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Press Release: Irish registrar says New RAA is a step in the right direction

Following up on my blog post from earlier we just sent this out to the media: Blacknight Announce New ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement Irish registrar says New RAA is a step in the right direction. April 23, 2013 – Carlow, Ireland – Leading Irish domain registrar Blacknight, announces positive changes to the New ICANN Registrar [...]

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New Domain Registration Agreement Recognises Local Law and Privacy

I’ve spoken about the RAA (Registrar Accreditation Agreement) in the past. I haven’t always been too positive about the planned changes to the contract and considering some of the things we were being asked to do my reaction was, in my view, quite reasonable. Not only did some versions of the text demand far too [...]

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i2coalition + blacknight

Don’t Ignore The Internet’s Nuts and Bolts

The internet as we know it is under constant attack. I don’t mean by DDOS or other “charming” things, though it’d be incredibly dumb to ignore them. What I’m talking about is the ongoing battle between the “open” and “free”. What I’m talking about is the balance between industry “self-regulation” vs government’s “top down” regulation [...]

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Talking Policy & Industry Self-Regulation With CloudFlare

There are a few topics and themes that I tend to spend more time talking about than others .. One of them is internet policy and how the Irish government is failing us. (See my previous article to get a taste of this) They simply do not turn up. So when I was in Las [...]

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ICANN Pulls The Trigger on RAA Prematurely

Blacknight are an ICANN accredited domain registrar. We’re the only Irish company to have ever been accredited by ICANN and it’s something we’re very proud of. But what on earth does that actually mean? It means that we have contracts and agreements directly with both ICANN and the domain name registries (Verisign, Afilias, Neustar, etc.). [...]

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Blacknight Goes on Offensive Against Fake Pharma, Irish registrar announces partnership with LegitScript

Going on Offensive Against Fake Pharma, Irish registrar announces partnership with LegitScript

I love the internet. I believe in it. I believe that it can make our lives better, improve our choices, help us to gain access to information quickly and easily and also help us to save money. But there’s also a “dark side” and ugly “underbelly”. There’s a very large part of the internet that [...]

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Blacknight Urges ICANN to Reconsider “Closed Generic” TLDs

We’ve posted about “closed generics” a few times in the past. What are they? Basically they’re applications for new tlds that have two characteristics: the string (the bit on the right of the dot) is very generic the applicant has stated that they don’t plan on allowing the public to register domains using the extension [...]

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Don

ICANN Should Clarify Position On Key Word New TLDs

Back in September a number of domain name industry leaders, including ourselves, wrote to ICANN to express our deep felt concerns about some companies declared plans for generic domain name extensions. We have sent ICANN another letter this week, which is included below and are also distributing a press release about it today. Here’s the [...]

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European regional registrar / registry meeting Amsterdam

Amsterdam, Registrars, Registries, Van Gogh and More

Tomorrow morning I’m heading off to Amsterdam. I wish it was just to enjoy the city, to soak a bit of culture and to hangout with friends, but it’s for work. ICANN is convening a regional meeting in the Dutch capital for registrars (companies like us), registries (think Neusta, Afilias or Verisign) and prospective domain [...]

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Press Release: Michele Neylon of Blacknight Elected Secretary of ICANN Registrar Stakeholder Group

Most of the press releases we put out are about general company news or events and things that we are participating in. However from time to time there is a little bit of news that is a bit more personal. Today is one of those days. I’m delighted to have been elected as Secretary to [...]

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Blacknight attending ICANN 45 in Toronto

ICANN Toronto Quick Preview

We’ll be attending the ICANN meeting in Toronto next week. It’s the 3rd ICANN public meeting this year and as always the schedule is very busy. Choosing which sessions to attend is always a challenge at ICANN public meetings. I’ll be representing Blacknight as usual. We are actively involved in the Registrar Stakeholder Group, which [...]

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Press Release: Blacknight to ICANN – The Registration of Generic Key Word TLDs Should Be Available to All People

Following on from our post about our letter to ICANN we issued the following press release earlier this morning. September 26, 2012 – Carlow, Ireland – Irish registrar and hosting company Blacknight have sent an objection letter to ICANN concerning several new gTLD applications, which may seek to operate non-trademarked generic word TLDs in a [...]

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