Industry News Summary – Week 17
Recent domain name news from the last week:
First non-Latin country domains approved by ICANN
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has approved the first four country-code domain names written in non-Latin script.
All existing top-level domain names are written using the ‘Latin’ alphabet, the 26 letters from A to Z. That system is fine for internet users in English-speaking countries, but not for those countries for which the official language is written using other scripts, such as the Russian Cyrillic characters, Arabic script or Chinese pictograms. European countries such as Austria or Spain also have problems with the Latin alphabet, as they use accented characters to spell their official name in their own language.
The first four countries to be allowed to write their country-code top-level domain names in their own script are Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They will retain their existing Latin-alphabet ccTLDs such as .ru (Russia). Other countries awaiting approval for ccTLDs in their own scripts include China, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Read full article here
UK web domain registrations highest since dotcom boom
Nominet, the internet registry for .uk names, have come up with some interesting statistics this week, claiming that registrations of UK web domains are at their highest since the great dotcom boom, which ended in 2000.
Nominet, revealed that 200,000 UK registrations were made in March, a number not reach since the first heyday of the internet back in 2000. In 2000, a staggering 250,000 registrations were made in the UK – the biggest peak seen on the web. Read full article here
European police to seize domains and IPs
Plans to create a cybercrime task force with the power to seize web sites suspected of being used for illegal purposes were have been agreed by European ministers.
The EU’s General Affairs Council set the European Commission the task of creating more detailed proposals for the centre, probably based at Europol. Its remit will be to “adopt a common approach in the fight against cybercrime internationally, particularly in relation to the revocation of domain names and IP addresses”.
In Britain, Nominet – the not-for-profit private company that administers .uk domain names – already has the power to seize suspect domains. The controversial Digital Economy Act, which passed into law earlier this month, gives the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Peter Mandelson, the power to replace Nominet if it doesn’t take sufficient action to clamp down on cyber crime. Read full article here
