Featured Blogs

Not Another Yearly Recap: What 2018 Tells Us About .brand Domains

It's that special time again! Time to unwind, spend time with loved ones -- and to reflect on another 12 months of progress across the .brand movement. Over the last few years, we've used this end of year assessment and our efforts with MakeWay.World to show you how the industry is being embraced globally -- through a range of examples, statistics and predictions about how the year ahead will be our best ever. more

NGO Community Urges ICANN to Exercise Independent Judgment as It Reviews the .ORG Sale

ICANN is reviewing the Internet Society's proposed sale of Public Interest Registry, the .ORG registry operator, to private equity firm Ethos Capital. ICANN effectively has the power to stop the sale by terminating PIR's Registry Agreement. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, NTEN, Consumer Reports, Americans for Financial Reform and several other organizations joined Monday's Public Forum at ICANN67 to ask questions about how ICANN plans to review the change of control of the .ORG registry... more

An Economic Perspective on Internet Centrality

The IETF met in November 2022 in London. Among the many sessions that were held in that meeting was a session of the Decentralised Internet Infrastructure Research Group, (DINRG). The research group's ambitions are lofty: DINRG will investigate open research issues in decentralizing infrastructure services such as trust management, identity management, name resolution, resource/asset ownership management, and resource discovery. more

ITU Secretary-General Elect Doreen Bogdan-Martin

This morning in Bucharest, Doreen Bogdan-Martin was elected by the member nations of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as its 12th Secretary-General. Of the 164 votes cast, she received 139 -- an overwhelming majority of 85 percent. Only 15 countries voted for her opponent, Rashid Ismailov of Russia, who sought to implement a divisive techno-political agenda. more

Will Altanovo’s Maneuvering Continue to Delay .web?

he launch of .web top-level domain is once again at risk of being delayed by baseless procedural maneuvering. On May 2, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board of Directors posted a decision on the .web matter from its April 30 meeting, which found "that NDC (Nu Dotco LLC) did not violate the Guidebook or the Auction Rules" and directed ICANN "to continue processing NDC's .web application," clearing the way for the delegation of .web. more

The geoTLD GDPR Survey 2018

The application of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the DNS is a hot topic within the ICANN community. However, since the implementation of the GDPR on May 25th, 2018, there has been little public data on: how many WHOIS data requests have been made at the registry level, and; how the registries are handling them. To further the factual and evidence-based discussion within the ICANN community, we gathered quantitative data about WHOIS access post-GDPR... more

Once Again, Why Internet Voting Doesn’t Work

An acquaintance said, "We trust our electronic systems to transfer millions of dollars of value; I suspect we will eventually develop schemes we will trust to record and count votes." Unfortunately, this is one of the chronic fallacies that make voting security experts tear their remaining hair out. The security models are entirely different, so what banks do is completely irrelevant to voting. more

3 Things You Should Be Doing This Spring and Summer ... If You’re a New TLD Applicant

It would have been difficult to plan for this no-man's-land period we find ourselves in this spring as ICANN rectifies, resets and finally closes their new TLD application window. But for those of us with applications in the black-box hopper, we soldier on. From a marketing standpoint, there are three things we are working on with our partner clients with applications submitted, and if you're in the game too, you might want to consider similar actions. more

Will Electronically Steered Antennas Replace Parabolic Antennas in Satellite Ground Stations? (ChatGPT-Assisted Version)

In a previous post, I asked whether electronically steered antennas (ESAs) would replace parabolic antennas in satellite ground stations. I read a few articles suggested by others and by Google search, used some common sense, produced a list of advantages of ESAs, and concluded that it was likely they would eventually replace parabolic antennas for many applications. more

China and Taiwan Recognize Starlink’s Military Value

When Russia invaded Ukraine, SpaceX had around 2,000 satellites in orbit. It was clear from the first day of the war that a low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of around 2,000 satellites would be a valuable military and civilian asset. The first truckload of Starlink terminals arrived in Ukraine on February 28, 2022, four days after the invasion. By March 19, there were 5,000 terminals in Ukraine and 150,000 active daily users by May 2nd.China and Taiwan have both seen the strategic value of 2,000 Starlink satellites. more

The ICANN Experiment: Lessons From NewCo

As ICANN turns 25 and I turn 51, I realize that I have literally spent more than ½ of my life working in the domain name industry and with the first multistakeholder experiment originally called NewCo (later called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"). My first interaction with NewCo, after the Green Paper, White Paper, Internet Forum for the White Paper, etc., was an Intellectual Property attorney at the law firm of Arter & Hadden. more

Are These the Last Days of Boys’ Club IT?

In the year 2016, 55 years after the human race launched a person into space; the women are still not earning the same wage as their male counterparts. In the UK, the gender pay gap was 19.7% in 2013, the last year we have the statistics for. This was 0.1 per cent worse than in 2012. In the US, women earn 79¢ for every dollar that men earn. As explained in this great article from Vox, the issue is much more complex than mere numbers. more

The WSIS+10 Outcome Document - Some Initial Thoughts

The final outcome document of the WSIS +10 Review was released late last night. I thought I would give you some initial impressions as we enter the week of the WSIS+10 Review at the United Nations in New York. The text endorses the central tenet of the multistakeholder model of governing ourselves on the Internet and re-commits to the Tunis agreement. It extends the mandate of the IGF for 10 years recognizing the role that this Forum plays in bottom up governance processes. more

VoIP: Beyond the Status Quo

On New Year's Eve 2008 I felt compelled to respond to the stories being written about the Death of VoIP which lead to my recent blog post: VoIP is NOT Dead!. Since then, I've enjoyed many of the conversations that have continued to take place in the comment sections of a number of blogs, including this one. My belief is the future is unwritten and if the conditions are right people will return to the space. But we need to embrace innovation and change and encourage people to be disruptive. What follows is a continuation of the conversation. more

Realizing the Promise of AI in a World Where Human Rights Matter

Artificial Intelligence, AI, is often portrayed and perceived as just one more innovative stage in a long line of ever more sophisticated and powerful tools that humans use to survive and prosper. AI is different! As its name states, its ambition and goal is not to be just another tool but to introduce an artificial (digital) intelligence that is free from the weaknesses humans confront when doing some tasks. more