.Bayern, the new gTLD for the German Bavarian State Government, was acquired by the Directors of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (AIM:TLDH.L). The companies business plan is to resale the gTLD.  The back end registry will be run by a registry services company called Minds+Machines. The company is traded by the London AIM market. To read further on this topic please click here.

25 registrations have been made during the first week that the new gTLD program is opening according to ICANN. This number doesn’t necessarily represent the number of applicants, since applicants can apply for 50 registrations, but the organization does expect a significant number more. Information is limited as ICANN plans to release final numbers after the three month registration period. Two weeks after the registration period ends ICANN will publish a list of domains obtained by which companies. To read further click here.

After the display of online protests last week against PIPA and SOPA, Congress decides to shelve the anti-piracy laws that were up for review last week. Congress plans to have some sort of resolution that will make protestors content and also the entertainment industry. To comments from congress click here. A new bill called the OPEN ACT was introduced last week during the online protest. This new bill aims to fight for stronger intellectual property rights for US artists and also addresses the openness of the internet.  This act only addresses the websites that willfully violate piracy laws.  To read further click here.

On May 1st Nominet is introducing multi-year registration periods for .uk domain names, that vary from 1 to 10 years. These are the changes that have been made by the company:

1. Variable registration periods enabled so that domains can be registered and renewed for between 1 and 10 years
2. Implementation of a new charging structure:
   • Single year = £3.50 + VAT.
   • 2+ years bought together in a single operation = £2.50 + VAT per year
3. Auto-renew functionality updated so that the number of years can be specified, as well as the number of days in advance of the expiry date that the renewal will be automatically submitted.

Fears arise from many people who use Megaupload that government anti-copyright laws could shut down websites on the internet for false infringements. File sharing is major player in office environments and large corporations who use this technology to work. The site is being charged for over 500 million in copyright infringements with pirated films and music. The company’s four executives have been arrested and are being held in custody by police. This happened directly after the online blackout protest against PIPA and SOPA.  Critics of the laws say that the ship has sailed with illegal sharing in the US and that it is impossible to stop unground websites from giving away copyrighted materials for free on the internet. Please click here to read further.

New rules are coming for Whois Verification and now customers identifies must be verified according to ICANN president. The president told the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that they will have to make a new agreement by March.  Whois Verification is often found very controversial and is often wanted by intellectual property and law enforcement communities.

Asif LLC, has secured a new gTLD .bank and was a very unlikely candidate. The company reserved the gTLD for use in domain name registration services. Asif LCC became a GoDaddy reseller of domain names last year. The company claims they have a ground-breaking encryption technology that will help them sell the .bank gTLD, which the company claims they have been working on for some good amount of time. For further information please click here.

Hostway Corporation sold Registry Services Corporation to Afilias. The company, Registry Services Corporation, managed one of the top level domains .pro. Hostway has 43, 493 domains registered, but according to ICANN they have 117,264 registered domain names. Afilias isn’t new at buying domain registry’s and has purchased several in the past. To read further on this topic please click here. 

Wikipedia and Google, among other websites, decided to shut down at midnight last night in order to protest the recent anti-piracy bills that have been passing through U.S Congress. The bill in congress was identified as PIPA and SOPA, and critics say it could cripple freedom of speech for the internet. The website, Wikipedia.com, says that they will not being able to continue giving free use to users and will have trouble operating. The company claims that they are in support of copyright infringement laws, but are not in favor how the law is written and say it just needs to be reconstituted.  News of the shutdown peaked interest on social networks, and was of the  highest talked about issues.People seem to want a resolution that will be reasonable to users and the entertainment industries. Wikipedia on Thursday morning thanked users for participating in the protest, which gathered more than 150 million people to support it. To read further on this topic please click here for CNN and here for eCommerce Times.

ICANN chairman saw little value in delaying a ICANN release of the new gTLD program, when critics have not found a specific problem that they needed to change in order to not delay the release. With the release of the the application, the cost to buy a new domain has a  huge application fee attached to it   of 185,000. The applicants will be able to push away from the traditional .dot com’s and will be able to have a new ending, opening all sorts of marketing strategies. The Federal Trade Commission claims that the new system will be able to create fraudulent websites and confuse users. However, ICANN says they have set up significant amount of time and financial interests aside to assure the success of the program. The concern is for users to become victims of internet cyber-hackers who pray on misspellings of websites. To read further on this topic click here.