icann

The company behind the proposed .xxx top-level domain, which was rejected after the Bush administration intervened, has been trying to dig up embarrassing government documents through a federal lawsuit.

Make that "was trying." A federal judge on March 12 granted summary judgment to the Bush administration in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ICM Registry.

By way of background, ICM Registry had proposed the porn-friendly .xxx domain in 2004 to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, four years after ICANN rejected the idea the first time. In June 2005, ICANN approved .xxx--but … Read more

YouTube returns to Pakistan: Everything's right on the Internet, for now http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/everythings-right-in-the-internet-for-now/

How Pakistan knocked YouTube offline (and how to make sure it never happens again) http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9878655-7.html

ICANN, Network Solutions sued for domain tasting http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080226-bad-flavor-icann-network-solutions-sued-for-domain-tasting.html

Apple updates MacBook, MacBook Pro lineups http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9879198-7.html

Apple’s iTunes grows to No. 2 U.S. music retailer http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080226/media_nm/apple_itunes_dc

Internet service providers filter http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23274585-15306,00.html… Read more

The Whois database may disappear.

An Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers committee is considering a sunset proposal at its meeting this week in Los Angeles that would effectively scrap the directory system on privacy grounds. Among those arguments is that a public-by-default Whois listing may run afoul of Canadian and European Union privacy laws.

Having this debate is not a bad idea. It's about time that we rethought whether the Whois directory service--which has public contact information for domain name owners--should exist in its current form.

Trademark and copyright holders, and their lobbyists, are opposing this move. … Read more

New top-level domains are once again on the horizon.

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, said on Thursday that it would begin accepting applications for new suffixes early next year.

The problem, though, is that new top-level domains aren't necessarily going to be that useful or interesting.

The venerable .com suffix still remains the Internet's prime real estate, and ones like .info and .biz seem to have become more used by spammers than legitimate businesses. ICANN's final rejection of .xxx this year, even there was no technical or legal reason not to approve it, … Read more