Featured Blogs

‘Rethinking ICANN’ is Not a One-Man Job

In the midst of the overseeing the biggest change in the history of the Internet's global addressing system, ICANN President Fadi Chehade has inexplicably embarked on a high-stakes battle over the very future of his organization and its relationship to world governments -- at the expense of the private sector's historical role in Internet governance. Worse, Fadi's global government gambit could have serious repercussions for the future of the Internet. more

Radix Wins 3-way Applicant Auction for .website, Donuts wins .lawyer, .fish, .discount

As of today, Innovative Auctions has successfully completed private auctions for a total of 18 contested generic Top-Level Domains, resolving contention for more gTLDs than all other mechanisms combined -- including straight-up withdrawals, private negotiations, and swaps. Here is this week's update. more

Alleged Power Grab: Is Internet Governance Hanging by a Thread?

The Internet Governance Forum in Bali is not without excitement as usual. There is a rumour about a power grab by the technical community. If the "power grab" is true, then I am assuming that this is a response to threats of institutional frameworks governing or interfering with the current status quo. Personally, I feel that this is anti thesis to "enhanced cooperation". If for some reason, ICANN or the US Government is behind the scenes in instigating this move, then I would suggest that it is very bad strategy and will cause more damage than harm to the current status quo. more

ICANN Explains “Brazil Meeting” Initiative

Given the post-Prism political climate, it should come as no surprise that the 8th edition of the UN-initiated Internet Governance Forum (IGF), currently happening in Bali (Indonesia), is showing record-braking attendance with more than 2,000 delegates. With a byline of "building bridges: enhancing multistakeholder cooperation for growth and sustainable development", the meeting's main theme is clearly the need to evolve the current model for Internet Governance. But not quite everyone has the same view on exactly how that should happen.  more

Anti-Consumer ICANN Can Not be Trusted To Protect Domain Registrants’ Property Interests

Domain name registrants who purchase a name in any of the present or pending generic (gTLD) top level domains should think twice before entrusting a domain name property interest to ICANN, even though ICANN levies a money tariff on each domain registration. ICANN has no policy language that indemnifies domain name registrants. ICANN language does not even contemplate the possibility of domain theft by an ICANN registrar. more

Is 47 USC 230(c) an Immunity or an Affirmative Defense (Does it Matter?)

Procedure matters. It matters whether a defendant can dispose of a litigation right out of the gate, or whether the defendant must suffer the slings and arrows of discovery, motions, and trial before presenting a successful defense. Procedurally, once a litigation has been initiated, defendant has a chance to say, "hey, wait a minute, there isn't actually a cause of action here." It's like someone suing me for being tall. Well, yeah, but there is no recognized cause of action against being tall. more

An Internet Governance Update

A lot of people (including me) are pretty upset at revelations of the breadth and scale of NSA spying on the Internet, which has created a great deal of ill will toward the US government? Will this be a turning point in Internet Governance? No, smoke will continue to be blown and nothing will happen. Governments are not monolithic. What people call Internet governance is mostly at the DNS application level, and perhaps the IP address allocation. more

Will Uniform Rapid Suspension Be a Substitute for Defensive Domain Name Registrations?

Many law firms and Intellectual Property departments in charge of managing brands and domain names for their customers or businesses must have had that same question: "how do I protect a brand online under the ICANN new gTLD program?" The first potential answer that is usually offered up to an enquirer is: "the Trademark Clearinghouse does that". As time goes by, and the rules under which the Trademark Clearinghouse operates are better defined and understood this answer becomes clearly fallacious. more

The Overlooked Signals of ccTLDs

Two ccTLD signals should get more attention when we're talking about the domains' benefits. Companies in emerging markets can signal their brands to expats and/or westerners. This ability to take the companies' appeal beyond their immediate, national markets deserves a look and some appreciation. Traditionally, Western companies have been the ones who registered ccTLDs to signal target="_blank" operations in overseas markets, while companies in emerging markets use them to signal their local brands to the local market. more

Video: IETF Chair Jari Arkko on “Pervasive Monitoring and the Internet”

Today at the RIPE 67 event in Athens, Greece, IETF Chair Jari Arkko gave a presentation on "Pervasive Monitoring and the Internet" where he spoke about the ongoing surveillance issues and: What do we know? What are the implications? What can we do? Similar to his earlier article on the topic, Jari looked at the overall issues and spoke about how Internet technology should better support security and privacy. more

The Big Bad Internet

I often think there are only two types of stories about the Internet. One is a continuing story of prodigious technology that continues to shrink in physical size and at the same time continue to dazzle and amaze us... The other is a darker evolving story of the associated vulnerabilities of this technology where we've seen "hacking" turn into organised crime and from there into a scale of sophistication that is sometimes termed "cyber warfare". And in this same darker theme one could add the current set of stories about various forms of state sponsored surveillance and espionage on the net. more

The Internet and OpenStand: The Internet Didn’t Happen by Accident

On the World Standards Day of 2013 it seems appropriate to recognize that on the Internet and throughout the Web, nothing goes anywhere without standards. These technical standards - communication protocols, data exchange formats, and interfaces - allow different computers and networks to talk to each other. They are the lifeblood around the world for multibillion dollar industries that didn't exist 20 years ago. They are born of a collaborative, open process that prides itself on technical expertise and measures success by the depth and breadth of their acceptance across a hodgepodge of vastly different technologies all interconnected to what we euphemistically call "the Global Internet." more

DotGreen Debrief: How the Applicant Auction Helps Mission-Driven Applicants

DotGreen announced on Friday that it has withdrawn its application for .green from ICANN's new gTLD program. We were surprised to hear the news, particularly after all of the effort that DotGreen has put into building a community and a movement around its application. While we at Innovative Auctions agree with Annalisa that the ICANN Last Resort auction would have been a poor choice for the DotGreen Community, we believe that the Applicant Auction is a great tool for single-string applicants who want to see their TLD used for a community purpose. more

DotGreen Is No More

Kevin reported on this last night. As you can see from the reactions to his post a lot of people are surprised, shocked and even quite upset that the DotGreen application has been withdrawn. It's not the only application for the string, which is why it was withdrawn, but to many people in the ICANN space it was the applicant everyone associated with the string. The unfortunate reality of the new TLD process is that money speaks more loudly than anything else. more

The Boundary Between Sec. 230 Immunity and Liability: Jones v. Dirty World Entertainment Recordings

Out in the wilderness of cyberspace is a boundary, marking the limits of Sec. 230 immunity. On the one side roams interactive services hosting third party content immune from liability for that third party content. On the other sides is the frontier, where interactive content hosts and creators meet, merge, and become one. Here host and author blend, collaborating to give rise to new creations. more