Featured Blogs

Artful Misrepresentations of UDRP Jurisprudence

The jurisprudence applied in adjudicating disputes between mark owners and domain name holders under the Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) is essentially a system that has developed from the ground up; it is Panel-made law based on construing a simple set of propositions unchanged since the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) implemented them in 1999. Its strength lies in its being a consensus-based rather than dictated jurisprudence. more

The Kaljarund Commission: Building Bridges Over Troubled Cyber-Water

There was one message which overshadowed all discussions at the 5th Global Conference on Cyber Space (GCCS) in New Delhi in November 2017: Instability in cyberspace is as dangerous as climate change. With four billion Internet users and five trillion dollars annually in digital transactions, instability in cyberspace has the potential to ruin the world. more

Net Neutrality: Both Sides Make Some Ridiculous Claims

We've all heard too much about NN, which I've been reporting for 20 years. I support it because I don't want Randall Stephenson of AT&T deciding what I should watch on TV. The long-run effect is negative. The claims from some people who agree with me are ridiculous. "According to former FCC commissioner Michael Copps, ending net neutrality will end the Internet as we know it." Michael knows I respect him, but... more

Give Network Administrators a Zero-Impact Firmware Update Solution

Struggles with the firmware update process are well known by Network Administrators in the cable industry. The copious tasks required to complete an end-to-end firmware update are painstaking and error-prone, often making the investment not worth the time it takes to complete the work... imagine doing these manual tasks over and over for hundreds to thousands of devices, many from different vendors, each with its own unique device update path! Clearly, this complex challenge needs a solution. more

Domain Name Disputes Deja Vu: Panavision.com and Panavision.org

History, it has been said, repeats itself. The same can be said of domain name disputes, as demonstrated by a pair of cases involving the same trademark ("Panavision") filed more than 20 years apart with remarkably similar facts. I can't hear the name "Panavision" without thinking about the origins of domain name disputes, so a decision involving panavision.org - coming more than two decades after litigation commenced over panavision.com - immediately made me nostalgic. more

An Example of Effective Government Support for New Communication Technology

The October Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on the commercial satellite industry provides a current example of effective government support of new communication technology. The hearing focused on broadband access, primarily from low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Witnesses from four companies - Intelsat, OneWeb, ViaSat and SpaceX - testified and the tone of the hearing was set by the opening statements of Committee Chairman John Thune and Ranking Member Bill Nelson. more

New gTLDs and Concept of a Universal Directory

The concept of a universal directory does not exist on the Internet. There are thousands of directories of all kinds and online Yellow Pages in many countries. All of these websites are different, accessed differently and operated differently: for example, Yellow Pages in France are different from their equivalent in Spain and Italy. There is no standard directory operated behind the same name worldwide. more

ARIN Takes Steps Toward Greater Diversity

For some time, the board of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has expressed a desire to have greater diversity across its leadership structures. Finally, steps are being taken to have representation that better reflects the diversity of the ARIN community... since ARIN was founded on April 18, 1997, two of its main oversight structures -- the Board of Trustees and Advisory Council -- have only been populated with persons from North America. At last, that changes. more

Significant Increase in Registry Locked Names Across Top 500 Most Highly-Trafficked Sites

A recent study conducted by Brandsight has revealed that 28% of the top 500 most-highly trafficked sites now employ registry locking. In contrast, only 15% of the top 500 most highly-trafficked sites were leveraging registry locking in 2013. Back in 2013, only 356 of the top 500 most-highly trafficked sites could be registry locked, but that number has also risen significantly so that now 396 of the top 500 most-highly trafficked sites are eligible. more

Long-held Domain Names Transferred to Complainants

There has lately been a number of long-held investor registered domain names transferred to complainants under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Two of the domain names were registered 23 years ago. This has provoked several commentators to complain that the UDRP is tilted in favor of mark owners and trademark-friendly panelists expressing hostility to the domain industry. I think we have to dig deeper than this. more

DDOS and the DNS

The Mirai DDOS attack happened just over a year ago, on the 21st October 2016. The attack was certainly a major landmark regarding the sorry history of "landmark" DDOS attacks on the Internet. It's up there with the Morris Worm of 1988, Slammer of 2002, Sapphine/Slammer of 2009 and of course Conficker in 2008. What made the Mirai attack so special? more

Internet Religious Wars: Net Neutrality Episode

Turning network technical protocols into religion seems like an inherently bad idea -- transient and unstable at best. However, it happens. More than 40 years ago, the world of legacy telecommunications and network design formalism started the tendency with OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Networks). A few years later, the academic research community did it with their myriad host-to-host datagram protocols -- eventually calling one "the Internet." more

Caribbean Businesses Can Make Good Use of Free DNS Security

IBM Security, Packet Clearing House (PCH) and Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) unveiled a free Domain Name System (DNS) service designed to protect all Internet users from a wide range of common cyber threats. Launched on November 16 with simultaneous press events in London, Maputo and New York, the public DNS resolver has strong privacy and security features built-in and can be enabled with a few changes to network settings, as outlined on the organisation's website. more

The FCC is Taking the Right Step

Today's announcement from the Commission that it intends to roll back the exercise of Title II utility-style regulation over "any person engaged in the provision of broadband internet access service" at its 14 December meeting is the right step. As a veteran of 40 years of internet related regulatory wars in the FCC and numerous other venues, the Commission's decision and the actual Rules promulgated in the February 2015 Report & Order stand among the most ill-considered application of authority and regulatory gerrymandering ever witnessed. more

Could SNET Become Cuba’s Guifi.net?

In an earlier post, I described Havana's community network, SNET, and wondered what it could become if the government and ETECSA were willing to legitimatize and support it. Spain's Guifi.net provides a possible answer to that question. Guifi.net is said to be the largest community network in the world. It began in 2004 and has grown to have 34,165 nodes online with 16,758 planned, 407 building, 612 testing and 4,043 inactive. more