DomainIncite

Domains belonging to hospitals, power grids, public transit services, banks, and other critical services have gone offline due to the collapse of a major local registrar whose troubles ICANN has been aware of for years. Net 4 India, which has been slowly imploding over the last year, saw a number …

Everything.sucks, which is quickly emerging as one of the world’s most prominent organized cybersquatting projects, has a novel new way to sell .sucks domains without, technically, selling them. The company, which casts itself as a “non-profit organization and communications forum for social activism” has published the transfer authorization codes for …

InternetNZ has picked the winner in its registry replacement project RFP, which will see it switch the entire .nz back-end to the industry standard EPP protocol by the end of the year. It’s selected the CIRA Registry Platform from Canadian .ca registry CIRA, but will continue to run its own …

Web site tools maker and registrar Squarespace has filed its papers for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is focused on serving small businesses by simplifying the process of building web sites. It sells domains as a value-added service, but it’s not its core …

Facebook has sued what it believes is a Web.com subsidiary, claiming the company has been engaged in wholesale cybersquatting for well over a decade. The complaint, filed in a Pennsylvania District Court, alleges that New Venture Services Corp current owns 74 domains, and has previously owned 204 more, that infringe …

Verisign’s affinity for cognitive dissonance has emerged yet again — it’s now claiming that it needs to be awarded the .web gTLD because it’s running out of .com domains to sell. In legal documents released by ICANN yesterday, Verisign’s lawyers say: “The undisputed evidence is that Verisign needs a TLD …

.uk registry Nominet has rejected its members’ favorite for chair of the board, causing no small amount of irritation among those who backed last month’s boardroom coup. Company acting chair Rob Binns yesterday told members that Sir Michael Lyons, who headed a review of Nominet a few years ago, will …

MMX plans to remove hundreds of thousands of domains from its premium list later this month, and reduce prices on a hundred thousand more. Dubbed The Great Release, the April 23 adjustment will see 725,400 names currently reserved at premium prices released to the available pool at the usual wholesale …

Are we about to see our next gTLD registry implosion? ICANN has whacked the company behind .gdn with a breach notice and a threat that it may seize the TLD, after its Whois systems allegedly suffered days of downtime. According to ICANN, .gdn exceeded its weekly and monthly downtime limits …

GoDaddy’s proposed $120 million acquisition of essentially all the meaningful assets of portfolio gTLD player MMX will be subject to Chinese government approval, it emerged this morning. Following GoDaddy’s bare-bones press release announcing the deal last night, this morning MMX added a whole bunch of flesh, including a list of …

.CLUB Domains CEO Colin Campbell says he’s planning to continue to promote the .club gTLD long after its acquisition by GoDaddy Registry, announced earlier today, closes. The deal was one of several announced last night by GoDaddy, the highlight being the $120 million purchase of MMX’s portfolio of 28 gTLD …

GoDaddy Registry has just announced it is acquiring 28 new gTLDs from rival MMX, along with the TLDs .club and .design. The MMX deal is worth at least $120 million; the value of the other two deals was not disclosed. It’s one of the most significant pieces of registry consolidation …

Nominet has been accused of being “tone deaf” to its members’ criticisms after it appointed two staffers to its board of directors and named a recently ousted director as interim CEO. The .uk registry told members last week that Eleanor Bradley will occupy the corner office “for approximately 6 months” …

XYZ.com has taken over the ICANN registry agreement for the gTLD .tickets, according to records. It looks to be the registry’s 23rd TLD, the latest of XYZ’s acquisitions of unused or floundering new gTLDs. In the case of .tickets, it’s picking up a low-volume, high-price TLD with some rather onerous …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation thinks the acquisition of Donuts by “secretive” private equity group Ethos Capital represents a risk to free speech. The deal, which sees Ethos buy a controlling stake from fellow PE firm Abry Partners, closed earlier this week, having apparently received no official objection from ICANN. But …

ICANN has been slammed by community members after announcing a return to in-person public meetings this year, but only to attendees wearing clown shoes. The Org said the new rule, which will come into force at ICANN 71 in The Hague this June, was “a bold but necessary measure to …