Panels Rule No Confusion Exists Between Singular and Plural New gTLD Strings

If early International Centre for Dispute Resolution decisions are anything to go by, as far as dispute resolution panellists are concerned, singular and plural versions of the same string do not risk causing user confusion. Tasked with handling string confusion objections under the new gTLD program, the ICDR has just rejected an objection by Google against Donuts' application for .CARS. Google has applied for .CAR. more

Video: IETF Chair Jari Arkko Summarizes The Activities of IETF 87 In Berlin

The 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in Berlin, Germany, concluded on August 2, 2013. IETF Chair Jari Arkko recently published his summary of IETF 87 on the IETF Blog highlighting what he felt were some of the more important aspects of what was a very successful IETF meeting. I also had the privilege of interviewing Jari on video about the meeting. more

A Look at Closed vs. Open New gTLDs

The essay analyzes some of the strengths and weaknesses of closed and open new gTLDs. The success of the gTLD to a large degree rests on the successful design and implementation of an effective digital business model. A closed gTLD is one whose owner uses it for exclusive content - for example, the use of .book exclusively for Amazon books. Conversely, if Amazon opens up .book, other book sellers and libraries would be able to set up sub-domains, sites where they controlled content. more

What’s Up With WEIRDS?

The IETF WEIRDS working group is defining a follow-on to WHOIS. Since this is the IETF, it's working on the technical issues about which it can deal with, not policy which is up to ICANN and the country registries. Somewhat to my surprise, the group is making steady progress. We've agreed that the basic model is RESTful, with queries via http, and responses as JSON data structures. The protocol is named RDAP for Registration Data Access Protocol, or maybe RESTful Data Access protocol. more

Providers Eye OTT Content at The Independent Show 2013

The future of broadband was the main focus of The Independent Show 2013. In particular, the event highlighted how the convergence of video, phone, Internet, and wireless broadband is shaping the industry. As with previous years, the show focused strongly on the programming community and there was no shortage of new, emerging programming to keep attendees interested. One of the breakout sessions focused on the growth of high-quality over-the-top (OTT) content distribution and how NCTC members could take advantage of this trend to target subscribers drifting away from traditional cable. more

When an IP Address Does Not Equal Individual Culpability - Breaking Glass Pictures v Does, DAZ 2013

Something bad happens online. I can tie that something-bad back to an IP address. Do I know who did the bad thing? According to the Federal District Court in Arizona, I don't. An IP address may identify the owner of an Internet access account; it does not identify who was online at that particular time and who may be responsible for the actions in question. In Breaking Glass Pictures v Does, DAZ 2013, Plaintiff brought a claim for copyright infringement, wants early discovery, but the court is refusing. more

New gTLD SSR-2: Exploratory Consumer Impact Analysis (Part 5 of 5)

Throughout this series of blog posts we've discussed a number of issues related to security, stability, and resilience of the DNS ecosystem, particularly as we approach the rollout of new gTLDs. Additionally, we highlighted a number of issues that we believe are outstanding and need to be resolved before the safe introduction of new gTLDs can occur - and we tried to provide some context as to why, all the while continuously highlighting that nearly all of these unresolved recommendations came from parties in addition to Verisign over the last several years. more

The Long Gestation and Afterlife of New gTLDs

ICANN continues to flail, pointlessly. The latest in a series of missteps that could easily have been avoided is its recommendations on what to do about a report on the potential for confusion and misaddressing when someone's internal network names match the name for a new gTLD, and they have misconfigured their routers and/or DNS to the extent that someone typing in a new gTLD name might end up in the middle of someone else's network. more

Network Security: How Attackers Gain Access from Inside

Most people - mistakenly - believe that they are perfectly safe behind a firewall, network address translation (NAT) device or proxy. The fact is quite the opposite: if you can get out of your network, someone else can get in. Attackers often seek to compromise the weakest link in a network and then use that access to attack the network from the inside, commonly known as a "pivot-and-attack." more

Singular and Plural New gTLDs: Costly Headaches

ICANN has recently stated that it will allow the public to register plural and singular gTLDs that are variants of words already registered as domain names. .Books will be able to join the currently allocated .book, and .pet will be able to join .pets. Of course, a pair like .blue and .blues, two words that look alike but have different meanings, isn't at issue here. The focus is just plurals and singulars. But that leaves plenty of room for trouble, and ICANN has to tackle some tough questions now, before the policy launch. more