is interesting, particularly for the contact pages of your websites.
This extension is also part of the TrueName program created by the Donuts registry: when registering a domain name in .CONTACT, Donuts will also protect the typographical alternatives of your brand by blocking them, thus preventing some phishing attempts through the registration by a third party of a typographically similar name (ex.: loulou.contact vs l0ulou.contact).
– Early Access Phase (EAP) Day 1: December 2/3
– Early Access Phase (EAP) Day 2: December 3/4
– Early Access Phase (EAP) Day 3: December 4/5
– Early Access Phase (EAP) Day 4: December 5/6
– Early Access Phase (EAP) Day 5-7: December 6/9
For any questions, your Nameshield consultant is at your disposal.
