Have New Domains Had Our Twerking Moment?

There's a lot of .buzz about Google's new holding company, Alphabet. From .NYC to .London to .Tokyo the "new Google" story is making .news everywhere, as the .media large and small speculates on what it means for the .online and .tech industries, and beyond. After all, as one of the .top brands and companies in the .world, when Google makes a move it can have .global impact. more

The Framing of “IP Transition” Fails to Come to Terms With Real Impact of the Internet

I keep seeing so many articles about the Internet and related policy issues that it's hard to know how to respond. The term "IP Transition" may be a good starting point since the term is an attempt to treat the Internet as a smooth transition rather accepting the idea that we are in the midst of a disruptive change. It seems that the FCC's approach is to simply substitute IP for old protocols and to preserve policies tied to the accidental properties of a copper infrastructure. This shows a failure to come to terms with the new reality. more

2012 Security Predictions: APT’s, Mobile Malware and Botnet Takedowns

As the weeks remaining in 2011 dwindle and 2012 peaks out from behind the last page of the calendar, it must once again be that time of year for purposeful reflection and prediction. Or is that navel gazing and star gazing? At the highest level of navel gazing you could probably sum up 2011 with one word -- "More"... But let's put that aside for now. What does 2012 hold in stall for us? more

ICA Anti-Phishing Victory Might Be a Curse!

A triumph by the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) over tactics and legislation detrimental to domain name owners might end up being a case of winner's curse, a triumph bought at the expense of the industry. In picking this one battle to win, the association ignores a broader war, the range of issues our industry needs to address. more

California Senate Passes Bill to Restore Net Neutrality Regulations

The California Senate has voted to approve a bill to restore net neutrality regulations repealed by the Federal Communications Commission in December. more

The Missing Link in Dotless Domains

Well more than a year ago, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee published SSAC 053, its paper on single-label domain names - now referred to in the community as "dotless" domains - advising against their use. In a robust comment period, the community weighed in on the utility and safety of dotless domains, with some in favor and some opposed. To address the matter, ICANN has commissioned further study of the issue with an eye toward resolving the issue for new gTLD applicants. more

Some Considerations for New TLD Operators from a Registrar Perspective

The "hot topic" at the upcoming ICANN meeting in Singapore will, of course, be whether or not the new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) will actually launch or not. Sure, they'll launch at some point, but ICANN has been pushing to make the big announcement at Singapore. There has been a lot written over the last couple of years about new TLDs over the last couple of years. We are now coming into what might be called the "end game". more

Email in the World’s Languages - Part III

In our last instalments we discussed the various ways to encode non-ASCII character sets, of which UTF-8 is the winner, and some complex approaches that tried to make UTF-8 mail backward compatible with ASCII mail. After years of experiments, the perhaps surprising consensus is that if you're going to do international mail, you just do it. more

How Not to Develop Public Policy

Some of ICANN's current proceedings on the introduction of new generic top level domains (gTLDs) provide a case study on how not to develop public policy. In particular, the Rights Protection Mechanism proceedings, with serious implications for trademark owners, have followed a course that does not correspond to the ideal of ICANN's bottom-up, consensus-based processes for policy development. More importantly, these proceedings are effectively unilateral developments in international law without the benefit of treaties or international conventions. more

IP Address Blocking

A network can fence its own IP addresses or block specific external ones from access. Administrators frequently block access to their own IP addresses to bar unwanted access to content. Individual IPs or blocks of IPs may also be blocked due to unwanted or malicious behavior. IP address blocking prevents a specific IP address or group of IP addresses from connecting with a server, computer, or application. more

Defensive Domain Name Registrations – Exactly Where Should They Resolve?

Domain names can be valuable assets, but many corporate domain name portfolios consist of non-resolving domains. In a recent survey conducted by Brandsight, more than 91% of domain professionals said that ensuring domains redirect to relevant content was an extremely important or somewhat important goal. That said, it's not uncommon for less than half of corporate domain name portfolios to point to live content. more

NSA Admits Purchasing Americans’ Internet Browsing Data Without Warrants

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has confirmed acquiring Americans' internet browsing information without warrants through commercial brokers, according to a letter from NSA Director Paul Nakasone to Senator Ron Wyden. more

Video: Highlights of the DNSSEC Key Signing Ceremony

ICANN video highlighting last week's historical DNSSEC key signing ceremony held in a high security data centre located in Culpeper, VA, outside of Washington, DC. "During the ceremony, participants were present within a secure facility and witnessed the preparations required to ensure that the so-called key-signing-key (KSK) was not only generated correctly, but that almost every aspect of the equipment, software and procedures associated with its generation were also verified to be correct and trustworthy." more

The Chinese Domain Name Bubble Bursts

Nearly one year ago, I asked Will .CN become the next .COM? And perhaps I was right in more ways than one. Because now it appears that .CN is experiencing its very own .COM bust. Just a year ago Chinese domain registrations were booming, so quickly in fact that .CN had surpassed .DE to become the most-registered ccTLD. more

ICANN Facing Critical Choice for Plan to Change DNS Cryptographic Key

While the majority of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) have given the organization the green signal to roll, or change, the "top" pair of cryptographic keys used in the DNSSEC protocol, commonly known as the Root Zone KSK (Key Signing Key), five members of the committee advised against the October 11 rollover timeline. more