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You can fault ICANN for many reasons but telling the .web and .biz squatters to take a long walk off a short pier is not one of them.

The wildcat squatters were told when they began that they would not be recognized.

The application by IOD, a current operator of .web, received an inaccurate assessment and was rejected. However, because of the dispute, ICANN also avoided giving .web to Afilias, and assigned them .info instead.

ICANN wasn't entirely dismissive of IOD, perhaps because IOD actually paid the exorbitant $50,000 fee and applied for it. IOD has also demonstrated a willingness to fight for .web in their Federal lawsuit against CORE, another .web operator, for unfair competition and trademark infringement.

Inconsistently, ICANN ignored a similar conflict with .biz, and gave it to NeuLevel, ignoring Pacific Root's operation of the legitimate .biz domain for the past six years.

I know it's not the main focus of the article, but the second page of the article mentioned that the new domains (at least .info and .coop) will be managed by new registry providers (.info: Register.com, Tucows.com, and .coop: CORE). Even thought the new domains aren't nearly as desirable as the old standbys, at least Network Solutions doesn't have a strangle-hold on the registry market anymore.

Sorry, that should have read: CORE.

If you don't pay for your domain you should lose it we can all agree. However somehow not truly connected but somewhat on the same thread is the whole PETA dispute. I love tasty animals too, especially that bit of a chicken I ate for lunch. What is to keep big corporate enterprises from not paying and then suing you when you register the domain they let lapse? Register with joker.com. Joker is a reseller for Core. The interesting thing about Core is, if you follow the link and look at the bottom of the page, that they are based in Switzerland. The Swiss seem to be less stupid about such things than these US people are. So if they try to drag you into court over it, your domain is registered internationally. Lawyers, politicians, and other such people(?) seem to be infatuated with physical jurisdiction. Let them know that they can talk to you in international court.

Joker registers through CORE (http://www.corenic.org/) - the registration is really held by them. So if Joker goes belly up, you can probably still modify things through CORE. In theory.

1. Go to http://www.corenic.org and find a registrar. I used NetWizards, http://www.netwiz.net. They've been quite good -- they even answer the phone!
2. In their words, "Name servers MUST be already registered with InterNIC or use CORE-registered domains." You can do that somewhere on the Network Solutions site. Don't even bother trying unless you meet those conditions.
3. If you have an InterNIC-registered nameserver, it then has to be registered with CoreNIC. NetSol apparently isn't sharing their databases.
4. After the CORE nameserver registration goes through, you can register your domain(s).

What do you get in return? Cheaper registration ($60/two years), real customer service, and an explicit antispam policy.

--Tom

To make this explicit for the boys in the back row firing spitwads at each other: groups with enough resources snap up their names in every major TLD "to avoid confusion." Adding more TLDs without controls over who can use them is unlikely to change this, and will probably result in little effect except that the registrar business will become a little more profitable as a larger block of names has to be purchased every time a new movie, breakfast cereal, or presidential candidate is launched.

Furthermore, so long as the Big Two browsers default to .com, that TLD will be the only noospheric real estate attractive to groups interested in reaching a general public instead of us nerds. If you need proof of this, looks at what an organization with its own TLD uses.

Yes, there is. Go here, http://www.corenic.org/, for a list of registrars.

Doug Loss

Heya, the Internet Council of Registrars can probably be of some use to you. Take a look at this page on CORE's site for a list of registrars accredited by ICANN. They're pretty scant on details (big surprise) with respect to domain transfers, so I'll give you a few tips: Joker.com has the cheapest rates of them all, followed by Firstdomain.net; both are German setups. Casdns.net charges basically the same rates as good ole NSI, but they happen to be the only registrar that actually has any information on domain name transfers. They say that you are able to transfer domain names from any other accredited registrar and pay $35 per year to maintain the existing domain(s). That information in itself is ambiguous and I'm reluctant to be the guinea pig to transfer my domain from NSI to one of these registrars. Of course I'll be transferring my domain over in a few months when I get my letter of harrassment from NSI ;). One of these days I may get around to e-mailing some of the registrars, if clear information on this topic doesn't become available soon. In the meantime I'll wait for someone with an expired domain name to step up and test their luck. Good luck (hint, hint :P)...

Heya, the Internet Council of Registrars can probably be of some use to you. Take a look at this page on CORE's site for a list of registrars accredited by ICANN. They're pretty scant on details (big surprise) with respect to domain transfers, so I'll give you a few tips: Joker.com has the cheapest rates of them all, followed by Firstdomain.net; both are German setups. Casdns.net charges basically the same rates as good ole NSI, but they happen to be the only registrar that actually has any information on domain name transfers. They say that you are able to transfer domain names from any other accredited registrar and pay $35 per year to maintain the existing domain(s). That information in itself is ambiguous and I'm reluctant to be the guinea pig to transfer my domain from NSI to one of these registrars. Of course I'll be transferring my domain over in a few months when I get my letter of harrassment from NSI ;). One of these days I may get around to e-mailing some of the registrars, if clear information on this topic doesn't become available soon. In the meantime I'll wait for someone with an expired domain name to step up and test their luck. Good luck (hint, hint :P)...

• All get registered in the NSI database
• Are actually reselling from CORENic

I don't even think you guys visited the site