More web censorhip powers for Nominet and registrars

Nominet, the UK’s domanin name registry which oversees .uk domanin name addresses, is searching for new policies regarding domain names suspending and already plans to meet in the next weeks with stakeholders, police, and government bodies; all these moves are made for a better prevention of online criminal activity.

SOCA (The Serious and Organised Crime Agency) has asked Nominet to examine its policies and wants the registry to get domains shut-down powers. Although this is just a proposal, people are already invited to join the discussions on their website and state their opinions about this issue. Moreover, in SOCA document we could see that Nominet should also change their contracts model with registrar and include firmer language; also, the registrars and Nominet should respond faster to domain names suspending requests.

On the other hand, IT lawyers are deeply concerned regarding SOCA’s request while dramatic changes can happen if police officers will have the power to shut down any website before a conviction or something alike. Moreover, this will need judicial overshight and lot of caution should be used while shutting down legitimate websites by mistake could lead to many court actions with “massive damages” requests.

This is not the first time Nominet and registrars will start shutting down websites related to criminal activity – not so long ago they have shut down 1,200 websites that were selling/marketing counterfeit goods. Although this measure can block certain domain names for being used, it’s a news the fact that cybercriminals register domain names in bulk, thus when closing a website, other 5 can born the next day. This action cannot completely stop the online criminal activity but can definitely act as a measure to prevent and even lower the « criminal related » websites.

Nominet is inviting public to state their opinions at policy@nominet.org.uk .

Diaspora launched – should Facebook feel threathened?

Although Diaspora was expected to be launched on 15 September it seems that 24 November was the lucky number for its developers. What it is called “the open alternative to Facebook” has just hit the online environment and comes with a new approach related to users’ privacy, as a response to Facebook’s issues regarding this subject.

Created earlier this year by four US students, Diaspora is now opened for public, however only invited people can join it, at least for now. Should it be a threat for the most popular social networking – Facebook? Its developers say they are adding new features in short time and they are able to identify and fix and problem that might occur, thus taking care of it really fast.

Diaspora has been created with over $200,000 investment from funds raising and it came as a response to the users’ privacy issues found earlier this year on Facebook. Basically, this social network will allow users to control the information shared through social networks thus focusing on promoting their service through the privacy setting features.

A threat or not, Diaspora has had some security problems in September when they made their code publicly available, while it contained lots of security holes that could be easily taken advantage of ; HTML injection in comments vulnerability was one of those. However the developers said the feedback they got from making the code available was great and they could easily managed to secure the website and learn from their mistakes.

In conclusion, Diaspora puts lots of emphasis on the fact it protects better its users’ privacy with a concise reference to Facebook’s problems : “Diaspora doesn’t expose your information to advertisers, or to games you play, or to other websites you visit”. It must take some time though to really demonstrate their abilities of keeping users’ privacy information more secured than any other social networking available right now.

Mark Zuckerberg announced new email service from Facebook

With over 500 million users, Facebook is the most popular social networking website on the planet right now, rivaling with giants like Google and others. Recently, Marck Zuckerberg announced a new service that will rival with Google, Yahoo and other email providers’ services, the Facebook Message. This is a new approach of emails while it aims to create a single hub that gathers under its roof texts, chats and emails.

With over 193 million users, Gmail is seriously feeling threatened by this new service which seems as a perfect alternative to it. However Marck does not expect people to shut down their Gmail/Ymail accounts and jump into this new boat but in time, things are about to be changing, he added. On the other hand, AOL’s official Brad Garlinghouse disagrees that traditional email is about to be doomed while it is way more popular and useful than a profile on a social networking site, regarding on how big this last one is.

Basically, all Facebook’s registered users will benefit from an @facebook.com email address that will gather text messages, instant messages chat or email into one large feed named “social inbox”. Over 70% of Facebook users send messages regularly and this new technology can dramatically make things easier for those persons communicating through different channels, whether we are talking about emails or instant messaging.

This new service features three folders for incoming messages – one for buddies, one for important things like bank details and a junk folder for junk messages. All conversations will be kept in a complete archive. In less words, this new service is meant to rival with top 3 emails providers : Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, all three handling over 750million registered users.

Some users will definitely switch to this service, some will both accept this new email service and their previous one, whether it is Google or Yahoo, and others will still be afraid of the latest rumors regarding Facebook problems with users’ privacy. Only time will tell if this service will really become a hit among Internet users or even an email killer, as some voices are already mentioning it.

Colombian domain (dot co) reaching for the stratosphere

Colombian domain (dot co) reaching for the stratosphere

The Colombian domain extension .co is becoming one of the most popular domain names with people buying new domain name extension. .co domain extension is even set to challenge .co.uk and .com domain name, the two most popular domain extension in the world.

Dot co (.co) domain name extension was awarded to Colombian government but ICANN, the Colombian government gave it to a private firm to run the domain extension. Though it was launched in July 2010, it was awarded to the Colombian government about 10 year ago. Dot co extension has seen registration that well in excess of half a million.

The commercial arrangement between Colombian government and the private firm ensures a quarter of the revenue from .co domain extension goes to the Colombian government. A spokes person for the private firm running the domain extension was quoted as saying

“We are going for a global audience and in three to five years we hope to have three to five million registrations.

“The average person can try up to 20 times to register a domain and companies are starting to come up with long and silly urls,” he said.

So far, 38% of firms registering for a .co domain are in the US, with 20% in Europe, the majority of these from the UK.

For countries lucky enough to have a domain name with a meaning beyond their own borders – such as the tiny South Pacific island of Tuvalu (.tv), domain names can be a rich income source.

The .tv web address has proved a hit with the broadcast industry, while Montenegro’s me has appeal to the social networking generation.

You can discuss the above domain name and other domain name related issues at domain name registration forum.