Canadian Frank Fowlie has joined ICANN in the role of Ombudsman.

The role is primarily one of conflict resolution, the principal junction being "to provide an independent internal evaluation of complaints by members of the ICANN community who believe that the ICANN staff, Board or an ICANN constituent body has treated them unfairly".

Mr Fowlie has 20 years of experience operating in various agencies of the Canadian government and the United Nations.

The Office of the Ombudsman and the work that the ICANN Ombudsman does are
established by Article V of the ICANN Bylaws.

The ICANN Ombudsman is independent, impartial, and neutral. The Ombudsman's
function is to act as an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) office for the
ICANN community who may wish to lodge a complaint about a staff or board
decision, action or inaction. The purpose of the office is to ensure that
the members of the ICANN community have been treated fairly. The Ombudsman
will act as an impartial officer and will attempt to resolve complaints
about unfair treatment by ICANN using ADR techniques.

Aplus.Net, yesterday announced the launch of two new services that help businesses and individuals protect their online property and business branding efforts.

Aplus.Net's Domain Monitor service monitors the domain name's registry record, and if any changes are made to domain name server, registrar, status or expiration of the entry being monitored, an email is sent to the customer. Domain Monitor not only protects customers from malicious actions but also from technical and clerical errors.

Aplus.Net's Domain Guard service helps businesses guard their website branding by monitoring the new domain name registrations for specific keywords that the customer selects. If a new domain name is registered that contains the monitored keywords, an e-mail is sent to the customer.

Cambridge, Mass. - July 19, 2004 - In March of 2002, Indianapolis bail bondsman Kerry Edwards was an average American looking to build his own Web page to display family photos. More than two years later and on the eve of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Mr. Edwards, the longtime owner of www.KerryEdwards.com, is sitting on a very hot piece of Internet real estate.

Having received unsolicited offers of up to $150,000 for the domain, Mr. Edwards has announced that he will auction the rights to www.KerryEdwards.com to the highest bidder. The auction will be held exclusively at www.Sedo.com, the leading online marketplace for buying and selling Internet domain names, from July 19-July 31, 2004. With the DNC set to begin just days after the start of the auction, Massachusetts-based Sedo.com will open the bidding at $150,000, and there is no reserve price.

Brian Rodgers has no idea why the Bush campaign would let a domain as potentially valuable as Bush2004.com slip out of its grasp.

But since it did, Rodgers, a former resident of President George W. Bush's hometown of Midland, Texas, took the opportunity last fall to snap up the domain, along with identical dot-org and dot-net extensions, for $8,000.

Since then, Rodgers has received calls from Bush supporters who have offered to pay as much as $135,000 for the domains. He declined to sell, citing animosity toward the incumbent president as the chief reason.

"He's a sorry son of a bitch and I'll do anything I can to bring him down," said Rodgers, who now lives outside Austin and is using the domains to house a satire site poking fun at the president.

The United Kingdom is a vibrant economy with a well educated and Internet savvy population, which makes it one of the strongest Internet markets worldwide. Despite widespread Internet use and domain registrations, some of the best bargains in the aftermarket are still to be found in the UK, especially among .co.uk domains. In this article, we will take a look at the reasons for this and also at the UK domain name market in general.

Overall Structure
The .uk ccTLD (including .me.uk, org.uk, .gov.uk) is operated by Nominet, a private, non-profit company, limited by guarantee. Registrations are handled more centrally than for other TLDs, with owners being registered both with a registrar (TAG holder) and Nominet.

Introduction

Nominet UK’s Policy Advisory Board recommended in August 2003 (Meeting 27) and again in April 2004 (Meeting 31) that the .me.uk Rules should be altered to restrict them to registration by individuals (i.e. humans). There was a public consultation from 21 May 2004 to 23 August 2004. Following that consultation, Nominet UK’s board agreed to change the .me.uk Rules.

As the Rules are part of the Terms and Conditions for registrants, they must be advertised on the website for at least 30 days prior to implementation. These changes were put on the website on Monday 25 October and will come into force on Monday 29 November 2004.