[...] Continue reading →

A top-level domain idea for indigenous peoples — .indigi. There are many indigenous groups of people — American Indian tribes, for instance, or Australian aboriginal people — who would be great candidates for a new TLD, but can’t afford the steep ICANN fees. To give them at least some identity on the [...] Continue reading →

As my 350 closest friends are aware, I have been pursuing .NYC hard for over a year, and in fits and starts since 2000, in conjunction with my friend Bill Semich, who manages .NU. dotNYC is the company behind our latest (and now it appears final) effort to get New York City to get [...] Continue reading →

Bart Lieben is an intellectual property attorney who has become the go-to guy for trademark verification for top-level domain Sunrise periods. In my interview with Bart, he talks about how he does his job, with some tantalizing hints about a system he’s developing to make the whole trademark verification process much easier and cheaper. [...] Continue reading →

A cranky letter from the NTIA to ICANN (PDF), submitted in late December during ICANN’s comment period for new top-level domains, has encouraged the awkward coalition of those opposed to new TLDs. The NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), a division of the Department of Commerce, is the agency tasked with [...] Continue reading →

The government of France is asking for bids to run .FR (in French), the ccTLD of France. The incumbent, AFNIC, is the odds-on favorite to win, but there have been grumblings for a while from its customers, especially in francophone Africa and the Caribbean. AFNIC recently lost the business of .HT [...] Continue reading →

As an aid to planning, I put together a PDF timeline of milestones and associated costs. This doesn’t include all costs, for instance rent, staff, travel and so on, but it does capture most of the likely and contingent costs associated with the process of getting a new top-level domain through ICANN. [...] Continue reading →