Featured Blogs

Capture Before the Letter: What Recent UDRP Decisions Say About Website Evidence

An analysis of 301 WIPO domain disputes finds substantial gaps in Internet Archive coverage, highlighting why preserving dated website evidence before notifying registrants can be critical to establishing bad faith in UDRP proceedings. more

What a Decade of DNS Query Data Tells Us About the Next Algorithm Transition

Monthly ICANN activity reports from top-level domain registries provide a rare, consistent, long-term view of DNS query traffic across registries, offering publicly available, operator-reported data on query volumes over UDP and TCP. more

Every Agent Needs a Name, and the Domain Industry Would Like to Sell It

Competing DNS-based proposals seek to establish verifiable identities for AI agents, raising questions about accountability, interoperability, and the commercial interests of domain industry players positioning themselves to shape the emerging infrastructure for agent identity. more

GDTC 2026 to Focus on AI Data and Network Infrastructure in Beijing

The third Global Data Technology Conference will bring international technical organizations together in Beijing on December 9 to explore AI infrastructure, trusted data spaces, advanced networking, open standards, and global cooperation. more

The Openness Alibi: How the RIR System Closed the Door on Its Own Legitimacy

Lu Heng argues that increasingly restrictive election and participation rules across the five Regional Internet Registries undermine the legitimacy of their governance model, proposing decentralized number coordination as an alternative to centralized institutional authority. more

From Policy to Practice: Project Jake as a Collaborative Laboratory for Domain Registration Data

Project Jake offers an open-source framework for testing domain registration data disclosure, helping stakeholders evaluate authentication, standardized requests and registrar workflows while preserving privacy protections and informing ICANN's future policy decisions. more

The Cyber Pandemic Is Here: Negligence, Not AI, Is the Real Threat

Cyberattacks on supermarkets, utilities and cryptocurrency platforms reveal how unclear responsibilities and institutional failures can expose critical systems, raising questions about accountability across cybersecurity, supply chains and Internet governance. more

More Than 80% of AfriNIC Addresses Detected Outside Africa Linked to a Single Company

New measurements link Cloud Innovation to 81% of AfriNIC IPv4 addresses detected outside Africa, raising questions about regional allocation policies, contractual obligations and the evidence needed to establish compliance. more

Beyond Blind Trust: Rethinking AI Governance for Operational Resilience

As autonomous AI agents gain access to critical systems, a proposed governance framework combines risk-based verification, API restrictions, model provenance and infrastructure safeguards to balance security costs with operational resilience. more

Can an Open-Source Project Have Unregistered Trademark Rights? Lessons from LIBBITCOIN

A WIPO decision involving the LIBBITCOIN open-source project illustrates how community recognition can establish unregistered trademark rights and how documented stewardship can support a successor maintainer's standing in domain name disputes. more

AI Agents and the End of Endpoint Privacy

AI agents with access to decrypted messages pose new challenges for end-to-end encryption, raising questions about endpoint privacy, operating-system permissions and whether users can protect conversations when their correspondents enable AI assistants. more

AFRINIC, Member Rights and Executive Interference

AFRINIC's effort to remove Cloud Innovation from its company register has intensified a dispute over court orders, membership rights, executive authority, and the accountability of Internet number registry administrators. more

Forced Representation: RIPE NCC, “Chinese Disinformation,” and the Fiction of an Inclusive Community

Following a disputed exchange at a RIPE NCC General Meeting, Lu Heng argues that nationality-based dismissal of criticism undermines inclusive participation and raises questions about the legitimacy of community-derived institutional authority. more

The February Case That Could End Africa’s Internet Registry

Cloud Innovation's petition to dissolve AFRINIC returns to Mauritius's Supreme Court in 2027, raising questions about the registry's governance, contested membership rights, legal costs and continuity of Internet address services across Africa. more

Registrars Must Offer DNSSEC, but Fewer Than One in Ten Use It Themselves

A study of 698 ICANN-accredited registrar domains finds just 9.46% have DNSSEC enabled, with European registrars leading adoption. Regional differences remain significant after accounting for registrar size, raising questions about security practices. more