Internet Regulation: Section 706 vs Title II

At the NANOG meeting in Baltimore this week I listened to a presentation by Patrick Gilmore on "The Open Internet Debate: Section 706 vs Title II." It's true that this is a title that would normally induce a comatose reaction from any audience, but don't let the title put you off. Behind this is an impassioned debate about the nature of the retail Internet for the United States, and, I suspect, a debate about the Internet itself and the nature of the industry that provides it. more

DNSSEC Takes Off in Wake of Root Zone Signing

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) is a suite of IETF-developed specifications designed to validate information provided by the Domain Name System (DNS). ... When the root zone was signed in June 2010, this acted as a catalyst for TLD operators to deploy DNSSEC on their side. We have seen a gradual but significant increase in signed TLDs since then. The map in this post shows the level of DNSSEC deployment in Europe. more

ICANN and the Data Quality Act: Part II

This is the second part of a multi-part series reported by ICANNfocus. This part discusses the congressional concerns regarding ICANN's governance of the Internet. "Since 1999 Congress has repeatedly expressed serious concerns regarding ICANN's governance of the internet. Congress has substantial responsibility for overseeing the key aspects of internet governance. Among its specific responsibilities, Congress has the duty to oversee implementation of the Department of Commerce's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and contract with ICANN." more

The FTC Authentication Summit

The Federal Trade Commission and NIST had a two-day Authentication Summit on Nov 9-10 in Washington DC. When they published their report explaining their decision not to create a National Do Not Email Registry, the FTC identified lack of e-mail authentication as one of the reasons that it wouldn't work, and the authentication summit was part of their process to get some sort of authentication going. At the time the summit was scheduled, the IETF MARID group was still active and most people expected it to endorse Microsoft's Sender-ID in some form, so the summit would have been mostly about Sender-ID. Since MARID didn't do that, the summit had a broader and more interesting agenda. more

Even Lawyers Have Domain Name Problems

No industry is immune from cybersquatting - not even the legal industry. In three recent (and unrelated) UDRP decisions, law firms won decisions ordering the transfer of domain names that contain their trademarks. One of the cases involved Alston & Bird, the large law firm where I began my legal career and first learned about domain name disputes 20 years ago. As the UDRP decision describes it, Alston & Bird is a well-known law firm founded in 1893 with offices throughout the world. more

Broadband Meets Content at ANGA COM 2013

The Association of German Cable Operators' annual trade show has a new name. Europe's principal cable industry exhibition and convention was previously known as ANGA Cable, but last week (June 4-6, 2013), the show launched as ANGA COM. This new title - an abbreviation of communication - highlights how the convergence of technologies and networks is blurring the line between cable operators and other communication and entertainment services providers. more

On the Upcoming Hearings on ICANN by the US Senate

I was a witness at the two prior hearing, one in 2001 and another in 2002 - it's quite an experience.

My submission to this year's hearing is online at http://www.cavebear.com/rw/senate-july-31-2003.htm

What's going to be said by the witnesses? I don't know. But I have some guesses... more

AusRegistry Earns $9M In Its First 12 Months

The Privately-owned Melbourne-based company AusRegistry that won a four-year contract on July 2002 from AuDA to provide registry services for Australia's .au ccTLD has reported an earning of $9 Million -- beating its original expectation by $3.5 Million. This earning comes from 52,640 new registration of .au, .org.au, .com.au, .asn.au, .net.au, and .id.au -- the majority portion consisting of .com.au. (pdf report)

AusRegistry has also recently won a contract to operate the registry for Solomon Islands domain names (.sb), and negotiating with five other countries that reportedly includes one "significant" ccTLD. The company is also interested in being authorized by the Australian Communications Authority to run trials of ENUM: "It just makes sense to do that, given the strength of the .au database...the cost to us is minimal, given we've got the existing infrastructure," said the AusRegistry's managing director Adrian Kinderis. [Source: news.com.au] more

Who Is Really Behind the Plan to Block .Web?

In May of this year, I questioned whether the continued legal maneuvering of a company called Altanovo Domains Ltd. (Altanovo) could further delay the launch of .web. After reading its second Independent Review Process (IRP) complaint, and ICANN's response, it seems that the unfortunate answer is a resounding "yes," or at least that is Altanovo's intent. more

Vint in International Herald Tribune on IDNs

According to this article in IHT , those who want deployment of IDNs now are "political gambits". Cerf said that the technical side is not yet ready and thus the deployment of IDNs should be done very carefully. I agree to the technical aspects. However, the next question is of course: "when will it be ready for deployment?"... more

Mubarak, Ben Ali, Kaddafi, ICANN: What They Have in Common Is Scary. Will They Share the Same Fate?

Will current failed ICANN direction on the New generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) doom its Regime to follow the fate of Mubarak, Ben Ali, and soon Kaddafi's? The whirlwinds of change we all have witnessed that started blowing in Tunisia, moved to Egypt and is now engulfing Libya, Yemen, Jordan and soon many others, have signaled a revolutionary way of thinking not just at local or regional levels but I believe on global levels too. more

Backlash Over Potential Firing of U.S. Election Cybersecurity’s Top Official

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with over forty other cybersecurity experts and organizations, are urging the White House to keep politics out of securing this month's election in the U.S. more

Spamhaus Policy Block List Update

Recently, I wrote about the Spamhaus Policy Block List (PBL), suggesting senders encourage their network/connectivity service providers (whomever they lease or purchase IP addresses from) to list their illegitimate email-sending IPs as a step towards improving the overall email stream on the internet. The initial PBL was seeded with listings from the Dynablock NJABL ("Not Just Another Bogus List"), which at the time of the cut-over was at more than 1.9 million entries... more

The Design of the Domain Name System, Part III - Name Structure and Delegation

In the previous installments, we looked at the overall design of the DNS and the way DNS name matching works. The DNS gains considerable administrative flexibility from its delegation structure. Each zone cut, the place in the DNS name tree where one set of DNS servers hands off to another, offers the option to delegate the administration of a part of the DNS at the delegation point. more

Google & eBay, Keywords & Domains, & ICANN

Sell a trademark as a keyword for directed search or online auctions and make $billions. But use a trademark in a domain name for direct search and lose the domain, or worse. The gap between how trademark law treats the two species of search has grown wider in the wake of several landmark 2010 trademark law decisions -- and provides another sound reason why ICANN should not establish any new rights protections for new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) beyond those STI-RT compromise positions already included in the fourth version of its Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAGv4). more