Bob Marley’s “WAILERS” Win Cybersquatting Lawsuit

Bob Marley's Wailers, who eventually became known simply as the "Wailers" after Bob Marley's death, successfully argued for dismissal of this cybersquatting and trademark infringement lawsuit brought by band members of another Wailers musical group who started using the band name 10 years before Bob Marley named his group in 1969... more

“The Broadband Revolution”

The International Telecommunications Union recently issued a press release announcing with joy the release of "the first set of global standards for Internet Protocol TV (IPTV)." A key sentence: "A combination of voice, Internet and video services over a single broadband link and from a single provider is foreseen as the ultimate goal of the broadband revolution." Those of you who lived through 'What Is Broadband Good For?' with me last summer, know that the word "broadband" is a pet bugaboo of mine. It's a word that answers a lot of policy questions in a particular way. more

Remarkable Internet History: Equifax Invented .COM in 1975

Once in a while, one comes across a new take on history that challenges everything you thought you knew. If you're the type who engages in bar bets with geeks, then this one is a certain gem. In 2001, Equifax submitted to the USPTO a sworn application to register a curious trademark, which eventually issued in 2004 with this data... Aside from the fact that Equifax has never actually held registration of the domain name efx.com, the truly outstanding fact here is that Equifax and/or its attorney has actually sworn to the United States Government that it was using "EFX.COM" as a mark for the provision of providing educational seminars via the internet since February 1975... Until now, I had imagined that Jon Postel added .com to the root in 1985. more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2007

Here is a list of the most viewed news and blog postings that were featured on CircleID in 2007. Best wishes for 2008. more

Will 2008 be the WiMAX Year?

There has recently been some good and bad news about WiMAX. On the good news part, an announcement made by the WiMAX Forum this month regarding the launching of the Mobile WiMAX certification program through which vendors can get their IEEE 802.16e-2005 equipment tested and possibly certified... On the bad news part, there was the Sprint-Clearwire breakup after three months of announcing a plan to join forces in building a nationwide WiMAX network in the US. Although it is anticipated that each company would carry on with its own WiMAX plans, analysts believe that the breakup would have negative impact on WiMAX deployment in the US... more

IPv4 Address Exhaustion and a Trading Market

There are discussions starting within the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) about the creation of trading market in IPv4 addresses as we approach the inevitable exhaustion of unallocated addresses. The view being put forward is basically "this is likely to happen anyway and by discussing it now, we can ensure it happens in an orderly way". When I first heard this idea I was a bit surprised. The RIRs are policy based bodies and so a shift to a trading market appears to be an abandonment of that policy base. However I have been partly corrected on that. more

Homeland Security Department Was Warned About DNSSEC Key Ownership and Trust Issues

The Internet Governance Project has unearthed a consultancy report to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that makes it clear that the issue of root signing and DNSSEC key management has been recognized as a political issue within the US government for long time. more

The Internet Running Out of Everything?

We know that the Internet is running out of IPv4 addresses and that some in our community check twice a day Mat Ford's doomsday clock or spend an hour once a week reading the tea leaves based on Geoff Huston's exhaustive data compiled at Potaroo. Like with global warming, there is still a school of thought out there arguing that this running out of IP addresses is just fear mongering and that we are not really running out of IPv4 addresses as a NATted world is more than adequate to run the Internet for the foreseeable future. We know that the Internet is running out of AS... more

How Rampant is Cyber & Typo Squatting? Just Ask WIPO After Reviewing Wipo.com!

How prevalent is cybersquatting and typosquatting? Take a look at www.wipo.com, and then compare it with the World Intellectual Property Organization's web site www.wipo.org. Ironically, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center handles a majority of the UDRP domain dispute arbitrations internationally. The very organization which is invested with the authority by ICANN to resolve cybersquatting and typosquatting disputes internationally under the UDRP is, by all appearances, being squatted. Here are two apparent typosquatters... more

Defendants Respond to Dell’s Anti-Tasting Suit

The defendants in Dell's domain tasting suit responded last Friday. It looks like a pretty feeble response to me. Their main argument is that they're just the registrar, and deny Dell's claim that the registrants are fakes made up by the registrar. They also argue that they're not infringing, they didn't use the names in question in commerce, they were just acting as helpful search engines, you know, like Google or Yahoo. (The comparison to Google and Yahoo is theirs.) more