Featured Blogs

Consensus Polling: ALAC Shows the Way

ICANN is about to make the jump from "merely excavating" to efficiently mining top-quality jewels. I say this because ICANN's At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) has reached unanimous consensus on their internal Self Review. As the New Zealand meeting drew to a close, a weary ALAC was ready to give up on creating a consensus Self Review. The familiar ICANN collaborative process of emailing Word attachments had "excavated" ALAC into the also familiar ICANN mire of "deeply divided over competing versions." more

Is ICANN Producing Jewels?

Excavation is fun. You get to rumble around on heavy equipment bashing up this and tearing up that. Each scoop uncovers original earth. As your big machine chews up the hill, an occasional sparkle suggests a raw gem or two. ...ICANN business is still predominately conducted on Email lists/forums. Email lists and forums are good at excavating... more

Ottawa Alternative Telcom Policy Forum

I had the pleasure of chairing all of the sessions of the alt.telecom policy forum held in Ottawa this past weekend. It was a great meeting, and a multi-stakeholder meeting at that -- having key people from Academia, civil society, Government, as well as the internet business sector. more

Lessons for the Internet Governance Forum from the IETF

As Antonios Broumas has correctly observed, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) begins life in Athens next week without the means for its participants to agree upon any substantive documents such as resolutions or declarations. Indeed, according to Nitin Desai, the Chairman of its Advisory Group, it is impossible for the IGF to make any decisions, as it "is not a decision-making body. We have no members so we have no power to make decision."... more

What Will Be the Outcome of the Internet Governance Forum Meeting in Athens?

Since the Tunis WSIS mandate was given to the UN Secretary General to convene the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), interest on the new emerging entity and its possible effects on the IG debate has been allegedly high. But as time is approaching when the IGF inaugural meeting will start its activities in Athens, Greece, now, almost 10 days before its first -- ever meeting, participation of all stakeholders and key actors in the meeting has proved to be even more than expected in the first place. more

What If .COM Had Been Born With Site Finder?

ICANN's new Registry Service Technical Evaluation Service (RSTEP) process is definitely a positive step forward for ICANN. The comment period for the Tralliance proposed new service using the DNS wildcard feature closed Wednesday night. ...Ken Fockler commented "there are no right answers and no wrong answers, just judgments and decisions made on those judgments." In this light, I would be interested in hearing different perspectives on the following questions... more

False Positives and Ignorance

Content inspection is a poor way to recognise spam, and the proliferation of image spam recently drums this home. However if one must use these unreliable techniques, one should bring mathematical rigour to the procedure. Tools like SpamAssassin combine content inspection results, with other tests, in order to tune rule-sets to give acceptable rates of false positives (mistaking genuine emails for spam), and thus end up assigning suitable weights to different content rules. If one is going to use these approaches to filtering spam, and some see it as inevitable, one better know one's statistics... more

ICANN Board to Vote on Domain Tasting Measure

The ICANN Board will vote today on a new registry service put forward by PIR for .org which is its attempt to solve the domain tasting issue. It takes the form of an amendment [pdf] to the .org contract and enables PIR to charge five cents per domain "when the number of such deleted registrations is in excess of 90 per cent of the total number of initial registrations"... more

JPA Agreement: Will it Change the Problems With the UDRP?

It was rather interesting to read this new agreement between the USDoC and ICANN talking about the mechanisms, methods and procedures necessary to effect the transition of Internet domain name and addressing system (DNS) to the private sector. What was more interesting though was to read in this very agreement the following: "...the Department continues to support the work of ICANN as the coordinator for the technical functions related to the management of the Internet DNS". OK, let's be honest! Technical? more

Spamming the News Cycle: Spamhaus Non-Story Goes Viral

Google News now shows more than 300 stories about Spamhaus, most about a proposed court order following a district court default judgment. To me, the most interesting is the meta-story -- why the non-event of a proposed order has the blogs scrambling with claims of constitutional crisis and even the notoriously close-lipped ICANN issuing an announcement "in response to community interest expressed on this topic." more

Additional .COM Domain Name Transfer Requirement by October 28

Registrars who support .com domain names will use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) system by October 28. ...There will be an additional step when trying to transfer a .com domain name among registrars. Specifically, a piece of information called an EPP code (aka auth code, EPP key, transfer secret) must be obtained from the current registrar and submitted to the gaining one prior to approving with the latter. more

ICANN Issues a Statement on the Spamhaus Case

ICANN issued a statement on the Spamhaus case: "...ICANN is not a party to this action and no order has been issued in this matter requiring any action by ICANN. Additionally, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend Spamhaus.org..." more

ICANN Sacrifices Privacy for Shot at Independence

Late last month, ICANN took a major step toward addressing some ongoing concerns by signing a new agreement with the U.S. government entitled the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) heralded as a "dramatic step forward" for full management of the Internet's domain name system through a "multi-stakeholder model of consultation." ...While the Joint Project Agreement may indeed represent an important change, a closer examination of its terms suggest that there may be a hidden price tag behind ICANN newfound path toward independence -- the privacy of domain name registrants. more

ICANN Ordered by Illinois Court to Suspend Spamhaus.org

Apparently, at this stage, it is only a proposed ruling. But I am no lawyer. This story has been discussed before, when Spamhaus, which is located in the UK, was sued in the US by a spammer. They refused to come before the court as "they do no business in Illinois, and are located in the UK...After this court ruling, Spamhaus.org was under a DDoS attack, in my opinion for the purpose of preventing users from reaching the information it provided about the court ruling. This was done along-side a Joe Job, sending fake email appearing to come from Spamhaus's CEO... more

EURid Releases 74,000 Disputed Names

EURid has unfrozen 74,000 domains that were part of a dispute against domain warehousers. In July, EURid relented to outside pressure as it suspended the registration of 74,000 domains. They claimed these domains were registered directly by three registrars, not on behalf of clients, which violated EURid's terms. But the registrars have won this round... more