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The registration and use of an Internet domain name that allegedly infringes another's trademark is an "advertising injury" within the meaning of an insurance policy, and thus requires the accused company's insurer to provide coverage, according to a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. In the same ruling, the Fourth Circuit also held that the domain name, because it led customers to advertisements at the related website, constituted use of the trademark "in the course of advertising." State Auto Property and Cas. Ins. Co. v. Travelers Indemn. Co. of Am. more
It's clear that the US government is intent on dropping its legacy contractual role for the IANA functions. Whatever your views on the wisdom or timing of that decision, the challenge now is to ensure that the transition leaves ICANN in the best possible position to succeed. Arriving yesterday to the island nation of Singapore felt strangely appropriate. Over the past week I've been one of the lonely people in the ICANN community to express concern about the US government's decision. more
Three satellite companies, SES, Telesat, and Hughes, are working toward integrated, multi-orbit broadband Internet service and Eutelsat may join them... It is too soon for these companies to be offering integrated multi-orbit services, but they have begun testing and demonstrating switching and antenna technology. more
What could be bad about free wireless Internet access? How about censorship by federally mandated filters that make it no longer "Internet." That's the effect of the FCC's proposed service rules for Advanced Wireless Service spectrum in the 2155-2180 MHz band, as set out in a July 20 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Acting on a request of M2Z Networks, which wants to provide "free, family-friendly wireless broadband," the FCC proposes to require licensees of this spectrum band to offer free two-way wireless broadband Internet service to the public, with least 25% of their network capacity. So far so good, but on the next page, the agency guts the meaning of "broadband Internet" with a content filtering requirement. more
Until today's announcement by Canon, no large brand had broken the "thin brand line" by revealing their plan to apply for their own new top-level domain. Now with Canon's announcement, other major companies have been challenged to either announce their TLD plans or else state that they plan to forgo the chance to brand themselves at the top level of the domain name space. more
The afternoon of 13 December in Dubai is notable for one important deadline -- "declaration" if a Nation State is willing to accept the obligations of the resulting treaty instrument and if so, subject to what conditions. It is worth emphasizing that multilateral treaty instruments are serious constraints on a Sovereign's powers, and most nations even if they do sign, make general declarations that provide escape routes to the obligations. more
The introduction of unlimited numbers of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) has increased customer and company confusion about the role of brand names and their product labels, as noted in an earlier post. This essay outlines the various possible scenarios for coupling TLD branding and labeling, and it explains why duplicating the benefits of branding under.com may be difficult. more
Last year, Facebook created its widely dubbed "Supreme Court" (officially the Oversight Board) in an effort to outsource some of the platform's most difficult content decisions. By all accounts, Facebook hoped the Board would have global legitimacy to make the toughest content decisions and help avoid reputational damage for being biased, arbitrary, tone-deaf, or worse. more
WhatsApp is now broadly disrupted in China including text messages which were going through despite China's censorship of the app beginning mid-July which only effected photographs and video chats. more
"ICANN could invoke emergency powers in its contracts to prevent Whois becoming 'fragmented' after EU privacy laws kick in next month," reports Kevin Murphy in Domain Incite. more
If you missed attending or listening to the live stream of the US Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) workshop on the transition of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to new technologies that was held last week on December 6th, the FCC has very nicely made a video recording available from their website for viewing... FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also appeared briefly to provide a few comments. more
Atrivo (aka Intercage), a Concord, California-based Internet hosting service, disappeared from the Internet for around two days recently. They didn't go bankrupt or suffer a physical catastrophe. Their providers simply shut them down by refusing their traffic. This might very well be the first time in history that the Internet community, a cooperative association of networks with no governing body, has collectively put someone out of business, if only briefly. more
The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) and The Domain Name Association (DNA) have announced their intent to merge, forming the largest Internet infrastructure advocacy group in North America. more
Over the past few years, cyberattacks and internet harassment have escalated against abortion clinics intended to disrupt services, intimidate providers and patients. more
No one can have failed to notice that the last IPv4 address will soon be allocated. We have lived with a shortage of addresses for 15 years, but when the last address is allocated, the shortage will become acute, instead of just a pain, as it is today... In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams describes the least expensive and most effective method for making something invisible. You simply decide that it is Someone Else's Problem or SEP, if you abbreviate. This is an approach that is frighteningly similar to the Swedish public sector's view of the address shortage on the Internet. "It is not our problem -- if we ignore it, it will probably go away." more
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