Featured Blogs

ICANN Complaint System Easily Gamed

ICANN's WDPRS system has been defeated. The system is intended to remove or correct fraudulently registered domains, but it does not work anymore. Yesterday I submitted a memo to the leadership of the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) and the greater At-Large community. The memo concerns the details of a 214-day saga of complaints about a single domain used for trafficking opioids. more

Bad News From the 2025 Munich Security Conference: Cyberspace Gets Weaponized

There was one unpleasant message from the 2025 Munich Security Conference (MSC), which will have probably far reaching consequences for the governance of the digital space: Cyberspace will be governed by the rules of geo-political conflicts. And it is a battlefield in the 21st century wars. Both in the "Bayerischer Hof" and in the "IHK Munich", where the 11th edition of the Munich Cybersecurity Conference (MCSC) took place, controversial debates circled around the question of how civilian and military use of digital services will interplay in the years to come. more

What Will Be the Outcome of the Internet Governance Forum Meeting in Athens?

Since the Tunis WSIS mandate was given to the UN Secretary General to convene the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), interest on the new emerging entity and its possible effects on the IG debate has been allegedly high. But as time is approaching when the IGF inaugural meeting will start its activities in Athens, Greece, now, almost 10 days before its first -- ever meeting, participation of all stakeholders and key actors in the meeting has proved to be even more than expected in the first place. more

Questions on the Impact of Trees on SpaceX Starlink

The Starlink Web site says, "Starlink is targeting service in the Northern U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near-global coverage of the populated world by 2021," but the rollout will not be uniform. The initial coverage will be centered around 53 degrees latitude, and locations with unobstructed views of the sky will have an advantage. Like many folks, I wonder about coverage at my particular location in a wooded mountain area at 34.8462° N latitude. more

Putting COVID-19 Traffic Growth Into Perspective

Nokia Deepfield is another company that works in the background on the web, and that analyzes data traffic patterns for the big ISPs. Their June 4 report on web traffic reports about the same thing we're hearing from most large ISPs -- the volume of web traffic suddenly shot up since the onset of the pandemic. Nokia Deepfield says that the increase in traffic has settled in at about a 25% increase over pre-COVID levels. more

Who Needs More TLDs?

ICANN's Sydney meeting has come and gone, with the promised flood of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) claimed to be ever closer to reality. Does the world need more TLDs? Well, no. Way back in the mid 1990s, it seemed obvious that Internet users would use the DNS as a directory, particularly once early web browsers started to add .COM to words typed in the address bar. This led to the first Internet land rush, with heavy hitters like Procter and Gamble registering diarrhea.com in 1995... more

Whose Customers Are Those Typing Brand Names in the Browser’s Address Bar?

Fourteen years ago, we had so much hope at the start of a new century. We thought the global economy was going to improve a lot because of the emerging Internet technologies. But where are we today? What has happened in the last 14 years? We know that even advanced countries are suffering from economic difficulties today. What happened to these advanced countries with high speed Internet? more

What’s Wrong With Spam Prosecutions

Spam these days is more than an annoyance -- it increasingly carries malware payloads that can do serious damage to your PC, steal your identity, or turn your PC into a zombie that carries out denial of service attacks. So anything that law enforcement can do to fight spam should be a good thing, right? Well, not quite, as I'll explain. more

ICANN’s gTLD Proposal Hits a Wall: Now What?

ICANN's plan to begin accepting applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) in mid-2009 may have been derailed by last week's outpouring of opposition from the global business community and the United States Government (USG). Having been involved with ICANN for over a decade and having served on its Board for three years, I've never seen such strong and broad opposition to one of ICANN's proposals. more

Internet Governance Outlook 2013: “Cold Internet War” or “Peaceful Internet Coexistence”?

Anyone who expected that with the end of the Dubai ITU World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December 2012, the heated debate on the future regulation of the Internet will slow down should remember to fairytale of the battle of the knight with the seven-headed dragon. Hardly a head is cut off, another is growing. In 2013 the discussion on Internet freedom will likely gain in sharpness. more

Breaking the Rules on Counterfeit Sales: The Use of Hidden Links

Counterfeiting is big business. A 2021 study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated that the international trade in counterfeit and pirated products was worth up to $464 billion in 2019, or around 2.5% of all world trade. A significant proportion of this trade occurs via digital channels, where global annual expenditure on eCommerce is more than $4 trillion. more

SiteFinder vs. Engineers: Our Mistake Is Ignorance

We, as the Internet engineering community, have made a great mistake. Actually, it wasn't even one large mistake, but a series of small ones. Engineers are busy people, and most of us work under the constraints of the organizational entities we serve (be it ISPs, non-internet corporates, or even non-profits). Few of us have time for politics; even fewer have the desire and motivation for politics, and those of us who do try usually end up facing a brick wall of stubbornness, lack of understanding of the underlying technical issues, or just a deaf ear. more

IP Addressing in the New Age of Scarcity

This is the prepared opening statement given on behalf of Depository, Inc. at the panel discussion "IP addressing in the new age of scarcity" in the context of Internet governance and public policy at the Global Internet Governance: Research and Public Policy Challenges for the Next Decade Regional Conference held at the American University School of International Service on Thursday, May 5th, 2011 between 11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. with Prof. Milton Mueller moderating and on the panel as well was John Curran, President and CEO of ARIN and Michael Froomkin, Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law. more

Verisign’s Attempt to Increase its Fees Still Unjustified Despite Diversionary Tactic

Shortly after the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)'s recent announcement allowing Verisign to pursue increased .com registry fees, Verisign published a blog post questioning the business practices of registrars and domain name investors. The ICA, on behalf of its registrar and domain name investor members, had previously spoken out against a .com fee increase, as did others in the domain industry. more

Why New TLDs Don’t Matter

Lost amid the furor about ICANN's rule change that may (or may not) lead to a flood of TLDs is the uncomfortable fact that almost without exception, the new TLDs created since 2000 have been utter failures. Other than perhaps .cat and .mobi, they've missed their estimates of the number of registrations by orders of magnitude, and they haven't gotten mindshare in the target community. So what went wrong? more