Here are the top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry updates featured on CircleID during 2012 based on the overall readership of the posts for the past 12 months. Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership and best wishes to the entire community for 2013. more
PIR, the registry operator for .org, has sent notices to registrars that it is implementing an anti-abuse policy that offers no due process for innocent domain registrants... While it's good intentioned, there is great potential for innocent domain registrants to suffer harm, given the lack of appropriate safeguards, the lack of precision and open-ended definition of "abuse", the sole discretion of the registry operator to delete domains, and the general lack of due process. more
The U.S. Congress' road to Stopping Online Piracy (SOPA) and PROTECT IP (PIPA) has had some twists and turns due to technical constraints imposed by the basic design of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). PIPA's (and SOPA's) provisions regarding advertising and payment networks appear to be well grounded in the law enforcement tradition called following the money, but other provisions having to do with regulating American Internet Service Providers (ISPs) so as to block DNS resolution for pirate or infringing web sites have been shown to be ineffectual, impractical, and sometimes unintelligible. more
Today's Wall Street Journal has a provocative story headlined 'China Squeezes PC Makers: Beijing Is Set to Require Web Filter That Would Block Government-Censored Sites'... According to a press release dated June 8th China time, after a period of testing and evaluation, the "Green Dam Youth Escort" software received government blessing in April to be made available for free public download. The press release says that the software has been downloaded over 3 million times since the end of March and is being used by approximately 2279 schools... more
As you read this, please keep in mind that I say it all with a track record nearly 14 years of being proactive and having a zero-tolerance policy toward criminal activity and network abuse on our system. We have great relationships with Law Enforcement Agencies both here in Canada and abroad. We are always helpful and (usually) happy to answer questions, and help LEA understand the complexities and nuances of the internet. We've had the good fortune to meet some really intelligent and clued in cybercrime units. We participate in numerous communities in combating net.abuse and cybercrime. more
The new year is upon us and it's time for our annual look at CircleID's most popular posts of the past year and highlighting those that received the most attention. Congratulations to all the 2016 participants and best wishes to all in the new year. more
We seem to hear quite a bit from ICM about their .xxx TLD proposal. People who might be interested in the view from the porn community might be interested in Violet Blue's article on the proposal. As you might expect, she is against and sees no real support from the porn world. She does not consider 153K defensive domain registrations as proof of demand. more
I'm writing this from Taipei, where I have lived in peace for over 10 years. Sadly I learned that during this week, intermediate-range ballistic missiles (operated by China) have flown far above the capital of Taiwan and that five of them have landed in the waters of Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). This provocative live-firing drill came as a direct response from China following Pelosi's visit. more
Looking back at 2010, here is the list of top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry news on CircleID in 2010 based on the overall readership of the posts (total views as of Jan 1, 2011). Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership and best wishes to the entire community for 2011. Happy New Year! more
Shakespeare has Marcellus say in Act 1 of Hamlet, "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark." ...Milton Mueller, in his recent post to this site, would have us believe that since ICANN's Board long ago agreed that ICM's application for dot-xxx registry satisfied its own criteria for a sponsored TLD, then the only explanation for all the delay is, "I'm beginning to think that ICANN's approach to TLD approval was cooked up by a demented sergeant from Abu Ghraib." Milton goes on to assert that ICM's claim on dot-xxx is protected by the 1st Amendment. If this is so, then why after more than six years of discussion, is dot-xxx still raising such a fuss? more
For a book project I decided to extend my interview with Milton Mueller from November 2003 (Part I | Part II). Exclusively for CircleID readers, here's part III that deals with WSIS, WGIG, US-American bias and the Internet Governance Project. "...One good result of the WGIG process is that the involved international community has already moved beyond those cliches. No one is proposing that the UN control the Internet. There is growing consensus that control of the DNS root needs to be internationalized..." more
The Egyptian government has disabled most Internet and cell phone services in an apparent effort to disrupt the anti-government protests gripping the country. Egypt's four primary Internet providers all stopped moving data early Friday, effectively cutting off Egyptians from the outside world and each other. more
It took three years for ICANN to issue a breach notice to BizCn over the invalid WHOIS record behind RAPETUBE[DOT]ORG. Throughout the history of this absurd case ICANN staff would repeatedly insist the record had been validated and the registrar was compliant, regardless of extensive evidence proving otherwise. Despite a letter sent to ICANN's CEO and an investigation by the Washington Post, the Rape Tube stayed online. more
In the latest twist of the US-China spat, President Trump has his sights on TikTok, the short-form video-sharing platform and ByteDance subsidiary. On July 31, President Trump threatened to ban TikTok because it was a threat to US national security. On August 6, he made good on his threat when he signed an Executive Order to that effect. President Trump tightened the screws with an August 14 Executive Order requiring ByteDance to divest its assets in the US and destroy any TikTok data on its US users within 90 days. more
In the news lately have been a number of incidents where U.S. courts, or the U.S. government itself has ordered domain registrars to shut down free speech. First was the E360 vs Spamhaus case, in which accused spammer E360 Insight sued anti-spam organization Spamhaus for labeling them as spammers and won by default when Spamhaus insisted that U.S. courts did not have jurisdiction over them in England and didn't appear. Unfortunately, U.S. courts did have jurisdiction over Spamhaus' domain registrar, who was nearly ordered to shut Spamhaus down (a court order was under consideration). Fortunately, Spamhaus was able to move their registration overseas before any shutdown order could be issued... more