CEO of Yonita thanked by the Director of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

CEO and President of Yonita Inc., Dr. Andrzej Bartosiewicz has been thanked by the Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Dr. Piotr Cywinski, for the commitment and successful actions that brought about the handing over of the domain "auschwitz.org" to the Museum. Letter can be found here (in English) and here (in Polish).

In his letter to A.Bartosiewicz, Dr. Cywinski writes:
Dear Andrzej Bartosiewicz,

I wish to thank you personally for your great commitment and successful actions that brought about the handling over of the internet domain auschwitz.org to the Museum. It will allow us the transfer of the current website of the Auschwitz Museum and memorial to the new address.

These actions are done in accordance with the policy of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Its aim is to support the efforts of the Polish Government directed against the erroneous associating of the concentration and extermination camps with Polish post-war locations of those places.

Your negotiation skills were a decisive element which got the desired result, even in a situation when the chances for success were to be estimated with great reserve. That is why I would like to express my seep gratitude and once again thank you for your commitment to this case, which lead to this highly satisfactory result.

Dr. Piotr M.A.Cywinski
Director

USA accounts for almost half of .CO registrations

CO internet S.A.S (.CO Interent), an organization responsible for .CO (Colombia) domains has published some interesting statistics: top-10 countries - origins of registrations.

Top-five countries are not surprising...

#1 USA - 48.94% registrations of .CO domains
#2 UK - 13.05%
#3 Colombia - 7.95%
#4 Canada - 4.05%
#5 Australia - 3.68%

The following five are more surprising...
#6 Germany - (only) 2.06%
#7 India -1.75%
#8 China -1.44%
#9 Poland - 1.35%
#10  France -1.17%

Germany... with only 2.06% of .CO domains (Germany is biggest ccTLD, #1 in .EU registrations and #2 in .COM registrations). Only 2.06% of .COs. Surprising?

Poland... 1.35% of .CO? Surprising, very surprising... Poland is not in the top-10 of .COM registrations, so why the hell, Poles started using .COs? Trademarks protection - definitely not due to the fact that there is not much well known trademarks owned by Polish businesses. Business expansion - rather not - Polish companies expand generally into European Union, not outside EU.

And France... yep, past restrictions in .FR registrations were driving factor for French businesses to register .COMs in the past 10 years. But now? Probably because of trademarks protection.

.TEL plunges since March 2011

HosterStats.com published domain statistics as of July 2011. We can see the steady growth of almost all gTLDs and ccTLDs. There are two exemptions: .US and .TEL. 

In the past months I had already reported symptoms of quite unusual behavior of US and TEL. In December 2010 in the article entitled "November closed down for .US domain count" I have reported decrease of US, MOBI and TEL total number of domains.

Since 2010 situation has changed for .MOBI - now it faces fast and steady growth. Problems remained with .US (decline in June for the first time in 2011) and .TEL (decline since March 2011).

Recent stats, presented by HosterStars.com shows steady decline for .TEL (total domain count):

For .TEL, situation is actually worse than in 2010, when domain count declined for 4 months. Now we face decline for 5 consecutive months and no signs of recovery (summer months are not the best timing for aggressive marketing of services like hosting or domain names)

.TEL domains are based on ENUM technology (E.164 NUmber Mapping "ENUM" is a technology for telephone number mapping on special DNS record types to translate a telephone number into a Uniform Resource Identifier or IP address). As one of early adopters of ENUM technology, I have been always an advocate of .TEL.

After so many years of ENUM presence without any spectacular success, I'm afraid, public ENUM is not going to become popular anymore and the fact that TEL is based on ENUM is not going to bring .TEL popularity. Since deployment, TELNIC has introduced several tools (website integration, telfriends, telpages, advertisement support, support for iPhone and Android), making .TEL domains more useful for average users. Regardless of investments in R&D as well as advertising and PR, TELNIC is loosing customers. It's question to TELNIC management, what's next? gTLD with 300,000 names will not be able to play important role when new TLDs arrive in mid-2013. There is no much time left for adjusting strategy and gaining new registrations.

Good luck to TELNIC. I will stay with my .TEL domains including bartosiewicz.tel ubt TELNIC marketing strategy definitely needs adjustments to play any role in the market of 1000+ top level domains.

ICANN Board finally approves new gTLD program.

On June 20, 2011, at around 12:00PM local time, during its meeting in Singapore, ICANN's Board adopted resolution on new Top Level Domains program. The adopted resolution gives the opportunity for applicants to submit their proposals for new gTLD starting January 12, 2012. The application period would end April 12, 2012 and the initial evaluations will be published by November 2012.

Overwhelmingly approved resolution by the Board (13 approving, 1 opposed, and 2 abstaining) has been greeted with cheering and applause from the attendees of the ICANN conference in Singapore. I didn't know that just by raising hands, ICANN Board members can trigger orgasm among new gTLD applicants. ;)

Anyway, I can imagine how much alcohol will be consumed tonight… ;)

Congratulations to ICANN Board and good luck to all applicants! I personally expect around 300-500 applications to be submitted by April 2012. Assuming that 90% will be accepted by ICANN, it will dramatically increase number of gTLDs in 2013 from today's 22 gTLDs.

The real game and the real hard work just start. Back-end registry providers, consultants and applicants – this year there will be no Christmas for you. If you work hard enough, Santa Claus will come to you in November 2012 with the letter from ICANN stating “your application(s) has been accepted”.

source: http://www.icann.org/images/singapore-new-gtlds-vote-721-245.jpg

Disney steals Seals?

Source: link to disney.com

Just recently Disney Enterprises Inc. claimed right on the "SEAL TEAM 6". Information about Team 6 of Navy Seals raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan has been released on May 1, 2011. Disney filled applications on... May 3rd.

Disney’s trademark applications for Clothing, footwear and headwear, toys, games and playthings; gymnastic and sporting articles (except clothing); hand-held units for playing electronic games other than those adapted for use with an external display screen or monitor; Christmas stockings; Christmas tree ornaments and decorations; snow globes. Wow, sounds strange...

Source: USPTO

Disney's action is the perfect example of unjustified desire to profit from the other people achievements.  I'm curious if the TM will pass the United States Patent and Trademark Office, but at least in most European countries it would be declined... 

Huffington Post commented on this saying: It remains to be seen what products will come of these trademarks, but the bin Laden raid video game and pajama set has to be just around the corner.

Department of Commerce on .XXX domain for porn sites

Courtesy: ISOC

Here is the letter from Lawrence E. Strickling, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Department of Commerce, US Government to Commissioner Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission on the .XXX and further Internet Governance issues.

The key points:

• Obama Administration does not support decision of ICANN to approve Registry contact with ICM Registry on .XXX domain delegation
• ICANN ignored the "clear advice" from governments including the US Gov
• USG respects the multi-stakeholder process
• ICANN Board took its action without the full support of the community
• DoC is dedicated to improve the responsiveness of ICANN to all stakeholders

With 1,353,039 2nd level domains, Poland is on 8th position in Europe

On January 4th, 2011, Polish ccTLD Registry which I managed for 9 years and left last year, has registered its 2,000,000th domain name (including both 2nd and 3rd level domains under .COM.PL, .NET.PL etc).

Polish ccTLD Registry is registering not only 2nd level .PL domain names (registrations directly under .PL) but also 3rd level names under .COM.PL, .NET.PL, .BIZ.PL, .WAW.PL and many more extensions. Diversity of domain extensions is a very good business strategy, providing additional sources of revenue to the Registry and Registrars.

Let's look at the example: There is only one "google.pl" domain, but if you sell also 3rd level names, Registry and Registrars can also make money on "google.com.pl", "google.net.pl", "google.biz.pl", "google.waw.pl" and... 154 such extensions.

Let's do the math. Renewal for .PL is 40 PLN (Polish zloty), renewal for "regional" PL domains is 10 PLN (25% of .PL) and for "generic" (like .COM.PL) is 30 PLN (75% of .PL). Bearing in mind that Polish Registry is holding 33 generic 2nd level names and 119 "regional" 2nd level names, "google" can generate not 40 PLN but up-to 2220 PLN revenue for the Registry annually.

Isn't it much better financial strategy than only 2nd level domains registrations like in (almost) all other country code TLDs???

As of January 3rd, NASK has registered:

• 1,353,039 .PL domains (2nd level names)
• 330,347 .COM.PL domains (3rd level names)
• 47,606 .WAW.PL domains 
• 34,077 .NET.PL 
• 23,594 .ORG.pl 
• 20,852 .INFO.PL 
• 11,791 .BIZ.pl domains and so on...

Of course the most valuable for end-users are 2nd level domains (directly under .PL), but 3rd level names especially under .COM.PL are still very popular among Polish companies and domainers and are important part of Registry's and Registrars' revenue. Among those 152 extensions, only 26 extensions have lost 3rd level names in 2010. All the rest gained, showing still existing demand for not only 2nd level names but 3rd level too.

With 1,353,039 domains Poland is on the 8th position among European ccTLDs. The top European's TLDs are as follows (as of November 30, 2010):
1. .de 14,007,185
2. .uk 8,966,685
3. .nl 4,168,836
4. .eu 3,312,453
5. .ru 3,096,193
6. .it 2,048,160
7. .fr 1,857,310 

If we just take the total number of domain names run by the Registry (both 2nd and 3rd level), it's actually 7th position in Europe with impressive 2,000,000 names.

Congratulations to my colleagues running the registry and all Registrars doing the hardest job!

Domain Arbitration in 2010

Based in Geneva, Switzerland, WIPO was established in 1994 to offer Alternative Dispute Resolution options for the resolution of international commercial disputes between private parties, especially cross-border dispute settlement. The subject matter includes both contractual disputes (patent and software licenses, trademark coexistence agreements, distribution agreements for pharmaceutical products and research and development agreements) and non-contractual disputes (patent infringement). WIPO established an legal framework for the administration of disputes relating to the Internet and e-commerce.

WIPO is recognized as the leading dispute resolution service provider for disputes arising out of the abusive registration and use of Internet domain names both ccTLDs and gTLDs.

Year 2010 was the record braking at WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center with almost 2,700 domain disputes involving 4,285 domain names:

The total number of disputes at WIPO reached 19,409 involving 35,232 domain names from all around the world. In 2010 only 12% of all disputes were ccTLD related.

France leads ranking of top 10 "most popular" ccTLDs at WIPO, followed by Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland...

Number of disputed domain names since 2000.

In 2010, Colombia, a "new" ccTLD, has joined France, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland becoming Number "4". Colombia opened-up their extension (.CO) in 2010, and many disputes resulted just from TM infringements in the first days after the "big bang".

Number of disputed domain names in 2010

Among gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains), .COM leads the way, followed by .NET .ORG and .INFO

Number of cases almost matches number of domain names registered, also led by .COM followed by NET, ORG, INFO:

WikiLekas upgrades its DNS

After long struggle with DNS providers and hosters (read HERE and HERE), WikiLeaks finally upgraded their DNS by using several Name Servers provided by different companies and distributed along many networks. Good news for WikiLeaks and its supporters and bad news for USG and the secret diplomatic files.

Here you can see dig query on "wikileaks.ch".

; <<>> DiG 9.2.3 <<>> @dns1.menandmice.com wikileaks.ch ANY
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1455
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 17, AUTHORITY: 15, ADDITIONAL: 19
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;wikileaks.ch. IN ANY
;; ANSWER SECTION:
wikileaks.ch.	1777	IN	A 46.59.1.2
wikileaks.ch.	1777	IN	A 213.251.145.96
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns3.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns4.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS dns1.syshack.org.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS dns2.easydns.net.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS dns2.syshack.org.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS arjeplog.scnr.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS marmotta.brabbel.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS v217241437.yourvserver.net.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS s2.s3cr3t.de.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS dns.wikileaks.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS lou.porcus.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns1.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns1.buzzernet.net.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns2.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns2.easydns.com.
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns2.easydns.com.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns3.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns4.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS dns1.syshack.org.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS dns2.easydns.net.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS dns2.syshack.org.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS arjeplog.scnr.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS marmotta.brabbel.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS v217241437.yourvserver.net.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS s2.s3cr3t.de.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS dns.wikileaks.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS lou.porcus.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns1.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns1.buzzernet.net.
wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	NS ns2.pcdog.ch.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
s2.s3cr3t.de.	77276	IN	A 216.245.206.111
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 178.63.167.108
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 188.40.194.13
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 193.28.181.57
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 193.138.215.125
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 216.18.205.196
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 216.245.206.111
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 217.147.219.146
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 46.4.160.2
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 72.52.2.1
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 80.246.50.106
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 85.124.44.140
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 85.124.251.171
dns.wikileaks.ch.	1212	IN	A 91.121.168.144
ns1.buzzernet.net.	1668	IN	A 193.138.215.125
dns1.syshack.org.	34076	IN	A 46.4.160.2
dns2.easydns.net.	37	IN	A 72.52.2.1
dns2.syshack.org.	412	IN	A 91.121.168.144
v217241437.yourvserver.net.	9012	IN	A 188.40.194.13
;; Query time: 192 msec
;; SERVER: 217.151.171.7#53(dns1.menandmice.com)
;; WHEN: Mon Dec 6 08:29:22 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 955
To the contrary to .CH domain, wikileaks.org is not responding.

November closed down for .US domain count

My blog posted on November 6th was entitled .US Domain Is Back On Track... Unfortunately November closed down for .US domain count. With 1,610,492 at the end of October, .US zone file contained in November only 1,607,455 domains, 3,037 below October count.

October has become relatively a good month for .US domain operated by NeuStar. American ccTLD ended October with 17,283 domains above September's results.

Looking at the graph, we can see fluctuations of .US zone month to month. US ccTLD is neither growing nor declining. It's surprising, because almost all big TLDs, are steady growing. November closed up for most big TLDs except .MOBI and .TEL.

The question is what NeuStar is going to do to promote .US. For NeuStar, the big telecommunication company, dotUS domain business is just a fraction of their revenue. What's more important, domain business for NeuStar is rather PR activity than focus on the results (number of registered domain names). Anyway it would be great to see .US growing at least with the average speed of the gTLD and ccTLD domain names market.

NeuStar, heads up and make it grow :)

FEDs seized 82 domain names

http://leahy.senate.gov

Today many of the Internet users, especially those making money on IP rights infringements, are afraid of upcoming Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, US Senate bill commonly known as COCIA introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee). COICA proposes amendments to Chapter 113 of Title 18 of the United States Code authorizing Attorney General to bring an in rem action against domain names "used by an Internet site dedicated to infringing activities". The general conclusion of the bill is that "upon receipt of such order, the domain name registrar or domain name registry shall suspend operation of, and lock the domain name". COICA paves the way to fast and efficient removal of the domain names pointing to web sites dedicated to infringing activities from DNS.

DHS seizes Internet
Bill S.3804 recently passed Senate Judiciary Committee (19-0) and is awaiting a vote from the Senate. Those responsible for inter alia IP rights infringements, were sleeping (quite) well, at least until the bill will (if ever) be passed... but suddenly domain names started disappearing from the net...

Current content of one of the sized sites today

Few days ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surprised many, seizing 82 domain names of commercial websites involved in selling counterfeit goods. Operation called "In Our Sites v. 2.0" was spearheaded by the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) led by ICE's Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), in coordination with the Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and nine U.S. Attorneys' Offices.


Plenty of choices
The biggest surprise for many is that neither provisions of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) has been applied (the latter is not yet in power). Department of Homeland Security (DHS) executed "traditional" court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names preceded by undercover purchases from online retailers suspected of selling counterfeit goods.

With existing DMCA, current DHS practice and upcoming COICA are we facing more and more such seizures? The recent DHS actions show that digital-business becomes easier to be targeted by US-based Law Enforcement Agencies and more different practical tools and methods can be used to enforce the law:

• (traditional) physical closure of the business and seizures of the equipment etc.,
• (traditional) blocking (removing) the illegal content located on the servers,
• (new) domain seizures at the Registrar level,
• (new) domain seizures at the Registry level,
• (new) removal of the Name Servers,
• (new) blocking financial transaction provider from completing payment transactions between its customers located within the United States and the Internet site.

Are ccTLDs a safe-haven?
Are the criminals going to move to Internet-safe havens (ccTLDs) not being under US jurisdiction? Quite likely, but which (cc)TLDs are going to be the safe havens? Crooks will be soon forced to use not only domain names from outside the jurisdiction of US but also:

• Registrars,
• DNS service providers (Name Servers),
• collocation or hosting providers,
• financial transaction providers.

Welcome to the new world.

QR Code

Marketing: How to loose money with Google AdWords

Google AdWords are not difficult to manage campaigns, optimize keywords, setting budget, max. CPC etc. But why to set up a campaign? The answer is simple. You get through to customers who are already searching for the product or service that your company offers.

Let's focus on the example. If the customers search for "mobile phone", it's easy to understand that mobile carriers should use "mobile phone" keyword(s) to display Ads in search results and get the customers in. This is the "normal" way - you pay for the clicks you can't get for free. When customer enters Your company name (like "Yon Consulting" in my case) and the results bring Your company on the first place (like in the example below) in the search results, why to display Your advertisement too?

 

Why to promote yourself paying for your company name as keyword to get your advertisement on the top of the results you get for free??? Unfortunately it's quite typical mistake of the marketing departments in the big (and small) companies... Here are the examples...

Orange

Orange pays for their ad to be displayed if "orange" is typed in Google. Do they loose money? Yes. Do they care? No...

Galeries Lafayette 

The same story... check by yourself...

COMARCH

I can show you thousands of companies paying for their trademarks and company names as keywords. Do you also pay for your TM or company name to be displayed over your cost-free result(s)?

Domain Names Market is Changing

COM COM über alles, über alles in der Welt

 
Recent gossips that GoDaddy is promoting .CO as replacement for .COM surprised me. I did my research and found out (with relief) that such a great surprise is over and .COM is back to the throne. Has anything changed since .CO and .ME  launch and recent poor results of .TEL .BIZ or .MOBI aftermarket sales?

Yes, the main change is .CO popularity and in the contrary, low value sales of premium .ME domains and decreasing total number of .ME names in the zone. Additionally, sales of .TEL .BIZ or .MOBI are showing signs that such TLDs  are far from popularity among domainers.

Most dynamic TLDs
Here are the numbers - net increase between October and November 2010 in the following zones:

COM	621092
INFO	82414
NET	78423
ORG	60797
CO	42967
MOBI	2556
BIZ	931

The data clearly shows that .COM is still the most prominent for Registrars, then INFO goes, followed by NET ORG and... CO. The rest is not out of competition.

GoDaddy
So, how Registrars react to the changing primary (and secondary) market? The best way is to look at the starting pages of Registrars. Here they are:

GoDaddy promotes .COM, than .CO followed by .INFO .NET .ORG .ME and .MOBI

Name.com

Let's check what thinks Name.com:

The primary choice for name.com is quite similar: .COM .ME .NET .INFO .ORG .US .TEL. I'm a little bit surprised with such high positions of .TEL and .ME on name.com list. Telnic (operator of TEL domains) has net growth of only 298 domains in October and doMEn (operator of ME domains) has net decline of 2230 domains in October and 2082 in September.

Let's check what our colleagues from EuroDNS think about primary market. Here it is:

EuroDNS
EuroDNS is... different. The primary choice is .CO.NO and .SO - the two new extensions. .CO.NO is the most interesting - it's privately held 2nd level domain under most restrictive European TLD - .NO operated by NORID.

For companies/individuals operating in Norway, it's extremely difficult to register domains directly under .NO. Norwegians have the following alternatives:

• .COM (obvious), 
• .NU [1]
• .CO.NO. 

.EU is not an alternative for Norway due to the fact that Norway is not a member of the European Union.

To the contrary to .CO.NO, dotSO is the Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) for The Republic of Somalia. It was redelegated to The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MoPT) in April of 2009, and will be available to the public for Open Registration on March 1st, 2011.

Among other extensions, EuroDNS prefers .EU (yes, EuroDNS is an European company), than .COM (am I surprised? No), NET, ORG, MOBI (??? this is surprising due to the decreases in the recent months), INFO, BIZ, TEL.

Conclusions? 

1. Registrars focus on the new TLDs where the profit margin is higher than for "normal" registrations. The best choice is .CO.NO (I like it, probably I will register one name there), and dotSO.
2. The next comes .CO. Yes, Colombian ccTLD zone is still "empty" if compared to .COM and still nice (valuable) names are available...
3. The next are most popular gTLD: COM NET ORG
4. Keeping .TEL (Telnic) or .MOBI (Afilias) on the list is rather a mistake; decisions are probably not based on (business) analysis but "expectations" IMHO.

I will watch closely how Registrars react to the new world of domains. Is it going to be traditional (COM COM über alles, über alles in der Welt) market or something new is going on?

[1] .NU is the Internet country code top-level domain assigned to the island state of Niue.  "nu" in Swedish means "now" and regardless of the fact that Niue Island has no connections with Sweden or Norway, ".NU" become popular in Sweden and Norwegian businesses operating in Sweden.

.US Domain Is Back On Track...

...But Still Below It's Past Result.

October has become relatively a good month for .US domain operated by NeuStar. American ccTLD ended October with 1,610,492 names in the zone, 17,283 above September's results.

In the industry where almost every TLD is steady growing from month to month, .US lost -29,659 domain names in September and -2,902 names in August according to HosterStats.com

There are many different factors influencing Top Level Domain growth. I can bet that .US lost so many customers because of 2010-sales showing almost no value of the "2nd class" domains like .BIZ .INFO .MOBI .ASIA .TEL on the Secondary Market.
Domainers' investments in .BIZ or .MOBI become void, .COM and leading ccTLDs (.DE .UK .NL .BE .EU...) are the Kings and Queens of Internet.

For Americans (as well as for most of the businesses around the world), .COM is the primary choice for business and American citizens. US ccTLD has been always treated just as an investment similar to investments in .CO or .ME. This is the reason why NeuStar's baby joined the general trend for "2nd-Class" gTLDs and "investments" ccTLDs.

.US result is still above many ccTLDs from around the world, but it can never become a real ccTLD for Americans. There is no alternative to .COM in US for doing business on-line.

Yon Consulting's CEO @ Internetdagarna

Internetdagarna is Sweden’s primary meeting place for Internet professionals. It is organized by .SE - Swedish ccTLD Registry.

Stockholm 2010

Internetdagarna is an amazing conference, with 750 attendees this year. I would never expect such a big event with so many attendees and distinguished speakers in the country with 9 million citizens. Sweden is focused on new technologies so maybe I shouldn't be surprised anyway...? Congratulations to NIC.SE for the great event. Good PR for them and the whole Swedish IT-business. 

As former .PL Registry's Head and CENTR's Chairman, I was invited to give a speech on the Polish domain market and factors which are driving the demand for domain names, and how long can we expect that growth to continue.

Stockholm 2010

To summarize my presentation, I would like to point you to two main aspects. The first is the reason why people register domains. What drives them to purchase a name under a TLD? Here are three reasons behind registrants' decision:

• “Must have” for business to be recognized in the country (like .DE .CZ .PL) → primary market
• Investments (like .CO .ME) → secondary market
• TM protection against cybersquatters (like .FR .BIZ .INFO) → defensive registrations

The next aspect is the TLD Registry itself. What can Registry do to facilitate growth. Let me show you one slide, based on .PL situation. I'm proud to be the author of .PL success, so let me give you a recipe for a successful TLD...

To download the full presentation go here
For any questions please contact me. The contact details are here 

Long Term Stability Of The Internet Infrastructure

Internet is growing with enormous speed. Number of domains, IP addresses, routing tables, Internet users and the content size is increasing. Of course, not only the valuable side of the Internet is growing but also the dark side. Internet usage by organized crime and cross-border terrorist activities are also growing with at least the same speed as the bright side. More Internet presence and Internet penetration create more business and money related on-line activities. More ”on-line” economy creates more opportunity for the organized crime to act.

Crime is the one side. The complexity of the Internet can also create more problems with long term stability. IP exhaustion, BGP complexity, capacity exhaustion are adding problems to already non-efficient software and backbone infrastructure. A lot of resources in the Internet are lost just because of problems and bugs with software that is used in firewalls, switches, registry systems, communication systems, data storage solutions, distributed databases and so on. How many copies of the same file are stored in your company's servers. Tens, hundreds?

Additional, more and more complex Internet can not be monitored or checked against threats just by humans. Billion of web-sites and addresses, hundreds of thousands line of code in each software piece are impossible to be checked by humans. We need next generation of automatic tools for automatic monitoring and security checks. For example the complex software solutions need automatic analytical tools to identify security gaps and performance bottlenecks. Standards but also patterns and good practices should be enforced in core elements of the infrastructure.

Quite often instead of buying new servers and more gigabit-links we can just try to optimize the infrastructure. We need greener Internet, where we do not trade growth with energy savings. We can go more green and the same time with better performance.

The long term stability of the Internet is based on the automatization of the threats detection and the global cooperation for exchanging the results of such analysis as well as infrastructure efficiency. We do not see it now, but in next 10 years it will become more important.

Conference: Internet Governance Forum
Session: Long Term Stability Of The Internet

document prepared as an input for the panel discussion taking place during Internet Governance Forum 2010.

May 12: DNS blackout in Germany

On May 12, 2010, Internet in Germany faced serious problems. According to German media (Focus, Spiegel, Chip, Frankfurter Allgemeine etc.) most of the web pages with addresses ending with .DE were not available between 11:30 UTC and 15:45 UTC. During the "blackout" DNS queries returned NXDOMAIN (Name Error RCODE), indicating probable existence of some errors during the process of uploading of the zone file into the DNS servers. This information has been briefly confirmed by Peter Koch from DENIC eG. It's quite likely that the defective or incomplete zone files have been uploaded into DNS servers.

Background

Usually domain registration and maintenance systems are separated from Domain Name System (DNS is resolving queries send by Internet users, translating domians into IP addresses). Normally there is no "direct" connection between registration system and live DNS. Those two "worlds" are connected when the registry system is exporting* zone file(s) and the zone file is uploaded into primary DNS server (and than distributed to the secondary Name Servers).

German accident is similar to the case from Spain (in 2006 the empty zone file has been uploaded) and Sweden (in 2009 incorrect DNSSEC-signed zone file has been uploaded). Unfortunately in both mentioned situations this critical part of the process has not been secured by automatic checks verifying the newly generated zone file.

Solution 

To avoid such incidents, automatic verification mechanism(s) can be used to check the differences between the new generated zone file and the previous one (the last correct zone file). If the number of changes is higher than usual, it indicates that some errors are quite likely to happen and the process should be terminated. It's the common practice in many different industry sectors, to check if the changes in the computer databases, physical storage, resources or energy consumption etc. are not deviated from what is expected from statistical estimations. The idea behind such statistical checks is to eliminate major errors using automatic verification systems. Of course such (statistical) methods don't eliminate minor problems, requiring more sophisticated control solutions to be implemented.

Explanations
*There is also another solution for updating zone files called "dynamic updates", allowing small portions of domains to up updated more frequently than zone files reloads. German registry is not using this method to update DNS.

12 maja - sądny dzień dla Internetu w Niemczech.

Internet w Niemczech w dniu 12 maja przeżył poważny problem. Jak donosiły niemieckie media, przez kilka godzin niedostępne były strony internetowe, których adresy domenowe były zakończone końcówką .DE. Podczas awarii, zapytania do DNS zwracały informacje, że domena nie istnieje czyli tzw. NXDOMAIN, co może wskazywać, że podczas ładowania plików stref na serwery DNS popełniono błąd i niepełne lub uszkodzone pliki stref znalazły się na serwerach DNS. Informację taką potwierdził Peter Koch z DENIC eG, podmiotu zarządzającego rejestracją i utrzymaniem domen z końcówką .DE, potwierdzając także, że awaria była odczuwalna pomiędzy 11.30 a 15.45 UTC, a więc przez ponad 4 godziny.

Rejestrując i używając domeny musimy pamiętać, że systemy rejestracji domen są niezależne z systemem DNS czyli serwerami odpowiadającymi na zapytania od użytkowników Internetu o adresy IP. Te dwa "światy" łączą się ze sobą w momencie, kiedy rejestr domen dokonuje tzw. eksportu plików stref. W przypadku Niemiec, taki eksport następuje co dwie godziny.

Analogiczny (identyczny) błąd jak rejestr z Niemiec, popełniły wcześniej rejestry z Hiszpanii (w 2006) oraz Szwecji (w 2009), gdzie umieszczono na serwerach DNS niepoprawne pliki stref. Niestety ten krytyczny etap, czyli przeniesienie informacji technicznych o delegowanych domenach z systemów rejestracji domen do systemu DNS, jak widać nadal jest problemem dla niektórych rejestrów domen w Europie.

Zarówno w przypadku Hiszpanii, Szwecji jak i Niemiec, nie dokonywano automatycznego sprawdzenia, czy wgrywany plik stref jest poprawny. Gdyby zastosowano mechanizmy weryfikacji, nie doszłoby do upublicznienia błędnych informacji.

Problem był bardzo szeroko komentowany w Niemczech i na całym świecie, nie tylko przez media specjalistyczne, ale także ogólno-informacyjne. W Polsce o problemie napisały:

• Webinside
• Internet Standard
• AZnews
• Dziennik Internautow