Featured Blogs

DNSSEC Becomes a Reality Today at ICANN Brussels

Attendees at the public ICANN meeting in Brussels today heard from over two dozen companies that have implemented or are planning to support DNSSEC, the next-generation standard protocol for secured domain names. It is clearer than ever before that DNSSEC is becoming a reality. more

Why ICANN Doesn’t Need to Go Back to the GAC Over Dot-XXX

This Friday, it looks as though the ICANN Board will follow the clear conclusions drawn by its independent review and approve dot-xxx. Given the importance of the first use of the review process, the importance of the Board being seen to be accountable and the fact that the community was pretty unanimous in recent public comment, it is pretty much the only reasonable course of action. The question then is: how do things move forward? more

Google’s “Deeply Disturbing Invasion of Privacy” Being Investigated by Connecticut AG

What happens to companies when they get too big for their own good? Do they inadvertently do things that potentially harm our privacy (think Facebook)? Or, do they simply make mistakes that violate our privacy? Well, last month Google revealed that its Street View cars "mistakenly" captured content flowing over wireless networks -- a potential invasion of privacy. more

Time to Regulate Google?

Should Google's provision of information services be regulated? Yes, if the decision is based on Google's own standards for determining whether to regulate tele-information companies. In recent comments to the FCC, Google described "broadband openness" rules, aka net neutrality, as a "fundamental necessity." Without such rules, the search engine giant, aka Big Search, fears that broadband providers would "promote only their own pecuniary interests over the far broader interests of Internet users..." As the Wall Street Journal noted last year, however, Google engages in the same type of discriminatory service practices they want the federal government to prohibit... more

Multiple (Even Random or Garbled) Domain Names to Bypass Spam Filters Not a Violation

The California Supreme Court issued its opinion in Kleffman v. Vonage, a case certified from the Ninth Circuit. The California Supreme Court held that the transmission of "commercial e-mail advertisements from multiple domain names for the purpose of bypassing spam filters" does not violate California's spam statute. more

FCC: We Will Regulate Broadband

Since the dust has settled from a stinging defeat in federal court, the FCC has decided to move on its own to settle the broadband regulation dispute. With a 3-2 vote the commission issued a Notice of Inquiry that would set the stage for more regulatory authority of broadband. It seems ironic that the motivating factor was the court case brought by Comcast in Federal District Court to immobilize the FCC's efforts to sanction the service provider from throttling Bit Torrent, file sharing customers. more

A Modest Proposal for ICANN

When it comes to accountability, ICANN would rather be compared to other U.S. nonprofit companies than to the regulatory bodies it more closely resembles. If they truly wish to be treated like a nonprofit, rather than a regulator, there is a very simple solution: make all contributions strictly voluntary. more

KnujOn Releases Internet “Doomsday Book”

Reporting from Brussels, Belgium. Since January KnujOn has been conducing its own audit of ICANN Registrar contractual compliance and illicit commerce within the generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) space. Our findings are shocking. more

When Having a Voice Isn’t Enough

In Brussels on Friday, an esteemed panel of experts got together to discuss the challenge of improving ICANN's accountability. It's just too bad nobody from ICANN came by to hear it. ... While their prescriptions varied widely, the panelists were remarkably similar in their diagnoses - namely, that ICANN has yet to meet the fundamental challenge of making its board and staff accountable and answerable to the community that it is intended to serve. more

Top Level Domains and a Signed Root

With DNSSEC for the root zone going into production in a couple of weeks, it is now possible for Top Level Domain (TLD) managers to submit their Delegation Signer (DS) information to IANA. But what does this really mean for a TLD? In this post we're going to try to sort that out. more

BP and Incident Response: How Well Do Oil and Security Mix?

BP and the Oil Industry are taking a lot of heat these days - much of it rightly so. Moving beyond the drama and evaluating the overall response of BP and others reinforces much of what is taught in incident response training and preparation... by showing the outcomes when one does not respond well. This is probably the most important incident that the responders involved will deal with in their professional lives. For those of us working to protect Internet Infrastructure and resources there are useful lessons as we consider what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and their response effort. more

Towards a DNSCERT Definition

To mix metaphors, my e-mail has been ringing off the hook after my previous article and I've had to think deep and difficult thoughts about what we really mean by DNSCERT, and whether DNS-OARC really has the capability or really can grow the capability to operate such a thing. I've had some discussions with ICANN and with members of the DNS-OARC board and staff, and it's time I checkpointed the current state of my thinking about all this. more

New Cyber Security Bill Could Increase Power of President and DHS

Introduced by ranking Senate members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, S.3480 is intended to create an Office of Cyber Policy in the executive branch of the government, confirmed by the Senate and ultimately reporting to the president. Senators Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Tom Carper introduced the bill publicly on June 10, and a critical part of the bill is that critical infrastructure networks such as electricity grids, financial systems and telecommunications networks need to cooperate with the Office of Cyber Policy. more

New Book on Domain Name Regulation

My book, "The Current State of Domain Name Regulation: Domain Names as Second Class Citizens in a Mark-dominated World" is now available by Routledge. The following is an overview of the book. more

Corporate TLDs - Why Keeping Mum Seems to Be the Order of the Day

Global brand protection powerhouse MarkMonitor recently released survey results revealing the intentions of their corporate clients with respects to new gTLDs. After reading the report, it's fair to say that I'm not surprised by the results, but continue to be frustrated by them. Where are all of these forward thinking and revolutionary online marketers and brand managers? Are they so unaware of the opportunity that has been placed before them or are they just being very savvy? more