The Dutch registry, the SIDN, announced that .NL reached the 5 million domains

5 Million DOT NL
milestone. They archieved this milestone just a year after 25th birthday of the .NL domain and 15 years after the SIDN took over .NL. .NL holds the 3rd position in list of biggest ccTLD’s after .DE and .UK with a little over 15 million domains for .DE and little over 10 million for .UK
Individuals are allowed to register a second-level .nl domain since 2003. As a forerunner, individuals were allowed to register a third-level domain since 2000. Such ‘personal domains’ had the …
ICANN 44 Prague was a busy event and produced a lot of news and new information.
Friday June 22 : ICANN announces it’s new CEO and President Fadi Chehadé.
Saturday June 23 : The biggest news this day must have been the fact that ICANN

suspended the Digital Archery system and later in the week abandoned it completely.
Sunday June 24 : A number of registrars participated in a briefing with the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) regarding the Domain Name Marketplace and the role of registrars in the ecosystem.
Points being discussed with the GAC.
- Registrar business models
- the role …
The Registrar Stakeholder Group (RrSG) would like to provide this statement regarding the current status of RAA negotiations and the update posted on the ICANN website on June 4, 2012.
The RrSG and its representatives on the Negotiating Team (NT) have been actively involved in discussions with ICANN staff and is pleased to see substantive progress reported to the community in advance of the upcoming ICANN meeting in Prague.

Among the issues that have been agreed to include improved registrar response and
availability to law enforcement, registrar abuse point of contact, publication of registrar information, establishment of an ICANN accreditation …
The new gTLD list.
This week several companies revealed how many applications they filed, and in some cases revealed more information then just the amount of applications.
Google has applied for 50 gTLD’s across 4 categories.
- Trademarks, like .google

Dot Google
- TLD’s related to Google’s core business, like .docs
- TLD’s that will improve user experience, such as .youtube, which can increase the ease with which YouTube channels and genres can be identified
- TLD’s where Google thinks has interesting and creative potential, such as .lol
Directi applied for 31 gTLD’s that will be heavily contested.
.web, .shop, .bank, .law, .music, .news, …
DNS.be, the organization who operate the Belgium ccTLD .be, offers a new service for the holder of a .be domain. The registrant of a .be domain can request a certificate in pdf format with the details of the individual or organization who is registered as the holder of the .be domain in question.
The purpose of this certificate is to verify that the domain has been registered with correct details and that the domain can be used for certain business transactions, such as applying for a digital certificate.
The below message will be send by DNS.be after the request.
Dear …
On 16 March, Nominet the ccTLD operator for *.uk reported they had over 10 million registrations. The 10th million .uk domain name registered is SwarveMagazine.co.uk. According to whois records the 10th million .uk domain name was registered by Steven Northam.
“We’ve been growing at around the 10% for the past couple of years,” said Nominet’s chief executive, Lesley Cowley.
Yesterday, SIDN the operator for the ccTLD .NL registered more then 4.9 million registrations. .NL is one of the largest ccTLDs in terms of total registrations . SIDN celebrated its three millionth domain name registration in 2008,while its two millionth milestone …
According to a post from ICANN there are currently 889 users registered in the TLD Application System (TAS). Each user can apply for 50 TLD’s. 50×889 = 44450. A staggering number that surely will not be met. Industry experts expect around 2000 applications.
Tremendous anticipation, planning, and work drove toward 12 January, 2012, the day ICANN began accepting applications for new gTLDs.
Organizations who choose to apply to operate a top-level domain have merely begun a journey that will most likely carry them into 2013. If you’re curious about the next phases of ICANN’s New gTLD Program, here are …
WIPO handled slightly more UDRP cases compared to 2010.
Though the amount of UDRP cases is just slightly higher compared to 2010 the amount of domains involved was up by 9.4%. A smillar trend is noticed by ccTLD registries who use their own ADR procedure to resolve domain name disputed.

Since ICANN appointed WIPO as one of the parties to handle domain disputes back in 1999, WIPO handled more then 22.5000 UDRP cases and this number will only increase according to WIPO with the launch of the new gTLD‘s at the end of this year. How high this increase …
Eurid just released their Q4 results of 2011.
.EU has matured as an extension. This was demonstrated by .eu consumer loyalty,shown in the robust and stable registration renewal rate.In 2011, 81.6% of .eu domain names were renewed which was consistent with 2010’s renewal rate (81.7%) and above the industry average.
Eurid 2011 Highlights.
- In 2011 Eurid reached a total registrations of 3.51 million .EU domain names.
- DNSSEC rollout started
- Website usage research. This study revealed that 31.4% of the .EU websites are being used for business usuage. Full report here.
- Eurid closed the case on sex.eu
Number crunching. …
As mentioned earlier this month ICANN is moving towards a new WHOIS eco system.
ICANN is pleased to announce the posting of the draft
roadmap to implement ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee’s Report on Domain Name WHOIS Terminology and Structure (SAC 051). To make or view comments click here. The SSAC report specifically targets, among other things, the “internationalization” of the WHOIS protocol, reflecting concern about the inability of the current WHOIS protocol to consistently handle non-ASCII data. Additionally, SAC 051 recommends terminology to be used to clarify discussions where traditionally the terms Whois or WHOIS have been used. …