Interview with United Nations Head Secretariat of WGIG

Markus Kummer, Executive Coordinator, Secretariat of the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance, is a career diplomat, who has served as eEnvoy of the Swiss Foreign Ministry in Bern since April 2002. His main tasks include foreign policy coordination in the area of information and communication technologies, in general, and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in particular. He chaired the negotiating group that developed an agreed text on Internet governance for the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action in December 2003... Mr Kummer says: "The time-frame is very short indeed. And the task ahead of us is daunting." more

What the ITU WSIS Spam Meeting Accomplished

The first week in July I went to an acronym-heavy World Symposium on the Internet Society Thematic Meeting on spam in Geneva. A few people have reported this as a meeting by "the UN", which it wasn't. Although the International Telecommunications Union is now part of the UN, it dates back to an 1865 treaty to manage international telegraph communication... more

Sender Address Verification: Solving the Spam Crisis

There are many companies in the spam-fighting business and most, if not all, claim to be hugely successful. Yet spam is exponentially more prevalent today than it was just 2 years ago. How can one conclude that today's anti spam solutions are working? This year spammers will use machine-generated programs to send trillions of unsolicited email. Thankfully, a new anti-spam technology has made its way into the market. more

The Site Finder Reprise

I have been attending the Icann conference in Malaysia this week. One of the key events was the submission of the report from the Security & Stability Advisory Committee regarding Site Finder. In reading the committee's report I discovered what I believe is an incredible breakdown in logic and as a consequence, a very mistaken, or at least confused, set of conclusions. So, why do I say that? more

CreditCards.com Domain Name Sells for $2.75 Million

"CreditCards.com, the domain name, has been purchased for $2.75 million by ClickSuccess, L.P., an Austin, Texas-based firm specializing in marketing financial products online. The purchase, announced yesterday (July 20, 2004), represents the fifth highest selling price for a domain name on record." I have to admit, when I looked at those opening lines from a new press release today I started trying to find out who was behind the joke!  more

ICANN Starts IPv6 Ball Rolling

IPv6 took a significant step forward this week with ICANN's decision to officially add the next generation protocol to its root server systems. The shift to IPv6 is perhaps the largest and most significant change to the structure of the Internet in decades - ICANN's move a signal that the revolution has officially begun. more

10 Reasons Why Involving Government in Spam Control is a Bad Idea

1. Many jurisdictions already have laws which cover abuse of computer systems and networks -- and spam is of course abuse. These laws are only sporadically enforced, however, usually when a sufficiently visible/powerful entity is the aggrieved party. Adding more laws (a) is redundant and (b) does not increase enforcement. 2. Laws are only enforced as law enforcement has resources available. Spam/abuse is not a high priority unless a sufficiently visible/powerful entity makes it so, and those cases are rare. more

ICANN Meets in Kuala Lumpur

Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released the following announcement today for its upcoming meetings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: ICANN, the international organisation responsible for managing and coordinating the Internet's Domain Name System is meeting in Kuala Lumpur 19-24 July, amidst reports that Internet usage in Asia is growing at an increasing pace, and that ICANN's model of public-private partnership is succeeding. more

The Site Finder Report: Dr. Stephen Crocker, Chair of the Committee

As an advisory committee, our focus is to give ICANN and the community our best advice regarding security and stability issues for the domain name system and the addressing system. We are not a standards, regulatory, judicial or enforcement body; those functions belong elsewhere. As we all know, VeriSign is in the process of suing ICANN on a number of matters, including ICANN's response to their registry change last September. Although VeriSign now contends that a number of us on the committee are "Site Finder co-conspirators" the next steps are really up to the ICANN board, the ICANN staff and the many members of the technical and operating community who run the domain name system. I'll be happy to interact with the members of the community here on CircleID as time permits. more

Registrant Freedom Day

After almost four years, ICANN has announced that they have adopted a new domain name transfer policy that make it much easier for domain name registrants to do business with the ICANN accredited Registrar of their choosing. Highlights from this new policy include; streamlined definition of responsibilities as it relates to the management of the domain name. Under the new policy, only the Administrative Contact or Registrant can authorize a domain name transfer to a new service provider... more