Featured Blogs

EFF Files Brief in Support of Email Privacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in a case that could have a profound effect on the privacy of Internet communications. The brief argues that the decision in US v. Councilman, soon to be reheard by the full First Circuit, should be overturned. more

Putting a Spammer in Jail

The country's first criminal trial about spam ended in Leesburg, Virginia earlier this month with a conviction of Jeremy Jaynes, better known under his nom de spam of Gavin Stubberfield. I was an expert witness for the prosecution, the Commonwealth of Virginia. The case was brought under Virginia's state anti-spam law, not the weaker Federal CAN-SPAM act... more

ICANN, VeriSign, and the Swamp

ICANN has initiated arbitration (before the ICC's International Court of Arbitration) against VeriSign under the .net Registry Agreement, seeking declaratory judgments that many things VeriSign has done or attempted to do over the years (Sitefinder, ConsoliDate, IDN, WLS, and stemming the abusive actions of shell registrars when they destructively query the registry for secondary market purposes) violate that agreement. more

United Nations Establishes Working Group on Internet Governance

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today the members of the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance, which is to prepare the ground for a decision on this contentious issue by the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005. The establishment of the Working Group was requested by the first phase of the Summit, held in Geneva last December. At that time, countries agreed to continue the dialogue on the management of the Internet, at both the technical and policy levels. more

ICANN Transfer Policy: Domain Hijacking Got Easier or Did It?

Slashdot recently ran a story about the upcoming changes to the ICANN rules governing domain transfers between registrars. A blog entry at Netcraft referenced by the story stated that: "...domain transfer requests will be automatically approved in five days unless they are explicitly denied by the account owner. This is a change from current procedure, in which a domain's ownership and nameservers remain unchanged if there is no response to a transfer request. This could mean trouble for domain owners who don't closely manage their records..." more

Domain Name Hijacking Affects Local Illinois Campaign in Will County

We've previously noted here the challenge of dealing with domain name disputes based on personal names, particularly in the political arena. Now that the campaigns are over and all are taking a deep breath, we can reflect back on one of the domain name disputes arising in the political campaign this year for the office of State's Attorney in Will County Illinois. more

Does the Internet Need to be Governed?

The term "Internet Governance" has become an area of particular attention in part as a consequence of widespread recognition that the Internet represents an important area of national interest for all countries seeking to participate in the benefits of global electronic commerce, distance learning, access to the encyclopedic wealth of information on the Internet, and in the social dimension that the Internet is creating. From the perspective of governments, the Internet is simultaneously a technology that promises high economic value for parties making use of it and a challenge in that it is unlike all other telecommunications media previously invented. more

AOL Fires Across the Bow of Spam-Friendly ISPs

The North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) conference, a gathering of Internet Service Provider (ISP) engineers and vendors convenes three times a year for mostly technical conversation along with social networking. The recent NANOG conference in Reston Virginia saw some unusually direct talk about Spam and the ISPs that tolerate it from America Online's Postmaster, Charles Stiles. more

Sender-ID Back from the Dead

With the closure of IETF's MARID group a month ago, many of us have left Microsoft's Sender-ID standard for the dead. After being rejected by the Apache Foundation and the Debian Project over licensing issues, and causing the closure of MARID for some of the same issues (in addition to already long running technical ones), some thought that Microsoft may have just buried it and gone on to better things like IETF's new MAILSIG group (in formation). But just like the ghost of Hamlet's father it just refuses to die and now it looks like it is coming back to life in a new reincarnation... more

Why DomainKeys is Broken

The recent testing by Gmail of DomainKeys affords an opportunity to look again at what the impact of it may be in any attempt to introduce a Domino addin to verify DomainKeys signatures. I have here a sample of an email sent from Gmail and that same email after being delivered to the in-box of a Notes/Domino user who prefers MIME. There are differences which make DomainKeys a real problem at Domino shops (and, I suspect, others). more

GNSO Council Review

The ICANN bylaws require a periodic review of ICANN structures and operations; the first of such reviews, that of the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council, is scheduled to be finalized in the next few weeks prior to the start of ICANN's annual meeting. To begin discussion on this topic, I draw your attention to a very thoughtful question posed by Joe Sims during the prior ICANN reform process... more

Relief Denied to Personal Name of Danish Businessman

Danish businessman Joacim Bruus-Jensen challenged the domain name www.joacimbruus-jensen.com in ICANN UDRP proceeding. He failed to prove enforceable trademark rights in his name and was denied relief in this decision by Panelist Derek Minus. Joacim Bruus-Jensen v. John Adamsen, Case No. D2004-0458 (WIPO Sept.29, 2004). The case should be considered before seeking to use the ICANN UDRP to take action based on the personal name of a business executive. more

ICANN Whois Policies Update

According to an article in the October 15, 2004 INTA Bulletin, several new "Policies Applicable to ICANN-Accredited Registrars" will be implemented by the end of 2004. The new Restored Names Accuracy Policy tales effect November 12 and requires that a domain name that was deleted due to the submission of false contact data or lack of response to a registrar's inquiries...  more

Internationalizing Top-Level Domain Names: Another Look

A paper by Dr. John C. Klensin, former Vice President of Internet Architecture at AT&T, a Distinguished Engineering Fellow at MCI WorldCom, and Principal Research Scientist at MIT. This paper has been reproduced with kind permission from the Internet Society. "Over the last few years, rising interest in internationalized domain names has been accompanied by interest in using those names at the top level and, in particular, replacing or supplementing country-code based domain names with names in the language of the relevant countries. This memo suggests that actually creating such names in the DNS is undesirable from both a user-interface and DNS management standpoint. It then proposes the alternative of translating the names so that every TLD name is available to users in their own languages." more

.eu Domain Name Contract Signed: Registration Could Begin in Six to Nine Months

The long awaited Service Concession Contract to operate the .eu registry was signed yesterday (Oct. 12). Now the European Commission will formally notify ICANN of the selected registry operator allowing official negotiations to commence between EURid and ICANN to have .eu put in the root. According to the press release, registrations could begin in six to nine months... more