Featured Blogs

Why 5G Is in Trouble (and How to Fix It)

I have a somewhat unconventional view of 5G. I just happen to believe it is the right one. It is trapped inside a category error about the nature of packet networking, and this means it is in trouble. As context, we are seeing the present broadband Internet access model maturing and begin to reach its peak. 5G eagerly anticipates the next wave of applications. As such, 5G is attempting to both extend and transcend the present "undifferentiated data sludge" model of mobile broadband. more

One Good Outcome from the Wall Street Journal: Google Flap

On Monday the Wall Street Journal published an article alleging that Google was trying to arrange a "fast lane for its own content" with telecom carriers and contending that Google and Professor Lessig were in the midst of changing their position on network neutrality policy. The WSJ reporters received a lot of flak for the piece -justifiably so. There was no real "news" in this news article. more

How to Fix WHOIS - Part 2

The key to fixing any part of the Internet infrastructure is to understand the business cases for the parties whose behavior you want to influence and design the technology accordingly. People who follow this approach (Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web) have a chance of succeeding. People who ignore it (DNSSEC, IPv6) will fail. The root problem here is that the ICANN DNS does not differentiate between the parts of the Internet that are accountable and those that are not. more

Never Invited, but Always Present

Listening today to the U.S. Congress' House of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing on ICANN governance reminded me just how often Vox Populi Registry, the company bringing dotSucks names to the Internet, is a guest at parties to which it has never been invited. Sometimes, like today, we are able to view it all from a distance and mostly we have refrained from trying to correct every misstatement or argue each odd point. more

How Are ICANN’s New TLDs Doing?

ICANN has now accepted several hundred new top level domains (TLDs) and some of them are now open for general registration. I have sized up for zone file access, so I can download daily snapshots of most of the active zones, and I'm making daily counts of the number of names in each zone. more

An Overview of the 27th DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Center Meetings

The DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Center (DNS-OARC) meetings are an instance of a meeting that concentrates on the single topic of the DNS, and in this case, it delves as deep as anyone is prepared to go! It's two days where too much DNS is barely enough! The hot topic of the meeting was the news that the proposed roll of the Key-Signing-Key of the root zone of the DNS, originally scheduled for October 11, was to be postponed. more

How the Clinton “Village” Transformed Internet Paradigms: Together Making a Difference

U.S. Presidential elections and the resulting Administrations can make an enormous difference on many levels and become profound points of inflection. This reality is certainly starkly visible today. Perhaps for the Internet community as well as the general public, some of the largely unknown events and actions surrounding the Internet and the Clinton team from 25 years ago can provide a basis for engagement over the coming months. more

Top Six IT Trends Impacting Business Networks

For decades, IT followed business. Even the development of the World Wide Web didn't move this development much beyond the four walls of corporate offices -- outside connections were essential but never informed the growth of business-critical technology. Now the growth of public clouds, enterprise-grade social networking and mobile device use in the workforce is creating a new paradigm, one where business networks are reactive to IT trends -- here are six that are set to impact companies this year. more

Showing our Ethos with .ORG

I recently stepped into a new role as Chief Purpose Officer of Ethos Capital, a specialized investment firm focused on helping companies drive growth and transformation through technology. In doing so, we are committed to operating ethically, responsibly, and in the best interests of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, vendors and the broader community. more

The Next ICANN CEO

Internet public policy -- and the technical ecosystem -- is at a crossroads and the choice of CEO that ICANN's board makes now is probably the most important such choice it has ever made. Since I work in Internet policy across the Geneva institutions where more than 50% of all international Internet-related policy meetings take place, and have worked at ICANN in senior positions in the past, I thought I would suggest some qualities the next CEO should have. more

The Naive Arrogance of FUSSPs

Everyone who's been in the e-mail biz long enough knows the term FUSSP, Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem, as described in a checklist from Vern Schryver and a form response that's been floating around the net for a decade. FUSSPs fall into two general categories, bad ideas that won't go away, and reasonable ideas that are oversold. more

Tinkering Without Tampering: Wrestling With Convergence and Communications Policy (Transcript)

Our world finds itself at a critical juncture. Both trillions of dollars and the future of human communications including fundamental access to it are at stake. For telecom operators and media outlets there is not a migratory way from where we are to the future. There is a clear consumer shift underway that runs in the opposite direction to that of telecom and media incumbents; emergent social practice is increasingly clashing with the very structure and desires of incumbent players... It was for these reasons that one of the six keynote speakers invited to Spring 2009 Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) in San Francisco was Richard Whitt, Google's Washington Telecom and Media Counsel. His keynote was entitled, Tinkering without Tampering: Wrestling with Convergence and Communications Policy... more

The Limits of Notice and Takedown

In The Limits of Filtering, Evan Engstrom and Nick Feamster argue eloquently that the costs of a "takedown-staydown" system to defend against copyright infringement would be prohibitive for online service providers (OSPs) and therefore deprive OSPs of otherwise interested investors. I agree that Engstrom and Feamster raise some valid points, particularly including that content recognition technologies are not perfect... However, we must also remember that the current DMCA regime imposes significant costs... more

What Does an Administration Change Mean for the FCC?

Just as the last change in administration changed the course of the FCC, so will the swing back to a Democratic administration. If you've been reading me for a few years, you know I am a big believer in the regulatory pendulum. Inevitably, when a regulatory agency like the FCC swings too far in any direction, it's inevitable that it will eventually swing back the other way. more

What It Takes to Prove Common Law Rights in UDRP Complaints

The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy now has seventeen years of history. A high percentage of disputes are indefensible and generally undefended. As the history lengthens, early registrants of dictionary word-, common phrase-, and arbitrary letter-domain names have been increasing challenged in two circumstances, namely by businesses who claim to have used the unregistered terms before respondents registered them and later by emerging businesses with no history prior to the registrations of the domain names. more