It was adopted on 14 April 2016 and after a 2-year transition period it becomes enforceable on 25 May 2018. Yet despite this timeframe, ICANN only approved a Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation on 17 May, with a draft published on 11 May. But […]

Following getting the approval of the Justice Department to release the o.com, ICANN is now consulting on the best method to auction off the domain name. It’s possible that following the consultation other single letter .com domain names will be released, of which only 3 have previously been released. The process comes about after the […]

Four years ago on 7 May 2014 the .club gTLD launched its general availability. The launch happened with much fanfare, including a big party in New York City featuring international celebrity 50 Cent, who also launched a fan site at 50inda.club. Four years later there 1.237 million .club domain names registered, it’s the fourth largest […]

Globally ccTLDs make up 44% of all domain names under management, a figure that has changed little in recent years, but within Europe the figure is 59% according to the CENTRstats Global TLD Report Q1/2018 published Friday. The difference would largely be explained by .com’s dominance in the United States. Globally, registrations grew by 1.4% […]

Canada’s ccTLD, .ca, had a bumper year in 2017/18, growing by 5.3% in the 12 months to the end of March to 2,736,980 domain name registrations making it one of the fastest growing ccTLDs. This compares to the overall the domain name market in Canada which grew at 1.35% while globally ccTLDs (in 2017) grew […]

Minds + Machines Group (MMX), registry for 27 new gTLDs with around 1.4 million registrations, has announced it is acquiring ICM Registry, the registry for gTLDs such as .xxx and .porn, which has around 100,000 registrations. The acquisition will see MMX acquire the entire membership interests of ICM Registry LLC, a US company, for a […]

At the end of March, the European Commission, without consulting the .eu registry EURid, decided that following the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union that the more than 318,000 .eu domain name registrants would not be able to renew their domain names. And nor would businesses based in the UK or […]

Verisign ended the first quarter with 148.3 million .com and .net domain name registrations in the domain name base, a 3.2% increase from the end of the first quarter of 2017, and a net increase of 1.91 million during the first quarter of 2018, according to financial results for the first quarter of 2018 released […]

In a disgraceful waste of tens of thousands of dollars of .au domain name registrant’s money, auDA took Josh Rowe, one of the Grumpier.com.au 3 and a former auDA Director, to the Federal Court Thursday, and in effect lost. With a legal team that, including preparation, probably would have cost around $30,000, including lawyers from […]