***************
RESEARCH PAPERS
***************
ICANN – NOW AND THEN: ICANN'S REFORM AND ITS PROBLEMS
Duke L. & Tech. Rev [2003]
This paper sheds some light upon the major problem
arising from the current normative infrastructure of
the DNS and provides a possible solution to the
current physical problem of the DNS. The paper's main
focus is the single-entity control of the A Root. The
paper uses as a starting point the Blueprint prepared
by the Committee on ICANN Evolution and Reform and
raises the question: Has this reform done anything to
resolve the single-entity control of the A Root? The
paper argues that the reform has done nothing to solve
the problem because the international privatization of
the DNS merely substitutes the administration of the
DNS function without making changes to the normative
infrastructure of the DNS. In light of the above, the
paper argues that there is a need to declare
independence from a one-entity controlled DNS. The
suggested approach is to share authority over the root
by acknowledging that countries that are accountable
to their populations are the authorities for their own
ccTLDs. Once technical and political independence has
been achieved, the technical and, to some degree,
political management of the DNS should be exercised
through an international body. In order to initiate a
discussion for a truly international body this paper
offers nine principles that a new international ccTLD
cooperation organization should observe when working
on its own creation. 

http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/PDFversion/2003dltr0007.html

Marketing Your Website: Legal Issues Relating To The
Allocation Of Internet Domain Names by BRIAN
FITZGERALD, LEIF GAMERTSFELDER & TONJE GULLIKSEN
[1998]
The cyberspace frontier has exploded in recent years
allowing us to buy and sell just about anything
on-line. Information is getting cheaper. Encyclopedias
that once cost the earth can now be accessed on-line
or via CD for a fraction of the cost. An integral part
of Internet commerce or `electronic commerce'
(e-commerce), is the Internet website. One finds a
website through an infinite number of ways. Three of
the most common are: through a web address given to
the consumer via an advertisement or packaging;
through an Internet search engine that locates
websites through word association; or through name
improvisation. The last one means that you simply
guess the website address.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLJ/1998/48.html

****
NEWS
****
au: auDA releases draft Registry Technical
Specification for comment
On 30 June 2006 the current Registry Licence Agreement
expires. In the coming months auDA will launch the
process for appointing a Registry Operator for a new 4
year term.
 http://auda.org.au/news-archive/auda-31032005/

Google loses .com.au
Google's indexing service dropped all Web sites with a
.com.au extension for a few hours on Friday afternoon,
effectively leaving millions of sites unattainable
from the Net’s most popular search engine.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/0,39023165,39186752,00.htm

WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center: New Generic
Top-Level Domains: Intellectual Property
Considerations
This report responds to a request made by Paul Twomey,
the President and CEO of the ICANN with letter dated
April 27, 2004. In this letter, Mr. Twomey requested
the WIPO to provide expert advice on “intellectual
property issues involved in the introduction of new
gTLDs”.

http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/reports/newgtld-ip/index.html

Panel Recommends VeriSign Retain Operation of ".net"
Domain
An independent advisory firm recommended Monday that
VeriSign Inc. be given another six years to run the
Internet's third most popular domain name suffix.
 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=625353
 http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/ebiz/41848.html

http://news.com.com/VeriSign+poised+to+retain+control+of+.net/2110-1030_3-5645108.html

http://out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=verisignlikelytok1112185641

http://www.cio-today.com/ecommerce/story.xhtml?story_title=VeriSign-To-Keep-Dot-Net-Domain&story_id=32043

http://forbes.com/home_asia/feeds/ap/2005/03/29/ap1912542.html

ICANN in Hot Seat over .net Registry Report
Germany-based Denic, one of the other four firms vying
with VeriSign for the right to control the .net
domain, slammed the report, saying it was "sloppy"
work replete with "serious factual errors" that led to
mistaken conclusions.
 http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/41961.html

Disappointment at DENIC over Poor Rating in .net
Procedure (news release)
Yesterday, the international Internet organization,
ICANN, announced the rankings achieved by the
applications it had received to take over
administration of the Top Level Domain .net. The
application from the German registry, DENIC, finished
in fourth place. This decision, which is based on an
evaluation of all applicants carried out by the
American firm of technology consultants, Telcordia
Technologies, caused reactions of surprise and
bewilderment.
 http://www.denic.de/en/denic/presse/press_70.html

New top-level domain names imminent
Icann has approved the .eu domain and the Icann board
is expected to approve .jobs and .travel soon.

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=137618

ICANN imposes $2 internet tax
Internet overseeing organisation ICANN has imposed
what amounts to a $2 tax on all new domains.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/31/icann_2buck_fee/

ICANN Publishes Registry and Registrar Compliance
Program
The Compliance Program explains ICANN's approach to
contractual compliance with regards to its Registry
Agreements and Registrar Accreditation Agreements.
 http://icann.org/compliance

ICANN Publishes Second Annual Update on the InterNIC
Whois Data Problem Report System
Today ICANN published its update on the InterNIC Whois
Data Problem Report System (WDPRS) in accordance with
the requirements set out in ICANN's Memorandum of
Understanding with the U.S. Department of Commerce.
 http://icann.org/whois/wdprs-report-final-31mar05.htm

us: U.S. finishes Internet study requested by Congress
in 1998
Talk about turning in your homework late: The
government just finished a report on Internet traffic
that Congress requested seven years ago. Lawmakers had
demanded the $1 million study, ultimately called
"Signposts in Cyberspace," under a 1998 law. Passed
almost at the dawn of what became the Internet boom,
the law required the Commerce Department to seek a
study about Web addresses and trademarks by the
National Research Council and wrap up the report
within nine months.

http://www.detnews.com/2005/technology/0504/03/tech-135718.htm

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TARDY_INTERNET_STUDY

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/11276453.htm

Revamp for web navigation system urged
The system the internet relies on to direct web
traffic needs to be revamped to thwart spammers and
identity thieves, concludes a report released on
Thursday.
 http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7218

Russian Companies Not To Get .eu Names
The European Internet domain .eu will be launched in
late 2005 by EURid non-profit organization (European
Registry for Internet Domains). Russian companies will
be able to get .eu names only if they have branches
and subsidiaries in the European Union, the newspaper
Business reports.

http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5483002

us: Appeals court upholds Sex.com ruling
A federal appeals court last week may have written the
final chapter to a sordid legal saga that helped
establish Internet domain names as property.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2005-03-31-sexcom_x.htm

AfriNIC to Emerge as Fully Recognised Regional
Internet Registry
This would signify that AfriNIC has been formally
recognised as the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for
the African and Indian Ocean region, assuming
operations of the region previously managed by APNIC,
ARIN and the RIPE NCC.

http://ripe.net/membership/newsletter/2005/newsletter7.pdf

How India's .IN Domain Rouses from its Slumber
India is one of the world's fastest growing economies,
the global leader in outsourcing and the service
computing, and home to over a billion people. But when
I first met officials from the Indian government to
discuss their plans for .IN, India had a total of just
about 7,000 .IN registrations, fewer than most small
countries have. ...(Compare to 100,000 names
registered last month alone) This is one of the most
rapid starts of any domain worldwide. In my
conversations with senior officials of the Indian
Government and the National Internet Exchange of India
(NIXI) which manages the .IN Registry, they credited
three key decisions that proved critical to the
success of the domain's re-launch.
 http://www.circleid.com/article/1022_0_1_0_C/

IT tackles phishing
ONE of the oldest cons in the book, the confidence
scam, has a new name: phishing. And it’s putting IT on
alert because of its potential to damage online
business communications and compromise the data
centre. ... Meanwhile, IT should monitor attempts to
register domain names that resemble legitimate
corporate URLs.

http://computerworld.com.my/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&articleid=475

http://www.kntimes.com/finance/fullstory0305-insight-Gone+Phishing+Yes+that%60-status-1-newsID-6459.html

National Arbitration Forum Issues Decision on Hillary
Clinton Web Address (news release)
The National Arbitration Forum announced that a ruling
has been issued in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton
regarding rights to the Internet domain name
hillaryclinton.com.

http://arbitration-forum.com/resources/news/index.asp?id=29

my: Government to be IPv6 compliant by 2008
The government aims to have all its facilities IPv6
compliant by 2008. This was announced by Halim Shafie,
Director General of the Ministry of Energy, Water and
Communications at Universiti Sains Malaysia after he
had launched the National Advanced v6 Centre of
Excellence (NAv6) located on the Penang campus of the
university. NAv6 has been selected by the government
to lead R&D and training in the next generation
Internet protocol. The center began operating on 1
March 2005.
 http://digital-review.org/aud18d.htm

April 2005 Web Server Survey
In the April 2005 survey we received responses from
62,286,451 sites. The monthly gain of nearly 1.7
million hostnames marks the strongest growth thus far
in 2005.

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/04/01/april_2005_web_server_survey.html

uk: iTunes DRS decision statement
Much of the recent debate regarding the itunes.co.uk
dispute has centered around the alleged 'David and
Goliath' nature of the dispute and this has, in some
instances, obscured the real reasons behind the
decision. The  11 page decision  can be seen
at:-http://www.nominet.org.uk/DisputeResolution/Decisions/Drs02223Itunes.html

http://www.nominet.org.uk/News/PressReleases/2005PressReleases/ItunesDrsDecisionStatement.html

Hostway Launches .Pro Domain In The UK
Hostway announced UK availability of the .Pro TLD.
Only available to registered professionals who have
been thoroughly vetted, .Pro will enable individuals
and businesses in any of these professions to create a
unique and secure address on the web. In addition,
.Pro is the first domain to be bundled with digital
certificate which allows registrants and their clients
to benefit from a security-enhanced Internet, ideal
for professionals who have heightened confidentiality
obligations.
 http://www.tophosts.com/articles/?001731.html

Who "owns" unregistered domain name space?
Recently, Register.com lost a class action lawsuit
where Michael Zurakov was upset that Register.com
pointed a newly registered domain to a "coming soon"
web page. While the lawsuit seems frivolous, one can
see where it may upset some domain owners. Why should
the registrar get some free publicity from a domain
owned by someone else? I guess you can argue no one
was actually harmed by Register.com's actions, but
those involved in the class action suit did own the
rights to the domain names. What about unregistered
domain name space? Can it be owned, and can those who
oversee top level domains do as they please with it?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20030915-2824.html

Meeting Growing Demands of Domain Name Space
This post will explain why ICANN and the domain
industry should foster and encourage the use of
third-level domain name spaces to benefit the domain
name industry and as a way to meet the growing demand
for easy-to-remember URLs.
 http://www.circleid.com/article/1009_0_1_0_C

Current Internet System Faces Technical and Political
Challenges Says Report
The Domain Name System has performed well, but
technical and political challenges must be met for the
system to continue to operate effectively, says a new
report from the National Academies' National Research
Council. Security must be heightened and steps taken
to counter attempts to use the system to control other
aspects of the Internet, a task for which it was not
designed and is not suitable, said the committee that
wrote the report.

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20050401075602921

Stay Away From Hyphenated Domains!
There is a reason why you don’t see many hyphenated
domain names out there today. Why?

http://www.webhostdir.com/news/articles/shownews.asp?id=11791

Failing to Register
When registrations are your primary business -- as
well as your generic domain name and corporate moniker
-- failing to file your financials on time is not a
good thing. Register.com (Nasdaq: RCOM) finds itself
in that unfortunate situation. After applying for a
filing extension earlier in March, the company missed
its deadline. Again.
 http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2005/mft05040107.htm

*****************
WSIS & GOVERNANCE
*****************
Discussion emerging about opportunities and strange
bedfellows
Civil Society involved in WSIS has finally started to
discuss the strategic and political implications of
multi-stakeholder processes like the World Summit on
the Information Society. Besides the usual “we have to
be involved if we have the chance”, there is a lot of
scepticism, but not yet a full understanding of how to
use these new structures in global governance.
 http://worldsummit2005.de/en/nav/14.htm

David Goldstein
 address: 2/4 Dundas Street
             COOGEE NSW 2034
             AUSTRALIA
 email: Goldstein_David§yahoo.com.au
 phone: +61 418 228 605 - mobile; +61 2 9665 0015 -
home

Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.
http://au.movies.yahoo.com

David Goldstein
 address: 2/4 Dundas Street
             COOGEE NSW 2034
             AUSTRALIA
 email: Goldstein_David§yahoo.com.au
 phone: +61 418 228 605 - mobile; +61 2 9665 0015 - home

Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.
http://au.movies.yahoo.com