As a designated committee of experts prepares to draft a new treaty to combat the use of information and communications technologies in cybercrime at the UN in January 2022, it is paramount that other stakeholders oversee these discussions to avoid violating human rights on the Internet. This initiative was kickstarted by a 2019 resolution led by Russia and endorsed by other countries considered by many to behavior controversially on cybersecurity matters, such as China, Venezuela, Cambodia, North Korea, and others. more
Internet all over Egypt has been blocked in an unprecedented revolt. I call on my friend Tarek Kamel, Egypt's Minister of Telecommunication, to overturn this oppressive decision and to unblock the Internet in all Egypt immediately and to join his people in their peaceful revolt. I have known Tarek Kamel for more than a decade and long before he became minister back in the days when he used to say he had no authority and that the decisions were in the hands of his boss and that he was a mere decision-less adviser to then Minister of Telecommunication, Mr. Nazif. more
Patrick Neighly reports on CommsDay about the Pacific Telecommunications Council 2009 Conference held last week where Vint Cerf was a keynote speaker. From the report: "Historians will view 2009 as a turning point in Internet history, according to Google internet evangelist Vint Cerf. Speaking to PTC'09 attendees, the legendary figure warned the industry to brace for 'significant change' and said Asia was poised to forever change the look and experience of the online landscape. The region boasts 578.5 million surfers with nearly 85% of its population still to come. That influx is likely to combine with the launch of non-Latin-character addresses to reshape the Web into a very different beast." more
SpaceX launched its eighth Starlink mission via the Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday, carrying 60 more satellites for its Internet satellite constellation, bringing the total in operation on orbit to 480. more
Internet governance can be a little on the dry side. So when tech policy reporters get a chance to write an ICANN story that features porn stars on picket lines, it's hard to blame them when they run with it. But all the media hype about ICANN's .xxx decision at last week's meeting in San Francisco exposed the real dilemma facing ICANN: how to engage governments in a multi-stakeholder model that's led by the private sector. more
Hal was an American entrepreneur and a visionary leader who managed and grew successful companies. He had a special impact on the domain name industry, where he founded domain retailer DomainBank and, in 2000, domain registry, Afilias. Hal grew Afilias into an industry leader and was also instrumental in founding Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit that manages the .org domain. more
At Friday's board meeting, ICANN once again narrowly approved the contentious .XXX domain intended for pornography. What this vote primarily shows is that ICANN's processes have been broken for a long time, and aren't getting fixed. Two board members made thoughtful and eloquent statements before the vote outlining the reasons they were about to vote for or against the domain. more
Report from a new study by Analysys Mason, commissioned by the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), says there is a potential USD $9.8 billion growth opportunity in online revenue through a routine update to Internet systems, including those for speakers of languages that do not use the English script. more
Fergie replied on NANOG to my recent post on the subject of broadband routers insecurity: "I'll even go a step further, and say that if ISPs keep punting on the whole botnet issue, and continue to think of themselves as 'common carriers' in some sense -- and continue to disengage on the issue -- then you may eventually forced to address those issues at some point in the not-so-distant future..." He is right, but I have a comment I felt it was important - to me - to make. Not just on this particular vulnerability, but on the "war"... more
Happy Launchiversary! It's been two years since World IPv6 Launch in 2012, the day many major Internet Service Providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world started permanently enabling IPv6 for their products and services. In the last two years, participation and interest in IPv6 has only grown. Today nearly 250 network operators around the world are participating in World IPv6 Launch measurements, and we continue to see increased IPv6 deployment by network operators, websites, and home router vendors. more
Even as we increasingly discover that every facet of our modern lives now revolve around, and are dependent on the Internet, for which reason its availability, functionality, safety, stability and security are now of great and continuing concern to all of us. These issues have a profound impact on its overall governance. To most of us, during the past three decades, the Internet has always been available, stable, affordable and open; and it should continue this way even as it is controlled and administered in a secure manner... more
A recent Infonetics press release says "WiMAX has gained such momentum across so many regions that it is no longer sensible to suggest that WiMAX growth will be flattened by the emergence of LTE [Long Term Evolution] in the next few years." Probably true, but it's also clear WiMAX will never reach the scale of either mainstream wireless family, i.e., WiFi or GSM/3GSM. By comparison with these giants, WiMAX will be a fringe operation. The critical issue is volume, and what counts is the wireless technology brand, not the technology itself. more
On Jan. 11, 2025, Verisign supported the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in taking a major step to ensure the continued security, stability, and resiliency of the Domain Name System (DNS). While imperceptible to most users, this action - specifically, the introduction of a new Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) Key Signing Key (KSK) in the root zone - is the next step of a multi-year-long process to change, or "roll," the cryptographic key that secures the root of the DNS. more
In rem actions over domain names are powerful tools. A trademark owner can undertake these actions when it identifies an infringing domain name but cannot locate the owner of that domain name. In a sense, the domain name itself is the defendant. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (which is a part of the federal trademark statute dealing with the unauthorized registration of domain names) says that a court can enter ex parte orders requiring a domain name to be turned over when... more
Many in the technical community attribute the rapid growth and spread of the Internet to innovation that took place at the "edge" of the network, while its "core" was left largely application neutral to provide a universal and predictable building block for innovation. It is this core neutrality that provides a basis for the security and stability of the Internet as a whole. And it is this same core neutrality that is critical to the continued spread of the Internet across the Digital Divide. Unfortunately, when the politics of censorship rather than solely technical concerns drive the coordination of these "core" Internet resources, it threatens the future security and stability of the Internet. This paper proposes a paradigm upon which all the governments of the world have equal access to these core Internet resources to empower them and their citizens with the rights acknowledged in the WSIS Declaration of Principles. more