Featured Blogs

What ICANN’s Strong Stance on the UN’s Global Digital Compact Says About Current Internet Governance

On 21 August 2023, ICANN org. made its position in relation to the current state of the UN's Global Digital Compact (GDC) clear in a blog post by Sally Costerton (ICANN CEO), John Curran (ARIN), and Paul Wilson (APNIC), entitled "The Global Digital Compact: A Top-down Attempt to Minimize the Role of The Technical Community." The publication strongly criticizes the GDC's attempt at folding the technical community into the civil society umbrella under a "tripartite" approach also involving the private sector and governments, as proposed by the Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology, Amandeep Gill. more

The Proxy Fight for Iranian Democracy

If you put 65 million people in a locked room, they’re going to find all the exits pretty quickly, and maybe make a few of their own. In the case of Iran’s crippled-but-still-connected Internet, that means finding a continuous supply of proxy servers that allow continued access to unfiltered international web content like Twitter, Gmail, and the BBC... more

Will 2016 Politics Trump Bipartisan Support for the MSM and DOTCOM Act?

The bitter partisan divide that characterizes so many of official Washington's current policy discussions was conspicuous in its absence at the July 8th hearing held on "Internet Governance Progress After ICANN 53" by the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. In opening remarks that asked "What is the multi-stakeholder community, anyway?", Subcommittee Chairman Greg Waldren went on to declare that he and his colleagues "sought to strike the right balance between supporting the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance, while still protecting the invaluable tool of communications and commerce the Internet has become". more

The RIRs in a Post-IPv4 world: Is the End of IP Address Policy Making Nigh?

IANA's IPv4 pool was officially exhausted in early 2011; Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) are gradually eating through their remaining IPv4 reserves and, although there will always be a trickle of recycled IPv4 addresses coming through as businesses go bust or ISPs move entirely to IPv6, the bulk of RIR IPv4 activity in future will be maintenance of existing allocation records... While IPv6 is definitely the way of the future for the Internet, the sheer size of the IPv6 address pool, combined with simplified allocation policies that have deliberately reduced barriers to entry, means there are very few organizations that can't get IPv6 directly from the RIRs these days. more

Vint Cerf Caught Off Guard, Nevertheless Says What Needs to Be Said About Our Misguided Policy

This morning's mail brought news of a 3 minute 45 second video clip of very candid and very outstanding remarks from Vint Cerf. Vint says very clearly what needs to be said and what needs to be grasped and acted on by the new president and congress next year... My observation is that in my opinion it is not the lighting that is unusual but rather the camera angle. It looks like interviewer is seated with his camera pointed up. The camera is looking at Vint's chin. Consequently I sent Vint an email: "you knew you were being recorded - surely? I hope: in any case the good deed is done... thank you sir." Vint replied with permission to quote... more

Law and Disorder: When .Brand Meets .Crime

Barclays Bank is a .brand pioneer, having recently announced plans to migrate its primary online presence to two new gTLDs it will operate on its own behalf. But Barclays Bank has also just plead guilty to a major financial services felony and been fined $2.4 billion for that criminal activity. While the new gTLD Registry Agreement is clear that a registry operator must remove any officer or director convicted of a felony, it is ambiguous in regard to whether the Agreement can be terminated when the operator itself has been found to have operated a criminal enterprise. more

The UDRP “Celebrates” Its 500th Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Case

Today, for the 500th time, an expert panel under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy or "UDRP", issued a decision finding a Complainant guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking or "RDNH". RDNH is an attempt to egregiously misuse the UDRP to unjustly seize a domain name from its lawful owner... To-date, the UDRP has adjudicated over 80,000 domain name disputes. The vast majority of them result in the transfer of a cybersquatted domain name to the rightful trademark owner. more

Internet Management and National Security: Time for a Federal Action Plan

Former CIA Director George Tenet recently gave a speech highlighting the need for federal action on internet management in order to protect national security. As reported by the online edition of Government Executive, Mr. Tenet explained that, "greater government regulation of the Internet and telecommunications networks is needed in order to guard against terrorist attacks." more

International Law and Cyberspace: It’s the “How”, Stupid

The Internet has enhanced freedom of communication, ignored national borders, and removed time and space barriers. But the Internet sphere was never a law-free zone. Already ICANN's "Articles of Incorporation" (1998) constituted that the management of critical Internet resources has to take place within the frameworks of "applicable national and international law". more

How to Discredit Net Neutrality

On Tuesday (November 30) Internet backbone provider Level3 publicly accused cable-based ISP Comcast of trying to thwart competing video services delivered through the internet. Comcast was, according to Level3, suddenly choosing to charge it more because of its carriage of Netflix traffic. The accusation was consciously framed to raise net neutrality alarms. It appeared as if a cable TV giant was using its control of internet access to make access to a competing, over the top video service more expensive... Then the full story came out. more

A Global Dialogue around WSIS Prepcom 3

As a contribution to the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Internet Governance Project, led by Professor Derrick L. Cogburn, is supporting a web-based Global Deliberative Dialogue on Internet Governance, from 19-30 September 2005. The purpose of this Global Dialogue is to raise awareness of Internet Governance, to broaden participation in the policy debate, and to provide concrete input into the final deliberations during the Third Preparatory Meeting for the WSIS, taking place concurrently with the Global Dialogue in Geneva. more

A Closer Look at the ‘Level 3 + Global Crossing’ Union

On Monday, 11 April 2011, Level 3 announced they had entered a definitive agreement to acquire Global Crossing. According to the Renesys Market Intelligence rankings, this merger would bring together the world's #1 and #2 global providers, with over half the Internet market on earth dependent on the combined entity. If the deal gained regulatory approval in the US and elsewhere today, how would the Internet provider landscape change? We'll answer that question in this blog, giving the proposed union a fictional name of Level Crossing for the purposes of our discussion. more

Mitigating DDoS

Your first line of defense to any DDoS, at least on the network side, should be to disperse the traffic across as many resources as you can. Basic math implies that if you have fifteen entry points, and each entry point is capable of supporting 10g of traffic, then you should be able to simply absorb a 100g DDoS attack while still leaving 50g of overhead for real traffic... Dispersing a DDoS in this way may impact performance -- but taking bandwidth and resources down is almost always the wrong way to react to a DDoS attack. But what if you cannot, for some reason, disperse the attack? more

A Short History of Internet Protocol Intellectual Property

A little over 25 years ago, the Internet Society proposed that they assume responsibility for the DARPA Internet Protocol (IP) specifications Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that were being evolved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to facilitate their use by the mainstream network communication standards bodies and providers. Last week, the IETF, in an attempt to fend off alternative Internet Protocols emerging in the 5G ecosystem and create a standards monopoly, asserted... more

Domains Should Be Complementary, Not Complicated

One of Rightside's missions is to help registrars, resellers, and domain specialists grow their business. As the domain industry once again convenes at NamesCon, it's important to discuss what we've been doing (what worked, what didn't) and still must do to build global awareness for new domain names. From a technological perspective, I think the tools and services being offered have never been faster, more stable, or secure. What I want to explore is not on the technical side of the business, but on the marketing side, and that's the opportunity presented by complementary domains. more