While the campaign for Scottish independence from Britain is controversial, the move for a .SCOT top level domain has proved uncontroversial gaining the support of the British government, with The Scotsman reporting British government ministers are “relaxed” about the proposal.

Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, claimed that Scotland would “soon be independent in cyberspace” and that the internet shake-up would be a “great boost” to Scottish businesses and tourism, The Scotsman noted on Monday.

But support is not quite universal with Yorkshire Tory MP Andrew Percy dismissing the idea of .SCOT as “nonsense”. “Scotland hasn’t even voted yet on whether to go independent, and all this is doing is giving Alex Salmond’s Nationalists a propaganda coup,” Percy said according to the report in The Scotsman.

But north of the border it was a different story.

“Scotland is well on the road to independence, and it looks like we will soon be independent in cyberspace too – the dotScot domain name will be a great boost in promoting Scotland around the globe,” a spokesman for Salmond told The Scotsman.

However should Scotland become independent it would then be entitled to its own country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), and then have two TLDs.

Microsoft announced it had, in conjunction with the financial services industry successfully executed a coordinated global action against some of the most notorious cybercrime operations that fuel online fraud and identity theft.

As part of the operation, Microsoft and its partners took down two Internet Protocol addresses behind the Zeus command and control structure, and Microsoft is currently monitoring 800 domains secured in the operation, which are helping identify thousands of computers infected by Zeus.

The legal and technical action led to a number of the most harmful botnets using the Zeus family of malware worldwide have been disrupted in an unprecedented, proactive cross-industry action against this cybercriminal organisation.

Partners in the operation were Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) and NACHA – The Electronic Payments Association and Kyrus Tech Inc.

Through an extensive and collaborative investigation into the Zeus threat, Microsoft and its banking, finance and technical partners discovered that once a computer is infected with Zeus, the malware can monitor a victim’s online activity and automatically start keylogging, or recording a person’s every keystroke, when a person types in the name of a financial institution or ecommerce site. With this information, cybercriminals can steal personal information that can be used for identity theft or to fraudulently make purchases or access other private accounts. In fact, since 2007, Microsoft has detected more than 13 million suspected infections of the Zeus malware worldwide, including approximately 3 million computers in the United States alone.

“With this action, we’ve disrupted a critical source of money-making for digital fraudsters and cyberthieves, while gaining important information to help identify those responsible and better protect victims,” said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit. “The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit has long been working to combat cybercrime operations, and today is a particularly important strike against cybercrime that we expect will be felt across the criminal underground for a long time to come.”

For more detailed information on the operation, see the New York Times report titled Microsoft Raids Tackle Internet Crime at www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/technology/microsoft-raids-tackle-online-crime.html and the Microsoft news release Microsoft Joins Financial Services Industry to Disrupt Massive Zeus Cybercrime Operation That Fuels Worldwide Fraud and Identity Theft at www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2012/mar12/03-25CybercrimePR.mspx.

17 .XXX UDRP cases have been filed so far,four months after .XXX domains became available for public sale. Eight of the 17 .XXX UDRP cases have been solved :

1.HEB Grocery Company submitted a complaint to the National Arbitration Forum on December 29,2011 ,asserting legal rights over the domain name HEB.XXX .This is the first complainant to win a .XXX domain name in arbitration

2.An arbitrator with the National Arbitration Forum has awarded RichardBranson.xxx domain name to Richard Branson.Richard Branson submitted a complaint to the National Arbitration Forum on January 10,2012,asserting legal rights over the disputed domain name.

3. An arbitrator with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center has awarded DenizBank.xxx domain name to Denizbank.The Panel ordered the disputed domain name to be transferred from the respondent to the complainant .

4. An arbitrator with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center has awarded BorusanHolding.xxx domain name to Borusan Holding.Borusan Holding submitted a complaint with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center on January 18, 2012,asserting legal rights over the domain. Borusan Holding has a trademark registration for “Borusan Holding”,registered on May 23,2005.Moreover,the company has a registered trademark for “Borusan” since 1982. Therefore,they managed to demonstrate that the domain name is confusingly similar to its trademark.

5. An arbitrator with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center has awarded Valero.xxx domain name to Valero Energy. According to whois records Valero.xxx was registered on December 6,2011,the day ICM Registry made the .XXX extension available for public sale.Valero Energy decided to submit a complaint with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center asserting legal rights over the domain name.

6.An arbitrator with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center has awarded Borcelik.xxx domain name to Borçelik Çelik Sanayi Ticaret Anonim Şirketi of Istanbul.

7. Baylor University won the domain name BaylorGirls.xxx ,after they submitted a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum on February 13,2012 .

8. The University of Texas System won the case against Deggil Yi / ECL Technologies and Charles Cho/ Soonyoung Interaction over the domain name UTSystem.xxx .