The South Australian government and its capital, the city of Adelaide, have declined to apply for the .ADELAIDE top level domain citing they cannot justify the costs involved, saying they are too high. South Australian Information Economy Minister Tom Kenyon says the figures don’t stack up. “The benefits promoted by ARI do not amount to a compelling business case,” he told Adelaide’s Advertiser newspaper . “It’s difficult to justify the additional cost of the TLD registration and the required ongoing management when there does not appear to be a problem in locating information.” A spokesperson for the Adelaide City Council, meanwhile, said that in addition to the application fee to ICANN, a further $50,000 to $100,000 has to be paid out for consulting fees, the Advertiser also reported. And on top of that figure, the spokesperson says, there are annual operating costs of around $125,000-to-$175,000 to be taken into consideration. “The process is very expensive and does not provide council with significant value for money,” she added. “Council currently owns a number of regular domain names which align with businesses as well as specific marketing of council strategies, initiatives and programs.” Offering a different point of view though was Ben Murray, the director of branding consultancy BMD Brands, who told The Advertiser that destination domains are a branding “dream come true” and thinks local governments are being short-sighted. “For South Australia or Adelaide to be able to attach itself to the businesses and activities that people come to our state for, is an outstanding branding opportunity,” he says. “The State Government needs to remove its tinfoil hat, show confidence in our state and make this small investment – ‘.ADELAIDE’ or ‘.SOUTHAUSTRALIA’ would assist our businesses in competing nationally and internationally.” ARI Registry Services CEO Adrian Kinderis also spoke to The Advertiser and said his organisation has been trying to convince the State Government and the council of the benefits of TLDs since 2009. “It’s disappointing – especially for a city like Adelaide, which puts great effort into putting itself on the global map through its various branding exercises,” chief executive Adrian Kinderis told The Advertiser. “It could be three years before this opportunity is offered again and what Adelaide risks is that there could be another Adelaide somewhere in the globe that could take that name.” Mr Kinderis also said that owning a domain allows governments to create an official one-stop shop to promote their cities, link local businesses and boost their online identity. And while it is costing interstate governments $US185,000 to apply for each new suffix, Mr Kinderis believes the operating costs would be recouped by NSW and Victorian businesses wishing to align their own websites with the official government domains.

ICANN has slammed the American Association of National Advertisers for not understanding the new generic Top Level Domains process, saying the “assertions in your letter are either incorrect or problematic in several respects. Perhaps the most severe mischaracterisations concern the ICANN process.” The letter from Rod Beckstrom, ICANN CEO and President , to the ANA’s Robert Liodice, also CEO and President, is one of the most scathing letters the organisation has sent, repudiating assertions of what ICANN has, or has not done. The ANA originally wrote to ICANN earlier this month seething about the new gTLD process. But the organisation appears to have been asleep at the wheel as the process developing new gTLDs has been ongoing since around 2005 and the application guidebook was approved in June. Trademark holders/brand owners have been prolific in their views on the introduction of new gTLDs, driving changes to the applicant guidebook. While ICANN note that the ANA have previously participated in the consultation process back in 2008, one has to ask why the ANA has only seriously woken up to the process now. Back to the ICANN response. Beckstrom’s letter, repudiating the assertion there has been a lack of public comment, says that “multiple public meetings and at least 45 lengthy public comment periods were conducted and thousands of comments, representing a broad range of interests, were received” while all public comments, including those from the ANA, were considered in the decision-making process. One has to wonder if anyone at the ANA involved in writing the letter had actually read the applicant guidebook with its incorrect assertions. “Your letter also claims that the program represents ‘unrestricted expansion’ or allows ‘virtually any word or phrase.’ These statements demonstrate a lack of understanding of Program details. More research on your part would have revealed: (i) restrictions on delegation rates; (ii) string requirements and limitations; (iii) required applicant background, financial and technical qualifications; (iv) objection processes for infringing and other inappropriately applied-for strings; and (v) standing registry operator obligations in the registry agreement.” Another assertion refuted regards quotes from economic studies that claim more gTLDs will lead to security lapses and financial burdens. ICANN demolishes this assertion saying “your quotations from the economic studies are highly selective and lead to an unsupported conclusion that more domain names will lead to cyber security lapses or consumer privacy violations. Your claim of ‘enormous financial burdens’ and other broad statements are offered without supporting data or rationale. I invite you to review the entire set of economic studies, which explored the current marketplace, and applied expert analysis to an examination of the potential risks and benefits as far as possible (noting that the benefits of innovation are difficult to predict).” The ANA also wrongly claims companies will have no choice but to apply for a gTLD. Something categorically denied by ICANN. One point the ANA did get right was that the economic “studies recommended the implementation of additional protections against trademark abuse and malicious conduct.” But as ICANN note, the organisation “formed teams of internationally recognised experts to adopt both these recommendations and incorporate many significant new safeguards into the program.” Some of the changes introduced into the guidebook were the establishment of a Trademark Clearinghouse and the implementation of a Uniform Rapid Suspension system. In 2008 when the ANA wrote to ICANN commenting on the new gTLD process, they suggested five specific proposals. One proposal concerned trademark protection, and ICANN say that as a result of theirs and other suggestions the IRT was introduced. Similarly with the other suggestions from the ANA transparency, registration information, application fees, general process issues and generic terms for TLDs such as bank and insurance, changes were made that reflected comments, largely satisfying the concerns of the ANA back then. In conclusion, ICANN say they “will vigorously defend the multi-stakeholder model and the hard-fought consensus of its global stakeholder participants, its duty to act in accordance with established bottom-up processes, and its responsibility to the broad public interest of the global Internet community, rather than to the specific interests of any particular group.” “As you may be aware, ICANN’s activities extend beyond this program. It works for the benefit of the public interest, including your organisation, in ways large and small.” All in all this belated outburst by the ANA being critical of the new gTLD process when their original concerns were largely addressed with changes made to the application process must be deeply embarrassing to the organisation. And ANA members should be very concerned about how the organisation represents them.

The chairman of ICANN until last month, Peter Dengate Thrush, has today been appointed executive chairman of Top Level Domain Holdings, a company that intends to make targeted investments in this space, focusing on both infrastructure technologies and specific top level domains. “Peter will be an outstanding asset to TLDH. Peter and I have worked together as ICANN participants since its inception, and I am very pleased to welcome him as our executive chairman,” said Antony Van Couvering, TLDH’s chief executive officer. “Peter championed successfully the approval of the new [generic top-level domain] programme at the highest levels and with Peter on board I have every confidence we will achieve the same success at TLDH. I can’t think of a better addition to our team – Peter is a superstar in our field, and we are delighted to have him at the helm.” At the last ICANN meeting, the last that Dengate Thrush chaired, the application programme was approved by the board and there will be an application window for new gTLD applicants for three months from 12 January. Dengate Thrush has been involved in ICANN since its inception over ten years ago including through providing comments on the formation of ICANN and serving on the launching group of the ccNSO, who subsequently elected him an ICANN board member in 2005 and then ICANN chair replacing Vint Cerf in 2007. His term on the board, and as ICANN chair, ended at the ICANN meeting in Singapore in late June. Dengate Thrush was also instrumental in the establishment of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain association and was legal advisor to InternetNZ.

8 European countries have partnered up to raise awareness on internet domains on Facebook. Together they have developed a game which allows people to perform whois queries on Facebook using domain names in a playful way. The project has been implemented by AvenueSocial, a US company specialising in Facebook applications, fan pages and mobile apps. The new Facebook application tells you whether your first and last name is still available as domain name in the selected country as well as providing a link with where to register it. You can also query any keyword and find out if it is free or not. Use the picture tool for sending interactive domain greetings to your friends and feel free to recommend funny domain names to them. Participating in the domain quiz will bring you points on your way to becoming a domain star. Other features of the application include a general knowledge quiz with a focus on the internet and domains as well as a tool where you can play with the visual aspect of a domain name seeing how your domain might look on different backgrounds and pictures. Points can be earned on many parts of the application and then ranked against your friends and global users. The Domain Star application is available at apps.facebook.com/domainstar . Participating registries are: Austria (nic.at – www.nic.at ) Finland (Ficora – www.ficora.fi ) France (Afnic – www.afnic.fr ) Germany (Denic – www.denic.de ) Montenegro (doMEn – www.domain.me ) Poland (NASK – nask.pl ) Serbia (RNIDS – www.rnids.rs ) Slovenia (ARNES – www.arnes.si )

The IANA added the .XXX Top Level Domain to the root nameservers yesterday , meaning that when ICM Registry, and its registry operator Afilias, are ready they can begin registrations of .XXX domain names. Domain Incite reports that “sex.xxx and porn.xxx are now also resolving to placeholder sites.” IANA have published their report on the “Delegation of the .XXX top-level domain” at www.iana.org/reports/2011/xxx-report-20110407.pdf . The report gives a detailed background into the application process

04|15|2011 7:34 pm EDT .XXX Goes Live in the Root Servers by Frank Michlick in Categories: Registries – 1 Comment Earlier today IANA added the .XXX Top Level Domain to the root nameservers. While the registry operator Afilias is still in their setup process for ICM registry , the zone is currently propagating. While a number of registrars have already been taking pre-registrations, the actual timeline for the launch has not yet been published.

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A screen shot of EdgeCast’s Application Delivery Network interface (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) – CDN provider EdgeCast Networks ( www.edgecast.com ) announced on Wednesday the general availability of its Application Delivery Network, marking the end of a three month beta .   According to the press release, the beta cycle included internal testing and testing with more than 10 companies. During the beta, sites realized performance gains ranging from 40 percent to more than 250 percent, EdgeCast says.

With blocking of internet content pervasive by many regimes around the world, the most well-known being the Great Firewall of China, Minds+Machines’ Antony Van Couvering examines the issue in light of ICANN’s approval of the .XXX Top Level Domain and the Indian government’s announcement that they will block access to any .XXX website. Writing on the Minds+Machines blog, Van Couvering says “the creation of new TLDs which are offensive to someone, somewhere, will probably increase it. But will it fracture the Internet?” He asks the question in light of ICANN George Sadowsky’s dissent when ICANN approved the .XXX TLD at their board meeting that concluded the recent Silicon Valley San Francisco meeting.

With blocking of internet content pervasive by many regimes around the world, the most well-known being the Great Firewall of China, Minds+Machines’ Antony Van Couvering examines the issue in light of ICANN’s approval of the .XXX Top Level Domain and the Indian government’s announcement that they will block access to any .XXX website. Writing on the Minds+Machines blog, Van Couvering says “the creation of new TLDs which are offensive to someone, somewhere, will probably increase it. But will it fracture the Internet?” He asks the question in light of ICANN George Sadowsky’s dissent when ICANN approved the .XXX TLD at their board meeting that concluded the recent Silicon Valley San Francisco meeting