ICANN is set to loosen up its restrictions on single-character gTLDs in the 2026 application round, according to draft Applicant Guidebook language. But the exemption to the usual rule applies only to gTLDs written in one script — Han, which is used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Applied-for Latin-script strings must be three characters and [...] Continue reading →

With too many auction winners failing to hand over the loot, the .ai registry has changed its auction terms to make being a deadbeat more expensive. The registry has increased its deposit requirement from 2% to 5% for bidders considered “high risk”, which basically means new customers, or $100, whichever is higher. The deposit is [...] Continue reading →

Google and Amazon have publicly backed ICANN’s plan to reserve the top-level domain .internal for private behind-the-firewall uses. ICANN picked the string “internal” as the one that it will promise to never delegate to the DNS root, allowing network administrators and software developers to confidently use it with a lower risk of data leakage should [...] Continue reading →

The manager of the increasingly popular .ai ccTLD has seemingly escalated his beef with GoDaddy, now advising registrants to not transfer their .ai domains to the market-leading registrar due to technical and operational issues. The list of approved registrars on the .ai registry web site has contained a warning about problems transferring domains into GoDaddy [...] Continue reading →

The .post gTLD has opened a brand-protection sunrise period 12 years after it first launched, after liberalizing its registration policies to allow private businesses to buy domains. .post is a “sponsored” gTLD run by the Universal Postal Union, a UN agency, and so far the space has been restricted to national postal agencies which are [...] Continue reading →

Team Internet is back in acquisition mode, saying this morning it has picked up an Israeli content farm business for $41.8 million. It’s bought Shinez IO, based in Tel Aviv and Denver, for the initial sum plus a potential extra $12.3 million if the company meets certain financial targets over the next two years, the [...] Continue reading →

Epik has retracted a claim it made on social media that former customer Kiwi Farms was hosting child sexual abuse material on its web site. The troubled registrar had said on Twitter in January that it had received a complaint about a “doxxing” post on the Kiwi Farms troll forum that contained naked photographs of [...] Continue reading →