The Canadian government released a statement saying "Facebook committed serious contraventions of Canadian privacy laws and failed to take responsibility for protecting the personal information of Canadians." more
Since Tim Berners-Lee first introduced us to the world wide web, we have seen several major phases of its growth. From the early years -- where researchers and open Internet pioneers led the way; to the dot-com boom; to the era of social media domination; the web has come a long way. While the pandemic circling the globe has undermined many critical systems and institutions of our society, I believe it also has the potential to strengthen is the resolve of the Internet community... more
As widely reported, and not surprising, the internet is swimming in COVID-19 online scams. Criminals, accustomed to rapidly grabbing online territory during times of crisis and profiting from public fear, are working overtime in the face of the coronavirus. Unfortunately, ICANN's failure to enforce its minimal WHOIS and DNS abuse requirements has resulted in delayed mitigation efforts at a time when swift responses are needed to protect the public from COVID-19 scams. more
There's a peaceful feeling in the air at ICANN's meeting this week, and I think it has something to do with being here in Costa Rica. Speaking at today's opening ceremony, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla described how, back in 1948, her country became the first to willingly go without any kind of armed forces for national defense. In that respect, Costa Rica is a lot like ICANN: alone in a hostile world with only its constituents and allies for protection. more
With less than 24 hours to go before the historic contractual relationship between the US government and ICANN is set to expire, a motion hearing is expected to be held today based on a lawsuit filed in federal court in Texas by four states' attorneys general which could lead to NTIA facing the possibility of a temporary injunction. more
Sixty years ago, Paul Baran and Sharla Boehm at The RAND Corporation released a seminal paper that would fundamentally reshape the cyber world forever more. Their paper, simply known as Memorandum RM -- 1303, described how specialized computers could be used to route digital communications among a distributed universe of other computers. It set the stage for a flood of endless developments that resulted in the interconnected world of everything, everywhere, all the time. more
Four pioneers are ready to Leap on the "Localized Internet". ICANN has approved four character strings of IDN ccTLD (Internationalized Top-Level Domain Names) after evaluation. The Lucky-Ones are Russian Federation, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. more
On Wednesday, May 4, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing called ICANN Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) Oversight Hearing. Kurt Pritz from ICANN has been invited to testify. Arrayed against him are a parade of intellectual property interests, some reasonable, some pur et dur lobbyists for complete corporate hegemony over all aspects of the Internet. more
Recently ten Democratic Members of Congress wrote a letter to Alan Davidson, head of the NTIA, requesting that the "NTIA immediately cease the public disclosure of personal information about users of .US" country code top-level domain (ccTLD). This communication highlights a significant concern regarding domain registration data: the need to protect the privacy rights of Registrants. However, an equally significant concern regarding registration data was raised... more
One of the essential features of the social compact that makes ICANN viable in its stewardship of the Domain Name system is that the operations of the Contracted Parties, i.e. Registrars and Registries, are governed by the cooperation of the contracted parties and the non-contracted parties, i.e. the stakeholders, in the creation of policy. In ICANN, contracts and other agreements are the method by which this policy is instantiated. more
ICANN realized during the Mexico City public meeting that its draft proposals for new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) did not take sufficient account of the trademark problems that might arise if the new top level domains become havens for cybersquatters. ICANN sensibly asked the trademark and brand owners to propose rules and procedures that might address these problems... more
Republican senator and US presidential candidate Ted Cruz is not very happy with ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade. In a letter dated today, Cruz along with two other senators, have dropped some pointed questions for Chehade in relation to his involvement with a recent meeting in China... "As you must know, the World Internet Conference is not a beacon of free speech..." more
On February 5th, while many (including the author) were on route to ICANN 52 in Singapore, the U.S. Senate passed S.Res. 71, a non-binding, "Sense of the Senate" Resolution declaring February 8th–14th as "Internet Governance Awareness Week". Those dates overlap the now ongoing ICANN meeting in Singapore, and the congruence is intentional. more
In a move that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, the EU Commission has given a rather mixed welcome to the IANA bid. While they obviously like a lot of what they are seeing, they're also not overly impressed with the contract only being open to US companies. more
As you may know, ICANN holds three public meetings every year. The most recent one, ICANN 54, was held in Dublin... So the next ICANN meeting is being held in Marrakech, Morocco starting Saturday, March 5th through March the 10th. Up until now all three meetings were the same length and had the same basic structure. However, from this year onwards, that'll change. How that will play out in reality, however, is anyone's best guess. more
A World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments. Serving Since 2002.