ICANN : Audio Files, Transcripts from Community Calls with ICANN Board Chair and CEO

Were you unable to join the community call with ICANN Board Chair Steve Crocker and ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé on Saturday? Don’t worry that you missed out, because an audio file and transcript is available online now.

Just under 300 ICANN community members and staff joined the quickly-scheduled call at 14:00 UTC on Saturday, 15 March to learn more about the US government’s announcement the day before that it would turn over stewardship of certain Internet technical functions to the global community.

“It’s been a long path leading to [this day],” Crocker said. “And it will be a long path from here. To borrow words from Churchill, this is the ‘end of the beginning.'”

“This is a moment to celebrate,” Chehadé said. “Unfortunately, we have to move very quickly into the responsibility this entails. This decision puts us now in an important light. The entire world is watching. We must engage everyone.”

The community call was scheduled with short notice, due to the unexpected release of the announcement ahead of schedule.

Check out ICANN here for the audio file and transcript.

ICANN Publishes Schedule For gTLD Auction Operations Commencement

ICANN is publishing the schedule [PDF, 376 KB] of the upcoming Auctions for unresolved contention sets. The first Auction Event is scheduled for 4 June 2014.

As described in Module 4 of the Applicant Guidebook, Auction is the method of last resort to resolve string contention sets. Contention sets have been scheduled for Auction based on the applications’ priority numbers and the eligibility requirements defined in the Auction Rules [PDF, 323 KB].

What action is required from Applicants?

Eligible contention set members have received notifications of intent to Auction. This notification initiates the Auction process for these contention sets. These applicants can be identified from the Current Application Status page or the Contention Set Status page as having an application status of In Auction. Applicants that have received an intent to Auction notification must respond within 28 days of the notification date and submit completed pre-auction materials including the Bidders Agreement and Bidder Forms. These materials are available within the Auctions resources section of the Auctions landing page on the New gTLD microsite as well as within the web form in the Customer Portal. Auction dates for each contention set will be confirmed at least 21 days prior to the Auction.

What if I did not receive a notification of intent to Auction?

Notifications of intent to Auction were only set to the active members of eligible contentions. If you did not receive an intent to Auction notification, then your contention set is not yet eligible per the Auction Rules. ICANN will be assessing eligibility on a regular basis and as contention sets become eligible for Auction, will issue additional notifications of intent to Auction. If necessary, ICANN will update the Auction schedule to accommodate the newly eligible contention set which may result in an Auction being rescheduled to a later event to provide at least the minimum required lead-time for all parties.

Is the Schedule Subject to Change?

The Auction schedule has been developed based on an anticipated volume of 20 contention sets per event. However, several factors including self-resolution of contention sets, eligibility for the Auction, and postponement requests will affect the actual number of contention sets participating in each Auction Event.

Should all contention set members agree that they would like to postpone the auction, ICANN may accommodate such requests per the Auction Rules. To request a schedule postponement, each member of the contention set should make the request using the web form in the Customer Portal when submitting the bidder information. Requests from any fewer than all active members of a contention set will not be honored.

Should all contention set members agree that they would like to advance the schedule, ICANN may be able to accommodate such requests. To request a schedule advancement, each member of the contention set should contact ICANN via the customer portal and submit a request identifying the earliest auction date they can support. Requests from any fewer than all active members of a contention set will not be honored.

The scheduled dates and times of the auctions are as follows:

Please see the full Auction Schedule [PDF, 376 KB] for more the details.

Applicants in contention are encouraged to attend the Auction session at the upcoming ICANN 50 meeting in Singapore.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
newgtlds.icann.org/en/announcements-and-media/announcement-19mar14-en

Afilias Welcomes “Dot Chinese Online” and “Dot Chinese Website” top-level domain names to the Internet

Global registry services provider Afilias, announced today the completion of technical preparations for the Landrush launch of the new Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) top-level domains (TLD).

You can read the press release after the jump :

“Global registry services provider Afilias today announced the completion of technical preparations for the Landrush launch of the new Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) top-level domains (TLD).

These two new TLDs represent the next generation of domains, ones that are written in local language scripts. Called Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), these TLDs are designed to make the Web a more welcoming arena for global users. Previously, TLDs were only available in Roman language scripts like English, Spanish and German.

Managed by trans-national TLD Registry Ltd., the Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) TLDs help businesses and individuals establish a strong relationship with Chinese-language audiences. Dot Chinese Online (.在线) is a useful way for brands offering products and services to publicize their online presence, such as a local store that sells in various Chinese-language territories via the Internet. Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) lets non-Chinese businesses and individuals brand a site specifically as a Chinese-language one without having to add a layer of explanation that the site is in Chinese, something that is necessary to do with standard, Roman-language TLDs.

“TLD Registry is excited to bring these domains to market,” said company CEO and Co-Founder Arto Isokoski. “We’ve been especially pleased that we’ve been able to launch these domains so quickly because of the skill and historical knowledge that Afilias brought to the project. Afilias has a strong background in IDNs, which helped us launch the domains with a maximum of speed and a minimum of fuss.”

Roland LaPlante, CMO of Afilias, added, “It’s great to see so many innovative ideas for top-level domains come to life. Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) both demonstrate an Internet that is more universal than before, yet they bring a sense of local familiarity that has not been available on the Web until now. TLD Registry’s stated mission is to make the Chinese Web more Chinese, and, even at this early stage, TLD Registry’s domains have garnered strong interest in the Chinese region. Afilias is proud to play an important supporting role in that mission.”

For more information about TLD Registry as well as the Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) domains, please visit http://域名.在线 or http://域名.中文网 or http://internetregistry.info.”

Elvis Presley Enterprises Wins Graceland.com Domain Name in Arbitration Case

Elvis Presley Enterprises filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum in January ,2014 , asserting legal rights over the domain name Graceland.com.

According to whois records , the domain name was first registered on December 23rd 1994.The domain name was owned by Simon Higgs of Burbank California, who owned the domain name since at least 2004.

The domain name currently resolved to a religious website. The site’s header says :

“Welcome To The Home Of The King Of Kings!”

Elvis Presley Enterprises is the owner inter alis of registered trademarks in the United Stated for Graceland for a wide variety of goods and services.Therefore, the company contended that the domain name is identical to its trademark.

One of the key points of this complaint was when Elvis Presley Enterprises managed to demonstrate that the respondent registered and used the disputed domain name in bad faith,by trying to sell the domain name to the complainant for $200,000.

Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. managed to establish all three elements required under the ICANN Policy and the Panel ordered the disputed domain name to be transferred from the respondent to the complainant.

You can read the decision here .

ICANN: First Community Priority Evaluation Results Released

Today (18 March), ICANN is publishing the first four results of the Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) process. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), CPE evaluation panel, performed the evaluations using the criteria defined in section 4.2 of the Applicant Guidebook (AGB). The CPE panel has provided further clarification to the AGB criteria through a set of Evaluation Guidelines [PDF, 1.85 MB], which were published on 27 September 2013. The Guidelines do not modify the framework or standards laid out in the AGB.

CPE is one of the contention resolution mechanisms defined in Module 4 of the AGB. It is available to applications that have identified themselves as a community-based application and are in a string contention set, for the purposes of achieving priority amongst competing members of the contention set. An application in CPE is evaluated using the four criteria (Community Establishment, Nexus between Proposed String and Community, Registration Policies, and Community Endorsement) as defined in section 4.2 of the AGB, and must earn at least 14 out of 16 possible points to pass the evaluation.

Next Steps

If a single community-based application in a contention set passes CPE, the application will prevail contention, and once eligible, may proceed to the next steps of the application process.
If more than one community-based application within a contention set passes CPE these applicants must resolve contention through the other methods described in the Applicant Guidebook (i.e., self-resolution or Auction: Mechanism of Last Resort).
If none of the community-based applications in a contention set pass CPE, all parties in the contention set must resolve contention through the other methods described in the Applicant Guidebook (i.e., self-resolution or Auction: Mechanism of Last Resort).