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ICANN has laid off 33 people, about 7% of its 485 staff, and has raised the specter of increased domain name prices, as it struggles to balance its budget. The job losses are effective today and come “across all functional areas and regions”, acting CEO Sally Costerton wrote. The Org said this...

Unstoppable Domains has revealed the next partner with which it intends to apply to ICANN for a new gTLD two years from now. It’s linked up with Secret Network Foundation to apply for .secret and in the meantime to flog .secret names that only work on its Polygon blockchain naming system. Secret...

All URLs using new gTLD domains are now being automatically linkified by WhatsApp, according to the registry manager who’s been pushing for greater support from the major social networks. Rami Schwartz of Latin American Telecom, the .tube registry, says that WhatsApp on Android devices is now...

Is ICANN stifling competition and pricing out the Global South by setting its new gTLD evaluation fees too high? A great many community volunteers seem to think so, judging by recent conversations. The Org last week revealed that it plans to charge registry service providers that want to...

ICANN’s Address Supporting Organization has elected Alan Barrett to fill one of its two seats on the ICANN board of directors for the second time. Barrett, an ISP pioneer from South Africa, was first elected in 2021 and will re-take his seat at ICANN’s AGM this November, assuming the Empowered...

DotMusic has pushed it general availability launch date out by more than three months, as it tries to recruit anchor tenants from the music industry. The registry says GA is now planned for October 8, versus a previous date of June 25. The gTLD is currently in its “community organization phase”...

Already-expensive ccTLD .tm is set to see its prices rocket by hundreds of dollars next week, with an annual registration set to cost $1,000 or more. .TM Domain Registry says a one-year registration or renewal will cost registrars $400, which can be reduced as far as $200 if they register more...

Orange Domains has announced the launch schedule for .locker, a real gTLD that nevertheless has support for the Bitcoin protocol built in. Sunrise is set to kick off next month, running from June 19 to August 20, shortly followed by a “Pioneer Program” in which the registry will seek out anchor...

Chinese registrar Alibaba is no longer at risk of losing one of its ICANN accreditations, according to a notice on the Org’s web site. Alibaba.com Singapore E-Commerce, one of Alibaba’s four registrars, failed to respond to abuse reports and missed ICANN payments, according to its March breach...

Unstoppable Domains has announced plans to apply for the first gTLD devoted to a metaverse. The company has partnered with Metropolis, a “a 360° curated universe that blends commerce, gaming, and experiences that span both digital & physical worlds” to launch .metropolis names on Unstoppable’s...

A controversial proposed amendment to ICANN’s bylaws is set to be killed off after the community flexed its muscles over the board of directors. The amendment, which sought to give ICANN a switch to turn off its accountability mechanisms under certain circumstances, is now likely to be replaced...

Users of ICANN’s new Whois data request service appear to be overwhelmingly apathetic about it, if the results of the first quarterly user survey are to be believed. ICANN sent surveys to 861 users of the Registration Data Request Service and 29 of the registrars that support it. Only 17...

ICANN is to bring in new rules for Whois privacy and proxy services, the best part of a decade after they were first proposed to massive controversy. It’s looking for volunteers to work with Org staff on implementing policy recommendations that in 2015 led to tens of thousands of people...

The GNSO Council has started discussing bringing in the lawyers over ICANN’s recent handling of issues related to its $200+ million auction fund and Grant Program. The Council today raised the possibility of deploying the never-before-used Community Independent Review Process, which would...

ICANN is spending millions of dollars more than expected in its current financial year, which it blames mainly on inflation pushing up the price of flights and hotels. The latest quarterly financial report, for the nine months to March 31, shows ICANN operations spent $112 million in the...

There’s been a shocking increase in the time it takes to get a Whois record disclosed under ICANN’s Registration Data Request Service, according to the latest monthly data. It took on average 14.09 days to have a request for private Whois data approved using RDRS in April, more than double the...

Key ICANN community groups have refused to come down on one side or the other in the debate about proposed content policing powers, leaving the question up in the air as ICANN considers a major bylaws amendment. As I reported last month, ICANN is thinking about changing its governing bylaws to...

The DNS Abuse Institute is rebranding around its flagship product in order to make its name shorter and less confusing, according to the organization. It’s now called the NetBeacon Institute, after a free security service it launched two years ago, and its products are also being renamed...

The number of gTLD registry back-end providers could more than double during the next new gTLD application round, ICANN’s board of directors has been told. There are currently about 40 registry services providers serving the gTLD industry, but ICANN is preparing for this to leap to as many as...

It may not help you win a gTLD, but a new method for screwing over your enemies in ICANN’s new gTLD program has emerged. As I reported earlier today, it seems quite likely that ICANN is going to add a new step in the new gTLD evaluation process for the next round — testing each applied-for...