ICANN is seeking individuals to serve on the Support Applicant Review Panel (SARP), an important component of the New gTLD Applicant Support Program that seeks to serve the global public interest by ensuring worldwide accessibility to, and competition within, the New gTLD Program. Panelists will be responsible for evaluating and scoring applications for financial assistance.

As new gTLDs are ushering in the biggest change to the Internet in years, SARP volunteers will be on the front line of the effort to lessen the digital divide by expanding the Internet to less-developed parts of the world. They will be part of an exclusive group of individuals chosen for their background and experience in areas such as running a small business, operating in developing economies, analyzing business plans, serving in the public interest, managing a domain name registry service, or awarding grants. SARP volunteers will make a real and lasting contribution to ensuring that the opportunities for innovation and economic development created by the Internet are open to all.

The financial assistance component of the Applicant Support Program offers a limited number of qualifying applicants the opportunity to pay a reduced evaluation fee of USD 47,000 instead of the full evaluation fee of USD 185,000.

SARP members will evaluate support applications against the established public interest, financial capabilities and financial need criteria outlined in the Financial Assistance Handbook [PDF, 710 KB] and as a group they will score each applicant.  It is important to note that panelists will not weigh the relative merits of overall gTLD applications.

If you are interested in applying to be a SARP member, please review the criteria, time commitment and other expectations as detailed in the posted EOI [PDF, 172 KB].

Useful References

• Applicant Support Program: newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support
• New gTLD Financial Assistance Handbook: newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support/financial-assistance-handbook-11jan12-en.pdf [PDF, 710 KB]
• Basic informational materials about the New gTLD program: newgtlds.icann.org/en/about/program/materials
• New gTLD Applicant Guidebook: newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/agb/guidebook-full-11jan12-en.pdf [PDF, 3.79 MB]
• About ICANN: www.icann.org/en/about/

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-3-03feb12-en.htm

A year ago today ICANN allocated the last five IPv4 address blocks to the five Regional Internet Registries in a ceremony with leaders from the Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Society. The use of the next generation of Internet addressing – IPv6 – has been steadily growing in that year and that's a good thing, because IPv6 is how the Internet will continue to serve as a platform for innovation and economic development.

IPv6 vastly increases the number of available Internet addresses. The architecture of IPv4 allowed for four billion Internet addresses. That's no longer sufficient on a planet of 7 billion humans, where many of those humans have multiple devices attached to the Internet. Every device connected to the Internet needs an IP address, whether it is a smartphone, mail server, laptop or web server.

Almost 6,700 IPv6 networks were publicly routed on the Internet in January 2012, and more are expected in the months leading up to World IPv6 Launch on 6 June 2012. On that day, Internet service providers, web companies and home networking equipment manufacturers around the world are asked to permanently enable IPv6.

More Information

• Beginner's Guide to Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses
• IPv6 – How to Act Now
• AfriNIC IPv6 Resources
• IPv6 @ APNIC
• ARIN IPv6 Wiki
• Portal IPv6 LACNIC
• IPv6 RIPE Network Coordination Centre

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org

An arbitrator with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center has awarded to A.S. Roma the domain name ASRoma.com.A.S. Roma is a professional Italian football club based in Rome . A.S. Roma filed a complaint with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center on November 22,2011,asserting legal rights over the disputed domain name.

The company owns many trademark registrations for the "AS Roma" mark all over the world.Therefore,they contended that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar to its trademark.Moreover,they contended that the respondent registered and used the disputed domain name in bad faith :

"The website to which the disputed domain name resolves contains links to a variety of websites offering a number of different types of products including one to what appear to be the Complainant’s official website but which actually just resolve to further unrelated pages similar to the others."

The Panel ordered the disputed domain name to be transferred from the respondent to the complainant.

You can read the decision here .