Toughest State-Level Net Neutrality Bill in the US Approved by California Senate

The California Senate on Friday voted to approve the toughest state-level net neutrality bill in the U.S. and now with both legislative houses having approved the bill, California Governor Jerry Brown has until September 30 to sign it into law. more

Study Finds GDPR Has Had Minimal Impact on Spam and Domain Registrations

Contrary to concerns regarding the effect of GDPR, "not only has there not been an increase in spam, but the volume of spam and new registrations in spam-heavy generic top-level domains (gTLDs) has been on the decline." more

Adopting IDN to Reach New Untapped Markets

An IDN is a domain name which uses a particular encoding and format to allow a wider range of scripts to represent domain names such as Gujarati, Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari and many more scripts. In simple words, a domain name with non-English characters will be called an Internationalized Domain Name. Humans have a variety of languages and alphabets that are familiar to them, and domain names do too. IDN unlocks an increased familiarity and affinity for humans. more

Iranian Influence Operation Worldwide Significantly Larger Than Previously Identified

An apparent Iranian influence operation targeting internet users worldwide is reported as significantly larger than previously identified, Reuters reports. more

WIPO Updates GDPR Guidance for UDRP

Three months after implementation of the European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center has expanded and updated its already helpful web page with important questions and answers about how the GDPR is impacting the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). more

The .EU Top-Level Domain Facing Radical Shake Up as a Result of the Proposed New European Regulation

In response to outdated Regulations in a rapidly changing world of domain names and internet governance, the European Commission earlier this year proposed a new Europen Regulation for the .EU Top Level Domain (TLD). more

ICANN Facing Critical Choice for Plan to Change DNS Cryptographic Key

While the majority of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) have given the organization the green signal to roll, or change, the "top" pair of cryptographic keys used in the DNSSEC protocol, commonly known as the Root Zone KSK (Key Signing Key), five members of the committee advised against the October 11 rollover timeline. more

Large-Scale Study by Security Researchers in China Sheds Light on the Scope of DNS Interception

During the 27th Usenix Security Symposium held in Baltimore, MD last week, a group of researchers from China revealed results obtained from a large-scale analysis DNS interceptions. more

Join the Quantum Internet Hackathon 2018

The eighth RIPE NCC hackathon takes on the Quantum Internet! The hackathon will be held during the weekend before RIPE 77 in Amsterdam, and is co-organised by QuTech and TU Delft, along with the RIPE NCC. We're bringing together network operators, quantum networking researchers, students, hackers, software developers and artists, to imagine and build the tools for the future Internet. more

China Has Reached 802 Million Internet Users, According to Country’s Internet Development Report

China's internet development has released a report stating the number of internet users in China reached 802 million at the end of June, an increase of 3.8 percent from six months ago. more

Cuba’s 3G Mobile Access Trial - Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

On August 14 at 11 AM ETECSA, Cuba's monopoly ISP, began a 9-hour, nationwide test of 3G mobile Internet access -- anyone near a 3G-equipped cell tower with a compatible phone and a prepaid mobile telephony account could get free access until 8 PM. As far as I know, the only notification was this post on the ETECSA Facebook page, but word of the test and instructions for getting online spread by word of mouth. more

Nerd Knobs and Open Source in Network Software

Tech is commoditizing. I've talked about this before; I think networking is commoditizing at the device level, and the days of appliance-based networking are behind us. But are networks themselves a commodity? Not any more than any other system. We are running out of useful features, so vendors are losing feature differentiation. This one is going to take a little longer... more

Limitations, Delays, and Laches as Defenses in Cybersquatting Claims

In passing the baton for combating cybersquatting to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recommended that "claims under the administrative procedure [should not] be subject to a time limitation" (Final Report, Paragraph 199). ICANN agreed and the UDRP contains no limitation period for making a claim. The absence of a limitation period does not necessarily forego applying equitable defenses for delay, but the consensus of Panels appointed to decide disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) is that they are not applicable in countering cybersquatting claims. more

Trump Relaxes U.S. Regulation to Launch Cyberattacks

President Donald Trump has reversed an Obama-era policy that set limits on how the United States deploys cyberattacks. more

New gTLDs: Are You Rich?

Did you know about these new domain name extensions which focus on wellness, wealth and ego? Well, I listed them and there is an interesting one... which really is unique... Many want to be famous and some industries should have a look at this list of extensions since they are keywords dedicated to very powerful industries: Gold and Diamonds, for example, have their own new gTLD for domain names ending in ".gold" and ".diamonds". more