Noncommercial and Fair Use in Rebutting Claims for Abusive Registration of Domain Names

The UDRP lists three nonexclusive circumstances for rebutting lack of rights or legitimate interests in domain names, which if successful also concludes the issue of abusive registration in respondent's favor. The third circumstance is "you are making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue." more

Protests Erupt Over EU’s Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

In a blog post today, Michael Geist writes: "The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia). This has generated a flurry of furious protest..." more

Russia Attempts Large Scale Experiment to Isolate Country from Global Internet

In a large scale experiments, Russia has attempted to test the feasibility of cutting the country off the World Wide Web, according to reports. "The tests, which come amid mounting concern about a Kremlin campaign to clamp down on internet freedoms, have been described by experts as preparations for an information blackout in the event of a domestic political crisis." more

The Lean and Antifragile Data Centre

Cloud is a new technology domain, and data centre engineering is still a developing discipline. I have interviewed a top expert in cloud infrastructure, Pete Cladingbowl. He has a vision of the 'lean' data centre and a better kind of Internet for users to reach it. He also has a roadmap for how these can be practically realised. The key is to apply established theories of value flow from more mature industries. more

International Pandemic Contact Tracing Standards Group Formed

The formation of an international pandemic contact tracing standards group was announced yesterday. Designated E4P, it is being established as an open public-private initiative under ETSI to "develop a framework and consistent set of specifications for proximity tracing systems, to enable the development of applications and platforms, and to facilitate international interoperability" that also provide for privacy protection. more

“African Women to Watch” - Sophia Bekele on Bloomberg TV

In its TV Special program, Bloomberg TV recently featured Sophia Bekele, Founder and Executive Director of DotConnectAfrica Trust along with Juliana Rotich as "two of Africa's leading ladies in the ICT sector" presenting their stories in their prime TV program ,"African Women to Watch". In the interview, Bekele talks about her ICT career journey and focus on helping bridge the "digital divide" that currently exists between Africa and the developed countries. more

Expressions of Interest Move Ahead: New TLDs Get Closer

It looks as if new top-level domains are getting ever closer to the opening bell. Preliminary minutes from the December 9 2009 ICANN Board of Directors meeting suggest that the Board may authorize Expressions of Interest (EOI) at their February 10th meeting. The vote was unanimous. more

Turning the IT-Value Chain Upside Down

Cloud computing will turn the IT-value chain upside down. That will lead to dramatic changes in the way hardware and software is being marketed and managed. These changes will be most profound for IT departments and value added resellers (VARs), but computer manufacturers will feel the heat too. To illustrate this point we can take a high level view of where servers are being deployed. more

Threat Intelligence in Latter 2019: Overcoming the Same and New Challenges

Does threat intelligence (TI) work? I looked into that question last year, exploring the reasons why it actually doesn't and what can be done to remediate the situation. Since then, more companies have incorporated TI into their security processes, and many are still not getting the benefits they expect. What's causing the dissatisfaction? Interestingly, pretty much the same aspects... more

USA: Court Leaves FCC With Discretion to Regulate Special Access Circuits

On Friday, the decision to deregulate "special access" circuits was upheld. The case had been brought by the Ad Hoc Committee, a long standing body of large business users, one of the main categories of buyers of high capacity leased lines to interconnect business premises. more

AT&T Says Google Voice Not Neutral

AT&T has turned up the volume on Google Voice in a filing with the FCC. At issue is Google's decision to block calls that are routed to certain rural areas with higher than average termination costs. Google questions regulating its service - a web application - the same as traditional phone services, but AT&T's letter claims that at the end of the day, Google Voice is routing PSTN to PSTN calls. more

Aircell vs. VoIP

Last week American Airlines launched their Aircell wireless Internet access on a limited number of flights. It didn't take long before a few folks tried to make voice and video calls (in violation of Aircell's terms-of-service according to their PR folks), and it didn't take long before someone figured a way around their voice/video blocking efforts. more

A New U.S. National Broadband Plan?

United States Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) introduced a bill that would require that the FCC create a new National Broadband Plan by July 2021. This plan would lay out the national goals needed for broadband going forward and also provide an update on how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted Internet access. I am not a big fan of the concept of a national plan for many reasons. more

Obama Reinforces Belief in Net Neutrality

Following his State of the Union Speech last week, Obama was asked a number of user-submitted questions via prepared via YouTube. Popular questions included the issue of open internet and neutrality, to which Obama responded: "I'm a big believer in Net Neutrality. I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it. My FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated that he shares the view that we've got to keep the Internet open..." more

Time for Auction?

Today, Innovative Auctions announced the resolution of eight Top Level Domains in the second private auction commencing on August 13th for a total of $9,651,000. With the first and second auctions successfully completed and the third auction scheduled for September 10th is now a good time to resolve your contention set and jump on the next auction bus? more