France, Italy and Spain are stepping up pressure on the European Commission to come up with legislation that ensures Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure in the bloc, a document showed on Monday.
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!
The registry fee for .it domain names is dropping by a quarter, from €4 to €3, for 6 months Registro.it announced in late December.
Brazilâs ccTLD manager, NIC.br, announced [Portuguese only] Monday theyâve reached the 4 million registrations mark after âmore than 25 years of flawless operationâ.
There are over 120 second level domains under which .br domain names can be registered from blog.br and wiki.br for individuals to eng.br and adv.br for liberal professionals, tv.br and tur.br for legal persons, rio.br, sampa.br and curitiba.br for cities those reserved for specific purposes such as gov.br, jus.br, b.br and org.br among others. Some of these have as few as 10 registrations, while the largest, com.br has 3,645,125 accounting for 91.2% of all registrations.
According to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, .br is the seventh largest country code top level domain (ccTLD). Verisign already had .br at 4 million domain name registrations at the end of 30 June, probably through rounding, up in this case, to the nearest hundred thousand. Chinaâs ccTLD was the largest with 22.7 million followed by Tokelauâs free .tk (21.5m), Germanyâs .de (16.3m), the United Kingdomâs .uk (12.0m), Russiaâs .ru (5.9m), the Netherlandsâ .nl (5.8m). Following .br is the European Unionâs .eu (3.8m), Franceâs .fr (3.2m) and rounding out the top 10 is Italyâs .it (3.1m).
Revenues from .br registrations allow NIC.br to, in addition to providing and maintaining the infrastructure behind .br, invest in a series of actions and projects that generate benefits and improvements to the internet infrastructure in Brazil. These include the operation of internet traffic exchange points, which promote the interconnection of networks that form the Internet in Brazil, reducing distances and costs; the handling security incidents and tracking internet statistics.
Nic.br notes that other advantages of registering .br domain names include additional security features, such as token and encryption, that strengthen both the accounts of Registro.br users, and their respective domains. There is another recent feature: a redirection feature that lets you point a .br domain to any URL, whether it’s on a website or the preferred channel on social networks, keeping identities and active tags on the Internet permanently. Servers distributed by Brazil and other regions of the world guarantee speed and reliability in the resolution of .br and a team exclusively dedicated to meet and assist users in their doubts complete the description.
2016 closed with global domain name registrations reaching 329.3 million according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, growing by approximately 2.3 million registrations, or 0.7% over the third quarter of 2016. Registrations grew by 21.0 million, or 6.8%, year over year. The most notable changes over the last 12 months were China’s ccTLD adding over 4 million registrations to become the largest ccTLD again, while .tk and .net shed over 7 million and 500,000 registrations respectively.
Total country code top level domain (ccTLD) domain name registrations were approximately 142.7 million, a 1.8% increase over the third quarter of 2016, and a 3.1% (4.3 million) increase year over year.
Without including .tk which has dropped from 26 million to 18.7 million in the 12 months to the end of 2016, ccTLD domain name registrations increased approximately 2.1 million in the quarter, a 1.7% increase compared to the third quarter of 2016 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 8.0 million domain name registrations, or 6.9%, year over year.
It means China’s ccTLD has now overtaken the free registration model of .tk to become the largest ccTLD and second largest TLD overall, again, positions it last held back in 2009 when it had over 14 million registrations. In the last 12 months .cn has grown by 4.24 million registrations.
At the end of 2016, .com was the largest TLD with 126.9 million registrations, followed by .cn with 21.1 million, .tk (18.7 million), .de (16.1m) and .net (15.3m). The largest of the new gTLDs remains .xyz which had 6.0 million registrations.
The top 10 ccTLDs, as of 31 December were .cn (China), .tk (Tokelau), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .ru (Russian Federation), .nl (Netherlands), .br (Brazil), .eu (European Union), .au (Australia) and .it (Italy).
There were 293 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 64.7 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations.
For .com and .net, both operated by Verisign, .com grew from 124 million registrations at the end of 2015 and 115.6 at the end of 2014. However for .net it’s a different story and it has suffered since the introduction of new gTLDs. In 2016 .net bled half million registrations from the 15.8 million one year ago but is still above the 15 million at the end of 2014.
New .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 8.8 million during the fourth quarter of 2016. In the fourth quarter of 2015, new .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 12.2 million.
New generic Top Level Domains (new gTLDs) totalled 25.6 million domain name registrations, which represents 7.8% of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented 63.% of all new gTLD registrations.
Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the fourth quarter of 2016 was 143 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 398 billion. Quarter over quarter, the daily average increased 11.4 percent and the peak increased by 122.5 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased by 16.0 percent and the peak increased 105.1 percent.
A week or so after the Italian ccTLD .it reached three million registrations, the French ccTLD reached the same milestone.
It means the French country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), today with 3,005,270 registrations, is probably the tenth largest ccTLD behind .it given the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief for the end of June, discounting .tk (Tokelau) due to it giving away its domain names and the large amount of phishing spam and scams using the ccTLDâs domains.
The .fr grew by 2.1% in 2016 and the registry says simplicity, attractiveness and trust are the main reasons for its success.
“Registering a .fr domain name is one of the keys to a successful online presence for companies and individuals alike,â said Mathieu Weill, Afnic CEO. âTo support the development of their business on the Internet, Afnic has set up the Réussir-en.fr program (réussir-en.fr), and intends to continue its efforts to make France a European leader in online presence.”
.fr domain names are available for registration to any person or business with a mailing address in the European Union.
Afnic donates 90% of the profits generated by .fr to its Foundation for Digital Inclusion(fondation-afnic.fr) which funds field projects to make the Internet accessible to the greatest number of people and to reduce digital exclusion throughout France.
The future of hundreds of thousands of domain names are in doubt following the UK’s “Brexit” referendum where Britons decided to leave the European Union. The TLD to be most impacted is .eu which has 294,000 registrations to individuals and companies in the UK out of a total of 3.82 million registrations, according to the latest EURid quarterly report. Along with .eu, .it and .fr among others require registrants to be based in the European Union or from the European Economic Area.The future of these domain names has been addressed in a discussion paper published by the German internet association, eco, called “Brexit – Challenges for the Domain Industry?“.So assuming the Brexit happens in a few years, what happens to the affected domain names? And also to the registrars in other European countries who have customers based in the UK?The eco discussion paper notes there has already been a change in behaviour with registrars observing a drop-off in registration numbers.”With our paper and the opening of a discussion forum, we would like to contribute to making the impact of Brexit clear and understandable for companies and customers, as well as – on the basis of expert knowledge – contributing towards the rapid creation of legal certainty for all those involved,” said lawyer Thomas Rickert, Leader of the eco Names & Numbers Forum.Looking to the future the paper presents five options for how the problem is likely to be addressed. They also take into consideration that a bilateral agreement between the EU and the UK could potentially be made that includes domain registrations and prevents an interim depletion in registrations. The options are a suspension of registrations ordered by the European Commission, a grandfathering for existing registrations, all registrations could be revoked, the use of proxy registration services and finally, that the UK stays in the European Economic Area. Stay tuned!To download the eco paper, Brexit – Challenges for the Domain Industry?, in full, go to:
https://numbers.eco.de/wp-content/blogs.dir/21/files/20160729_brexit_challenges_for_the_domain_industry.pdf
DENIC is warning .de domain registrants of German-language emails coming from the forged email address of info@denic.de. The emails claim to acknowledging a domain transfer and have the subject “DENIC eG â Domain-Transfer Bestätigung”. DENIC is advising the emails have nothing to do with them and contain a ZIP file that contains malware.
EURid currently has open the .eu Web Awards. The awards are an online competition where .eu and .eÑ websites can be nominated for a chance to win a prestigious award to be presented at a stunning ceremony in Brussels.
There are numerous categories including âThe Better Worldâ, for ecologically minded websites, and âThe Laurelsâ, for websites that promote ongoing education/Pan-European projects. For more information see webawards.eurid.eu.
The IE Domain Registry has published their annual report for 2015. The report includes a large amount of information for those interested in .ie stats, such as there were 35,225 new .ie registrations in 2015, an increase of 13.4 percent when compared to 2014 (31,072). Accounting for .ie non-renewals or deletions, there was a net increase in registrations of 12,929, an increase of 48 percent on 2014 net registrations.
Turnover increased five percent to â¬2.86 million. The company registered an operating loss of â¬517,082 in 2015. The loss is principally accounted for as a result of expenditure of â¬508,000 on activities under the companyâs Strategic Development Fund.
Commencing on 6 July, .ro domain registrants have the option of signing their domain names with DNSSEC the Romanian registry RO TLD has announced.
And get ready for the three millionth .it domain name under management. During May and June there were around 20,000 new .it domain names added to the base meaning they are 40,000 registrations short of the three million milestone. The .it is the ninth largest ccTLD.
Have you ever wondered about what the .dk registry should do about severe violations and misuse of .dk domain names? If so, DIFO invites you to participate in the consultation that extends over the Danish summer.
On 6 June, DIFO held a successful hearing which started a debate about when a domain name can be suspended, how the registrant is validated and what personal information DIFO may pass on.
A large number of representatives from the Danish internet community, from government authorities and the Copenhagen Police to a wide range of IT suppliers participated.
Issues to be considered include should the process of suspending a domain name become faster than it is today? One proposal is to create a special suspension board with responsibility for the suspension of domain names. Can you thereby ensure efficient treatment of cases of evident crime on Danish domain names? What about the legal certainty?
DIFOâs validation of the identity of registrants behind a domain name is currently carried out by letter but perhaps the current validation model should be tightened up? A more restrictive solution with forced NemID validation for Danes and an activation code by post for foreign registrants gained great support at the oral hearing. However there were strong voices against increased control and concerns that domain registration will become too difficult for the customers.
Should DIFO disclose information about anonymous registrants to authorities and individuals quicker and easier than today? DIFO looks forward to see the right holders participate in the written hearing.
GCSEC, in cooperation with ICANN and DNS-OARC, announces the 2011 Workshop on DNS Health and Security (DNS-EASY 2011) will be held in Rome, Italy, 18-19 October 2011.
The DNS-EASY workshop will gather researchers and professionals from academia, industry and governmental agencies. Representatives from major DNS ecosystem stakeholder groups – technical development, network operators, enterprise users, and security experts â will participate as well, to discuss the health and security of the Domain Name System and how the current state of the DNS affects modern society.
The DNS EASY 2011 Workshop will convene in conjunction with the 3rd Global Annual Symposium on DNS Security, Stability and Resiliency and the first Workshop on DNS Health and Security. The timing of the workshop should permit those from the community planning to attend the ICANN meeting in Dakar, Senegal to transit through Rome prior to departing for Dakar later in the week.
Following the tradition of the 2009 and 2010 edition of the Global Annual Symposium on DNS-SSR, the workshop is organized in two parts. The first, for open attendance, showcases accepted, refereed papers and invited guest speakers. The second, the Global Annual Symposium on DNS-SSR is an invitation-only event. Invited participants from across the DNS ecosystem will discuss operational and policy open issues and challenges related to the DNS health and security. Members of the community who are interested in participating should visit the website for acceptance criteria and related invitation information.
Research topics and paper submission instructions can be found here: www.gcsec.org/workshop/dnseasy2011/call-for-paper
For more information and registration visit the workshop web site dnseasy.gcsec.org/ or contact directly: dns-easy2011@gcsec.org
Information on the two previous Global DNS SSR Symposiums held at Georgia Tech University in 2009 and Kyoto University in 2010 can be found at www.icann.org/en/topics/ssr/dns-ssr-symposium-report-1-3feb10-en.pdf [PDF, 6.08 MB] and www.gtisc.gatech.edu/pdf/DNS_SSR_Symposium_Summary_Report.pdf [PDF, 502 KB].
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-06jul11-en.htm
The Italian ccTLD, .IT, has passed the two million active registrations mark this week with there being 2,001,192 registrations as of today.The registry has announced that in the past five years, the number of .IT domains has doubled with .IT remaining the fifth largest ccTLD in Europe after .DE (Germany) who has 13,905,243 registrations, .UK (United Kingdom – 8,802,095) and .NL (The Netherlands – 4,094,078) while .EU (European Union) has 3,285,310. All registration figures are as of 22 October.Overall, .COM is the largest TLD with just over 90 million registrations, .NET with close to 13.4 million, .ORG closing in on 8.8 million and .INFO with more than 7 million registrations according to recent registration figures.The Chinese ccTLD, .CN, has declined markedly in recent months and as of 30 September had 6,047926 registrations, down from 14,082,553 at the end of February 2009. There has not been an increase in .CN registration figures since February 2009, likely to be due to a change in identity requirements at registration and increases in pricing.