It’s Time to Put a Bow on the URS: Our Work is Almost Done

For years our community has struggled with the rules of the URS - the Uniform Rapid Suspension - aimed at taking down the "worst of the worst" domain name registrations in a manner faster and cheaper than its predecessor, the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy - the UDRP. On June 27, in Prague, a diverse group met to discuss the fate of the URS. To my surprise, it was a rare "kumbaya" moment, and that makes it worthy of comment. more

A Financial Back-Up to Win .WINE?

Still want to protect wine Geographical Indications (GIs)? A hot potato! Where the bucket ends is still to be found and the launching of both .WINE and .VIN new gTLDs is still an issue. At least some of the three applicants are following the ICANN new gTLD applicant guidebook, working with parties interested in bringing better protection mechanism to protect wine GIs. There seems to have been an attempt which has not worked... more

ARIN Seeks Caribbean candidate for Board of Trustees

Persons from the Caribbean seeking to contribute to the governance ecosystem of the global Internet can now volunteer for an appointment to the board of trustees of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). The call for volunteers will close on April 30 at 5 pm EDT. ARIN is one of five registries worldwide that coordinate Internet number resources. Its region spans the United States, Canada and many countries in the Caribbean. more

Jugaad Innovation and Applications of DNSSEC

It would be one of the ironies of global technology development that the West has effectively so far followed a Jugaad principle of "good enough" innovation for DNS security, whereas India could well embrace all the latest advances in DNS security as its Internet economy grows. Like most other protocols from the early Internet, the DNS protocol was not designed with security built in. For those protocols, security services were typically either implemented at a different layer of the protocol stack, or were added on later. more

New Agreement Declares ICANN Independent

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has reached a major milestone today with a new agreement in place with the U.S. Department of Commerce allowing the organization greater independence and giving more countries oversight of the organization. more

American University Washington College of Law to Hold Open Discussion on the .ORG Sale Controversy

The American University Washington College of Law announced it will be hosting a fireside chat on the sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR) to the private equity firm Ethos Capital. more

Forty Percent of New Generic TLDs Shrinking, According to Domain Incite Analysis

Forty percent of non-brand new gTLDs are shrinking, reports Kevin Murphy in Domain Incite: "According to numbers culled from registry reports, 172 of the 436 commercial gTLDs we looked at had fewer domains under management at the start of June than they did a year earlier. more

Who is Wagging Who? Same Dog, New Tale.

Today, my company AusRegistry International signed an open letter to the United States House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet as a show of support for ICANN and its new Top-Level Domain program. I'm disappointed by the nature of the oversight hearing the Subcommittee has called and I believe it will only be a distraction. Let's not kid ourselves; the reason for this hearing is to beat up ICANN over the new TLD program. I think this is unfair and unjustified... more

Keys Under the Doormat

To those of us who have worked on crypto policy, the 1990s have become known as the Crypto Wars. The US government tried hard to control civilian use of cryptography. They tried to discourage academic research, restricted exports of cryptographic software, and -- most memorably -- pushed something called "escrowed encryption", a scheme wherein the government would have access to the short-term keys used to encrypt communications or stored files. more

Achieving a Cyber-Reliant Infrastructure

Don't worry about the bad guys turning out the lights. Worry about everything they're stealing while the lights are still on. The theft of intellectual property ranging from Hollywood films to defense secrets is underway by cyber-criminals of various stripes. Maintaining control over intellectual property may be the single most important challenge to American economic security. Implementing a cyber-reliant infrastructure is a national challenge which crosses the traditional boundaries between economic sectors and between public and private domains. more

No False-Starts, Do-Overs, or Mulligans for Email

Josh Baer, former VP of Datran Media and current CEO of OtherInBox has been floating an idea at the DMA's Email Experience Council and a few other places, and recently got some traction in Ken Magill's Magill Report. What Josh is proposing is to create the technical means by which a Sender can decide when email 'expires' and is automatically removed from a recipient's inbox, either by deletion, or perhaps archiving (in the case of Gmail). This would supposedly help the end-user, by removing marketing offers that are no longer available. Why this idea shouldn't happen... more

The $100 Billion National Broadband Plan for America

The new Administration in the USA laid out a $100 billion proposal for broadband investment as part of its $2 trillion infrastructure plan. Under the proposal, the plan is to provide national broadband coverage. The Administration will use better competition measures, such as price transparency, the use of public utility infrastructure, and subsidies for low-income households to achieve its goals. more

When It Comes to Domain Name Rights Protection, scapegoat.sucks

It is not surprising that the phase 1 review of domain name rights protection mechanisms is delayed, but it is a bit of a surprise that in responding to a question posed in 2020, business executives and their lawyers replied with answers first offered and rejected five years earlier. In that time before COVID-19, the launch of the Vox Populi Registry and its dotSucks domain names drew quite a lot of attention. more

Update on AS Path Lengths Over Time - How Interconnected is the Internet?

With the number of ASes connected to the Internet constantly increasing, one could expect that the length of the AS paths would also increase as the network as a whole gets wider. However, this doesn't seem to be the case. Also, with IPv6 being more widely deployed, how does the interconnectedness of the IPv6 portion of the Internet compare to IPv4? more

IPv6 Medics Without Borders

At its November 5th plenary, the Canadian ICT Standards Advisory Committee approved the recommendations of the Canadian IPv6 Task Group set up by isacc in april. The 50 members of the Task Group were invited to individually produce a list of seven recommendations. Received inputs were collated, debated, ranked and ultimately distilled down to a pair of quite straightforward recommendations for immediate action. more