.nz Dispute Resolution Service Policy Review

The Domain Name Commission (DNC) has announced a consultation on their Dispute Resolution Service that will run until the beginning of April this year.

They are proposing three minor changes

1. a change where the term Mediator will be defined,
2. Increase the fee for Expert determination from $1800 to $2000 (+GST)
3. Increase the fee for appeals of Expert determination from $6,600 to $7,200 (+GST)

All fairly innocuous, but the entire policy is up for review. It was last reviewed in 2007-2008, and at that time a couple of points were raised.

I'll probably make a submission and I'll be watching the review page and hope to report here on any significant developments

Google Analytics illegal in Germany?

According to reports, the state privacy commissioner in Hamburg, Germany, has decided that Google Analytics should be illegal.

"The free internet service Google Analytics gathers detailed information about website visits via a user’s IP address, sending the data back to Google servers in the United States for processing.

"According to the paper [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung], Caspar and data protection officials in other German states believe this practice should be illegal."

Apparently they intend fining German websites that use Analytics (despite it not being illegal yet). It's like something from the siege of Helengrad.

Let's hope this doesn't spread, because once they take Analytics off us, they will be back for Adsense next, then possibly Piwik

Sources

• The Local (An English language German news site)
• Search engine land blog