Issue 109 - 06th March

.cn goes live in 10 days

Don't forget that .cn is being opened up to registrants from anywhere in the world. Previously it was only available to companies based in China.

You can place your orders now at www.netnames.com and we will process these as soon as the registry opens on March 16^th. More information on the .cn registration process is available here.

US Government seizes domain names

US law enforcement officials have recently adopted a new strategy for shutting down websites that violate drug or trade patents and copyrights. In the past, police would simply seize the servers that housed the websites, but now they have also started to take control of the domain names. This means that rather than the website just disappearing from the Internet, a site remains operational, greeting visitors with stern warnings from government agencies.

In a recent copyright infringement case, the U.S. government seized a domain and placed the following message on the offending site: "The domain and website were surrendered to U.S. law enforcement pursuant to a federal prosecution and felony plea agreement for conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws."

Proposals for new .au domains rejected

The auDA (Australian Domain Administration) recently formed a panel to oversee the formation of new second-level domain names under the .au suffix. The panel received 17 proposals including uni.au, catholic.au and research.au.

Previously the panel has extended support for geographic domains, which formed the basis of three proposals. However of the other proposals only one - the retention of the current domain conf.au - was accepted. Most of the other proposals were rejected because there was no evidence of support for the domain from the intended user group.