Featured Blogs

ICANN’s Implementation Recommendation Team for New gTLDs: Safeguards Needed

During the recent ICANN Board meeting in Mexico City, the Board authorized the creation and funding of an Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT). This team was to be comprised of "an internationally diverse group of persons with knowledge, expertise, and experience in the fields of trademark, consumer protection, or competition law, and the interplay of trademarks and the domain name system to develop and propose solutions to the overarching issue of trademark protection in connection with the introduction of new gTLDs." more

Unlicensed Millimeter Wave Spectrum

I haven't seen it talked about a lot, but the FCC has set aside millimeter wave spectrum that can be used by anybody to provide broadband. That means that entities will be able to use the spectrum in rural America in areas that the big cellphone companies are likely to ignore. The FCC set aside the V band (60 GHz) as unlicensed spectrum. This band provides 14 GHz of contiguous spectrum available for anybody to use. This is an interesting spectrum because it has a few drawbacks. more

Global Domain Registrations Edge Closer to 300M: Verisign

The number of domain names registered around the world grew by 2.2 million, or 0.8 percent, to 296 million at the end of June according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign. With similar growth, the 300 million mark should be reached around the end of 2015. Worldwide registrations have grown by 16.4 million, or 5.9 percent, year over year. more

The Central IPv4 Pool is Gone

Yesterday, the Asia-Pacific registry got the last two blocks in the central IPv4 pool. The IANA has been sitting on five /8s (one per regional registry), and these will be handed out (along with the fragments from the legacy class B space), one to each registry. The IANA IPv4 registry doesn't yet reflect this. more

Capping Broadband Internet by Design

FIOS by Verizon, is a bundled Internet access, telephone, and television service that operates over a fiber-optic communications network with over 5 million customers in nine U.S. states -- providing Fiber to the Home (FTTH). One of the first service areas was a Northern Virginia community known as Ashburn -- which is also is the cloud data center capital of the world. It literally sits on top of the most massive mesh of high bandwidth, low latency fiber in existence. more

Thinking Carefully About New gTLD Objections: Legal Rights (4 of 4)

This last article on the four new gTLD objections will look at the Legal Rights Objection ("LRO"). While other articles in this series have touched on trademark concepts at certain points, issues from that area of the law predominate in LRO. Here we review the pertinent LRO-related trademark concepts, with which many readers likely will have some familiarity from working with domains and the UDRP. Still, the theme of the first three articles applies here: Potential objections are more involved and complicated than they may seem, and require careful thought if they are to be made. more

The Great Inevitable: From Broadband Internet to Cloud Application Access

Some inevitable changes are hard to see in prospect, yet are 'obvious' in retrospect. The next communications revolution is 'made for cloud' access. A colleague pointed me to a Forbes article "For Today's Telecoms Companies, Customer Experience Is Just As Important As Download Speeds". It was written by Huawei's global president of assurance and managed services. Well, I told you so! more

A Tribute to the STI (Special Trademarks Initiative Team)

In the ICANN world, our relations are often a little tumultuous, as policy-making bodies can be. As I look back on my experiences over the last decade at ICANN (and many committees, working groups and task forces), one stands out for its quality, dedication, professionalism and hard work. That's the Special Trademarks Initiatives Working Team, or the STI. I was proud to be a part of the Team as an Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) representative, and this tribute reflects my high regard for the Team and the recommendations it produced. more

A Modest Proposal for ICANN

When it comes to accountability, ICANN would rather be compared to other U.S. nonprofit companies than to the regulatory bodies it more closely resembles. If they truly wish to be treated like a nonprofit, rather than a regulator, there is a very simple solution: make all contributions strictly voluntary. more

Beyond Net Neutrality: A Manifesto for Internet Freedom

The Internet's existence within the regulatory system has been a disastrous failure. Network Neutrality is fine as far as it goes. The problem is that it leaves the current abysmal system in place. On my Economics and Architecture of IP Networks Mail list, Erik Cecil has been deconstructing the regulatory system. Bottom line -- the most significant thing that can be done for the citizens of the internet in the US would be for the FCC to declare the internet protocol to be telecommunications and no longer exempt from regulation. more

Making Network Neutrality Sustainable, Revisited

Today FCC Chairman Genichowski announced that the FCC's Network Neutrality Proceeding is entering the rule-making stage. This is a historic milestone, worth celebrating, but the milestone is on a road with hairpin turns. If you look directly above us, you can see we're in almost exactly the same place we used to be when the pro-competition provisions of the 1996 Telecom Act were intact and the distinction between telecommunications service and information service was meaningful, but now we are a lot lower. more

European Commission on the Future of the Internet

The European Commission has just published a communication which describes the broad lines of its Internet policy in the coming years. Vint Cerf, on the Google Public Policy blog sees this as a very interesting vision. Indeed, it closely links the issue of openness of the Internet to several obvious and not-so-obvious factors. more

The Digital Decade – A Look Back

With 2019 coming to a close, we're not just saying goodbye to the past 365 days, we're also saying goodbye to an entire decade. As we bid farewell to the 2010s, we're taking this opportunity to look back and reflect on the digital decade as well as consider what the future might have in store for us all. The past ten years were a whirlwind of change, with new advances in technology exploding onto the market at a faster pace than ever before. more

We Need Smarter Governments to Manage a Changing Global Environment

The natural disasters, climate change and widespread social and economic crises that are taking place in the world today show that the human race needs to become smarter. The urban revolution that succeeded the Neolithic agricultural revolution has allowed us to build new city-based civilisations that are conducive to innovation and information-gathering in all aspects of life and beyond. While amazing civilisations have come and gone over the last 10,000 years it is only since the 20th century that we have seen a real explosion in the urbanisation process, leading to a doubling of the global population. more

Sprint’s Big Deal: New Life for WiMax

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the terms of a yet unannounced deal which will finance a massive rollout of WiMax by a Sprint-Clearwire joint venture. Outside funding is to be provided by Intel, Google, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable as well as Bright House, a small cable company. Assuming the deal is for real, this is good news for US users of broadband and, indirectly, other users around the world. more