Featured Blogs

Caring About Cybersecurity or Preparing the Ground for an I-Patriot Act?

Few months ago in a talk given at the Institution of Engineering and Technology organised here in London by the Society for Computers and Law, Professor Lessig recounted a conversation he had with former US Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, where Larry asked the question that many had in mind... how the US Government managed to conceptualize, design and draft a piece of legislation as vast and complex as the USA PATRIOT Act in such a short period of time (a month and 15 days after 9/11), and the answer was what many people had imagined... more

Telecom Heroics in Somalia

Internet service in and around Mogadishu, Somalia suffered a crippling blow recently as the East African Submarine System (EASSy) cable, which provides service to the area, was cut by the anchor of a passing ship. The government of Somalia estimated that the impact of the submarine cable cut was US$10 million per day and detained the MSC Alice, the cargo vessel that reportedly caused the damage. more

Amazon’s Satellite Ambitions Finally Lift Off: Project Kuiper Enters the Low-Earth Orbit Race

After several delays due to bad weather, Amazon's Project Kuiper finally launched its first batch of low-orbit broadband satellites on April 28. The company says it is in communication with all 27 new satellites. Amazon used a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral. Amazon is under pressure to get the launches going and has a commitment to the FCC to launch 1,618 satellites by July 2026. more

Encryption, Our Last Line of Defense

Encryption is fundamental to our daily life. Practically everything we do online makes use of encryption is some form. Access to our financial transactions, health records, government services, and exchanged private messages are all protected by strong encryption. Encryption is the process of changing the information in such a way as to make it unreadable by anyone except for those possessing special knowledge (usually referred to as a "key"), which allows them to change the information back to its original, readable form. more

The Early History of Usenet, Part VI: The Public Announcement

Our goal was to announce Usenet at the January, 1980 Usenix meeting. In those days, Usenix met at universities; it was a small, comaparatively informal organization, and didn't require hotel meeting rooms and the like. (I don't know just when Usenix started being a formal academic-style conference; I do know that it was no later than 1984, since I was on the program committee that year for what would later be called the Annual Technical Conference.) more

Internet Governance Survey: What You Told Us

What do people perceive to be the top issues facing the Internet today? How can stakeholders work more effectively together to strengthen the governance mechanisms meant to address these issues? And when it comes to the Internet Society, what should our role be and where should we focus our attention? To help inform our work in Internet governance, we posed these and other questions to our community in February. We had an overwhelming response with over 800 people taking a few minutes of their time to answer our survey. more

TMCH Review Recommends Status Quo

On July 25th ICANN announced the publication of the Draft Report of the Independent Review of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). This study was coordinated for ICANN by the Analysis Group, in conjunction with researchers from the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford as well the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School... while public comments on the draft report will be accepted through September 3rd, this Report was triggered by GAC concerns expressed before the Applicant Guidebook for the new gTLD program was even completed, and is not the work product of a GNSO-created working group and therefore will not directly result in the establishment of any new ICANN policy. more

ICANN New gTLD Auctions - Apparently No Antitrust Concerns?

There has been much discussion in ICANN circles concerning auctions to resolve new gTLD contention sets. This article summarizes the discussion and events to date, and suggests there should be little worry for applicants seeking to resolve their contention sets via private auction, rather than ICANN's "last resort" auction. more

Domaining Europe Becomes NamesCon Europe

After 10 years as one of the top-level European Domaining Conferences, it is our pleasure to announce the transition of Domaining Europe into NamesCon Europe! This is an exciting new chapter for the NamesCon brand that expands into the European domaining market. The agreement between Domaining Europe and NamesCon was confirmed at the beginning of 2018. The rebranding of Domaining Europe to NamesCon Europe is in effect for the upcoming June 2018 event in Valencia. more

The ICANN Board by the ICANN Board

A self-appraisal of the ICANN Board has just been posted on the organization's website. In it, Board members rate 89 different measures of their own performance according to a seven-measure rating from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree". Unfortunately, despite plenty of figures in the documents, there is zero analysis of what this all means, so I have gone through them and prepared one. more

Essential Cyber Security Steps for Your Business

Layered security is a concept that's important for anyone who wants to create a strong, successful defense strategy to understand. This is a strategy that relies on the use of multiple lines of defense in an attempt to repel any potential attacks. For this reason, it's based on the principle that says "no single form of protection is enough to stop a determined cybercriminal. more

Communicating Emotion and Presence: From a Hole in Space to Cuba’s Public-Access Hotspots

Cuba, one of the least connected nations in the world, recently created 35 public-access, WiFi hotspots around the island. While 35 hotspots is a drop in the bucket, this opening is a start and it has been noted in many articles and blog posts. Most of the coverage of the new hotspots has been lackluster and redundant, but an article last month in Miami Herald stands out because it stresses the human and emotional impact of these access points. more

Does the Internet Need “Governance”?

It's remarkable to me that there are now two powerful agencies fighting to "govern" the Internet -- the ITU and the FCC. On any given day, it's hard to tell whether they are on the same side or different sides. The ITU process apparently began in earnest with the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) meetings, where the concept of "Internet Governance" became an urgent goal. The FCC process began when incumbent Internet Access Providers (IAPs) argued that "Net Neutrality" was a stalking horse for government control... more

From Crisis to Resilience - the Path to Sustainable Communications Infrastructure in the Caribbean

The Caribbean suffered six major storms in 2017, including the record-breaking Category 5 hurricanes Irma and Maria. In the unprecedented destruction, the islands of Dominica and Barbuda lost all communication and telecommunications service, and eight other Caribbean countries were severely disrupted. Each hurricane season wreaks greater devastation than the last, yet decreased telecommunications competition, inadequate regulation, and high national debt burdens in the region yield ever-diminishing infrastructural investment. more

Macro Observations Facing Email Infrastructure

Last month I attended the 36th annual M³AAWG conference in San Francisco, where esteemed members of the online messaging and anti-abuse community come together to make the Internet a safer and more secure environment. The sending community is highly influential especially among Email Service Providers (ESPs) and truly dominated the two-macro conversations that I participated in. These conversations have the industry in somewhat of a transition. more