Registration for the 2022 Nordic Domain Days to be held in Stockholm in May 2022 has opened. The conference that focusses on the domain name industry in the five Nordic countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, and let’s not forget the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland as well, is aimed as a means of discussing domain name issues for the Nordic region, and is aimed at registries, registrars, resellers, service providers and investors.
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 GDPR is coming and a number of ccTLD registries are giving registrars heart palpitations. Itâs a month till the European Unionâs General Data Protection Regulation comes into play and the Icelandic, Norwegian, Slovakian and United Kingdom ccTLD operators are only just announcing how theyâll deal with it.
For Icelandâs .is they will stop publishing names, addresses and telephone numbers of personal contacts by default from the ISNIC WHOIS database. For individuals who wish to continue to publish their information, they must log in, go to “My Settings” and select “Name and Address Published”.
ISNIC will however, at least for the time being, continue to publish email addresses, country and techincal information of all NIC-handles associated with .is domains. Those customers (individuals) who have recorded a personally identifiable email address, and do not want it published, will need to change their .is WHOIS email address to something impersonal. However the Icelandic country code top level domain isnât happy with the new regulation. They note the GDPR âwill neither lead to better privacy nor a safer network environment.â
For the sake of the internet community, e.g. Individual users, Service Providers, Hosting Companies, and many other stake holders, ISNIC will continue to publish email addresses and the country name of all contact types until further notice.
For NORID, the registry for Norwayâs .no, they have made a few changes to their policies that come into effect on 5 May. NORID state they will âonly collect data that we need, and that the domain holder shall be informed about which data is being processed by Norid. Starting on 5 May, we will collect less data about the holder than what we currently do.â Following consultation with the with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, NORID will launch a new version of WHOIS on 22 May.
And Nominet, the .uk registry, has announced their changes. Following a consultation period that outlined their proposed changes that were published for comment between 1 March and 4 April, Nominet have announced that:
âWe have taken a conservative approach to publishing data, to ensure that we do not fall foul of the new legislation,â said Nominet COO Ellie Bradley. âWhile, as a result, we will be publishing less data on the WHOIS â we have comprehensive procedures already in place that ensure that we will continue to respond swiftly to requests for information to pursue legitimate interests.â
The proposals also outlined an approach to replacing the existing privacy services framework with recognition of a Proxy Service offered by registrars. In response to the feedback, Nominet has decoupled this proposal from the bulk of the GDPR-related changes and will consult further on this topic in June 2018.
The grace period (i.e the period from when a domain name is suspended until it is deleted) for .is domains has been 60 days since .is domain names were available. This period will soon be shortened to 30 days, counting from the renewal date.
The reason for this is simply to get deleted domains one month sooner back on the market, and to align the .is domain rules to international conventions. After this change ISNIC will also inform the registrant precisely when the domain will be deleted, regardless of any holidays. This means that the so called holiday rule (.is domains never deleted on holidays) will also be abandoned.
The third reason for this change, and perhaps the most important one, is to increase automation and enabling ISNIC to maintain stable registration and renewal fees in spite of cost increases.
ISNIC has offered a simple web forwarding services for free for .is domain name registrants since 2010. The Icelandic ccTLD registry has now expanded this service to allow users to define custom CNAME records and custom TXT records in addition to the already possible A/AAAA and MX records. The service if free of charge until decided otherwise.
The alt-right neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer, is back online using a .is domain name, the ccTLD for Iceland. But the .is registry, ISNIC, doesn’t appear too happy with a report saying they’re looking into their options as to how to deal with the issue.
“What we are doing right now, in this particular situation, is we are writing to the National Police,” ISNIC CEO Jens Pétur Jensen told Icelandic English news site Grapevine. “We are asking them if or how we should respond and asking them for guidance.”
“One of the reasons why this matters is because Iceland does have hate speech laws; specifically, Article 233(a) of the Icelandic Penal Code specifically forbids the dissemination of speech that in ‘a ridiculing, slanderous, insulting, threatening or any other manner’ targets an individual or groups based, amongst other things, on their race or religion,” reported Grapevine.
“Jens emphasises that this is a delicate situation with serious implications. He says though that ISNIC has received some complaints about DailyStormer, and he therefore feels compelled to respond.”
“What we worry about is the reputation of the .is domain,” Jensen said. “Of course ISNIC does not want to have the reputation that we’re a safe haven for criminals. That’s something we’re constantly looking into.”
For now ISNIC has asked the registrant Andrew Anglin “to correct his registration, by providing proof of his identity in the form of legal documents. He has one week to do this, otherwise the domain will be closed.”
“He has to provide ISNIC with legal documents of his being,” Jensen says. “This is something all registries can do, but it has nothing to do with the content. It only has to do with the registration itself. If [Anglin] doesn’t reveal himself and prove his being, we will close his access to the domain. After two weeks, the domain itself will be moved from the DNS that is hosting it now onto the ISNIC’s parking site. It will be unable to connect to any DNS server whatsoever, and it will automatically expire. We wouldn’t be taking the domain from him; we would just not enable him to renew it.”
The Daily Stormer has been booted by a few ccTLDs and registrars following the horrendous events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and an article was published on the site attacking Heather Heyer, the anti-racism activist that was killed Saturday while demonstrating against the “alt-right” white nationalist movement.
The alt-right white nationalist group was first booted by registrars GoDaddy and then Google who deleted their .com domain names. They then briefly tried a .ru (Russia) and then .at (Austria) domains, both of which were quickly deleted. According to a BBC report, they were also booted from Albania’s ccTLD, .al and set up on the “dark web”.
“Iceland has some of the world’s most stringent free speech protection and privacy laws, a point stressed by one of the latest stories on The Daily Stormer site,” the BBC reported.
Currently the site is being hosted in Wyoming, USA, by a company called BitMitigate, through the ISP FranTech Solutions according to Grapevine, not as previously reported in Iceland.
The alt-right neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer, has finally found a home, for the time being at least. The website has reappeared with a .is domain name, Iceland’s ccTLD. The Daily Stormer has been booted by quite a few domain name companies, from registries to registrars and even Cloudflare.
The site most recently had registered a .at (Austria) domain name but was quickly booted following protests from Austrian politicians just over a week ago.
The problems for The Daily Stormer started following the horrendous events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and an article was published attacking Heather Heyer, the anti-racism activist that was killed Saturday while demonstrating against the “alt-right” white nationalist movement.
The alt-right white nationalist group was first booted by registrars GoDaddy and then Google who deleted their .com domain names. They then briefly tried a .ru domain, which was also quickly deleted. According to a BBC report, they were also booted from Albania’s ccTLD, .al and setting up on the “dark web”.
“Iceland has some of the world's most stringent free speech protection and privacy laws, a point stressed by one of the latest stories on The Daily Stormer site,” the BBC reported.
“As a furore over paedophile's links to Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson has led to the collapse of Iceland's ruling coalition, The Daily Stormer went on to say that they believe this political instability will enable them to keep the domain active for the foreseeable future.
“Icelandic company OrangeWebsite, which describes itself as a ‘freedom of speech web hosting provider’, is listed as a host of the new site according to registry directory site Whois.com. When contacted by BBC Trending, however, the company said it was simply a proxy and was not directly hosting the site.”
[news release] ISNIC has made an important change in the .is domain registry system. The domain’s registrant (owner/holder) now has direct control of the domain registration, the same control as the administartive contact has. The registrants can now log in and manage their domains directly if they so wish (and if they have confirmed their registration in the same way as the other contacts have).
The processes of deleting and transfering a domain has also been changed. From now on, not only does the administrative contact have to confirm the action, but the registrant as well, as long as the registrant has a valid email registered. If not, only the administrative contact has to confirm the request as before. ISNIC belives these changes will further enhance the registration security of .is domains.
This ISNIC news release was sourced from:
www.isnic.is/en/news/view?id=399
The total number of .eu registrations grew by 4.7 percent in the third quarter of 2014 compared with the same quarter last year, according to the progress report released last week by the .eu registry EURid.
The increase for the quarter was 50,132 domain names under management, a net increase of 1.3 percent to 3.88 million. This made .eu the eleventh largest TLD in the world. The largest was .com with 114.576 million registrations followed by .tk (Tokelau) with 26.785m, .de (Germany â 15.794m), .net (15.083m), .cn (China – 1â.907m), .uk (United Kingdom) â 10.514), .org (10.399), .info (5.591m), .nl (Netherlands – 5.506m), .ru (Russian Federation â 4.895m) while .br (Brazil â 3.493m) followed.
âAs the new gTLDs continue jostle for position in the changing TLD landscape, our healthy growth rate has further underlined that .eu has a firm foothold in the domain name market,â commented EURid General Manager Marc Van Wesemael.
Indeed, .eu registrations increased in 24 of the 28 EU member states. Malta, Greece and Luxembourg each saw growth of more than 5 percent.
The countries in the top ten list account for 87.6 percent of all .eu registrations. German residents have by far the most .eu domain name registrations, followed by residents of the Netherlands and France.
Residents in the European Economic Area (EEA) countries of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway became eligible to register .eu domain names on 8 January 2014. At the end of the third quarter registrants in Norway had registered 5,685 names, in Iceland 177 and Liechtenstein 78.
The survey also found the Netherlands has the highest density of domains registered of any European country, with 328.2 .nl domains registered per 1,000 people. Denmark was next with 226.2 .dk domains per 1,000 people followed by Germany with 196.1, the United Kingdom with 164.5, Iceland with 154.4 .is domains per 1,000 and Luxembourg with 154.0 .lu domains per 1,000.
The countries with the highest densities of .eu domains were Malta with 35.7 per thousand followed by the Netherlands with 30.2 and Luxembourg with 28.7.
The third quarter also saw EURid launch its new registration system. EURid implemented the new system to increase performance and to better meet RFC standards and so provide an improved service to the .eu registrar community and consequently to .eu domain name holders.
The full report is available for download at link.eurid.eu/reports.
The .is (Iceland) registry ISNIC has suspended a domain name due to being linked with the terrorist organisation Islamic State.The khilafah.is domain was suspended yesterday as it was used “for the website of a known terrorist organisation. The majority of ISNIC’s board made the decision … on the grounds of Article 9 of ISNIC’s Rules on Domain Registration, which states: ‘The registrant is responsible for ensuring that the use of the domain is within the limits of Icelandic law as current at any time.'”Never before, the registry notes, has ISNIC suspended a domain on grounds of a website’s content.ISNIC head Jens Petur Jensen told Iceland’s media that this was the first time they had suspended a domain because of its content.”We have no experience with this… we have always pointed out that it’s none of our business. That the Islamic State had their domain under ‘.is’ was something we feared because of the abbreviation,” Jensen said.According to New Zealand’s Stuff website “documentation for the web listing shows it was registered to Suite 4551, 17B Farnham St, Parnell, Auckland. Its owner is described as Azym Abdullah.””On the New Zealand Companies Office listings, the suite is the registered office for at least 63 companies, including a number that have been struck off.”Under New Zealand’s company system, registration can be done online with virtual offices providing a legal entity for mail drops.”It is not the first time New Zealand virtual offices and shell companies have been caught up in international security.”