Berners-Lee Announces Creation of World Wide Web Foundation

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, on Sunday announced the launch of World Wide Web Foundation to fulfill a vision of the Web as humanity connected by technology. "The Web is a tremendous platform for innovation, but we face a number of challenges to making it more useful, in particular to people in underserved communities," said Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and co-Director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI). "Through this new initiative, we hope to develop an international ecosystem that will help shape the future Web. A more inclusive Web will benefit us all." more

U.S. Senate Voted to Eliminate Broadband Privacy Rules

"The US Senate today voted to eliminate broadband privacy rules that would have required ISPs to get consumers' explicit consent before selling or sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other companies," Jon Brodkin reporting in Ars Technica. more

Coronavirus Online Threats Going Viral, Part 4: Phishing

In part four of this series of posts looking at emerging internet content relating to coronavirus, we explore phishing. In times of crisis, cyber criminals invariably take advantage of the growing concerns of the public. In the case of the coronavirus, they have done so by sending phishing emails that play on the fears surrounding the spread of the illness. A number of reports have emerged of emails purporting to provide advice or assistance relating to COVID-19... more

ICANN Publishes gTLD Statistics and Trends Report, Asks for Community Feedback

The gTLD Marketplace Health Index presents statistics and trends related to generic top-level domains. ICANN intends to publish these statistics biannually to track progress against its goal of supporting the evolution of the domain name marketplace to be robust, stable, and trusted. more

Trump, Tides, and the US Tech Sector

When a tax is too high people avoid it, and when the political cost of supporting the US government becomes too high, foreign governments will avoid it too. Add to that cost America's new inclination to withdrawal, and consider the muddy tidal flat on which could soon list the hull of what used to be American technological primacy... When countries try to develop technology policies to compete with the United States, they often begin with rules over immigration. more

The Social Responsibility Imperative - TLDs Leading the Charge

Last month at CIRA's annual general meeting, I had the pleasure of meeting Tracy Axelsson, the executive director of the Vancouver Community Network. Her organization is working to connect street-involved citizens in downtown Vancouver with critical life-saving information via SMS messages. Chatting about her program was a vivid reminder for me of what many technology companies around the world have recognized, that the benefits of our wares can have a profound impact on our economies, culture and social fabric of our countries. more

Last Days to Register for TLD Operator Webinar

The TLD Operator Webinar today announced that Ingrid Baele (Head of Operations, Philips) and Ken Nishida (Manager, Internet & Domain Strategies, Hitachi) are the latest speakers to be confirmed for next week's Webinar. more

New Report on Performance Measurements of the DNS Root Service in China

Zhiwei Yan writes to report: "CNNIC recently lunched a monitoring to measure the performance of the DNS root service in China (mainland). The results reflect that the service diversity from different ISPs and different geographical locations is obvious for different root servers. Besides, the stability of the DNS root service is directly affected by the BGP routing system. CNNIC will continue this work and anticipate the wide participation from the community." more

Implications of Satellite Being Broadband

We've had a quiet policy change in the United States over the last year, where satellite broadband is starting to be considered broadband by the federal government. Any rural household that subscribes to and loves Starlink would wonder why this is news, but from a policy perspective, it is a big deal. I've been considering what this shift might mean in the future. The FCC decided that Starlink wasn't broadband when it rejected Starlink's long-form filing in August 2022, where Starlink wanted to claim the funding it had won in the RDOF reverse auction.  more

Attacking DNS Abuse: The Next Amendments Needed

Abusive behavior that leverages the domain name system (DNS) continues to be a problem, with a reach that has been widely and credibly documented. There is little doubt that bad actors continue to use the DNS for nefarious and costly purposes. While the amendments made in 2024 to ICANN's Registry Agreement (RA) and Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) were a step in the right direction, more advanced tools are needed to bring abuse rates down. more

The .BEST Brand Protection (Interview)

Launching a social network based on a single domain name extension is seriously innovative, but such a concept also implies to give Trademarks a chance to protect themselves. I recently interviewed Cyril Fremont, the new operator of the .BEST Registry and also CEO of "THE.BEST Social Network" on his plan to allow Trademarks to protect their assets prior to the launching of the review network. more

Another Look at the Latest Domain Name Numbers and Trends

There are now 177 million domain names across all top-level domains, which is an increase by 16% (24 million domain names) compared to a year ago. These numbers are from the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, a quarterly report from VeriSign about the growth of the domain name industry. In this review, Royal Pingdom has broken down the numbers in order to demonstrate the growth of both gTLDs (generic TLDs, such as .com and .net) and ccTLDs (country-code TLDs, such as .cn, .se, .uk and .us). more

Is Call Forwarding an “Information Service” and Why It Matters for FTC Jurisdiction

Time to brush the dust off your Computer II notebooks. Are voicemail, electronic fax, and call forwarding enhanced services or telecom services? Today's case: FTC v. American eVoice, Ltd... The FTC brought an action against Defendants claiming that they were engaged in cramming, adding unwanted voicemail, electronic fax, and call forwarding services to consumers bills to the tune of $70 million. more

Those Who Don’t Remember 2014 Are Doomed to Repeat It

J. Gordon Crovitz is making his case against the IANA transition again today, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. I think it's useful to once again go on record opposing his flawed logic against the transition. i2Coalition was among those that publicly praised the IANA transition report when it arrived this week. When the Washington Post covered our announcement, I was frustrated by a commenter who has a different take on the transition than I. more

2.7 Billion Using the Internet by Year End, Estimates UN

UN's Millenium Development Goals Report released this week estimates that by the end of this year, 2.7 billion people (39 percent of the world's population) would be using the Internet. more