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Google Received 65.9 Million Take Down Requests Last Month, Company Reports

As part of its transparency report, Google says Copyright removal requests continue to be on steady rise and that the company received a new record 65,923,523 requests just last month. more

In Praise of OpenDNS and a Wii Factoid

If you are not already using OpenDNS on your home network I have one question for you. Why not? When it debuted, OpenDNS' main advantage was speed. It is a great deal faster than the DNS operated by most ISPs so, if you configure your border router/DHCP server to use OpenDNS name servers, the t'internet magically speeds up... On looking at the OpenDNS stats for my home network the other day, one item gave me cause to scratch my head a little. There was a non-trivial number of AAAA look-ups going on. In case you don't know (and I know you do), AAAA look-ups are IPv6 address look-ups... more

The 2018 IPv4 Market: Third Quarter Report

With strong performances across all market segments, the third quarter of 2018 demonstrated that there is still a voracious appetite for IPv4 numbers. At the end of the third quarter this year, the number of IPv4 transactions and volume of IP addresses traded in the ARIN market surpassed third-quarter totals for all prior years. An additional 18 million numbers were transferred in Q3, putting the total for the year at nearly 42 million numbers, a more than 160% jump compared to this same time last year. more

Some Thoughts on the Recent DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Centre Workshop, OARC-35

The DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Centre (DNS-OARC) convened OARC-35 at the start of May. Here are some thoughts on a few presentations at that meeting that caught my attention... These days it seems that the term "the digital economy" is synonymous with "the surveillance economy." Many providers of services on the Internet spend a lot of time and effort assembling profiles of their customers. These days, it's not just data in terms of large-scale demographics but the assembling of large sets of individual profiles.  more

Three Reasons Why It Makes Sense to Deploy DNSSEC Now

As many of you may know, today .ORG announced that all of its 8.5 million domains are now able to be fully DNSSEC signed - the largest set of domain names in the world so far that has access to this key security upgrade. .. The widespread publicity that the Kaminsky bug got around the world vindicated a decision made in several companies to invest time, effort and money into deploying DNSSEC. The community was split on the value of the DNSSEC effort -- many thought the deployment was quixotic, while a few others thought it was appropriate. more

MOPO - The Latest Speed Bump on ICANN’s New gTLD Superhighway

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a Petri dish for acronyms. The latest one to be introduced into the ICANN lexicon is MOPO which is short for Morality and Public Order. MOPO is one of the four grounds by which a third party can challenge an application for a new generic top-level domain (gTLD). The profile of MOPO recently increased when ICANN's Government Advisory Committee (GAC) provided formal advice to the ICANN Board regarding the current MOPO procedures set forth in ICANN's Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG) for new gTLD applicants. The resolution of this issue will largely determine whether new gTLD applications will be accepted by ICANN in 2011 as planned or sometime in the far distant future. more

General Data Protection Regulation and the Future of WHOIS

Why does all of the discussion around potential options for WHOIS in the era of the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) feel like déjà vu? Is it because issues around WHOIS never really go away, and become a hot topic every few years? Is it because no one is really happy with the current system? Privacy advocates would be delighted to do away with it altogether, while business and Intellectual Property professionals press for improvements to accuracy and availability, which I fully support. more

Super Bowl and Return of the Super Dip in Traffic

In a blog post, Sandvine announced that for the second year in a row, the Super Bowl was seen as an event that led to a 15% reduction in overall internet traffic, despite being available as a streaming video feed for United States viewers. The blog says "Sandvine's traffic statistics have showed continued growth in adoption of live streamed sports events, but for the time being it is no threat to replace viewing via traditional broadcast methods." more

The New Marketing Vanguard: Domain Extensions (nTLDs)

Back in 2014, hundreds of new Top Level Domains (nTLDs) rolled out into availability. This means that the .com, .gov, and .org extensions that are typically used for business domains were joined by a multitude of other, more specialized extensions such as .attorney, .cars, and .recipes. As a channel partner, it's crucial to know how these new units will influence your presence online. more

Thomson Reuters in Definitive Agreement to Sell Intellectual Property Unit Including MarkMonitor

The portfolio includes Web of Science, Thomson CompuMark, Thomson Innovation, MarkMonitor, Thomson Reuters Cortellis and Thomson IP Manager. more

2015 New gTLD Year in Review (Infographic)

The 2015 infographic reflects some of the intriguing highlights of the new gTLD industry... Revenues are based on the average retail price over four registrars (101domain, eNom, GoDaddy and United Domains) at the end of December 2015. In the case where a TLD was unavailable at all four registrars, one or more alternative registrars were used for the average price. Top five TLDs launched in 2015 are based on TLDs entering into General Availability after January 1st and based on volume, not revenues. more

Spam Fighting: Lessons from Jack Bauer?

As I blogged about several months ago, as did numerous other anti-spam bloggers, David Ritz was sued by Jeffrey Reynolds and a judge in North Dakota agreed with Reynolds. At the heart of the case was that Ritz engaged in anti-spam activities using techniques known only to a small subset of advanced computer users, and used these techniques maliciously against Reynolds... Back in the olden days of spam fighting, some anti-spammers used to use malicious techniques against spammers in order to shut them down... more

Some Observations from NANOG 62

NANOG 62 was held at Baltimore from the 6th to the 9th October. These are my observations on some of the presentations that occurred at this meeting. .. One of the more memorable sides in this presentation was a reference to "map" drawn by Charles Minard in 1869 describing the statistics relating to the Napoleonic military campaign in Russia, and the subsequent retreat. more

Six Key Issues About Operating a TLD Registry

Brand owners unfamiliar with the domain name system (DNS) are hearing that their first step in registering a top level domain (TLD) is to select a back-end TLD registry provider. The fear instilled in them is that if they don't act quickly, all available service providers will have reached their capacity. Given ICANN's tight and inflexible application submission schedule, brands don't want to be left at the starting gate. more

NAF Caught Revising Past UDRP Decisions?

In a previous CircleID article, it was discovered and documented that NAF Panelists and Complainants were systematically copying/pasting nonsense into UDRP decisions. It has been a couple of months with no action by ICANN, and no public statement by NAF. In a shocking new development, though, it turns out that NAF has quietly edited a past UDRP decision! more