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

Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite Internet Service Developments for 2020

I posted reviews of important LEO-satellite Internet service developments during 2017, 2018 and 2019. I've updated those posts during the years and have 18 new posts for 2020. In 2020 we saw increased effort from China, OneWeb's bankruptcy and restructuring with new ownership and prospects, Amazon investng in space-related infrastructure, Telesat making steady progress, SpaceX making rapid progress and satellite and debris tracking and collision-avoidsnce service startups. The following are brief summaries of and links to the 2020 posts. 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

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

Leaving it to the Last Second - The Leap Seconds Conundrum

Thanks to the moon, the earth's rate of rotation is slowing down. It's a subtle interaction and the modeling of planetary dynamics predicts that the earth's rotation should be slowing down by an average of 2.3 milliseconds per century. But this is not quite so uniform... So what? Maybe we can start by looking at how we've defined time over history... It's only been in recent decades that we've turned our attention to timekeeping with an obsessive level of detail that rivals, and maybe even surpasses, train spotting. more

Microsoft Disrupts the Zeus Infrastructure

Over the weekend and this morning, Microsoft, working in conjunction with others, issued civil lawsuits to sinkhole numerous domains associated with the Zeus botnet. When I say "botnet", I use the term loosely because Zeus is not a botnet in the sense that Rustock or Waledac is (or was). Rather, Zeus is a tool kit that online criminals can buy that lets them create phishing pages, perform fast fluxing, host drive-by downloads in addition to spamming. It's more like infrastructure than a botnet, although it does have a large botnet under its control. 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

A Post-Pandemic Look at Owning (Virtual) Space for Business vs Renting on Social Media

Over 20 years ago, in 1997, the very first social media platform, SixDegrees.com, was launched. Most of us have probably not heard of it, and that's not surprising since the platform survived for only four years. Since then, there has been a surge in the number of social media platforms that have been launched: Friendster, MySpace, Foursquare, Classmates, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest, WeChat, Vine, WhatsApp, Blogger, WordPress, LinkedIn, Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, ClubHouse, the list goes on. more

Washington State Passes Country’s Toughest Net Neutrality Legislation

Washington may be the first state to approve a net neutrality law that applies to all wired and wireless Internet providers in the state. 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

BMW Goes After BMW.cat

In one of the first (if not the first) UDRP cases for .cat, the auto giant BMW appears to have filed a WIPO case over the BMW.cat domain name. Other prospective new TLD operators have tried to suggest in ICANN meetings that these new TLDs do not cause problems with cybersquatting or defensive registrations... Obviously, given the above WIPO case, that statement is false. more

Why ICANN Isn’t Being Very Sensible: Part I - .brands

We have long argued that ICANN should consider categories for new gTLDs because different categories will have markedly different benefits and impacts for consumers. It is difficult to represent the complexities of the world in any system and the flat, first come first served single level approach ICANN is proposing is actually more cumbersome, more restrictive, more expensive and less equitable than the very successful existing system it is seeking to extend. 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

Neustar Analysis Shows ICANN Study Overstates Risk of Harmful Domain-Name Collision

As we blogged about recently, Neustar is committed to ensuring that the domain name system is secure and stable and has been operating top-level domains (TLDs) for over a decade. Tuesday, Neustar submitted comments to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in response to ICANN's proposal to delay the launch of hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). ICANN's decision to delay the launch is based on a study it commissioned that measured the potential frequency of domain-name collision. more