Featured Blogs

When No Action Is the Wisest Action (ICANN Does Good)

Although ICANN is now getting a lot of ridicule for the "glitch" in its TLD application System, it deserves some praise and respect for the results of its April 10 board meeting. In that meeting, the board showed the involved community - and the rest of the world - that it is no longer going to be stampeded by extra-procedural political pressure to make yet another round of hasty amendments to its new TLD program's policies and procedures. more

Next gTLDs: 2016 or 2019?

On September 22, 2014, ICANN published an analysis of the review and assessment work that remains to be done before a new round of gTLD (generic Top Level Domain) applications can be initiated. According to the document, 2016 is the earliest a call for the next lot of applications to operate an Internet suffix could come. To many, a subsequent application window so soon after the 2012 round seems unrealistic. more

The Crimeware Infection Lifecycle

The distribution and installation of malicious and unauthorized software has evolved consistently throughout the 21st Century. The evolutionary path from annoying viruses, to destructive malware and on to financially driven crimeware, is well documented and can even be conveniently traced via the parallel evolution of technologies that were designed to counter each new aspect of the then contemporary threat. more

What Your ISP (Probably) Knows About You

Earlier this week, I came across a working paper from Professor Peter Swire - a highly respected attorney, professor, and policy expert. Swire's paper, entitled "Online Privacy and ISPs", argues that ISPs have limited capability to monitor users' online activity. The paper argues that ISPs have limited visibility into users' online activity for three reasons: (1) users are increasingly using many devices and connections, so any single ISP is the conduit of only a fraction of a typical user's activity; (2) end-to-end encryption is becoming more pervasive, which limits ISPs' ability to glean information about user activity; and (3) users are increasingly shifting to VPNs to send traffic. more

Identical or Confusingly Similar to Trademarks but Noninfringing Domain Names

Domain names may be confusingly similar to trademarks or even identical or but not infringing. This is particularly true of trademarks acquired later than the allegedly infringing domain names ArcBest Corporation v. Domains By Proxy, LLC, Registration Private / Vernon Troupe, D2016-2381 (WIPO January 13, 2017) (<arcbest.com>, in which "ark" is a contraction of "Arkansas"), but it can also apply to marks composed of common element that predate domain name registration... more

FCC Commissioner O’Rielly’s Appalling Op-Ed on the ITU

The FCC Commissioner Michael O'Reilly's recently contributed opinion on the ITU in "The Hill" is beyond bizarre. It also sadly displays an appalling lack of knowledge of the organization and its history. I find it disturbing - as someone who held senior positions at both the FCC and the ITU and wrote the organization's history - how fundamentally ignorant an FCC Commissioner could be today of the global telecommunications ecosystem. more

When It Comes to gTLDs, Follow the Money (Part 1)

Introducing new generic Top-Level Domains represents, as ICANN says, "the biggest change in the Internet since its inception 40 years ago." Among the least understood aspects of this change is its potential to alter the economic power of ICANN as an institution. To see how that might happen, let's follow the money as it is expected to flow from the gTLD application process. ICANN expects to get a lot of money from gTLD applications: $92,500,000, to be exact. more

How Not to Stop Spammers

Spam Arrest is a company that sells an anti-spam service. They attempted to sue some spammers and, as has been widely reported, lost badly. This case emphasizes three points that litigious antispammers seem not to grasp: Under CAN SPAM, a lot of spam is legal; Judges hate plaintiffs who try to be too clever, and hate sloppy preparation even more; Never, ever, file a spam suit in Seattle. more

The Internet Is Designed for Surveillance

The current implementation of the Internet is hierarchical in that we get IP addresses from providers and then use a DNS that is rooted. We go even further in requiring that we conform to conditions on our intent (AKA our use) of connectivity in order to get a temporary lease on something so fundamental as our identity in the guise of a DNS name. We go further by accepting the idea that we communicate within pipes owned by service providers who can dictate terms in order to extract a rent. more

What Ever Happened to the Closed Local Internet Registries?

Since the establishment of the RIPE NCC, 5,000 Local Internet Registries (LIRs) have closed. We wanted to find out why. Many of them were probably victims of the burst of the dotcom bubble. But how many? And which countries were mostly affected? How many closures were the results of mergers? We've got answers. more

Biggest Deal in Telecom Policy Since the AT&T Divestiture

The biggest communications policy moment since the AT&T divestiture has just happened: The $100 million-dollar-march (or more -- what Comcast spent to make sure this happened) has ponderously, self-evidently reached its conclusion with the FCC's approval of the merger between Comcast and NBCU. It wasn't the subtlest campaign; it didn't need to be; it was effective in its discipline and heavy persistence. The tweets are flying and the journalists are already weighing in. more

The Broad Brush of LegitScript, Painting Inaccuracies About CIPA

The president of LegitScript recently authored an inaccurate and misleading critique of the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) that was clearly intended to smear our reputation with a broad brush dipped in inaccuracies and scare tactics. This response paints the true picture of who we are and the benefits CIPA Members offer U.S. consumers. more

International Law of Critical Internet Infrastructure [CII]: A Comparative Analysis

On Friday December 13, 2024 at 10:00–12:00 CET (09:00-11:00 AM UTC) the Lodz Cyber Hub at the University of Lodz Law School, an ICANN EURALO ALS, and the United Nations University – Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) hosts an online workshop 'International Law of Critical Internet Infrastructure: A Comparative Analysis of Europe and China'. more

What Mobile Malware Looks Like

Last month at the Virus Bulletin Conference in Barcelona, I took in one of the sessions on mobile malware. This type of malware is foreign to me because I mostly stay in the email space at work (and even then, I am focusing more on day-to-day issues of running a large mail provider than I am on spam and abuse). What's mobile malware like? What are the threats? How do users get infected? more

Wow, Sanford Wallace Owes a Lot of Money

Last September MySpace sued ur-spammers Sanford "Spamford" Wallace and Walt "Pickle Jar" Rines were for egregious violations of CAN SPAM. Neither responded, so as was widely reported, earlier this week the court granted a default judgement. Since they sent a lot of spam, the statutory damages came to an enormous $235 million. Even for Spamford, that's a lot of money. more