• Judge Halts Domain Deception
  Domain Registry of America is accused of tricking Register.com's customers into switching services
  .... full story
  Editor's Note: Some of our customers have also been victim of this company and have filed the appropriate complaints against them.
• Biz' Internet Domain Settles Class-Action Suit
  Managers of the '.biz' Internet domain have agreed to pay roughly $1.2 million to settle charges that their system for handing out hot names like 'www.show.biz' amounted to an illegal lottery. The agreement, approved Dec. 13 but made public last weekend, marks the end of a rocky legal road that domain manager NeuLevel Inc. has traveled since launching one of the first alternatives to established domains like '.com' last year
  .... full story
• DVLA fails in reverse domain name hijack
  The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), the government body responsible for administering and issuing driving licences in the UK, has been heavily censured in a rejection of its bid to acquire the domain DVLA.com
  .... full story

12/30/2002

• Register.com Wins Stay Against Domain Reseller
  In a case of deceptive marketing, Register.com (Quote, Company Info) scored a victory Monday after a district court issued a stay against reseller Domain Registry of America from committing any acts likely to dupe Register.com customers into erroneously thinking the Domain Registry of America is their registrar
  .... full story
  Editor's Note: Some of our customers have also been victim of this company and have filed the appropriate complaints against them. See below from the above article:
  The deceptive marketing case wasn't the first such allegation the Domain Registry of America has been accused of, according to presiding Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, who noted the concern's executives had been previously convicted of various unlawful activities, and went on to state that the company's deceptive tactics were "neither accidental nor innocuous, but calculated and intended to confuse and mislead consumers."
• A turbulent year for New Zealand's domain system
  The domain name system in New Zealand is undergoing one of the most radical changes to the way it is managed since its inception
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12/26/2002

• Expired Domain Treasure! ...Or Trash?
  An expired domain name is a lot like a used car. You can't really be sure who owned it and what they did with it before you came along. With a used car, you risk having some high repair bills -- which is bad enough. But a used domain name can be much more expensive. The wrong name can cost you traffic, search engine rank, and respectability!
  .... full story

12/20/2002

• HM The Queen found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking
  In a WIPO complaint over the domain name newzealand.com described as 'misconceived' by a three member domain name panel the Queen, as Head of State of the country of New Zealand, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. The decision, made on 27 November 2002, states unequivocally "...the Panel has no hesitation in branding this misconceived Complaint as an abuse of the Policy which has put the respondent to needless expense."
  .... full story

12/18/2002

• CNN wins massive domain dispute
  Global news agency CNN has won what is thought to be the largest domain name dispute - in terms of number of domain names - under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
  .... full story

12/17/2002

• .me.uk Internet Domain Suffix Flops
  The specialised '.me.uk' domain suffix, which was designed to give UK Internet users some personal space, has apparently flopped
  .... full story

12/16/2002

• Multilingual top-level domains are far off, ICANN says
  SECOND-LEVEL DOMAIN NAMES in Chinese, Japanese or Korean will be abundant by late 2003, but a version of ".com" or ".museum" in any of those languages is a long way off, an executive of the group that oversees the Internet naming system said Sunday
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• "We can", says ICANN
  As well as discussing new top level domains ICANN's Amsterdam meeting took a critical step in the implementation of its reform process
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• ICANN confirms new domain names on way
  Beleaguered ICANN, the governing body for Internet domain names, has confirmed that it plans to increase the number of top-level domain (TLD) names. The new domain names will be decided at an ICANN meeting early next year
  .... full story

• Icann to introduce more elite domain names
  Icann, the body which controls the introduction of new domain names, has said it will approve a range of new suffixes during 2003
  .... full story

12/13/2002

• Panel finds Bigot domain can stay where it is
  There is no "reasonable connection between pornography and narrow-minded people with intolerant views" said a three member WIPO panel in the fight for Bigot.com between a tobacco company and an online search/domain name developer. But the panel went on to find for the registrant who had pointed the domain to pornographic sites
  .... full story

• ATO takes ownership of ato.com.au domain
  The Australian Taxation Office has gained ownership of the domain ato.com.au, which, in July this year, was the cause of some confusion when at least one member of the public complained of being misled into thinking it was the official ATO site
  .... full story

12/12/2002

• Economics of Kid-Friendly Domain Questioned
  Some critics of the dot-kids concept say it creates a ready-made stalking ground for sexual predators, but supporters of the law say it contains strong provisions to prevent criminals from stalking the users of kids.us addresses. The question remains, however, whether or not there is an economic case for the new domain
  .... full story

• Dodgy domain name selling continues
  More domain name resellers are coming under the spotlight for their controversial sales tactics
  .... full story

• TeliaSonera Finds Teliasonera.com Domain Name Was Already Taken
  AB, the Nordic phone company formed by Telia AB's takeover of Sonera Oyj, discovered it will have to buy the rights to use the http://www.teliasonera.com domain name from a South Korean
  .... full story

12/11/2002

• Hobbyist asked to hand over windowsxp.nu domain
  Dutch site windowsxp.nu may be forced to run under another domain name after Microsoft's lawyers in the Netherlands asked the owner to hand over the name
  .... full story

12/10/2002

• Hijacked? Fight over Poker.com URL
  Poker.com Inc said its eponymous domain name was hijacked and traffic redirected to another business on December 6 in an act of "technological piracy".
  .... full story

• Geeks stake claim for domain name
  New Zealand technology enthusiasts have united to push for internet and email addresses that end in .geek.nz
  .... full story

• Domain names competition opens with a twist
  The Internet Society of New Zealand (InternetNZ), which owns Domainz, would like some but not all Domainz customers to shift to these other incoming registrars
  .... full story

12/09/2002

• What's (not) up with Mydomain.com, Namesdirect.com?
  Readers are reporting problems with accessing sites hosted by mydomain.com. And some Mydomain.com customers have told us that their email boxes have been empty since this morning. Attempts to access Mydomain.com and sister site NamesDirect.com, which describes itself as "an ICANN accredited registrar and one of the top 10 DNS hosts in the world", are met with DNS error messages
  .... full story

• .Net.uk domain granted stay of execution
  The underused .net.uk domain has been granted a stay of execution after a meeting of Nominet's Policy Advisory Board decided that still more consultation was needed before a decision on its future was taken
  .... full story

• Free .ae domain names
  In a bid to boost the number of sites using a .ae domain name, The UAE Network Information Center has announced plans to offer a free domain name to every educational institute, government department and non-profit organisation in the UAE. The giveaway domain names will be www.name.sch.ae for schools, www.name.ac.ae for colleges and universities, www.name.gov.ae for government bodies, and non-profit organisation in the UAE
  .... full story

12/06/2002

• ICANN urged to tighten rules, block spam
  The standards body for Internet domain names should ratchet up efforts to ensure the accuracy of domain-name owner data and eliminate bulk marketing that uses domain-name information, according to recommendations of an Internet task force
  .... full story

• Nominet explains role in ebay.co.uk detagging slip
  Nominet UK would like to clarify its role in the reactivation of the ebay.co.uk domain name earlier this week. We would like to make it clear that we were not responsible for causing the web site to go off-line and that we took immediate and legitimate steps to get the domain name up and running as soon as possible
  .... full story

• New public order / decency domain name controls
  Following the liberalisation of the Dutch country code top level domain .nl (see: Netherlands Domain Authority to de-restrict .nl) in September, the independent body charged with overseeing their dispute policy has published its new rules and regulations
  .... full story

• Domain name reseller to provide refunds
  Internet Registrations Australia Pty Ltd has agreed to pay refunds to those who were misled by its "renewal notices" issued in September
  .... full story

• Transfer of .org control delayed
  VeriSign and the Internet Society on Friday said they are delaying the technical transfer of the .org domain for nearly a month to give companies selling .org addresses more time to comply with new requirements
  .... full story

• ICANN At-Large Reps Can Keep Jobs
  The California company that oversees the Internet's domain-name structure has decided to keep its five democratically elected board members through early next year -- even though their terms were due to expire this month
  .... full story

12/05/2002

• Karl Auerbach: ICANN "Out of Control"
  Karl Auerbach, a public board member of ICANN and one of the Internet governing body's strongest critics...
  .... full story

• ICANN urged to scrutinize domain claims
  The standards body for Internet domain names should ratchet up efforts to ensure the accuracy of domain-name owner data and eliminate bulk marketing that uses domain-name information, according to recommendations of an Internet task force
  .... full story

• Surfing Kids Master Their Own Domain
  President signs bill to create kids.us, a safe haven on the Internet for children, despite some objections
  .... full story

• Domain Name Infrastructure Attacked Again
  The main servers for the .info top-level domain (TLD) were attacked last week, in an assault whose techniques mirrored those used in an earlier attack on the Internet's root servers
  .... full story

12/04/2002

• Bush signs 'dot-kids' law creating child-safe Internet domain
  President George W. Bush on Tuesday signed into law legislation to create a new child-safe "dot-kids" domain on the Internet and to make car rides safer for children
  .... full story

• NetNames cock-up blamed for eBay detagging
  www.ebay.co.uk domain name was partly or totally inaccessible for a period of about 2 1/2 hours on Tuesday, December 2 as a result of the failure to renew the domain name. This resulted from an administrative error on the part of NetNames
  .... full story

• Crichton wins right to internet domain
  Author Michael Crichton has won control of the internet name www.michaelcrichton.com in a ruling by a UN panel
  .... full story

• ICANN Finalizes .Org Deal With PIR
  The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has signed the finalized agreement for the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the not-for-profit subsidiary of the Internet Society (ISOC) of Reston, Va., to operate the .org top-level domain
  .... full story

• Domain Name Theft Part II: Did ICANN Leave Foxes Guarding the Chicken COOP?
  When it comes to stealing domain names, I suspect that there are two reasons why so many web bandits appear to be immune from ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers uses the acronym ICANN): the first reason...
  .... full story

12/03/2002

• eBay UK is detagged!
  Reader reports have flooded in this morning concerning the 'disappearance' of ebay.co.uk from the Web. Our informants kindly did the legwork for us, pointing us to the Nominet who is entry for ebay.co.uk. And there we have our answer: "This registration is DETAGGED".
  .... full story

• Companies settle domain dispute for $300,000
  Four companies agreed to repay customers a total of $300,000 to settle federal charges that they sold fake Internet addresses ending in ".usa" with an advertising campaign pegged to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
  .... full story

• Bogus Domain Name Operators Settle With FTC
  The operators of online businesses that used deceptive spam messages and appeals to patriotism to sell Web addresses that don't work, including ".usa," have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that the scam violated federal laws
  .... full story

• VeriSign to revamp secondary domain biz
  VeriSign Inc next month will re-launch its GreatDomains domain name resale service, dropping its retail auction model in favor of a wholesale system that will be made available to all of its registrar channel partners, ComputerWire has learned
  .... full story

• Nominet wins injunction against DRS
  Nominet UK has won an interim injunction order in the High Court against Domain Registrar Services Limited (DRS), banning the company from using the Nominet name and logo
  .... full story

• Keep ICANN Open
  In late October, the international body that regulates critical components of the Internet met for the first time in China. The Shanghai meeting offered a historic opportunity to resolve questions surrounding international governance of the Internet and to focus attention on the tight controls China still exercises over the Internet within its borders
  .... full story

12/02/2002

• Dialog Adds Domain Names Database
  Dialog has joined with SnapNames to offer a master directory of domain name information. At 65 million records and counting, the database becomes the largest single file on Dialog. The Domain Names Database (File 225) carries both current URL records and historical ownership records for Internet domain names
  .... full story

12/01/2002

• ITU keeps domain name options open
  The ITU has left the door open for the global body to play a future role in the contentious area of Internet domain name management
  .... full story