Recently in registries Category

Alexa Raad has announced that she will be leaving PIR at the end of next month to "seek new challenges".

In a press release issued yesterday the registry operator highlighted some of the achievements under Ms Raad's leadership, such as the growth of the registration base and the deployment of DNSSEC.

Maarten Botterman will be interim CEO while the registry seeks a replacement for Ms Raad.

Over the last couple of years several of the gTLD registry operators have requested contractual changes with ICANN.

In many cases the change was small enough that it fit into what is called the Registry Services Evaluation Process (RSEP), which is the case of "new services" such as Verisign's Registry Lock.

In other cases, however, the requested change is much bigger and requires that ICANN open it up to public comment.

Such was the case with the proposed "Phased Allocation Program in .JOBS". which has been open to public comment.

You can read the proposal here (PDF), but in essence it broadens the usage scenarios and the possible registrants of .jobs domains quite significantly. Under the current regime companies are restricted to registering their company name or a close derivative. Under the proposal all those restrictions are gone out the window. From a registrant perspective that may seem appealing at first, but the way that this is being pitched could lead to only a very narrow number of registrants actually gaining at any level. Ultimately, however, the only entity that stands to gain would be the registry.

If you have the time take a read over some of the comments - they are quite revealing!

Switch, the registry operator for the Swiss ccTLD (.ch), has been the target of a scammer judging by emails they sent to registrants.

In the email the company underlines their stable position as registry operator and explains that another company has been trying to undermine them:

Email below:

You are receiving this e-mail because you have registered one or more .ch or .li domain names with SWITCH. At the moment, customers of SWITCH are being asked by third parties to transfer their domain name from SWITCH to a different supplier. The reason given for this is that it will soon no longer be possible to register domain names with SWITCH.

In order to prevent any misunderstandings and uncertainty, we would like to correct this misinformation as follows:

SWITCH registers and administers the .ch domain names on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM). The contract between SWITCH and OFCOM runs until 2015. It is possible for the contract to be renewed. You are thus in good hands with SWITCH and do not need to take any action.

With the setting up of our subsidiary switchplus, we have laid the foundations for the future - independently of our contract with OFCOM and its renewal. switchplus already offers e-mail and web hosting in addition to the registration of domain names.

As an independent foundation, SWITCH has established the internet for the Swiss universities in Switzerland. We make a key contribution to the stability of the internet and offer high-quality services for universities and third parties.

If you have any questions, our helpdesk will always be pleased to assist you.

With kind regards,

SWITCH Internet Domains

The ICANN Board's statement on vertical integration at Nairobi has left pretty much everyone in an awkward position.

Either it is:

• a masterful move by the board
• or an act of madness

I'd hope it was the masterful move, as it essentially forces everyone to reach a consensus. Failure to do so will have a negative impact on both registrars and registries, as nobody can really "win' in the post-Nairobi world.

The Board's statement is still being debated, but on the face of it they are blocking any form of relationship between registries and registrars:

5. New gTLDs Implementation – Vertical Integration

Whereas, decisions about industry structure affect many aspects of the public interest – prices, service offerings, sources and uses of data, and more;

Whereas, ICANN has obtained several studies, and heard from Industry participants about the possible benefits and detriments of choices related to ownership integration or non-integration;\

Whereas, the market for new gTLDs will be dynamic, and has yet to emerge. In particular, there are concerns about how industry structure could affect consumer data protection;

Whereas, the GNSO is in an active policy development process on the issue of Vertical Integration, and the Board does not want to create an environment in which it would be difficult to later harmonize the new gTLD marketplace with the GNSO policy result; and

Whereas, it is important to establish a baseline approach to registry-registrar separation for the new gTLD process to move ahead.

Resolved (2010.03.12.17), within the context of the new gTLD process, there will be strict separation of entities offering registry services and those acting as registrars. No co-ownership will be allowed.

Resolved (2010.03.12.18), if a policy becomes available from the GNSO, and approved by the Board prior to the launch of the new gTLD program, that policy will be considered by the Board for adoption as part of the New gTLD Program.

The second last line includes an incredibly vague reference to "registry services" without offering any definition. So is providing DNS to a registry covered? What about if I buy shares in a company that already owns shares in another company? Where do you draw the line?

The last sentence is the "opening", but based on the interactions on the mailing list so far I'd suspect that there will be a lot of squabbling ..

Hopefully, however, there will be some progress, as it is now an issue of importance to a lot of parties

The board has put forward a motion to decide vertical integration once and for all. There will no cross-ownership allowed.

The board's decision is very interesting.

They are, to quote Dennis Jennings, setting a baseline, but will bow to any policy decision that comes from the GNSO.

There is now a GNSO PDP (Policy Development Process) to discuss vertical integration.

Nominet, the registry operator that manages *.uk, is planning on releasing both single and two character domain names.

In common with a lot of other ccTLD registry operators, Nominet had blocked single and two character domain names from being registered. However they are now planning on releasing them to the public in a phased plan.

The exact details of "how" the domains will become available have not been decided, which is why the registry is now conducting a consultation period with the public.

The current proposal is not drastically different to the kind of methodology used by several of the gTLD registry operators to handle similar scenarios, although there are a few extra twists. To start with Nominet is speaking of the entire project in terms of "cost recovery", whereas other registries have used this kind of release as a revenue generator. The other thing which is quite interesting is how they plan to differentiate based on the second level ie. org.uk domains, according to their proposal, should be given to charities and not for profits, while co.uk should go to business users. While this is very logical it's still interesting to note that they've "gone back to basics" in some respects.

You can view full details of what Nominet are planning on their site and share your thoughts.

It will be interesting to see how the Nominet registrars and the public react to this news.

PIR, the registry operator for .org, has relaunched their website.

The new site is currently "beta", though that seems like an odd way to label a public-facing site that has been live for years ..

The area that interests me, of course, is the registrar list .. And I'm not overly impressed with the way it displays..

SIDN, the registry operator for .nl (Netherlands) have launched their new site.

The new look site gives the registry a complete visual facelift.

You can find it here.

SIDN, the registry operator for .nl, has announced the introduction of a new service for its registrars. The new phishing alert service harnesses data provided by Netcraft and will automatically email the registrar of record of any .nl domain name that is flagged as being used in a phishing attack.

Every five minutes or so, SIDN checks Netcraft's suspect URL database,
which is constantly being updated. Every time a .nl URL is added to the
database, an e-mail message is automatically sent to the relevant
registrar's administrative contact e-mail address. In other words, the
system does not rely on periodic reporting, but on almost immediate
individualised e-mail contact. It therefore provides a basis for very
rapid intervention. The service is due to enter use on February 15,
2010.

Message content
The e-mail sent to draw a registrar's attention to the fact that a
client is running a website that may be fraudulent will include the
following information:

- Suspected phishing site URL
- Host: the IP address of the system running the website
- Country: the country of origin of the IP address
- Date: the date and time that the suspect site was detected
- Target: the name of the company that seems to be targeted

SIDN are conscious of the danger of such a service and warn registrars that there may be false alarms.

It will be interesting to see how registrars and the wider internet community react to the introduction of this service.

Again on the subject of new TLDs ....

One of the "issues" that concerned a number of people is the concept of "vertical separation".

The basic idea is that registries and registrars should be kept separate.

While that is a wonderful Utopian ideal, the reality is that in the real world companies own other companies, people trade in stocks and shares etc., etc. So it's far from being a simple "cut and dried" situation.

It's also a situation that I personally think has been blown out of all proportion. And of course the people who are pushing it hard are the current registry operators. Can you say "monopoly"?
Or how about "fear"?

Be that as it may, the debate has been going on for months. During the Seoul meeting there was a public debate where both sides of the argument were able to "have it out", but while that may have helped clarify things for some people it didn't resolve it.

Fast forward to January 2010.

The GNSO council has now voted that the only way to resolve this issue once and for all is via  a PDP - which is ICANN speak for a quite drawn out policy development process:

A set of formal steps, as defined in the ICANN bylaws, to guide the initiation, internal and external review, timing and approval of policies needed to coordinate the global Internet's system of unique identifiers.

In many cases a PDP can take years to go through the full process, though there have been some exceptions in the recent past (think "tasting").

The motion that the GNSO council approved sets very clear limits on the PDP, but whether or not it will be possible for a policy debate as contentious (for some people) as this to be resolved in the 16 weeks mentioned or not is a different matter.