DNS

Some Notes on the .XXX Top-Level Domain

Yesterday the ICANN board discussed and approved ICANN staff to enter into negotiations with ICM Registry, Inc. for the .XXX Top Level Domain (TLD). I'm sure there will be a longer more complete presentation from ICANN later about this, but as an individual board member I thought I'd post a quick note before people got carried away with speculation based on a lack of information. more

Identity Theft: Giving Away Your Personal Information

Identity theft is apparently the "in thing" these days. By media accounts, hackers and evildoers lurk everywhere trying to steal your personal information. In the past few months, one company after another is being forced to admit customer data has been lost or stolen. In many cases, they have them come forth repeatedly over the next few weeks, or even months revising the estimated number of impacted customers. To date, I don't think any have ever lowered those numbers. ...Let's consider two events that didn't make the front page of C|Net or CNN.  more

Fitting .JOBS Into the Marketplace

There have been several posts over the last 48 hours in response to the new dot jobs domain on both sides of the argument. John Sumser from The Electronic Recruiting News provides a balanced view of the new domain and in the end determines that then new domain will not help job seekers. Gerry Crispin has a slightly different view on The CareerXroads, which is not surprising as Gerry was a advocate of the new domain from the beginning. Joel Cheesman provides a fantastic top 10 thoughts on the new domain as well... more

ICANN Approves New Domain for Adult Sites

The Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has determined that the proposal for a new top level domain submitted by ICM Registry, Inc. has met the criteria established by ICANN. Accordingly, ICM Registry will now move forward into technical and commercial contractual negotiations with ICANN to generate a voluntary .xxx top-level domain (TLD). more

Port 25 Blocking, or Fix SMTP and Leave Port 25 Alone for the Sake of Spam?

Larry Seltzer wrote an interesting article for eWeek, on port 25 blocking, the reasons why it was being advocated, and how it would stop spam. This quoted an excellent paper by Joe St.Sauver, that raised several technically valid and true corollaries that have to be kept in mind when blocking port 25 -- "cough syrup for lung cancer" would be a key phrase... Now, George Ou has just posted an article on ZDNET that disagrees with Larry's article, makes several points that are commonly cited when criticizing port 25 blocking, but then puts forward the astonishing, and completely wrong, suggestion, that worldwide SPF records are going to be a cure all for this problem. Here is my reply to him... more

Morgan Freeman Wins Transfer of morganfreeman.com from Cybersquatter

Perhaps Morgan Freeman never learned about the high profile domain name disputes involving celebrity names (e.g., Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Julia Roberts), because he didn't register morganfreeman.com before it was snatched up by Mighty LLC in April 2003. After learning about Mighty LLC's (no stranger to domain name disputes) cybersquatting, Freeman filed a complaint before a WIPO arbitration panel under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy... more

Do We Really Need IDN?

James Seng has quoted that Korea, China and Japan must have IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) service. His statement may appear as above mentioned countries desperately need for IDN services because there are no alternative. However, there have already been well established local Internet address providers since quite some time. more

The Accountable Net: Who Should Be Accountable?

Two weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission held a summit on e-mail authentication in Washington, DC; the community of people who handle bulk mail came together and agreed on standards and processes that should help reduce the proliferation of spoofed mail and fraudulent offers. This was a big, collective step in the right direction. But e-mail sender authentication alone won't solve the Net's fraud and phishing problems - nor will any single thing. It requires a web of accountability among a broad range of players. Yet this week there's another meeting, in Cape Town, South Africa, that could make even more of a difference...but it probably won't. more

Wal-Mart on the Domain Name War Path

Wal-Mart seems to have been particularly vigilant lately about protecting itself from third parties setting up websites critiquing Wal-Mart and its practices. ...Wal-Mart recently scored a victory in an arbitration proceeding under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP") before the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") against Jeff Milchen, a self-proclaimed critic of Wal-Mart from Bozeman, Montana who registered the domain name "walmartfacts.biz". more

Could IP Addressing Benefit from the Introduction of Competitive Suppliers?

An article written by Paul Wilson, Director General of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), and Geoff Huston, Senior Internet Research Scientist at APNIC. "In recent months proposals have been made for the introduction of competition into the system of allocation of IP addresses. In particular, calls have been made for new IP address registries to be established which would compete with the existing Regional Internet address Registries (RIRs). Specific proposals have been made by Houlin Zhao of the ITU-T and by Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project, both of which propose that the ITU itself could establish such a registry group, operating as a collection of national registries." ...It would appear that part of the rationale for these proposals lies in the expectation that the introduction of competition would naturally lead to outcomes of "better" or "more efficient" services the address distribution function. This article is a commentary on this expectation, looking at the relationship between a competitive supply framework and the role of address distribution, and offering some perspective on the potential outcomes that may be associated with such a scenario for IP addresses, or indeed for network addresses in general. more

ACPA Applies to Noncommercial Use of Domain Name

A recent decision by the Ninth Circuit confirms that "commercial use" by the defendant is required for a Lanham Act trademark or dilution claim, but is not required in a cybersquatting claim under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). Michael Kremer, a dissatisfied hair transplant patient, used the domain name www.BosleyMedical.com as a site critical to the Bosley Medical Institute, a hair transplant clinic. Bosley sued. The district court entered summary judgment for Kremer on the grounds that his conduct was not commercial... more

More on Story Behind .ASIA

James Seng, my good colleague in APEET, said: "...Chiao called .ASIA 'more or less like a joint venture among APxx organizations'. I say nonsense!" When I say more or less, I mean more or less... On this .ASIA entry, I've intended to use the language carefully at this moment 'cos I know someone will be watching... more

In Pursuit of IDN Perfection?

Many of the problems of IDNs come from trying to do multiple languages at the same time or languages one can't read. The biggest difficulty is implementing them in gTLDs like .com or .org. I think that if we focus on helping the country level TLDs (ccTLDs) get going with IDNs in their own native languages, we would be solving the problem for 80% or so of the people. My concern is holding up the ability for these people to use IDNs because we can find the perfect solution for the edge cases. more

Story Behind .ASIA

After releasing .travel and .jobs (hey, steve.jobs up for bidding!), ICANN said they will look at .xxx and .asia next. (via Chiao) "Vint Cerf: ...of those, we have had fairly extensive discussion about .asia and .xxx. We continue to evaluate those. The others will be attended to as we can get to them. But i want to say for the record that we will attempt within the next 30 days to come to a conclusion one way or the other about .asia and .xxx so these will be on a board call sometime within that period." Chiao called .ASIA "more or less like a joint venture among APxx organizations". I say nonsense! Don't let appearance fool you. more

.EU TLD Comes Closer Than Ever to Becoming a Reality

With much awaited fanfare, .EU is inching ever closer to becoming real! I am a bit reluctant to say it is actually here until the gates are actually open, but I can imagine that there are many who are grateful as I am that the process has gotten as far as it has. On March 23rd, 2005, ICANN announced that they had approved an agreement earlier that week with EURid to have .eu added to the root zone... more