Featured Blogs

The Internet (and ICANN) After the Trump Apocalypse

Three months ago, I pondered the question Would the Internet Survive a Trump Apocalypse? As improbable as that outcome was in August, enough of the American electorate has "pulled the pin" to bring it on. It is a brave new world -- distinctly darker and more uncertain. At the moment, the Trump team is trying to figure out how to manifest their vacuous invectives masquerading as policy. The world is watching, and Washington looks like the scene in Ghostbusters where the containment grid has just been turned off, and the demonic ghosts are rising from the underbelly of K-Street. The result here is a Washington lobbying dream -- a result rather different than that promised to naïve Trump devotees. more

The Real Deployment Issue

When I see glib talk about the inevitable transition to IPv6 or DNSSEC, I have to wonder what industry people think they are working in. Let me give an example that has nothing to do with networking: storage capacity. Now if there is one constant that everyone in the computing industry can agree on it is that they expect storage media capacity to increase. more

Three Myths About DKIM

The DKIM standard has been out for two years now, and we're starting to see some adoption by large mail systems, but there's still a lot of misunderstanding about what DKIM does and doesn't do... Any a mail system can add a signatures to the messages it handles, and spammers can sign their mail, too. A DKIM signature contains, stripped down to its basics, the domain of the signer and a checksum of the message. more

Broadband Stymied

Unfortunately, no matter what else the stimulus bill may or may not have done, it's slowed down the rate of broadband deployment in the US over the last year. The Rural Utility Service (part of the US Agriculture Department) and NTIA (part of the US Commerce Department) have awarded only 15% of the first round money they promised to make available. To be blunt, they failed in their mission. more

Unclear on the Concept, Sanctions Edition

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is an advocacy group that, among other things, tries to isolate Iran by pressuring businesses and organizations to stop doing business with Iran. This week they turned their attention to ICANN and RIPE to try to cut off Internet access to Iranian organizations. Regardless of one's opinion about the wisdom of isolating Iran (and opinions are far from uniform), this effort was a bad idea in an impressive number of both technical and political ways. more

Sept 8 Deadline for Comments on IANA Stewardship Transition - Have You Submitted Your Comments?

Have you submitted your comments on the IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal? Do you believe the proposal of the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) for how to transition the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions away from the U.S. government to the global community to be a solid proposal? Do you have points in the proposal you would like to emphasize? Do you have concerns? more

Big Data for the Common Good of Local Communities

There is no doubt that big data is going to be one of the most important tools that will assist human society in the future. Our increasingly complex society has been able to move forward, and it will continue to do so, based on rational, scientific facts and figures within the context of the needs of humanity. As an example, neuroscience is giving us more insight into ourselves, and we are learning that many of the elements that we have always thought of as being uniquely human are based on neurological/biological processes that can be put into algorithms. more

WIPO Provides New Top-Level Domain Resources for Rights Holders

Courtesy of Brian Beckham from the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center in Geneva, here are a few important links with information that may be helpful for rights holders with ICANN's New gTLD program now launched and accepting applications more

Privacy is a Growth Market in Search of Leadership

Within a single month, privacy has moved to the top of the "to-do" list for government, business and consumers. In fact, the confluence of activity is the best indication in the last ten years that the will exists to establish regulatory and self-governance programs that complement consumer protection. Privacy is a growth market. more

The Essential Ingredient of Politics Is Timing

The transition of the IANA contract oversight is, of course, the topic du jour at ICANN 50 in London. From the sessions to the hallway banter, it's the hottest topic I can recall in ICANN's history. It's an inherently over-the-top political topic, merging partisan politics in Washington with Internet governance. On numerous occasions in Singapore, Larry Strickling raised the domestic politicking on the part of the Republican Party regarding the IANA oversight transition, cautioning us of the discourse fuelled by opportunism. more

Solving the “Fake Twitter Profile” Problem Using DNS

Recently, an article I wrote for Bitcoin Magazine talked about how we can use DNS underscore scoping to better abstract Lightning addresses and even create a de facto specification that could work on any resource (like a wallet or a smart contract) across all blockchains. more

Yahoo Collaborating With US Intelligence Agencies

It was revealed yesterday that Yahoo has been scanning people's email for the federal government. This activity was, apparently, authorized by Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer but not the former CSO Alex Stamos. Mr. Stamos left Yahoo in June 2015. He also publicly disagreed with the director of the NSA back in February 2015 about the NSA having access to encrypted data. more

Cloud Versus Dedicated Data Centers: Rumble in the Virtual Jungle

Cloud or dedicated? That's the question companies face each time they need new storage space or resources -- is it better to build local or host off site? Both tech segments are performing strongly, with the global data center blade server market to reach more than $15 billion by 2019 at a compound annual growth rate of 10.25 percent and cloud computing sitting on a $16 billion market that's only trending up thanks to increased public and hybrid adoption. In other words, it's virtual war: Who wins the battle? more

Intellectual Property Interests Line Up to Crucify ICANN in Congress

On Wednesday, May 4, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing called ICANN Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) Oversight Hearing. Kurt Pritz from ICANN has been invited to testify. Arrayed against him are a parade of intellectual property interests, some reasonable, some pur et dur lobbyists for complete corporate hegemony over all aspects of the Internet. more

How Many TLD Applications Will ICANN Receive?

This post could be subtitled: "The Wisdom of Elites." I polled some people I know in the domain field (plus Andrew Goodman, who wondered what the hell I was going on about). I asked them a simple question: "For the record, how many new TLD applications do you think there'll be?" Most of these people know the domain name world very well, but from different perspectives. Journalists, registrars, intellectual property attorneys, domainers, registry operators, TLD aspirants, entrepreneurs, domain aftermarket auctioneers, civil society activists... more