The White House wants help and so does ICANN; could it be you?
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ICANN is searching for applicants from the Internet user community to occupy a seat on their Board of Directors.
They hope to fill this position with those who may be interested in helping to develop policy, and are able to serve on ICANN’s Board of Directors.
If you are reading this, you may qualify. Here are the requirements: you must be an Internet user who does not represent a particular government, corporate or non-profit entity.
You will be the voice for the average everyday Internet user and try to represent the view of individuals who often simply feel they don’t have a voice in policy formation.
You should have a broad international perspective and a background in Internet users’ interests, consumer policy and/or civil society worldwide.
If you are interested, you can obtain more information by writing ICANN’s Board Candidate Evaluation Committee at BCEC-Request@icann.org. The deadline to apply for the “At-Large Board seat” is September 6, 2010.
Just think, soon after taking your new position at ICANN, you may have to help out the US Government.
The White House has asked ICANN (and other entities) for a meeting to discuss illegal online pharmacies.
ICANN and other companies were asked to send a representative to a meeting on this issue on September 29.
The ICANN new board member deadline is September 6, so barring a long interview and hiring time frame, you should have a good week to 10 days to “get your feet wet” at ICANN then jam over to the White House and cure their ills next.
I almost think I see a “Nobel” prize of some sort on the horizon for you next!
Registrars are catching heat for failing to control the activity on domain names registered with them, and eNom in particular has been singled out.
ENom, who is essentially the world’s second-largest domain name registrar, has been accused recently of playing host to an inordinate amount of what could be described as “malicious” websites.
Possibly coincidentally, ENom seems to be the preferred domain name registrar for pharmaceutical spammers as well.
ICANN is currently looking into the issue and awaiting eNom’s response with regard to questions about some eNom resellers who seem to be violating ICANN rules. They are accused of allowing customers to provide false Whois database information, not following ICANN deletion policy and not in compliance with reseller obligations.
ICANN’s main concerns are centered around the idea that scammers are abusing the domain name registration system to hide domain name servers to make it difficult to put illegal networks of hacked, botnet computers out of operation.
This is a great issue to show ICANN how you can help, and get in good with the White House.
So get your applications submitted and think about how you can help ICANN, the White House and maybe even eNom get through this rough time.
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The Product May Be Smaller But the Price Tag Rarely Is.
Recently Overstock.com, paid $350,000 for “O.co”name. The president of Overstock, justified the price by the possible opportunities that a one letter domain could represent.
Currently, O.co redirects users to Overstock.com.
Many companies have complained that it has been difficult to find a good .com address, and some are using the launch of the .co domains as a band aid for their fruitless searching for an alternative.
In addition, most registries have strict bans on less than 4 letter domains for many legal and technical reasons; the fact that .co seems to be unconcerned with these problems, makes it seem to be “new thinking”.
One fact that many overlook is that the slick new marketed URL, .co, is just the Internet country code for Colombia. It has been around for years, prior to the current marketing trick, and no one really seemed to notice before.
Consider that new or old, the extensions can be confusing.
When the CCTLD naming conventions were being held, Scotland overlooked the importance and as a result .sc is for “Seychelles” and Scotland has no unique cctld.
No one ever said that the internet was fair. If they did, they probably should be shot.
Prior marketing tactics, like .tv for Tuvalu, .cc for Cocos Keeling, .mp for Marianas and .ws for Samoa have enjoyed marginal success, but not ever making the dent in the .com market-share, that they had all hoped.
According to .CO Internet SAS, 39,000 applicants have sought .co addresses since they became available for registration in February. They contend that there are 70 percent of the brands listed in the BrandFinance top 500, including companies like Nike, eBay, Coca-Cola, Apple and Amazon, but nothing close to the $350,000, paid by Overstock.
Far from philanthropic, rather, .CO Internet SAS seeks maximized profits, and charges premium prices for preferred and generic domain names; this “preferred stock” line of names will be auctioned off at a later date.
Conversely, the .uk domain name turned 25 recently and its birthday was celebrated by its more than 8.5 million domain names and holders.
The registrar responsible for .uk, Nominet, is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, unlike the profit machine that .co is hoping to be.
This means that under British law, it can have members, but not shareholders, pays no dividends and its charges cover running costs.
Anyone with an interest in the Internet may join more than 2,800 Nominet members from all areas of the Internet industry.
Nominet also resolves disputes such as cybersquatting, it runs the DNS infrastructure that keeps .uk working, and It also runs the Tier 1 registry for UK Enum.
This is a unique service that combines telephone numbers and the Domain Name System to simplify the way telephone calls over the Internet work. Enum lets callers know if you can receive VoIP calls.
Nominet research has shown that 77% of British consumers preferred to use a .uk rather than a .com when searching for information online.
Earlier this year, the controversial Digital Economy Act, passed, which gave the secretary of state ultimate control of Nominet, despite its years of successful autonomous operation and a fierce lobbying campaign to stay independent.
Its desire for independence online is not unique however; recently German glass and component company Schott AG has filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “.schott” for “Registration of domain names (legal services); management of domain names; renting or leasing of domain names; allocation of domain names; trading in domain names.”
The issue arises with US Trademark law as the German glass company “Schott Glass” ( no pun intended initially) owns the trademark for “Schott” and domain names have strict guidelines against being “non-generic” for obvious reasons.
It is widely believed that this application will be denied on these grounds.
The one thing that is a constant, within the realm of the Internet, is that it will never be boring.
.xxx; The “Red Light” Finally Got The “Green Light”.
Well its finally here.
The internet has finally made its own red light district.
ICANN approved the creation of a .xxx suffix. The design for websites under this extension will be those with pornographic content, as ICANN officials have stated.
The .xxx domain was first proposed in 2005. As expected, it was rejected immediately, then un-rejected multiple times since inception. However the ICANN announcement means that it will actually become a reality. Unless there are more issues, .xxx will be live in about 9 months. How is that for irony?
ICM Registry Inc. finally got their wish for ICANN to sign off on the .xxx domain. ICM is the company that has been up to bat all these times since 2005, and got rejected over and over until now.
Members of ICANN’s board have argued that in order to maintain neutrality, it should create .xxx and allow websites with sexually explicit content to start using the suffix on a voluntary basis.
The basic idea as I alluded to earlier, is to create a virtual “red light district,” which could be monitored and set to official guidelines. The benefit would be to go to a .xxx site and know that it is safe from viruses or spyware. In addition, it would keep the porn sites in a known area.
Even with this idea of keeping all the “rotten eggs in one basket” there are still opponents of the move, like religious groups and the Free Speech Coalition.
These groups dislike the idea that such an official designation would be given to online porn, despite nearly being on opposite sides of the spectrum.
I have always been of the opinion that having adult sites in one location will make it easier to filter or block access to adult content on their computers. It seems as though this would be a great help for parents.
A few in the adult entertainment industry oppose .xxx, saying it will invite censorship, but then members of religious groups also oppose its creation on obvious moral grounds.
Given that there are an estimated 5 to 6 million adult sites on the World Wide Web, oddly it’s expected that most will have absolutely no interest in moving to the .xxx domain.
Some existing porn sites will surely register xxx versions of their domains, but it seems that this will be in a defensive manner rather than as a new site or a moved site. ICANN expects around half a million .xxx sites will be registered when it finally goes live.
Keep in mind that online pornography is a major industry. Statistics allude to the fact that $3,000 is spent on Internet porn per second. The math is that there is an estimated 370 million pornographic websites on the Internet. What this adds up to is that .xxx could possibly outpace .com in a perfect storm. Especially when you factor in that “sex” is the number one search term, globally. “Sex” accounts for 25 percent of all Internet searches.
ICM said it already has 110,000 pre-reservations for .xxx domains, which would possibly cost $60 a year to register.
Less known, but approved today also, is the ICANN decision for domain names written entirely in Chinese characters. This includes the final characters to the right of the last dot where previously, you could have all Chinese characters except for the “.cn”. Now you can even have the “.cn” in Chinese characters.
Now if only someone would tell the .cn registry to allow registrations again.
NameMedia’s Brian Carr – June 2009 Part 2
NameMedia is an Internet publishing company (but not a domain parking company) that is behind the GoldKey, ActiveAudience, and SmartName domain parking services. (They also own Afternic and BuyDomains.) Brian Carr talks about domain monetization and parking in 2009. He reveals some fascinating plans for content publishing in the future.
Snapnames-PartII.m4v
The most chilling part of our two-part webisode. In this segment, Nelson Brady of Snapnames.com delivers an address at the TRAFFIC West 2007 show in Las Vegas. During his talk, he refers directly to rumors of robots and the psychological impact on him. He claims the accusations are false. With Brady now drummed out of the domain industry amid allegations of shill bidding, and the knowledge of the “Halvarez” handle widely known among domainers, how does this presentation set the stage of possible litigation? Listen to the only known audio of Nelson Brady discussing this controversy, even as he is alleged to have spearheaded the shill bidding endeavor.
Randy Charach, Entertainer, Motivational Speaker, Mentalist, Magician
Randy Charach is a former professional Magician, Mentalist and Speaker. Hes a published Author and leader in the field of Internet Marketing and Domain Monetization. Randy also produces full length feature films through Synergy Movies.
10 seconds about: And a Bee Goes To…
supernom.com Where goes this honey-bee after pollination? Choose between a bee-hive and a news-stand. Answer online news-stand to read news about home & garden and travel. Other news about Arts Auto Business & Finance Computing & Technology Education Electronics Entertainment Environment Family Fashion Games Health Home & Garden Internet Jobs Motor (Automobiles, Motorcycles) Pets (cats dogs) Real Estate Science Shopping Sports & Recreation Travel Even a bee is interested in Affiliate Marketing, Advertising Network, Internet Advertising, Direct Navigation Advertising, Domain Name Monetization, Direct Navigation Search Marketing, Domain Monetization Service, Online Contextual Advertising Commercial Ads Make Money and money rhymes with honey …
daniellaw09
Daniel Law is the Chief Operating Officer of domain monetization company namedrive. They recently announced their new NDX domain marketplace that complements their current “park and sell” platform. Daniel discusses trends in domain parking and monetization in 2009.
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