"The Root Server is a Scarce Resource" is the focus of part one of a three-part series based on a study prepared by Karl M. Manheim, Professor of Law at Loyola Law School and Lawrence B. Solum, Professor of Law at University of San Diego. Special thanks and credit to Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 25, p. 317, 2004. ...We begin our analysis of domain name policy with a brief excursion into economics. Economics cannot answer all of the questions raised by domain name policy. First, domain name policy must answer to the discipline of network engineering. A useful domain name system must work, and the functionality, scalability, reliability, and stability of the system are determined by the soundness of its engineering. Second, domain name policy must answer to public policy. The Internet is a global network of networks, and Internet policy is answerable to a variety of constituencies, including national governments, the operators of the ccTLDs, Internet Service Providers, information providers, end users of the Internet, and many others. more
Jonathan B. Postel, one of the Founding Fathers of the Internet passed away on October 16, 1998. Jon had a great deal of influence over how the Internet works and how it was designed. The following is a letter written by Vinton G. Cerf on October 17, 1998 in honor of Jon's death. The letter was called "I Remember IANA".
"If Jon were here, I am sure he would urge us not to mourn his passing but to celebrate his life and his contributions. He would remind us that there is still much work to be done and that we now have the responsibility and the opportunity to do our part. I doubt that anyone could possibly duplicate his record, but it stands as a measure of one man's astonishing contribution to a community he knew and loved." more
Now that ICANN has approved a potentially vast expansion in the number of generic Top-Level Domains, there's considerable interest in and confusion about how these names can be used. For example if someone registers "dot BRAND", can they advertise http://brand/ and have it work? more
The latest post on DearAOL's blog, by EFF activist coordinator Danny O'Brien, is titled "The Shakedown Begins". In short, Danny receives email from overstock.com on an AOL mailbox -- email that he apparently paid overstock $29.95 to receive. And that email arrives with Goodmail certification that AOL recognizes and flags as such. Danny seems to think this is not the sort of email that should be certified by Goodmail, and that AOL should not suddenly turn on Goodmail certification. Suddenly? more
On February 4, 2004, United States Congress held a hearing on a new proposed bill called the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act (FOISA). This bill will increase prison sentences by up to seven years in criminal cases if a domain owner provides "material and misleading false contact information to a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority." What follows is a collection of commentaries made in response to this proposed bill. more
There are now well over 100 brands actively using their new dot brand domains to promote their goods and services. The latest release of the Dot Brand Observatory, which is now a complimentary resource, produced by dotStories in collaboration with Verisign and Valideus paints a picture of a vibrant market that is developing significantly. more
The alarming rise of phishing attacks has been underscored by a recent study "Phishing Landscape 2023: An Annual Study of the Scope and Distribution of Phishing conducted" by the Interisle Consulting Group, revealing a tripling of such attacks since May 2020. Despite efforts by companies and policymakers to combat this cybercrime, the data suggests that the prevailing strategies are ineffective and worsening each year. more
A fellow named Paul Korzeniowski has written a very good, concise piece on the Comcast action at the FCC for Forbes, Feds And Internet Service Providers Don't Mix. He manages to describe the controversy in clear and unemotional language, which contrasts sharply with the neutralists who constantly use emotionally-charged terms such as "blocking," "Deep Packet Inspection," "forgery," and "monopoly" to describe their discomfort. more
A incorrect configuration within Swedens .SE zone caused temporary shutdown of all websites under the country code top-level domain. Web monitoring company, Royal Pingdom, also located in Sweden reports: "Last night, a routine maintenance of Sweden's top-level domain .se went seriously wrong, introducing an error that made DNS lookups for all .se domain names start failing. The entire Swedish Internet effectively stopped working at this point. Swedish (.se) websites could not be reached, email to Swedish domain names stopped working, and for many these problems persist still..." more
As we navigate through 2025, the domain industry remains a critical focal point amid persistent geopolitical instabilities, inflation, and an ongoing energy crisis. These pressures have reshaped the landscape of domain registrations and the domain aftermarket. Despite these challenges, digitalization continues to drive innovation and efficiency across sectors. more
Ever visit cartoonneetwork.com? Adaptac.com? Check the URLs carefully, for these aren't the "real" sites operated by the Cartoon Network cable channel or by Adaptec, manufacturer of PC storage devices. Instead, these domains -- and some 5,000+ others -- were registered by a Mr. John Zuccarini. Read on to learn what he is up to and how he has gotten away with it. more
The recent research highlighting the alarming practice of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate Authority (CA) vendors using the MD5 hashing algorithm (which was known to be broken since 2005) has shown a major crack in the foundation of the Web. While the latest research has shown that fake SSL certificates with MD5 hashes can be forged to perfection when the CA (such as VeriSign's RapidSSL) uses predictable certificate fields, the bigger problem is that the web has fundamentally botched secure authentication. more
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
I've been trying to avoid writing about the Internet as such. With as "At the Edge" I'm looking at larger issues but can't escape writing more directly about the Internet. It seems as if everyone wants a say in Internet policy without distinguishing between technical and social issues. Today the term "The Internet" or, for many simply "Internet" is more of brand than a term for a specific technology and its implications. It has become too easy to talk about the Internet in lieu of understanding. We also see the converse -- a failure to recognize "Internet" issues. more
India is one of the world's fastest growing economies, the global leader in outsourcing and the service computing, and home to over a billion people. But when I first met officials from the Indian government to discuss their plans for .IN, India had a total of just about 7,000 .IN registrations, fewer than most small countries have. ...(Compare to 100,000 names registered last month alone) This is one of the most rapid starts of any domain worldwide. In my conversations with senior officials of the Indian Government and the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) which manages the .IN Registry, they credited three key decisions that proved critical to the success of the domain's re-launch... more