June Edition
We are delighted to invite you to join our latest Webinar?The Key to Successful Domain Management: Com Laude Intelligence.?
In this session, our panel of experts will dedicate 20 minutes to delve into the intricacies of successful domain management and auditing. We’ll talk about how we use visualisations from Com Laude Intelligence to evaluate and analyse the dozens of data points that exist within your domain portfolio. We’ll show you how you can ensure your portfolio is:
You will see first-hand how Com Laude Intelligence provides actionable insights to ensure you are continually optimising your portfolio.?
Don't worry if you can't join live, register for the event and we will send you a recording, so you don't miss this opportunity to learn more about Com Laude Intelligence.
Web3 Podcast
Episode 4 of The Com Laude Web3 podcast is available now. You can subscribe to our?YouTube?channel,?Apple?podcasts?or?Spotify?for this month's must listen episode featuring?Sandy Carter, Chief Operating Officer at Unstoppable Domains. In this episode our host, Dietmar Lenden, speaks to Sandy about:
Whether you're experienced in the world of Web3 or just starting out, our podcast series provides valuable insights and practical tips for managing your digital assets.
Who are we?
For a long time, our philosophy was to focus on good strategic advice and great client service. We have been rewarded with a strong reputation and a very loyal customer base – in our last client survey, a stunning 97% of respondents said they would recommend us.
In the past year or so, we’ve noticed a change in how we are regarded, culminating in a law firm introducing us to a corporate client last month as “the best Tech Enabled corporate registrar in the business”. We are naturally nervous of this accolade, but we have received very high scores for our security and technologies in recent RFPs we’ve completed.
?Dot Music?
Dot Music may launch this autumn, almost 12 years after the application was submitted to ICANN. We met earlier this month with the founders and their enthusiasm, energy and concern to protect the rights of others were impressive.
Founder Constantine Roussos told us, “Dot Music is a community-based top-level domain, supported and endorsed by thousands of the most trusted and influential music organizations worldwide. It’s for everyone who loves music, including brand owners who use music in their adverts!” We hope they get sign-off for their launch plan from ICANN because, as he told us, “We are investing heavily in rules and processes to get the right names into the right hands”.
We don’t have the full details of their Sunrise yet but their Rights Protection Measures include: Registrant verification; A Globally Protected Music Marks List to protect the names of famous music brands and artists; Takedowns for music piracy; a nexus requirement such that the content on a .music domain must relate to legal, licensed music activities.
领英推荐
All Dot Music registrations will appear on their Dot Music platform which looked to us like a super-charged alternative to Spotify where artists / registrants can decide how their music features.?
?354 million and counting
Verisign is best known as the operator of .com and .net. Every quarter it publishes an excellent digest of statistics called “The Domain Industry Brief”, looking at trends across registries of all types. In its latest report, covering the quarter from January to March 2023 it identifies over 354 million registered domains, a measly increase of just 1% over Q4 of 2022.?It’s a good job that ccTLDs were up by 2.6 million to 137million, perhaps lifted by events such as direct registration under .AU which has made Australia the seventh largest ccTLD in the world.
As ever, we were struck by the strength of .com which is regarded as the domain name for business all over the world. Verisign now manages an impressive 161 million .com domains, which is nearly six times greater than the total of 27.3 million registered new gTLDs. Sadly, there is no information on IDNs, domains in character sets other than ASCII. We have heard rumours that despite ICANN’s recent brave efforts to boost Universal Acceptance, IDNs are falling back.
Internet Governance and why it matters to all of us
Our dot Brand team features a number of professionals led by the redoubtable Susan Payne, Head of Legal Policy. At least six times a year Susan and members of her team travel to far-flung places to help shape policy in the meetings where the governance of the internet is discussed. This includes ICANN meetings, Internet Governance Forum events and smaller initiatives such as “Internet & Jurisdiction”. Anywhere governments gather to debate regulating the internet, we turn up because one free inter-operable internet, globally available, is essential for e-commerce and the free exchange of information which our clients care about. Regrettably not all governments, including the Russians and the Chinese, agree so our task is to advocate for one open trustworthy internet.
If you’d like to know more about our work in this area, which includes playing a leading role on several ICANN Working Groups and in its Generic Names Supporting Organisation (where policy is made) contact the?dot Brand team. Even now we are preparing a case that we can help to present at the World Summit of the Information Society Forum event in 2025 (the WSIS+20), which is an initiative of the United Nations where diverse stakeholders come together to discuss on an equal footing the most pressing issues in global digital policy.
The Elephant in the Root: Blockchain Domains
ICANN has no developed position on blockchain domains other than monitoring their adoption and development. By highlighting the security and stability risks inherent in a decentralized naming process, where so-called Alt-Root blockchain operators act independently of each other using their own processes and technical standards, ICANN appears to have its fingers crossed that with the collapse of crypto, the popularity of blockchain domains will diminish.
However, the subject of blockchain domains was forever present at ICANN77 in Washington DC this month. The many voices calling for a more rapid journey to Round Two of the new gTLDs often cited the concern that a blockchain operator will begin to sell dot Brands before Round Two launches and foretold of Name Collision if someone applies for a string that is already launched as a blockchain domain. The DNS Research Foundation hosted a roundtable called “The elephant in the root” which concluded that the world of internet governance will be fundamentally altered when browsers start allowing blockchain domains to resolve. Brian Beckham, Head of WIPO’s Internet Resolution Section announced that WIPO are to provide “UDRP-like” services to second-level Handshake blockchain domains registered by Namecheap via the Namebase platform – though he was hazy on details of the remedy when we asked.
Our position remains constant: if you are responsible for the management of a brand in the domain name system, consider the value of protective registration in the main blockchains for your key terms because you really don’t want your brand attached to a crypto wallet that an anonymous abusive scammer has control of. We can count 8 million blockchain domains registered. If Blockchain was a country, that would make it the third largest.?Contact our Web3 team?for some practical advice.
Introducing the RDRS, heir to WHOIS
The RDRS system is the unloved heir to WHOIS. It has been created by ICANN for the submission of requests to access non-public domain registration data and should be operational by the end of 2023. The RDRS will not deliver non-public registration data in response to disclosure requests. Instead, it will act as a centralised portal to receive user requests and pass them to the relevant registrar. Requests will need to identify any rights and explain what the legal basis for the disclosure is. Any decision on whether to provide the data will be made by the individual registrar, and any data disclosure will be made outside of the system.
Despite this lack of utility, it is important that brand owners and their representatives use the system as it will generate data on the demand for accurate domain registrant information over a period of up to two years. This will then be used by the ICANN Board in its consideration of whether to approve a much more useful System for Standardised Access/Disclosure (SSAD). If requestors do not use the system, this will fuel the narrative that there are no problems gaining access to non-public registrant data.?
As a registrar, we should be able to sign up to the RDRS from August 2023. We will keep you informed of how you can submit requests. If you want to hear more about what happened at ICANN77?click here to watch our video update.