Featured Blogs

Reputation and “The Cloud”

As Reddit recently learned it's not a great idea to use the Amazon EC2 cloud to host mailservers. There are a number of reasons for this, most of them related to the reputation of mail coming from EC2 servers. When you're using machines in the cloud, changing IP addresses is as simple as initializing a new server. Spammers discovered this almost as soon as the EC2 cloud became public. more

Questions About the Robustness of Mobile Networks

With mobile phones having become a utility, people are beginning to rely completely on mobile services for a large range of communications. All mobile users, however, are aware of some level of unreliability in these phone systems. Blackspots remain all around the country, not just outside the cities, and in busy areas the quality of the service goes down rather quickly. Drop-outs are another fairly common occurrence of mobile services. more

The Uncertainty of Measuring the DNS

The period around the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century saw a number of phenomenal advances in the physical sciences. There was J.J. Thompson's discovery of the electron in 1897, Max Planck's quantum hypothesis in 1900, Einstein's ground-breaking papers on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect and special relativity in 1905, and Ernest Rutherford's study of the nucleus published in 1911 to mention but a few of the fundamental discoveries of the time. more

Filing Cybersquatting Complaints With No Actionable Claims

I noted in last week's essay three kinds of cybersquatting complaints typically filed under ICANN'S Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The third (utterly meritless) kind are also filed in federal court under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). While sanctions for reverse domain name hijacking are available in both regimes, the UDRP's is toothless and the ACPA's a potent remedy. more

New gTLDs’ Sales Force a Bottleneck?

A number of the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) have not fared well, as reflected in the dismal domain registrations. Most often we're told the problem is that end users don't know about the gTLDs, or that they don't understand or fully believe in the gTLDs' benefits, or that they demand a tremendous amount of benefits before giving up the familiar for something new (so-called .com-stickiness). My point: Behind all these explanations there may be another, the lack of decent sales force strategies. more

What May Happen to GAC Advice? 3 Fearless Predictions

Many TLD applicants are likely to respond to the GAC Advice in a manner that is like story telling: Based on a mixture of fiction garnished with some facts from their applications, applicants will write savvy responses with only one aim -- to calm down the GAC's concerns and survive the GAC Advice storm. The "duck and cover" strategy... According to the Applicant Guidebook, material changes to applications need to go through a Change Request process. more

Apple’s Naked Self Interest

Any vendor in the platform business knows that their primary product is programming interfaces -- the so-called APIs that developers depend upon in order to deliver applications. The API exposes features of the platform, and differentiate applications running on that platform from all others. Lose control of the API, and you will lose control of the developer. Developers are the leading indicator for platform success. Ergo, lose the developer, lose the platform. more

Navigating the “Pentest” World

The demand for penetration testing and security assessment services worldwide has been growing year-on-year. Driven largely by Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) concerns, plus an evolving pressure to be observed taking information security and customer privacy seriously, most CIO/CSO/CISO's can expect to conduct regular "pentests" as a means of validating their organizations or product's security. more

An Alternative to CCWG Overreach

ICANN is in the midst (I wouldn't yet say the middle) of its transition from oversight by the US Department of Commerce to oversight by something else. A Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) on Accountability delivered a long report in August that proposes a new oversight structure for ICANN. But it has the practical problem that the ICANN board really, really hates it. Having looked at it, I can't entirely blame them. more

The World of Internet Threats Is Constantly Changing

The world of Internet threats has changed continually over the years. From the time that a "worm" first showed up in the wild, or whenever someone penetrated a system without authorization for the first time, various forms of attacks and malware have presented dangers to the system and those who use it. Different vectors have received varied focus over the years... Many parts of the Internet community have been involved in addressing relevant issues and fostering efforts to combat them. more

Neustar Urges Caution to ICANN Before Batching

Neustar has sent the following letter to ICANN. Neustar sent the letter to urge caution to ICANN before launching the batching process to promote competition and choice for consumers in a fair and balanced manner... "Neustar has long been an advocate for the introduction of new generic top level domains. Given the long and sometimes arduous road the ICANN community has traveled to get to this point in the process, we are understandably anxious to avoid unnecessary delay in the launch of new gTLDS." more

When It Comes to Domain Name Rights Protection, scapegoat.sucks

It is not surprising that the phase 1 review of domain name rights protection mechanisms is delayed, but it is a bit of a surprise that in responding to a question posed in 2020, business executives and their lawyers replied with answers first offered and rejected five years earlier. In that time before COVID-19, the launch of the Vox Populi Registry and its dotSucks domain names drew quite a lot of attention. more

Time to Take Stock: Twelve Internet and Jurisdiction Trends in Retrospect

With the growing tension between the cross-border Internet and the patchwork of national jurisdictions, it becomes crucial to keep track of key global trends that drive the debate on appropriate frameworks. One year ago, the Internet & Jurisdiction Project initiated a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process on these issues. To provide a factual basis for such discussions, it established an Observatory, supported by a network of selected international experts, to detect and categorize relevant cases via an innovative crowd-based filtering process in order to identify high-level patterns. more

Death of Transit: A Need to Prevent Fragmentation

Way back in the olden days, folks decided that cities should invest lots of money in public transportation systems. The reasons were many fold, including reducing the number of individual vehicles being driven in too, and parked in, congested "downtown" areas, and increasing traffic to businesses in those areas, increasing their commercial viability. Many of these systems are sold to the public with the idea that they will (at least) break even against capital and operational expenses over time, but the reality is far different. more

Why Vertical Integration Is Good for the Domain Name Industry

ICANN's decision a little over a week ago to permit the vertical integration of registries and registrars in the new top-level domain program, which now appears in the Applicant Guidebook published over the weekend, was as welcome as it was surprising. This bold, principled stance will fundamentally modernize the domain name industry and create competitive benefits that will be felt by consumers and under-served communities for years to come. more