Domain Diary

The Department continues to support the work of ICANN as the coordinator for the technical functions related to the management of the Internet DNS.ICANN, today welcomed statements made by Mr. John Kneuer, Acting Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, United States Department of Commerce indicating support for private sector leadership of the DNS.Mr. Kneuer said, “The Department continues to be supportive of private sector leadership in the coordination of the technical functions related to themanagement of the DNS as envisioned in the ICANN model. Furthermore, the Department continues to support the work of ICANN as the coordinator for the technical functions related to the management of the Internet DNS.”

The promise of dotMobi, introduced back in May, is to deliver better more streamlined Internet content to mobile devices through optimization. Now that a Sunrise Registration period for owners of intellectual property is over, the mobile Top Level Domain Ltd (mTLD) in charge of registration for the new domain name has opened up its doors to the general public. 13,000 trademark companies joined during the Sunrise period. It is said that 25,000 were originally expected. mTLD anticipates signing up over 200,000 dotMobi sites within its first year.

Network Solutions, an ICANN accredited domain registrar, yesterday called on the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) to review the proposed .com registry agreement between the ICANN and VeriSign, Inc.

Network Solutions asked NSTAC, which provides advice to the President on communications issues related to national security and emergency preparedness, to immediately assess the security concerns that the .com registry proposal poses for the Internet. The .com proposal is pending before the U.S. Department of Commerce for review. ICANN’s Board of Directors in February narrowly approved the agreement, which includes automatic renewal terms and up to $1.3 billion in cumulative, guaranteed price increases that would not have to be directed toward security improvements or otherwise justified. The proposal fails to provide a minimal level of ICANN oversight and security risk mitigation, omitting contractually enforceable requirements for security reporting, testing, monitoring and risk analysis.