From Lesley Cowley, chief executive at Nominet

Welcome to the October edition of Nominet News. A lot has happened in the Internet industry since the last issue, including a new agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the US Department of Commerce. As ever, this puts Internet Governance at the forefront of our minds, especially as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) fast approaches. More ›

By Emily Taylor, director of legal and policy at Nominet and member of the Advisory Group for the Internet Governance Forum

On 9 October 2006 we hosted “The road to Athens”, a UK Internet governance stakeholder event at the RICS Venues Centre in London, which was instigated, organised and sponsored by Nominet.

A pre-cursor to the upcoming world Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens (30 October - 2 November), the forum built on our strategy of playing a leading role in the worldwide discussion of Internet Governance. This sees us working closely with organisations such as the United Nations, ICANN and worldwide domain name registry organisations as well as the IGF. More ›

By Emily Taylor, director of legal and policy at Nominet

With a new agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the US Department of Commerce confirmed, the organisation which oversees the Internet may now be in a position to become more autonomous.

Known as the ‘Joint Project Agreement’, the arrangement replaces the old ‘memorandum of understanding’ (MoU) which expired at the end of September 2006. Described by Dr Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN, as “a major step forward for ICANN autonomy”, the agreement confirms that the US government will hand control of the Internet to the private sector in the future. More ›

To mark the Internet Watch Foundation’s tenth anniversary and to raise awareness of its work combating child abuse on the Internet, you are cordially invited to a series of national conferences to learn about its work and join discussions.

Home Office Minister, Vernon Coaker MP will be speaking at the launch conference. Each of the following events, which begin at 11.00am, will be hosted by a local parliamentarian, feature an in-depth presentation by the IWF and lead into a panel discussion inviting comment and questions from delegates. Refreshments and a buffet will be available and the event should finish at around 1.30pm. Full details will be sent following registration. More ›

The end of September saw the start of open registration for .mobi, mobile phone-specific website addresses. The promise of the .mobi domain name is to deliver better, more streamlined Internet content to mobile devices through content optimisation. More ›

On 8 August 2006, we took industry-leading action to prevent ‘domain tasting’, which has put a stop to the potential abuse of our automated registration service. Domain tasting, which has been a growing issue for .com for over a year, is the practice of registering domain names, assessing revenue generation potential and, if they create an insufficient return, deleting the domain names before the registry requests payment. Through the introduction of a new policy, we put a limit on the number of registrations that can be deleted by registrars. More ›

We are pleased to report the outcomes of the 2006 AGM held on 27 September 2006.

The first resolution, that the annual report and accounts of the Company for the financial year ended 30 September 2005 be received, was passed on a show of hands poll. More ›

On 1 October 2006, charges for registrant transfers and registration agent changes were significantly lowered.

Our Registrant Services team has continued to make significant improvements to the processing of tag changes and registrant transfers. As a result, we are able to process these more quickly and efficiently, leading to price reductions.

The new fees are as follows: More ›