Domain Name News: “ICANN 44 set to kick off; President & CEO to step down after 3 years” plus 1 more

ICANN 44 set to kick off; President & CEO to step down after 3 years

Posted: 14 Jun 2012 02:08 PM PDT

ICANN has just released the official “meeting guide” for the upcoming ICANN Meeting #44 in Prague, Czech Republic. There are over 100 meetings scheduled, and many of the domain industry’s most powerful and successful businessmen and companies will be in attendance. ICANN’s outgoing CEO Rod Beckstrom writes:

“Before us are a multitude of important issues such as the negotiations on the Registrar Accreditation Agreement and discussions on how to measure the effectiveness of the New gTLD Program. And as usual, it is a busy week filled with more than 100 meetings, sessions, and hopefully at least some time for networking and fellowship.

As many of you know, it is also my last ICANN meeting as this organization's CEO and President. The past three years have been a remarkable journey, and our accomplishments together are many. I believe ICANN is poised for success on its own journey from a small Internet nonprofit organization to a world-class professional organization capable and ready to meet the challenges ahead.”

ICANN has yet to announce who will be taking over the new CEO position. Mr. Beckstrom wrapped up the intro in the official meeting guide by saying:

“ICANN is not a community of spectators. We are a community of doers. Everyone has a voice in our multistakeholder process. Just as everyone who uses the Internet should have a say in its governance. I encourage you to raise your hand and share your views during this week's meetings. Your voice makes our discussions richer. Thank you for being an important part of our global multistakeholder model. It has been a pleasure and an honor to serve you.”

ICANN Meeting Prague Czech Republic

On Monday night (June 25) ICANN will hold a farewell reception for it’s outgoing CEO, Rod Beckstrom. The event is expected to be well attended, maybe even drawing record crowds for any single event during the week long conference. The meeting guide in it’s entirety can be downloaded via PDF here on ICANN’s website.

Beckstrom was appointed in July of 2009 as President and CEO of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). He announced his official resignation effective July 1, 2012, in August of last year. It will be interesting to see who is the new face of ICANN — surely there are many candidates who would love to fill the vacating position.

On a slightly different note… As it was reported by TheDomains.com just a few days ago, Mr. Beckstrom’s total compensation for the previous year was $998,230. Not bad, right? Gotta wonder why he decided to step down — just some food for thought.

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Freedom Registry wants new gTLDs to be “FREE” domains!

Posted: 14 Jun 2012 12:45 PM PDT

Have you heard of Freedom Registry? Probably not, so pay close attention, because it is likely that you will be hearing a lot about this new company in the weeks and months to come. FDR is marketing and proposing a disruptive new business model to operators/registries of the new generic top level domains (new gTLDs) that could shake things up across the entire domain industry if widely adopted.

FreedomRegistry.com New Domains Free

Their TLD monetization services seem to be unlike anything else on the market currently. In the company’s own words: “Domains are a commodity. Give them away for free! Just like email services are provided for free these days (think Gmail and Hotmail), we believe the best way to attract registrants to your TLD is to give away your domain names for free.”

Freedom Registry says that they know that giving out free domain names makes good business sense. A subsidiary of the company, Dot TK, has been the registry for the Tokelau country-code TLD since 2001. Dot TK is the only ccTLD registry that gives away free domain names, to anybody. It only takes a few minutes to register and activate a new domain that ends in .TK.

As a result, Tokelau (.tk) is now the third largest country code top level domain registry in the world, behind Germany (.de) and United Kingdom (.uk) and it has more active domain names registrations than Russia and China combined. According to the company’s website, Freedom Registry predicts over 1 billion domains in just a few years from now, in 2015.

“The world of domain name registrations is about to undergo huge changes. Over the next few years the number of TLDs available will dramatically increase as ICANN opens up the root zone for new gTLDs. The supply of domain names will be almost endless. If TLDs offer registration for free, the demand will be huge.

In a country like the Netherlands there is a registered domain name for every three internet users. If we assume that in the near future the same ratio (1:3) will apply globally, we can expect to see the number of registered domain names jump from 200 million today to more than a billion in 2015.”

We reached out to Joost Zuurbier, founder and CEO of Dot TK and Freedom Registry as well. He told us that by the end of this year his new company hopes to add 6 more ccTLD’s. In his own words: “There is a lot of interest from smaller countries that want to use their extension for free domains.” By 2015, Joost believes that Freedom Registry will be serving 150 or more new gTLD’s, and some additional smaller ccTLD’s as well will be coming into the picture.

According to an official count at NIC.tk, there are over 9 million .TK domains registered currently. Give it another month or two, and the TK ccTLD will overtake the current 2nd largest ccTLD in the world .UK, which is currently at a little over 10.3 million registrations, according to Nominet.

Free Domains New TLDs

According to ICANN, it may take anywhere from 9 to 20 month’s for any new gTLD to get approved and become available on the web for registrations. No one knows how long it is going to take for sure, since there are many variables at play, but FDR is ready to seize on the opportunity and help promote the expansion of the internet – which is happening whether you like it or not.

It’s worth noting that the company sponsored the ICANN meeting in Costa Rica, earlier this year and is also sponsoring the upcoming meeting in Prague, which kicks off in less than 2 weeks. They have been mingling with many industry insiders all year long and have made their presence known. Expect some big announcements to be made soon involving FDR and “free domain” ventures.