Panels Rule No Confusion Exists Between Singular and Plural New gTLD Strings

If early International Centre for Dispute Resolution decisions are anything to go by, as far as dispute resolution panellists are concerned, singular and plural versions of the same string do not risk causing user confusion. Tasked with handling string confusion objections under the new gTLD program, the ICDR has just rejected an objection by Google against Donuts' application for .CARS. Google has applied for .CAR. more

Fight Phishing With Branding

Phishing, stealing personal information by impersonating a trusted organization, is a big problem that's not going away. Most antiphishing techniques to date have attempted to recognize fake e-mail and fake web sites, but this hasn't been particularly effective. A more promising approach is to brand the real mail and real web sites. more

Complicating ICANN’s New TLDs Decision

Drawing on standard-setting approaches and the regulatory options at the disposal of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), I outline three alternative venues to decide on launching new top-level domain names (TLDs). ICANN needs to analyze all these venues before making a final procedural decision. more

DNS… Wait a SEC

Complete DNSSEC implementation requires that domains are authenticated at the root by the Registry, and that DNS zones and records are authenticated as well. Now before I go any further, let me begin by stating that I fully support the development and deployment of DNSSEC and that the vulnerabilities presented by Cache Poisoning are very real, especially for those websites collecting login credentials or other types of sensitive information. more

Forget TLDs, Keep Dot Suffix and Move On

I have been working on URL, Web address, ID's and Namespace since quite a long time and I have my reservations about the present set up being a complete network. generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), country codes (cc), .co are all complicating the network, add to that the problem of address shortage plus other problem mentioned in comments and blogs at CircleID. It's time for out of the box thinking. more

SPIT is in Everyone’s Mouth, Though Not Yet in Everyone’s Ears

Spam over Internet Telephony (SPIT) is viewed by many as a daunting threat. SPIT is much more fatal than email spam, for the annoyance and disturbance factor is much higher. Various academic groups and the industry have made some efforts to find ways to mitigate SPIT. Most ideas in that field are leaning on classical IT security concepts such as intrusion detection systems, black-/white-/greylists, Turing tests/computational puzzles, reputation systems, gatekeeper solutions, etc... We identified the lack of a benchmark testbed for SPIT as a serious gap in the current research on the matter, and this motivated us at the to start working on a first tool for that. more

DOTZON Study: Digital Company Brands 2021

DOTZON presents the fourth edition of the Digital Company Brands study. After having introduced the study in 2018, DOTZON continued to expand and enhance the underlying data to display how cities successfully use their Digital Company Brands. The Digital Company Brand is the digital dimension of a company brand and mirrors the "digitalness" of a company. Purely digital company brands developed for the first time in the 1990s, with the emergence of Internet business models. Some of them were based solely on a generic Internet address, for example, www.hotel.de or www.amazon.com. more

Dot-Com is Still King - of Domain Name Disputes

Despite the launch of more than 1,200 new gTLDs, .com remains far and away the most popular top-level domain involved in domain name disputes. In 2016, .com domain names represented 66.82 percent of all gTLD disputes at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the only domain name dispute provider that publishes real-time statistics. And, as of this writing, the rate is even higher so far in 2017, with .com domain names accounting for 69.78 percent of all disputes. more

Name Collision Mitigation Requires Qualitative Analysis (Part 3 of 4)

As discussed in the several studies on name collisions published to date, determining which queries are at risk, and thus how to mitigate the risk, requires qualitative analysis. Blocking a second level domain (SLD) simply on the basis that it was queried for in a past sample set runs a significant risk of false positives. SLDs that could have been delegated safely may be excluded on quantitative evidence alone, limiting the value of the new gTLD until the status of the SLD can be proven otherwise. more

Limitations and Laches as Defenses in Domain Name Cybersquatting Claims

UDRP Paragraph 4(c) states as a preamble that "[a]ny of the following circumstances, in particular, but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be proved based on its evaluation of all evidence presented, shall demonstrate your rights or legitimate interest to the domain name for purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(ii)." Three nonexclusive circumstances are listed. more

Domain Registry/Registrar Cross Ownership: A Reality Check

Funny how marketplace reality can poke holes in claims and theories. A debate is raging between some existing registries (Afilias, PIR, Neustar) and registrars like ourselves over the issue of 'cross-ownership' in Top-Level Domains (TLDs). At question: should the same set of shareholders be allowed to own all or part of a registry as well as a registrar that sells names in the TLD owned by the registry? These registries are saying 'no', and one of their principal objections is they think current registrars have an unfair advantage in pursuing TLD deals. more

Thank Heavens for Class Action Lawyers

If you had an e-mail address any time in the past six years, you've probably gotten spam for something called VigRX for Men, with fairly specific promises that it will make you, ah, manlier. I always wondered how many nitwits could fall for this kind of nonsense. Thanks to a recent class action settlement, we now know that there have been quite a lot of them. A class action suit filed in 2001 in Colorado settled recently, with some quite amazing info in the documents available at http://lemsettlement.com. LEM stands for Leading Edge Marketing, the name used by the defendants for several companies in the US, Canada, and the Bahamas. more

NTP: The Most Neglected Core Internet Protocol

The Internet of today is awash with networking protocols, but at its core lie a handful that fundamentally keep the Internet functioning. From my perspective, there is no modern Internet without DNS, HTTP, SSL, BGP, SMTP, and NTP. Of these most important Internet protocols, NTP (Network Time Protocol) is the likely least understood and has the least attention and support. Until very recently, it was supported (part-time) by just one person. more

Losing and Reclaiming Domain Names

For registrants who are not trademark owners losing their domain names can be an irretrievable loss; and for trademark owners, perhaps not irretrievable but fraught with uncertainties of recovery. ICANN attempted to solve the problem of inadvertent lapses of registration in the Expired Registration Recovery Policy (ERRP) and its companion the Expired Domain Name Deletion Policy (EDNDP), implemented in 2013. more

Australia Launches Major Cybersecurity Revamp Following Recent Major Cyberattacks

Australia is set to enhance its cybersecurity framework in response to recent widespread cyberattacks. The government has released its 2023 -- 2030 Cyber Security Strategy, aiming to position Australia among the top cyber-secure nations by 2030. more