NominetUK have posted an interesting article giving some breakdown on the numbers involved in their historic release of 1.8 million .uk domain names.
Read More: First week of Right of Registration in numbers – Nominet
As of 08-07-2019, the end of the first week, there were 40,284 registrations. Probably far short of what Nominet were hoping for. But good news for the “ordinary registrant” as there are now tens of thousands of new domains available for first-come, first-served registrations.
In a month’s time, our management team will be heading to Barcelona in Spain to take part in the 63rd ICANN meeting from 20–25 October.
This should be a policy focused event, as this meeting includes a ‘High-Level Government Meeting (HLGM)’ section, which takes place every two years in the current ICANN schedule.
HLGMs reinforce the critical role that governments play in providing advice to the ICANN Board on public policy relating to the secure and stable functioning of the Domain Name System. They also give participants an opportunity to discuss at a very senior level the current public policy issues and challenges at ICANN.
We’ll also be meeting with colleagues from around the world who work primarily in the internet governance, domain name and DNS space.
As always, ICANN meetings are free to anyone with an interest, including invididuals, so if you are remotely interested in the inner workings of the internet, they provide a rare unfettered glimpse for anyone who wants to learn more. Join us if you can, or watch this blog for our post-meeting analysis and report.
The European data protection authorities have expressed concern over the unlimited publication of personal data of domain name registrants in the WHOIS. Typically at the moment when you register a new domain name you are bombarded with marketing calls and emails for a week or more.
Starting this week, you’ll see that the data on WHOIS for domains owned by EEA registrants is getting masked. This masking process is automated, will be ongoing and will be completed across all relevant domains on the platform.
For all existing domain names, if either of the Registrant, Admin, Tech and/or Billing contacts is identified as being from the EU, we will mask the WHOIS output for that domain name with placeholder details in place of the users’ personal information (this service will be referred to as “GDPR WHOIS Protection”).
Here’s an example of how the changes will look on a typical .COM domain name:
Some domain extensions are using their own interpretation of the GDPR so there are varying levels of masking in these domains (.UK is such an example).
Also to note that: access to personal data of domain name registrants may be granted when such access is necessary for technical reasons such as for the facilitation of transfers, or for law enforcement when it is legally entitled to such access.
Domains that have a paid-for “Privacy Protection” service will still enjoy this service – it has the important difference that enquiries using the web form/email address given in the Privacy Protection on the WHOIS will be forwarded to the Registrant. This is not the case (nor possible) on the GDPR masked domains.
