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Corporate and Premier Services News
Spring 2007

May 14th 2007 marks a special anniversary for Webnames.ca, and the Canadian Internet. Twenty years ago on this date, Webnames.ca director John Demco founded the .CA country code domain name to preserve Canadian identity on the Internet. Today there are over 830,000 .CA domain names registered and we're set to hit the one million mark by the end of 2007. Impressive for a country with fewer than 33 million people. In fact, .CA is the seventh most represented extension on Google, behind only .UK among country codes. We're really proud that Canadian identity is thriving of the Internet, and of the part John played in getting us there.

At a Glance - History and Facts about .CA

  • .CA was allocated by Jon Postel, operator of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), to John Demco of the University of British Columbia (UBC) on May 14th, 1987
  • Demco conceived and managed the .CA registry until December 2000 on a volunteer basis
  • .CA domain names were free to register until 2000
  • CIRA assumed operation of the .CA ccTLD on December 1, 2000 from Demco
  • .CA ranks 13th among country codes domain names in popularity
  • 71% percent of Canadians prefer using the .CA extension over all others
  • There are more than 90 certified registrars (including Webnames.ca) who together employ thousands of people across Canada

Introducing - New Corporate Representative

Webnames.ca is delighted to welcome Nicholas Caristinos to our Corporate and Premier Services Group. Nicholas has been helping customers with technical issues as a member of our Webnames.ca's Customer Support team for two years, and is bringing his expertise to assisting Corporate clients with everything from developing a corporate domain name strategy, to protecting brands and valuable intellectual property, to conducting account reviews, domain registrations, renewals and DNS modifications.

To request an account review, or learn more about the services available to Corporate clients, speak to Nicholas or Michael toll free at 1-866-470-6820 or by emailing corporate@webnames.ca.

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Corporate Care News

We would like to take this opportunity to review a few of the benefits of being a Webnames.ca Corporate and Premier Services customer.

Service Agreement

A Corporate Services Agreement describing Webnames.ca's service standards, support guarantees and responsibilities is now available to all Corporate customers. This agreement provides you an objective basis for gauging our effectiveness and promise of premium service.

After Hours Support

Exclusive access to after-hours technical support is available to Corporate customers in the event of a service interruption. If one of your primary domain names is not resolving, or you cannot send or receive email and suspect your domain name or DNS to be the cause, call toll-free 1-800-882-1958 between the hours of 5pm to 6am Pacific Standard Time for operator assistance . Your issue will then be relayed to a Webnames.ca technician for immediate technical assistance.

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Participate in Managing Canada's Internet Presence

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is gearing up for their 2007 Board of Directors election and want you to participate!

The September election will feature a split ballot of candidates from the Final Nomination Committee Slate (individuals chosen by CIRA's Nomination Committee from public applications) and the Final Members' Slate (individuals nominated and supported directly by CIRA members like you). Anyone is eligible to nominate an individual or apply to be considered by the Nomination Committee. A total of four Directors will be elected by CIRA members: three Directors from the Final Nomination Committee Slate and one Director from the Final Members' Slate.

Nominations will be accepted online until 6:00pm Ottawa time on Monday, May 21, 2007 with voting taking place September 6-13, 2007.

More about CIRA and membership

CIRA is a non-profit, member-driven organization responsible for the management of Canada's .CA domain namespace, the policies that support Canada's Internet community, and Canadian involvement in international Internet governance. A CIRA Member is someone who holds a .CA domain and has chosen to become a part of CIRA's Membership.

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Recent Domain Disputes and Resolutions

  • GoDaddy.com, Inc. wins [PDF] a dispute over godaddy.ca
  • Yellow Pages Group loses [PDF] a dispute over yellowpage.ca
  • The Motley Fool Inc. loses a dispute over fools.com
  • Musician's Friend, Inc. wins [PDF] a dispute over musiciansfriend.ca
  • Motorola loses a dispute over motorazr.com
  • Trailwest Online wins [PDF] a dispute over trailpeak.ca
  • Registry operator Neustar loses a dispute over neu-star.com
  • Craigslist wins [PDF] a dispute over craigslist.ca
  • Best Western International wins [PDF] a dispute over best-western.ca
  • The CBC wins [PDF] a dispute over hockeynightincanada.ca
  • Country music star Keith Urban has filed a lawsuit against a New Jersey man named Keith D. Urban over the domain name keithurban.com

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Domain Industry News

CIRA Issues Fraud Alert - CIRA has issued a fraud alert, advising .ca domain holders not to respond to communications from German-based company DAD Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH under the confusing banner of the Registre Internet du Canada (Canadian Internet Registry). According to CIRA: "The scam is targeting CIRA Registrants in Quebec with French language faxes or letters containing official looking forms requesting Registrant contact information. While the forms appear to be required to update domain name Registration records, they are actually luring unsuspecting Registrants into a $1457 package of marketing services offered by DAD Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH."

.ASIA Domain To Launch - DotAsia Organization, registry operator for the .asia domain for the Asia/Pacific region, will begin accepting .asia domain name applications in June. According to DotAsia documents, the launch will begin with a sunrise process separated into three main phases: the first for governments, the second for Registered Mark owners, and the third for registered companies.

.EU Domain Is One Year Old - The .eu domain for Europe has turned one year old, and has more than 2.5 million registrations making it the third most popular European TLD, after .uk and .de.

ICANN Board Rejects .XXX Domain Application - By a 9-5 vote with one abstention, the ICANN Board has rejected the .xxx domain application from ICM Registry. The decision came nearly seven years after the proposal was first made.

On a related note, the Government of Canada commented on the proposed .xxx domain agreement, expressing its concern that ICANN may venture beyond its core technical functions toward "an ongoing policy-making and oversight role governing Internet content."

.MOBI Domain Tops 500,000 - DotMobi, the registry operator for the .mobi domain, has announced more than 500,000 .mobi domain names have been registered in 104 countries since launching last fall.

Canadian Privacy Commissioner Issues Finding On Registrant ID Requirements Michael Geist (Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa) recently blogged a finding by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in which the Assistant Commissioner comments that it is appropriate for a domain registrar to require personal identification in order to change the administrative email address for a domain registration.

VeriSign to Strengthen its Internet Infrastructure - VeriSign has announced an initiative to expand and diversify the capacity of its global Internet infrastructure by ten times by the year 2010. It plans to increase its DNS query capacity from 400 billion queries a day to over 4 trillion queries a day, and to increase bandwidth from 20 Gbps to more than 200 Gbps.

Registrars Surveyed on Domain Name Suspension - CNET News.com has surveyed a number of registrars following GoDaddy's action last week to suspend service to security site Seclists.org. Among the questions was: under what circumstances will you suspend a customer's domain name based on the content of his or her Web site, in the absence of a court order? GoDaddy participated in the survey.

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Around the Office ...

I had the unfortunate experience of spilling an entire cup of tea on my keyboard last Monday morning. This may be as much a testimonial to Dell's products that I am writing this on the same keyboard today, but here is my recipe for keyboard recovery in the event of a spill:

  1. Unplug the keyboard immediately.
  2. Go to the kitchen sink, shake and drain off as much off the liquid as you can.
  3. Rinse the entire keyboard under the sink for 10-15 seconds - shake, drain and repeat.
  4. Put the keyboard in the dishwasher on the dry cycle - repeat twice.
  5. Open the back of the keyboard (removed 15 screws to do this) and let sit for approximately four days.
  6. Replace the back of the keyboard with whatever screws you have left (only 6 of 15 screws remained for some reason).
  7. Plug keyboard back in and start typing.

- Stephen Smith, Webnames.ca President

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