News
CZ.NIC's Turris project awarded for protecting privacy
The Iuridicum Remedium non-governmental organisation, which has handed out Big Brother awards since 2005, announced the winners for 2013 on Thursday, 16 January at Bio Oko. The CZ.NIC’s Turris project took home the award in the Privacy Protection category. The purpose of this activity is to help users protect home networks by means of a special router. The Privacy Protection award is the only category in the Big Brother competition that has a positive meaning.
The jury’s justification for the Big Brother award stated that:
The Turris project prepared and implemented by the CZ.NIC Association does something for which a negative Big Brother award is usually handed out: by means of a household router, it monitors traffic between the public Internet and the specific private network and sends the acquired information to a central location. This project received a positive Big Brother award due to its objective and the manner in which it is achieved.
The aim of the Turris project is not to snoop or monitor activity. Its goal is to protect a specific private network – typically a home network of Internet users – against a wide variety of cybernetic threats and attacks that emerge in the Internet environment and become more dangerous literally hour by hour. For this reason the Turris project needs to monitor in real time which attacks the protected network is regularly exposed to.
The Big Brother competition warns of companies and projects that improperly infringe upon personal privacy, primarily in the area of information technology. Past winners of the Privacy Protection award include journalist and university instructor Jiří Peterka, the European Digital Rights organisation and the PGP encoding program.
Warning over misleading .uk registration offers
Nominet is warning registrars and registrants to be vigilant regarding misleading offers to secure the .uk version of their existing .co.uk domain name.
Such offers are inaccurate and unnecessary. Existing registrants don't need to take any immediate action regarding reservation of an equivalent .uk domain name or to pay any up front reservation fees to secure .uk domain names.
Holders of third-level .uk domains that are eligible for the free reservation period don’t need to pre-register the .uk equivalent. The shorter address will be automatically reserved for them for five years. Our marketing and customer outreach will continue to make it clear that registrants should not feel obliged to make a snap decision.
Registrars should be aware that this type of misleading pre-registration activity is prohibited and we will always take steps to prevent it.
We always advise registrants to be wary of unsolicited calls, text messages or emails regarding their domain name or web presence and contact their registrar to check if any action needs to be taken.
Registrants should also check the small print carefully to fully understand what is and is not included in the details of any promotion or offer before completing a transaction.
.eu dispute resolution fees further discounted in 2014
Article Source: EURid (Source)
The fee for a basic .eu Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) procedure will be cut by a further 50%, according to the .eu registry EURid and the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC), the institution appointed to rule on Alternative Dispute Resolution proceedings for the .eu top-level domain.
The announcement heralds the third year in a row that the cost of .eu ADR proceedings has been reduced.
“The continued reduction of ADR fees will further help rights holders to overcome the financial barrier that prevented them from claiming their rights through .eu ADR proceedings,” commented Czech Arbitration Court Board Member, Petr Hostaš.
EURid’s General Manager Marc Van Wesemael added, “At EURid, we want anyone with a legitimate prior rights claim to be able to challenge a .eu registration. Making the .eu ADR process more affordable, and therefore accessible, is one way of doing this.”
Why ADR
People can challenge a .eu registration if they believe they have a prior right to the domain name and the current holder has registered the name for speculative or abusive purposes. EURid offers the fast and convenient .eu ADR procedure through the independent CAC specifically for this purpose. No travel is required as all cases are conducted online and by email, and in 24 official EU languages. Cases take an average of four months to resolve.
EURid appointed the CAC in 2005 as its ADR provider. In order to make .eu ADR decisions, the CAC selects one or more panellists from its list of 112 accredited international experts.
In numbers
Since the ADR procedure first became available in 2006, 686 cases have been filed – of which 51 in 2013. The ADR panel accepted 35 complaints last year, 10 are still pending. More information about the terms and conditions of the new .eu ADR price structure is available at eu.adr.eu.
Warning over misleading .uk registration offers
Nominet is warning registrars and registrants to be vigilant regarding misleading offers to secure the .uk version of their existing .co.uk domain name.
Such offers are inaccurate and unnecessary. Existing registrants don't need to take any immediate action regarding reservation of an equivalent .uk domain name or to pay any up front reservation fees to secure .uk domain names.
Holders of third-level .uk domains that are eligible for the free reservation period don’t need to pre-register the .uk equivalent. The shorter address will be automatically reserved for them for five years. Our marketing and customer outreach will continue to make it clear that registrants should not feel obliged to make a snap decision.
Registrars should be aware that this type of misleading pre-registration activity is prohibited and we will always take steps to prevent it.
We always advise registrants to be wary of unsolicited calls, text messages or emails regarding their domain name or web presence and contact their registrar to check if any action needs to be taken.
Registrants should also check the small print carefully to fully understand what is and is not included in the details of any promotion or offer before completing a transaction.
.be enables registrants to request list of similar domains
From 22 January DNS Belgium
enables a .be registrant to request a list of domain names that have
similarities with their domain name. They can also view the details of the
registrant of this domain names.
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Nominet defends claim by Cartier International AG
The claim centres around 12 websites which contain content Cartier believes infringe their intellectual property (IP) rights. If successful, the injunction would have the effect of forcing domain registries such as Nominet to automatically suspend web addresses based on a private company’s belief that the associated websites infringe its IP.
Nominet considers that the Cartier legal action is not only superfluous and mis-directed, but would also set a damaging precedent.
Go to Full ArticleSwedes and the Internet 2013 available in English
.SE’s report ”Swedes and the Internet 2013″ is Sweden’s most important study on individuals’ internet use and has been published since 2000. For the first time we have also released the report as a web version. You can find it here.
European ccTLD - January 2014
CENTR has published its latest ccTLD newsletter for January 2014 with articles and stats;
- Article: "Governing the Net - What happened in 2013 and what’s coming up in 2014"
- A look back at what CENTR did in 2013
- QnA with Albert Chang (CIRA)
- Domain Name Statistics
- Coming up at CENTR
- Members 185
The Internet Governance landscape
CENTR has published a paper on the topic of Internet Governance. The paper provides an analytical and historical account of the Internet Governance landscape including many of the contributing elements to the global dialogue, such as;
- WCIT
- WSIS+10
- IGF
- Montevideo statement
- Istar
- Panel on the Future of Global Internet Cooperation
- And others
The paper also includes a large flowchart of internet governance processes.
The paper can be found at http://centr.org/CENTR-Paper-IG_landscape_this_year_and_next
.ir (Iran) tops CENTR member Highest Growth for 2013
According to the CENTR stat database, the ccTLD .ir (Iran) has experienced the highest growth among CENTR full members for 2013. The ccTLD saw a high growth of over 47% over the 12 month period. Other high growth members for the period include .pt - Portugal (16.4%), .ru Russia (15.5%) and .is Iceland (12.9%).
For more domain name statistics, see the DomainWire Stat Reports