1) Uneducated and Illiterate, the Internet's Next Big User Group:
Video above published Aug 8, 2017, by WSJ.com: In India and elsewhere in the world, inexpensive smartphones and data plans are bringing a large, new group of users online: the uneducated and illiterate, who are adapting apps to fit their own needs and skills. Oh, BTW, good luck on trying to sell any domain names to these users.
2) Names, Domains & Trademarks
[Editor's note: there really wasn't a need for more than two dozen new gTLDs, but that didn't stop inept ICANN nor its dysfunctional GNSO from expanding the global DNS root from just 22 gTLDs and less than 300 ccTLDs, to now over 1200 new gTLDs, an unmitigated ICANN-made disaster (see above and quotes of the week below). A better solution would have been to terminate and dissolve ICANN in 2012 or thereafter, after splitting off the IANA department, n/k/a PTI, to be run jointly by the Internet Society, Root Server Operators, and Registry Operators, and convert all (then 22) gTLDs to ccTLDs (all TLDs, both unrestricted such as .COM and .CO, and restricted such as .EDU and .EU, except .INT could be run by ITU as proposed in 2003 (pdf).) That is essentially how the internet was organized until 2000 (pdf), with .COM, .NET, and .ORG, run as open TLDs under U.S. government supervision. ICANN has proven to be unfit for the purpose for which it was intended. The "ICANN community" (particularly its policy-making GNSO) is neither representative of, nor accountable to, the global internet community, and ICANN policy-making and implementation are governed by greed, conflicts of interest, cronyism, and incompetence.]
One commenter: "... Good that someone can talk honestly about what many refer to as the ”ICANN Travelling Circus”, and it’s total overproduction of new gTLDs, which will not only produce more and more chaos for all internet users, but harm a lot of innocent people and companies too ..."• Quotes of the Week:
"ICANN's history is riddled with examples of bad policy suggestions that had theoretical benefits, and whose introduction was based on speculative demand that never was realized. It's time to assess those policies properly and honestly, and admit that they were failures .... While the new gTLD program has been a disaster, it hasn't been an underperformance of 99%+ of expectations (perhaps more like 80% to 90% underperformance). Thus, while it's obvious that both [new gTLDs and sunrise period] have been failures, sunrise usage is an even greater failure ..." --both quotes by George Kirikos on the gnso-rpm-wg public mail list (emphasis added).• Canonical Domain: WWW vs Non-WWW: Google Says It Doesn't Matter | seroundtable.com
• The China Domain Name Scam Redux | ChinaLawBlog.com
• Millions of Australian domain name owners 'ripped off' | smh.com.au: "[auDA]'s been stacked at the board level by people with conflicts of interest who have made hundreds of millions of dollars out of this."--Sean Fogarty, auDA member
• The ACCC Is About To Slap A Dodgy Aussie Domain Name Company | Gizmodo Australia | gizmodo.com.au: another false billing scam.
3) ICANN news
b. Letter from ICANN (Theresa Swinehart) to GAC (Thomas Schneider) re: European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance Task Force:
"... It is our [ICANN] intention, through the work of reaching out as broadly as possible, to capture the respective user stories to help inform whether, and if so, to what extent, this impacts the current global policy as it relates to WHOIS. We fully agree it is essential to consult and proactively seek the input beyond the range of routine ICANN participants ..." (emphasis added)c. Brazil Reiterates Opposition to new gTLD .AMAZON: Letter from Hartmut Glaser to Steve Crocker [Published 11 August 2017] The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) re: Final Declaration of .AMAZON Independent Review Panel (highlighting added):
4) ICYMI Internet Domain News
Video above published Aug 4, 2017: Michael Beckerman, The Internet Association's (domain: InternetAssociation.org) chief executive officer, discusses the new legislation targeting website liability for sex trafficking ads. He spoke with Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde on "Bloomberg Technology."
- Russia: New Legislation Attacks Internet Anonymity | Human Rights Watch | hrw.org: "Two new laws in Russia jeopardize the privacy and security of internet users and aim to further control Russians’ freedom of expression."
5) Investing
• Q2 2017 results this past week:
• R.I.P. $NSR:
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| NYSE: NSR No Longer Trading |
6) Most read posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com:
1. News Review: HTC Terminates New gTLD .HTC, ICANN .BRAND Scam
2. Tech Review: Amazon Plans to Disrupt Payments Industry (video)
3. Snap $SNAP Q2 2017 Earnings LIVE Webcast, August 10, 5pm EDT
-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo