Featured Blogs

Finally the .com Discussion is Over…

Well, at least one part of it. As ICANN has announced, the Board approved the VeriSign Settlement Agreement. Now, there will be many questions, many pros and contras, but for me the main question is that finally this discussion is over. Here's what I think about my vote and the agreement itself.  more

Analyzing Data for Business and Security Signals

Domain name registries and registrars play a critical role in the functioning of the internet, serving as gatekeepers to the DNS. As such, they have an important responsibility to ensure the security and stability of the DNS but also to promote the use of a domain name in a meaningful way for the end user. To be more efficient in achieving these goals, the domain name industry has started to become more open to the idea of leveraging their own internal data to gain insights about their current business. more

Time to Renew .coop, .museum, and .aero ICANN

Way back in 2000-2001, ICANN approved a handful of new top level domains, and entered into agreements with their promoters. Three of the sponsored domains, are coming up for renewal next year, so they've sent in their renewal proposals. A sponsored domain is one that restricts who can register to members of a particular community, in this case respectively co-ops, museums, and the airline industry. Let's take a look and see how they're doing. more

President of Tucows in Response to SiteFinder

I have been thinking a lot about stewardship lately in my role as CEO of Tucows and how that relates to employees, a board of directors and investors. Where I've got to, which is not necessarily relevant for this post, is that stewardship needs to exist at EVERY level of a company and a life. With the recent dustup created by Verisign's new Sitefinder service it has crystallized for me what has always bothered me about the .com/.net registry and the way Verisign has approached it.
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Cornucopia: A Radically Different Approach to TLDs

Much of the discussion about proposed TLDs centres around domain names as a form of classification: ".mobi" for mobile device content, ".kids" for child-safe content, language codes for language-specific content, ".museum" for museum-related entities, and so on. Notoriously little activity has been forthcoming in actually implementing these proposals, and the select few that have been allowed out into the world are, shall we say, a tad arbitrary. I'd like to engage in a little thought experiment where we abandon the "few TLDs with carefully chosen meanings" paradigm, and instead consider the benefits of a cornucopia of completely meaningless TLDs. more

How Big Is the Domain Business?

When you're standing close to ICANN, the domain business may seem pretty big, but when you stand farther away, not so much. Verisign's revenues are about $1 billion/year. The .COM and .NET top-level domains together have about 150M names. The next biggest gTLDS are .ORG with 25M and .INFO with 12M. The biggest new TLDs are TOP with 2.9M and .XYZ with 1.8M, with both bloated by firesale prices. The rest are smaller, mostly much smaller. more

HTTPS Web Hijacking Goes From Theory to Practice

I've been privately talking about the theoretical dangers of HTTPS hacking with the developers of a major web browser since 2006 and earlier last month, I published my warnings about HTTPS web hacking along with a proposed solution. A week later, Google partially implemented some of my recommendations in an early Alpha version of their Chrome 2.0 browser... This week at the Black Hat security conference in Washington DC, Moxie Marlinspike released a tool called SSL Strip... more

The Non-Parity of the UDRP

The UDRP is obviously not working. Two websites, fundamentally the same (criticism at trademark.tld), two opposite decisions, both within weeks of each other! A Complainant (Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc) initiated a complaint to WIPO about one of my criticism websites (biocrystpharmaceuticals.com). The Panel found in my favour. Another Complainant (Eastman Chemical Inc) meanwhile made a complaint to NAF regarding another of my criticism websites (eastman-chemical.com). The Panel found against me. The two websites are fundamentally the same, both websites in criticism of the practices of the individual companies concerned... more

Voluntary Initiatives As a Source of Policy-Making on the Internet

For many years, I have observed that the Internet is adopting many self-regulation frameworks to address a variety of issues. Indeed the Internet has benefited from self-regulation as an efficient way to address jurisdictional conflicts -- particularly as compared to traditional law making. Since the Internet is global, jurisdiction is often the most difficult policy issue to address. To this end, voluntary initiatives are becoming increasingly popular in the digital space due to their ability to address dynamically issues related to the Internet. more

Microsoft Choking Domain Parking Business Practices?

In a follow up to Microsoft's Strider URL Tracer tool released a few months ago, SecurityFocus is running an article which takes a closer look at how Microsoft's free Strider URL Tracer with Typo-Patrol is aimed at fighting typo-squatters and domain parking abuse. From the article: "In most cases, the typo domain is not even selling a product or service itself. The typo domain makes its money from syndicated advertising such as Google's AdSense program. The typo-squatter simply parks the domain and the only content on the site ends up being the ads served from a syndicated advertising program..." more

A Psychoanalysis of Corporate Domain Names and Branding - Part II

Naming for today's global e-commerce is very fragmented and every corporation is trying to cope with little or no guidance at all. When a name fails to deliver a clear and distinct message no amount of bizarre branding ideas will ever save it. Now to check on the health of a name here are some key reasons and if not corrected, a name will endlessly shout and eventually die. more

Challenges in Anti-Spam Efforts

Without commenting on the particulars as they relate to Goodmail -- especially since I am on the advisory board for Habeas, a competitor -- let me note that public discussion is largely missing the nature of the current Internet mail realities and the nature of the ways we can deal with them. There are two articles in the current issue of the Internet Protocol Journal, of which I wrote one, that provide some useful background about this reality. Simply put, Internet mail needs to sustain spontaneous communications... more

A Safe Pharmacy Environment in the Digital Age

Today's ever-evolving, digital world has fundamentally changed, enhanced and challenged the way in which businesses all over the world must operate. For organizations and professions that have existed for centuries, this has created the opportunity and the test of adapting to change to remain successful and relevant. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) was founded in 1904, at a time when there was little uniformity in the practice of, or standards for pharmacy. more

Domain Name Proxy Service Not Inherently Evil

In the recent court decision of CyBerCorp Holding v. Allman case, although the registrant of the domain name 'cybertraderlive.com' did lose the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) case and was found to have acted in bad faith (having been a former customer of complainant), the decision is noteworthy as it finds that registrant's use of proxy service to keep contact information private, in and of itself is not evidence of bad faith... more

Measuring the Use of DNSSEC

The canonical specification of the DNS that is normally cited are the pair of quite venerable RFCs, RFC 1034, "Domain names - concepts and facilities", and RFC 1035, "Domain names - implementation and specification", both published in November 1987. However, these two specification documents are just the tip of a rather large iceberg. One compendium of all the RFCs that touch upon the DNS lists some 292 RFCs. more