Recently in Domains & Hosting Category

ICANN is currently going through a complicated process in order to introduce more domain extensions (the bit after the ".")

While the launch of new TLDs is something that a lot of people will welcome it is not without its issues.

One of the areas that has been receiving quite a bit of attention is in relation to intellectual property rights.

So what has this got to do with privacy?

In many respects very little, but unfortunately the latest document that the IP community have released does impact on privacy.

In simple terms the IP people see their rights as being more important than those of private individuals.

I've posted in more detail both here and here.

And if you have feelings about the subject I would urge you to make your feelings known to ICANN - any internet user can do so!

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• IRT Final Report Ignores End User Concerns (isquattedyour.eu)
• Registrant Privacy Should Not Be Ignored (blacknight.com)

If you don't want to read a shameless plug, then stop reading now...

Over at Blacknight we're doing a special offer on .im domain registration - simply use the coupon code "imfeelinglucky" when placing your order and you'll get 10 euro off!

Over the last few weeks we've been working on integrating with a load of different domain registries, such as .je (Jersey) and .gg (Guernsey).

Since we are now an ICANN accredited registrar  I've also been working away at our accreditations with the ICANN gTLD registries.

As we went through the accreditation process instead of buying an existing registrar we have to liase with each registry operator we intend on working with. It's an interesting process, but takes quite a bit of time.

Personally I'm a lot happier that we chose to do things this way!

Taking short cuts when it comes to ICANN is not a good idea (look what happened with RegisterFly!)

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• Blacknight Now ICANN Accredited (blacknight.com)

The BBC have a serious online presence which probably costs them a fortune to maintain every year.

None of the Irish political parties have an online presence that comes anywhere near it (and you wouldn't really expect them to either... )

But when an Irish political party blatantly rips off the BBC's design and thinks they can get away with it, what kind of message does that send?

They then try to cover their tracks, but obviously don't do a particularly convincing job of it.

Now the thing that leaves me practically speechless is the attitude of the politicos that emanates from their comments on both of Steph's posts:

Get over it Steph. The site is brilliant. Its really is superb. Its online, it works, and its not going anywhere.

As a matter of fact, the site online now, was ready to go last week, the .org site up yesterday was a bit of a teaser based on some very early work.

I think its great. Don't think anybody else other than yourself and Dave Cochrane of p.ie are even the slightest bit bothered. My two cents, appreciate a brilliant website when you see it!

So the message is what exactly?

(Irish) Political parties don't have to abide by copyright rules?

As I already learnt, they seem to think that they can abuse email without any censure, so why would design or any other intellectual property matter?

Of course the funny thing is that they don't do a particulary good job of protecting their own IP.

Both finegael.tel and fiannafail.tel are registered to the same person.. I somehow doubt if that person has any links to either party and most certainly not both ...

As many people know I buy quite a few domains in the aftermarket. I also register a lot of new ones across most TLDs

I've been looking at my portfolio list and I've realised that I really need to clean it up a bit, as some of the domains I acquired are not going to be of any use to me any time soon.

There's nothing inherently wrong with any of the domains, but they cover niches that I'm not particularly interested in and, in many cases, were acquired as part of a bundle or "job lot".

The first one is listed over on IWF here

I'll probably post a few more in the coming weeks

Spammers annoy the life out of me.

Lazy and ignorant they always seem to find some way of "explaining" their (mis)behaviour

Bido, who are relaunching this week, thought it would be a great idea to spam the entire membership of DNForum

Grr!

Remember 365 selling to UK company Names.co.uk?
Well seemingly Names.co.uk like to overcharge their clients ...

I already mentioned their pricing policy on co.uk transfers out, but they've since gone on to expand that to include com/net/org/info/biz domains. Don't believe me?

Check out this screenshot from the Register365 / Namesco control panel (click to enlarge):



Or how about this invoice a client paid recently for the "right" to move his domain elsewhere (click to enlarge):




So in simple terms if you are NOT happy with their service and want to change provider you will get billed for changing YOUR domains to a new provider.

Aren't they great?

Companies behaving in this manner give a bad name to the entire industry and really make me sick. While I may have had my differences with the previous owners of register365 I somehow doubt that they'd have stooped this low!

And to make matters all the more interesting ..

I'm getting reports from some clients that the charges are being imposed, while others are being told that they can leave without having to pay - what about the people who don't question charges?

NB: Yes I have a vested interest in the hosting and domain industry and I don't hide it. On the other hand I would never be interested in running a company that abused registrants in this manner - there are plenty of ways to make money, messing your clients about isn't one of them

I'm really tired of the shenanigans involving the IEDR and the IE namespace, so I wrote this rant.

Feedback welcome (on that site :) )

Since I post to more than one blog it may appear at times that my activity here is pretty low key.

Over on FilmReviews.ie I've posted a couple of reviews of films I've seen recently including:
Wanted
Hancock
Alatriste
Incredible Hulk

While over on my domain news blog I've posted a few short posts about updates and some more in depth ones like the one the IEDR annual report

The company blog hasn't been that active recently, but I am trying to post to it a couple of times a week. We've been rather busy with the new rollout chez Blacknight, so my energies have been focussed elsewhere (fixing websites to read in English without boring people to death takes time!)

I've also got a few more project ideas in the pipelines, though whether I'll get the time to do anything about them is a totally different matter. (Pipelines is anywhere between vague idea and fully functional website and covers everything in between)