ICANN

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Say No to WIPO’s Proposal to Amend the PDDRP to Create New Law

A number of comments to ICANN's proposed Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Process for new gTLD Registry Operators support a proposal by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to hold a registry operator accountable for trademark infringement that occurs within a TLD if it "knowingly permitted, or could not have reasonably been unaware of" infringing domain names within the TLD. more

New gTLD SSR-2: Exploratory Consumer Impact Analysis (Part 5 of 5)

Throughout this series of blog posts we've discussed a number of issues related to security, stability, and resilience of the DNS ecosystem, particularly as we approach the rollout of new gTLDs. Additionally, we highlighted a number of issues that we believe are outstanding and need to be resolved before the safe introduction of new gTLDs can occur - and we tried to provide some context as to why, all the while continuously highlighting that nearly all of these unresolved recommendations came from parties in addition to Verisign over the last several years. more

ICANN Should Pay Even More and Increase Its Spending Several Fold

Where does this idea that the employees of all non-profit organizations alike shall lead a public-transportation lifestyle come from? ICANN's monetary resources do not come from war widows and pensioners, for ICANN to feel guilty about every penny that it spends on administration. Nor does its resources, wherever they come from, are any that are earmarked to be spent on famine relief or on basic health care for the most unfortunate. more

Domain Pulse 2008: Internet Governance the Focus of Day One

Around 350 attendees came from Russia in the east to Ireland in the west, as well as a few people from elsewhere around the globe, to attend Domain Pulse 2008 in Vienna on February 21 and 22. Day one's focus was internet governance. The future of the DNS was one of the key issues addressed by Michael Nelson of Georgetown University in Washington DC, with domain names becoming less important, but their numbers still increasing, as online access by a myriad of devices skyrockets connect -- everything from the television, refrigerator, washing machine, pets, sprinkler systems and cars. more

Verisign’s Preliminary Comments on ICANN’s Name Collisions Phase One Report

Verisign posted preliminary public comments on the "Mitigating the Risk of DNS Namespace Collisions" Phase One Report released by ICANN earlier this month. JAS Global Advisors, authors of the report contracted by ICANN, have done solid work putting together a set of recommendations to address the name collisions problem, which is not an easy one, given the uncertainty for how installed systems actually interact with the global DNS. However, there is still much work to be done. I have outlined the four main observations... more

How Tiered Internet Pricing Could Actually Facilitate P2P

Time Warner Cable's planned experiment with tiered charging for Internet access has generated a flurry of coverage in the blogsphere, but no new insights (at least that I've seen). The primary problem ISP's complain about is that 5% of their customers use 90% of the available bandwidth and when they examine this traffic, it's mostly peer-to-peer file sharing... more

IPv6 Answers to Common Questions from Policy Makers, Executives and Other Non-Technical Readers

A factual paper prepared in October 2009 for and endorsed by the Chief Executive Officers of ICANN and all the Regional Internet Registries that provides answers to commonly asked questions about IPv6 such as: How are allocations made, and to whom? How are IPv6 addresses actually being allocated? And why did such large IPv4 address allocations go to US organizations, including the US Government, and its Department of Defense? more

Why I’m No Longer So Worried About ICANN

"No, the new gTLD program isn't ready!" ... "Yes, I was wrong on the Trademark Clearinghouse!" Fadi Chehadé showed some strong leadership qualities during last week's ICANN regional registry and registrar meeting in Amsterdam. Honesty and courage... What started out as a speech soon turned into a heart to heart. As he responded to questions, Chehadé made some surprisingly honest comments. more

How Much Money Is There in Complaining?

Although I don't have a lot of sympathy for the trademark lawyers' argument that trademark holders need to register .sucks domains cheaply before anyone else can, there is one point at the end of their letter that's worth a look. The registry contract for .sucks, between Vox Populi and ICANN, has this sentence that appears (as far as I know) in no other registry contract, in the section on Registry-Level fees. more

A Made Up Fantasy and the ICANN gTLD Reality

Gary Elliot, chairman of the Association of National Advertisers and vice president of global marketing at Hewlett-Packard, wrote a column in Advertising Age titled "ICANN's Promises Aren't Simply Speculation, They're Outright Fantasy." His arguments opposing ICANN gTLDs are similar to the other heads of various advertising associations around the world. While the main powerbrokers of the global advertising sector are mum, their association heads are using the same circulated message of cyber-squatting fears without any solid proof. Here is my analysis and an open challenge to the trade. more

Will a Global TAR Make DNSSEC Stick?

Two US Government contractors and the National Institute of Science and Technology have released a white paper, "Statement of Needed Internet Capability," detailing possible alternatives and considerations for a Trust Anchor Repository (TAR) to support DNSSEC deployment. The document was released through the DNSSEC-Deployment Group this week with a request that it be circulated as widely as possible to gather feedback. A Trust Anchor Repository (TAR) refers to the concept of a DNS resource record store that contains secure entry point keys... more

First Nine English-Language newgTLDs Delegated by ICANN - .Camera, .Clothing, .Singles and More…

This past week brought word that the first nine Latin / ASCII "new Generic Top Level Domains (newgTLDs)" were delegated by ICANN and are now found in the root of DNS. This means that the registries behind these newgTLDS can now start the process of making "second-level domains" (the ones we normally register) available in each of these TLDs. more

Internet Governance: There Are No Masterplans

Please pardon me if I start this story by telling about an incident that happened to me at the Madrid airport while flying to the ICANN meetings in Rio.

It was about midnight when, after flying in from Turin, my hometown, I had to go through the passport control to reach my gate for the flight to Rio. The war between the US/UK and Iraq had started two days before, and even if the Spanish government was among its supporters, security checks were apparently proceeding as usual. Passport controls inside the EU for EU citizens usually take a few seconds, and the line ahead of me was proceeding quickly. more

WIPO Proposal for Paperless UDRP

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has sent to ICANN a letter proposing Paperless Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)... This would save considerable amounts of paper, reduce courier charges (as the notice weighs far less than the full complaint), and thus would be good for the environment. more

The Harsh Reality of Spam and Online Security… Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Working in the anti-spam and online malware fight can be depressing or at best invoke multiple personality disorder. We all know things are bad on the net, but if you want a dose of stark reality, check out Brian Kreb's fantastic 'Security Fix' blog on the Washington Post site... Speaking to an old friend who asked me what I was doing these days, I recently likened the fight against this relentless onslaught to having one's pinky in a dyke, and there are days when I don't even think we have a dyke! more