Next week is Valentine’s Day.. so why settle for boring old flowers that wilt or chocolates that melt (and are full of calories)?

Why not go for a proper gift – a nice new personal domain name!

Bert likes the idea, and since he’s a big bad dragon (though probably cuter than most) we thought it was best not to argue with him

What do you think?

Say It With Flowers .. Or Maybe A Domain? is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

Here it is:

Blacknight is Named Irelands Number One Hosting Provider – Blacknight Leads the Irish Market for the Third Year in a Row

Blacknight has been named the leading webhosting company in Ireland for the 3rd year in a row by Hosterstats.com.

The registrar and hosting company which has long been known for its innovation in the domain space and devotion to the Irish market is leading the pack on domain hosting. Serving 27% of the Irish market, Blacknight is number one in hosting for the .com, .net, .org, .info, .ie, .asia and .mobi extensions.

Blacknight is also the largest Eurid registrar, and the only Irish ICANN accredited registrar. According to hosterstats.com “ The fastest growing Internet extensions on Irish hosters are .Com, .IE and .UK.”

Michele Neylon of Blacknight explains the company’s success: “We are the leading hosting company in Ireland because we are incredibly passionate about what we do. We love the Irish market and are committed to providing the best, newest and most innovative hosting products and platforms available. It also doesn’t hurt that we are reasonably priced.”

Blacknight isn’t resting on its laurels; the hosting provider is constantly looking for new ways to improve the hosting experience of their customers.

Neylon continues: “Over the last few months, our technical team have been working on a number of new services, including “no fluff” cloud hosting. Hosting, and cloud hosting in particular is an evolving service for us. We are always looking for ways to deliver an even more exciting product.”

Blacknight’s latest hosting product, Cloud Hosting, utilises cloud based, virtual servers. Cloud Hosting offers options to suit even the most demanding needs and opportunity to wield complete control as well as the ability to back up, restore, reboot in seconds with one click.

Visit http://www.blacknight.com to learn more about Blacknight’s number one hosting services.

Blacknight Leads the Irish Market for the Third Year in a Row is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

We haven’t given away any “shiny objects” in a while, so we thought it was about time that we did.

So what’s the deal?

Whether you’re an existing “fan” of ours on Facebook or not you can enter a draw to win an Xbox 360 which also comes with 1 year’s Xbox Live Gold membership.

So whether you’re a casual gamer or just want to watch Netflix via your Xbox, then this competition is the one for you.

How do you enter?

Simply head on over to our Facebook page and follow the instructions.

We’ll announce the winner in 2 weeks time.

Any questions? Let us know via the comments.

Want To Win An Xbox 360 + Xbox Live Gold Membership? is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

This morning, however, we felt it prudent to take a slightly different route and emailed our clients directly before publishing anything anywhere else.

As has been covered in the media today we had a security issue which led to some customer data being breached.

The below is the official release that we have issued

Blacknight Hit By Security Breach, Reports Minimal Damage

February 1, 2012 – Carlow, Ireland – Irish registrar and hosting company Blacknight experienced a security breach on January 31, 2012.

No financial data has been compromised and the damages are minimal. The breach may however, include client contact details such as email addresses and telephone numbers. Up to 40,000 customers may have been affected.

The breach occurred on January 31, 2012 and was caused by an external compromise.  Blacknight is investigating the issue further and taking appropriate steps to prevent a re-occurrence of the issue. Blacknight have already been in touch with Dataprotection.ie and Iriss.ie in regard to this matter. Blacknight will also be in contact with Gardai for a further investigation.

Michele Neylon of Blacknight explains: “We take our responsibilities to our customers very seriously and have already been in touch with the Data Protection Commissioner and have informed them of the breach. Blacknight is a secure company, however data breaches are a reality that almost every online company must face. We are taking this opportunity to increase our security even further and apologize to our customers for any inconvenience this may cause.”

Blacknight is highly active in the online security community and work with enforcement groups to address and eradicate cyber crime. The company is passionate about educating its customers on ways to identify and prevent cybercrime and is taking measures to increase security even further.

Blacknight are recommending that users update passwords used for Blacknight.com and be mindful of any unusual online account activity.

If you have questions about the breach or require additional information, please contact support@blacknight.com

Security Issues is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

It’s also been incredibly busy, which is why I’m only getting round to posting this now and even now I doubt that anything I post will be that coherent, but I’ll give it a go..

Over the past week or so myself, TJ McIntyre, Simon McGarr, Ian Bergin (and many others) have probably spoken to just about every single media outlet in the country. The discussion and debate surrounding copyright, digital rights has gone from being a minor interest to something that mainstream media are paying attention to.

It’s been wonderful to see over 70 thousand people sign the petition over on StopSOPAIreland.com.

It’s been depressing to see some of the stupid and profane insults being directed at an elected representative on Twitter and elsewhere. You may not agree with Minister Sherlock, but there’s no excuse for some of the offensive insults that have been aimed at him over the last week.

So let’s look at the positives, the negatives and possible future actions. (You’ll have to excuse me if I meander!)

For a long time I’ve felt that our industry as a whole was not taking the right approach when engaging with government.

In many respects we speak a completely different language.

The IP (intellectual property) lobby, however, can be very well organised and knows how to speak the language that politicians and government understand.

They also have another major advantage – unity. Rights holders tend to speak as one voice, while those of us in the digital economy either don’t speak, or when we do we don’t know how to do so in a way that government will understand. Unity is, usually, but a distant dream.

The exception to that of course was the SOPA Blackout, or as Frugal Dad termed it in their rather excellent infographic, “The Day the Internet Stood Still”. And while the huge level of interest in a single day is laudable I’d hope that people don’t forget that SOPA was just one battle. The war is far from over. But maybe using terminology like “battle” and “war” isn’t particularly helpful. It might be a clear metaphor, but it’s confrontational. And confrontation is a big part of the problem.

The debate and discussion around copyright online is not a new one. It’s been going on for years, but it’s only in the last few months that it’s become visible enough for people outside our industry to pay attention.

SOPA and PIPA in the US might be “dead”, but you’re incredibly naive if you  believe that they won’t be replaced with something else. The important thing is that whatever comes along as a replacement should be balanced enough to make both rights holders and the rest of us (even though we are a rights holder) happy, or equally unhappy.. depending on your viewpoint.

The key for those of us involved in the digital industry is to actively engage in constructive dialogue with both the rights holders and our public representatives. But it needs to be both dialogue and constructive. Shouting at each other won’t work.

Last Wednesday  evening I, along with several others from the Irish Internet Association,  met with Minister Sherlock in his offices. We spent about an hour discussing both our concerns and fears, as well as getting a very good feel for the Minister and his government’s views on the issues. We had a very good discussion, which I think all parties found to be educational and productive. Among the concerns we raised was that we hadn’t seen the draft text of the proposed legislation and we also didn’t feel that the safeguards that may exist had been clearly communicated. The text was produced the next day.

However organisations such as ISPAI (Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland – we’re a member) were very concerned by the wording. You can read their letter here (PDF). Around the same time Ireland’s largest online community Boards.ie joined the fray and published an open letter on their site that all visitors had to see before accessing it (kind of like an interstitial advert). And all through this time the number of signatories of the petition on the Stop SOPA Ireland site kept growing..

Yesterday evening an incredible thing happened. The Irish parliament (Dail Eireann) actually debated the proposed Statutory Instrument on copyright. Minister Sherlock and other members of the Dail had a lively discussion about an SI that was originally going to be signed into law without any public debate! It was also made very clear by the Minister that they intend to proceed with signing it next week, which didn’t come as a surprise to me. On a positive note, however, the Minister and his colleagues had considered an alternative wording to the SI that was drafted by TJ McIntyre and Simon McGarr. That alternative wording would have removed a lot of the issues for companies such as ourselves who dread spurious legal threats. No matter how spurious a legal threat might be it still costs us money and time to defend ourselves and our clients against them.

What are the next steps?

In the short term I’m not 100% sure, but things change very quickly in the world of politics.

While it might be nice to think that the government might actually adopt amended wording for the SI, which would go a long way to appeasing companies like ourselves, it’s more likely that the SI will be signed into law in its current form.

However even if that does happen there is still a chance to make a change. Irish politicians are now very aware of the level of interest the Irish public have in this topic. They cannot simply ignore 70 thousand people. Both the IIA and the ISPAI should be able to facilitate dialogue with both industry, government and rights holders. Unfortunately to date IRMA have not shown any willingness to “play ball”.

Maybe the sane way forward is for there to be a comprehensive debate and revision of copyright law in Ireland leading to either modifications to the existing legislation or the introduction of completely new legislation.

What do you think?

Let us know via the comments.

Calm Reasoned Dialogue Helps is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

Mobile is big and getting bigger. If you ignore it as part of your business then you do so at your peril.

Bert, our pet Dragon, wanted to get a takeaway and all he could find was a PDF menu! And while you may not believe in dragons you’ve probably come across restaurant websites that insist on giving you the menu as a PDF only. The Oatmeal sums it up nicely – and if you’re a designer and you haven’t seen that comic, where have you been?

But I digress..

Some projections suggest that there will be over 1 billion users of mobile by 2013. Can you or your business afford to ignore them?

Is your website functional and usable on all mobile devices?

If yes, then well done, if not then read on!

We’ve partnered with GoMobi from Dublin based dotMobi to offer our clients the best mobile solution that money can buy.

What does the system do?

You’ve got two choices. You can either build a mobile site from scratch or give it a “kick start” by letting GoMobi “suck in” your existing site’s content (basically save some time on typing).

Want to know more? Check out the demonstration video here

So how much will this cost?

€3.99 a month or €44.99 a year

How do I order it?

You can order it here.

Do I need a .mobi domain name to use GoMobi?

No. GoMobi will work with any domain name. You just need to let the system know where the new mobile site will be located ie. m.domain.tld or iphone.domain.tld – you decide

Who provides the hosting for the mobile site?

GoMobi does

What about search engines? Will my GoMobi site be search engine friendly?

The solution has been designed to make your mobile site as search engine friendly as possible and follow best practices.

If you have any other questions please let us know! Bert and the team are here to help!

Think Of The Hungry Dragons And Get Mobile is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

The last couple of days have been very “interesting”.

As I mentioned previously, the Irish government intends to enact legislation that could have a “chilling effect”. I went into this a bit in my previous post and far more eloquent people have written extensively about the entire subject.

My key issues with the legislation can be summed up as:

• lack of transparency – if the legislation isn’t so abhorrent then why not let us see the text?
• illogical “logic” being applied to it – Minister Sherlock claims that the legislation already exists. If that is the case why does he feel obligated to introduce more legislation? I’m not a lawyer, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
• Lack of debate (see transparency) – I went into this last time
• Lack of consultation – industry groups such as the IIA (which we are members of) were NOT consulted

Meanwhile, back at the “ranch”, the people have spoken loud and clear.

Over 30 thousand people have signed the petition over on Stop Sopa Ireland. There are at least two other petitions doing the rounds at present, so the number of voices crying an emphatic “NO” (or “hands off” if you want to be more melodramatic) is higher.

Unfortunately, while the Minister has “engaged” at some level his opinion does not appear to have changed. He has been talking to various people over the last couple of days and there’s been emails and phone calls involving some very big companies, politicians and more. Where this will end is anyone’s guess at the moment. Hopefully at some point soon industry will be able to play a role in the drafting of legislation that impacts us and our clients.

I’d love to be optimistic and think that the government might reverse their position, but the reality is that Judge Charleton’s decision in EMI vs UPC is putting the government under pressure. However that pressure is not balanced. Why should the IP lobby have greater rights than you or me? (And for the record, Blacknight holds IP rights that we will protect energetically)

But this morning’s headlines weren’t about any of this.

Ireland has angered the hive, we will be reporting all attacks through this account | #OpIreland #OpMegaUpload

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) January 24, 2012

That single message of less than 140 characters was posted last night at around 9pm Irish time. Shortly afterwards several Irish government sites were effectively taken offline in an attack by “Anonymous“. The sites weren’t “hacked”. Any personal data stored on servers was not tampered with. The sites were simply unreachable due to a DDOS attack.

While Anonymous may have launched / orchestrated these attacks in “support” of our campaign against “Irish SOPA” I wouldn’t endorse their actions. Not for a minute.

Why not?

Because it distracts people and causes more confusion. Politicians and journalists have enough difficulty dealing with technology as it is without adding to the confusion.

“Cyber-activism” might be understood by a netizen, but far too often government sees cyber-activism as cyber-terrorism. We’re an internet company, so “obviously” we’re somehow linked to the negatives as well as the positives ..

TJ McIntyre is more eloquent on the subject

So let’s see what the next chapter in this saga will be ..

Related articles

• Stop Ireland’s SOPA (ocaoimh.ie)
• EMI is suing the Irish government for not tackling music piracy (thenextweb.com)

Anonymous Targets Irish Government Sites In Response To “Irish SOPA” is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

Remember SOPA?

We didn’t like it and it was pretty clear that a lot of internet users weren’t too happy about it either.

However SOPA was being debated openly in Congress. There was discussion. There were public hearings. There was also a massive backlash of public opinion, but that is one of the beauties of democracy.

Democracy.

We are an internet company not a political lobbying group, but this is not the first time that I’ve written a post for our blog where I’ve used that word.

It’s a word that many of us take for granted.

It’s a concept that many of us cherish, even without realising it. I guess the definition kind of explains that:

Democracy in its purest or most ideal form would be a society in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives 

In Ireland, however, it appears that we will not be given the opportunity to engage in a public debate about the introduction of very similar legislation to the now defunct SOPA.

The Minister, in this case Sean Sherlock, appears to be trying to introduce the legislation via ministerial order. What that means is that our public representatives won’t even be given the opportunity to vote on it, never mind actually debating it.

What is the legislation going to say exactly?

This is part of the problem. We know that the Minister intends to sign it into law, but the exact wording of the legislation hasn’t been shared. TJ McIntyre has provided an FAQ for those of us who have difficulty translating legal English into something we can actually understand and relate to.

It is probably going to be based on text similar to this:

 3. The Act of 2000 is hereby amended by the insertion of the following subsection after subsection (5) of section 40:

        (5A)(a) without prejudice to subsections (3) and (4), the owner of the copyright in the work concerned may apply to the High Court for an injunction against a person who provides facilities referred to in subsection (3) where those facilities are being used by one or more third parties to infringe the copyright in that work.

        (b) In considering an application for an injunction under this subsection, the court shall have due regard to the rights of any third party likely to be affected and the court shall make such directions (including, where appropriate, a direction requiring a third party to be put on notice of the application) as the court may deem necessary or appropriate in all the circumstances.

What that translates into in plain English is that we, a hosting provider, could be held liable for a copyright infringement that we knew nothing about. Of course it goes further than that, as it could be (ab)used and force us, and others in industry, to either block access (filter) your internet connection or disable access to entire websites and domains. Or taking it further, if a rights holder found an infringing photo on Facebook they could demand that the site be blocked!

Ireland has a healthy digital economy, an economy that we at Blacknight are proud to be part of. International companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Ebay, Paypal and many many more have chosen Ireland as their European home. The introduction of this sort of legislation without proper debate and discussion and without the full ramifications of the legislation being considered could only have  negative impact on the digital industry and the Irish economy as a whole. Innovation in a digital age should be allowed to flourish. Intellectual property rights holders are, of course, entitled to protections, but those protections should not be granted at the behest of freedom of speech and unreasonable impact on others.

With that in mind several of us have got together to organise a petition to the Minister to ask him NOT to enact any legislation at this time.

If you want to find out more please head over to Stop SOPA Ireland.

Any questions or feedback? Let us know via the comments

(Dáil image via Wikipedia)

Say No To An Irish SOPA Style Law Say Yes To Democracy is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

One of the great things about being an international company is you get to celebrate lots more holidays. Of course it doesn’t generally mean you get to take time off for them.

We’ve got customers in over 100 countries around the world

So today (the 23rd of January 2012)  it’s the Chinese new year and far be it from us to miss out on a chance to celebrate a new year we’re continuing our year of the Dragon erm I mean Cloud discount. When a country has nearly 20% of the worlds population and the holiday involves a dragon .. you just know we’re going to have to mention it …. and yes Bert has returned to help us celebrate it.

So if you want to avail of some great savings on a cloud hosting plan look no further than our cloud store use code “cloudyear” and get 20% off. You can read more about the Year of the Cloud here

While you’re at it maybe you’d like to get a .cn.com maybe now is the time to break into the huge market that is China.

Happy new year again is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies

Image via CrunchBase

Personally I love blogging. I write for the company blog on a regular basis, but I also write on several other blogs.

However I’d be the first to admit that I am not afraid of taking advantage of whatever tools I can find to help speed up the process and improve it.

Zemanta, in my opinion, is probably the most powerful and useful tool in my personal blogging “toolbox”.

You might have noticed the Zemanta icon on some of our blog posts in the past. It’s also the tool we use to help suggest “related” articles from sources we trust that end up in the footer of our posts here.

So what exactly is Zemanta?

Zemanta is a service which works by scanning your content as you write it and then makes “intelligent” suggestions for images, related links and tags.

That’s a very simplistic overview. In reality there’s quite a bit more “under the hood”.

Before getting under the hood, let’s cover a couple of the more basic things.

How do you get it?

You can just go here and install one of the browser plugins, or the plugin for your content management or blogging software.

How much does it cost?

Nothing. It’s 100% free.

Do I need to signup for an account to use it?

No, but if you do create an account you’ll be able to access the more powerful tools. See screenshot below (click to enlarge)

Zemanta preferences screen

You can also tell the system more about you, including things like your Flickr ID, Twitter handle and which sites you author.

Zemanta personalisation

Zemanta Flickr

And since the system works by suggesting content for you, including tags, photos and links, the more information you give it the more relevant the suggestions will be and the more time you’ll save, while also improving your blog writing.

Zemanta Monetisation via Amazon US

It also allows you to make money, in theory at least, as it hooks into the Amazon (US) affiliate program.

We spoke to Andraz from Zemanta a while back on the Technology.ie podcast. You can catch that interview here.

We’ve also been talking to Zemanta more recently about some of their upcoming services and all I can say is “wow!”. They’ve got some really cool things in the pipeline.

If you’re already using Zemanta, how do you find it?

If you’re a new user, what do you think?

Let us know via the comments!

Use Zemanta To Improve Your Blogging is an article from Blacknight Blog - News, tips & offers from Ireland's leading hosting & domain registration companies