Featured Blogs

How to Design a Decentralized Social Media Protocol – Be Ruthless About Technical Requirements and Eager to Build Coalition

Project Liberty's Institute sat down with Dave Clark, an early contributor to the TCP/IP protocols that built and run the Internet, and one of the expert advisors on DSNP, the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol. Dave Clark is Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. more

Riding the Waves of the Future

Yes, that was the theme of this year's Caribbean Cable and Telecommunications Association (CCTA) conference. This annual event was held in sunny Montego Bay, Jamaica, over the first week of February... For that, one has to applaud the fine work that CCTA puts into the event, drawing together operators, vendors, programmers, solution providers, marketers, and technologists alike -- and this year, over 270 attendees and 80-some exhibitors. more

Politically Correct Rhetoric at a Technical Conference in Cuba

In a recent post, I argued that the US embargo, the poor state of the Cuban economy and fear of free information had stifled the Cuban Internet at its inception in 1996, but that twenty years later, those constraints were significantly reduced. I suggested that the Cuban Internet was being held back by mundane bureaucracy and political correctness. We got an example of that at the Latin American and Caribbean Network Information Center (LACNIC) conference in Havana this week. more

ICANN Update on Whois, New gTLD Program PDPs, ICANN CEO and Privacy Accreditation

As promised, 2016 is off to a busy start at ICANN, with important discussions about Whois/Registration Directory Services, subsequent rounds of the New gTLD Program and internet governance already underway, and more to come. Brand owner concerns will be front and center in the coming months, as community stakeholders set priorities and begin discussions of key challenges and desired results. more

The Year 2038 Computer Problem – a Repeat of Y2K?

The Year 2038 Problem relates to representing time in many digital systems as the number of seconds passed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 and storing it as a signed 32-bit integer. Such implementations cannot encode times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. At that time, systems might crash and be unable to restart when the time is changed to that date. It is like the Y2K problem caused by the widespread use of two decimal digits to store the year. While that problem was overhyped... more

Is ICANN Opening up Public Comment Periods in Bad Faith?

I read with interest that ICANN opened up yet another comment period on new TLDs. I believe that I speak for many when I question whether ICANN is opening up these comment periods in good faith, or instead whether these are smokescreens, mere distractions to pretend that ICANN is "listening" to the public while staff and insiders proceed with predetermined outcomes. more

‘Combosquatting’: New Attention for an Old Problem

A study (18-page PDF) from researchers at Georgia Tech and Stony Brook University has attracted attention to what it calls "combosquatting," but the practice has been around since the early days of domain name disputes. The study says combosquatting "refers to the combination of a recognizable brand name with other keywords (e.g., paypal-members.com and facebookfriends.com)." It adds that this practice differs from other types of cybersquatting "in two fundamental ways. more

Would It Be Selfish to Register Calzone.Pizza?

I was told recently that I should register the domain "calzone.pizza" as soon as it becomes available, even though our start-up has nothing to do with food. This is a question that a lot of businesses may be facing as they become aware of the new dots that are becoming available, like .club, .nyc and .guru. Should businesses spend money and grab their brand in all of the new domain extensions to prevent potential customer confusion, or worse - cybersquatting or phishing of their brand on the internet? What if your brand can have multiple meanings?  more

Game Over for Public Whois? Article 29 Gives ICANN the Advice It Asked For

We've talked about the conflicts between our ICANN contract and privacy law in the past. Not once, not twice, but multiple times. We refused to sign the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) with ICANN until we'd received a data retention waiver. That decision probably cost us money, but if we have to choose between operating legally or illegally our path is clear. more

How Digital Asset Management May Change Due to COVID-19

One of the "fathers of the internet," Vint Cerf, in a September 2019 article he published, said: "Today, hackers routinely break into online accounts and divert users to fake or compromised websites. We constantly need to create new security measures to address them. To date, much of the internet security innovation we've seen revolves around verifying and securing the identities of people and organizations online. more

Email User Safety At Risk - MAAWG Consumer Survey 2010

The 2010 version of the now-annual Messaging Anti-abuse Working Group (MAAWG) 'Email Security Awareness and Usage Report' was released yesterday. While un-belied by the title, the vernacular name might get a bit more attention: "The MAAWG Consumer Email Survey". ... Consumers were surveyed in North America and across Europe with variety of questions from computer expertise and savvy, to their preferences of email. more

Spam Levels Still Lower a Year After Rustock

Arstechnica wrote an article recently entitled Spam levels still low a year after Rustock botnet takedown. The article is more detailed that numerous things have contributed to the decline in spam since then. However, the article misrepresents Rustock's effect on the spam levels. It's completely true that Rustock was the largest botnet and sent the most spam (by total individual spam connections). more

Who Would You Nominate for the Internet Hall of Fame? (Nominations Open Until March 15)

Who do you think deserves recognition in the Internet Hall of Fame? Do you know of someone who has played a key role in the Internet's development who should be recognized? (And is not already among the existing IHOF inductees?) If you know of someone who deserves the recognition, nominations are open until March 15, 2017. As outlined by Internet Society President & CEO Kathy Brown in a blog post today, the Internet Hall of Fame seeks to honor three types of inductee. more

Booting Up Brazil

The improvised alliance between ICANN and the government of Brazil is now beginning to take shape. The "summit" that President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil announced last month now has a name: the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance. It's no longer a summit, it's a GMMFIG. (Shall we pronounce it gum-fig?) The meeting will be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 23 and 24. Don't book your tickets yet, though -- we are still debating how open this meeting will be. more

Cuba’s New WiFi Regulations – Good, Bad or Meh?

Soon after ETECSA began rolling out WiFi hotspots for Internet access, people began linking to them from homes and community street nets. These connections and importing the WiFi equipment they used were illegal, but generally tolerated as long as they remained apolitical and avoided pornography. Regulations passed last month legalized some of this activity in a bid to boost connectivity by allowing Internet access from homes and small private businesses like restaurants and vacation rentals that are located close enough to a hotspot to establish a WiFi connection. more