Due to the ongoing pandemic, the European Commission has asked EURid, the .eu registry, to continue monitoring new .eu domain name registrations using their APEWS – Advanced Prevention and Early Warning System – platform for Covid-related keywords until 31 December 2021. The initial measures for these checks were set in early April 2020 in order to protect end-users from possible misuse of domain names.
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.
The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020, but the 11 month transition period meant the UK was still bound by the EU’s rules. At the end of the transition period it was known businesses and citizens of the UK would lose the right to register .EU domain names. What very few realised was that due to the terms and conditions for .fr, they would lose the right to register and hold .fr domain names as well.
Google and a French publishers’ lobby said on Thursday they had agreed to a copyright framework for the U.S. tech giant to pay news publishers for content online, in a first for Europe.
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.
France is resuming collection of a special tax on Big Tech companies like Amazon and Facebook despite the threat of U.S. retaliatory tariffs on French Champagne, cheese, handbags and other goods.
A French appeals court upheld an order for Google to open negotiations with French publishers over payments to use their news content.
France’s ccTLD grew 3.7% in 2019, totalling 3,428,951 domain names under management as of 31 December, an increase of 123,655 in the 12 months according to Afnic’s Annual Report released this week. This makes .fr the ninth largest ccTLD in the world according to Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief.
A top French court on Thursday struck down critical provisions of a law passed by France’s parliament last month to combat online hate speech, dealing a severe blow to the government’s effort to police internet content.
France will tax big digital businesses this year whether there is progress or not towards an international deal on a levy, its finance minister said on Thursday, adding such a tax had never been more legitimate or more necessary.