A series of six papers from the European Commission “represent a wholesale effort to put governments in charge of the internet” writes Kieren McCarthy. “They would be put in a position to decide how the internet’s underlying naming structure – the domain name system – expands and evolves. “If the DNS evolves in the right way of course, governments won’t need to do anything, they will let others get on with it. But just in case people decide to do something that isn’t in the public’s interest, then governments will be there to firmly but politely inform them that they are not allowed to do that. Well, that’s the theory anyway.” To read McCarthy’s analysis of the papers and the players and what is going on, check out his posting on his Dot NXT site at news.dot-nxt.com/2011/08/31/ec-papers-analysis .

Hosting Reviews – NOVI, MI – Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, announced it has self-certified under the United States Department of Commerce’s Safe Harbor framework, enabling its clients to operate freely in the European Union and the United States. The European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection went into effect in October of 1998, and would prohibit the transfer of personal data to non-European Union countries that do not meet the European Union adequacy standard for privacy protection. The self-certification program enables United States companies to bridge the gaps in privacy regulation and operate safely within the European Union.

A screenshot from Future Hosting’s website shows its colocation offerings (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) – Web host Future Hosting ( www.futurehosting.com ) announced on Tuesday that has self-certified under the United States Department of Commerce’s Safe Harbor framework to allow its clients to operate freely in the European Union and the US. This announcement follows the company’s upgrade to its hardware in its London data center last month . The European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection was established in 1998, and prohibits “the data transfer of personal data to non-European Union countries” that don’t meet the privacy protection standards.

ePages CEO Wilfried Beeck delivering his keynote presentation (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The first presentation of WorldHostingDays 2011 came from ePages ( www.epages.com ) CEO Wilfried Beeck who talked about how small businesses can “Sell global, think local”. Beeck started his presentation by taking a retrospective look at e-commerce, starting with the pre-Internet age with retail brands like Ikea and H&M, before zeroing in on his central theme of how small businesses can learn from Amazon’s business model. He pointed out the challenges of the small business market in Europe

A video still from a tour of TelecityGroup’s London data center (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) – Colocation and managed hosting provider TelecityGroup ( www.telecitygroup.com ) announced on Monday that it has partnered with digital and print publishing firm Digital Technology International ( www.dtint.com ) to launch DTI Cloud, its SaaS publishing platform.

EURid, the .eu top-level domain registry, will be present at the WorldHostingDays trade fair in Rust, Germany from 22 – 25 March 2011 to continue to raise the visibility of .eu domain names in the German market. In Germany, .eu domain name registrations grew by 6% during 2010 and there are currently more than one million .eu domain names registered to German businesses, organisations and individuals.

The logo and rating system for BCS’ The Certified Energy Efficiency Datacenter Award (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The Chartered Institute for IT, formerly known as British Computer Society ( www.bcs.org ), launched a new certification last month that aims to give European data center owners a new own green IT standard for facilities. The new standard for green data centers follows in the footsteps of The US Green Building Council’s LEED standard.