Buzz Lightyear, the astronaut character from the movie Toy Story, is known for his tagline, "To infinity, and beyond!" ICANN can take a lesson from the ebullient Buzz with respect to accountability and transparency. Just as Buzz believed he could fly beyond infinity, ICANN should view full implementation of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) recommendations not as the last stop, but as the next stop on its important journey of accountability and transparency. more
ICANN released its sixth version of the draft Applicant Guidebook for the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program in April following three years of debate surrounding the rules and procedures that will outline how potential applicants will apply to own their own piece of Internet real estate. Overall, the response has been positive. more
Last week, I visited Budapest to deliver a speech at the ICANN Studienkreis, an annual conference where experts study and address some current issues relating to Internet governance. I discussed how the Internet is on a slippery slope. Starting with the legitimate concern over how to deal with cybersquatters, we have moved to an unreasonable focus on legal control of Internet content and the domain name system. more
At the ENISA presentation on her botnet report at eco in Cologne, 9 and 10 March, one of the slots was dedicated to threats to the mobile environment. The message I was supposed to come home with was: we can still count the numbers of mobile viruses manually, <600; the problem will never be the same as on a fixed network as traffic is monitored and metered: We detect it straight away. We are studying the problem seriously. Are mobile operators really prepared for what is coming? more
Today, my company AusRegistry International signed an open letter to the United States House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet as a show of support for ICANN and its new Top-Level Domain program. I'm disappointed by the nature of the oversight hearing the Subcommittee has called and I believe it will only be a distraction. Let's not kid ourselves; the reason for this hearing is to beat up ICANN over the new TLD program. I think this is unfair and unjustified... more
This is an open letter to the United States House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and the Internet regarding the Oversight Hearing on new Top-Level Domains to be held on Wednesday 4 May. The intention of the open letter is to highlight the imbalance of intellectual property interests on the panel and to ensure the Subcommittee is presented with some balanced facts and benefits of the new Top-Level Domain program. more
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
For years, corporate domain name administrators have scoffed at every new second-level and third-level country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) liberalization, and rightly so. Until recently, most had continued the practice of registering significant numbers of variations, misspellings and typo-squats. While I have never encouraged the practice of registering every variation in every geography, as this becomes prohibitively expensive over time... With what seems to be the imminent launch of hundreds of new TLDs as a result of ICANN's new initiative, companies appear to be saying enough is enough, and meaning it. 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
In a tweet, EU commissioner for the Information Society Neelie Kroes congratulates OPTA on the spam fine for the golf ball printing company Backsound. Since 2004 the Dutch OPTA is the number one spam and malware fighter of the EU with a total of €1.9 million in fines. It made me ask two question to myself: How come that we seldom hear of other spam fines in the EU? And can the EU change this in any way? more
The recent tempest in a teacup on ARINs PPML list over the transfer of IP address blocks from Nortel (a company in Chapter 11) to Microsoft has some interesting Internet Governance dimensions that are yet to be discussed. One aspect that has been overlooked amidst all the sound and fury, is the governmental perspective on IP address transfers. 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
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
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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