Featured Blogs

How Domain Name Traffic Testing/Tasting Works

Starting from an old article (dated July 21st, 2005) published at Computer Business Review, (and following a more recent entry on GoDaddy's Bob Parson's blog) I would like to touch a bit more on the topic of 'traffic testing' or 'traffic tasting' of domains. This topic has been discussed at ICANN meetings since last year and is also referred to by the name of 'add/delete' or 'add/drop' storms... more

Domain Name Dispute Cases Increased by 6.6% in 2004

In its February 18, 2005 press release, WIPO has reported filing an average of 3.4 UDRP and UDRP-based cases per calendar day in 2004, bringing the total number of cases received in 2004 to 1,179 -- an increase of 79 cases (or 6.6%) as compared to 2003. Also mentioned in the report is a 37 percent increase in ccTLDs cases over the previous year. Listed below are a number of additional facts and figures reported... more

.XXX and Conservative Groups

By now, you should have read elsewhere that the ICANN board has rejected the ICM application to create a .XXX TLD. It still comes as a surprise to some. Frankly, this was the prognosis I made to Stuart Lawley two years ago, for the very reasons mentioned by the European Commission. I mentioned in a previous blog entry that 6000 complaints from US citizens would have more weight on the conservative US administration than any other consideration... more

If ICANN’t Keep a Contract, Let the Public Enforce It

Earlier in the Registerfly controversy, ICANN Vice President Paul Levins posted to the ICANN Blog: "ICANN is not a regulator. We rely mainly on contract law. We do not condone in any way whatsoever RegisterFly's business practice and behaviour." This is disingenuous. ICANN is the central link in a web of contracts that regulate the business of domain name allocation. ICANN has committed, as a public benefit corporation, to enforcing those contracts in the public interest. Domain name registrants, among others, rely on those contracts to establish a secure, stable environment for domain name registration and through that for online content location. more

Getting WHOIS Server Address Directly from Registry

If you want to find out the WHOIS server for a particular TLD then in many cases you can do it with a simple DNS lookup. Just query for an SRV record for the domain _nicname._tcp.tld, like this... Many other TLDs follow this convention including .au .at .dk .fr .de .hu .ie .li .lu .nl .no .re .si .se and .ch. more

How Spammers Get Around SPF

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) stops novice spammers but not the professionals, says Spammer-X, a retired spammer who has gone into a lot of the details in his book, "Inside the Spam Cartel". The best way to beat SPF is to join it... First, Joe Spammer rents a dedicated spam host in a spammer-friendly location, like China. Next, he registers 100 domain names, and each domain is registered under a fake name and address. Next, DNS entries for each of the hosts are set up, including a valid pointer record (PTR), an MX record and reverse DNS entries for each domain... more

Can’t Sell Your IPv4 Numbers? Try Leasing Them

In a "policy implementation and experience report" presented at ARIN 31 in Barbados, ARIN's staff noted that they are seeing "circumstances" related to the leasing of IPv4 number blocks. At the recent INET in Denver, ARIN's Director John Curran alleged that there is a "correlation" between address leasing activity and organizations that have been unable to complete specified transfers through the ARIN process, which requires needs-based justification. more

Book Review: Sex.com by Kieren McCarthy

On the face of it, Kieren McCarthy's Sex.com was a book that could have written itself: a notorious, well-publicised feud over the most valuable domain name in existence, between two charismatic men -- one a serial entrepreneur with a weakness for hard drugs (Gary Kremen), the other a gifted con-man with delusions of grandeur (Stephen Cohen). It's a story replete with vicious acrimony, multi-million dollar lawsuits, and rumours of gunfights between bounty hunters in the streets of Tijuana. Thankfully, McCarthy wasn't content to just bundle together all the articles he's written about Sex.com over the years and slap a cover on the front... more

10 Things Google Could Do as a Domain Name Registrar

In the absence of any formal announcements, news of Google being accredited by ICANN as a domain name registrar, spread fast in the media today after it was first reported by Bret Fausett on Lextext -- see Google is a Registrar. The company has since mentioned that "Google became a domain name registrar to learn more about the Internet's domain name system," and that it has no plans to sell any domain names at the moment. However, speculations on what Google could do as an accredited registrar are far and wide. Here are ten, listed in no particular order... more

A Dangerous, Norm-Destroying Attack

Kim Zetter has a new story out describing a very serious attack. In fact, the implications are about as bad as possible. The attack has been dubbed ShadowHammer by Kaspersky Lab, which discovered it. Briefly, some crew of attackers -- I suspect an intelligence agency; more on that below -- has managed to abuse ASUS' update channel and private signing key to distribute bogus patches. more

Damaging Malware Uncovered in the Google Play Store

Android users can choose from 3.718 million applications in the Google Play Store. When installing applications, the majority of consumers trust Google to keep their devices safe from hackers. However, the reality is different. Just back in May 2023, researchers discovered over 101 infected applications in the Android store. Many of these apps counted over 400 million downloads. more

The Real Problem with dot-XXX

Shakespeare has Marcellus say in Act 1 of Hamlet, "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark." ...Milton Mueller, in his recent post to this site, would have us believe that since ICANN's Board long ago agreed that ICM's application for dot-xxx registry satisfied its own criteria for a sponsored TLD, then the only explanation for all the delay is, "I'm beginning to think that ICANN's approach to TLD approval was cooked up by a demented sergeant from Abu Ghraib." Milton goes on to assert that ICM's claim on dot-xxx is protected by the 1st Amendment. If this is so, then why after more than six years of discussion, is dot-xxx still raising such a fuss? more

Has the FCC Created a Stone Too Heavy for It to Lift?

After five years of bickering, the FCC passed an Open Internet Report & Order on a partisan 3-2 vote this week. The order is meant to guarantee that the Internet of the future will be just as free and open as the Internet of the past. Its success depends on how fast the Commission can transform itself from an old school telecom regulator wired to resist change into an innovation stimulator embracing opportunity. One thing we can be sure about is that the order hasn't tamped down the hyperbole that's fueled the fight to control the Internet's constituent parts for all these years. more

Shouldn’t Tea Time for Kenya Mean IDN Top-Level Domains?

Anyone who knows Kenya knows it is famous for tea. And while I can now get Kenyan tea online from US companies like Starbucks, Caribou Coffee or any number of other re-sellers, like most consumers I would vastly prefer to cut out the middle man and buy my tea direct from Kenyan companies. Why not? But here's the rub... more

In Memoriam: Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. – a Personal Recollection

Brooks is famous for many things. Many people know him best as the author of The Mythical Man-Month, his musings on software engineering and why it's so very hard. Some of his prescriptions seem quaint today -- no one these days would print out documentation on microfiche every night to distribute to developers -- but his observations about the problems of development remain spot-on. But he did so much more. more