Featured Blogs

Conclusion: SLD Blocking Is Too Risky Without TLD Rollback (Part 4 of 4)

ICANN's second level domain (SLD) blocking proposal includes a provision that a party may demonstrate that an SLD not in the initial sample set could cause "severe harm," and that SLD can potentially be blocked for a certain period of time. The extent to which that provision would need to be exercised remains to be determined. However, given the concerns outlined in Part 2 and Part 3 of this series, it seems likely that there could be many additions (and deletions!) from the blocked list given the lack of correlation between the DITL data and actual at-risk queries. more

2014 M3AAWG Mary Litynski Award Nominations Now Being Accepted

In 2010 the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M³AAWG) and the Internet industry as a whole lost a great friend and supporter, Mary Litynski. Her dedication, excellence, perseverance and tireless work behind the scenes of M³AAWG helped make the organization the success that it is today. Through this award, M³AAWG seeks to bring attention to the remarkable work that is done far from the public eye over a significant period of time... 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

The ICANN Quilombo

Argentines use the word "quilombo" to describe "a real mess", which is what I feared was awaiting us at the outset of ICANN's meeting in Buenos Aires this week. Since then, ICANN President Fadi Chehade has done a good job cleaning-up the internal process quilombo he and the board created. But ICANN's leadership has left the ICANN community struggling to answer deep and ongoing questions about the future of the Internet and the multistakeholder model. more

TPP IP Chapter Leaks Reveal New U.S. Proposed Regulations for Country-Code Domain Names

The leaked Trans Pacific Partnership intellectual property chapter has revealed a number of U.S. proposals including U.S. demands for Internet provider liability that could lead to subscriber termination, content blocking, and ISP monitoring, copyright term extension and anti-counterfeiting provisions. This post discusses Article QQ.C.12 on domain names. more

LAC, the DNS, and the Importance of Comunidad

The 1st Latin American & Caribbean DNS Forum was held on 15 November 2013, before the start of the ICANN Buenos Aires meeting. Coordinated by many of the region's leading technological development and capacity building organizations, the day long event explored the opportunities and challenges for Latin America brought on by changes in the Internet landscape, including the introduction of new gTLDs such as .LAT, .NGO and others. more

ISOC Bulgaria Urges Chapters to Help Governments Answer to a Question from the ITU

ISOC-Bulgaria has been following the developments around Internet governance on the global arena since 2001, when we started participate in the WSIS process. Our representatives supported the efforts of the Bulgarian government to make sure the Internet is developed in an open, bottom-up, and transparent way. Last week in Geneva (November 11-12) at the ITU there was a meeting of the ITU Council Working Group on international Internet-related public policy issues. more

Who Uses Google’s Public DNS?

Much has been said about how Google uses the services they provide, including their mail service, their office productivity tools, file storage and similar services, as a means of gathering an accurate profile of each individual user of their services. The company has made a very successful business out of measuring users, and selling those metrics to advertisers. But can we measure Google as they undertake this activity? How many users avail themselves of their services? Perhaps that's a little ambitious at this stage, so maybe a slightly smaller scale may be better. Let's just look at one Google service. more

In Praise of ICANN

ICANN comes in for a lot of criticism. That's because people care very deeply about it. The multi-stakeholder model, of which ICANN is the exemplar, is such a radical and revolutionary departure from how global affairs have been managed in the past that many of us are constantly on guard lest ICANN degrade into the command-and-control structure that characterizes other global regulatory bodies. At ICANN, it's the volunteers, those who care (as well as, yes, those who are paid to pretend to care) who set policy more

ICANN@15: Born in the USA - But Will It Stay?

This article was originally intended to be a short one focused on indications that ICANN was exploring the establishment of a legal nexus outside the United States and discussing what that might mean - and whether it was consistent with the Affirmation of Commitments (AOC) entered into with the United States in 2009. Then, as completion neared, came the sudden and nearly simultaneous release of the October 7th Montevideo Statement and the announcement two days later of a proposed 2014 Brazil "Summit" focused on restructuring Internet governance. At that point the task vastly expanded. more

Will the ICANN Auctions Kill off New gTLD Innovation?

As the launch of the first of the new gTLDs draws ever closer, more and more applicants are beginning to publicise their business models and ideas for putting the Domain Name System (DNS) to good use. By doing so, they are also shedding light on what promises to be a far less uniform Top Level for the Internet than might have previously been feared. A schism is appearing in the type of applicant/TLD model being enacted. Up until now, Donuts, Google et al have tended to hold the spotlight, and for good reason. more

.SEXY? .TATTOO? Now Live in DNS? Welcome to the World of NewgTLDs

As I wrote last week, ICANN is proceeding along with "delegating" the "new generic top-level domains (newgTLDs)" and while last week's .GURU may have provoked some chuckles, this week's block of 11 newly "delegated" newgTLDs brings us... more

“ICANN Urged to Rule on .LLP ‘Breach’”

There is probably no worldwide community without at least one member located in the US. But does this qualify the closing of a community to only US based members and, by extension, to exclude all other eligible entities from around the world solely because of arbitrary geographical circumstances based upon company whims? more

Name Collision Mitigation Requires Qualitative Analysis (Part 3 of 4)

As discussed in the several studies on name collisions published to date, determining which queries are at risk, and thus how to mitigate the risk, requires qualitative analysis. Blocking a second level domain (SLD) simply on the basis that it was queried for in a past sample set runs a significant risk of false positives. SLDs that could have been delegated safely may be excluded on quantitative evidence alone, limiting the value of the new gTLD until the status of the SLD can be proven otherwise. more

Fighting for Smaller New gTLD Applicants

Will new gTLDs just be more of the same, or will they bring real diversity and innovation to the Internet's namespace? For Hong Kong based Stable Tone, applicant for two Chinese character IDN TLDs (?? or "Dot WORLD" and ?? or "Dot HEALTHY"), it's the smaller applicants that give the new gTLD program its soul. more