Considering a Vulnerability Disclosure Program? Recent Push Raises Questions for General Counsel

Several years ago, vulnerability disclosure programs, also called "bug bounty" programs, were novel and eyed with suspicion. Given sensitivities and potential liabilities, companies are wary of public disclosure and hackers seeking to exploit research. When a hacker presented a flaw to a company, the company was more likely to be concerned about taking legal action than making a public announcement or offering a reward. That is changing. more

ICANN Africa Strategy - A View from the Inside

"Africa is rising" is a phrase we are accustomed to hearing nowadays. We Africans also seem desperate to make that positive narrative about Africa. From the vantage point of the digital Africa that I seat, it is most promising, but only if we can face some of our own self afflicted stagnation. Having been in the African Domain scene for nearly a decade now, I am always challenged to view our situation with a pinch of salt, a fact that doesn't attract many friends. But I am willing to go at it and point out the shortcomings. more

Current Difficulties With Displaying Internationalized Top-Level Domains

Earlier this week, we inserted eleven new top-level domains in the DNS root zone. These represent the term "test" translated into ten languages, in ten different scripts (Chinese is represented in two different scripts, and Arabic script is used by two different languages). This blog post is not about that. (If you're interested about it, read our report on the delegations.) What I would like to talk about is some of the difficulties we face today in expressing scripts in a consistent way over the Internet... more

A New Boom to Come? Re-Evaluating the Success of the New TLD Program

I think it's fair to say that quite a few people -- both within the domain name industry and beyond -- have an opinion on whether the new TLD program is succeeding or struggling. But are things really all that bad? Are we forecasting doom before it has really had a chance to run? Crunching the numbers... Let's consider the (relatively short) history to this point and take a look at some statistics. more

EU CRA: Regulatory Extremism and Exceptionalism

European Union (EU) legislators, like most of the world, are troubled about the increasing number and severity of cybersecurity incidents. However, unlike most of the world, which is taking a flexible, adaptive Zero Trust Model approach of continuous controls for cyberdefense, the EU government is pursuing a vastly expanded version of the failed Common Criteria certification model coupled with regulatory extremism and exceptionalism strategies. more

Rod Beckstrom’s First 100 Days at ICANN

Rod Beckstrom took over as ICANN President/CEO on July 1, 2009, so October 9th marked his 100th day in office -- and a good opportunity to examine the progress made by ICANN during his short tenure. ...to borrow an analogy from American football: when you have the ball in the Red Zone, you need to score touchdowns, not field goals. So far, under Rod's leadership, ICANN has moved down the field on a number of issues. In particular, ICANN scored a "touchdown heard round the world" by bringing the MoU/JPA to a successful conclusion. more

Disclaimer in Trademark Registration Sinks UDRP Action

A trademark owner who notices that someone else has registered a domain name incorporating the owner's mark can file an arbitration action under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP for short). This often serves as a quicker and less expensive alternative to pursuing the cybersquatter in court. To be successful under the UDRP, the "Complainant" has to show all of the following three elements... more

Russia Says It Has Successfully Tested a Country-Wide Alternative to the Global Internet

Russia's Ministry of Communications has announced that it has successfully tested a country-wide alternative to the global Internet and that general users did not notice any changes. more

Takeaways from the DNS-OARC’s 28th Workshop

March has seen the first of the DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Center (OARC) workshops for the year, where two days of too much DNS is just not enough! These workshops are concentrated within two days of presentations and discussions that focus exclusively on the current state of the DNS. Here are my impressions of the meeting. more

Why the 1# Vulnerability for Cyber Attacks Will Be Apathy

Everyone has heard of the cyber security attacks on Target (2013), Home Depot (2014), Neiman Marcus (2014), Sony Pictures (2014), and the United States' second-largest health insurer, Anthem (reported February 2015), but have you heard of the security breaches for Aaron Brothers, Evernote (denial of service attack), P.F. Chang's China Bistro, Community Health Services, Goodwill Industries, SuperValu, Bartell Hotels, Dairy Queen, U.S. Transportation Command contractors, and more. more

Core Internet Institutions Abandon the US Government

Milton Mueller from Internet Governance Project writes: "In Montevideo, Uruguay [last week], the Directors of all the major Internet organizations -- ICANN, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Society, all five of the regional Internet address registries -- turned their back on the US government. With striking unanimity, the organizations that actually develop and administer Internet standards and resources initiated a break with 3 decades of U.S. dominance of Internet governance..." more

Join InterCommunity 2015 on July 7/8 to Talk Future of Internet Governance, Security, Access

What are the most pressing Internet governance issues in the next 2-5 years? What are the biggest priorities in terms of making the Internet more secure and trusted? What are the best ways to bring the next 3 billion people online? Those will all be topics of discussion at the "InterCommunity 2015" meeting taking place this week on July 7 and 8. The meeting will not take place at any one physical location... more

KnujOn Releases New Security, Abuse and Compliance Report

We have just issued a new report detailing abuse of the Domain Name System and Registrar contract compliance issues. The report specifically discusses several items including: Registrars with current legal issues; Illicit Use of Privacy-Proxy WHOIS Registration; A study on the contracted obligation for Bulk WHOIS Access; and more. more

ICANN vs Epag/Tucows: German Court Rules Against ICANN

German courts seem to be pretty fast, so instead of having to wait weeks or months to see how they'd rule, we've already got the answer. The German court in Bonn has ruled that EPAG (Tucows) is not obliged to collect extra contacts beyond the domain name registrant. The decision, naturally, is in German, but there is a translation into English that we can use to understand how the court arrived at this decision. more

Country and Regional TLDs Are Vital in Supporting Online Linguistic Diversity, Study Finds

A study conducted by the Oxford Information Labs in collaboration with Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR), finds that the role of country and regional TLDs is imperative in supporting diversity in global online linguistic. more