The Trademark Clearinghouse: Secure, Reliable, Usable - Pick Any Two

Earlier this week, technical and legal experts from ICANN, Deloitte and IBM met in Brussels with their counterparts from registrars and registry service providers representing as much as 90% of prospective gTLD registries, to discuss the technical implementation of the Trademark Clearinghouse, the database of rights holder information that will support the mandatory rights holder protection mechanisms for new gTLDs. more

Spam Kings: Book Review (Part 2)

I'd like to continue on in my review of the book Spam Kings (read part 1) and make some more comments, particularly regarding the antispammers. One thing that I really liked about the book is learning the history of some of the spam tools. I was never a participant on NANAE (news.admin.net-abuse.email; a USENET newsgroup which discusses e-mail spamming), that was before my antispam time. But I was intrigued by its history. People would gather together and discuss spammers and tools for stopping them, and sometimes spammers would stop by and the flame wars would ensue. more

ICANN, Civil Society, and Free Speech

Gordon Crovitz's Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the relationship between ICANN and the future of free speech quotes me a couple of times... Crovitz emailed me last week when he was researching his column. I was somewhat more critical of ICANN's status quo in our exchange than in the quotes he ended up using. Following are my full answers, emailed to him on Thursday. more

Researchers Uncover Massive Underground Link-Shortening Service Used by Malicious Actors

New research indicates that the .US top-level domain contains numerous domains linked to a malicious link-shortening service dubbed 'Prolific Puma' promoting malware and phishing. Infoblox has been monitoring this three-year-old service, which uses short domains hosted on uncooperative providers to disguise harmful landing pages. more

DNSSEC Failure Causes Massive Website Outages on Russian Internet

A DNSSEC failure plunged hundreds of Russian-language websites into darkness on Tuesday evening, rendering .ru and .рф domains inaccessible. The outage affected users both within and outside Russia, with major platforms such as Tinkoff Bank, Avito, Wildberries, Yandex, and MTS experiencing disruptions. more

Over 100 US Mayors Sign Pledge to Hold ISPs Accountable for Net Neutrality Violations

A net neutrality pledge initiated by mayors from New York City, Austin, and Portland, is now signed by more than 100 US mayors. The signed pledge holds ISPs accountable for net neutrality violations, despite the FCC's vote to repeal the regulations late last year. more

Email Ad Network Isn’t Liable for Spam: Ferron v. Echostar

John Ferron is one of several "repeat" plaintiffs around the country suing over unsolicited email (perhaps not coincidentally, he's also an attorney). In this case, Ferron sued a variety of defendants associated with unsolicited email promoting dish satellite offerings for violations of Ohio's consumer protection law and the Electronic Mail Advertising Act (EMAA). more

Baltimore Gets Hacked: Main Computer Systems Crippled, Experts Estimate Months to Recover

On May 7, hackers breached parts of the computer systems that run Baltimore's government, taking down essential systems such as voice mail, email, a parking fines database, payment systems used for water bills, property taxes, real estate transactions and vehicle citations. more

Generic Top Level Domain Insights for Q4 2015

2015 has been a busy year for the new gTLD industry and 2016 will undoubtedly, be another interesting year. Anticipation of the General Availability for some of the highly contentious TLDs, the development of existing generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) in terms of registrations, and business proposition with the majority of the first round of applicants reaching delegation by the end of the year. While 2015 had over 7 million new gTLD domain registrations, the top 25 Top Level Domains accounted for almost a half of both registration revenues and volumes highlighting the need for the industry to garner further momentum and fortune. more

The Christmas Goat and IPv6 (Year 4)

This year, 2013, I got 24 days of IPv6 and DNSSEC measurements. All in all it created 15GB logs with more than 62 million rows. On the 21st of December, early in the morning, the goat was "traditionally" burnt down, however this year with one exception. Via the Swedish newspaper Expressen the arsonists anonymously took the blame and also filmed their own act. more

Political New gTLDs: One Year in Review

Once a month, at the end of the month, a snapshot of domain name registration volumes is taken according to categories of new gTLDs. Twenty categories are covered and this article covers Political new gTLDs. These snapshots allow having a global overview of which extensions increase their volume of domain names registered from a month to the other, in a period of 12 months. Below is what I noticed from January 2018 to December 2018 for domain name extensions related to politics. more

AfPIF 2016 Diaries: 7th African Peering and Interconnection Forum

The 7th African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) took place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from 30 August - 1 September 2016. AfPIF is the annual conference organised by the Internet Society to specifically address interconnection challenges together with the wide-ranging opportunities the African continent offers. Tanzania is well-known for its safari, Mount Kilimanjaro and beautiful Zanzibar beaches, but not only that... more

New TLDs: Time For a Do-Over on Plural Similarity

Mandarin is a tricky language, but ICANN may want to learn the expression chóngfù before leaving the Beijing meeting. Chóngfù means "do-over" and that's what ICANN needs to forestall an entirely preventable disaster in the delegation of new top-level domains (TLDs). The issue of "string similarity" seems straightforward. Nobody inside ICANN or out there in the real world wants Internet users to be confused by new TLDs that are confusingly similar. Imagine hearing an ad offering low rates at car.loans but you encounter something completely different at car.loan instead? more

Musings on Metering: An Update from ICANN’s Latest Meeting

ICANN held another update for new gTLD applicants last week, revealing that the proposal to meter the introduction of new gTLDs received many suggestions during the open comment period. This was just the first step to what I imagine will be a long process - one that will continue on September 12 when ICANN holds a public consultation that will offer more detailed discussion on the many different options for metering. more

Leveraging Trademark Data to Drive Domain Name Strategy

For years, corporate domain name portfolio managers have struggled with determining whether or not their portfolios were the "right" size. Managers of mature domain name portfolios have often felt that their portfolios were bloated, containing domains that were no longer needed. Conversely, domain managers of newer portfolios have sometimes known that gaps existed. Regardless, the question remains -- just how many domains should a corporate portfolio contain? more