Global Domain Name and Internet Policy News
The Public Interest Registry (PIR) unveiled the finalists for the 2025 .ORG Impact Awards Tuesday and announced rapper, philanthropist and activist Common will host this year’s awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. in October that will recognise outstanding mission-driven individuals and organisations from around the world for their positive contributions to society.
ICANN published its tax returns for itself and its affiliate Public Technical Identifiers for the year ending 30 June 2024 this week. When combined with looking at the corresponding annual reports, they show soaring expenditures but income has plateaued. While ICANN attributes some of the increased expenditure to the upcoming new gTLD expansion, what does this mean for registries, registrars and registrants? Higher prices?
Public Interest Registry, the team behind .org, and the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation have partnered to make available tools to all domain name registries in the global battle against child sexual abuse material.
Hope for Justice, a UK-based charity working to bring an end to modern slavery and human trafficking, and to protect the human rights of victims and survivors, won the main prize in the fifth annual .ORG Impact Awards from the people behind the .org top-level domain, Public Interest Registy.
Internationalised Domain Names may have failed to attract significant numbers of registrations, but they’re now offered by 84% (144) of all ccTLDs, with a further one in preparation to launch, according to the latest IDN World Report. But growth has been limited and awareness is still low.
If you’re wanting to know more about Universal Acceptance, ICANN is holding a second round of their “ICANN for Beginners: Universal Acceptance” (UA) webinars on 12 and 13 July 2023.
The second of the two big global domain name registration reports, the quarterly CENTRstats Global TLD Report for Q4 2022, came out recently with its usual focus on its member European ccTLDs and how domain names across the continent are used. The other major report from Verisign, which I wrote on earlier this week, focusses on total domain registrations around the world. With 52 full and 8 associate members, CENTR’s members are responsible for over 70% of all registered country code top-level domain names worldwide, and 57% of the European domain name market, ccTLDs and gTLDs combined. .com, which accounts for 45.6% of all domain names registered globally, accounts for only a third (32%) in Europe while other gTLDs account for the remaining 11%.
Public Interest Registry, the .org registry, and the American Red Cross have joined together to curtail scammers seeking to take advantage of natural disasters and the Red Cross’ good name. It is the first time any registry operator has established a Trusted Notifier relationship with a major international humanitarian organisation like the American Red Cross.
The total number of domain names registered around the world increased incrementally in the first quarter of 2023, growing 1.0% or 3.5 million, which coincidentally was the same 1.0% and 3.5 million increase for the 12 months to the end of March, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.
Public Interest Registry has announced a call for nominations for the fifth annual .ORG Impact Awards. The Awards seek to promote the .org top-level domain as well as showcase some of the best work registrants are doing in the not-for-profit world. Plus in 2023, prize money has jumped dramatically and all finalists will be invited to attend the in-person award ceremony.