Israeli And American Terrorism Victims Sue To Seize Iran’s ccTLD

A group of victims of terrorism from Israel and the United States have moved to attach and seize the internet licenses, contractual rights and domain names being provided by the United States to the extremist regime in Tehran.

If successful, the case could set a precedent and mean countries such as North Korea and Syria could lose control of their ccTLDs. The announcement came this week from families who have won American federal court judgments that amount to more than a billion dollars against the Iranian government seek to own all the TLDs provided by the US to Iran including the .ir TLD, the ایران TLD and all Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being utilised by the Iranian government and its agencies. The court papers have been served on ICANN.

The families are represented in this unprecedented civil action by attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Tel-Aviv, Israel and Robert Tolchin of New York.

“This is the first time that terror victims have moved to seize the domain names, IPs and internet licenses of terrorism sponsoring states like Iran and are attempting to satisfy their court judgments,” Darshan-Leitner said in a statement. “The Iranians must be shown that there is a steep price to be paid for their sponsorship of terrorism. In business and legal terms it is quite simple – we are owed money, and these assets are currency worth money.”

In cases brought in the US by the terror victim plaintiff/judgment holders against Iran, the districts courts have repeatedly ruled that the suicide bombing and shooting attacks perpetrated by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organisations in Israel were funded by the Islamic regime through MOIS. However, although the families have received compensatory and punitive damage judgments against the defendants, Iran has refused to satisfy the court awards. Iran has been designated by the Department of State as an outlaw nation that provides material support and resources to terrorist groups worldwide since 1996.

Darshan-Leitner has successfully seized $120 million in Iranian assets from sources like real estate, historic artefacts and bank accounts for victims, according to a report in the New York Post. The strategy was called “very creative and very aggressive” by Ned Rosenthal, an intellectual property lawyer who is not involved in the case the report continued.

The article went on to say Rosenthal and his colleague Beth Goldman were sceptical the suit would ultimately prevail.

“I don’t know that ICANN even holds that kind of money or assets to pay out,” Goldman told the New York Post, explaining that the power to control IP addresses and domain names often belongs to third party registries based in each country.

“It’s unclear what ICANN can do or what their authority is,” she added.

Under an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (28 U.S.C. § 1610(g)), legislated to assist terror victims to collect judgments against foreign states abrogates Iran’s sovereign immunity for claims arising from acts of terrorism and subjects to attachment “the property of a foreign state… and the property of an agency or instrumentality of such a state, including property that is a separate juridical entity or is an interest held directly or indirectly in a separate juridical entity.”

According to Baruch Ben-Haim whose son Shlomo was severely injured in a 1995 terrorist bombing of an Israeli bus: “It’s not right that the US government would provide these licenses to Iran while it is refusing to pay off the judgments handed down against it for funding global terrorism. The federal court awards given to our families must be satisfied.”

“For years the Iranian government has refused to pay its judgments, thumbing its nose at these terror victims and the American court system,” said Darshan-Leitner. “Our clients continue to suffer from the suicide bombing that Iran financed in Jerusalem nearly seventeen years ago. It is not our intention to shut down Iran’s internet usage, but we want what is rightfully due. If by seizing any funds earned from these licenses and contractual rights we can satisfy the judgments, we will have served our clients.”

DENIC Closing In on Another Mileston : 16 Million .DE Domain Names

Denic,the company behind .DE domain is approaching 16 million domain name registrations under .DE.This makes .DE one of the world’s largest ccTLD .

 

DENIC registered the 14 millionth .de domain name on 26 November 2010 and the 15 millionth .de domain name on April 18,2012.This means that in less than six months, almost 500,000 .DE domain names were registered .

There are 15,750,297 .DE domains registered up to date,according to the most recent figures on DENIC’s website.

The annual average growth rate of the recent years has been about 1 million domain names,which is an impressive number .Moreover,at the end of October/beginning of November 2010,domain growth gained particular momentum through the introduction of the special character eszett, ß .

Check out EuroDNS here to register your .DE domain name.

 

 

 

General Availabiliity for Five Other New gTLDs Started

Five other new gTLDs are out of the EAP pricing and into the real general availability,including .Parts and .Tools.

 

The five new gTLDs are: .Industries, .Tools, .Supplies, .Supply and .Parts.

Interested organizations, businesse and individuals can register domain names on a first-come ,first served non-restricted basis in the general availability phase.

Sunrise period (for trademark holders) started for .Global, while Landrush period started for .Consulting and .Kaufen.

 

 

Survey Finds Australians Prefer .AU Domain Names

[news release]A survey of more than 3,000 Australians has found .au domain name registrations are on the rise, with 76% of all domain name holders choosing .au, an increase of 2% on last year.

 

The survey is the second annual report to investigate domain name use and ownership in Australia.

It was jointly prepared by AusRegistry and .au Domain Administration (auDA) with assistance from global market research company Effective Measure.

Security and trust

The report found .au remains Australia’s home on the Internet with more than double the level of trust over any other namespace.

George Pongas, General Manager of Naming Services at AusRegistry, said the results show the .au brand position is built on a foundation of trust, reliability and security.

“Two-thirds of survey respondents are more likely to trust a .au website compared with only one-third for a .com,” Mr Pongas said.      

“Security and trust were a recurring theme and we found that Australian Internet users are security conscious when navigating the web. Trusted organisations (64%) and secure websites (61%) both ranked high in factors that are important for Australians navigating the Internet.

“Given that survey respondents reported .au is synonymous with doing business online, it is clear that .au domain names are a symbol of online trust and security for Internet users in Australia.”

Mr Pongas said the result is reflective of the industry’s longstanding commitment to security and stability, and more recently exemplified this past year through the introduction of the world-first Registrar Information Security Standard by auDA and AusRegistry’s domain name security service, .auLOCKDOWN.

Policy and governance

Chris Disspain, CEO of auDA, said this year’s report reinforced the satisfaction with the current level of governance for the .au namespace.

“The overwhelming majority of .au domain name holders perceived the registration process as being very easy. The results show that both governance and ease of registration are considered to be appropriate by the vast majority of respondents, which is a strong endorsement of auDA’s regulatory model,” Mr Disspain said.

“This is consistent with the fact that Australian businesses rely on .au for their online presence. More than 80% of respondents use their .au domain names for business websites, supporting our position that .au is Australia’s online home for business.”

Women and .au

The survey also found the number of females holding domain names increased from 16% in 2013 to 22% this year. 

The barriers to increasing female registrations is an active area of investigation and auDA’s recent promotion of the 2014 Australia and New Zealand Internet Awards calls for more females to get their businesses online and embrace the benefits and success it can afford.

The publication of today’s report follows last year’s report which established a benchmark of domain name use and ownership in Australia. A previous report by Deloitte Access Economics in 2011 found the .au domain namespace contributes $475 million to the Australian economy per year and supports more than 4300 full-time jobs.

The 2014 report will also be a topic of discussion at the Australian Internet Governance Forum hosted by auDA. The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP – Minister for Communications, will officially open the 2014 auIGF in Melbourne on 26 August.

This auDA and AusRegistry news release was sourced from:
www.auda.org.au/news/survey-finds-australians-prefer-.au-domain-names/
www.ausregistry.com.au/news/survey-finds-australians-prefer-au-domain-names

.Global Auction Results ! 35 Domain Names Sold

.Global Registry, Right Of The Dot and NameJet.com partnered to hold an Online auction during ICANN’s 50th conference .The auction featured 82 premium .Global domains.

 

35 out of the 82 premium .Global domain names were sold. The highest sale was Banking.global at $12,000.Sales add up to a total of $69,530.

Here are the results :

Trading.global   $4,800

OMG.global  $300

Fineart.global   $550

Mobile.global   $2,200

Adult.global   $3,500

SolarEnergy.global    $350

Cannabis.global   $1,900

Politics.global  $680

Traveling.global   $800

IDW.global   $5,200

Transport.global   $1,200

Cricket.global   $800

Flights.global  $5,000

Mining.global   $250

MoneyTransfer.global    $800

IPO.global   $1,500

Banking.global  $12,000

FindAJob.global   $300

Property.global   $1,900

Virus.global   $250

Sports.global   $8,000

Ads.global   $1,500

Buy.global  $4,600

Translate.global   $500

Auditor.global

Webserver.global  $250

Healthcare.global   $2,000

Classroom.global  $500

Call.global   $2,000

Video.global   $2,400

Medicine.global   $500

ITS.global   $650

Cinema.global   $950

Wiki.global   $500

Clubs.global   $600