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U. S. Government Blasts China’s Draft Domain Regulations

In an unexpected move, the two top U.S. officials charged with the Obama Administration's Internet policy have issued a joint statement severely criticizing draft Chinese domain policies. On May 16th, the State Department's Ambassador Daniel A. Sepulveda and NTIA's Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information Lawrence E. Strickling issued an official statement titled "China's Internet Domain Name Measures and the Digital Economy". more

Proving Common Law Rights Predating Domain Name Registration

The trademark rights required for standing under paragraph 4(a)(i) of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) refer to both registered and unregistered rights. Complainants with registered trademarks satisfy the requirement by submitting their certificates of registration. However, and not surprisingly, complainants with unregistered trademarks have to demonstrate that the alleged marks qualify as such, which requires that complainants prove both secondary meaning of the marks and their distinctiveness prior to the registration of the domain name. more

Sweden Makes its TLD Zone File Publicly Available

Patrik Wallström writes to report that as of today, IIS (The Internet Foundation In Sweden) has made the zone files for .se and .nu domain names publicly available for the first time. "The underlying reason for making the zone files for .se and .nu available is our endeavour at IIS to promote transparency and openness. IIS has made the assessment that the zone files do not contain any confidential information and, therefore, there is no reason not to make this information available." more

PirateBay Domains to Be Handed over to the State, Swedish Court Rules

The Swedish court ruling on Thursday will result in confiscation of 'ThePirateBay.se' and 'PirateBay.se' from one the worlds most popular torrent websites. more

Moving Towards a Better (Not Just a Bigger) Internet

Those of us who have been working on IPv6 for over 15 years know what it means to be an advocate for an infrastructure technology that cannot be easily tied to new revenue or short-term risks. It is a battle on an icy uphill slope with head winds and a gallery of skeptics who call themselves realists and cheer your every bruise. This has often made us cheer any news of a new IPv6 deployment, as a means to keep faith. However in doing so, it sometimes made us overlook the substance of that news... more

WordPress Announces New .BLOG TLD, to be Available This Year

Automattic, the parent company of the popular blogging platform WordPress, today announced plans to make the new .blog TLD available for registration this year. Earlier this year, the company secured the rights to oversee and operate the registration of the highly contested new generic TLD. more

Hong Kong Billionaire Richard Li Becomes First Person to Own a TLD Matching His Name

The new top-level domain (TLD) .richardli secured for the Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li went live on the internet today. Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite: "The registry is Pacific Century Asset Management (HK) Limited, a subsidiary of PCCW, the Hong Kong telecomms and internet giant of which Li is chair... The gTLD is a pure brand-protection play, according to the 2012 application" more

Is the Internet a Tobacco Product?

Audacity by federal policy makers can be admirable, at least in some cases, but it can a bit more problematic in others. A case in point is the Food and Drug Administration's "deeming" of the internet to be a tobacco product. The FDA explained that it was exercising its authority under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act which gave the agency an extensive set of duties, responsibilities and authorities over "tobacco products." more

Facebook Introduces Open/R as a More Efficient Modular Routing Platform

Facebook has announced a new routing system aimed at solving fast-recovery challenges for its Terragraph network that brings high-speed internet connectivity to dense urban areas. more

Series of New African TLDs Fail to Go Live, Get Termination Notice from ICANN

Nine of the 17 African new Top-level Domain (TLD) applicants have received termination notices this week as a result of missing their deadlines to go live. more

Is the Internet Fragmenting? Join the Discussion Live - Tuesday, May 10, at 3:30pm US EDT

Is the global, open Internet moving away from a network of networks that is universally accessible to a series of networks fragmented along policy, technical or economic lines? As some governments pass laws related to data localization and restriction of cross-border data flows, what will the impact be? What about the increasing use of DNS and content filtering? What other factors have the potential for causing fragmentation? more

New Revenue Models for the ‘Software Telco’

I was recently asked how telcos might come up with new business models for a world where all resources are under software control. The core idea is to match network supply and demand in space and time (and at all timescales). I've typed up my notes for the curious to critique...Today's telco is more like a static utility 'pipe', the way that gas, electric or oil are delivered. It sells direct access to raw network mechanisms, and users buy circuits that offer a fixed bandwidth in space and time. more

Increasing the Strength of the Zone Signing Key for the Root Zone

One of the most interesting and important changes to the internet's domain name system (DNS) has been the introduction of the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). These protocol extensions are designed to provide origin authentication for DNS data. In other words, when DNS data is digitally signed using DNSSEC, authenticity can be validated and any modifications detected. more

Apple Requires All iOS Apps to Work on IPv6-Only Networks as of June 1

Yesterday Apple declared that as of June 1 all iOS apps submitted to the AppStore MUST support IPv6-only networking. Back at their June 2015 WWDC event, Apple announced that all iOS 9 applications must support IPv6 - the news this week is reinforcing that requirement... As Apple continues to point out, the vast majority of application developers will not need to do anything to support IPv6. more

Reflections on the G7 ICT Ministers Meeting in Japan

On April 30, 2016, ICT Ministers of the "G7 group" concluded their deliberations in the beautiful city of Takamatsu, Kagawa prefecture in Japan. After months of preparatory work and two full days of discussions, the ICT Ministers of the USA, UK, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Germany plus the European Union issued a joint declaration that: recognizes our digitally connected world; commits to mutual goals and, once again; reaffirms the multistakeholder model for the governance issues facing the deployment, development and evolution of the global Internet. more