ICANN

Are We Attending the Right ICANN Meeting?

I have no idea who wrote that wonderful piece, Time for Reformation of the Internet, posted by Susan Crawford. (It wasn't me - I never use the word "netizen".) Elliot Noss of Tucows wrote a partial rebuttal, I must be attending the wrong ICANN meetings. Elliot's company, Tucows, has been a leader in registrar innovation and competition. And Tucows has constantly been among the most imaginative, progressive, responsible, and socially engaged companies engaged in these debates. ...But the points made by Time for Reformation of the Internet go far beyond registries and registrars. more

Time for Reformation of the Internet

An anonymous writer posted an article titled Time for Reformation of the Internet on Susan Crawford's blog. The article calls for a liberal approach towards ICANN, making a number of references to IETF and its process. "It's time for netizens to come to a similar realization about their direct relationship with the empowerment offered by the internet. None of the core principles that produced the net give any set of clerics -- even the original engineers, or ISOC, much less ICANN -- the right to prevent innovation at the edge..." more

Cornucopia: A Radically Different Approach to TLDs

Much of the discussion about proposed TLDs centres around domain names as a form of classification: ".mobi" for mobile device content, ".kids" for child-safe content, language codes for language-specific content, ".museum" for museum-related entities, and so on. Notoriously little activity has been forthcoming in actually implementing these proposals, and the select few that have been allowed out into the world are, shall we say, a tad arbitrary. I'd like to engage in a little thought experiment where we abandon the "few TLDs with carefully chosen meanings" paradigm, and instead consider the benefits of a cornucopia of completely meaningless TLDs. more

Adult-Related TLDs Considered Dangerous

In an RFC prepared by Donald E. Eastlake 3rd and Declan McCullagh, an analysis is offered for proposals to mandate the use of a special top level name or an IP address bit to flag "adult" or "unsafe" material or the like. This document explains why these ideas are ill considered from legal, philosophical, and technical points of view: "Besides technical impossibility, such a mandate would be an illegal forcing of speech in some jurisdictions, as well as cause severe linguistic problems for domain or other character string names." more

dotMP Goes Mobile, Limits Access to WHOIS Data

The fact that the market for mobile phones that provide Internet access (aka "smart phones") is predicted to increase during the next several years, with global shipments growing to an impressive nearly 125 million units in 2009, means the competition for bridging mobile content and mobile phone use is likely to be keen. Indeed, dotMP already must face competition for registry services that will target mobile phone users. A few of the biggest names in information technology and mobile communications -- led by Nokia and including Microsoft, Vodafone, HP, Orange, Samsung and Sun Microsystems are planning to wedge into the Top-level Domain name space (TLD) by supporting a new TLD registry for mobile web content focused on web pages built specifically for access by mobile devices like smart phones and handheld computers or Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)... what may set dotMP apart from the technology giants led by Nokia, is a significant value added benefit to its domain name registration services...it will protect the privacy of its registrants.  more

Examining the Proposed Internationalization of TLDs

Last month, John Klensin wrote an article published here on CircleID regarding Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Top Level Domains (TLD). Based on his Internet Draft, John suggests using language translation in the application for TLD. The advantage of this method is that all existing TLDs can now be represented in any number of languages without additional need for ICANN to create new TLD. While this sounds like a clean solution to the IDN TLD problem, I don't think it is viable for the following five reasons... more

WGIG Too Focused on Negative Side of the Internet?

The following is a report by Susan Crawford at the ICANN meeting in Cape Town where a workshop was held yesterday for increasing awareness and understanding of United Nation's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and issues that directly impact ICANN. "WSIS" is defined as a process in which governments intend to address a broad range of international legal, regulatory, economic, and policy issues related to the Internet. Some governments have proposed that an intergovernmental organization be responsible for "Internet governance," a phrase that remains undefined and some consider to include and/or mean the administration and coordination of the domain name system (DNS). more

ICANN Transfer Policy: Domain Hijacking Got Easier or Did It?

Slashdot recently ran a story about the upcoming changes to the ICANN rules governing domain transfers between registrars. A blog entry at Netcraft referenced by the story stated that: "...domain transfer requests will be automatically approved in five days unless they are explicitly denied by the account owner. This is a change from current procedure, in which a domain's ownership and nameservers remain unchanged if there is no response to a transfer request. This could mean trouble for domain owners who don't closely manage their records..." more

United Nations Establishes Working Group on Internet Governance

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today the members of the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance, which is to prepare the ground for a decision on this contentious issue by the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005. The establishment of the Working Group was requested by the first phase of the Summit, held in Geneva last December. At that time, countries agreed to continue the dialogue on the management of the Internet, at both the technical and policy levels. more

ICANN, VeriSign, and the Swamp

ICANN has initiated arbitration (before the ICC's International Court of Arbitration) against VeriSign under the .net Registry Agreement, seeking declaratory judgments that many things VeriSign has done or attempted to do over the years (Sitefinder, ConsoliDate, IDN, WLS, and stemming the abusive actions of shell registrars when they destructively query the registry for secondary market purposes) violate that agreement. more

.EU: Lucy’s Football?

Those of you familiar with the American comic series "Peanuts" by the late Charles Schultz may be familiar with the recurring theme of Lucy's football. Lucy holds a football on her toe for Charlie Brown to practice a field goal kick. Charlie Brown realizes that the last 25 times Lucy has held the ball for him to kick, she pulled the ball out of the way at the last minute, causing him to trip and fall. Charlie Brown knows full well that Lucy may not keep the ball in place for him to kick, yet his determination gets him running towards that unlikely opportunity each and every time. more

Does the Internet Need to be Governed?

The term "Internet Governance" has become an area of particular attention in part as a consequence of widespread recognition that the Internet represents an important area of national interest for all countries seeking to participate in the benefits of global electronic commerce, distance learning, access to the encyclopedic wealth of information on the Internet, and in the social dimension that the Internet is creating. From the perspective of governments, the Internet is simultaneously a technology that promises high economic value for parties making use of it and a challenge in that it is unlike all other telecommunications media previously invented. more

An Open Letter to NTIA, ICANN, and IANA

I am writing this note in order to express my concern about an impending change in the root of the Domain Name System (DNS) and two of the largest Top Level Domains (TLDs). I am concerned that there is a risk of disruption to the net that has not been adequately evaluated and I am concerned that this change is being deployed without adequate monitoring or safeguards. more

GNSO Council Review

The ICANN bylaws require a periodic review of ICANN structures and operations; the first of such reviews, that of the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council, is scheduled to be finalized in the next few weeks prior to the start of ICANN's annual meeting. To begin discussion on this topic, I draw your attention to a very thoughtful question posed by Joe Sims during the prior ICANN reform process... more

Internationalizing Top-Level Domain Names: Another Look

A paper by Dr. John C. Klensin, former Vice President of Internet Architecture at AT&T, a Distinguished Engineering Fellow at MCI WorldCom, and Principal Research Scientist at MIT. This paper has been reproduced with kind permission from the Internet Society. "Over the last few years, rising interest in internationalized domain names has been accompanied by interest in using those names at the top level and, in particular, replacing or supplementing country-code based domain names with names in the language of the relevant countries. This memo suggests that actually creating such names in the DNS is undesirable from both a user-interface and DNS management standpoint. It then proposes the alternative of translating the names so that every TLD name is available to users in their own languages." more