Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later - A TMCH Story

As an industry insider and technologist, it's always tempting when discussing something new, such as the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH), to jump into the gritty details to try solving problems. However, in this case, we would be jumping a step ahead because it's fair to say most of the general community is not well informed about the current implementation challenges around the TMCH. more

‘Rethinking ICANN’ is Not a One-Man Job

In the midst of the overseeing the biggest change in the history of the Internet's global addressing system, ICANN President Fadi Chehade has inexplicably embarked on a high-stakes battle over the very future of his organization and its relationship to world governments -- at the expense of the private sector's historical role in Internet governance. Worse, Fadi's global government gambit could have serious repercussions for the future of the Internet. more

On Why and How the Internet Needs to Be Governed

The World is not inventing Internet Governance. Internet is already being governed. There is governance, but without a formal structure -- the structure is undefined like a round table... The opponents of the concept of Internet Governance perhaps believe that the essential character of the Internet is preserved best by challenging the very concept of Governance. The words "Governance", "Control", "Regulation" or even "Coordination" are mistaken to be invasive to the essential character of a free, open and user-centric internet. more

Internet Governance and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Part 3: Article 6-12

Internet Governance like all governance needs to be founded in guiding principles from which all policy making is derived. There are no better fundamental principles to guide our policy making than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (UDHR). This article is Part 3 of a series exploring the UDHR as a guide and template for the digital governance and digital citizenship. We discuss UDHR Articles 6 through 12 and address topics such as fundamental digital values, cyberlaw, policymaking and the role of tribunals in digital governance. more

The Internet Society Names Former ICANN Board Member Rinalia Abdul Rahim as Senior Vice President

Abdul Rahim's Internet governance experience spans over 20 years and most recently she served on the Board of Directors for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). more

The Proposed “Cloud Computing Act of 2012,” and How Internet Regulation Can Go Awry

Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced a new bill, the "Cloud Computing Act of 2012" (S.3569), that purports to "improve the enforcement of criminal and civil law with respect to cloud computing." Given its introduction so close to the election, it's doubtful this bill will go anywhere. Still, it provides an excellent case study of how even well-meaning legislators can botch Internet regulation. more

China’s New Law Could Severely Damper Domain Name Registrations

Trevor Little reporting in the World Trademark Review writes: "The Chinese government has announced that registries and registrars will have to meet a number of conditions and obtain the approval of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) before being allowed to engage in commercial and operational activities in China." more

Jeff Schmidt to Present Name Collision Management Framework at Research Workshop

I'm delighted to announce that the name collisions workshop this weekend will include Jeff Schmidt, CEO of JAS Global Advisors, presenting the Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework that his firm just released for public review. Jeff's presentation is one of several on the program announced by the program committee for the Workshop and Prize on Root Causes and Mitigations of Name Collisions (WPNC). more

So, Your gTLD was Approved – What Now?

The world is just waking up to the fact that ICANN has been accepting applications for new generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, since 2012 and that hundreds of these gTLDs have already been approved through Initial Evaluation, with more being approved every week. It is expected that the new extensions will begin appearing online in the second half of 2013... But if you're reading this, you've known this for a long time. In fact, you may have just gotten word that your application is approved. Congratulations! Awesome news... but, what now? more

Email’s Not Dead, Neither is Spam

Over the past few years, we have seen a plethora of over-hyped articles in the popular press and blogosphere crowing wrong-headedly about how 'email is dead'. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter, new and as-yet unproven technologies are the supposed death-knell for our old reliable friend, e-mail. I wrote about the rumours of email's death being exaggerated back in 2007 in response to such inanity. Since then, we've seen such a cornucopia of silliness of the 'Such & such is killing email' variety that Mark Brownlow compiled a bunch of articles, and their rebuttals at his excellent site... more

Challenges for .brands - From Strategy to Implementation Planning

While your strategy and objectives speak more broadly to why you're launching a .brand TLD, your implementation plan covers the all-important 'how'. Once you complete your strategy workshop session to agree upon objectives and approach, how do you actually launch a .brand TLD? You need an implementation plan to guide you from strategy to launch, and beyond. At its core, the implementation plan is a checklist; just like a pilot landing a plane, you need to run through your checklist to ensure you don't miss any crucial elements. more

Steering Website Traffic with Managed DNS vs. IP Anycast

I recently read an interesting post on LinkedIn Engineering's blog entitled "TCP over IP Anycast -- Pipe dream or Reality?" The authors describe a project to optimize the performance of www.linkedin.com. The web site is served from multiple web server instances located in LinkedIn's POPs all over the world. Previously LinkedIn used DNS geomapping exclusively to route its users to the best web server instance, but the post describes how they tried using BGP routing instead. more

The Last Domain Name You’ll Ever Register

We read with interest the 20 Sept., 2011 article in The Hollywood Reporter. This confirmed that there is a lot of misinformation about the expansion of the domain name space circulating. Sadly, a creative opportunity is being seen as a threat by the most creative of industries. The arrival of an open playing field for .ANYTHING is not a threat, it is unquestionably a long awaited opportunity and solution to the murky waters of the .COM namespace.
The opportunity is the restoration of trust and authenticity. Trust and reputations have been eroded by cybersquatting, phishing and fraud that are endemic to the current naming system. more

Cable Trounces the Telcos

Yesterday, Netflix posted graphs of how well various ISPs deal with Netflix video streams. The results are striking. All the cable companies easily beat all the phone companies with the exception of Verizon where we're seeing a mix of DSL and FiOS results. more

Cryptographic Tools for Non-Existence in the Domain Name System: NSEC and NSEC3

In my previous post, I described the first broad scale deployment of cryptography in the DNS, known as the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). I described how a name server can enable a requester to validate the correctness of a "positive" response to a query -- when a queried domain name exists -- by adding a digital signature to the DNS response returned. more