Skype Messes Up, Badly

The Open Net Initiative's Information Warfare Monitor project has published a stunning report by "Hacktivist" Nart Villeneuve titled: "Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform." It has been covered by both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal... more

Broadband Data Improvement Act Passes Senate, House, A.K.A. Find Why U.S. is on Continuous Decline

In a major win for the public interest, the Broadband Data Improvement Act passed the Senate (on September 26th) and the House (on September 29th). Due to amendments, it now goes back to the Senate for final approval (should be pro-forma) before it lands on George Bush's desk. With the United States falling further and further behind a host of other countries, the question on many people's minds (including the folks over at Point-Topic who created this graphic) is, "Why is this happening?" more

Remembering Jon: Looking Beyond the Decade

A decade has passed since Jon Postel left our midst. It seems timely to look back beyond that decade and to look forward beyond a decade hence. It seems ironic that a man who took special joy in natural surroundings, who hiked the Muir Trail and spent precious time in the high Sierras was also deeply involved in that most artificial of enterprises, the Internet. more

ICANN Slaps Joker.com and DNS.com.cn

If you have rules and regulations but don't enforce them then there's little point in having any rules or regulations in the first place. One of the criticisms that is often leveled at ICANN is with regard to compliance issues. There are a number of areas where ICANN accredited registrars may be flounting the rules, but if nobody does anything about it then none of the registrars will have any incentive to actually comply. more

Coming to Grips with an Internet that Never Forgets

My weekly technology law column discusses the implications of an Internet that never forgets. I note that the most significant Internet effect during the current election campaign in Canada has not been any particular online video, website or Facebook group. Instead, it has been the resignation of eight Canadian candidates based on embarrassing or controversial information unearthed online. more

It’s Official: China Now Has More Broadband Lines than the United States

It was just last year that those of us raising alarms about the massive half-decade market failure in the United States to adequately provision broadband services were facing a misinformation campaign that raw numbers mattered more than percentage rankings. According to this argument, the U.S. broadband market was sound because we had more broadband lines than anyone else. The misinformation brigade got so much attention that public interest groups had to issue reports systematically refuting the PR are marketing hype. more

European Commission on the Future of the Internet

The European Commission has just published a communication which describes the broad lines of its Internet policy in the coming years. Vint Cerf, on the Google Public Policy blog sees this as a very interesting vision. Indeed, it closely links the issue of openness of the Internet to several obvious and not-so-obvious factors. more

Delayed Enforcement Blocks Domain Name Lawsuit: Southern Grouts v. 3M

I'm often baffled by lawsuits over domain names and keywords because they just don't seem to make any economic sense. This lawsuit is especially perplexing given the plaintiff's delays and the seeming impossibility of the plaintiff reaching a profitable outcome, even if it won in court. What was the plaintiff thinking? more

Who Should Bear Domain Name Risk?

Domain owners are bearing tremendous risk that someone else is better equipped to absorb. In this post, I outline the motivation of risk ownership, the sources of risk associated with owning a domain name, and the ways by which some of these risks have been transferred to institutions that are better equipped to handle them. I close by pointing out that we would be better served by having a trademark risk-management entity. more

Which Region is Taking the Lead in IPv6 Deployment?

IPv6 is in the news because the mainstream media have started to pick up the fact that IPv4 will be fully allocated in the next two or three years. And IPv6 deployment is important if we want to keep the Internet growing sustainably. So where is IPv6 deployment most evident? more