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It seems as though the inevitable is now upon us, and though there are many that have wished this day never come, the launch of the first new gTLD registries is approaching. Now whether the first new gTLD registry will launch within the next few months or be delayed due to Advice from world governments remains to be seen. However, most companies with which I have spoken desperately need any extra time to prepare for the launch of new gTLDs. more
It is time for some straight talk about governance. The word "governance" used here means authority. It does not merely mean rules, or coercion, or any other weasel-worded definitions that deflect our attention from the art of good governance as distinct from self-serving opportunism and illusory power sharing. Politics, as Theodore Lowi reminded us, is ultimately about "who gets what". Quibbling with endless essays about who rules the root is useful, but not demonstrative. more
In 1905, philosopher George Santayana famously noted, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." When past attempts to resolve a challenge have failed, it makes sense to consider different approaches even if they seem controversial or otherwise at odds with maintaining the status quo. Such is the case with the opportunity to make real progress in addressing the many functional issues associated with WHOIS. We need to think differently. more
Amidst a firestorm of debate, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has experimented with various forms of governance of the domain name system (DNS) involving input from the Internet community since its founding in 1998. ICANN's experimentation in running a representative and open corporate decision-making process has largely failed. This failure has manifested itself most explicitly by ICANN's retreat from its effort to enable the direct election of a subset of its Board members and, less explicitly, by the extent to which other efforts to engage the Internet user community in the decision-making process have proven ineffective. more
As I sit in Schiphol airport awaiting the final leg of my journey home from ICANN Toronto, I'm thinking of all the work that lies ahead in the coming months. The sense of being caught in the holding pattern that descended over the industry after the Prague meeting and lasted into September, is evidently over. The wheels have thankfully begun to turn again on the path towards the new TLDs finally going live. more
A portion of me sympathizes with Richard Hill. He argues passionately in his recent article, "The True Stakes of Internet Governance" for a statist position on Internet governance. It is hard to be an unheeded prophet; difficult to take positions that are not in the comfortable mainstream of what, as you perceive, are lemmings heading for the cliff. I know the feeling. more
In 2010, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) published SAC045 [PDF], a report calling attention to particular problems that may arise should a new gTLD applicant use a string that has been seen with measureable (and meaningful) frequency in queries for resolution by the root system. The queries to which they referred involved invalid Top-Level Domain (TLD) queries (i.e., non-delegated strings) at the root level of DNS, queries which elicit responses commonly referred to as Name Error, or NXDomain, responses from root name servers. more
EuroDNS, the Luxembourg registrar, used its well attended New Year party last Wednesday to invite the Minister of Telecoms, Jean-louis Schiltz to talk about a law voted at the end of December 2007. According to the Finance and Budget Commission Report on Draft Law 5801, Revenues generated from use of, or license to use, a Domain Name are exempted from Luxembourg corporate taxes up to 80%. more
As many in the ICANN community prepare to depart for the sunny beaches of Cancun, Mexico, it appears the ICANN 76 meeting could be significant when it comes to the long-awaited next application window for gTLDs. It's been over 11 years since applicants were last able to apply for a gTLD (and some of those strings are still launching into the marketplace all these years later), and the community work to review that initial process has never really stopped. more
This was never part of the plan. Going into the Dubai World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) two weeks ago, there was optimism aplenty. After weeks of online and media campaigning, proponents of a free Internet had managed to scare everyone into thinking that WCIT was tantamount to digital Armageddon. This had the effect of defusing the conference before it even started, or so it seemed... more
Defense Readiness Condition (DEFCON) is a measure of the activation and readiness of the United States armed forces. The DEFCON scale is a numerical ranking from 5 (standard peacetime protocol) to DEFCON 1 (expectation of actual imminent attack). Today ICANN should find itself at a DEFCON 1 status with the announced pending departure of Doug Brent, ICANN's Chief Operating Officer, effect at the end of July. more
Today, four years after the launch of the Catalan linguistic and cultural registry, Google reports that there are 90 million pages of Catalan content under the some 36 thousand .CAT domains. As imperfect as Google's tools are as a metric, the correct observation is that the use of .CAT by Catalans vastly exceeds the expectations of its initial proponents... more
This morning, the US House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet led by Representative Goodlatte (R - VA) conducted a hearing on New gTLDs. Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President from ICANN did his best to alleviate concerns about the risks posed to intellectual property rights and consumers as the result of the New gTLD Program and reiterated that the process to launch new gTLDs has been underway for 7 years. more
The European Union (EU) has set a high bar by tackling domain name system (DNS) abuse head on via government regulation and seems to have successfully resisted attempts to water down DNS stewardship obligations. Recent guidance from a key European Commission cooperation group (the NIS Cooperation Group) handling sections of the Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2) intends for a robust implementation of Article 28, which will go a long way toward helping to mitigate some of the longstanding problems that persist in the DNS. more
"The Internet is the real world now." This assessment was offered by Protocol, a technology industry news site, following the very real violence on Capitol Hill during the counting of the electoral college votes that officially determines the next president of the United States. The media outlet went on to say that, "[t]he only difference is, you can do more things and reach more people online -- with truth and with lies -- than you can in the real world." more
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