Featured Blogs

In Whose Language? Cybersquatting by Foreigners

There are no gatekeepers to prevent registrants from acquiring domain names incorporating marks that potentially violate third-party rights. Anyone anywhere can acquire domain names composed of words and letters in languages not its own through a registrar whose registration agreement is in the language of the registrant. For example, a Chinese registrant of a domain name incorporating a Norwegian mark as in <statoil.store> in which Complainant requests the proceeding be in English notes that Chinese is not an official language in Norway. more

An Ethnographic Study - What are Cubans Doing Online?

Aida Zeki?, a student at the University of Uppsala, Sweden has published her master's thesis, "Internet in Public: an ethnographic account of the Internet in authoritarian Cuba." The thesis reports on interviews of 50 Cuban Internet users at nine WiFi hotspots in Havana during September and October 2016. She asked pre-planed, but mostly open-ended questions of 25 men and 25 women. She tried to identify people between 25 and 50 years old, but a few were a little older. more

Registry Lock - or EPP With Two Factor Authentication

For the last couple of years, the most common attack vector against the DNS system is the attack against the registrar. Either the attack is on the software itself using weaknesses in the code that could inject DNS changes into the TLD registry, or social engineering the registrar support systems and the attacker receives credentials that in turn allows the attacker to perform malicious changes in DNS. DNSSEC is the common security mechanism that protects the DNS protocol, but by using the registrar attack, any changes will result in a proper working DNS delegation. more

A Winning Biden 5G Strategy: Flatten the Curve

No, not the COVID curve - the curve of U.S. engagement in global industry 5G activities. Let me explain. What is known as 5G actually consists of a broad array of fundamentally revolutionary virtualization platforms that are constantly, collectively developed by industry in several dozen open global bodies. These bodies meet every few weeks, and several score companies around the world process scores to hundreds of input documents to produce many hundreds of effectively mandatory... more

The Effects of the Forthcoming FCC Privacy Rules on Internet Security

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced new privacy rules that govern how Internet service providers can share information about consumers with third parties. One focus of this rulemaking has been on the use and sharing of so-called "Consumer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI)" - information about subscribers - for advertising. The Center for Information Technology Policy and the Center for Democracy and Technology jointly hosted a panel exploring this topic last May... more

Domain Abuse: Are We Speaking the Same Language?

For those of us in the domain name industry, it's clear that security threats and the way we track, report, and mitigate them has been a topic of increased discussion and focus in recent months. As we prepare to come together as a community again at the next ICANN public meeting in Marrakech, many of us will look to continue these conversations, as there is no doubt it is a topic of importance, relevance and urgency for our community at this time. more

Navigating the .brand Delegation Process

Today marks a major milestone for .brand Top-Level Domain applicants, as we pass the deadline set by ICANN for them to sign their Registry Agreement (RA). For those who have knuckled down over the last few weeks and months to meet this deadline, congratulations -- for many, this was no mean feat and the effort should be acknowledged. more

EURid Releases 74,000 Disputed Names

EURid has unfrozen 74,000 domains that were part of a dispute against domain warehousers. In July, EURid relented to outside pressure as it suspended the registration of 74,000 domains. They claimed these domains were registered directly by three registrars, not on behalf of clients, which violated EURid's terms. But the registrars have won this round... more

Australian Farms Get Connected to the Starlink Satellites

Last year, I reported on the possibility that LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite-based systems might be a gamechanger for the delivery of high-speed data services, including internet access, to people in regional and remote Australia. What has become clear with the rollout of the NBN is that the quality of data connections in metropolitan cities in many cases has improved, but that the rest of Australia doesn't have a similar experience. more

Data Based Decision Making

A new report was released by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the US Department of Commerce... It is a 68 page report with a wealth of data to help understand the factors that differentiate levels of adoption and to try to understand the reasons for non-adoption of residential broadband. In the US, people who don't use the internet represent two thirds of non-users of broadband... more

Trusted Notifier Arrangements Require Trust: Why Unpacking Misunderstandings Around Trusted Notifiers Is Important for Dealing With DNS-related Abuse

Domain Name System (DNS) Operators (Registries and Registrars) receive notices asking them to take action on a wide range of alleged technical and content-related abuses. However, there is a fundamental question of when it is appropriate to act at the DNS level and the evaluation of whether the alleged abuse meets a sufficient threshold for action at the DNS level. Additionally, given the volume of abuses occurring on the internet, existing resources, mechanisms, and protocols available in-house to Operators are in many cases insufficient to address abuses in a timely fashion. more

IGF 2015: Running in Place

The Internet Governance Forum, held this year in the Brazilian beach resort town of João Pessoa, completed its 10th annual meeting Friday November 13. The IGF Secretariat claims that nearly 5,000 people attended. Moreover, it looks as if its existence will be continued for another 10 years when the UN meets in New York later this year. Vint Cerf declared it "the best IGF ever" in the closing open microphone session. But how good is "best?" more

Rewiring Internet Governance: Summing up ICANN Policy Walking Backward Into the Future (Part 4)

So-called "globalization" and its corollaries which are trade policy and, thus, foreign policy intersect with telecommunications. This ought to be obvious and it is not new. For example, in December 2011, OECD adopted its "Recommendation of the Council on Principles for Internet Policy Making", the latter which apparently connects with an earlier U.S. cyberspace strategy based on something called the "Internet Freedom Agenda" dated 21 January 2010... more

Going Postal

When a service is constructed using diverse components, then the way in which service revenues are distributed to the various suppliers of the components of the service can follow a number of quite distinct models. There are various forms of revenue redistribution models where the revenue per transaction is distributed to the various suppliers according to their inputs to support each transaction. more

ICANN Chair Elections Test Its Institutional Integrity

The ICANN Board will soon be considering candidates for election to the position of ICANN Chairperson and Vice Chair, which compels me to remind both the Board and the ICANN community of the fact that one of the members pursuing the Chairmanship is the subject of an on-going Australian Freedom of Information Act, which was initiated by the irregularities that brought about this individuals dismissal from the .au Domain Administration. more