Featured Blogs

Overcoming Obstacles to Full-Scale Business Intelligence Adoption in 2021

Data analytics isn't just for large organizations anymore. As businesses and community collectives increasingly move their operations into digital spaces, the vast amounts of data being collected pose an opportunity for them to get to know their stakeholders better. While the security implications of this migration are hard to be taken lightly, the potential for game-changing insights is likewise enormous.  more

Cybersquatting and Reverse Domain Name Hijacking: UDRP to ACPA

Trademark owners in the U.S. have a choice in suing for alleged cybersquatting: either the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) or the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). Of the two, the UDRP is far and away the forum of choice for a very good reason: it is speedy, efficient, and inexpensive. Complaint to award can be concluded in less than 45 days. more

Scaling the Root of the DNS

The DNS is a remarkably simple system. You send it queries, and you get back answers. Within the system, you see exactly the same simplicity: The DNS resolver that receives your query may not know the answer, so it, in turn, will send queries deeper into the system and collects the answers. The query and response process is the same, applied recursively. Simple. However, the DNS is simple in the same way that Chess or Go are simple... more

On Why and How the Internet Needs to Be Governed

The World is not inventing Internet Governance. Internet is already being governed. There is governance, but without a formal structure -- the structure is undefined like a round table... The opponents of the concept of Internet Governance perhaps believe that the essential character of the Internet is preserved best by challenging the very concept of Governance. The words "Governance", "Control", "Regulation" or even "Coordination" are mistaken to be invasive to the essential character of a free, open and user-centric internet. more

Adopting IDN to Reach New Untapped Markets

An IDN is a domain name which uses a particular encoding and format to allow a wider range of scripts to represent domain names such as Gujarati, Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari and many more scripts. In simple words, a domain name with non-English characters will be called an Internationalized Domain Name. Humans have a variety of languages and alphabets that are familiar to them, and domain names do too. IDN unlocks an increased familiarity and affinity for humans. more

Reasons Why You Should NOT Apply for a .BRAND New gTLD

There are two kinds of new domain name extensions: those dedicated to selling domain names through the network of accredited Registrars and those dedicated to a personnel use. I call these "dotBRANDs" or ".brand" new gTLDs since they are used - most of the time - by Trademarks for their own benefit. This article focuses on .BRAND new generic Top-Level Domains. In the ICANN vocabulary, these are "Registry Agreements with Specification 13". more

Digging Through the Problem of IPv6 and Email - Part 2

We have seen that spammers already possess the ability to hop around IP addresses quickly. They do this because once an IP gets blocked, it is no longer useful to them. There are only so many places they can hide, though - 4.2 billion places they can hide. However, in IPv6, if they are able to do the same pattern of sending out mail and hopping around IP addresses the same way they do in IPv4, then there is virtually unlimited space they can hide in. more

DMARC: New Email Authentication Protocol

A consortium of companies including Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Paypal have announced that they were collaborating and coming up with a new protocol known as DMARC -- the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. What is DMARC? more

Leaving it to the Last Second - The Leap Seconds Conundrum

Thanks to the moon, the earth's rate of rotation is slowing down. It's a subtle interaction and the modeling of planetary dynamics predicts that the earth's rotation should be slowing down by an average of 2.3 milliseconds per century. But this is not quite so uniform... So what? Maybe we can start by looking at how we've defined time over history... It's only been in recent decades that we've turned our attention to timekeeping with an obsessive level of detail that rivals, and maybe even surpasses, train spotting. more

A Post-Pandemic Look at Owning (Virtual) Space for Business vs Renting on Social Media

Over 20 years ago, in 1997, the very first social media platform, SixDegrees.com, was launched. Most of us have probably not heard of it, and that's not surprising since the platform survived for only four years. Since then, there has been a surge in the number of social media platforms that have been launched: Friendster, MySpace, Foursquare, Classmates, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest, WeChat, Vine, WhatsApp, Blogger, WordPress, LinkedIn, Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, ClubHouse, the list goes on. more

Why Has ICANN Cut Subsequent TLD Round Preparations From Its Budget?

As we approach another ICANN meeting and another opportunity for our community to come together to discuss, collaborate and work, there is naturally a flurry of activity as stakeholders push for a spot on the agenda for their key areas of interest. And in the midst of current discussions, particularly around important topics like GDPR, it's easy for other vital conversations to be missed. more

UDRP and Article 92(b) of EUROPEAN COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 40/94

It has been over a year since I posted "The Non-Parity of the UDRP", how little did I know then compared to now! Since that posting, the corporations and their lawyers have given me a crash course in the law and I have learned much. There are many tricks that corporations will play on a domain name registrant in order to silence criticism of the corporation and to violate the registrants right of freedom of expression without frontiers. The UDRP Administrative Proceedings is one such trick... more

Skype Takes a SIP of Cisco With UC500 Skype For SIP Certification

It's been a busy month for the folks in the Skype For SIP project. First, back on September 9, Skype announced ShoreTel interoperability. Then last week on September 17, Skype announced interop with the open source SIPFoundry sipXecs product. Today, though, is Skype's biggest announcement yet... more

ICANN Maps Whois Models for GDPR

Earlier today ICANN held a webinar to provide an update on their data privacy activities in relation to whois and GDPR. Rather than simply talking about the various "models" they produced both a visual mapping as well as a matrix. While some attendees may not agree with how all the models are classified it is still a helpful way of showing the deviations from the current fully public whois model for gTLD domain name registrations. more

Dot-Com is Still King - of Domain Name Disputes

Despite the launch of more than 1,200 new gTLDs, .com remains far and away the most popular top-level domain involved in domain name disputes. In 2016, .com domain names represented 66.82 percent of all gTLD disputes at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the only domain name dispute provider that publishes real-time statistics. And, as of this writing, the rate is even higher so far in 2017, with .com domain names accounting for 69.78 percent of all disputes. more