Why New TLDs Don’t Change a Thing

I have a heard a lot lately about ICANN unanimously voting in favor or relaxing top level domain rules and had a few people come to me and ask 'how does that affect what you do?' The short answer is, it won't; at least not for a long time and here is why... There might be some huge potential gain if all shoe companies got .shoes and branded it, but someone would have to manage it and each would have to spend money to brand .shoes to consumers. Adidas gets adidas.shoes but spends nothing to brand it and lets Nike pay to brand .shoes and Reebok to brand it as well and leech. So instead of cartel like behavior (which is hard to maintain), we fall back into .com more

It Is Payback Time! - Government of Sweden on Internet Governance

Today is a wonderful day for us working with Internet Governance that do believe in an Open Internet and multi stakeholder model for its governance. FTTH Council is having its annual meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, and the IT Minister, Anna-Karin Hatt, made an opening speech that was among the strongest I have heard from any country. Yes, any country. And I do not even know if any organization have said such strong things. more

Newly Discovered Malware Called VPNFilter is Targeting at Least 500K Networking Devices Worldwide

Cisco's security arm, Talos, today revealed a several-month-old research on a sophisticated modular malware system dubbed "VPNFilter. more

First Do No Harm: Ensuring Compliance with the EU’s GDPR While Preserving Access to WHOIS Data

There is growing concern about how ICANN will comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), whose enforcement sanctions come into force in May of 2018. How will ICANN comply with GDPR without unduly restricting global Internet users' access to the public WHOIS database? For nearly the past 20 years, Internet users, businesses, law enforcement and consumer protection agencies have relied on WHOIS as a necessary resource. more

Oracle Launches Internet Intelligence Map Providing Insight Into the Impact of Internet Disruptions

Oracle today announced the launch of the Internet Intelligence Map website; a source available for free that provides country-level connectivity statistics based on traceroutes, BGP, and DNS query volumes on a single dashboard. more

Section 3.18 of the 2013 RAA: Reasonable Investigations, Appropriate Responses

Section 3.18 of the ICANN 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) contains language requiring registrars to investigate and respond to abuse complaints. Nearly one year into the new RAA's effective period, what do we know about Section 3.18? If a person or entity wants to submit a complaint, what should they keep in mind? This article reviews the meaning of Section 3.18, how to leverage it, offers a list of do's and don'ts for complainants, and offers a few recommendations for registrars. more

ICANN and the Data Quality Act: Part VI

This is the sixth part of a multi-part series reported by ICANNfocus. This part focuses on ICANN's Strategic Plan. Read previous parts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V. "The requirement that ICANN develop a Strategic Plan offers an important opportunity for achieving meaningful reform of the organization. The Strategic Plan is one of the key new ICANN duties contained in the most recent amendment to their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Commerce. The MOU specifies in considerable detail the elements that ICANN is to include in the Plan including issues ranging from executive compensation to mechanisms for ICANN accountability..." more

Zoom Faces Class-Action Lawsuit, Accused of Overstating Its Privacy Standards

The video-conferencing company Zoom is facing a class-action suit filed on Tuesday accusing it of overstating its privacy standards and failing to disclose that its service was not end-to-end encrypted. more

Fighting Phishing with Domain Name Disputes

I opened an email from GoDaddy over the weekend on my phone. Or so I initially thought. I had recently helped a client transfer a domain name to a GoDaddy account (to settle a domain name dispute), so the subject line of the email -- "Confirm this account" -- simply made me think that I needed to take another action to ensure everything was in working order. But quickly, my radar went off. more

Words and Descriptive Phrases as Trademarks Registered as Domain Names

In a trademark context, who owns or controls, or would prevent others, from using words and phrases commonly available to speakers in a language community, is in persistent tension. While common words alone or combined may become protected from infringing uses under trademark law, their protection is contingent on factors such as linguistic choices and strength or weakness of marks in the marketplace. more

Defendants Respond to Dell’s Anti-Tasting Suit

The defendants in Dell's domain tasting suit responded last Friday. It looks like a pretty feeble response to me. Their main argument is that they're just the registrar, and deny Dell's claim that the registrants are fakes made up by the registrar. They also argue that they're not infringing, they didn't use the names in question in commerce, they were just acting as helpful search engines, you know, like Google or Yahoo. (The comparison to Google and Yahoo is theirs.) more

Who Are the Major New gTLD Applicants and… (Part Five: Rightside Registry)

Rightside is a name you may only have heard of very recently. It is a relative newcomer in the new gTLD industry. It is important to note that there is a difference between "Rightside" and "Rightside Registry". One is the Trademark and also the name of this new group to which eNom (a Registrar), Namejet (a platform to buy/sell domain names and Premium domains) and Name.com (another Registrar) belong. As for "Rightside Registry", it is the new name of the platform to operate new gTLD applications. more

EFF Files Brief in Support of Email Privacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in a case that could have a profound effect on the privacy of Internet communications. The brief argues that the decision in US v. Councilman, soon to be reheard by the full First Circuit, should be overturned. more

Security Expert Bruce Schneier Calls for Creation of New Government Agency for IoT Regulation

During a talk at the RSA Conference, security expert Bruce Schneier called for the creation of a new government agency that focuses on internet of things regulation, arguing that "the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high" to do nothing. more

Resolving the ICANN-Proposed TLDs Debate

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has recently decided to allow any entity to register a top-level domain name (TLD). The best mechanism for valuing this decision, a mechanism that outperforms crowdsourcing, blogs, and committee decisions, is the legal and easy-to-implement solution known as prediction markets.
In handing down its TLD decision, ICANN never identified the problem it was trying to solve... more