Author name: fairwindsp

Josh Bourne ⬥ 17 July A recent Slate article titled “www.thosenewdomainnames.areforsuckers,” caught my attention last week.  With all the controversy over ICANN’s planned rollout of a potentially unlimited number of new generic top-level domains (TLDs), I found the frankness of the title refreshing.  As someone who works closely with brand owners, both at FairWinds and […]

Josh Bourne ⬥ 2 July This week, the Wall Street Journal reported on businesses’ struggle to protect their brands on Twitter. Many are concerned about unauthorized uses of their brand name on popular social media sites—Phil recently wrote a post about usersquatting, the uncertainty of harm that usersquatting inflicts and the ambiguity of enforcement mechanisms

Phil Lodico ⬥ 24 June A quick report of some of the most important developments coming out of ICANN’s meeting Sydney: Despite concerns over the way in which ICANN is moving forward with the new TLD launch, it appears that ICANN is poised to start accepting applications for new TLDs in February 2010. If an

Phil Lodico ⬥ 20 June As the debate over new TLDs rages on, more and more people are joining in the discussion and offering their two cents.  Just the other day, former New York City mayor Ed Koch announced that he is behind the .nyc top-level domain.  He went so far as to call .nyc

Phil Lodico ⬥ 20 June Anybody who has had a friend sneak onto his or her Facebook profile and change the information knows the heavy reputational damage that can come from being misrepresented on a social media site. But this harmless prank has a much nastier relative: Userquatting.  Similar to cybersquatting, usersquatting is when Internet

Phil Lodico ⬥ 12 June ICANN announced on Friday that it has teamed up with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (NORC) to undertake a study on the accuracy of WHOIS contact data for domain names.  The study will test the WHOIS data from a sample of domains from across different

Josh Bourne ⬥ 9 June Last week, when I attended Rep. Boucher’s congressional hearing on the relationship between Internet governing body ICANN and the U.S. government, I was encouraged to see how many representatives are informed on this topic and are looking to get at the source of the cybersquatting problem. There’s a great opportunity

Phil Lodico ⬥ 21 May ICANN claims that the roll out of new TLDs is designed to encourage healthy competition in the domain name space, but the organization has repeatedly failed to provide evidence that substantiates these claims. Furthermore, ICANN has not put forth any evidence to suggest that the new TLDs will be even

Josh Bourne ⬥ 14 May It seems like everyone is feeling the economic crunch to some degree. The New York Times reports that even though there are encouraging signs in the economy, the latest disappointment in retail sales signal that people remain cautious. In down markets, individuals and companies alike look for new opportunities to

Josh Bourne ⬥ 29 April Southern Company (Southern), a Fortune 500 company that provides energy related services in the South, filed for an injunction against Dauben, Inc, a corporation that owns over 600,000 domain names, to suspend its use of the domains sotherncompany.com and southerncopany.com. Southern, which is a Fortune 500 gas & electric utility,

Phil Lodico ⬥ 27 April We’ve talked a lot about the governance issues in ICANN, but it’s trickier to discuss ways to go about fixing these issues. For example, if one of the problems is that there’s no accountability in the current system, how do we go about creating oversight? Should that oversight come from

Josh Bourne ⬥ 17 April From conversations that I’ve had, the following description of the ICANN supply chain tends to set off some light bulbs and pique interest:   If you look at this chain and then remember that the GNSO (a major policy development entity in ICANN) was recently restructured to favor the wholesalers