Less than one month after it was announced Donuts were taking on the domain name registry business of Afilias, Ethos Capital has announced it is taking over Donuts by acquiring a controlling interest in the company.
The self-declared African country of Somaliland, internationally considered to be part of Somalia, has sent a request to Sierra Leone asking for it to consider sharing their ccTLD, .sl, according to a report in The Somaliland Chronicle.
The XYZ Registry recently launched Sunrise periods for five recently acquired new gTLDs – .quest and four new gTLDs for the beauty industry – .Beauty, .Hair, .Skin and .Makeup. Registrations for trademark holders commenced 1 December while General Availability will commence on 2 March.
[news release] ICANN Friday announced the launch of an audit program aimed at reviewing how registrars are fulfilling their contractual obligations related to addressing reports of potentially abusive domains. This audit follows the 2019 audit program that included all active registry operators, with the objective of understanding how registries were fulfilling their contractual obligations relating to the performance of Security Threats Reporting.
The “vile” and “odious” Leave.EU appears to have had their domain name suspended, temporarily at least, following the pro-Brexit campaign group having transferred registration of their domain name to an Irish businessperson who denies any involvement in Leave.EU.
ICANN Thursday confirmed what everyone expected, and had been listed on their meetings page, that March’s ICANN70 will be held as a Virtual Public Meeting due to the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
ICANN has announced the continuation of their Pandemic Internet Access Program for ICANN70. The programme financially assists those attending ICANN’s online-only meetings whose internet bandwidth is limited to get better broadband access. The programme was first piloted, with 24 people taking advantage of the programme, during the virtual ICANN69 with the support of ICANN’s Board in their resolution from August 2020.
[news release] ICANN Wednesday announced the publication of additional second-level reference Label Generation Rules (LGRs).
CentralNic Group, the ever expanding London-based domain name and web services company, has announced its first foray into the French-speaking world with the acquisition of SafeBrands, a leading online brand protection software provider and corporate internet services provider.
Epik, domain name registrar and webhost to some of the most unsavoury right-wing platforms including a YouTube-clone that “chortles at the idea of slaughtering and then eating black infants”, and which has a documented history of working with websites that traffic in hate, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, has given Parler a home after it left or was kicked off its previous registrar and its webhost booted it.