The official Registrar Negotiating Team Statement:

After nearly 18 months of negotiations with ICANN over a new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), formal negotiations have concluded. The posting of a “proposed” 2013 RAA by ICANN for public comment signals that ICANN staff believes that negotiations have concluded and the remaining issues will not be resolved.

The Registrars’ NT disagrees. To be clear, this is NOT the outcome that registrars wanted, and they remain ready and willing to continue negotiations.

Prior to the Toronto ICANN meeting (October 2012), all parties acknowledged that they were very close to agreement on all remaining issues. The process appeared to be reaching a favorable conclusion and when ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé communicated his desire to have RAA negotiations wrapped up by the end of 2012, registrars felt it was an ambitious timeframe, but one worth pursuing for the benefit of all parties.

When negotiations finally resumed in February 2013 much to the surprise of registrars, the few remaining issues were not the only items under discussion. ICANN staff presented a list of 10 brand new items for inclusion in the agreement, under the pretext of enhancing the “public interest.” Furthermore, these new items came along with an arbitrary deadline and decision to link the 2013 RAA to the new gTLD timeline.

Among these new demands was a Registrant Rights and Responsibilities document (R3), a temporary privacy accreditation program and a requirement that registrars accept and implement recommendations of the WHOIS Expert Working Group, which had yet to be formed and whose work is just beginning.

Although registrars were surprised by these new demands, registrars worked in good faith with ICANN to accommodate its intentions. For example, registrars consulted with their members to fine-tune the R3 document to make it easier to understand and readily translatable in other languages.

Some of the other new items for inclusion transcend the RAA and could affect the entirety of the multi-stakeholder model. For example, ICANN insisted on including a proposed Revocation (or “blow up”) Clause that would have given them the ability to unilaterally terminate all registrar accreditations. After major pushback, ICANN staff relented and in its place proposed giving the ICANN Board the ability to unilaterally amend the RAA. This is identical to what ICANN inserted into the proposed new gTLD registry agreement – a clause met with strong opposition not only from the Registry Stakeholder Group but from the broader ICANN community.

The effect of such a clause in the primary agreements between ICANN and its commercial stakeholders would be devastating to the bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model. First, it will effectively mean the end of the GNSO’s PDP, as the Board will become the central arena for all controversial issues, not the community. Second, it creates an imbalance of authority in the ICANN model, with no limits on the scope or frequency of unilateral amendments, and no protections for registrars and more important registrants.

In addition to the new items for inclusion there was a surprise announcement that all new gTLD registries must only use registrars that have signed the 2013 RAA, a transparent effort by ICANN to arbitrarily link the new gTLD program to the outcome of RAA negotiations. This requirement would create separate “classes” or “levels” of registrars, which is unprecedented in the DNS industry. There can and must be only one meaning of “ICANN-Accredited.”

All of the items that have been agreed to over the past 18 months would, by themselves, produce an RAA that is vastly improved over the current 2009 version. If adopted, that RAA would significantly raise performance requirements for every ICANN accredited registrar and bring dramatic improvements to the domain name ecosystem. Nearly all of the Law Enforcement requests that were endorsed by the GAC have been included, as well as the major items that were requested by the GNSO are included in that RAA. That RAA would bring registrant verification. That RAA would bring enhanced compliance tools.

Registrars must emphasize that the key differences between that RAA and the one currently proposed by ICANN are not issues raised by Law Enforcement, GAC or the GNSO but by ICANN staff.

It now moves to the greater ICANN community to review these competing draft RAAs, and registrars look forward to those public discussions. We welcome engagement with all stakeholders on the new 2013 RAA, and what it means for registrars, registrants, and the management of the DNS as a whole.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On may 13, 2010 the Russian registry released the IDN TLD .РФ wich reached 1 million registrations within eleven months after it was launched.

.RU currently holds the 4th position in list of biggest ccTLD’s after .DE, .UK  and. NL with a little over 15 million domains for .DE, over 10 million for .UK and over 5 million domains for .NL.

For more statistics regarding .RU you can visit the following url : http://statdom.ru/

Related articles

• .NL Domain Names reaches 5 Million Milestone.

Currently we are hiring additional programmers for Our Dutch office. In the office, we speak mainly Dutch. Don’t let this hold you back to respond if your native tongue is English or another language.

Java (programming language) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Specifically we want to hire Senior Java Developers. Are you interested in the developments of the domain name industry; you might want to check out the job specifics. You can find them here:  https://www.realtimeregister.com/careers

Strangely enough, one of the perks of the job is not mentioned in the job description. The programmers share a lovely Jura espresso maker with the Realtime Register support team for their frequent shot of quality Java.

So, if you feel you match the requirements give your career a new direction and join the fastest growing registrar in the Netherlands.

5 Million DOT NL

milestone. They archieved this milestone just a year af ther 25th birthday of the .NL domain and 15 years after the SIDN took over .NL. .NL holds the 3rd position in list of biggest ccTLD’s after .DE and .UK with a little over 15 million domains for .DE and little over 10 million for .UK

Individuals are allowed to register a second-level .nl domain since 2003. As a forerunner, individuals were allowed to register a third-level domain since 2000. Such ‘personal domains’ had the form of john.doe.123.nl. They never became popular, and registration has been suspended since 2006.

SIDN is located in Arnhem and has 1800+ Registrars.

.NL Domain Name Registration History :

• 1997 10.000 Domain Names
• 1999 100.000 Domain Names
• 2004 1.000.000 Domain Names
• 2006 2.000.000 Domain Names
• 2008 3.000.000 Domain Names
• 2010 4.000.000 Domain Names
• 2012 5.000.000 Domain Names
• 2014 6.000.000 Dot NL Domain Names ?

For more information visit SIDN.

Friday June 22 : ICANN announces it’s new CEO and President Fadi Chehadé.

Saturday June 23 : The biggest news this day must have been the fact that ICANN

suspended the Digital Archery system and later in the week abandoned it completely.
Sunday June 24 : A number of registrars participated in a briefing with the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) regarding the Domain Name Marketplace and the role of registrars in the ecosystem.
Points being discussed with the GAC.

• Registrar business models
• the role resellers play
• the diverse nature of the RrSG (Registrars Stakeholder Group) members

Monday June 25 : The RrSG met directly with representatives from the Law Enforcement community on Monday to provide them an update and to update them on the status of the 12 requests they had previously indicated were important. The RrSG has accepted 10 of the 12 proposals.
Outstanding issues are WHOIS verification and Data Retention.
In the evening ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom had it’s farewell party which was largely attended.

Tuesday June 26 : Tuesday was a busy day for the Registrars.
RAA (Registrar Accreditation Agreement) discussions
gTLD discussions about the implications for Registrars and it’s Resellers/Customers.
The Executive Committee of the RrSG met with the ICANN Board Tuesday afternoon. Main topics were the new RAA and gTLDs.
A healthy interaction with the ICANN compliance team.
ICANN renews the .com contract with Verisign.

Wednesday June 27: WHOIS replacement workshop. A few observations from this workgroup.

• No uniform data model that exists for domain name registration data.
• The WHOIS protocol itself has no standard capacity for handling non-ASCII text.
• Directory services do not satisfy legitimate needs for access to different granularities of data.

Replacing the current WHOIS system as we know it, is one of the top priorities of ICANN’s priority list.

Participation as a panel member regarding the IRTP Part C Update. This workgroup is gathering information to recommend a control function for domain name owner changes.

No further news on the URS. ICANN has not selected an URS provider yet.

Thursday June 28 : Participation as a panel member regarding the locking of a domain name during an UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution)
Most noteable was the public forum. This session lasts around 5 hours and includes a variety of topics. This is a session where anyone and everyone can ask their questions or make comments to the ICANN board.

Related articles

• ICANN 44 Statement from the Registrar Stakeholder Group(realtimeregister.com)

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Among the issues that have been agreed to include improved registrar response and

availability to law enforcement, registrar abuse point of contact, publication of registrar information, establishment of an ICANN accreditation for privacy/proxy service as well as many other important issues which have been identified both by law enforcement and the greater community.

As ICANN points out in the documents recently released, several issues remain outstanding including:

• Whois verification/validation
• Data retention
• Future RAA amendments process
• Registrar obligations to support certain technologies which today are optional
• Port 43 whois access for thick registries

The RrSG fully agrees that several of the open items require input and discussion from the broader community as they contemplate significant changes to the domain name ecosystem as it exists today, and will impact the expansion of the Internet to new users and new regions of the world. We believe the upcoming meeting in Prague will provide an excellent venue for initiating these discussions and the RrSG looks forward to participating in those conversations.

More information about the RAA 2012 can be viewed here.

Related articles

• WHOIS verification rules coming this year ?(realtimeregister.com)

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This week several companies revealed how many applications they filed, and in some cases revealed more information then just the amount of applications.

Google has applied for 50 gTLD’s across 4 categories.

• Trademarks, like .google
  

  Dot Google

• TLD’s related to Google’s core business, like .docs
• TLD’s that will improve user experience, such as .youtube, which can increase the ease with which YouTube channels and genres can be identified
• TLD’s where Google thinks has interesting and creative potential, such as .lol

Directi applied for 31 gTLD’s that will be heavily contested.
.web, .shop, .bank, .law, .music, .news, .blog, .movie, .baby, .store, .doctor, .hotel, .play, .home .site, .website, .click, .online, .one, .ping, .space, .world, .press, .chat, .city, .deals, .insurance .loans, .app, .host, and .hosting.

TLDH applied for 92 TLD’s :

.abogado, .app, .art, .baby, .beauty, .beer, .blog, .book, .casa (Spanish for .home), .cloud, .cooking, .country, .coupon, .cpa, .cricket, .data, .dds, .deals, .design, .dog, .eco, .fashion, .fishing, .fit, .flowers, .free, .garden, .gay, .green, .guide, .home, .horse, .hotel, .immo, .inc, .latino, .law, .lawyer, .llc, .love, .luxe, .pizza, .property, .realestate, .restaurant, .review, .rodeo, .roma, .sale, .school, .science, .site, .soccer, .spa, .store, .style, .surf, .tech, .video, .vip, .vodka, .website, .wedding, .work, .yoga, .zulu, 网址 , 购物

The Public Interest Registry (.ORG) applied for .NGO and .ONG.

CloudNames went for .cloud and .global.

Starting Dot announced they applied for .archi, .bio, .design, .immo and .ski.

Based on the current information from ICANN it is expected that a total of 1700+ gTLD’s will be revealed on June 13th.
ICANN expects the first new gTLD’s to launch early 2013.
It’s estimated that ICANN can batch 500 gTLD’s each year.

Delays?
Currently there are a few issues that could delay ICANN’s gTLD time table.
The batching process is still disputed in it’s current setup. In it’s current form, all the gTLD applicants are allowed thru Digital Archery to apply for the first batch. Industry experts argue that contested gTLD’s ( .WEB for example) should not enter the first batch.
The Trademark Clearninghouse has some lose ends, though it is expected to be up and running in October later this year.
Currently no URS provider has been selected by ICANN.

The purpose of this certificate is to verify that the domain has been registered with correct details and that the domain can be used for certain business transactions, such as applying for a digital certificate.

The below message will be send by DNS.be after the request.

Dear registrant,

You have requested the WHOIS registration details certificate for the domain name realtimeregister.be from our website.

Attached please find the pdf document with the currently valid WHOIS registration details for this domain name.

You will find more information about this topic at our website DNS Be.

Yours sincerely,
DNS.be Team

The certificate can be requested when you visit the website of dns.be and do a whois query on your domain. Scroll to bottom of the page and click on YES  at Request WHOIS registration detail certificate. The certificate will be send to the e-mail address associated with the holder of the domain.

“We’ve been growing at around the 10% for the past couple of years,” said Nominet’s chief executive, Lesley Cowley.

Yesterday, SIDN the operator for the ccTLD .NL registered more then 4.9 million registrations. .NL is one of the largest ccTLDs in terms of total registrations . SIDN celebrated its three millionth domain name registration in 2008,while its two millionth milestone was reached in 2006. 6 years later, the number of .nl domain names has more than doubled .

Denic hit the 15 million mark yesterday. The 15th million domain name is floristennetzwerk.de. .DE is the world’s largest ccTLD, and the second largest TLD.

Tremendous anticipation, planning, and work drove toward 12 January, 2012, the day ICANN began accepting applications for new gTLDs.

Organizations who choose to apply to operate a top-level domain have merely begun a journey that will most likely carry them into 2013. If you’re curious about the next phases of ICANN’s New gTLD Program, here are highlights of what to expect.

In early May, approximately two weeks after the new gTLD application window closes, ICANN will publish a list of the applications and who has applied for which domain name. Until then, ICANN will not comment publicly about any specific application, the total number of applications received, or who has submitted applications.

• Call for Videos: New gTLD Applicant Stories and Learnings Sought (icann.org)
• ICANN now accepting new gTLD applications; are cybersquatters still a real risk? (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)