On December 6th, Chairwoman of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin submitted a letter to Cherine Chalaby and Goran Marby of ICANN, expressing — in no uncertain terms — the challenges to and expectations of the organization in light of the impending General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law that will come into force May of 2018.

2017 proved to be an eventful year with the United States pulling back from ICANN, the advance of opportunistic practices by bad actors, and innovative uses of new gTLDS from some of the biggest global brands.  These three trends are important factors to consider as 2018 domain name strategies are considered.  Domain strategies are unique and these three trends should be top of mind.

According to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai, the Obama era Net Neutrality rules that govern access to the Internet will be repealed on December 14th, 2017. 

While the impact of this action may take some time to directly impact companies and individuals, the FCC vote could signal an important change for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), content creators, and users.