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.au Domain Administration (auDA) Ltd - Home

auDA Domain Name News - Aug 1

01/Aug/2008

auDA Domain Name News is compiled by David Goldstein on auDA's behalf. The views expressed in the news items linked from auDA's website (Linked Documents), do not necessarily reflect the views of auDA. auDA does not warrant the accuracy or reliability of the information contained in the Linked Documents, and assumes no liability to any person for any reliance placed upon any information contained in the Linked Documents.

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DOMAIN NAMES
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- ICANN
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US: We Will Not Give Up Oversight Of Internet Domain Name Root Zone
The Bush administration has no intention of giving up United States oversight role of the management of the central root zone of the internet domain name system (DNS), the essential database storing information on how to reach domain names on the global internet.
ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1185

U.S. Intends to Remain in Full Control of Internet Root Zone, Says Letter from NTIA
In a letter sent by bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to ICANN, the department has made it clear that despite recent discussions in Paris meetings, the U.S. department intends to remain in full authority over the Internet root zone.
www.circleid.com/posts/87315_us_in_control_of_internet_root_zone/

Public Comments: Improving Institutional Confidence in ICANN
Dear Chairman Dengate-Thrush: On June 16, 2008, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) posted for public comment a series of interrelated documents prepared by the President’s Strategy Committee (PSC) regarding improving institutional confidence in ICANN. The Department of Commerce (Department) takes this opportunity as a member of the community and ICANN’s partner in the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) to offers its views on such an important topic.
www.ntia.doc.gov/comments/2008/ICANN_080730.html

ICANN Publishes 2008 Semi-Annual Contractual Compliance Audit Report
ICANN's Contractual Compliance Department publishes its second semi-annual Registrar and Registry Contractual Compliance Audit Report. This report summarizes ICANN's audit activities from October 2007 through June 2008. During this period, ICANN conducted three registrar contractual compliance audits and one registry contractual compliance audit. ICANN conducted each audit by following consistent audit procedures established before each audit commenced. This report contains details regarding the audit methodology, findings, observations and conclusions.
icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-30jul08-en.htm

ICANN Opens Comment Forum on .COOP and .MOBI Proposed Contract Changes to Allocate Single-Character Names
ICANN is today opening a public comment forum on proposed amendments to Appendix 6 of the DotCoop and DotMobi Sponsored TLD Agreements.
icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-28jul08-en.htm

Egypt / ICANN meeting [news release]
The Government of Egypt has the honor to host, in Cairo, the next ICANN meeting, from 2 to 7 November 2008, at InterContinental CityStars Hotel. The ICANN meeting was previously hosted in Cairo in March 2000, by the Egyptian Ministry of Communications, the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) and the Internet Society of Egypt.
appablog.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/egypt-icann-meeting-2/

ICANN To Offload Domains from De-Accredited Registrar
When RegisterFly lost its ICANN accreditation, GoDaddy swooped in to take over the registration of RegisterFly clients’ domain names. It was a nice pickup for GoDaddy of nearly 1 million domain names.
domainnamewire.com/2008/07/31/icann-to-offload-domains-from-de-accredited-registrar/

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- ccTLD & gTLD NEWS
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Olympic organisers agree to China blocking 'sensitive' internet sites
Olympic organisers 'regret' agreement to restrictions but China claims censorship will not affect reporting of Beijing 2008 ... Chinese officials said the censorship would not hamper journalists in their job of reporting the Games. A BOCOG spokesman Sun Weide said that the plan had always been to provide “sufficient” Internet access for foreign reporters. Sites run by the Falun Gong religious sect remain inaccessible, as do most with the word Tibet in their internet address.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article4431162.ece

Personalize your domain using .ME
The .ME Registry officially opened for live, real-time registrations and was met with huge international demand. .ME after .com, .biz, .eduis spreading around the world with more than 50,000 new domain names with the first "live" name registered being: yusu.me.
www.ciol.com/Developer/Enterprise-Tools/News-Reports/Personalize-your-domain-using-ME/30708108447/0/

Barack Obama Goes .Mobi
United States Presidential candidate Barack Obama is leveraging the mobile web to get his message out. His campaign is using ObamaMobile.mobi. And unlike most popular .mobi domain names, it actually resolves to a .mobi domain rather than just forwarding to a mobile version of a .com we site.
domainnamewire.com/2008/07/29/barack-obama-goes-mobi/

Dot-na Doman Remains Hot Potato
THE controversy surrounding Namibia's Internet domain name (.na) is not likely to die down soon, given the recent formation of a new Ministry of Information and Communication Technology.
www.namibian.com.na/2008/July/national/081AFB7980.html
allafrica.com/stories/200807310688.html

InternetNZ selects web advocate board members
InternetNZ has appointed four members to its executive board, formed earlier this year as part of a structural review of the society in order to act as an advocate for internet users.
www.itbrief.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2464&Itemid=808

The WashBiz Guest Blog: A Day At .ORG
Welcome to Day 2 of our little experiment in guest blogging, something we hope captures a small slice of Washington at work. All this week we plan to run posts from Adam Palmer, policy counsel for .ORG, the Public Interest Registry based in Reston. Adam works on policy issues dealing with Internet governance, cyber security, and e-commerce. Today, he talks about what one actually does at .org.
blog.washingtonpost.com/washbizblog/2008/07/the_washbiz_guest_blog_adam_pa.html

UCC abandons attempt to control Uganda domain name
The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) says it is not interested in taking over control of the Uganda country code, .ug. The country code is registered to and controlled by Charles Musisi, an Internet entrepreneur who has managed Uganda domain names over the past 12 years.
www.independent.co.ug/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=736&Itemid=2946

Number of domains in the UZ zone exceeds 7,000
The number of domains registered in the .UZ zone exceeded 7,000 as of 25 July, the administration of the .UZ domain zone said. According to the statistics, the number has grown by about 22% from 5,766 since the beginning of the year.
www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=58005

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- DNS SECURITY
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DNS patches cause problems, developers admit
Patches released earlier this month to quash a critical bug in the DNS (Domain Name System) have slowed servers running BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain), the Internet's most popular DNS software, and crippled some systems versions of Windows Server.
computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9111001
www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/29/DNS_patches_cause_problems_developers_admit_1.html
computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/scrt/EA56EA85FA872164CC257496000F71E7

Apple skewered over missing DNS patch
Apple has come under fire for failing to patch the critical Domain Name System (DNS) flaw which prompted a (rest of) industry wide response earlier this month.
www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/29/apple_dns_patch_mia/

With Security at Risk, a Push to Patch the Web
Since a secret emergency meeting of computer security experts at Microsoft’s headquarters in March, Dan Kaminsky has been urging companies around the world to fix a potentially dangerous flaw in the basic plumbing of the Internet.
nytimes.com/2008/07/30/technology/30flaw.html
iht.com/articles/2008/07/30/technology/30flaw.php

Hackers start DNS attacks, researcher says
Hackers are now actively exploiting a critical flaw in the Domain Name System, but they're not using any of the already known exploits, said a researcher who crafted the first attack code to go public.
computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9111098

Internet providers in Vietnam battle DNS flaw
Local internet service providers (ISPs) say they are taking action to overcome a serious flaw inherent in the Domain Name System (DNS) that could allow an attacker to re-direct unwilling web users to dangerous sites.
english.vietnamnet.vn/tech/2008/07/796258/

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- MISCELLANEOUS
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Asia Pacific Internet Community to descend on Christchurch - NZ to host APNIC 26 [news release]
Next month, InternetNZ (the Internet Society of New Zealand Inc) and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) will jointly host APNIC 26, one of the most important meetings in 2008 for the local Internet community.
www.internetnz.net.nz/media/2008/apnicevent

InternetNZ appoints Executive Board members [news release]
InternetNZ (the Internet Society of New Zealand Inc) is pleased to announce it has appointed Peter Dengate-Thrush, June McCabe, Miki Szikszai, and Judy Speight as members of its recently-established Executive Board.
www.internetnz.net.nz/media/2008/execboard

InternetNZ launches Liz Dengate Thrush Foundation [news release]
InternetNZ (the Internet Society of New Zealand Inc) is pleased to announce the launch of an Internet entrepreneurship foundation established in memory of Liz Dengate Thrush, a former Councillor of the Society.
www.internetnz.net.nz/media/2008/ldtf

Barack Obama Goes .Mobi
United States Presidential candidate Barack Obama is leveraging the mobile web to get his message out. His campaign is using ObamaMobile.mobi. And unlike most popular .mobi domain names, it actually resolves to a .mobi domain rather than just forwarding to a mobile version of a .com we site.
domainnamewire.com/2008/07/29/barack-obama-goes-mobi/

Why We'll Never Replace SMTP by John Levine
John Levine An acquaintance asked whether there's been any progress in the oft-rumored project to come up with a more secure replacement for SMTP. Answer: No. Truly, spam isn't a technical problem, it's a social one. If we could figure out some way to make mail recipient networks and hosts willing to shun known bad actors, even at the cost of losing some real mail for a while until the bad actors cave, it would make vastly more difference than any possible technical changes.
www.circleid.com/posts/replacing_smtp/

Emirates airline website plummets offline in A380 excitement
Dubai's government-owned airline, Emirates, forgot to renew its domain name this week, sending its website crashing offline on the same day it was trumpeting delivery of its first Airbus A380 superjumbo.
www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/31/emirates_domain_loss/

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- DOMAINING & AFTERMARKET
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Find an Undervalued Asset. Fix It Up. Flip It. (Now It’s Web Sites, Not Houses)
Dave Hermansen did not own a bird or a cage when he bought bird-cage.com, an online store, for $1,800 three years ago. He simply saw a Web site that was “very, very poorly done,” and begged the owners to sell it to him. He then redesigned the site, added advertising and drove up traffic. Last December, he sold it for $173,000.
nytimes.com/2008/07/29/technology/29flip.html

Matt Bentley Leaving Sedo
Sedo Chief Strategy Officer Matt Bentley is leaving the company, Sedo announced today. The move is effective the end of this month.
domainnamewire.com/2008/07/29/matt-bentley-leaving-sedo/

Imminent Domaining: The domain name market is a hot investment opportunity for entrepreneurs.
One hundred domains. Sounds like a good, round, impressive number. And 100 felt like a lot for Howard Hoffman, who began snapping up domains like HealthWater.com and SportsWater.com to help redirect web surfers to his bottled water company's site, taking advantage of what's called "type-in traffic," when users just enter words or a guessed-at domain into the browser address bar.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25932453/

Moniker/Snapnames accidentally sell the wrong domain
Imagine the following scenario: A registrant owns a .NET version of your .COM domain and decides to list it with SnapNames. However he mistypes the domain by entering the .COM version in the spreadsheet he sends to his account manager.
www.domainnamenews.com/registrars/monikersnapnames-accidentally-sell-the-wrong-domain/1783

Crash Course Guide to Domain Name Appraisals
Ever looked for new domains to buy in auctions, pending delete, or expired? I’m sure all of us have some difficulty appraising the value of domains. The process is both easy and hard at the same time, especially when considering the long term value and not necessarily the present value. Grabbing a domain name now that holds a potential-value in the future is a real-niche and requires some strategy. Though the remaining names market and especially the gTLDs (Generic Top Level Domain Extensions, e.g. .COM/.NET/.ORG) is saturated and sometimes impossible to get a nice ones but there are some techniques to grab excellent and superior names using some technique we had successfully put on trial and lead us successfully to acquire many domains such as EVERNET.com and PreLanding.com. In this article, I will be highlighting some quick techniques to evaluate domains for the present or near-future resale value.
www.dotsauce.com/2008/07/31/domain-name-appraisals/

Google makes 6 Figure Offer for KNOL.com
For a vacuum cleaner reseller from Dordrecht in the Netherlands, Europe, this week may very well be the time of their life!. The family Knol have been the owner of the domain name knol.com for many years and it looks like Google is interested in purchasing the domain! Google has reportedly offered "a sum of five zeros."
www.domainnews.com/en/general/google-makes-a-5-figure-offer-for-knol.com.html

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