Featured Blogs

The Formation of IPv4 Address Markets

Something odd happened through 2021 in the market for IPv4 addresses. Across 2021 the reported market price for the transfer of IPv4 addresses has doubled, from approximately USD $27 per IPv4 individual address at the end of 2020 to around USD $55 per address in December 2021. It has taken seven years for the market price to rise from just under USD $10 to get to USD $20 per address. The next year, 2020, saw the price rise a further USD $7 per address, and then in the next 12 months, the market price doubled. more

Report on Reaction to Zuccarini’s Arrest

On September 3, 2003, United States federal law enforcement officers arrested the notorious John Zuccarini accused of allegedly creating misleading domain names to deceive children and direct them to pornographic websites. Zuccarini's arrest is the first to be made under the Truth in Domain Names Act, which took effect earlier this year prohibiting people from creating misleading domain names as a means to deceive children into viewing content that's harmful to minors, or tricking adults into clicking on obscene websites. What follows is a collection of commentaries made by experts in response to this event...
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In Historic Vote on WHOIS Purpose, Reformers Win by 2/3 Majority

It has taken almost three years -- by some counts, more than 6 years -- but ICANN's domain name policy making organization has finally taken a stand on Whois and privacy. And the results were a decisive defeat for the copyright and trademark interests and the US government, and a stunning victory for advocates of the rights of individual domain name registrants... more

Invalid WHOIS Data: Who Is Responsible?

Suppose you wanted to know who operates a website at a given domain name. Perhaps you suspect that the domain name is pointing to a website that offers illegal content, or you may just want to send a comment to its authors. Conveniently, the Internet provides a so-called "WHOIS" system that ordinarily provides contact information for each registered domain. But in the case of many hundreds of thousands of domains, the WHOIS data just isn't accurate.  more

Gartner on New Generic Top Level Domains

Gartner, the well known IT consulting company, has published a report on the new top level domains that will appear some time next year. The report totally misses the mark. In a pure US centric vision, it focuses on ".com" as the must-have TLD, totally overlooking the fact that a ".com" is mostly worthless e.g. in Germany, where ".de" is the TLD one must have to succeed locally... more

Moving Target: Spammer Using Over 1000 Home Computers as DNS

Some individual appears to have hijacked more than a 1,000 home computers starting in late June or early July and has been installing a new Trojan Horse program on them. The Trojan allows this person to run a number of small websites on the hijacked home computers. These websites consists of only a few web pages and apparently produce income by directing sign-ups to for-pay porn websites through affiliate programs. Spam emails messages get visitors to come to the small websites.

To make it more difficult for these websites to be shut down, a single home computer is used for only 10 minutes to host a site. After 10 minutes, the IP address of the website is changed to a different home computer... more

Fragmented Connections: How Network Fees Threaten Brazil’s Internet

The debate surrounding network usage fees in Brazil has intensified following the approval of Bill 469/2024 by the House of Representatives' Communications Committee in early December 2024. This bill prohibits telecommunications operators from charging internet companies based on data traffic. While this is merely a preliminary step in a lengthy legislative process, it signals that proposals from telecom companies to implement network usage fees are unlikely to gain traction. more

JD Falk – a Decade Afterwards

I can still hear it. ‘Hee hee’. That’s good. We all have unique laughs, but few are distinctive. Fewer yet belly the true nature of the human being issuing them. British insult comedian Jimmy Carr has one such laugh, a tri-tone ‘dah dah DUH,’ rising on the third expulsion. It has a bell-like quality, ringing, embodying the deft touch that Don Rickles had of insulting while loving, something Carr has mastered. It lets you know that despite him having just said something shocking and horrid, he is laughing with, never at, reassuring the target, ‘all is well.’ more

More Problems Crop Up With Universal Acceptance of Top Level Domains

I've often found truth in the famous George Santayana quote, "Those that cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." That's an apt warning for what is currently happening - again - with the hundreds of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) that are launching ... and failing to work as expected on the Internet. First, a quick refresher: As most CircleID readers know, in the early 2000s, seven new gTLDs were launched: .AERO, .BIZ, .COOP, .INFO, .MUSEUM, .NAME and .PRO. Aside from Country Code TLDs (ccTLDs), these were the first top-level changes to the DNS since the early days of the Internet. more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2015

Once again it is time for CircleID's annual roundup of top ten most popular posts featured during the past year (based on overall readership). Congratulations to all the 2015 participants and best wishes in the new year. more

XXX Comes to a Head

Just when you thought the .xxx affair couldn't get any worse, it does. I'm beginning to think that ICANN's approach to TLD approval was cooked up by a demented sergeant from Abu Ghraib... Now, after the triple x people negotiated with ICANN's staff a contract that met all prior objections, and heads into what should be its final approval, word is that a few ICANN Board members are leaning in a negative direction. What is the reason? A group of pornographers has organized a campaign against .xxx, flooding ICANN's comment box with overwhelmingly negative remarks. more

Registrar Influence on the Domain Security Posture of the Forbes Global 2000

In the 2021 Domain Security Report, we analyzed the trend of domain security adoption with respect to the type of domain registrar used, and found that 57% of Global 2000 organizations use consumer-grade registrars with limited protection against domain and DNS hijacking, distributed denial of service (DDoS), man-in-the-middle attacks (MitM), or DNS cache poisoning. On average, the adoption of domain security controls is two times higher for enterprise-class registrars than for those using consumer-grade registrars. more

How AI Is Boosting Domain Registrar Efficiency, Empowering Registries and Transforming User Experience

AI is bringing changes to the domain registration process by enhancing user experience, improving registrar operations, and empowering registries. In recent years, AI has entered the industry via the huge growth of new website builders. Today, new developments in the field offer an opportunity to align the interests of all stakeholders, from end user to registry. more

How SOPA Will Destroy The Internet

As you read this, please keep in mind that I say it all with a track record nearly 14 years of being proactive and having a zero-tolerance policy toward criminal activity and network abuse on our system. We have great relationships with Law Enforcement Agencies both here in Canada and abroad. We are always helpful and (usually) happy to answer questions, and help LEA understand the complexities and nuances of the internet. We've had the good fortune to meet some really intelligent and clued in cybercrime units. We participate in numerous communities in combating net.abuse and cybercrime. more

All Quiet on the Virtual Front: Why Domain Investors’ Fear of the Feds is Irrational

When a sniper ends the life of soldier Paul Bäumer in Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," a laconic situation report from the frontlines recounts an unusually quiet day. In the grand scheme of things, nothing worth reporting has happened. Reading David Kravets' recent article in Wired brought this upsetting ending to mind. U.S. authorities taking down individual domains based on copyright infringement charges is the online equivalent of Remarque's allied snipers: picking off the occasional domain - for better or worse - has little effect on the overall situation. more