Featured Blogs

The Suitable Defendant Rule: In Rem Jurisdiction under the ACPA

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) creates two distinct avenues by which mark owners may seek a remedy for cybersquatting. A person who is a suitable defendant under 15 U.S.C. §1125(d)(1)(A) is one over whom the court has in personam jurisdiction. However, if the mark owner is "not able to obtain in personam jurisdiction over a person who would have been a defendant" in the ACPA action, then "[t]he owner may file an in rem civil action against a domain name in... more

Homeland Security Department Was Warned About DNSSEC Key Ownership and Trust Issues

The Internet Governance Project has unearthed a consultancy report to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that makes it clear that the issue of root signing and DNSSEC key management has been recognized as a political issue within the US government for long time. more

Hong Kong is the Fastest Internet Region in the World

In Akamai Technologies' "State of the Internet" report for Q4 2010 Hong Kong (as a region/country) was identified as the market with the fastest average peak internet connection speed in the world. Hong Kong fixed line users can access the internet with an average peak speed of 37.9Mb/s, ahead of South Korea at 32.3Mb/s, Romania at 31.7Mb/s and Japan at 30.5Mb/s. more

Cybersquatting and Geopolitics Heats Up

Cybersquatting is so 2000, or so we thought. The Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) at WIPO has been chugging along for several years now, methodically determining if complainants IP rights have been violated and reassigning "ownership" of domain names. Typically, the cases are fairly boring. But some recent developments in the world of 800 lb search gorillas, Google and Baidu, suggests that the regime could be faced with substantial pressure in the near future. more

Outdated Whois Information Might Lead to False Light Tort: Meyerkord v. Zipatoni

It's a late entry, but this opinion may be a dark horse candidate for the most bizarre case of 2008. Meyerkord was a Zipatoni employee and listed as the registrant on domain names at Zipatoni's Register.com account. Meyerkord left in 2003. In 2006, Zipatoni ran an astroturfing viral campaign for Sony to promote the Play Station Portable at the domain alliwantforxmasisapsp.com... Unfortunately for Sony -- and Meyerkord -- the campaign did not go well. more

Observations on Resolver Behavior During DNS Outages

When an outage affects a component of the internet infrastructure, there can often be downstream ripple effects affecting other components or services, either directly or indirectly. We would like to share our observations of this impact in the case of two recent such outages, measured at various levels of the DNS hierarchy, and discuss the resultant increase in query volume due to the behavior of recursive resolvers. more

Might CubeSats Provide Broadband Internet Connectivity One Day?

In November, 2016, SpaceX filed a request for approval to launch 4,425 Internet-service satellites using the Ku and Ka frequency bands. The satellites were expected to measure 4 x 1.8 x 1.2 meters. In February, 2018 SpaceX launched two Internet-service test satellites - TinTin A and B - that measured only 1.1 x .7 x .7 meters. Why the size difference? more

Long Live the Neodomainers: The Domain Game, Good or Bad

David Kesmodel's to be released book The Domain Game, irrespective of how it is received, will undoubtedly catapult the industry into a new era: that of the neodomainers, the super crunchers. To analyze the impact of the book on the industry, let's look at stylized exchange scenarios featuring a domainer as intermediary (an intermediary in that he or she acquires from the seller and then hopes to resell to the buyer)... more

Measure Your Bufferbloat! New Browser-based Tool from DSLReports

All things come to those who wait, and bufferbloat measurement tools are no exception. When we hosted a workshop on reducing Internet latency way back in 2013, one of the identified outcomes was the need for better tools to help users understand when they had a bufferbloat problem, and now we have just such a tool from the awesome folks over at DSLReports. Before going any further I should probably clarify what we mean by bufferbloat. more

Email Portability Approved by Knesset Committee

The email portability bill has just been approved by the Knesset's committee for legislation, sending it on its way for the full legislation process of the Israeli parliament. While many users own a free email account, many in Israel still make use of their ISP's email service. According to this proposed bill, when a client transfers to a different ISP the email address will optionally be his to take along, "just like" mobile providers do today with phone numbers. more

LTE Insufficient from the Start, Boingo IPO Propitious

The trouble with planning way ahead is that the world changes before you execute. The major wireless carriers have been planning their 4^th generation LTE (Long Term Evolution) rollouts for a long time -- that's how they do things. Now, even as Verizon Wireless is doing an aggressive rollout of LTE, it's becoming clear that LTE networks will not be able to slake the data thirst of a world full of smart phones and tablets. Whoops. more

Building a Strong, Sustainable Domain Name Industry - With Integrity

This week, I had the privilege of presenting at NamesCon on behalf of the Domain Name Association (DNA) -- in my position as Chair of the Board -- to provide an update on our activities and an assessment of our progress as an industry in light of the goals of the DNA. In summary, there is still a long way to go with many challenges to address. Despite this, there is much to be excited about and incredible opportunity for our combined success. Included here is a transcript of my speech. I welcome feedback and comments. more

Cross-Pollination in Cyberspace and the Internet Governance “Spaghetti-Ball”

In mid-May 2020, UN-Secretary General Antonio Guterres will present a "Roadmap for Digital Cooperation". This will be another milestone in the discussion on the future of cyberspace, pushed further forward by the UN High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (HLP), co-chaired by Jack Ma (AliBaba) und Melinda Gates (Microsoft Foundation) The HLP Final Report presented five groups of recommendations. Discussion started during the 14th IGF in Berlin... more

A Serious Bug in the Similarity Check

A week ago, ICANN announced the latest delay in the New gTLD Program: the so-called "contention sets" will only be published March 1, 2013. The original deadline was July 2012, postponed serially in two-month intervals. The gTLD program is lost in confusing similarity. What went wrong? In order to determine which TLD applications are in contention, it is necessary to say which TLD strings are confusingly similar to one another. more

European Privacy Authorities Object to ICANN Whois Proposals

In response to a letter from ICANN's Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) to data protection authorities concerning overreaching requests of law enforcement agencies in ICANN's ongoing Registrar Accreditation Agreement negotiations, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has written the ICANN Board. more