An Extraordinary General Meeting held Monday saw four of Nominet’s directors including Chair Mark Wood removed from their positions, while CEO and board member Russell Haworth stood down on Sunday, the day before the meeting. The Board clear-out follows a campaign for reform of the .uk ccTLD registry by Public Benefit .UK.
Nominet’s CEO Russell Haworth has become the sacrifice in the ongoing battles over management of the .uk ccTLD. In an announcement today, Nominet said Haworth “intends to step down from the Board and relinquish his duties as CEO. Russell will complete a short transition, arrangements for which details are being finalised. The board will announce interim leadership measures in due course.” Whether Haworth’s sacrifice minimises the fallout coming from today’s EGM remains to be seen.
Around 3.6 million websites across 464,000 domain names were taken offline after a major fire at an OVHcloud data centre site in Strasbourg last week, Netcraft is reporting. Around 184,000 websites using 59,600 .fr domain names were impacted, around 1.9% of all .fr domain names.
PIR is on a mission to improve the domain name space for fellow registries, registrars and registrants. More than a year and a half ago – in May 2019 – the .org registry introduced the Quality Performance Index, or QPI. In doing so, they created a roadmap to identify best practices and incentives for registrars to reduce abuse rates and increase renewals of .ORGs.
Total new gTLD registrations have been on a downhill slide since late September 2020 according to nTLDstats.com and the decline is continuing. Verisign’s authorative Domain Name Industry Brief released this week reports that in the final quarter of 2020, new gTLD domain name registrations dropped 4.2 million to 26.0 million which equates to a drop of 13.8% compared to the third quarter of 2020. Over the year new gTLDs decreased by 3.3 million or 11.2%.
The XYZ Registry launched 4 beauty-related new top-level domains this week plus .quest. .Beauty, .Hair, .Skin, and .Makeup which are being aimed at independent beauty brands, influencers, big-brand cosmetic companies, salon owners, medi-spas, dermatologists, skincare specialists/aestheticians, suppliers, hair stylists, barbers, makeup artists, fashion designers and other beauty industry insiders. Plus there’s the destination-driven .Quest domain that’s being pitched at gurus, experts and enthusiasts of any field, a go-to domain for anyone seeking a specific service and/or product.
The registry fee for domain names under Iceland’s ccTLD will increase for the first time since the ccTLD was delegated over 30 years ago, the registry ISNIC announced.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) launched a call Tuesday for applications for projects to improve internet access in Canada. Over C$1 million in grants will be awarded to community groups and researchers working on infrastructure, cybersecurity, digital literacy and community leadership projects – with preference given to those that benefit students, as well as northern, rural, and Indigenous communities.
Public Interest Registry announced Wednesday the launch of the DNS Abuse Institute as part of its ongoing efforts to protect Internet users from the threat of DNS Abuse such as malware, botnets, phishing, pharming and spam.
On 1 January 2021 over 81,000 British-based .eu registrants found their domain names had become “suspended”, meaning their domain names would not resolve to websites and emails would not transmit. The reason was that at the end of the Brexit “transition period” on 31 December, they were ineligible to hold or register .eu domains. To comply, individuals had to prove they were a citizen of the European Union or the larger European Economic Area, an EU citizen no matter where they lived in the world or for businesses, be a legally established entity in the EU or EEA.