Industry News Summary – Week 5

Recent domain name news from the last week:

China’s domain name rules spur website flight

China’s tighter regulation of internet domain names is driving website owners to register overseas, according to industry sources and internet activists.

“We are seeing people starting to bypass domestic domain names,” said Song Yingqiao, vice-president at HiChina, a leading web registrar. “Twenty to 30 per cent of new customers are now going for .com instead of .cn domain names.”

Industry experts said the trend was triggered by swift implementation of a stricter website registration regime.  Read full aritcle here

Internet Society endorses Nominet plan to avoid government regulation

The Internet Society (Isoc) has endorsed Nominet’s plans to avoid government regulation of the .uk domain.  The idependence of Nominet, the member-run, self-regulating body that manages the .uk domain, is threatened by government proposals in the Digital Economy Bill now going through parliament.

The government wants to reserve powers to regulate the domain name industry and so guarantee that the public interest will underpin the operation of the UK domain name space.  Critics believe that government control will lead to more red tape and slower resolutions of disputes over issues such as cyber-squatting.  Read full article here

Google DNS idea could threaten privacy

Google is amongst a group of DNS (Domain Name System) and content providers proposing an extension to the DNS protocol so that Internet requests are sent to servers in close proximity, thus boosting Internet performance.

The proposal, submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force this week, was noted in the Google Code Blog. Some persons commenting on the proposal, however, feared it would infringe on privacy.  Read full article here