Rightside Rejects Donuts’ Unsolicited $70 Million Proposal, Says Undervalues Business

In an announcement released this morning, Rigtside said its Board of Directors has rejected the unsolicited proposal from Donuts Inc. to acquire Rightside's entire registry of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and related assets for $70 million in an all-cash deal. more

Facebook Stays, Everybody’s Happy, but Nothing Has Changed

After some turmoil, Facebook won the war with the Australian Government as the necessary changes were made to the legislation that avoided them needing to change their business model. Those subtleties are lost in the general press. What counts for the popular media is that they were able to spin some great stories around the fact that Australia stood up to the giants. That brought international attention, which boosted the ego of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. more

Court Refuses Injunction in .africa TLD Case

"DotConnectAfrica's attempt to have ICANN legally blocked from delegating the .africa gTLD to rival applicant ZACR has been denied," Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite. more

Negotiating the WSIS+10 and the Future of the Internet

After two and a half years of technical analysis and discussions, six months of deliberations among all stakeholders, and intense negotiations at the United Nations, at three o'clock in the morning on December 12, 2015, the talented co-facilitators from the United Arab Emirates and Latvia dropped the gavel on the outcome document for the ten-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). That consensus document presents international principles that will guide the UN's work on Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-related issues. more

OpenDNSSEC Launched to Help Drive Adoption of DNSSEC

A team of developers including .SE (The Internet Infrastructure Foundation), LNetLabs, Nominet, Kirei, SURFnet, SIDN and John Dickinson have come together to create open source software, called OpenDNSSEC, to make it easier to deploy DNSSEC. Patrik Wallström, responsible for DNSSEC at .SE comments: "In order to spread the use of DNSSEC to an increased number of domain names, the management surrounding this technology must be simplified. Together with a number of collaborators, we're developing OpenDNSSEC. Leveraging our deployment experience, we will produce a well-packaged, easy-to-use and flexible DNSSEC tool that eliminates all manual procedures. Those in charge of name servers no longer need detailed knowledge about the protocol in order to use it." more

Is UN SG Guterres Driving the Bus That Macron Threw UN IGF & Multistakeholderism Under at IGF Paris?

A fresh & transparent, community-led, bottom-up, public debate has now become unavoidable and undeferrable. "....we need limited and smart regulation" were the clear and unambiguous words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the launch of the final report of his UN Panel on Digital Cooperation last week in New York. Last November, I wrote about President Macron throwing down the gauntlet at UN IGF Paris challenging IGF and Multistakeholderism to become more relevant.  more

Xi Insists on China’s Right to Regulate Its Own Internet

Chinese President, Xi Jinping, in response to concerns about China's new Internet regulations and restrictions, says "rule of law also applies to the Internet, with the need to safeguard a country's sovereignty, security and development interests as relevant as in the real world." more

White Space for Internet Use Interfering with Wireless Patient Devices?

There is a germ of truth (perhaps a prion-sized germ or maybe just an amino acid) in the idea that transmitters in "white spaces" in the TV band *might* disrupt patient monitoring equipment if designed by a lunatic who believes in sending massive pulses of energy in a whitespace in the TV band (perhaps amplified by a large parabolic dish antenna the size of a trashcan lid or larger, aimed at the patient monitor system. But that risk is completely shared with zillions of other potential radiators of energy in the entire electromagnetic spectrum... GE, of course, owns NBC. There is a MAJOR conflict of interest at the corporate level of GE... more

Don’t Let Patent Wars Widen Digital Divide

For generations, large pockets of Africa were isolated from things many of us take for granted: access to medical treatment and advances that can make the difference between a healthy, productive life or debilitating illness -- or even an early death. These problems still persist, but over the last two decades technology has helped break through and enable medical professionals to reach the poorest and most remote populations and offer some hope. more

Goodbye Marilyn Cade

Marilyn Cade was an exceptionally hardworking, always gracious leader in ICANN and IGF. She was a strong supporter of U.S. interests at ITU and a member of the U.S. delegation at the WCIT. Dozens have spoken of her at a memorial site, including Vint Cerf: "Marilyn was an elemental force in the ICANN, IGF and policy worlds. She was an advocate who could be counted upon to speak passionately for the causes to which she was dedicated..." more

State Department Should Return to Its Knitting

Having researched and written about the 100 year history of U.S. State Department's institutional machinations in the telecom/cyber sector, taught law school graduate courses, and worked with its bureaus and staff over the past 45 years, the latest twists and turns seem to repeat past mistakes. The fundamental problem is that the U.S. is the only country whose Foreign Ministry is given a significant role and engaged in telecom and cyber matters in global venues. more

FCC Chairwoman Wants Broadband Standard Boosted to 100Mbps Across the United States

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has proposed that the US standard for broadband be redefined to a minimum of 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload speeds, up from the current 25Mbps/3Mbps. more

Cyptech Needs You!

In August of last year I wrote in a blog about the importance of cryptech to wide-scale trust in the Internet. For those who don't know about it, http://cryptech.is is a project aiming to design and deploy an openly developed, trustable Hardware Security Module (HSM) which can act both as a keystore (holding your secrets and keeping them private) and as a signing engine. more

IoT a Major Global Development Opportunity, ITU Reports

In a new report released today by ITU and networking giant, Cisco, the Internet of Things (IoT) is identified as a major global development opportunity with potential to improve the lives of millions and dramatically accelerate progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. more

Internet Cut Off Across Syria Amidst Tense Fighting

Internet monitoring companies say Syria's Internet connectivity has been shutdown nationwide. Renesys, a U.S.-based network security firm that studies Internet disruptions, reports that about 6 hours ago (12:26pm in Damascus) Syria's international Internet connectivity was shut down. "In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet." Akamai Technologies Inc. has also confirmed the complete outage in Syria. more