The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA) have added their names to the growing list of advertising associations to voice disapproval at ICANN’s proposal for new generic Top Level Domains. Arising from their deep slumber, seemingly oblivious to over five years of negotiations, the WFA have written to ICANN to express “deep concerns and strong reservations held by the global marketer community” that this decision will lead to significant legal and financial risks for brands in relation to the protection of domain names and monitoring of domain name abuse. Still rubbing their bleary eyes, WFA, who has around 60 of the biggest global marketers and 60 National Advertiser Associations on five continents as members, believes that the changes are likely to introduce confusion in the marketplace, increase the likelihood of “cybersquatting” and lead to trademark disputes. Brands could be forced to engage in costly defensive registrations of domain names in order to protect their trademarks and intellectual property, requiring significant diversions of internal resources on top of the costs already associated with buying gTLDs. In its letter, likely to be soon published on the ICANN website and currently available on the WFA website , WFA calls on ICANN to abandon its plan in its current form. The sentiment was echoed by Alain Heureux, President of the Brussels-based Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Europe): “Allowing limitless domain endings opens the door to huge registration costs and significant potential damage to both publishers and advertisers. This decision jeopardizes both our brands’ integrity and the safety of consumers.” Also joining the queue in awaking from the five year deep slumber was the ACA. Not letting facts get in the way of a good story, the ACA says that a worst-case scenario would be the hijacking of a reputable brand name by a “criminal element” said Bob Reaume, the ACA’s vice-president of policy and research according to a report in Canada’s Marketing Magazine. “Virtually unlimited damage could ensue if criminals own sites with trustworthy domain names that appeal to children or the elderly or other vulnerable groups in society,” Reaume told Marketing Magazine, who obviously has not read the applicant guidebook. According to the report, Reaume considers an ideal outcome for the ACA would be for ICANN to postpone the start of the new gTLD programme. But one must ask Reaume what has ICANN been doing for the last five or more years. Reaume then suggests, in what would be comical if he was not being serious, “we’re merely asking to be consulted on this.”

Before he had even commenced, Thomas Spiller has informed ICANN that he will not be joining the organisation as its Vice President of Europe. ICANN announced Spiller’s appointment to the position on 23 June, during its 41st public meeting in Singapore. A search for an appropriate replacement has already begun. According to a Domain Incite report, Spiller decided to take a position at another company instead, and his decision not to take up position at ICANN “may have predated the announcement of CEO Rod Beckstrom’s July 2012 departure earlier this month.” Spiller is a French national who was to have been responsible for driving ICANN’s strategic objectives in Europe and manage the Brussels office. Previously Spiller has worked for the French Prime Minister’s Office and most recently headed up global policy strategy at SAS, one of the world’s largest independent software vendors. Spiller has worked on topics ranging from education, sustainability and innovation to data privacy and cloud computing.

ICANN CEO,Rod Beckstrom explained that his decision to abstain from voting on .XXX was because he had legal concerns.Even though he said that there were extensive discussions and debate by the Board on this matter,he decided to abstain from voting. Here is what Rod Beckstrom said : “This was an extremely difficult decision.There were extensive discussions and debate by the Board on this matter . As expressed in Brussels last June when the issue also came to another related vote,while I accept the contribution to ICANN’s accountability and transparency provided by the existence and the use if the independent panel review process,I nonetheless remain concerned about the determination by two of three panelist that the ICANN board should not use business judgment in the conduct of its affair.I recognize that the Board did not adopt this findings of those panelist,and that the Board affirmed it application of business judgment to this decision within the rationale for this decision

The controversial .XXX sponsored Top Level Domain was approved by the ICANN board Friday at the board meeting that concluded their Silicon Valley-San Francisco meeting. The approval was hailed as a “landmark decision” by ICM Registry, the .XXX registry operator, saying it will provide a “progressive new home for adult entertainment online.” The ICANN board voted 9-3 in favour, while four board members abstained.

A screenshot showing one of several online petitions opposing the ruling (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to a Thursday report in the Toronto Star , the office of Canada’s prime minister intends to reverse a controversial decision by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission that would have imposed usage caps and usage-based billing on smaller Internet service providers in the country. “The CRTC should be under no illusion — the Prime Minister and minister of Industry will reverse this decision unless the CRTC does it itself,” said a quote attributed to a senior conservative government official. The CRTC issued the ruling earlier this week, which would require smaller ISPs (which use the networks of the country’s two major carriers, Bell Canada and Rogers Communications, for last-mile connections) to impose usage limits on customers – eliminating “unlimited” plans – and charge a uniform rate of roughly $2 per gigabyte on usage beyond that limit

An arbitrator with the National Arbitration Forum has awarded the domain name HP-BrainDumps.com to Hewlett Packard . Hewlett Packard,a technology corporation also known as HP ,submitted the complaint to the National Arbitration Forum asserting legal rights over the disputed domain name

The wikileaks.org domain name is back in action following the decision by EveryDNS to terminate registrar services for the domain last week at the height of the assault on the whistle-blowing website. The assault on WikiLeaks following the often embarrassing leaking of communications between government officials included companies such as Amazon ceasing hosting of the website and MasterCard and Visa stopping processing of donations to the website, although the credit card companies were still providing payment services for those wishing to donate to organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan. The wikileaks.org is using the US registrar Dynadot as its registrar and DNS provider while the website has been hosted by Silicon Valley Web Hosting since Friday night reports Netcraft, although as reported it “does not appear to be serving any of the leaked cables or other content that it used to hold