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.

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.

The UAE, the domain administrator for .ae, continues to implement practices for protecting intellectual property from their registrants. The policy was created and went public in 2009. The terms to register a domain name have become increasingly tough and they say that the registrant should be aware  about reserved names and cultural or moral names  and should complete their applications to their fullest in order to have good faith applications. The ccTLD’s according to the administration will be registered and will be handled in a transparent manner. To read further on this subject click here. 

ICANN was ready for the New gTLD Launch. Michael Salazar, the new programs director for the gTLD program was confident that the new launch would bring success.Every group and sect of ICANN was prepared for the launch according to the Director. The package for applicants is available at http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/ and all applicants should have their paper work resolve by April 12th, 2012.  To read further on this subject please click here.

The legal battle about co.no is about to commence with a foreign company called Norwegian company Elineweb AS who registered the domain, and is administered by a Dutch company called  Dutch company CoDNS BV. The company Elineweb AS has a law filed a lawsuit against Norid. The the domain was illegally transferred and has now been put on the ban list of transfers. The court trial will start in march. To read further click here.

Congress is trying to pass two controversial copy right enforcement laws that will aim to protect the Internet community. The new laws nicknamed PIPA and SOPA are in high support around lawmakers and companies. The Motion Picture Company of America is in high support and Congress is ready and seeking approval. The bills will help court orders to be placed to stop websites who are infringing copyright laws. To read further click here.

The spanish government has decided to pass a new legislation that will block websites selling pirated material within ten days of being online. The new law is called the Sinde law named after the Spanish Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez- Sinde. The Intellectual Property Commission will decide whether the website will have legal repercussions. The entertainment industry is pleased about this new law, but bloggers and many online-journalists find that this law is pretty harsh. To read further click here.

The Internet made a new stride yesterday and is emerging  with possibilities for anyone to register web address suffixes for 185,000 dollars. This launch is the  so-called dot brand names and has endless opportunities for marketers to make brand new images for companies online. These new changes have not gone well with the federal trade commission and warned businesses that this new gTLD system could be a nightmare. Forty of the world’s largest companies have already complained to ICANN and to FTC that this will increase costs and they don’t see the benefit.  Applicants have until April 12th to sign up. The first domains will be seen in 2013.  To read further on this story click here.

China plans to implement IPv6 by 2015.  The new systems opens up a possibility to have a larger pool of addresses compared to the IPv4 system, which is currently standard around the world. The IPv4 system only has the capability of handling 4 billion IP addresses, while the IPv6 can hold trillions with no unforeseeable end. China currently has the worlds largest internet system, and will be trying out a small version of the IPv6 system by that end of 2013. WIth this on the horizon Chinese technology has been encouraged to develop for the new system. To read further click here.