.Org and .EU now configured with DNNSEC

The Public Interest Registry and EURid, operators of the .org and .eu domain names respectively, announced the deployment of DNNSEC on the two gTLDs this week at the 38th ICANN meeting. The domains are the largest yet to adopt the new standard, which will bring greater security to Internet users.

As boring as it sounds, DNSSEC makes domains more secure by verifying and validating name server responses as they cross the Internet. It makes intercepting web traffic harder and can even stop hackers from redirecting visitors to fake sites.

The technology was expensive for the .org and .eu registries to implement, but I think it was worth it. It remains to see whether the general public is aware enough about the technology for it to have an effect on consumer choice for the extensions.

Source | Domain News
Photo | Flickr

EU critical of American influence on Internet

In a recent meeting, the EU’s European Economic and Social Committee expressed concern about America’s dominant influence on the Internet. Thomas McDonogh, a member of the committee, stated, “A possible threat to internet security is that so many internet services are controlled from the States.”

According to McDonogh, most of the Internet’s infrastructure, including financial services and cloud-computing, is controlled by US private industry and the government. Many Europeans would like to see an Internet with greater world collaboration, especially considering that the technology has no borders.
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Changes to .eu domains and use of symbols: domain registrations in "bad faith"

New criteria to reject abusive .eu domain registrations has been established by the European Court of Justice. According to reports, a clause for using special characters has been exploited, in particular by Austrian company Internetportal und Marketing GmbH.

Using the “&” symbol, the company managed to register 33 generic trademarks before the three phase period of setting up .eu domains started back in 2005. Internetportal intended to register, and profit from, the registration of 180 generic domain names before general registrations began.

European laws allow for the use of domain names without symbols only, and on one company challenging the registration of a domain name from Internetportal, the court has since revoked its claims to its abusive registrations.

The Court has been establishing what it means to register domain names in “bad faith”, saying of Internetportal:
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.eu IDNs launch

Today is a big day for Europeans with the availability of .eu IDNs. Interestingly, so far most of the names registered are German.

Here is a list of the first ten IDNs registered. All of them are in German and contain umlauts.

1. ärzte.eu (doctors)
2. börse.eu (stock exchange)
3. flüge.eu (flights)
4. bücher.eu (books)
5. ferienhäuser.eu (vacation homes)
6. reisebüro.eu (travel agency)
7. büro.eu (office)
8. küche.eu (kitchen)
9. müller.eu (miller, also a last name)
10. öl.eu (oil)

A lot of the premium names have already been picked up and will be auctioned in the comings weeks.

It will be interesting to see how IDNS stack up against identical names without special characters. Misspellings like ol.eu (öl) and fluge.eu (flüge) have been registered for years. I think speakers of languages that use non-Latin characters have gotten used to altering their spelling for the web, after all.

Preregistration for .eu IDNs now open

Those itching to get their hands on a non-Latin character domain will be happy to know that .eu registrars are now accepting preorders for IDNs.

The names cost the same as a normal .eu and are available on a first come, first serve basis. IDN registration will go live on December 10.

There will be no sunrise period for the new names, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea for trademark holders to preregister. Considering the diverse nature of Europe and its many languages, .eu is fulfilling its role as Europe’s TLD. It’s great that the registry stepped up to the plate so early.

Exterminator.com sells for $600,000

An unreported deal up until now, Exterminator.com sold in a private sale for £369,871, or $600,000 USD. The buyer remains unknown.

Country-code domains have been doing very well as of late. Antivirus.es sold for $63,325 in a private sale, while Blackjack.eu reached $45,000 in an online auction.

Most interestingly, patiofurniture.net, which was originally bought in 2006 for a measly $2,411, sold for $30,000! This is highly unusual for a two-word .net. I’m sure the seller was laughing all the way to the bank.

Source | DNJournal

More domain extensions to be IDN-ready

Yesterday, Bulgeria made news when it announced the availability of its .bg extension in Cyrillic. Now, two more extensions are stepping up to the IDN plate: .eu and Russia’s .rf.

Because .eu is a TLD intended for all of Europe, plans are in place to support alphabets for 23 different languages starting December 10. This will make it the most linguistically diverse domain extension in the world.

Not to be left out of the picture, Russia will begin accepting Cyrillic registrations next summer on the .rf extension, a previously unused domain for the Russian Federation.

Source | Domain Name News

More details about Christian.com sale emerge, .eu registry grows

More details about the sale of Christian.com have emerged. The buyer is Boris Kreiman, the same person who bought Call.com for £675,364 ($1.1 million USD). He plans on using the name for a Christian social networking and general information site.

Kreiman has also acquired several other names as of late, but is keeping the details secret.

In other news, The European Registry of Internet Domain Names (EURid), the operator of the .eu TLD, announced a growth of 66,129 new registrations in July. This is a 15% increase from the same time last year. A recent progress report showed an annual increase of 3.1%. Considering the tough economic times, this growth is very good.

.eu domains to be available in Cyrillic and Greek

In an effort to encourage greater adoption of the .eu top-level domain (TLD), the European Commission will start allowing non-latin characters to be used in domain registration. In the past, only “a to z” and “0 to 9″ characters were allowed. European states that will benefit greatly from this move include Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Lithuania.

Some of the countries, such as Slovenia, rely on a modified version of the latin alphabet, containing non-latin characters with diacritical marks that were previously not allowed in .eu domain registration. Characters such as “à” and “ä” will now be allowed, as well as Cyrillic characters such as “ψ” and “д”. In the past, these countries could only use some of the characters in their alphabets that matched latin characters.

.eu is the fourth most popular country code, after .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), and .nl (Netherlands). The top-level domain was first made available to EU nation states and citizens in 2006. This move is seen by many as a precursor to a larger ICANN adoption of non-latin alphabets, including Chinese, Arabic and many others.

Source: Euroalert
Photo: Flickr

PIR advocates to keep registries and registrars separate

The Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit organization responsible for the management of .ORG top-level domains (TLD), is raising its voice to advocate registry-registrar separation. The organization is concerned that ICANN is moving toward removing restrictions that prevent a registry, responsible for maintaining the infrastructure and management of a Top-level domain, from simultaneously owning registrars, the companies that sell domains.

Among the problems such cross-ownership could cause are that registries that are also registrars could provide domains at lower prices and thereby give themselves an unfair advantage over competing registrars. Another possible negative outcome is that information that a registrar gives to the domain registry could be used for their own registrar’s business, thereby once again giving them an unfair advantage.

PIR believes that these safeguards must stay in place and be more thoroughly defined when the new gTLDs are implemented. ICANN will be presenting information about cross ownership to a panel in Sydney on June 22. This will also undoubtedly raise questions about ICANN’s future. While the U.S. government believes it should maintain oversight over the organization, the E.U. wants oversight to be handed over to a collective committee of nations. ICANN itself, however, has expressed wishes to become an independent organization.

Source: CircleID