Next Round of New TLDs May Not Happen Until 2020, Says ICANN

Speaking at this week's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), taking place in Geneva, head of ICANN's global domains division, Akram Atallah, has pointed to 2020 as the earliest realistic timeframe for the next round of new gTLD applications. more

The Front Running Class Action Suit

In a recent press release, Los Angeles law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner says it's filed a class action suit against Network Solutions and ICANN for front running. (If you tuned in late, NetSol admits that if you query a domain name on their web site, they will speculatively register it so that it's only available through NetSol for five days, at their above market price.) This is a very peculiar suit... For one thing, it's hard to see how the total class damages would be large enough to be worth a suit... more

DNS Abuse Institute Launches Centralized DNS Abuse Reporting Service

The DNS Abuse Institute (DNSAI), the entity created by Public Interest Registry (PIR), today announced the launch of NetBeacon, a centralized DNS Abuse reporting service. NetBeacon was developed in collaboration with CleanDNS, an anti-abuse solution developer, which has donated the development and technology behind NetBeacon. more

Estimating Trademark Claims Notice Suppression of Non-Infringing New gTLD Registrations

On February 2nd ICANN staff announced the release of a Draft Report: Rights Protection Mechanisms Review that is open for public comment until May 1st. This Draft Report is preliminary to an Issues Report requested by the GNSO Council that is due to be delivered by September 30th, and that may set the stage for a Policy Development Process (PDP) on Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) that could commence in 2016. Such a PDP could consider comprehensive reform of these RPMs as well as of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). more

IPv6: The Summer It Finally Happened

A decade old guessing game finally came to an end during these 2012 summer months. America was supposed to be hopelessly behind while Europe had not much to show after a decade of spending lavishly EU money on IPv6 related projects. China and Japan were thought to be light years ahead of everybody else. But in the end, it was the might of the American Content Industry that tipped the scales. more

Registration of Generic Names: Advocate General’s Opinion Before the Court of Justice of the EU

One of the most debated questions at the time of the opening of the .eu Top-Level Domain (TLD) was whether or not it was possible to register names on the basis of prior rights on signs which include special characters, such as an ampersand. The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of European Union has just published his opinion (4 years later...) more

Cyberattacks Spur Boom in Insurance Demand Amid Rising Global Threats

A wave of high-profile cyberattacks is reshaping the global insurance industry, creating both risk and reward for major players. According to a new Bloomberg report, firms like Munich Re and Chubb are capitalising on surging demand for cyber insurance as artificial intelligence makes digital breaches more frequent and destructive. more

Do You Know Who Your Domain Name Registrar Is?

A guy I know passed along this e-mail sent to one of his customers. They assumed it was a phish, since they didn't recognize the domain name in the link, but couldn't figure out what the goal of the phish was. They even checked the list of ICANN registrars, and nope, registrar.eu wasn't on the list. Nonetheless, this mail was real, and if the recipient had ignored it, his domain would have been suspended. What's going on? more

Kentucky Governor: All Your Gambling Sites Belong to Us

According to news reports, the governor of Kentucky has filed a suit in state court to seize 141 gambling domain names. His claimed authority is a 1974 law against "gambling devices", on the theory that a domain is a "device", and online gambling is taking money away from in-state horse racing and the lottery. The judge sensibly has said that he doesn't understand all the issues, and has given all sides a week to submit briefs. more

The 5G Race in Reno

The past week in the 5G world was notable because of some major events in Reno in the 5G race to roll out the full 5G specifications known as Release 16. A set of seven major concurrent industry standards meetings were hosted there over five days last week. The metrics are indicative of who really participates in and shapes the rapidly emerging 5G platforms. more

Could Net Neutrality be to Investments in the Internet What AT&T’s Regulation was to Bell Labs?

As the FCC moves forward with its plans to regulate the internet in the U.S., it's worth taking a look at what's happened when the government has regulated other innovative industries. As a facilitator of innovation, I've always been fascinated with the history of Bell Labs. Bell Labs was once thought of as the source of most modern innovations... The work done at Bell Labs built the foundation for modern invention leading to phones, space exploration, the internet, music distribution, cell phones, radio and television and more. more

The Hack Will Be a Costly Affair for Optus

More and more information is becoming available about the breach of Optus (Australia's second-largest telco). It looks like the hacker is more of an amateur than a professional criminal or a "state actor." This makes the hack even more worrisome. It looks as though Optus didn't have its security house in order. This makes the issue all the more painful for the company. It will dent its reputation, and customers could become somewhat wary about dealing with the company. more

Nigerian Cable Company Takes Blame for Misrouting Google’s Global Traffic Through China

Much of Google's traffic yesterday appeared to be re-routed through Russia and dropped at China Telecom. The issue raises serious concerns as a possible traffic hijacking incident. more

Dispersing a DDoS: Initial Thoughts on DDoS Protection

Distributed Denial of Service is a big deal -- huge pools of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as security cameras, are compromised by botnets and being used for large scale DDoS attacks. What are the tools in hand to fend these attacks off? The first misconception is that you can actually fend off a DDoS attack. There is no magical tool you can deploy that will allow you to go to sleep every night thinking, "tonight my network will not be impacted by a DDoS attack." more

An IPv6 Update for 2020

The Australian Domain Name Administration, AUDA, recently published its quarterly report for the last quarter of 2020. The report contained the interesting snippet: "The rapid digitization of our lives and economy -- necessitated by COVID-19 -- continued to underpin strong growth in .au registrations. New .au domains created in December 2020 were up 23 percent from December 2019, while total domains under management were up more than 2.1 percent over the same period." more