Contestant #3 in our registry provider speed-dating was CentralNIC, a durable study in an alternate business model. They’ve been around since 1995, selling domain names under a “two-letter-code.com” taxonomy, for instance uk.com, us.com, and so on. While some have whined that this is “cheating” or “unreal”, the fact is that domain names from CentralNIC work just as well as any other, and aren’t subject to the vagaries of ICANN or ccTLD policies. They have a large network of registrars, and are proof that you can do things differently and thrive.

Contestant #2 in our registry provider speed-dating was Afilias.

Featured new TLD registry operator: VeriSign. A quick overview of each of the registries who came to our Registry Speed Dating event at the recent ICANN meeting in Paris.

Starting a new gTLD? Are you going to start your own registry, or outsource? It’s a critical choice, because with “stability of the Internet” as the watchword of the day, you want to make double-sure that your application isn’t torpedoed on technical grounds. Unless you’re very sure of what you’re doing, it makes a lot of sense to find a partner who can pass all of ICANN’s tests.

But whom to choose? Who’s out there, and what do they offer? What prices do they charge? Will they help with your application. Do they support the business rules that you need to implement?

To help answer these and other questions, Jothan Frakes and I set up a “speed-dating” session during the recent ICANN meeting in Paris.

Like it or not, intellectual property protections are a part of life if you plan to start a new TLD. Designing a clear, simple, and appropriately-priced Sunrise period can be the difference between smooth sailing and disaster.

Certain domainers are suddenly finding common ground with trademark owners over ICANN’s introduction of new gTLDs. For someone with no dog in the hunt, it promises to be entertaining.

AFNIC, the French registration authority, has seven ccTLDs from their colonies that they keep dark and non-functional. At least three of these seven functioned at one point before being shut down under pressure from France. Whether they were turned off, or never turned on, their absence from the active Internet effectively denies their inhabitants any separate identity. In September of last year, the ISO-3166-1 list was shuffled around, adding two new items to the list, .BL (St. Bartholomew) and .MF (St. Martin - French side). These two are also dark, bringing the total to nine.

Now, in an apparent about-face, they are considering starting them up and adding two more. I can only speculate on their intentions. Are they finding it useful to have more votes in the CCNSO?

Yesterday, hundreds of sweaty ICANN attendees put on their best clothes and braved the crush of the rush hour metro on a very hot day to crush together for the ICANN gala at the overwrought Hotel de Ville (city hall) in Paris.
Most of them missed an interesting announcement.
I arrived an hour late, but [...]

How many applications will ICANN receive for new top-level domains? An informal poll from people who are supposed to know about domain names…

ICANN constituencies were always a bad idea. It’s high time we got rid of them. Constituencies flout the fine pronouncements by ICANN about transparency and representation, they are highly inefficient, and they serve to ensure that consensus is rarely achieved. The net effect is to concentrate power in the ICANN Board. Bottom-up decision-making? Not even close.