
Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they say online, testing the limits of free speech on the internet.
Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they say online, testing the limits of free speech on the internet.
The number of .de domain names registered grew by 460,000, or 2.75%, to 17,160,504 in 2021 cementing .de’s position as the world’s largest ccTLD. This was an increase over 2020 when .de domain registrations grew 376,000 or 2.30%.
ICANN’s meetings are starting to get back to normal with in-person attendances. In an announcement during the recent ICANN74 in The Hague, DENIC, eco and ICANN announced the ICANN78 annual general meeting will be held in Hamburg, Germany, in October 2023. And ICANN has scheduled the first Global Domains Division Summit since May 2020’s cancelled GDD Industry Summit in Paris for Los Angeles in November 2022.
The international popularity of Germany’s ccTLD .de continues to grow. There were 17,160,504 .de domains at the end of 2021 with 1,695,256 (9.88%) of these domains registered abroad, according to a DENIC report. Within one year, the number of international registrations has increased by 244,000, almost twice as much as in the previous year (2020: 128,000).
At DENIC’s ordinary General Assembly held Wednesday in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the members of DENIC eG voted on the composition of the Cooperative’s bodies through 2025. There were three new members voted onto the Supervisory Board, while members of the current Executive Board were all returned.
After being twice-delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Domain Pulse is back and will take place as a face-to-face event on 17 and 18 May. The conference will be hosted by DENIC at the historical plenary chamber of the German Parliament in Bonn. For two days, there will be discussions on the trends and developments in the domain name industry.
Catching up on what’s been happening at EURid is the focus of today’s post. Over the last three months EURid has released their 2021 fourth quarter report, released 48,000 .eu domain names that were previously registered to British registrants, announced Greek character .eu domain name registrations will be deleted (Greek character domains should be registered under .ευ), continued COVID-related domain checks for nefarious registrations to March with their APEWS, published the first annual report of the Dynamic Coalition on Data and Trust, published results of their 2021 Registrar Satisfaction Survey (positive), continued support of the Surfrider Foundation Europe, they currently have a vacancy open for Legal Counsel while the CEO position has closed and announced an additional verification method for providing evidence of a registrant’s identity. Phew!
As part of the orderly transition at the management level that’s happening at the .de ccTLD registry DENIC, Thomas Keller joined the DENIC Executive Board as new full-time member on 1 October. This follows his appointment in June by the Supervisory Board and DENIC General Assembly to succeed Dr. Jörg Schweiger, who announced earlier this year he was stepping down on 31 December.
Despite having one of the world’s toughest laws against online hate speech and harassment, Germany has struggled to contain toxic content ahead of its Sept. 26 election.
united-domains AG, a subsidiary of United Internet, has signed up to ipcom GmbH’s Anycast service RcodeZero DNS, joining a list of registrars and registries administering over 23 million domain names around the world.