Is ICANN’s .IR Response at Odds with the ACPA and ICE Domain Seizures?

An initial review of ICANN's response to litigation seeking it to turn over control of the ccTLDs of Iran, Syria and North Korea led to the conclusion that it had opened a "legal can of worms". A few more just wriggled out, and they threaten the basic assumption that underlies the U.S. statute governing cybersquatting and the practices engaged in by Federal officials seizing domain names engaged in intellectual property infringement. more

How Bad is Goodmail?

Goodmail Systems made a big splash last week when AOL and Yahoo announced that they will be giving preferential treatment to mail that uses Goodmail's CertifiedEmail service, claiming (implausibly) that this has something to do with stopping spam... Since Goodmail charges senders for each message, some people see this as the end of e-mail as we know it. I have my concerns about Goodmail, but a lot of the concerns are either overblown or based on bad reporting... more

Google Cloud Lands Grace Hopper Subsea Cable in Bude, Cornwall

Google Cloud has landed its muchly anticipated subsea cable, Grace Hopper in Bude, Cornwall. The 16-fiber pair Google-funded cable will connect New York (United States) to Bude (United Kingdom) and Bilbao (Spain). more

A Snapshot of the Domain Industry in 2023

The year 2022 was a turning point. We started emerging from the covid emergency and could return to traveling and meeting our peers at industry events worldwide. But it was also a year of taking stock, with numbers returning to pre-covid levels. After two years of sky-high domain registrations, figures returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2022. The domain sector shows a good mix of strength and adaptability to change compared to other industries.  more

The Empire Fights Back!

Even as we increasingly discover that every facet of our modern lives now revolve around, and are dependent on the Internet, for which reason its availability, functionality, safety, stability and security are now of great and continuing concern to all of us. These issues have a profound impact on its overall governance. To most of us, during the past three decades, the Internet has always been available, stable, affordable and open; and it should continue this way even as it is controlled and administered in a secure manner... more

World Body Declares Cyber Security Top Issue

Sovereign nations around the globe have clearly defined borders, but as attendees were shown at a UN Conference several years ago, cybercrime is a borderless phenomenon. In 2011 Norton Security released statistics that showed that every 14 seconds an adult is a victim of cybercrime and the numbers are growing. As internet use grows, so does the amount and type of information streaming across the web. This information crosses transnational lines, public and private sectors. more

A Short History of Internet Protocol Intellectual Property

A little over 25 years ago, the Internet Society proposed that they assume responsibility for the DARPA Internet Protocol (IP) specifications Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that were being evolved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to facilitate their use by the mainstream network communication standards bodies and providers. Last week, the IETF, in an attempt to fend off alternative Internet Protocols emerging in the 5G ecosystem and create a standards monopoly, asserted... more

Normalize inflated iOS 15 Email Open Rates with Unsupervised ML

Happy Holidays. In September 2021, Apple rolled out iOS 15. For high volume email senders, Apple Mail now essentially tracks every email sent as an "open." Seemingly if you are a campaign engineer, high volume sender or ESP, this change can radically affect 25% - 45% of your email subscriber base, across both B2B, B2C or D2C. Inside your email analytics platform, you should see the specific percentage of Apple Mail users in your database, thus a significant rate of change ( delta) regarding inflated "open rates." more

Egypt’s Internet Blocked - I Call on My Friend Tarek Kamel to Unblock It and Join His People

Internet all over Egypt has been blocked in an unprecedented revolt. I call on my friend Tarek Kamel, Egypt's Minister of Telecommunication, to overturn this oppressive decision and to unblock the Internet in all Egypt immediately and to join his people in their peaceful revolt. I have known Tarek Kamel for more than a decade and long before he became minister back in the days when he used to say he had no authority and that the decisions were in the hands of his boss and that he was a mere decision-less adviser to then Minister of Telecommunication, Mr. Nazif. more

Google’s Secret Strategy With the Kansas City Fiber Project

I have long been perplexed at how Google plans to make a profit with their Kansas City Fiber project. Originally the project was touted as an altruistic move by Google to really understand the underlying costs of deploying fiber in a large municipality. But as anyone who has been in the trenches can tell you, it is not the technology that determines the cost of a fiber deployment, but the tyranny of the take-up. more

China Continues VPN Crackdown, Targets Alibaba and Other Ecommerce Sites

In the latest series of measures taken by China to clamp down on use and distributions of VPNs, Chinese authorities have issued warning to the country's top ecommerce platforms, including Alibaba's Taobao.com, over the sale of illegal virtual private networks that allow users to skirt state censorship controls. more

Video: IETF Chair Jari Arkko Summarizes The Activities of IETF 87 In Berlin

The 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in Berlin, Germany, concluded on August 2, 2013. IETF Chair Jari Arkko recently published his summary of IETF 87 on the IETF Blog highlighting what he felt were some of the more important aspects of what was a very successful IETF meeting. I also had the privilege of interviewing Jari on video about the meeting. more

WSIS Deal: Oversight

The UN Secretary-General has been invited to "convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue." Everyone can see his/her hearts' desires in the WSIS deal: ICANN can believe that it has survived for another day; governments can believe that they will have "an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance"; and there will be an enormous meeting in Greece by the second quarter of 2006 to start the Internet Governance Forum going. more

We Must Keep Track of How Countries Will Confront Cybercrime in a New UN Convention

As a designated committee of experts prepares to draft a new treaty to combat the use of information and communications technologies in cybercrime at the UN in January 2022, it is paramount that other stakeholders oversee these discussions to avoid violating human rights on the Internet. This initiative was kickstarted by a 2019 resolution led by Russia and endorsed by other countries considered by many to behavior controversially on cybersecurity matters, such as China, Venezuela, Cambodia, North Korea, and others. more

How to Avoid Insider Threats Such as the Latest New York Post Hacking

New York Post has been "hacked" by an employee. To protect themselves from insider threats, companies can deploy zero trust and restrict access. On October 27, the New York Post published a string of racist and sexist articles on its website. Fabricated news about politicians, such as pieces concerning racist comments of a New York City mayor, has been headlining the publication. more