The French Constitutional Court has declared that article L.45 of the French Electronic Communications Act, the legal framework for domain name management under .FR, is unconstitutional however it ordered that the current rules remain in place until 1 July 2011. The order was given on 6 October to AFNIC, the registry for .FR, by the French Constitutional Court who considered unconstitutional article L.45 of the French Electronic Communications Act. The order from the court includes provisions that mean past decisions and any decisions made up until 1 July cannot be challenged on the basis of its decision.

Last Saturday, 2 October, NIC Brasil, the registry for .BR (Brazil) domain names, released 199,379 domain names that were not renewed by their owners. The full list of domain names that were released can be seen at: https://www.nameaction.com/Brasil_Listados/brasil_nuevo.html For more information in Portuguese see registro.br/info/proclib.html . To register your .BR domain name, check out America Registry here

ICANN will be holding a third consultation on the new gTLD registry agreement issues at 18:30 UTC on 8 September. On the ICANN Blog, Craig Schwartz writes that “ICANN has consulted with an open drafting consultation group on several issues relating to implementation of the new gTLD program. Earlier this year the “Temporary Drafting Group” group met twice to discuss the Trademark Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Process and the process for future amendments to the registry agreement for new gTLDs

.CO Internet, the registry for the recently relaunched .CO country code Top Level Domain, is pushing for the ccTLD being recognised as an alternative to .COM. Their goal has received a boost with Google agreeing to rank .CO domains as a generic Top Level Domain is their content is targeted globally and not just at Colombian internet users, according to a report in PC Pro. “We will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted.

Nic.at, the registry for .AT domain names, has introduced changes to its Whois privacy rules. As of 7 January 2010, phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses are all hidden by default. For registrants, when registering a domain name, the default setting will be “hidden” and if registrants want this information public they will have to change the default setting.

AFNIC, the registry for .FR domain names, has found 98 per cent of registrars are happy with the services they provide in their latest registrar satisfaction survey. This is up on the 77 per cent in the February 2009 survey.

As of 00:01 on 7 February, a new era began for the .CO (Colombia) ccTLD began with the transition of management of the registry from Universidad de los Andes to .CO Internet SAS.

Under the Bill Secretary of State may intervene in “.uk” domain name registration where there has been a misuse of domain name registration procedures and the registry has failed to deal adequately with the abuse. …

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The UK “Digital Economy Bill” Gives The Government Rights To Take …

Dot TK, the registry for .TK domain names, today announced that they have opened the .TK registry for free domains with full name server support. Since 2001 Dot TK has provided free domain name registration services but only in …

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Dot TK Opens Registry for Free Domains with Full Name Server …

Afilias the registry for the .INFO domain , released its 2009 .INFO Annual Report today,. According to the report, the .Info extension currently ranks 7th among all Top Level Domains (TLD’s) and is has the most registrations of any TLD …

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Afilias Releases Annual .Info Report: Over 5.3 Million .Info …