Below is a non-exhaustive list of links to Year 2001 news reports about the domain name system, in reverse chronological order. A few links may no longer be available, while others may require a password or fee to access their archives.   DECEMBER   29-Dec-01 Internic finds demand brisk for dot-name domains, by Robert Thompson (National Post) Internic.ca, a Canadian registrar, is currently accepting applications for .NAME domains. 27-Dec-01 Sold to the highest cybersquatter, by Julie Wheeler (ISP Planet) Opportunities for cybersquatting are proliferating as new domains are created, but that may change under the ACPA. 24-Dec-01 Mastering your own domain is the dot-name of the game, by Robert L. Brewer (Nashville Business Journal) The London-based domain name registry for .NAME, Global Name Registry Ltd., announced the dates and procedures designed to protect trademark owners, prevent consumer confusion and minimize unfettered opportunism in the new TLD space zoned for use by individuals, 19-Dec-01 New.net finds ally for domain effort , by Evan Hansen (C/Net) New.Net plans to add Europe's 7.5 millionTiscali to a growing list of Internet service providers that support its unconventional TLDs. 18-Dec-01 Addressing Authorities Finalize ,AERO Domain Contract, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) In signing a contract clearing the way for .AERO to join the worldwide naming system, ICANN president Stuart Lynn effectively rejected the argument that the air travel industry - rather than the larger air travel community - is unfairly allowed to control the new TLD. AuDA to auction rare domain names, by Vivienne Fisher (ZDNet Australia) The Australian Domain Authority has launched an auction process for 3006 domain names (e.g., SHOPPING.COM.AU, SPORT.COM.AU) which were previously classified as generic and therefore unavailable for registration. 17-Dec-01 Change of Distribution Methods for .BIZ Domain Names on Registry Reserve (NeuLevel) NeuLevel plans to accept new IP claims for the .BIZ domains that are the subject of litigation in California under allegations of an illegal lottery. 15-Dec-01 Firm buys Hecht Web domain, by Laura Ernde (Herald-Mail) Gen-X Strategies, a Virginia company that develops Web sites for conservative candidates registered SUEHECHT.COM/NET/ORG to block the politician's use of her own name. 14-Dec-01 Address Authorities Order VeriSign To Alter .Com Promo, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) ICANN announced that VeriSign's offer of cash incentives for high volume registrars violated the terms of its agreement to administer the .COM TLD. Canadian Domain-Name Authority Scrutinizes Sellers, by Steve Bonisteel (BizReport) The Canadian Internet Registration Authority is seeking public comment on proposals for a certification process for companies that resell domain names. Tony 'Del Boy' Blair flogs second-hand domain names, by (Silicon.com) The UK government, through the Treasury Solicitor's Department, has begun selling off the domain names of bankrupt companies. 13-Dec-01 AusRegistry Wins .AU Tender , by David Frith (Computer Daily News) AusRegistry, a subsidiary of RegistrarsAsia, won the tender for registry services for Australia's .AU second level domain names. Kangaroo domain court, by Kieren McCarthy (Register) A joint venture between RegistrarsAsia and Afilias has been awarded the com.au, net.au, asn.au, id.au and org.au second-level domains and deepening the controversy regarding the administration of .AU. 12-Dec-01 'Sucks' online is a good thing: official, by Kieren McCarthy (Register) Despite millions of people understanding what the term "sucks" means in slang, WIPO arbiters have found justification to prevent third parties from registering the term appended to a trademark as a domain name. 11-Dec-01 No special rights given for famous Web names, by Stephanie Sim (IDG News Service) A Beijing Intermediate People's Court ruled that the China Internet NetworkInformation Center did not have the right to reserve Chinese domain names for companies that are well-known and ordered the administrator of .CN to treat all domain applicants equally. EU Plans ICANN Study, by Monika Ermert (Heise) The study will focus on both selection process for new TLDs as well as election process for the at-large community. Nominet begins issuing .UK DRP Decisions (Nominet) Nominet has begun posting decisions under its new dispute resolution policy for the .UK domain. 10-Dec-01 Kraft Gobbles Up PEZ Collector's Domain Name, by Steven Bonisteel (Newsbytes) Kraft Foods, which uses markets confections sold in Europe under the "Sugus" brand prevailed in a UDRP proceeding against the person who registered his Sugus nickname for hosting a website for collectable PEZ dispensers. Sites Forlorn When Reborn as Porn, by Jeffrey Benner (Wired) A growing number of local governments, church groups and nonprofit organizations have recently seen their homepages turned into smut dens when they forgot to renew the domain names which were snapped up by pornographers. 07-Dec-01 Dot-info domain name is intuitive, by Zlati Meyer (Silicon Valley.com) The .COM is crowded but there's room in .INFO. VeriSign looking for a RealName, by Skinny DuBaud (C/Net) Rumors that VeriSign will acquire RealNames, which has been hawking a similified naming system for years. NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins Win Over Porn Site In Domain Dispute, by Michael Bartlett (Washington Post) NHLPENGUINS.COM was registered without the club's permission by a Russian company that linked the Web address to pornographic sites and asked for a minimum of $550 to purchase the domain name. 6-Dec-01 Registration rules tighten for .INFO domain, by Andy Sullivan (Reuters) and Afilias Makes Changes To Sunrise Policy, by Jim Wagner (Internet News) Afilias, the .INFO registry, announced that it has tightened up registration rules in preparation to bulk challenge the validity 10,000 domain names registered during the trademark Sunrise period. Say It With a Dot: Domain Names Make Easy Gifts, by Dina ElBoghdady (Washington Post) With more than 100 firms registering domain names these days, the competition among them makes for a bargain hunter's delight. Australian domain name war escalates, by Vivienne Fisher (ZDNet Australia) Web hosting company NetRegistry has filed a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleging deceptively misleading marketing practices by Melbourne IT and Internet Name Group. VeriSign to Acquire NameEngine and 1GlobalPlace (VeriSign) Acquisitions expand the corporation's suite of digital services. See also: VeriSign Introduces Broad Range of Services for Establishing & Managing Trusted Brands in the Digital World VeriSign Unleashes Watchdog Service (Silicon.com) A new digital brand management service in partnership with several digital surveillance companies will monitor the internet for misuse of registered domain names. Help! I've Lost My Domain Name! by Lee Hodgson (eCommerce Base) Those who forget to renew their domain names learn that their rights expired along with the domain name. 5-Dec-01 VeriSign to play domain-name watchdog, by Stefanie Olsen (C/Net) VeriSign plans to introduce services that help guard companies' brands online, diversifying its own revenue in the face of a potential lag in its domain name registrar business. Afilias Tweaks Plan To Challenge Fraudulent .INFO Addresses, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) Afilias estmates it will file arbitration challenges against roughly 10,000 of the more than 50,000 names registered during the sunrise period. See Sunrise Challenge Policy )Proposed) Trademark rules tightened for .INFO domain, by Reuters (Silicon Valley.com) 4-Dec-01 Agency pushing .CA web domain Registration campaign, by Mark Evans (National Post) he Canadian Internet Registry Authority is under pressure to increase its marketing efforts to help make the .CA TLDas well known as .COM. Web address disputes deemed unfair, by Gwendolyn Mariano (C/Net) Montreal-based eResolution said it could not find enough customers, thanks to athe dispute-resolution process that unfairly favors trademark holders and large corporations over individuals. Mammoth IPv6 Lab Planned, by Isaac Hillson (CommWeb) Cisco will lead a consortium of industry and academic institutions in building an IPv6 research network infrastructure funded by the European Commission (EC). 3-Dec-01 .PRO Contract Nearing Completion, Operators Say, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) A contract formally authorizing the creation of a global .PRO TLD will be completed by early 2002, according to the registry. Biz appears to be slow for new Net domains, by Mark Webster (Buffalo Business First) Few area businesses seem to be in a rush to secure the rights to new domains ending in .BIZ or .INFO. Big guys usually win best addresses, by Joe Salkowski (Chicago Tribune) Arbitrators favor trademark holders. 02-Dec-01 Public TV station claims domain name grab is extortion (Daytona Beach News Journal) Northwest Indiana public television station WYIN's domain name, was purchased by a Lithuanian company offering links to pornographic sites and a $550 resale price. NOVEMBER   30-Nov-01 Afilias Deletes .Info Domain Names After Glitch, By Brian McWilliams (Newsbytes) A software glitch at the .INFO domain registry operated by Afilias briefly allowed faulty registrations of 237 domain names that had fewer than the required three characters, 29-Nov-01 ADNS Warns Internet Users Not To Fall for Internet Scam Involving the Top-Level Domain .USA (ANDS) AGN Domain Name Service issued a warning against TLD Networks, which purports to be the only place to register a .USA domain. 28-Nov-01 ICANN Completes Dot-Coop Deal, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) The National Cooperative Business Association will operate the .COOP TLD that will be reserved for cooperative companies. 15-Nov-01 Researchers probe Net's 'dark address space', by Kevin Poulsen (Register) Broadband customers and US military systems are the most common victims of an online phenomenon dubbed "dark address space," which leaves some 100 million hosts completely unreachable from portions of the Internet. First .MUSEUM Internet Addresses Go Live, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) For now, the only active addresses ending in .MUSEUM belong to the Museum Domain Management Association (MuseDoma) which operates the TLD registry. 14-Nov-01 Non-U.S. Internet operators fight for independence, by Reuters (Silicon Valley.com) Some managers of ccTLDs see ICANN as an impediment to their independence, others see the corporation as vital in asserting themselves with local governments. New.Net Distends Domain Name Dynasty, by Julie Wheeler (ISP Planet) The fiesty alternative domain name registrar oppugns ICANN's insolence toward determining new top level domains, but ISPs hold the key to making potential TLDs universally resolvable. 13-Nov-01 Tech Security Officials Visit Key Net Facility, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) Deputy Commerce Secretary Sam Bodman and White House electronic security advisor Richard Clarke toured the secure VeriSign facility as part of an ongoing effort to gauge the security of the nation's privately operated critical infrastructure 12-Nov-01 Dead Education Dots becoming Porn sites, by Karen Ellis (editorial) Ways to bury unusued education websites with dignity.Govt. 7-Nov-01 Dot-Biz Is Finally in Business, by Joanna Glasner (Wired) The debut of NeuLevel's .BIZ comes a month after the introduction of .INFO. 5-Nov-01 Million Dollar Domain Name Comes to Life as Free Drugs Portal (Internet News Bureau) DRUGS.COM, a domain name valued in the millions of dollars, has gone online with a content-rich pharmaceuticals search and information portal. The Tiniest Dots on the Web, by Stewart Taggart (Wired) Administrators of .HM, .BV, and .SJ, assigned in the Internet's early days to a series of frozen, isolated, largely uninhabited islands pounded by polar winds in the Arctic and sub-Antarctic, are disinterested in cashing in on the TLDs. 1-Nov-01 Dot-Kids, or Dot-Kids R US? (Wired) House lawmakers are considering a bill to establish a top level domain for child-appropriate content. Lawmakers Propose .KIDS Compromise, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) Congressional lawmakers suggested amending the .KIDS proposal to create a .US subdomain, KIDS.US.   OCTOBER   30-Oct-01 Lawmakers Consider .KIDS-.US Compromise, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) Congressional lawmakers are considering authorizing a child-friendly addressing space within .US as part of the proposed "Dot Kids Domain Name Act of 2001". 29-Oct-01 Government Cedes Control Of .EDU To Non-Profit Group, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) The U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Association signed a five-year cooperative agreement designating Educause, a not-for-profit group representing more than 1,800 universities, colleges and higher education groups, as the new manager of the .EDU TLD. Government Awards .US To NeuStar, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) The U.S. Commerce Department today awarded control of .US to NeuStar, a Washington-based firm that is one of the co-operators of the .BIZ TLD. See also: NTIA Purchase Order Award to NeuStar to Manage .US NeuStar Inc. to administer .US domain, by Andy Sullivan (Silicon Valley.com) The award sets the stage for greater development of what has been up to now online backwater reserved for local governments, schools and libraries. Farewell Tuvalu, by Andrew Simms (Guardian) The Pacific island state of Tuvalu, which sold rights to its .TV domain for $50m, it is about to lose its real one to global warming. 26-Oct-01 Pornography Takes Over Financial Site for Children, by Susan Stellin (NYTimes) Ernst & Young, producer of the game MONEYOPOLIS.COM, learned that pornographic images had been posted at an alternate Web address for MONEYOPOLIS.ORG, which has been under new ownership after the domain name expired during the summer. NeuLevel gets .BIZ domain back on track, by Reuters (ZDNet) The .BIZ registry cleared a legal hurdle when plaintiffs in a lawsuit failed to post an $800,000 bond ordered by the court to prevent the assignment of domain names. 25-Oct-01 Hold on .BIZ domain names lifted, by AP (SiliconValley.com) A court-ordered hold on up to 58,000 .BIZ domain applications will be lifted after an Arizona radio disc jockey and a Los Angeles company failed to come up with the half of the required $1.6M bond. Dot-info making a name for itself, by Wendy McAuliffe (ZDNet) More than half a million customers have registered a .INFO domain name during the first 90 days of operation, according to the registry, Afilias, 23-Oct-01 New.net Targets Hollywood with .movie... Oh, and it Bought FirstLook, by Ben Fritz (Digital Coast Daily) New.net is now linking new movie titles off a .MOVIE domain to the official studio site. 22-Oct-01 Registration for .BIZ Is Delayed, by Susan Stellin (NYTimes) Open registration for .BIZ domain names has been pushed back to November 7 to allow more time to test the registration system, according to NeuLevel. Internetters requests Afilias to publish challenges to domain applications (Europemedia) UK registrar Internetters has requested the .INFO registry to publish challenges to trademark applications that were made during the Sunrise period, since many of the registrations were fraudulent. 19-Oct-01 .MUSEUM domain ready for launch, by Reuters (ZDNet) MuseDoma, a nonprofit body backed by the International Council of Museums and the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, will manage .MUSEUM, which goes live in November. 18-Oct-01 The Wait Continues For New Top-Level Domains, by Bob Liu (InternetNews) The .BIZ registry will go live November 7. Ukraine's national domain name restored, by Roman Olearchyk (Kyiv Post) After almost a decade of negotiation and scandal, local firms have been authorized to begin registering second level .UA domain names. 17-Oct-01 ICANN Finalizes Contract For .Museum Domain, by David McGuire, Newsbytes .MUSEUM is the first "sponsored" TLD contract approved by ICANN. Launch of .Biz Web addresses pushed back to Nov. 7, by Elinor Mills Abreu (SiliconValley.com) 10-Oct-01 For Sunrise Registrants in .info TLD, Remainder of 2001 Will Be Waiting Game (BNA) It appears that the early challenges to Sunrise .INFO registrations largely involves skirmishing for domain names in which nobody has any trademark rights at all. VeriSign, RealNames push keyword browsing, by Stefanie Olsen (C/Net) VeriSign will make keywords, which allow direct navigation in non-English languages. available to its domain name registrars by the end of the year 5-Oct-01 Businesses get more domain-name options, by Robert Mullins (SJ Business Journal) The market will ultimately decide how useful the new TLDs are. 3-Oct-01 .INFO land grab overwhelms registry, by Paul Festa (C/Net) Afilias, which deferred its .INFO registrations when its system was overwhelmed the first day of real time availability, extended the suspension a second day after continued efforts to bring its system up to speed. Oct-01 America's Cyberspace Address: A Multimillion-Dollar Lost Opportunity, by Bennett Z. Kobb (Civil Rights Forum) The US government will soon turn over control of .US free ofcharge to the organization chosen to exclusively manage the domain. SEPTEMBER   28-Sep-01 Internet Vulnerable to Terrorists, Experts Warn, by Dina ElBoghdady (Washington Post) The terrorist attacks prompted ICANN to begin exploring how to secure the domain name system critical to routing web traffic and e-mail. NeuLevel: Dot-Biz Deadline Rollback Unrelated To Lawsuit, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) NeuLevel said its move to postpone the official launch of .BIZ had nothing to do with a lawsuit NeuLevel is fighting in California, but rather was made in response to the turmoil that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Registrar Advisory: Internationalized domain names to go live (VeriSign) VeriSign Global Registry Services (GRS) intends to move forward in the Internationalized Domain Name Testbed by placing the IDNs directly into the .com, .net and .org zones starting October 27. 27-Sep-01 VeriSign empire's new territory: Net IDs, by Ben Heskett (C/Net) VeriSign, looking to expand its presence in the nascent convergence between the Internet and traditional telephone network, acquired Illuminet Holdings in a $1.2 billion deal, New UK domain rules save Internet's soul, by Kieren McCarthy (Register) The changes to Nominet's domain resolution service (DRS) for .CO.UK domains, the registrar's first major overhaul since 1997, include the introduction of independent judges. 26-Sep-01 IE upgrade jams domain name deal, by Stefanie Olsen (C/Net) A new feature in Internet Explorer 6 is cutting off traffic to Microsoft-backed RealNames and domain name company XTNS. Melb IT dispute with auDA flares, by Kate Mackenzie (Australian IT) Registrar Melbourne IT and the new Australian domain name authority are heading into arbitration after Melbourne IT refused to fund an increase in auDA's budget. 25-Sep-01 Sunrise Challenge 'Poker Game' Begins For .INFO Domains, by Steven Bonisteel (Newsbytes) WIPO has begun to process challenges to domain registrations filed during the Afilias sunrise period for owners of registered trademarks. See also: Sunrise Challenges in .INFO - Listing of all Challenges Attacks May Heighten Focus On Pending .US Bid, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) In the surge of patriotic emotion that has followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the battle over who will operate the long underused .US TLD may take on heightened significance 24-Sep-01 VeriSign CEO confirms plans to buy Illuminet (Total Telecom) VeriSign plans to integrate its Web directories business with Illuminet's telephony infrastructure, enabling the company to deliver location-based telephone services to its customers. See also corporate PR: VeriSign to Acquire Illuminet Market grows for expired domain names, by Reid Kanaley (Philadelphia Inquirer) The rush to register an ever-dwindling supply of catchy domain names has fueled a rush for expired Web addresses. New USSR domain names to cost as much as E16,441, by Michael Novkov (EuropeMedia) Registration costs for .SU domain names will reach as high as US$15,000 (E16,441) during a Sunrise period and will be reduced to $100 five months later. Internet expanding by leaps and .INFO (The Star) .INFO domain names have been activated. 20-Sep-01 Register.com And Applied Semantics Make "DomainSense", by Michael Singer (Internet.com) The new service uses the combined technology of both companies to give customers linguistically relevant domain name alternatives when their first choice is not available. 19Sep-01 VeriSign bars "offensive" Net name auctions, by Erich Luening (C/Net) VeriSign is halting some auctions of domain names related to lthe terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in an effort to remove sites it finds "offensive." 15-Sep-01 Sites shun new domain names, prefer .COM, by Anick Jesdanun (SiliconValley.com) Relatively little interest has been shown in the new TLDs, .INFO and .BIZ. 10-Sep-01 Most Net suffixes to work by November , by Reuters (C/Net) Although all seven domains approved in November 2000 by ICANN could be online by January of next year, another set of new domains for at least a year after that, 'Dot-Info' Opens To Public On Wednesday, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) 9-Sep-01 Internet suffix .ORG isn't just for non-profits (San Jose Mercury) A task force established by ICANN concluded that .ORG serves a role well beyond non-commercial organizations and it should not become a restricted TLD. 7-Sep-01 Flint police website used for pornography (Michigan Daily) A pornographer purchased the former domainname of the Flint Police Department, after the latter decided to make its website part of the city's web presence. 4-Sep-01 UN body admits its powerless to right many domain name wrongs (Ananova) The World Intellectual Property Organisation says it lacks the clout to protect names not subject to commercial law. Trademark law clashes with domain rights, by Associated Press (C/Net) A new WIPO study says little can be done to protect celebrities, places or brand names because they don't have the advantage of trademark law. Elz era ends in domain, by Kirsty Needham (smh.com.au) Robert Elz lost control of Australia's domain name system to ICANN after the Federal Government rejected his request for the Government to take over the custodianship instead. Mailout sparks domain naming row, by Adam Gifford (New Zealand News) An Australian company, Internet Name Group, is accused of charging too much -- $250 Australian ($301) --for a service which is available considerably cheaper elsewhere, and that money is non-refundable if they don't get the name, 3-Sep-01 Young Gandhi's Crusade Is Dot-In, by Manu Joseph (Wired) Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of the legendary freedom fighter, is using .IN (India) to remind modern Indians about a forgotten concept called nationalism. U.N. Body Urges Stronger Rules on Cybersquatters, by Reuters (NYTimes) The World Intellectual Property Organization proposed broader rules to protect celebrities and international organizations from misuse of their names on the Internet. New U.N. study says untrademarked domain names are unprotected (Silicon Valley.com) U.N. body urges stronger rules on cybersquatters, by Robert Evans ( Silicon Valley.com) IANA report supports .au transfer, exposes rift, by Jenny Sinclair (IT) The current administrator of .AU, Robert Elz, expressed concern that Australian authority, auDA is still not fully formed and not ready to take control over the ccTLD. AUGUST   29-Aug-01 Sun Makes Claims on Domain Names, by Susan Stelling (NYTimes) A law firm representing Sun Corporation sent letters to registrars demanding hat they refuse applications for .BIZ domain namescorresponding to more than three dozen of their trademarks, including SUN.BIZ. 25-Aug-01 One-Fourth Of '.Info' Addresses May Be Frauds - Study, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) University of Minnesota Professor , Robert Connor, determined that 15 to 25% of 11,500 .INFO domain names registered during the "Sunrise" period may have been obtained fraudulently and added a new term to the cyberspace lexicon, "Sunrise squatters". Domain Name Goldrush Part 4 - Expiring Domains Industry on Hold, by Lee Hodgson (eCommerceBase) On August 10, VeriSign suspended the "batch" release of deleted domain names. and put the entire expiring domains industry on hold until further notice. 24-Aug-01 25,000 .INFO names taken before Sept 12 launch for Net domains, by AP (The Star) Individuals and organisations say they're being shut out because many of the good domain's won't be available by the time registration is opened to them. 23-Aug-01 Companies Move To Register .INFO Domains, by Thor Olavsrud (InternetNews) More than 60 percent of registrations made during theSunrise Period exclusively for trademark ownershave been filed outside of the U.S. As .COM Gets Company, a Rush For Addresses, by Leslie Walker (Washington Post) The .INFO and .BIZ names are stirring a great deal of interest and controversy as they near the end of the pre-registration periods set up to protect trademark holders. 22-Aug-01 ZA Domain Registration Goes Competitive (Africa News Service) Namsspace South Africa is a non-profit company organized to administer the South African ccTLD. 20-Aug-01 Law Expert Charges Bias In Domain-Dispute Arbitrations, by Steven Bonisteel, (Newsbytes) Michael Geist has produced a comprehensive analysis of fast-track arbitration and concludes that the methods used to select the arbitrators who rule on UDRP cases have had a dramatic impact on who wins and who loses. The complete study is available at: http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~geist/geistudrp.pdf 17-Aug-01 Net domain name strain, by Associated Press (MSNBC) Plans to add New features and languages to the DNS are stretching it beyond its practical limits. Entering a new 'Net domain: Is .BIZ worth the effort and cash? by Stacey Higginbotham (Sacramento Business Journal) Opinions differ on whether it's worth a small-businessperson's effort and money to jump into the complex, two-step registration procedure that's an administrative headache. 16-Aug-01 Celebrities, fans line up for .names, by Reuters (C/Net) The first assigned .NAME domain names will go live in mid-November, but the Sunrise period officially opened. 15-Aug-01 .INFO registry to evict cybersquatters, by Reuters (C/Net) Afilias says that it will seek to recover domain names from dishonest applicants who grabbed hundreds them before registrations were made available to the public. Afilias to Challenge Questionable Sunrise Registrations in .INFO (Afilias PR) Operators of new .,INFO Internet suffix initiate challenges for good names, by AP Register.com to Manage .AG, .SC Domains, by Ryan Naraine (Silicon Alley) Nic AG operates the .AG top-level domain for Antigua and 6th Dimension is the marketing agent of the .SC registry for the Seychelles. Iperdome Relinquishes Claims to .PER; To Seek Reparations from ICANN (Iperdome) 14-Aug-01 ICANN adviser brings diplomatic expertise to Net governance, by Mary Anne Ostrom Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister, came to Silicon Valley seeking ideas for the future of at large membership of ICANN. 10-Aug-01 Renting out Web names garners big bucks, by Reuters (C/Net) Nick Koustas has become a cyber landlord by leasing out popular generic domain names to companies willing to pay tidy sums to hold the names for a limited amount of time. 08-Aug-01 Whois in Dot-Info? Everyone, by Joanna Glasner (Wired) The .INFO WHOIS database, which tracks registrations during a Sunrise period only for trademark owners, shows that a vast number of generic-sounding words have already been claimed. 07-Aug-01 Airlines Collide In International Domain Name Dispute, by Steven Bonisteel (Biz Report) A dispute over SPIRITAIRLINES.COM pits two airline companies of the same name against each other. Afilias Looks Into '.Info' Fraud Allegations, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) Afilias said that the company is sorting through the thousands of pre-registrations it has accepted in order to determine whether there is widespread fraud among Sunrise applicants. Congressional Leaders Demand New Internet Domains, by David McGuire (Newsbytes) The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and the Internet Subcommittee sent a joint letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans urging the creation of new Internet domains. Net users irate over .iINFO cybersquatters, by Reuters (C/Net) The Sunrise period set up by Afilias for new .INFO domain names has drawn the ire of the Internet community who say desirable generic names have been awarded to applicants who have no trademark claim to them. 06-Aug-01 New Non-English Domains Deal Criticized, by Max Smetannikov (Interactive Week) The Internet Engineering Task Force is proposing a protocol that will make names written in code other thanEnglish-friendly ASCII equally routable through DNS servers, Unrecognized domains want to be sanctioned (Houston Chronicle) Despite the relatively limited reach the new names offer, the desire to stake out a unique piece of Internet real estate is strong. Register.com Named as Provider of EarthLink's Domain Services (BusinessWire) New.Net Introduces Web Addresses for Hispanics New.net announced 21 new TLDs for Spanish -speaking Internet users, among them .AGENTE, .ARTES, .CIA, .DEPORTE, .ESCUELA, .FAMILIA, .JUEGO, .TEC and .XXX. 04-Aug-01 A Lottery to Win Web Domain Names May Be Unfair (CNN transcript) According to Esther Dyson, "t's a punt. They're just saying, well, we don't want appear to be unfair, so we'll makeit a lottery. But then, your chances of winning the lottery are higher if you try more times." 03-Aug-01 Obscenities Live in New Domains, by Joanna Glasner (Wired) Choice obscene domains are once again up for grabs in the new TLDs, and . many registrars are taking a customer's choice approach to vulgar domain names of all stripes. Finally, Chicago's master of its domain name, by Howard Wolinsky (Chicago Sun-Times) A 28-year-old Chicago entrepreneur paid "in the mid-six figures'' for CHICAGO.COM. 02-Aug-01