Featured Blogs

Where Do Old Protocols Go To Die?

In Ripley Scott's classic 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner, replicant Roy Batty (portrayed by Rutger Hauer) delivers this soliloquy... "I've...seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like (cough) tears... in... rain. Time... to die." more

GAC Communiqués and Community Activity on DNS Abuse

This blog post and the associated report aim to provide an overview of DNS Abuse 1related issues the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), part of the ICANN multi-stakeholder model, has identified. We also summarize the relevant community activity taking place to address these areas of interest and highlight remaining gaps. From 2016 to June 2023, the GAC referenced four primary categories of activity related to DNS Abuse. more

The Open Internet?

I'm sure we've all heard about "the open Internet." The expression builds upon a rich pedigree of term "open" in various contexts. For example, "open government" is the governing doctrine which holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight, a concept that appears to be able to trace its antecedents back to the age of enlightenment in 17th century Europe. more

Why Mexico Lost Fight Over Mexico.com Domain Name

In a recent decision, a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) domain name arbitration panel dismissed a complaint filed by the Mexican Tourist Board (MTB) against Latin America Telecom (LAT) concerning the domain name "mexico.com." The panel went so far as to find that the complaint was brought in "bad faith" and made a finding of attempted "Reverse Domain Name Hijacking" against the MTB. ...In its complaint, the MTB argued that LAT had registered the domain name in "bad faith" in order to sell it for a profit at a later date. more

ICANN DNS Resolver Symposium – the Session Had Several Interesting Presentations That I Would Like to Comment On

ICANN hosted a Resolver Operator Forum in mid-December, and the session had several interesting presentations that I would like to comment on here... The first presentation in this forum was from Paul Mockapetris. He pointed to the original academic published paper, Development of the Domain Name System, by Paul Mockapetris and Kevin Dunlap, published in the proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM’88. The paper noted that by 1983 it was obvious that the shared HOSTS.TXT file was not a scalable solution... more

How to Listen to the Individual Internet User

The recent ICANN meeting in Vancouver touched upon many issues important to ordinary Internet users: privacy in domain name registration; the cost and terms of .com domain names; internationalized domains; introduction of new domain suffixes. But there were few "ordinary Internet users" at the meeting. Few people can roam the globe to keep up with ICANN's travels, and not many more participate in online forums. more

The 30th Birthday of DNS!

As Ond?ej Surý of CZ.NIC recently pointed out on the dns-operations list, it was 30 years ago this month, in November 1983, that two RFCs that defined what we now call the Domain Name System (DNS), RFC 882 and RFC 883, were published. They make for an interesting read today when you think about how far we've come in those 30 years -- and now how absolutely critical DNS is as part of the Internet's infrastructure. more

Survey of Global Internet Jurisdiction

The American Bar Association/International Chamber of Commerce (ABA/ICC) recently released a survey on global Internet jurisdiction. The survey, co-chaired by Professor Michael Geist, involved nearly 300 companies in 45 different countries. It found that U.S. companies were far more concerned and pessimistic about Internet jurisdiction risk than European and Asian companies. The study has also found that an "Internet jurisdiction risk toolkit" is emerging where companies target low risk jurisdictions and take steps to avoid doing business in perceived high risk jurisdictions. more

Here’s Looking at You…

Much has been said in recent weeks about various forms of cyber spying. The United States has accused the Chinese of cyber espionage and stealing industrial secrets. A former contractor to the United States' NSA, Edward Snowden, has accused various US intelligence agencies of systematic examination of activity on various popular social network services... These days cloud services may be all the vogue, but there is also an emerging understanding that once your data heads into one of these clouds, then it's no longer necessarily entirely your data; it may have become somebody else's data too... more

How Rampant is Cyber & Typo Squatting? Just Ask WIPO After Reviewing Wipo.com!

How prevalent is cybersquatting and typosquatting? Take a look at www.wipo.com, and then compare it with the World Intellectual Property Organization's web site www.wipo.org. Ironically, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center handles a majority of the UDRP domain dispute arbitrations internationally. The very organization which is invested with the authority by ICANN to resolve cybersquatting and typosquatting disputes internationally under the UDRP is, by all appearances, being squatted. Here are two apparent typosquatters... more

How Failure To Maintain IPv6 Is Hindering Law Enforcement

Recently, the FBI, DEA and even the Canadian Mounted Police have suggested that the switch to IPv6 is making it more difficult to track criminals online, those who would traffic in things such as drugs or child pornography, in addition to hackers, botnets, kidnappers and terrorists. Under IPv4, it wasn't very difficult to find offenders online via their IP addresses. The American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN) would hand out the address and internet providers would log them into the public WHOIS database. more

EFF’s Emerging Alignment With Offshore Internet Pharmacies

The last few years have been challenging ones for members of the Canadian International Pharmacy Association. First, in 2010, they lost their ability to advertise in the US search space after the US Department of Justice noted that many seemingly "Canadian" pharmacy websites "sell drugs obtained from countries other than Canada" when shipping medicines into the US, and major search advertising programs tightened their policies, effectively excluding CIPA's members from advertising in the US. more

WIPO Cybersquatting Report Ignores Real UDRP Trends

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) asserted on Monday that new gTLDs from ICANN would unleash a global crime wave. This dire warning was bolstered by an astonishing statistic: a whopping eight per cent (8%) increase in UDRP complaints from 2007 to 2008! But WIPO's press release tells only a very little of the truth. Astonishingly, the UDRP system actually works pretty well... more

End of the World/Internet on 31-March-2012?

Well... Maybe not the world, but the Internet it seems. According to a Pastebin letter, Anonymous announced they will black-out Internet on 31st of March. They even explained how to do it by attacking the DNS Root Servers on Internet using a reflected amplification attack. If this is successful, the root DNS servers will become unresponsive and cannot handle any other requests... more

UN Cyberdiplomcy I: PoC, Cybercrime and the Global Digital Compact

Despite global polarization, recent UN cyber diplomacy has achieved three significant agreements in 2024: a cyber attack reporting system, a convention against cybercrime, and a "Global Digital Compact." These successes show that consensus on global issues is possible, though the vague wording of agreements raises concerns about their long-term effectiveness in ensuring security and peace. more