Following criticisms from two American advertising associations of the ICANN proposal for new generic Top Level Domains, two more advertising groups, one on each side of the Atlantic, have come out voicing their criticisms. In the US, three groups – the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and most recently the American Association of Advertising Agencies(4A) – have come out strongly against the plan. And in the UK the Direct Marketing Association has added its voice the chorus. However it would appear they have left it too late. Chris Combemale, executive director of the DMA UK, said that “the creation of new internet real estate will come at a cost to businesses that could outweigh any potential benefits.” “Creating a tranche of new internet domain names will be extremely costly to businesses. As well as the associated costs of registering new domain names and spending money to attract customers to multiple domains, businesses face the legal and financial headache of having to contend with cybersquatters grabbing specific domains. “Customised domain names won’t offer brands any enhanced marketing possibilities because consumers can easily search for specific information with the current domain name system.” Combemale adds: “Companies are already hard pressed to find cost savings in these tough trading times; adding a further financial burden that won’t reap any commercial benefits cannot be justified.” DMA UK say they will respond formerly to ICANN with a request to revise or withdraw its new rules. Meanwhile back in the US, 4A complained about the new gTLD plans saying that “if adopted [new gTLDs] would allow applicants to claim virtually any word, generic or branded as a domain name, resulting in confusion of brand identity and dilution of brand history and value.” “We are very disappointed in the position taken by ICANN concerning the assignment and sale of new domain names,” said 4A’s President and CEO Nancy Hill. “These changes would cost brand owners billions of dollars, severely, if not irreparably, diluting the value of trusted and respected brand names, as well as abrogate the good work 4A’s members have done on behalf of their clients.” “All marketers share the goal of a stable global marketplace, served by an Internet system that consumers can rely on to accurately reflect the quality and history of a product or service. ICANN’s actions would remove that trust and place consumers at a significant disadvantage in making marketplace choices and decisions.” The complaints by the advertisers have been aired many times and dealt with by ICANN. ICANN has been consulting with intellectual property groups, people involved in domain names including potential applicants, lawyers and anyone else who is interested for over five years, yet the American, and now British, advertising groups have seemingly only just realised the significance of the changes. Not only that, as Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s CEO and President, pointed out in a letter to the ANA in 2008 the ANA had complained to ICANN about new gTLDs, something seemingly overlooked by the ANA in their complaints. With ICANN board having approved the applicant guidebook at its Singapore meeting in June, and having announced a three month application window commencing 12 January, it would appear that advertising associations on both sides of the Atlantic have been asleep at the wheel.

[news release] RIGHT OF THE DOT, a domain name strategy consulting group for new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applicants and existing TLDs, announced today that it has entered into a cooperative arrangement with Architelos, a consulting and managed services company serving the same market. Under the arrangement, Architelos will refer gTLD applicants seeking premium domain name consulting services to RIGHT OF THE DOT, and RIGHT OF THE DOT will refer to Architelos clients looking for new TLD feasibility, financial modeling and TLD application services, as well as a managed solution for running the front office functions of a TLD registry. The internet name space is expected to expand into potentially hundreds of new TLDs, as companies are permitted to apply for generic names and even their own brand name in the form of a TLD, to generate greater brand awareness and control. However, achieving the benefits requires a comprehensive set of strategic services leveraging the best of several providers. The cooperative agreement between the two companies provides a complementary set of services targeted at generics and brand applicants. RIGHT OF THE DOT specializes in new and existing gTLD strategy, board advisement, premium domain strategy, market positioning and sales. The company is offering its expertise to assist new gTLD applicants in developing and executing premium domain name strategies including financial planning. Architelos’ executives have run registries and launched new TLDs. They provide the rigorous analysis and creative ideas for helping brands and businesses intelligently identify opportunities within the TLD industry. The company has also pioneered tools such as the Business Case Builder, which enables an applicant to easily create the cost and revenue projections for its TLD, as well as the customized report required by ICANN as part of the TLD application. “The Right of the Dot team is a great complement to the Architelos team in terms of industry experience and track record,” said Alexa Raad, CEO of Architelos. “Architelos is unique in what it offers our clients—a hands-on team of executives with a successful track record of building registries and launching TLDs and its Business Case Builder that helps brands and generic TLDs create a strong and defensible application for their desired TLD,” said Michael H. Berkens, Managing Director for RIGHT OF THE DOT. “Interest in new gTLDs continues to increase among entrepreneurs, investors and corporations. And rightly so,” said Monte Cahn, President of RIGHT OF THE DOT. “We are on the verge of a true paradigm shift in the domain industry, and forward-thinking businesses are aggressively planning around new gTLDs. With Architelos and RIGHT OF THE DOT in your court, you’ll have the business intelligence, valuation and sales support you need to ensure your next move is a success.” About Right Of the Dot LLC RIGHT OF THE DOT is an Internet consulting and advisement firm specializing in new and existing TLD strategy, board advisement, premium domain and market positioning, sales and services. The venture is the brainchild of two successful domain and Internet industry veterans, Monte Cahn and Michael H. Berkens, Esq., who possess a unique combination of vision, leadership and domain expertise. Cahn was the original founder of Moniker.com, a top 7 ICANN Accredited Registrar, who went on to head the Aftermarket and Sales Division of Oversee.net. Among other pioneering services, Cahn introduced the concept of Live Domain Auctions to the industry. Berkens, a domain investor with more than 75,000 domains, owns WorldwideMedia Inc., including the retail site MostWantedDomains.com. He founded and contributes to the widely read blog, TheDomains.com. Both principals of RIGHT OF THE DOT are members of the prestigious Domain Hall Of Fame, and are two of only 10 members. This highly qualified consulting group gives you access to the most experienced domain sales and marketing strategists in the industry. They are the only domain industry firm specializing in the many of the critical service offerings required to be successful in the ever-expanding domain industry. About Architelos Architelos, Inc. provides consulting and managed services for clients in the internet and domain name industry. The TMS service provides outsourced professional services and SaaS-based registry “front-office” solutions for both new TLD contract winners and existing small registries. TMS services range from new TLD application support to launch and turnkey management of a new TLD. The consulting practice focuses on innovative growth strategies and boasts both industry leaders as well as new entrants as clients. Architelos operates as an independent and trusted third party with no financial interest in or plans to apply for any new TLDs. Architelos has an “open source” ethos, thus ensuring integration with all back-end processors. With an executive team comprised of leading industry veterans who have successfully launched, built and managed new and existing TLDs, Architelos is uniquely positioned to offer a turnkey solution for registry launch and management. Founded by Alexa Raad, former CEO of PIR, the .ORG registry, and John Matson, a veteran management consultant to Fortune 500 companies, Architelos brings wisdom and experience to turn rapid market change into innovation and success for its clients.

Centralnic’s GB.COM is no longer pointing to their nameservers reports Michele Neylon on his Internet News website. Neylon also says that any domains in the zone are now being wildcarded to the main GB.COM website. Upon going to the GB.COM website, the following notice is posted: Welcome to the GB.com site You may be here because you have been sold a domain or email service using the gb.com domain that has ceased to work. You can restore that service swiftly by registering with GB.COM Ltd. GB.COM Ltd will not provide a service that you have paid others for, unless they have an arrangement with GB.COM Ltd. If you have already paid for future service and it has ceased then you should contact your supplier. If you have any queries please send us an email and we will endeavour to answer your questions. GB.COM Ltd. In response, CentralNic have posted the following notice on their website: Notice Regarding GB.COM Domains Unfortunately, the service we have been providing for domains ending .gb.com has been interrupted. We apologize for any inconvenience – the interruption was effected without warning by a third party and was out of our control. We are currently taking legal advice about this and will be taking urgent steps to restore the service. But we cannot achieve that instantly. In the interim we are taking every action possible to ensure that .gb.com websites continue to function during the temporary period before our service is restored, to mitigate any losses to our clients. Neylon, who manages registrar Blacknight Solutions , did a bit of poking around in Whois records and found the nameservers for GB.COM were switched away from CentralNic over to Bytemark earlier on the day in question. Neylon further notes that all the other Whois records seem to be unchanged. On his posting, Neylon notes several updates from CentralNic with the final one being from one of CentralNic’s staff stating: We have started creating accounts with Gb.com Ltd for our registrars, and registering their domains into them. Although we don’t believe that Gb.com Ltd has any right to do what they’ve done, we feel that this is the best course of action to get our registrant’s domains working, until we can resolve the legal issue and bring gb.com back onto our registry infrastructure. We are working in descending size order, so the largest registrar portfolios are being cleared first. As we are having to use a screen-scraping script to submit the information, it’s a slow process, taking 4-5 seconds per domain. We have already registered those domains that are directly registered with us, with no registrar. For further updates and additional information, see Michele Neylon’s Internet News blog at: www.internetnews.me/2011/07/30/centralnics-gb-com-in-dispute-gb-com-now-wildcarded

A “deliberate, premeditated and malicious” attack on the network of Australian registrar and webhost Distribute.IT saw customer data, websites and emails that were hosted on a number of Distribute.IT servers potentially rendered unrecoverable. Distribute.IT described it as “a deliberate aim at the Company and our clients”. The loss of the data has been disastrous for many customers of Distribute.IT. The cost to the company that had around 210,000 domain names under management and 6.5 per cent share of the .AU market representing on recent figures around 130,000 .AU domains, has been disastrous with the company subsequently being acquired by the Netregistry Group, Australia’s largest group of registrars. Approximately 4800 domain names across four servers, holding domain related services, such as DNS and web hosting suffered complete data loss. 2000 of these were websites and associated data while a further 2800 accounts had DNS hosting. Of the 2000 websites lost, Netregistry is still working to recover data around one month after the hack. The SAN storage device hosting data has been sent to Sydney and in the next few days will go to data recovery experts, but time and cost constraints will in part determine what data can be recovered. To do their work, hackers gained SSH access to a compromised desktop within the company and then gained access to an internal log containing passwords to gain access to the network, Brett Fenton, NetRegistry’s Chief Operating Officer told the Goldstein Report/Domain Pulse/Domain News. The Australian policy and regulatory body auDA worked quickly with Netregistry to ensure the acquisition of Distribute.IT went ahead with minimal disruption. As required under the Registrar Agreement, auDA’s consent was requested by the parties prior to finalisation and was very quickly granted. While the hacking is a rare case, there are lessons the domain name industry – registrants, resellers, registrars and registries – all need to learn. For registries and TLD managers, Fenton says it is important from an Australian perspective “that auDA needs to take responsibility for ensuring security of domain data for domain registrars.” One part of this Fenton believes is that the registrar accreditation test should ensure that registrars have PCI-DSS compliance to ensure best practice security for registrars with the stability of the .AU namespace being the role of the regulator. He further added that a review of the ICANN model of data escrow for registrars should be undertaken with a view to possible implementation in at .AU namespace. Globally it is highly likely there are many registrars where security is inadequete and the possibility of similar attacks is highly probable. Ultimately more care needs to be taken with the domain names, registrant data and data hosted on these domains. Registrars need to ensure their security standards are high, recognising their client’s website can be their business, and the loss of data such as in the Distribute.IT hack has the potential to destroy a business. However it is not just registrars such as Distribute.IT that have to bear some responsibility Fenton said, but also resellers who have to safeguard against catastrophic data loss. And then it comes to the domain name registrant. Registrants need to realise that sometimes despite the best intentions and highest levels of security, hacks and natural disasters can happen that can occasionally lead to a catastrophic data loss. Webhosting companies can and do lose data and people and organisations using these services should also do regular backups.

Web Hosting Company Provides Hosting to GTP Solutions Ltd Charlotte, NC (PRWEB) April 25, 2011 ORCS Web Inc., a managed hosting provider specializing in Microsoft Windows solutions, has announced that GTP Solutions Ltd, a leading provider of account cards and prepaid cards, has completed the migration of their server hosting solution to OrcsWeb. Contis Group Ltd, the parent company of GTP, determined that moving the hosting from an in-house solution to a managed hosting provider would be the best option in planning for and meeting their long range business requirements

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