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Private Cyber Investigators

This post was prompted by questions I was asked to address when I participated in a panel discussion of cybersecurity. Here are the relevant questions: "Should we reconsider the notion that companies under attack are prohibited from investigating the attackers and trying to locate them? We allow private investigators to conduct some activities that usually only the police are allowed to do; should we accredit private cyber investigators?" ...The one I found more interesting is the second question: whether we should accredit private cyber investigators. more

The GNSO Review

The London School of Economics review of the GNSO was recently released by ICANN. ...The review is refreshing. But first, a pause: Do you know what the GNSO is or what it does? Do ICANN's processes seem difficult to understand? I bet (unless you've been going to ICANN meetings) you don't know much about this. And the focus of the report on the impenetrability of ICANN's work is refreshing and very useful. more

A Tribute to the Father of the RFC, Dr. Stephen D. Crocker

40 years ago the Request for Comments (RFC) process for the Internet was born. The RFC process continues to be the way Internet protocols are expressed today. We have one very special man to thank for this and his name is Dr. Stephen D. Crocker. He has played a key role in shaping the modern day Internet. For this, I felt that a special tribute to him was in order as we take a look at his countless contributions from the foundation of the Internet to the Internet as we know it today. 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

The IPv4 Market: 2017 and Beyond

The IPv4 market has grown significantly in the last four years. It finished particularly strong in 2017, both in terms of the total volume of addresses traded and overall number of intra- and inter-RIR transactions in the ARIN region. Over the last four years, the steady and sometimes substantial growth in the number of transactions has been mostly attributable to a dramatic increase in small block trades of fewer than 4,000 addresses. more

PirateBay Domains to Be Handed over to the State, Swedish Court Rules

The Swedish court ruling on Thursday will result in confiscation of 'ThePirateBay.se' and 'PirateBay.se' from one the worlds most popular torrent websites. more

Registry-Registrar Cross Ownership: Framing the Issues

There has been much said and written recently about the issue of registry-registrar cross ownership with regard to New Top Level Domains ("New TLDs"). It is clear that there appears to be a fair amount of confusion about the issue and the positions espoused by various parties. To assist the ICANN community in understanding the issue -- the points of agreement and debate -- I offer the following overview on behalf of Network Solutions and Central Registry Solutions... more

Vint Cerf: Ask Your ISPs What Their Plan Is for IPv6

Vint Cerf joined TWiT TV host Leo Laporte yesterday in Google+ Hangout urging that we need to stop running the experimental version of the Internet and move to the production version of the Internet running IPv6! He also made a great request to everyone watching to ask their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) about when the ISPs would have IPv6 available. more

The Broadband Adoption Rate

Yesterday's FCC report estimates that at least 80 million Americans don't have high-speed Internet access - defined as download speeds of at least 4 Mbps and upload 1 Mbps - at home. (Soon the Commission will release another report comparing these results to those in other countries.) This service is completely unavailable to at least 14 million Americans - the FCC estimates that "1,024 out of 3,230 counties in the United States and its territories are unserved by broadband[, and t]hese unserved areas are home to 24 million Americans living in 8.9 million households." more

Opting for UDRP Over URS

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) implemented the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) in 2013 together with three other rights protection mechanisms for trademarks. It "is not intended for use in any proceedings with open questions of fact, but only clear cases of trademark abuse"... It was designed to afford rights holders claiming abusive registration of domain names with new gTLD extensions an even faster route to remedy than the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). more

The Importance of the FCC

My friend Om Malik, dean of the telecom bloggers, posted on the importance of the Federal Communications Commission Chair appointment Obama will make as President... Om is dead on about the importance of this appointment. Decisions made by the five member FCC commission have had and will have an enormous effect not only on the tech sector but on the entire US and even the global economy. more

Costly Domain Name Price Comparison Sites

Price comparison sites, including those for domain registrations, are supposed to benefit buyers. Do they? Recent theory and practice suggest a friend-and-foe relationship. Comparison sites introduce an entire layer of costs, notably including the sites' marketing costs. more

.Brand Applications Account for One Third of All New gTLD Applications

ICANN announced today that they received a total of 1930 New gTLD applications from 60 countries for 1408 unique strings. Of the 1930 applications received, .Brands accounted for 664 of them. There are an additional 80 .Brand TLDs which we have classified as "Other", as they do not fall into any of the categories listed above. more

Google Showing Signs of Increased Concerns Over Rising Data Privacy Scrutiny

Earlier this year, Google quietly terminated its "Mobile Network Insights" service, which provided wireless carriers globally, information on network performance in various locations. more

By the way… Your IDN is Live.

Just when you think ICANN has got it right, it shoots itself in the foot as only ICANN can. Unfortunately it seems this is yet another case of one step forward and two steps back. While we should be celebrating the fact that Internationalised Domain Names (IDN's) have finally been entered into the Root Zone, we are instead left shaking our heads at the seemingly nonexistent process lines nor communication lines between ICANN and its technical off-shoot IANA. more