TLDs or No TLDs for Cities? Berlin Senate Wants Out

A fight has begun over the virtual existence of Germany's capital: Does a .berlin address space have a right to exist beside the old standby berlin.de? The outcome of the fight could have a broader effect on the future of city names on the Internet. After a recent hearing at Berlin's City Parliament, Michael Donnermeyer, speaker of the Berlin Senate, said the right to the name Berlin belonged to the city and has to be protected. For the young company dotBerlin GmbH that is applying for a new city top level domain (TLD) with the ICANN, the Senate's blockade could kill a long-nurtured project and could set a bad example for other initiatives like .london, .paris or .nyc, sources said. more

Why Is the Client-Side Scanning a Concern for Encryption?

As today is the Global Encryption Day, I decided to make my first post here on this topic. About two months ago, Apple caused a controversy by announcing the adoption of a measure to combat the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM). The controversy was so huge that, a month after its announcement, Apple decided to postpone its plans for the new features to have more time to gather information from the various stakeholders and implement improvements before releasing the measures originally announced. more

Reflections on NANOG 66

The North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) continues to be one of the major gatherings on network operators and admins, together with the folk who work to meet the various needs of this community. Their program committee produces a program that never fails to provide thought provoking interest. Here are my reactions to some of the presentations I heard at NANOG 66, held in San Diego in February. more

The Next Network Policy Battle

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The biggest threat to the Internet innovation ecosystem from network operators is not discrimination but terms of interconnection. Metered billing, bandwidth caps, and wholesale transit fees can all be implemented consistently with net neutrality rules. And in practice, net neutrality will be limited to "legal" content... more

BT Removes Broadband Caps, Offers Unlimited Data to Customers Amid COVID-19 Crisis

British telecommunications giant BT Group, which also owns the UK's biggest mobile services provider EE, has annouced it is removing all caps on its customers' home broadband plans during the COVID-19 pandemic. more

Big Rumble in Tokyo Over JPRS’s Announcement to Offer gTLD Domains

In an announcement at a registrars meeting in Tokyo on October 19th 2010, JPRS announced that they would be offering generic Top-Level Domains (.com, .net, .org, etc.) to their .jp accredited registrars in the near future. JPRS is already famous for their double-dipping practices, acting as both registry and registrar for .jp domains, for their dubious "campaigns" which are aimed at being dis-advantageous to smaller registrars and for their famous registrar back-end "system" which is circa 1995 technology and even prone to accidental DOS attacks by registrars trying to simply drop-catch domains. more

The Internet and the Legitimacy of Governments

In two recent debate events I participated in, on iFreedom and privacy in the online world, mistrust of government and government's intentions and motivations on and towards the Internet were abundantly present with more than just a few people in the audiences. The emotions were not new to me, no, it was the rationality that surprised and sometimes almost shocked me. Why? Well, should these sentiments get the support of the majority of people, it would undermine all legitimacy of a government to govern. Let's try and take a closer look. more

Why Did’t the Internet Zap Singapore’s Straits Times Newspaper?

US papers employed 56,900 full-time journalists in 1990, the year Tim Berners Lee began testing his World Wide Web software, and they employed 32,900 in 2015. The disruption of the newspaper business began 22 years ago, when Craig Newmark launched his classified ad site, Craigslist. (Note that Newmark now generously supports investigative journalism and fact-checking organizations). Newspapers have adapted to the Internet by adding digital editions, but they generate less ad revenue than print editions have lost. more

ICANN 53: Accountability, Brand Policy & New Round of New gTLDs

In June, MarkMonitor joined our colleagues once again at the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 53rd public meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Several high-profile and contentious issues were on the agenda, many of which have significant impact on the interests of intellectual property and brand owners. Among these are the ongoing ICANN Accountability issues and the impending departure of ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé; registrant information (Whois) transparency, accuracy and accessibility; and the timing of the next round of new gTLD applications/delegation. more

The Central IPv4 Pool is Gone

Yesterday, the Asia-Pacific registry got the last two blocks in the central IPv4 pool. The IANA has been sitting on five /8s (one per regional registry), and these will be handed out (along with the fragments from the legacy class B space), one to each registry. The IANA IPv4 registry doesn't yet reflect this. more

The Pros and Cons of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)

At the Virus Bulletin conference this past September in Dallas, Righard Zwienenberg from ESET gave a presentation entitled BYOD. BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device, but he reframed the acronym to "Bring Your Own Destruction", that is, he alluded to the security implications of bringing your own device. BYOD is the latest trend sweeping business and schools. more

Thinking of Applying for a Truly Generic TLD, but Restricting Ownership to a Single Registrant?

As it's coming down to brass tacks and companies are now seriously considering applying for their own .Brand Top-Level Domain (TLD), questions about whether to also apply for a truly generic TLD keep popping up. Many large corporations want to know whether it's even possible to apply for something like .Shoes AND to restrict registrations so that only a single specified registrant is allowed. After all, for the right company it seems that something like .Shoes could be a valuable namespace -- short, easy to remember, and easy to spell. more

Why the Internet is Not Like a Railroad

When one person transmits the speech of another, we have had three legal models, which I would characterize as Magazine, Bookstore, and Railroad. The Magazine model makes the transmitting party a publisher who is entirely responsible for whatever the material says. The publisher selects and reviews all the material it published. If users contribute content such as letters to the editor, the publisher reviews them and decides which to publish. more

ICANN and DOC Announce New Three-Year Agreement

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the United States Department of Commerce (DoC) today announced that they agreed to extend their joint Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for three additional years until September 30, 2006. more

Say YES to DNSSEC

With the latest "DNSpionage" attack, ICANN astutely prompted domain name holders to fully deploy DNSSEC on their names. Afilias absolutely supports this and encourages the same. In this post, I remind you of why DNSSEC is important and our continued role. Afilias has a long history in the development and advocacy of DNSSEC. In 2007, we partnered with Public Interest Registry to help found dnssec-deployment.org. more