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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

A Day Which Will Live in Infamy: ICANN Board Approves VeriSign Settlement

ICANN's Board voted to accept the latest settlement proposal by a vote of 9 to 5: "Today, ICANN's Board of Directors approved, by a majority vote, a set of agreements settling a long time dispute between ICANN and VeriSign, the registry operator for the .COM registry. These settlement documents include a new registry agreement relating to the operation of the .COM registry..." more

Paid Peering: Issues and Misunderstandings

Recently I was asked for my opinion on Google paying France Telecom (FT) to deliver traffic into FT's network, i.e. Google paying to peer with FT. I wasn't aware Google pays FT. I don't even know if it's true. But I do know this is a topic fraught with misunderstandings. Also, if there is a "problem" here, the problem is one of competition (or lack thereof) in portions of the French broadband access market. It is not a problem that can be or should be fixed by "network neutrality" regulations or legislation. more

SpaceX’s Starlink Internet Service Will Target End Users on Day One

Starting with Teledesic in 1990, would-be Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations have been justified to the FCC, other regulators, and the public as a means of closing the digital divide. Teledesic's goal was "providing affordable access to advanced network connections to all those parts of the world that will never get such advanced capabilities through existing technologies." Today's low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite companies make the same claim, but Telesat, OneWeb and Leosat seem to be targeting commercial markets first. more

How Domain Name Typo-Squatters are Gaming Google

In a recent article, eWeek reports on researchers at Microsoft revealing large-scale, typo-squatting schemes that use "multi-layer URL redirection to game Google's AdSense for domains program". According to this report, the Microsoft Research Systems Management Research Group succeeded in tracking a ring of typo-squatters registering misspelled domain names that generated traffic for serving advertising from Google. more

IGP on Future U.S. Role in Internet Governance

On June 30, 2005, the United States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administrtation (NTIA) released the "US Statement of Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System." The Internet Governance Project (IGP) has issued 7 points in response to the "Statement of Principles" showing the direction believed to be in the interests of the United States and the world. more

Google Fiber Project: Programming Key to Success

Google has officially rolled out its long-touted Google Fiber Project showcasing what broadband should look and feel like to all users. Yes, it sets the new standard for broadband connections with a 1Gig speedster, over 100 times faster than current broadband offerings in the U.S. Not-withstanding, just speed will not be the determining success factor; the availability of competitive programming will become the deciding judgment in Google's move to tout reasonable costs to bundled broadband. more

Are the FCC Workshops Fair?

The FCC has run three days of workshops on the National Broadband Plan now, for the purpose of bringing a diverse set of perspectives on broadband technology and deployment issues to the attention of FCC staff. You can see the workshop agendas here. The collection of speakers is indeed very diverse. As you would expect, the session on eGov featured a number of government people and a larger collection of folks from the non-profit sector, all but one of whom has a distinctly left-of-center orientation. Grass-roots devolution arguments have a leftish and populist flavor, so who better to make the argument than people from left-of-center think tanks? more

Why I Support Canadian Presence Requirements for .CA Domain Names

It nearly goes without saying that if ".CA" means and should continue to mean, "Canada", the registration of a .CA domain name ought to involve some tie to Canada. As Canadian Internet Registration Authority ("CIRA") CEO, Byron Holland, aptly put it, "The fundamental requirement of having a Canadian presence in order to get a dot-ca domain name make sense...because it is a country code and there is an assumption that there is some "Canadian-ness". And that is why, in a nutshell, I support a Canadian 'presence requirement' for the registration of .CA domain names. Nevertheless, the question of what constitutes an appropriate 'presence requirement' is an interesting issue... more

Snowshoe Spam: What It Is, and How Not to Look Like You Send It

Have you ever found yourself blocked by a snowshoe spam filter or listed on a snowshoe blacklist? Or perhaps you've been told that one of your mailing practices makes you look like a snowshoe spammer? If so, you're probably wondering what snowshoe spam is, what you're doing to earn this reputation and what you should be doing differently. Here's a brief overview of the history of snowshoe and some suggestions on how to avoid being mistaken for a snowshoe spammer. more

IETF’s Descent Into the Political Rabbit Hole

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has a curious, non-linear history as a "non-organization" of technical innovators now approaching 47 years. As it approaches a landmark 100th official meeting, it has become embroiled in a controversy that takes it further down the political rabbit hole it has been deepening in recent years. The IETF is considering cancelling its 100th meeting now scheduled in Singapore in November 2017... because "concerns were raised about anti-LGBT laws." more

Tangible Property: First Domain Lawsuit Filed After Federal Ruling

Storage specialist Optima Technology Corporation has filed a lawsuit against Network Solutions alleging that the registrar gave away its domain name without its permission causing damage to its business. The suit alleges that Network Solutions transferred ownership of its domain name "optimatech.com" to a former Optima employee Michael DeCorte, which has allowed him to redirect Optima's revenue to his possession. Optima claims that DeCorte along with another former employee Raymond Martin, used a fake webiste to divert Optima's revenue. more

Effects of ICANN’s Legal Presence in the US, Under California Legislation

Excerpts from the recent address of the President and CEO of ICANN to the Working Group for Internet Governance (WGIG). "ICANN's establishment in California is a consequence of history. Jon Postel, the long standing coordinator of the IANA functions was based at the University of Southern California. Jon was designated ICANN's first Chief Technology Officer but was preempted from taking the position due to his untimely death. The legal instrument available in California to establish such a public benefit function, including its multi-stakeholder expression, is a not-for-profit, public benefit corporation..." more

The Fragile Network

One of the more persistent founding myths around the internet is that it was designed to be able to withstand a nuclear war, built by the US military to ensure that even after the bombs had fallen there would still be communications between surviving military bases. It isn't true, of course. The early days of the ARPANET, the research network that predated today's internet, were dominated by the desire of computer scientists to find ways to share time on expensive mainframe computers rather than visions of Armageddon. Yet the story survives... more

Will DNS Rescue the Future of Search?

Researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China have started work on a project based on a distributed information retrieval system that promises to address future search engine scalability issues that are believed to be inevitable as the Internet continues to expand: "With the rapid increase of web pages, the coverage of search engines will become poorer and the update intervals will be much longer. If the current architecture of search engines is still in use, it will be an impossible mission to find the precise and comprehensive information in the future. This problem will be more serious when IPv6 technology is widely implemented in communication networks. The problem of 'Too much information means no information' may become a disaster with information explosion." more

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