From ICANN News & Press

ICANN and the Africa Network Information Center (AFRINIC) have signed an agreement pledging to work collaboratively to identify additional potential locations for the expansion of L-Root anycast instances in Africa.

The placement of instances of root servers is important to the infrastructure of the Internet in Africa.

“This agreement comes in at a perfect time here in Toronto when ICANN has unveiled a new initiative to increase presence and participation across our region” said Adiel Akplogan, AFRINIC’s Chief Executive Officer. “Besides policy related discussions and participation, Africa needs to strengthen the resiliency of its Internet Infrastructure in order to attract local contents investments.”

“This very important agreement is a further reflection of the hard work of the Africa stakeholders and their spirit of engagement” said Fadi Chehadé, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN. “Our commitment to this sort of cooperative effort is framed by the initiative of the Africa Support Working Group, which is aimed at increasing African participation in ICANN.”

The Africa Support Working Group presented its three year initiative during ICANN‘s 45th public meeting in Toronto, Canada. The agreement between AfriNIC and ICANN marks the first implementation of the Africa Strategy.

Under the signed agreement, AFRINIC is willing to help ICANN strengthen the resilience of the DNS further by helping to identify potential additional physical locations that host L-Root.

For the full skinny go HERE.

From Wall Street Journal

Lance Armstrong Gets Dumped

Commercial fallout from doping allegations against Lance Armstrong hit Wednesday, as Nike Inc., RadioShack Corp., Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, the makers of Trek bikes and Giro helmets, and others distanced themselves from the former cycling champ.

Nike was particularly harsh, citing what it described as insurmountable evidence that he participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade.

The clothing and footwear company said it would continue to support Mr. Armstrong’s cancer charity and carry Livestrong- branded products. The Lance Armstrong Foundation, known as Livestrong, for years has had a partnership with Nike, allowing it to license the Livestrong brand for a collection of clothing, shoes and other merchandise. Mr. Armstrong in the past made appearances at retailers and trade shows on Nike’s behalf, to promote the Livestrong line.

Analysts say Livestrong branded products—profits from which go to the charity—represent a tiny portion of Nike’s $25 billion in revenue.

For the full skinny go HERE.

From ICANN

The application comment period is part of the New gTLD Program and allows you to:

• View a comment that has been submitted on an application
• Submit a comment on an application

Submit comments

To submit a comment, you must first create a user account using the form on this page. New gTLD Program Feedback credentials may also be used to submit a comment in this Forum. TAS and New gTLD Customer Service login credentials are not valid on the Application Comment Forum.

Comments for evaluation panels – Comments may be submitted on any active New gTLD application. Comments directed to the evaluation panels and submitted between 13 June 2012 and 12 August 2012 26 September 2012 will be forwarded to the evaluation panels to review and consider as part of the application’s evaluations. Comments submitted outside of this period will be available for public viewing in the View Comments section of this Forum.

Comments on objection grounds – On this forum, you may also submit comments on any application on the basis of one of the four available objection grounds (string confusion, legal rights, limited public interest, community) specified in the Applicant Guidebook. Comments directed to objection grounds WILL NOT be considered as formal objections and WILL NOT by themselves block an application from being evaluated. Formal objections are required to be lodged directly with a dispute resolution service provider following the process outlined in Module 3 of the Applicant Guidebook. Comments made in this Forum and directed to objection grounds will be available in the View Comments section of the Forum for viewing by the public, independent objector, and dispute resolution service providers.

Other Comments – Comments not intended to be directed to an evaluation panel or objection ground can be made under the “Other” category. Please note that comments directed to this category will not be summarized, analyzed, or sent to the evaluation panels, and will play no part in the evaluation process of an application. They will be available for public viewing in the View Comments section of this Forum.

For the full skinny go HERE.

From technology review

ICANN’S Boondoggle

by Wade Roush

Modern societies depend on systems of unique identifiers. If you’re a U.S. citizen, for example, it’s vital that your Social Security number be yours alone, or somebody else could start picking up your checks after you retire. Similarly, it’s crucial that no two phones have the same number, no two neighborhoods have the same zip code, and no two products at the supermarket have the same bar code. When an address system expands—say, when the phone companies introduce a new area code—it’s almost always because the community of users has outgrown the existing scheme; it means that the old identifiers either are in short supply or aren’t specific enough.

But that’s not what’s prompting a huge expansion of Internet domains right now. As you may have heard, the relatively manageable list of “generic top-level domains” (gTLDs) that we’ve all mastered over the last couple of decades, such as .com, .net, and .org, is set to expand dramatically starting next year. You could soon find Amazon at amazon.book and Google at google­.search. And there may be hundreds more new top-level domains—the proposals now under review range from .aaa to .zulu. This expansion isn’t happening because we’re running out of unique Web addresses under the existing set of gTLDs. Far from it. It’s happening because the body in charge of these things—the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN—thought it would be fun and profitable.

For the full skinny go HERE.

From ICANN

Go HERE for the current timeline for the new gTLDs. This is certain to change.

The 45th Meeting of ICANN will take place at The Westen Harbour Castle in Toronto. Hosted by The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) that hosts Canada’s .CA domain. For the current and future skinny go HERE.

As we are reaching a critical point in the evolution of the internet, we will begin to see several agencies making changes to the way they do business.Barrister & Solicitor Lorraine Fleck, has been keeping an eye on the changes that The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) have been making regarding the privacy of its registrants.She imparts important information for .ca holders that they may not have noticed after the jump.

Changes To The .ca WHOIS Privacy Policy

By Lorraine Fleck

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), the organization overseeing .ca domain names, changed its WHOIS policy in June, 2008.

Under the revised policy, WHOIS searches will not display registrant, administrative or technical name and contact information for domain names registered by private individuals. In other words, .ca registrants receive automatic privacy protection. WHOIS information for domain names registered to businesses and other organizations is displayed by default unless CIRA approves an organization’s request to shield its contact information from WHOIS searches.

CIRA has implemented an on-line message delivery form that allows an interested party to send a message to the administrative contact of a privacy shielded .ca domain name in the event of a domain name dispute.If the dispute is not resolved within 14 days of the on-line message’s transmission, the interested party can apply for the disclosure of the registrant’s contact information.The interested party must meet CIRA’s criteria for disclosure. The following are a few of the criteria is that a dispute must concern:The infringement of the interested party’s registered Canadian copyright, patent or trade-mark;The infringement of the interested party’s Canadian federal or provincial business or trade-name; orThe use of the interested party’s personal information to commit identity theft.

Byron Holland, President and CEO of CIRA explains on its website that “ The new dot-ca WHOIS policy puts registrants first by restricting access to the private information of individuals while providing timely mechanisms for legitimate information requests.”

CIRA’s new WHOIS policy can make proving a registrant’s lack of a legitimate interest in a domain name difficult in .ca domain name dispute resolution proceedings (a.k.a. CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, or CDRP). However, CIRA has also amended the CDRP rules to allow a complainant to file a submission addressing the registrant’s legitimate interest in the domain name where the registrant’s identity is not published in WHOIS.

For more information on this and other .ca issues, please visit Cira.ca.

From ICANN

20 August 2012

From ICANN

Go HERE for a 90 minute recorded session from ICANN.