ICANN: Subsequent New gTLD Program Activities under Consideration – Initial Work Plan Published

Download the Draft Work Plan [PDF, 397 KB]
The New gTLD Program is enabling the largest-ever expansion of the domain name system. It is designed to enable increased opportunity, diversity, and innovation at the top level of the Domain Name System ( DNS ).
“We are very pleased with the initial results of the current round of gTLDs, the first of which was delegated into the Internet in October 2013,” said Akram Atallah, president of ICANN ‘s Global Domain’s Division. “In the past several months there has been an increasing level of interest in the timing of the next application process. While we have been focusing our resources on ensuring the current round of gTLDs are ushered safely into the Internet, we are now at a point where we can kick-off discussions regarding a subsequent round.”
Based on current estimates, a subsequent application round is not expected to launch until 2016 at the earliest.
The gTLD Applicant Guidebook provided that ICANN ‘s goal is to launch subsequent gTLD application rounds as quickly as possible, noting that the exact timing would be based on experiences gained and changes required after the completion of the first round.
As of 22 September, 515 applicants have signed registry agreements with ICANN ; 395 new gTLDs have been delegated under the program; 312 TLDs have submitted TLD Startup Information to ICANN for publication. Initial Evaluation has been completed for all applications, with a small number undergoing re-evaluation due to application change requests initiated by the applicants. The remaining objection processes and contention resolution processes are proceeding according to schedule. Program statistics are updated weekly and may be viewed here. With these operations proceeding in a stable manner, ICANN is now allocating resources to preparations for subsequent rounds.
Guided by ICANN ‘s stated goal of opening a new application round in a timely manner, the activities described in the Work Plan are intended to ensure that the next application round can take place with the added benefits of experience gained in the first round. The Work Plan is intended to enable ICANN to support and facilitate the reviews and discussions to occur through the multi-stakeholder process on the future of the Program.
A session is planned at the upcoming ICANN public meeting in Los Angeles to present and discuss the plan.
About ICANN
ICANN ‘s mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org.
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-3-2014-09-22-en
ICANN: Upcoming ICG Events – Conference Call
The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group ( ICG ) will hold its fifth conference call on Wednesday, 1 October 2014 from 04:00-05:00 UTC. For time zone conversions, please see here.
The community is welcome to attend by way of a listen-only mode Virtual Meeting Room through which audio of the call will be streamed. Translations will be available through relevant Adigo Bridge dial-in numbers and Conference ID codes.
A list of country dial-in numbers can be found here. In the case that there is no appropriate dial-in number for an interested participant, ICANN will provide a dial-out service to that individual. Correspondingly, language service Conference ID numbers are listed below:
- Français – Conference ID: 75929475
- Español – Conference ID: 68385764
- 中文 – Conference ID: 825702
- Pусский – Conference ID: 345720
- العربية – Conference ID: 82855066
- Português – Conference ID: 759752
Participants who are interested in an English line but are unable to join by way of the Virtual Meeting Room may request a dial-out service.
For all dial-out service requests please contact
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
by 03:00 UTC, 1 October.
In-Person Meetings
The ICG will be holding their next face-to-face meeting on Friday, 17 October 2014 from 09:00-17:30 PST/ 16:00-00:30 UTC in Los Angeles, California (Time zone conversions can be found here).
Observers are welcome to attend the session in-person. Note, however, that seating is limited. Information on remote participation and interpretation opportunities will be shared in due course.
In addition, the ICG invites the community to attend a special Open Discussion Session with them on Thursday, 16 October from 10:00-12:00 PST / 17:00-19:00 UTC (Time zone conversions can be found here). More information on the session will be made available as it is finalized.
To follow the ICG and learn more about the IANA Stewardship Transition visit http://icann.org/stewardship.
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-09-22-en
Koko.com Domain Name Sells For $100,000
The domain name Koko.com was sold recently for a whopping $100,000. The seller is iGenesis Limited, according to domaininvesting.com.
According to whois records, the domain name was first registered in 1998.Moreover. Moreover, the seller appears to have acquired the domain name in 2005 and it paid for it only $12,000.
The new owner iss an entity based in China.At the time of writing this article, Koko.com doesn’t resolve to a website.
Congratulations to both the seller and the buyer.
Concerns Small Number Of New gTLDs Hit By Phishers
There are reports that new gTLDs are already a boon for phishers with a report in Infosecurity Magazine saying “it’s s a worrying trend that shows fresh addressing to be a boon for phishers and spammers — at least at first.”
The report claims “there appears to be a hierarchy establishing itself in terms of who uses which and for what purposes — and some TLDs are more likely than others to be exploited by the bad guys.”
“Out of curiosity, we checked our honeypot logs for the past 60 days to see if any malicious activity came from these new TLDs,” explained Jerome Segura, a researcher at Malwarebytes, in a blog, adding that many of them have already been compromised.
“It is important to note that the majority of the domains involved were not registered by the bad guys themselves,” he said. “Instead, what we observed are websites that have been hacked and used for nefarious purposes.”
“However, this doesn’t mean that cyber crooks won’t jump on the occasion to leverage these new top-level domains. In fact, just a few days ago the Internet Storm Center reported that phishing scams were already using the ‘.support’ TLD.
“Some TLDs are more likely to be exploited by the bad guys. For example ‘.pharmacy’ would be a good candidate for spammers pushing various drugs even though there are some restrictions as to who is allowed to register their site.”
While the numbers and risk is very small, it is the case when accessing any website that there is always a small chance it could be hacked and used for nefarious purposes.
Verisign Wants You To Know Your .COM Is Still Waiting
With hundreds of new gTLDs now available and your desired shorter domain easy to find in one of these gTLDs, Verisign wants registrants to know they can still get a good .com domain. Albeit with a bit of effort and imagination.
In a posting on their blog, Verisign asks “did you know there are still millions upon millions of great .com domain names available for registration?” They then suggest taking “a look at the latest facts around .com availability, based on an analysis of .com domain name registrations as of July 2014:
- 23 million times a day, a .com domain name availability check is successful
- Over 95 percent of five-character .com combinations are available
- More than 99 percent of six-character .com combinations are available.
Even though there is an abundance of .com domain names available for registration, the post notes that many experts recommend registering descriptive and keyword-rich names because they attract higher click-through rates on search engine results pages.
Verisign ask did you know?
- Nearly half of all .com domain names are made up exclusively of two or more frequently used English keywords
- In the past year, 11.8 million new .com domain name registrations contained two or more English keywords.
Verisign have also published an infographic for more information, which is posted below:
The full Verisign blog posting is available at:
blogs.verisigninc.com/blog/entry/make_your_idea_internet_official