VeriSign-ICANN Proposed Settlement Discussed in Vancouver

Unfortunately I cannot be in Vancouver for the conference. I write this from Cape Town, venue of last years fall ICANN. I want to disclose a couple of things upfront. Those who know me will know I am nothing if not strongly independent in my views. However disclosure helps those of a more suspicious mind know my associations and if they choose to, take them into account in interpreting my opinions. ...I am somewhat disappointed by the reaction to the proposed settlement. I feel that most of the discussion fails to take into account the actual conditions under which the settlement has been negotiated. more

Why IPv6 Deployment is Slow in Africa & What to Do About It

We (the global corps of IPv6 evangelists) have done the trainings (over 200 training sessions in about 45 countries in Africa alone and counting). We've done the conferences (several variations of IPv6 World, IPv6 Business Conferences, IPv6 Hours and Days at the Africa Internet Summits, etc). We've even done the global coordinated events -- IPv6 World Launch. Governments have found it trendy to launch IPv6 Task Forces and come up with National Action Plans for IPv6. Now, almost more than 2000 network engineers (across Africa), thousands of hours of speeches and presentations, hundreds of blog articles and webinars later, where are we? more

TLD Expansion: ICANN Must Not Back Down

ICANN's plan to open up the domain name space to new top level domains is scheduled to begin January 12, 2012. This long overdue implementation is the result of an open process that began in 2006. It would, in fact, be more realistic to say that the decision has been in the works 15 years; i.e., since early 1997. That is when demand for new top-level domain names, and the need for other policy decisions regarding the coordination of the domain name system, made it clear that a new institutional framework had to be created. more

The Design of the Domain Name System, Part II - Exact and Approximate Name Matching

In the previous installment, we looked at the overall design of the DNS. Today we'll look at the ways it does and does not allow clients to look up data by name. The most important limitation of the DNS, compared to other databases, is that it only does exact match lookups. That is, with a few minor exceptions, the name in the query has to match the name of the desired records exactly. more

Project 2025: The Internet and Cybersecurity

As the saying goes, elections have consequences. The consequences are underscored in the recent U.S. Presidential election and the potential impact on the Internet, infrastructure and cybersecurity. In the context of the CircleID global community, it seems worth asking where things are headed? It does beg for an analysis of what is actually proposed in Presidential Transition Project 2025 related to things internet and cybersecurity. more

IS3C Report: Socio-Political and Technical Impacts of Post Quantum Cryptography Policies

At the 20th Internet Governance Forum in Lillestrøm, Norway, the UN Internet Governance Forum's dynamic coalition Internet Standards, Security and Safety (IS3C) released its new report on post-quantum policies. This report presents the findings of a collaborative study undertaken by IS3C and the French domain name registry Afnic and examines the critical need for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) to achieve greater security in the ever-expanding global IoT landscape. more

Apple’s New Benchmark, ‘GSM-Symbolic,’ Highlights AI Reasoning Flaws

A recent study conducted by Apple's artificial intelligence (AI) researchers has raised significant concerns about the reliability of large language models (LLMs) in mathematical reasoning tasks. Despite the impressive advancements made by models like OpenAI's GPT and Meta's LLaMA, the study reveals fundamental flaws in their ability to handle even basic arithmetic when faced with slight variations in the wording of questions. more

The Next Internet Revolution Will Not Be in English

This visual depicts about half of the currently approved internationalized domain names (IDNs), positioned over their respective regions. Notice the wide range of scripts over India and the wide range of Arabic domains. I left off the Latin country code equivalents (in, cn, th, sa, etc.) to illustrate what the Internet is going to look like (at a very high level) in the years ahead. more

ICANN Postpones Amazon Domain Decision, Crusade Continues Between Amazon Nations and Amazon Inc.

ICANN on Monday extended the deadline to April for Amazon basin nations to reach a deal with the tech giant Amazon Inc in their seven-year battle over the .amazon domain name. more

Buying Multiple Domains Makes Sense

Companies usually use one single domain name for their online activities but then, more questions pop up: SEO, Infringement, Future of the company, monitoring online competition... If buying multiple domain names answers some of these questions, there is a way to do it. Here is how... It often happens that the domain name of a company is neither the generic keyword of its core business nor a keyword that necessarily appears attached to its name. more

The IPTV Growth in South Korea

At the beginning of 2008, the South Korean government passed a law that allowed telecoms operators to broadcast programmes in real-time over their broadband networks. The KCC awarded IPTV licences to KT Corp, Hanaro Telecom and LG Dacom. KT was banking on real-time Internet TV services because growth in the traditional broadband and telephone markets had slowed. The company planned to invest more than KRW1.7 trillion (US$1.5 billion) in IPTV services by 2012 as part of efforts to cultivate new sources of revenue. more

French Court Orders Google, Cloudflare, Cisco to Poison DNS in Anti-Piracy Crackdown

In a significant escalation against piracy, a French court has ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to tamper with their DNS resolvers to block access to approximately 117 pirate sports streaming domains. more

2011 UDRP Filings Up at WIPO, Down at NAF - And Still Infinitesimal

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently issued a detailed press release regarding Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) cases for which it provided arbitration services in 2011 and, once again, the number of WIPO filings was up. According to WIPO: "In 2011, trademark holders filed a record 2,764 cybersquatting cases covering 4,781 domain names with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (WIPO Center) under procedures based on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), an increase of 2.5% and 9.4% over the previous highest levels in 2010 and 2009, respectively." Yet that's an incomplete picture. more

The GAC Strikes Back

Last week in Prague, the GAC (Government Advisory Committee) relentlessly hammered ICANN over a range of issues relating to the new gTLD program. And while their criticisms were legitimate, one has to wonder to what extent governments were punishing ICANN for past offenses. At the same time, the ICANN board and management seem to have finally - much belatedly - figured out how important it is to maintain a constructive and positive relationship with governments. more

UDRP Complaint: Actually, a Motion for Summary Judgment

Trademark owners (and here I'm talking about those with U.S. registrations even if they are foreign entities) have a choice of forum for challenging alleged cybersquatting domain names. They can either sue in district court under the ACPA, or get a quicker and less expensive result by filing a complaint and asserting a claim under the UDRP. But to get to a quicker and less expensive result everything about the process is accelerated, and this begins with drafting the complaint. more