I have been an active participant in the ICANN "grand experiment" from the beginning. An experiment in which a private sector led organization was entrusted by the Internet community and governments to be a trustee of a global public resource. However, at no time during my twelve years of participation in ICANN have I been more concerned about the long term viability of this organization than I do now heading into the Singapore meeting. Failure of the ICANN Board to do the right thing in Singapore will have a profound impact on the future of the private sector led model. more
ICANN has apparently hired Jeff Moss (aka Dark Tangent) as CSO. Moss is a well known figure in the internet security community and was founder of Black Hat and the Def Con conferences. However isn't Moss a bit conflicted? Isn't he on one of the review teams? more
Yesterday morning (26-April-2011), in US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Judge Kevin Gross signed an order authorizing Nortel's sale of IPv4 addresses to Microsoft. This is an important moment for the Internet community, as it represents the beginning of a new market-based mechanism for the distribution of scarce IPv4 address resources. As the various Regional Internet Registry (RIR) organizations exhaust their supply, traditional "needs-based" distribution will become impossible. more
To the dismay of many (and the chagrin of some), it appears as though the US House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet will be conducting a hearing on New generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). Meanwhile, ICANN is careening towards the finish line of the new gTLD Program with a vote by the ICANN Board scheduled for June 20th. Just what this all means remains to be seen. more
Three sections of the redlined version of the Draft Evaluation Criteria for new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) caught my attention. It seems ICANN wants to ensure it has information to not only evaluate and score responses, but to conduct a post-launch analysis of the program's success in terms of expanded competition, consumer choice and trust. That additional information means more work by both the applicant and for ICANN. But it's a good move because pre-launch preparation and thought staves off mishaps and misfortunes later. more
Okay, so spending my Monday morning printing out and reviewing 348 pages of the "New gTLD Discussion Draft" is not exactly what I had mind when I woke up today, but kudos to ICANN for keeping to the timeline that they had released last month. Since, most of you do not have the time or the patience (and probably have real work to do), I've taken it upon myself to highlight the most important changes in this version. more
Last Friday ICANN released an updated new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Applicant Guidebook that appears to have taken a number of positive steps toward closing the divide between the ICANN Board and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). One of the more important changes to the Applicant Guidebook was the following text... more
In his eloquent dissent against approving .XXX, ICANN Board member George Sadowsky talked about blocking and filtering top-level domains. It's a concise statement of a concern that has been identified by various people, including members of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), as an impediment to the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program. It's a thorough defense of a common point of view about blocking TLDs, but while no-one can disagree about the fact of blocking, what is the actual effect? more
I recently wrote about the encouraging level of DNSSEC adoption among top-level domain name registries, and noted that adoption at the second level and in applications is an important next step for adding more security to the DNS. The root and approximately 20 percent of the top level domains are now signed; it is time for registrars and recursive DNS servers operated by the ISPs to occupy center stage. more
The following is a proposal for an "Early Warning" system to resolve one of the remaining impasses between the ICANN Board and the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) as identified in the GAC Scorecard. Based upon phased array radar technology, this proposal is designed to incorporate multiple discrete evaluation phases into the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program to provide an integrated and comprehensive early warning system for the GAC in providing advice to the ICANN Board, potential applicants, and the broader Internet community. more
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