Featured Blogs

ICANN Board Resolutions May Enable New gTLDs to Potentially Launch in Fall

In an attempt to appease the Governmental Advisory Committee, ICANN's New gTLD Program Committee directed ICANN staff to amend the Registry Agreement so that all New gTLD Registries will be required to include a provision in its Registry-Registrar Agreement that requires Registrars to include in their Registration Agreement a provision prohibiting Registered Name Holders from distributing malware, abusively operating botnets, phishing, piracy, trademark or copyright infringement, fraudulent or deceptive practices, counterfeiting or otherwise engaging in activity contrary to applicable law, and providing (consistent with applicable law and any related procedures) consequences for such activities including suspension of the domain name. more

ARIN Provides Latest Word on Need to Move to IPv6: Will Anyone Heed the Warning? (Does anyone care?)

NetworkWorld is running an article today that talks about the announcement from ARIN (the American Registry for Internet Numbers) of the ARIN Board resolution calling upon ARIN to no longer be "neutral" in the IPv4 vs IPv6 space and instead work to actively encourage migration to IPv6... Until now, ARIN and the other RIRs have generally been fairly neutral in the IPv4 versus IPv6 debate and have not shown a preference in allocation, but this announcement from ARIN shows the first signs of change. more

Your Cybersecurity is Only as Strong as Your Weakest Vendor

Managing the risk of third parties has become a compliance focus for many large organizations. Companies even work with third-party service providers and external vendors just to manage this risk. The recent SolarWinds attack escalates the critical need for chief compliance officers to collaborate with their business counterparts to identify and mitigate potentially unknown threats that lie within third-party supply chains. Yet how can companies manage this risk when it's not if but when you're attacked? more

Take Down Order by California Court Raises Issues of Censorship and Free Speech

The internet is abuzz with commentary about a recent case in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California concerning the web site wikileaks.org, a "website dedicated to leaking documents that are "anonymous, untraceable, uncensorable." Time Magazine allegedly described the site by stating that it "could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act." The case certainly raises important issues concerning First Amendment Rights, censorship and freedom of speech. The case involves the alleged posting of private internal documents of Bank Julius Baer & Co and its bank customers... more

Fair Use Incorporating Trademarks in Domain Names

The paragraph 4(c)(iii) safe harbors of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy are construed from a five word phrase, "legitimate noncommercial or fair use." "Noncommercial" like "identical" in paragraph 4(a)(i) has a defined meaning; it does not include domain names inactively held (for any alleged purpose), although non-use is not necessarily fatal to rights or legitimate interests. "Fair use" has a larger canvass; it includes nominative (commercial) use that is fair and Constitutionally protected speech. more

Thinking Outside the Internet

This is a talk I gave at Google in Cambridge January 6, 2014. Some may know this as Ambient or Borderless Connectivity, but I'm titling this post as "Thinking Outside the Internet." It builds on my Three Stages of Digital theme, outlining how we are shifting from a telecom-centric framing with meaning and value inside the wire to today's Internet in which meaning and value are no longer contained within channels. more

Clarivate Domain Survey Reveals a 10% Increase in Cyberattacks

Clarivate has once again surveyed global business leaders about the importance of domain names to their organizations, including the role of domains as intellectual property (IP) assets. The 2020 survey followed up on our 2019 survey, revealing key year-over-year trends in how organizations manage, secure and budget for domain names. In this blog, we review key trends from the new report. more

iREIT Drops TM-Typo Domains?

As faithful CircleID readers will know, iREIT (Internet REIT, Inc.), a Texas domain name portfolio investment corporation, has been sued by Verizon and by Vulcan Golf for cybersquatting. It appears iREIT is taking steps to clean up its portfolio by deleting obvious typos of famous trademarks... more

Is ICANN Stumbling Forward? GAC Advice and Shared Decision Making Procedures

When Bill Clinton addresses the 40th ICANN meeting in San Francisco in March 2010 he described Internet Governance as a process of "stumbling forward". Stumbling is good, he said, as long as it goes forward. Five ICANN meetings later - in the meantime ICANN adopted the new gTLD program, got nearly 2000 applications for Top Level Domains (TLDs) and has a new CEO - the "stumbling forward" goes into the next round. 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

Tracking Internet Piracy: Harder Than You Think

Wired Magazine recently published an article called "The Shadow Internet", where it says: "Anathema is a so-called topsite, one of 30 or so underground, highly secretive servers where nearly all of the unlicensed music, movies, and videogames available on the Internet originate. Outside of a pirate elite and the Feds who track them, few know that topsites exist. Even fewer can log in." But what are the difficulties in tracking and identifying these so-called topsites? Joel Snyder, a senior network consultant responds. more

The Death of TLD Front Running

In an article published over two years ago, I cited a disturbing trend of third parties seeking to obtain national trademark registrations in an apparent attempt to game ICANN's new gTLD process. While many of these applications have withered and died on the vine some have sneaked through. However, it appears that the United States Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) has issued a very well-reasoned and articulate opinion... more

The FTC Authentication Summit

The Federal Trade Commission and NIST had a two-day Authentication Summit on Nov 9-10 in Washington DC. When they published their report explaining their decision not to create a National Do Not Email Registry, the FTC identified lack of e-mail authentication as one of the reasons that it wouldn't work, and the authentication summit was part of their process to get some sort of authentication going. At the time the summit was scheduled, the IETF MARID group was still active and most people expected it to endorse Microsoft's Sender-ID in some form, so the summit would have been mostly about Sender-ID. Since MARID didn't do that, the summit had a broader and more interesting agenda. more

ICANN and the Data Quality Act: Part II

This is the second part of a multi-part series reported by ICANNfocus. This part discusses the congressional concerns regarding ICANN's governance of the Internet. "Since 1999 Congress has repeatedly expressed serious concerns regarding ICANN's governance of the internet. Congress has substantial responsibility for overseeing the key aspects of internet governance. Among its specific responsibilities, Congress has the duty to oversee implementation of the Department of Commerce's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and contract with ICANN." more

Broadband Meets Content at ANGA COM 2013

The Association of German Cable Operators' annual trade show has a new name. Europe's principal cable industry exhibition and convention was previously known as ANGA Cable, but last week (June 4-6, 2013), the show launched as ANGA COM. This new title - an abbreviation of communication - highlights how the convergence of technologies and networks is blurring the line between cable operators and other communication and entertainment services providers. more