Beware! The letter from Domain Registry of Canada is nothing more than a scam.

A company called “Domain Registry of  Canada” sends mass volumes of postal mail directly to domain owners. The letters are designed to appear as though the Domain Registry of Canada is some sort of official government organization or is somehow related to the .CA Registry.

Read the full article…

Many believe the introduction of gTLDs will bring innovation and expansion to
how gTLDs are utilized and will create a more robust Internet experience. As
the process for companies to apply for new gTLDs is currently underway, the
exact benefits of new gTLDs will not be known until we find out what these new
gTLDs will be, which organizations are applying for them, and how they’ll be
implemented. There is much speculation however and it can be argued that having
new gTLDs will impact the Internet on a greater scale than just about any other
innovation of the Internet to date.

The application process for new gTLDs is less restrictive than with previous
limited introductions of a handful of gTLDs such as .info, .biz, and .name. This
time, new gTLDs can appear in any form, from generic terms (.photo), to corporate
brands (.canon), to geographic regions (.paris), to community specific services
(.bank). The organizations operating the new gTLDs will manage the gTLDs as the
registry in a similar manner as today’s registries manage the .com, .net, .org,
extensions and other existing gTLDs, but will have a broader and more flexible
means of distribution, policy making, and market appeal.

We will all start to hear and learn more about the new gTLDs in the coming months
as the extensions are announced and the sponsoring organizations begin to market
their new gTLDs. It’s a safe bet to assume we’ll be hearing about “enhanced
security”, “greater choice”, “better user experience”, and “community driven” as
some of the keywords used to describe and promote these new gTLDs.

ICANN will be announcing the applicants and the gTLDS they’ve applied for within
the next few weeks. Knowledge is key at this point to help us understand how these
new gTLDs can and will affect existing and new domain holders. We’ll keep you updated
of ongoing developments in the new gTLD space through this blog.

DomainPeople  followed the lead-up to the vote with particular interest. As a Domain Name Registrar and Internet Service Provider (ISP) DomainPeople can be involved in the legal disputes between its customers and law enforcement agencies or Intellectual Property (IP) owners. Any changes to the laws that affect the Internet will most likely affect DomainPeople and our customers.

The Internet ‘blackout’ protest started just before Christmas when GoDaddy customers railed against that company’s pledge of support for the Act. Customers complained on Reddit.com and made a pledge of their own to transfer their domains away from GoDaddy. Within days the worlds largest Registrar made an about face and publicly dropped its support for the act. The ball had already started rolling however. The founder of Wikipedia declared his intent to leave GoDaddy. The Reddit thread soon exploded into a full blown Internet backlash aimed at Congress with Wikipedia helping to lead the way.

While the protest to stop SOPA was successful, the desire to change the laws governing control of the Internet has not been extinguished. There is a long history of laws being  crafted, drafted and brought to various Governments around the world.  Recently in the US there was SOPA & PIPA. In Europe there is ACTA. Canada has Bill C-30 and C-11.  And there is some discussion regarding IP protection in the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement that is currently being drafted. These are all recent attempts to change the laws that govern how we use the Internet and how the Internet will be controlled and by who.

The issues behind these changes are profound. In Canada, if Bill C-30 is put into effect, law enforcement staff could gain access to the personal information about an ISP customer without need of a warrant. Corporations would be required to track and record all your online activity and hand it over to the Government when required. Under SOPA meanwhile, it may have been mandatory for Domain Name Registrars to immediately shut down domain names without a court order, and with there being no immediate recourse for the customer to have services restored.  The type of provisions in these laws are most certainly already in effect in countries like Syria. The fear is that we in the developed world would be forced to follow that model.

On the other hand, the valid concerns of IP owners and law enforcement need to be met. Legitimate companies spend millions creating content and need to have that content protected from piracy. They feel the need to stem their losses. The problem is, the current laws do not allow corporations to fight back effectively. The ball, they argue, is in the criminals court and the criminals have all the advantage.

As long as the criminals have an advantage, there will be pressure to change laws and erode that advantage; to level the playing field. Everyone needs to be vigilant about how the laws could change and what it would mean to us as individuals, companies and Domain Name Registrars!

http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_item_id=378

http://sopastrike.com/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248298/sopa_and_pipa_just_the_facts.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/digital-culture/ivor-tossell/toewss-child-pornographers-gaffe-aside-bill-c-30-has-real-dangers/article2344551/

Here’s a few interesting facts related to .com growth:

• 1985: The first .com domain is registered.
• 1987: The first milestone is reached – over 100 active .com domains registered!
• 1994: The second milestone is reached – over 1000 active .com domains registered!
• 1997: Less than half a million active .com domains are in the DNS.
• 1999: ICANN starts accrediting multiple registrars; new competition brings more exposure to .COM
• 2000: Huge growth spurt, more than 10 million new .COMs registered totaling over 21 million.
• 2006: Another milestone is reached as .COM hits 50 million domains!
• 2010: The year ends with about 87 million .COMs growing by 314% in a 10 year period.
• 2012: Huge milestone, .COM reaches 100 million active domains!!!

In its 27 year existence, the .COM TLD has never seen a year over year decline in total active domains. The TLD has grown into a brand of its own with the phrase “dot-com” generally used to refer to virtually anything related to business on the Internet. A number of offshoot industries such as pay-per-click advertising seeing yearly revenue in the tens of billions, and aftermarket premium domain sales averaging more than a 10,000% markup on domain costs, attribute a significant portion of their success to the success of .COM.

What will the next milestone be? Stay tuned, the dot-com show has just begun…

To understand the reasons why a Whois database exists, lets look at the history of the Domain Name System (DNS). The DNS originated in the early 1980′s as a system to assist Internet operators with identifying network resources on the Internet by associating the hard to remember IP addresses (i.e. 204.174.223.49) assigned to a computer or network, with easy to remember “Domain” names such as domainpeople.com. Part of the DNS included a “Whois” protocol which associated a series of contact information with a given domain name to assist Internet operators in identifying and contacting other Internet operators that maintained the operations of a network resource on the Internet. The first domain name registered and still active on the Internet was symbolics.com, registered on March 15th, 1985.

The WHOIS protocol has since evolved into a free online service used as a tool for many purposes including checking to verify that a domain name is available for registration, investigating trademark infringements by identifying and contacting the Registrant associated with a domain name, verifying the identities of online merchants to ensure secure financial transactions on the Internet, and tracking the registrant of a domain name that has been used for malicious and/or unlawful activities.

Remember I described the Whois Database as being “publicly accessible”, this means that anyone with an Internet connection can obtain the contact information associated with a domain name registration. This unfortunately enables various misuses of the Whois Database that can lead to annoying if not dangerous outcomes. ICANN (the organization responsible for the management of the DNS) requires all accredited registrars to provide free public access to a web based Whois interface and a standardized TCP port 43 Whois server. Anyone with basic programming skills or access to Whois data parsing software can start collecting and storing the personal contact information associated with registered domain names. Although the use of such automated data mining processes are not allowed according to the standard Whois report disclaimer, there is no system in place to prevent anyone from running such processes. Some of the negative results associated with these types of Whois data mining activities include, email spam, phishing scams, fraud, and identity theft.

Registrars have employed various tactics to limit the success of automated Whois data mining over the years. Common techniques are presenting a “Captcha” image on a web based Whois form, and another is to enforce a maximum number of Whois queries per hour on a Whois server. Unfortunately, neither of these are foolproof. The most reliable method to secure your personal contact information from being harvested through Whois data mining is to use a preventative approach such as a proxy Whois service. Proxy Whois is an additional service that masks personal contact information in the Whois database for a domain name registration. This essentially puts you in control of how your personal contact information is used in the registration process by enabling your contact details to be represented in the public Whois database by a set of proxy contacts that are maintained by the company that provides the service. A reputable proxy Whois provider will include a legal agreement that will protect your interests, ensuring you maintain full legal ownership of the domain registration, and will also obligate the provider to forward any legitimate communications received on your behalf to you.

There is plenty of discussion related to the current state of the Whois protocol which has existed relatively unchanged for over 25 years. Complaints and concerns claiming the current Whois system is antiquated and deficient are increasing. Questions of data accuracy and reliability, accessibility and readability are issues that ICANN has been attempting to address for over 10 years. Some progress has been made in the form of Whois data accuracy, and prohibitions to bulk Whois data distribution, but there’s still a great deal of policy development remaining that relies on community consensus before we’ll see any tangible changes to the old Whois.

In the year 2013 the show show will become more like a carnival circus as hundreds if not thousands of new TLDs will be brought online. What took place for a small number of new TLDs in the last decade will be multiplied a hundredfold and compressed into a few months of activity. Some of the possible new candidates will be names like .London, .ECO, .CANON  or .SHOP. Some names like .WEB will undoubtedly be sought by more than one applicant.

Compared to the deployment of previous TLDs, the next phase of expansion stands to be chaotic. In the past, new TLDs were made generally available to the public. But each of the businesses that apply going forward may have its own agenda and may restrict availability of the name space. So amid the flurry of new domains, the rules of the game will be completely different.

It is hard to guess who will benefit the most from this expansion. Surely, ICANN stands to gain several million in revenue. The new TLD holders will hopefully benefit. There is also much interest to the back end service providers that run the registry systems on behalf of the holder of the TLD. But further down the food chain – for registrars, resellers and registrants – the benefits are less certain.

2012 will be an interesting year as we see who is applying for these TLDs, and what their business objectives will be. At the end of the year it should be clear who will benefit and how.