Name Collision: Why ICANN Is Looking at It the Wrong Way (Part 1)

ICANN has, once again opened up a veritable can of worms, with their latest decision on the 'horrors' of Name Collision. While we are sure that ICANN and the Interisle Consulting Group have very good reason to make the decision that they have - delaying the delegation of several TLDs - we believe that the findings contained in Interisle's report do not give sufficient cause to delay the new gTLD program in the manner proposed by ICANN staff. more

Bandwidth Needed to Work from Home

The pandemic made it clear that the millions of homes with no broadband or poor broadband were cut off from taking the office or the school home. But the pandemic also showed many additional millions of homes that their current ISP connection isn't up to snuff for working or doing schoolwork from home. Families often found that multiple adults and students couldn't share the bandwidth at the same time. more

Iran Launches Its First Private Cloud Data Center

Iran has officially launched its first cloud data center in Tehran during a ceremony attended by the Minister of Communication and Information Technology," according to reports from local news sites. more

Is racing.com a Half-Million Dollar Mistake for Racing Victoria?

What's a domain name? What business function do they serve? Can a domain name generate ROI? I imagine these were the questions the Board of Racing Victoria asked before signing off on the purchase of racing.com to support a Victorian racing industry joint initiative to establish a digital media and content platform similar to that of the AFL. more

U.S. Congress Nears Breakthrough Agreement on National Online Data Protection Framework

In a landmark move that may pave the way for enhanced online data protection in the United States, key congressional committee leaders are on the brink of finalizing a national framework to safeguard Americans' personal data on the Internet.  more

ICANN 47: Policy Debates and Cautious Optimism

A strange feeling came over me after I got home from ICANN 47 in Durban, something I haven't felt after an ICANN meeting before. The feeling? Optimism. I'm optimistic, albeit cautiously so, about the future of ICANN and by extension, hopefully that of Internet governance in general. If the meeting in Durban is any indication, we've come a long way in the past year. There were no indicted war criminals invited to dinner. And though it may be too soon to say for sure, I don't think a letter will be sent to the government of South Africa about the quality of the hotel. more

Ottawa Committed to Overturn CRTC Decision on Usage-Based Internet Billing

Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement has announced that the Harper government will overturn the CRTC's decision that effectively ends "unlimited use" Internet plans if the regulator doesn't rescind the decision itself. more

DOTZON Study: Digital Company Brands 2023

DOTZON presents the sixth edition of the Digital Company Brands study. After having introduced the study in 2018, DOTZON continued to expand and enhance the underlying data to display how companies successfully use their Digital Company Brands. The Digital Company Brand is the digital dimension of a company brand and mirrors the "digitalness "of a company. more

Restricting Anti-Virus Won’t Work

In a blog post, Stewart Baker proposed restricting access to sophisticated anti-virus software as a way to limit the development of sophisticated malware. It won't work, for many different and independent reasons. To understand why, though, it's necessary to understand how AV programs work. The most important technology used today is the "signature" - a set of patterns of bytes - of each virus. Every commercial AV program on the market operates on a subscription model... more

Google and Verizon Wireless Find Common Ground on Net Neutrality

In a joint statement released today by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, and Lowell McAdam, President and CEO of Verizon Wireless, the two companies have expressed their support for making existing 'net neutrality' principles enforceable. The joint statement was published as a blog post late Wednesday on both Google and Verizon policy blogs. more

Rapidly Changing Triple and Quadruple Play Business Models

It is interesting to follow what is happening with triple and quadruple play broadband prices in competitive markets. Through triple and quadruple play, customers are increasingly getting more services for the same money. As most fixed telecoms markets are still largely monopolistic in nature, basic access charges remain high; but good prices are even available in markets with healthy wholesale competition, if one shops around. more

German High Court Says No to Retaining Telecom, Email Data for Tracking Criminal Networks

The highest court in Germany has ruled against telephone and email data retention used to track criminal networks. Melissa Eddy of the Global and Mail reports: "A law ordering data on calls made from mobile or landline telephones and e-mail exchanges be retained for six months for possible use by criminal authorities violated Germans' constitutional right to private correspondence, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled. In its ruling, the court said the law failed to sufficiently balance the need for personal privacy against that for providing security."
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Neustar and Afilias Jump on the No-Tasting Bandwagon

In a message posted to the ICANN GNSO list, Avri Doria forwarded along a most interesting document from Neustar, who runs the .biz domain... Neustar proposes to change their registrar agreement so that each registrar will only get credit for deletions of 10% of their new domains, with a few minor exceptions for tiny registrars and bulk registrations due to one-time mistakes. They say they expect Afilias to propose the same change for .info.  more

ICANN Gives .amazon Talks a March Deadline

ICANN's board of directors has voted to put a March deadline on discussions concerning .amazon top-level domain. more

Dave Crocker and John Levine Discuss Current Dealings With Spam (Video)

During the M3AAWG meeting in Brussels earlier this year, Dave Crocker and John Levine were asked to step into an impromptu video studio and talk about how email has changed over the past several decades and whether we are any closer to resolving the spam problem. more