June 22, 2009 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Iron Mountain Digital, the technology arm of Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), will be participating as a sponsor and exhibitor at the 35th ICANN meeting being held in Sydney, Australia, June 21 – 26. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique domain name identifiers. A major theme of ICANN’s Sydney meeting will be planning for the expansion of the generic top-level domain (gTLD) space. Iron Mountain currently provides escrow services for the majority of gTLDs currently in existence, and plans to offer its Registry Data Escrow services to the registries that will operate the new gTLDs.
ICANN has initiated a unique opportunity for businesses and communities to define and acquire their own gTLDs. The organization is preparing to accept new gTLD applications in early 2010, when potentially hundreds of new gTLDs will be introduced to supplement the current 21 gTLDs in existence, such as .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .mobi, and .tel, as well as the over 250 country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), such as .uk, .de, and .au. With ICANN’s new gTLD program, companies, special interest groups, or geographic regions could create their own gTLDs such as .ironmountain, .music, or .berlin. In addition, Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will become available for non-ASCII, multi-byte character languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic.
To help the Internet community further understand the impact of new gTLDs, why an organization may want to get one, how to apply, and issues around brand protection, Iron Mountain’s Intellectual Property Management group has developed a white paper on the topic, entitled Make Way .com … Here Come the New gTLDs, which can be downloaded at: www.ironmountain.com/gtld.
In 2001, Iron Mountain was the first company ever selected to protect registry data via escrow agreements, and today Iron Mountain is poised to provide Registry Data Escrow services to the registries that will operate the new gTLDs. A registry is a repository operator that stores the master WHOIS database of registrants and domain names under a given TLD; registries are also responsible for their TLD’s root domain name system servers that aide in quick and efficient Internet routing.
“Depositing registry data into secure escrow accounts managed by a neutral third-party such as
Iron Mountain helps safeguard the continuity of service across the Internet,” explains John Boruvka, vice president of intellectual property management at Iron Mountain Digital. “Iron Mountain has proven itself to be a safe, reliable choice for the escrow needs of registries.”
As the new gTLDs are created, their registries will be required to comply with the same data escrow requirements that ICANN maintains for existing gTLDs. This is to ensure the continuation of Domain Name System operations in the event of a physical or business failure of a registry.
As part of their Registry Agreement with ICANN, each registry operator must comply with provisions contained within a Registry Data Escrow Agreement. That agreement requires registries to periodically transfer registry data for their gTLD to a reputable escrow agent to be held in escrow. As a trusted, neutral, third party, Iron Mountain works with registry operators to fulfill this requirement by safeguarding valuable registry data in secure, access controlled escrow accounts.
For more information on Iron Mountain Digital’s Intellectual Property Management services, visit http://www.ironmountain.com/resources/services/icann.asp.
