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September 2009

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The .mx registry has once again lowered the price for the .mx extension. Right now, we’re half way the landrush for this domain. The landrush started on September 1st and ends on October 31st. During this landrush the price for the .mx extension will be gradually reduced. So far, already 9 price reductions took place.

You’ll find the price for the .mx domain on our website.

At midnight, the .yu extension won’t exist any longer. Since Yugoslavia fell apart, it wasn’t possible anymore to register a domain name under the .yu domain but already existing names were still supported. At midnight, this support will also stop.

Since beginning 2008, people who own a .yu domain name were offered the possibility to switch this domain name to a .rs (Serbia) or a .me (Montenegro) name. People who haven’t done this, we’ll be facing a problem after midnight since not a single .yu website will still be reachable.

It seems logic, that once a country doesn’t exist anymore, it isn’t possible to register a domain name under this country code extension. However, it doesn’t always have to be like that. It is still possible to register a domain name under the .su extension (Sovjet Union) although this union doesn’t exist anymore for quite a while.

Today ICANN and the American government are signing an agreement, a so called ‘affirmation of commitments’ says The Economist. Although this agreement is only 4 pages long, it contains an important annoucement. This agreement gives ICANN the autorithy to manage its own affairs. Moreover this agreement doesn’t need to be renewed every few years, it’s an agreement of unlimited duration.

Until now, the U.S. Department of Commerce was the the only formal body to check on ICANN. This was firmly critizised by the global Internet community as well as by other international governments. Moreover, ICANN itself has long wanted more independency. And this “affirmation of commitments” seems to respond to these needs.

The agreement states that different panels of international representatives from different countries will be composed. These panels will monitor the work of ICANN in 4 areas: competition between generic top-level domains, the administration of domain registrations, network security and transparency and accountability and the public interest. Only in this latter area, the American government remains a permanent supervisor of the government.

The full article of The Economist can be read here.

A few days ago, the 1,5 millionth .fr domain name was registered via AFNIC (.fr registry). The domain name lessecouesduvocal.fr was registered by a group of professional performers from Haute-Savoie.

With 1,5 million registrations the .fr extension seems to do very well. In January 2002, only 100,000 .fr names were registered. In June this number had risen up to 500,000. After June 2006, registrations started to speed up and in January 2008, the amount of 1 million .fr registrations was reached. In September 2010, this had risen up to 1,5 million.

The success and the rise of .fr registrations can be explained by the speed and the simplicity of such a registration. Moreover the French seem to be quite chauvinistic as a .fr extension is the ideal extension to address an audience in France.

vlagkameroen1Tomorrow, September 18th 2009, the go-live for the .cm extension (Cameroon) will start. This go-live has been postponed several times due to technical issues. This issues should have been resolved now because the .cm registry has decided to operate all registrations on their own servers instead of cooperating with an external partner.

During this go-live, everyone who wishes to do so, can register a domain name under the .cm extension. Applications will be treated on a first come, first served basis. During the go-live it’s also possible to register .cm names per year.

From October 1 SIDN (the .nl registry) will mediate costless in quarrels over .nl names. This so-called mediation attempts to resolve a dispute without the intervention of a judge. The current procedure is that SIDN hires outside specialists in the field of domain names and registered trademarks and let them try to settle a quarrel. ‘ By becoming a mediatior ourselves, we want to make the process more accessible,’  says Maarten Simon, head lawyer for SIDN. ‘This procedure allows both parties to save money, time and publicity.’

A mediation occurs when the 2 parties can not agree on a .nl domain and 1 of both parties files a complaint at SIDN. SIDN will try to mediate in this dispute. If such mediation can not be completed successfully, the .nl registry themselves foot the bill, otherwise the costs of a mediation are contained in the solution.

‘We have based ourselves on the model currently used in the UK,’ says Roelof Meijer, CEO of SIDN. ‘The registry itself acts as a mediator in disputes over domain names. We note that more than half of the fights over domain names are resolved by such mediation, and we are therefore convinced that a mediation in many cases will provide a solution for .nl domain name holders.’

On December 10th, Eurid (.eu registry) will launch .eu IDN domain names. During this launch, there won’t be a sunrise period, meaning that the owners of a registered trademark, which contains special characters, won’t be able to register their domain name sooner than anyone else. All applications will be treated on a first come, first served basis.

Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) are domain names that contain characters such as letters with accents and characters in non-Latin languages such as Greek. For example, with IDN the registration of the domain name www.café.eu becomes possible while you can now only register www.cafe.eu.

The implementation of IDNs under .eu will not only support all characters of all the 23 official EU languages. Also the complete alphabets of all the official EU languages will be supported. This means that characters of these alphabets, which aren’t used in any of the official languages will be possible. This way, Eurid hopes to be prepared for the accession of new countries to the EU.