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Domain Names / Recently Commented

UDRP and Article 92(b) of EUROPEAN COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 40/94

It has been over a year since I posted "The Non-Parity of the UDRP", how little did I know then compared to now! Since that posting, the corporations and their lawyers have given me a crash course in the law and I have learned much. There are many tricks that corporations will play on a domain name registrant in order to silence criticism of the corporation and to violate the registrants right of freedom of expression without frontiers. The UDRP Administrative Proceedings is one such trick... more

Domain Name Resale Market a Haven for Phishers?

In a recent article at TechWeb, the following observations were made: "Internet addresses that appeal to identity thieves eager to rip off consumers are being posted by major domain resellers... Finnish-based F-Secure has identified more than 30 registered domain names for resale that would be of interest only to the legitimate holder of the trademark or to phishers..." more

.Mobi Premium Name Auction Off to Wild Success at TRAFFIC in Miami

I'm in attendance at the the TRAFFIC EAST 2006 show, in Hollywood [Miami], Florida. There has been a lot of buzz here about the .Mobi top level domain, ranging from the talk of early registrants hoping to create the next big mobile portal to those that were keen to see implementations of mobile content. There was a domain name auction this evening where flowers.mobi sold for $200,000.00 (USD), and fun.mobi for $100,000.00 (USD) from a long list of domain names in the com, net, info, org, us and mobi extensions. more

False Positives and Ignorance

Content inspection is a poor way to recognise spam, and the proliferation of image spam recently drums this home. However if one must use these unreliable techniques, one should bring mathematical rigour to the procedure. Tools like SpamAssassin combine content inspection results, with other tests, in order to tune rule-sets to give acceptable rates of false positives (mistaking genuine emails for spam), and thus end up assigning suitable weights to different content rules. If one is going to use these approaches to filtering spam, and some see it as inevitable, one better know one's statistics... more

Additional .COM Domain Name Transfer Requirement by October 28

Registrars who support .com domain names will use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) system by October 28. ...There will be an additional step when trying to transfer a .com domain name among registrars. Specifically, a piece of information called an EPP code (aka auth code, EPP key, transfer secret) must be obtained from the current registrar and submitted to the gaining one prior to approving with the latter. more

ICANN Issues a Statement on the Spamhaus Case

ICANN issued a statement on the Spamhaus case: "...ICANN is not a party to this action and no order has been issued in this matter requiring any action by ICANN. Additionally, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend Spamhaus.org..." more

EURid Releases 74,000 Disputed Names

EURid has unfrozen 74,000 domains that were part of a dispute against domain warehousers. In July, EURid relented to outside pressure as it suspended the registration of 74,000 domains. They claimed these domains were registered directly by three registrars, not on behalf of clients, which violated EURid's terms. But the registrars have won this round... more

League of Nations, United Nations, Next: United Cyber Nations

Though the "Techies" have been heavily involved in many initiatives like Internet Governance, Internationalized (Multi-lingual) Domain Names, Identity Management, Information Security, Access Rights Management etc., they still have to correctly apply the technologies at hand to be able to replicate many accepted norms that have matured in the physical world such as federated identities, non-repudiation, notarizing, witnessing, co-signing etc. more

French NIC Warns Against Slamming

Everyone knows there are many frauds linked to the growth of domain names. According to AFNIC (the French NIC), there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of slamming since the beginning of this year. ...To fight against these practices, AFNIC issued a guide where it describes different categories of slamming... more

In Rem Domain Name Proceeding: Sometimes “may” Means “must”

Investools, Inc. recently filed an in rem domain name proceeding against a Canadian entity that registered the domain names investtools.com and investtool.com. In rem domain name proceedings are provided for under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA"), 15 U.S.C. 1125(d), and are a handy way for a trademark owner to acquire a domain name from a cybersquatter when the cybersquatter can't be found e.g., is located outside the U.S. ...The ACPA requires that a plaintiff demonstrate four things to establish in rem jurisdiction over a domain name... more

Macabre Result Avoided in Mortician Domain Name Case

If a court won't let you use your own name, you might feel like you're a mere ghost of your former self. That happened to Ed Kalis of Broward County, Florida. In a recent case, Florida's court of appeal considered whether a trial court's order against Kalis, enjoining him from using his own last name in various means of advertising and in the URL for his company's website, was proper. The appellate court held that the injunction was overkill. more

Why Don’t GAC Representatives Follow Their Own National Law?

A few weeks ago ICANN's domain name policy making organ (the GNSO) decided that the purpose of Whois was domain name coordination and not compulsory surveillance of domain name registrants. The US and Australian governments expressed their opposition. The US government's lack of concern for privacy is well known. But what about Australia? The Australian ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) representative, Ashley Cross, tried to use his authority as "a government" to intimidate the GNSO, sending it a message announcing that "Australia" supports a broader definition of Whois purpose that gives ICANN a blank check... What does "Australia" really support, however? more

Help! This is Not an Emergency

I like the drift of the Pulver/Evslin proposal on emergency communications, and wish there was as vigorous a debate going on over here. I just hope we in the UK aren't jerked out of complacency by some major disaster -- although widespread use of pre-paid cellular means the problem of sunken landlines isn't as acute. Yet I can't help but wonder why the poor public has to wait for a disaster before they're given partial control over how their number maps to different destinations and services. Why can't I get a voicemail service from someone other than my connectivity provider? Why is ENUM hostage to the telcos, whose interest lies in ensuring that new services can only come from them? more

Interesting Facts About Domain Names

During a database testing, Dennis Forbes makes use of the .com zone file as data sample but he also stumbles upon some unexpected domain name discoveries which he has reported on his site. Dennis Forbes explains: "I recently had a need for a mid-sized amount of real-world data, which I required for testing purposes on low-end hardware (testing and demonstrating some of the new functionality of SQL Server 2005). I wanted something that wasn't confidential, which excluded the easy choice of using business data, and I refrain from using artificial data..." more

ENUM: Mapping the E.164 Number Space into the DNS

Many communications networks are constructed for a single form of communication, and are ill suited to being used for any other form. Although the Internet is also a specialized network in terms of supporting digital communications, its relatively unique flexibility lies in its ability to digitally encode a very diverse set of communications formats, and then support their interaction over the Internet. In this way many communications networks can be mapped into an Internet application and in so doing become just another distributed application overlayed on the Internet. From this admittedly Internet-centric perspective, voice is just another Internet application. And for the growing population of Voice over IP (VoIP) users, this is indeed the case... more