Stop Using the Term “Open Internet”

Over the past few years, the term "open internet" has become popular among politicians in Washington and Europe. It is bandied about in political pronouncements that assert that everyone needs to somehow support the open internet without ever actually defining it. It is sometimes used as a synonym for Net Neutrality. In fact, it is a bogus public relations term that is rather like saying you believe in the Tooth Fairy. more

The New TLD Registry Example to Follow

With lessons learnt from the first Round, what does a new applicant need to know to prepare for the coming Round? Which example should he follow to increase his chances of success? I have had the chance to read about new domain names sales figure expectations, prior to the launching of Round one of the ICANN new gTLD program. Comments that I read and feed-backs that I have today are: "our expectations are the one we wrote on the paper and we are happy with them". more

A Phased Array Early Warning System

The following is a proposal for an "Early Warning" system to resolve one of the remaining impasses between the ICANN Board and the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) as identified in the GAC Scorecard. Based upon phased array radar technology, this proposal is designed to incorporate multiple discrete evaluation phases into the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program to provide an integrated and comprehensive early warning system for the GAC in providing advice to the ICANN Board, potential applicants, and the broader Internet community. more

The Race to Bury Net Neutrality

The Internet is currently full of news articles describing how the FCC will soon be putting to bed the last vestiges of its order a few years ago to eliminate net neutrality rules. The order that is widely being called the net neutrality ruling was a far-reaching change at the FCC that essentially wrote the FCC out of any role in regulating broadband. more

Calling Africa: ICANN’s New Approach to Africa Is a Welcome and Significant Opportunity

The announcement last month of a new approach by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to Africa is welcome, and significant for a number of reasons. Africa must participate in ICANN's activities to help shape its policies, and benefit from the domain name industry (estimated at $2 billion in 2008), where it lags behind other regions, given the few African registrars, and that there are no generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) registries that are African. more

ICANN Begins Publishing Monthly Reports on Generic Top-Level Domain Security Threats

ICANN has published its first new monthly report providing statistics and insight into security threats to generic top-level domains (gTLDs). more

Too Little, Too Late? Why ICANN’s Proposed WHOIS Access System Isn’t Worth It

After two years of grueling, complex and contentious debate, the ICANN EPDP team delivered its Phase 2 Final Report on July 31st, 2020. Unfortunately, and disappointingly, the policy recommended for the so-called "System for Standardized Access/Disclosure" (SSAD) fails to meet the needs of the users it supposedly is designed to benefit. more

Next on the US Telecoms Agenda: Downgrading Broadband

The American industry lobby (AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast) successfully pushed the regulator to get rid of net neutrality, but they are not stopping there. They can sense the opportunity under the Trump Administration to roll further back any regulations that stand in the way of maximising their profits. As all three largely enjoy geographic monopolies in their regions of operation, there is little competition driving innovation forward, so their aim is to milk the networks that they currently have in place for as long as possible. more

Nobody Has Proposed a Sustainable Model for Internet Governance Yet

The idea that the US would maintain a strategic position in the Internet was always a pipe dream. Allowing the US to pick the DNS contractors is one thing, allowing the US the power to arbitrarily shut countries off the net is quite another. And that is what deployment of DNSSEC and the rPKI under the current models would do. The idea that some US congressman would promote a bill to force ICANN to drop Cuba, Palestine or the enemy of the moment off the Internet is really not far fetched. The US government was just shut down for over two weeks in a bizarre act of political theater. more

The Cold-War Fight Against Domaining Continues

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win!" quote by Gandhi pretty much summarizes the evolution of the domain name monetization and development business. I have watched this business come of age for more than half a decade... In the beginning nobody cared... then when people started talking about how great it was, 'smart people' and the "legitimate web" laughed. Then the trucks with money showed up... A significant double-digit percentage of global Internet traffic is now owned by domain holders with generic names. So the fight is on.  more

Net Neutrality 101: Why ‘Title II’ Doesn’t Apply to Internet Transmissions

No baby boomers had been born when Congress enacted Title II of the Communications Act in 1934 as a means of regulating the Bell telephone monopoly, and the first Millennials were in elementary school when that monopoly was broken up in 1983. Title II was set to die along with plain old telephone service until the Obama administration decided Title II should be used to implement net neutrality -- the principle that consumers should have reasonable access to internet functionality. more

Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India

Tomorrow Internet Governance Forum (IGF) starts. The overall discussion topic this year is How to reach the next billion(s), and that builds on the fact that today we have around one billion Internet users. A number that will explode when all different kinds of devices, from cellphones, to TV sets to toasters will be Internet connected... Some workshops have been cancelled and panelists have been replaced as many people and organisations have made the decision to not go to India. more

Prudential Settlements for Alleged Cybersquatting/Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Under the ACPA

Given the number of awards endlessly arriving from Panels appointed to decide cybersquatting disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) (ten to fifteen published daily), the sum total of grievants filing de novo challenges under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protect Act (ACPA) is remarkably small -- one or two at most in any single year; and those rarely proceeding to summary judgment or trial. more

Will 2008 be the WiMAX Year?

There has recently been some good and bad news about WiMAX. On the good news part, an announcement made by the WiMAX Forum this month regarding the launching of the Mobile WiMAX certification program through which vendors can get their IEEE 802.16e-2005 equipment tested and possibly certified... On the bad news part, there was the Sprint-Clearwire breakup after three months of announcing a plan to join forces in building a nationwide WiMAX network in the US. Although it is anticipated that each company would carry on with its own WiMAX plans, analysts believe that the breakup would have negative impact on WiMAX deployment in the US... more

The Browser Is the OS (Thanks to Firefox 3.5, Chrome 2, Safari 4)

Almost a year ago I wrote about Google Chrome: Cloud Operating Environment and [re]wrote the Google Chrome Wikipedia article, discussing the ways in which Google was changing the game through new and innovative features... Similar features were quickly adopted by competitors including Opera (which Chrome quickly overtook at ~2%) and Firefox (which still has an order of magnitude more users at ~20-25%). more