August 25, 2011 — – IT infrastructure services provider NTT America announced Thursday it has extended its suite of private cloud services to support hybrid cloud requirements after achieving VMware vCloud Powered status for the NTT Communications private cloud service offering.

Global input and ideas will be on the rise at the 42 nd Public Meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers thanks to ICANN’s on-going Fellowship program. Now in its fifth year of successful capacity building and participation in the ICANN community, the Program’s mission is to identify members of the Internet community who either have not previously been able to participate in ICANN processes and constituent organizations, or those who require further exposure to the Internet community and its work but cannot travel and attend a meeting without financial support. Outreach is focused on the less developed regions of the world, in order to help create a broader base of knowledgeable constituents who will become the new voice of experience in their regions and beyond. As a reminder about the process, applications for each meeting are assessed by an independent selection committee, and priority is given to applicants who: meet minimum program requirements; are current residents of developing and least developed nations in the five ICANN regions; and who are interested in participating in ICANN and its supporting organizations, advisory committees or stakeholder groups. An effort is made to include more participants from the region that the current meeting is being held in, as long as minimum requirements have been satisfied. Additionally, all confirmed fellowship participants must comply with the terms and conditions of the Fellowship program, as outlined at http://www.icann.org/en/fellowships/terms-and-conditions.htm . As stated within these terms and conditions, ICANN is a California non-profit public benefit corporation incorporated in the United States and must therefore comply with all the laws and regulations of California and the United States. Fellows are responsible for obtaining all travel visas once accepted into the program. ICANN will only purchase tickets for Fellows after all necessary documentation has been obtained and Fellows demonstrate that they have obtained all necessary travel visas. Once all of the requirements for travel are met, the Fellowship program arranges airfare and hotel, as well as provides a stipend, following successful completion of the Fellowship program, to assist with some meeting costs incurred. Recipients will be expected to actively participate in and contribute to ICANN processes during and after the meeting. As always, registration for ICANN’s meetings is free for anyone wanting to attend. The meeting in Dakar, Senegal will be held from 23-28 October 2011. For this 14th round of the Fellowship Program, 19 fellows have been selected from 18 countries, chosen amongst the 78 applications received. Seven of the fellows are alumni from at least one of the past 13 programmes; 10 are first-time attendees to any ICANN meeting, 2 individuals have attended past meetings, but are first time fellows. There is representation from all sectors including civil, government, academia, and from business or user groups. Also included in these sectors are representatives of country code supporting groups. You will find this current list of participants at: http://www.icann.org/en/fellowships/ The 43 nd ICANN Public Meeting will be held in San Jose, Costa Rica (Latin America region) from 11-16 March 2012. The online application process for that meeting opens on 30 September 2011; look to the ICANN homepage for that announcement. About ICANN: To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. This ICANN announcement was sourced from: www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-18aug11-en.htm

One must wonder what America’s Association of National Advertisers has been doing for the last five years or so. As ICANN has been consulting about the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains, they have seemingly said nothing. Not a peep. Well, not until July this year anyway. And then it becomes a flood. And now a letter to ICANN’s CEO and President Rod Beckstrom where the ANA criticises ICANN for its lack of a bottom-up input process involving the global Internet community, insufficient research and guidance from expert authorities, inadequate oversight by the U.S. Department of Commerce and potentially disastrous consequences if the program is implemented in January 2012, as planned. While ICANN’s process has not been without criticism, it’s difficult to take seriously the ANA’s comments. I mean, what were all those ICANN meetings, the long drawn out process that has gone close to pushing to the limit some of the early parties interested in new gTLDs. The ANA argues that implementation of the ICANN program is economically unsupportable and is likely to cause irreparable harm and damage to its membership and the Internet business community in general. At the same time, according to the ANA, the program contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardises the safety of consumers. “By introducing confusion into the marketplace and increasing the likelihood of cybersquatting and other malicious conduct, the ICANN top-level domain program diminishes the power of trademarks to serve as strong, accurate and reliable symbols of source and quality in the marketplace,” says Bob Liodice, President and CEO, ANA. “Brand confusion, dilution and other abuses also pose risks of cyber predator harms, consumer privacy violations, identity theft and cyber security breaches. The decision to go forward with the program also violates sound public policy and contravenes ICANN’s Code of Conduct and its undertakings with the United States Department of Commerce.” So OK, the ANA raises some points, but points that have been debated interminably. And where was the ANA? Apparently not at the meetings and now they have woken up and demand the process be stopped. Give me a break. The ANA is a professional organisation that, so they say has more than 400 companies as members, representing in excess of 10,000 brands that collectively spend over $250 billion in marketing, communications and advertising each year, presumably in the US. So with all these members and all this support, why have they only now woken up to the new gTLD process? To read more of the ANA’s criticisms and a link to their letter, see the news release on their website at www.ana.net/content/show/id/21790 .

The fight in courts over the US government’s seizure of gambling-related domain names is continuing with Wired reporting “federal prosecutors are asking a judge not to return the domain names of one of Spain’s most popular websites, seized as part of a major US crackdown on internet piracy.” “The legal filing over Rojadirecta.com represents the government’s first legal response to a lawsuit challenging ‘Operation in Our Sites.’” The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized as many as 208 domains the authorities claim are linked to intellectual-property fraud, Wired reports, with the first seizures taking place in 2010. “The court-ordered seizures are aimed at web sites that sell counterfeited goods, as well as sites that facilitate illegal music, film and broadcast piracy.” “The Rojadirecta .com and .org domains were seized in January along with eight others connected to broadcasting pirated streams of professional sports.” To read the Wired report in full, see: www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/domain-seizures-defended

Website owners around the world using .COM or .NET domain names could find themselves on piracy charges and even face extradition to the US even if their website does not break any local laws The Guardian reported. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) is targeting websites outside America that they believe are “breaking US copyrights whether or not their servers are based in America or there is another direct US link, said Erik Barnett, the agency’s assistant deputy director.” The Guardian also reports that “As long as a website’s address ends in .com or .net, if it is implicated in the spread of pirated US-made films, TV or other media it is a legitimate target to be closed down or targeted for prosecution, Barnett said. While these web addresses are traditionally seen as global, all their connections are routed through Verisign, an internet infrastructure company based in Virginia, which the agency believes is sufficient to seek a US prosecution.” To read the full article in The Guardian, see: www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/03/us-anti-piracy-extradition-prosecution

A map of Voxel’s CDN span of geographic nodes (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) –- Cloud and managed hosting provider Voxel ( www.voxel.net ) announced last week that its VoxCAST On-Demand CDN platform ( www.voxel.net/voxcast-cdn ) is now available for free for all Perigee Global’s ( www.perigeeglobal.com ) hosting customers. The partnership announcement comes a month after Voxel completed a Series A $5.5 million capital raise led by Seaport Capital, providing the company with capital to support increased sales activities and accelerate the deployment of its solutions. Each hosting plan’s bandwidth allowance can be used flexibly and as-needed for both standard website traffic and CDN traffic.

A screen shot of Webs.com Earth Day promotion page (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) –- In the week ending April 22, 2011, there were many great promotions, a couple of which were tied into celebrating the upcoming Earth Day. Web host Webs.com is offering a 48-hour sale on all services in addition to free ad credits, Colocation America is making a $100 charitable donation with all new accounts at its Los Angeles data center, 1&1 Internet is offering six months of free shared hosting, and HostGator is offering 25 percent off its hosting services. Webs.com Offers Discounts on Services, Ad Credits To celebrate Earth Day, Webs.com ( www.webs.com ) is offering its “Go Green and Save Green – Happy Earth Day Sale!” Starting Thursday, the 48 hour sale offers discounts on a wide range of Webs.com’s products and services, including annual subscriptions and Webs Premium Packages.