ICANN Announces Deadline for 2026 New Top-Level Domain Applications

ICANN will open applications for new top-level domains in April 2026, offering brands a rare chance to secure custom domain names to enhance trust, marketing flexibility, and long-term online security. more

Compliance Overhaul a Start

ICANN is clearly changing with the new CEO making immediate changes to the organizational structure and Compliance announcing a number more effective tools and procedures at Sunday's At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) and Regional Leadership Meetings. It seems very ambitious and they will need to be because our year-long research, publicly distributed here for the first time, shows a complete breakdown in ICANN's Compliance functions on every level possible. more

Mark Zuckerberg’s Content Moderation Overhaul: Prelude to a Fragmented Internet and a Threat to Truth

Mark Zuckerberg's recent announcement of sweeping changes to Meta's content moderation policies marks a pivotal moment for the internet, democracy, and truth itself. The decision to replace third-party fact-checking with a decentralized "Community Notes" system and relocate trust and safety operations to Texas signals a shift in Meta's governance approach. This move is not only politically expedient but also a troubling prelude to the tech industry bowing to the political priorities of the incoming Trump administration. more

One-Click Unsubscription

Unsubscribing from mailing lists is hard. How many times have you seen a message "please remove me from this list," followed by two or three more pointing out that the instructions are in the footer of every message, followed by three or four more asking people to not send their replies to the whole list (all sent to the whole list, of course,) perhaps with a final message by the list manager saying she's dealt with it? For marketing broadcast lists, it's even worse because there's no list to write to. more

Failed Expectations: A Deep Dive Into the Internet’s 40 Years of Evolution

In a recent workshop, I attended, reflecting on the evolution of the Internet over the past 40 years, one of the takeaways for me is how we've managed to surprise ourselves in both the unanticipated successes we've encountered and in the instances of failure when technology has stubbornly resisted to be deployed despite our confident expectations to the contrary! What have we learned from these lessons about our inability to predict technology outcomes? more

Concerns About ICANN’s Bylaws Shouldn’t Bog Down Board/GAC Discussions

The Brussels meeting between the ICANN Board of Directors and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) became contentious over what constitutes a "bylaws consultation," what that designation means, and whether future meetings between the parties should be labeled as such. At the risk of going over familiar ground, it may be useful to review what the bylaws say about ICANN's duty to consult with the GAC. more

IDN Scaremongering: Mashable and Times Online Screw Up

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) might be a slightly "hot" topic at the moment following on from ICANN's launch of the IDN country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) program recently. However, IDNs are NOT a new topic. Far from it. They've been around for quite some time. Unfortunately neither The Times Online or Mashable seem to have done any homework. more

Trump’s Tweets Flouting the Cybercrime Treaty Curbs on Racist and Xenophobic Incitement

The existence of the 2001 Cybercrime Convention is generally well known. The treaty has now been ratified/acceded to by 60 countries worldwide, including the United States. Less well known is the existence of the Additional Protocol to the Convention "concerning the criminalization of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems." more

Notes from NANOG 64

The North American Network Operator's Group held its 64th Meeting in San Francisco in early June. Here's my impressions of some of the more interesting sessions that grabbed my attention at this meeting... At the start of the year, the US FCC voted to reclassify Broadband Internet access services under Title II of the US Telecommunications ACT -- effectively viewing Internet access providers as common carriers, with many of the rights and responsibilities that goes with this classification. more

Is Whois Data Accuracy Enough?

The Whois Task Force of the Domain Name Supporting Organization (DNSO) has been consulting with registrars over the past few months on the Whois accuracy issue for law enforcement. The Task Force has enumerated three primary areas of interest: accuracy, uniformity, and better searching capabilities. When the registrars met with the Task Force in Shanghai, a fourth area of interest was also brought forward and advocated by many of the registrars at the meeting as paramount to the other three areas. This fourth area of interest was privacy. more

Proceedings of Name Collisions Workshop Available

Keynote speaker, and noted security industry commentator, Bruce Schneier (Co3 Systems ) set the tone for the two days with a discussion on how humans name things and the shortcomings of computers in doing the same. Names require context, he observed, and "computers are really bad at this" because "everything defaults to global." Referring to the potential that new gTLDs could conflict with internal names in installed systems, he commented, "It would be great if we could go back 20 years and say 'Don't do that'," but concluded that policymakers have to work with DNS the way it is today. more

ICANN Dressing Up for New gTLD Party in San Francisco

The ICANN Board met on September 24-25 2010 in Trondheim, Norway, to consider and act on the impediments still in the way of the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program. They passed a number of resolutions that provide very clear indications of how things are going. The short version is that the news is good for new gTLDs. ICANN is nailing down the final outstanding issues and the timetable is clearer than ever. more

Challenging Domain Names for Abusive Registration: UDRP and ACPA

There are predatory-domain name registrants, and there are registrants engaged in the legitimate business of acquiring, monetizing and reselling domain names. That there are more of the first than the second is evident from proceedings under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). "Given the human capacity for mischief in all its forms, the Policy sensibly takes an open-ended approach to bad faith, listing some examples without attempting to enumerate all its varieties exhaustively. more

When the Backend Domain Name Registry Is Too Expensive

What we call a "backend registry" is the mandatory technical platform to operate a domain name extension and all registries have one. It is the backend registry that allows accredited registrars to technically sell domain names for each top-level domain (TLD). The question here is: what happens to a registry, who sells domain names to accredited registrars when his backend registry solution provider is too expensive? more

Underneath the Hood: Ownership vs. Stewardship of the Internet

As is well known to most CircleID readers - but importantly, not to most other Internet users - in March 2011, ICANN knowingly and purposefully embraced an unprecedented policy that will encourage filtering, blocking, and/or redirecting entire virtual neighborhoods, i.e., "top-level domains" (TLDs). Specifically, ICANN approved the creation of the ".XXX" suffix, intended for pornography websites. Although the owner of the new .XXX TLD deems a designated virtual enclave for morally controversial material to be socially beneficial for the Internet, this claim obfuscates the dangers such a policy creates under the hood. more