The Colombian government has come under fire for opening up the .co registry contract for rebid in a way that seems predetermined to pick Afilias as the winner, displacing its fierce rival Neustar. As I blogged in November, Colombia thinks it might be able to secure a better registry deal, so it plans to shortly [...] Continue reading →

The eight nations of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization are unhappy that ICANN is giving .amazon to Amazon the retailer and have vowed to spread the word that ICANN has acted “illegally”. ACTO secretary general Alexandra Moreira has written (pdf) to ICANN CEO Göran Marby to say: “We consider this decision an illegal and unjust [...] Continue reading →

Good grief. Just when you thought the outrage over .org manager Public Interest Registry’s imminent sale to Ethos Capital couldn’t get any weirder, the #SaveDotOrg campaign has announced that it is going to physically protest ICANN’s headquarters in Los Angeles next week. From 0900 until 1100 local time, Friday January 24, they’ll gather to demand [...] Continue reading →

Almost 10 years ago, when DI was barely a month old, I looked at that year’s Oscar nominees and predicted that a .movie gTLD could find some demand in the movie industry. Was I right? Of course I was. As regular readers know, I’m always right. Apart from those times I’m wrong. In 2010, there [...] Continue reading →

ICANN has moved long-time head of North America stakeholder engagement Chris Mondini to head up the organization’s European office. Mondini will take over the role of vice president of stakeholder engagement for Europe and will also become managing director of the Brussels office. He replaces Jean-Jacques Sahel, who quit to join Google’s Asia policy team [...] Continue reading →

Australian ccTLD manager auDA has named its next CEO: Rosemary Sinclair, current CEO of Energy Consumers Australia. She’ll join the organization in March, about nine months after the last guy, Cameron Boardman, quit after enduring three years of controversy. Sinclair appears to come from the consumer side of the house. As well as being a [...] Continue reading →

ICANN has published a ream of new information about the proposed acquisition of Public Interest Registry by Ethos Capital, a deal widely criticized for what it could mean for millions of .org registrants. The documentation was provided to ICANN by Ethos, PIR and the Internet Society, PIR’s current owner, on the understanding that certain confidential [...] Continue reading →