Featured Blogs

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

Transparency: The Internet’s Only Currency

I don't know about you, but I am angry. I am angry with the state of the world and our incapacity to do something about it. I am angrier because, in all this, I thought that the Internet would be the place where we would see collective action at its best. But, that's not going to happen. At least, anytime soon. Is it time to admit that the Internet has turned toxic? No. But, it is time to ask ourselves the question... more

Vulnerabilities of Weak Marks and Uncurated Websites

Dictionary words, alone, combined as phrases, modified by other parts of speech, and single letters that function as marks also retain in parallel their common associations that others may use without offending third-party rights. As a rule of thumb, generic terms are not registrable as marks until they perceivably cross a threshold to suggestive and higher classifications. more

ICANN Issues Guidance to Domain Registrars and Registries in Light of Hurricane Maria

ICANN has issued a guidance notice to registrars and registries in relation to Hurricane Maria, which caused massive damage throughout the Caribbean. This isn't the first time that this has happened, with a previous incident in Asia triggering action from both registrars and registries to give domain name registrants impacted by the natural disaster breathing space. more

UDRPs Filed - Brand Owners Take Note

After being in the domain industry for over 15 years, there aren't too many things that catch me by surprise, but recently a few UDRP filings have me scratching my head. Both ivi.com and ktg.com have had UDRPs filed against them, and I have to say for anyone holding a valuable domain name, it's a cautionary tale and one that should have folks paying attention to the outcome of each. more

When UDRP Consolidation Requests Go Too Far

Although including multiple domain names in a single UDRP complaint can be a very efficient way for a trademark owner to combat cybersquatting, doing so is not always appropriate. One particularly egregious example involves a case that originally included 77 domain names -- none of which the UDRP panel ordered transferred to the trademark owner, simply because consolidation against the multiple registrants of the domain names was improper. more

Your Online Freedoms are Under Threat - 2017 Freedom on the Net Report

As more people get online every day, Internet Freedom is facing a global decline for the 7th year in a row. Today, Freedom House released their 2017 Freedom on the Net report, one of the most comprehensive assessments of countries' performance regarding online freedoms. The Internet Society is one of the supporters of this report. We think it brings solid and needed evidence-based data in an area that fundamentally impacts user trust. more