Over the weekend, I saw that Andee Hill announced that she has left Donuts. Andee worked there for two years as Director of Business Development at Donuts. Prior to Donuts, Andee founded (and sold) an escrow service and got her start in the domain business at Escrow.com.

Of her time at Donuts, Andee said she is "Honored to have worked at a smart company and with smart people.” Her last day at the company was July 31.

After reading the news about her departure from Donuts, I reached out to Andee to see if she is staying in the domain name industry and ask what her plans are. Andee told me she has accepted an offer from ICANN to become its Registrar Services & Engagement Programs Director.

"I'm very excited to start the position and feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to (more…) → Read More

Did you know there is a new domain name transfer and registrant change policy that is being implemented by ICANN on December 1, 2016? You can read the full transfer policy on ICANN's website.

In addition,  OpenSRS published a blog post about the policy change. Here is how the company stated that these changes will impact its customers:

Any changes to first name, last name, organization or email address fields for the owner of any gTLD domain name will now start a trade process
The process involves obtaining explicit confirmation from current and new registrants before a change can be completed
After a change of registrant has been completed, previous and new registrant need to receive notifications about the change, with no option of reversing the change
After a change of registrant has been completed, the domain is by default locked for transfers to a new registrar for the following 60 days

There has been a ton of political and mainstream discussion about the expiring IANA contract between ICANN and the US government. Despite some last minute efforts to thwart the transition, the contract has officially expired. I am not into political discussion and debate, so I stayed away from writing about this topic.

I am on ICANN's news distribution list (you should also  sign up for ICANN news), and I want to share the news release ICANN sent out this morning announcing the transition of the stewardship of IANA functions. You can also read it directly on the ICANN website. Personally, I don't think Internet users (or domain investors)  will see any changes with this transition.

Here is ICANN's email from this morning: (more…) → Read More

ICANN sent out a news alert yesterday calling for volunteers to participate on a new working group that will be created to "Review all Rights Protections Mechanisms in all generic top-level domains." Among other things, this working group will be tasked with potentially overhauling the UDRP and URS procedures. This could have major ramifications for domain investors and domain name portfolio operators.

A week ago, Phil Corwin from the Internet Commerce Association wrote an article on CircleID about the importance of this working group and the impact its findings and recommendations may have on domain owners and domain investors. Phil also published an informative blog post about the working group on the ICA's website. You should read both of these articles to get a better idea of why members of the domain investment community should consider participating on this working group.

Phil also commented to me about the importance in having solid representation among domain investors within this working group:

"These reviews, first → Read More

According to a news release this past May, current ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé "will be concluding his tenure in March 2016 to move into a new career." Because of his pending departure, ICANN is now seeking candidates for the CEO position, and the application deadline is Sunday, September 20, 2015.

Interested in applying for #ICANN CEO position? Only 5 days left to submit your application! http://t.co/Q0CO5Hm2Ir pic.twitter.com/j1Knu17MXC

— ICANN (@ICANN) September 15, 2015

It looks like ICANN has reason to believe that passwords and account information for users registered on its ICANN.org website have been hacked. I am on the ICANN email list, and I received a password reset email from the organization with information about why this reset is being requested.

Because of the importance of this matter, I am publishing the email that I received. I presume that people with ICANN online accounts have also received the same email. (more…) → Read More