News

The latest issue of Focus.it (December 2013), the newsletter of the .it Registry, was entirely dedicated to the Internet Festival 2013. Famous figures from Italy and abroad presented facts and different perspectives, including some completely new ideas. The list of those involved is vast: from Bruce Sterling to Derrick De Kerkhove, from the Minister of Education, Universities and Research Maria Grazia Carrozza to Domenico Laforenza, the Director of Iit-Cnr. Topics covered range from safety and big data to traditional publishing, from classical and on-line media to Olivetti’s uniquely Italian approach to innovation, from gender-based violence and women’s retaliation via the Web, to parents and children in the Facebook era.
Go to the newsletter

CENTR has published its latest ccTLD newsletter for December 2013 with articles and stats;

• "The IANA Elephant in the Room"
• Network and Information Security
• Survey Highlights: Registry Lock
• QnA with Don Hollander (APTLD)
• Domain Name Statistics
• Members 185

Residents, companies and organisations based in the European Economic Area (EEA) countries of Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway will also be eligible to register domain names under the .eu top-level domain from 8 January 2014.

This decision by the European Commission follows up on the provision contained in the original .eu regulation (EC 733/2002), which foresaw the extension of .eu to the European Economic Area.

CENTR has published a comprehensive report from the recent 48th ICANN Meeting held in Buenos Aires.  The report covers the ccNSO, the GNSO and GAC sessions as well as detailing special sessoins relating to Internet Governance which was a common theme to the conference.  
Click below to go to the report
 

Nominet announced updates on a range of new initiatives and projects designed to help the company evolve the .uk namespace and improve standards in the face of a rapidly changing internet landscape, as first outlined in June 2013. These are:

1. - The introduction of second level domain names in the .uk namespace – for the first time, shorter, simpler ‘example.uk’ domain names will be available alongside ‘example.co.uk’, ‘example.org.uk’ and so on.
2. - The development of initiatives that will enhance the security of the UK namespace, and contribute to the security of the web as a whole.
3. - A revised draft of the Registrar Agreement, which rewards those meeting highest standards of service, is now published and open for comment.
4. - A proposed Data Quality policy – the company’s first – has been published and is open for comment.

CENTR has published its opinion on the Draft Directive concerning measures to ensure a high common level of network and information security across the Union (NIS Directive): http://www.centr.org/CENTR_opinion_on_EU_NIS_directive

The opinion welcomes the focus of the draft Directive on enabling a culture of security and trust but expresses concern that the text moves away from enabling the development of a security framework, in favour of a prescriptive, regulatory environment.

The CENTR Board commented on the EC Consultation on Internet Governance .

The comment endorses ‘cooperation and partnership among all stakeholders’ as a key principle of Internet governance, reiterates the deep involvement of the European ccTLD registries as a stakeholder on the national and international level and emphasizes the necessity of paying attention to the needs of the local Internet community.

You can find the Board comment at http://centr.org/CENTR-Comment-EC_consultation .

The regular pre-report to the upcoming ICANN meeting in Buenos Aires is available covering what to expect at the the ccNSO, GNSO and GAC sessions. 
Click to go to the report
 

To improve the protection of the French Internet against attacks on its DNS infrastructure, Afnic calls for an acceleration in the deployment of DNSSEC

The strategic plan is based on several action levers, the initial initiatives being as follows:

• A Practical Guide to DNSSEC deployment: this implementation and deployment manual provides practical guidance for DNS hosts to configure DNSSEC on their infrastructure;

• Special DNSSEC training, in partnership with HSC for those involved in DNS hosting in France; 

•  A financial incentive scheme. Until 31 December 2013, Afnic is offering its accredited registrars a 10% discount on the price of creation and keep options for DNSSEC signed domain names under the .fr TLD.