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Kentucky vs. 141 Domain Names

Yes, that is a title of a real, current legal case and controversy. And, no, the links in this post are not spam... mostly gambling news sites seem to be reporting on this. The Governor of Kentucky, through his Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, has moved in court to have 141 gambling-related domain names transferred to the Kentucky state government, partially because other legal gambling operations in Kentucky, like horseracing, lose revenue to online gaming. Yes, you read that right: by allegedly violating KY law, the state can move to have property used in these unlawful acts transferred to the state. In this case, the "property" in question is the domain names themselves. This case is definitely novel in the realm of cyberlaw, but also is a bit controversial for how it originally proceeded... more

Is Secured Routing a Market Failure?

The Internet represents a threshold moment for the communications realm in many ways. It altered the immediate end client of the network service from humans to computers. It changed the communications model from synchronized end-to-end service to asynchronous and from virtual circuits to packet switching. At the same time, there were a set of sweeping changes in the public communications framework... more

Trump’s Fundraising Email - Bad Data Drives Delivery Problems

It's a wild election season here in the US. In the past few presidential elections, email has played a bigger and bigger role in messaging and fundraising. President Obama's campaign used email effectively, but sent huge volumes. In fact, the volume was so heavy, it led to a joke on the Daily Show... This year there is a stark difference in how the candidates are using email. more

The Freedom to Innovate Without Permission

In a speech this morning, widely heralded (and criticized) as a call for "network neutrality," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski: "Why has the Internet proved to be such a powerful engine for creativity, innovation, and economic growth? A big part of the answer traces back to one key decision by the Internet's original architects: to make the Internet an open system." Now "open system" doesn't mean anarchy. The Internet has rules, technical standards codified in the unassuming sounding "Requests for Comment." more

Clues about the Future of TV

A recent article chronicles the telcos' slow start in cable TV. I don't think the telcos stand a chance of succeeding in cable TV. Instead, if they're to succeed at all, they'll probably buy or form alliances with existing cablecos... But they'd better start swimming, because the times are a changing.. more

Making the Platform Relationship Win-Win

CSC recently participated in an open discussion at the World Trademark Review's APAC WTR Connect, where we moderated a discussion with brand owners, Western Digital and PVH, and platform owner, Alibaba, on the topic: "Making the Platform Relationship Win-Win." How do brands define what a platform is? For the brand owners, a platform could be any distribution service of their products -- be it a traditional eCommerce marketplace like Alibaba or Amazon.com -- or other digital service enablers... more

Are We Ready to Defend Our Freedom? Book Review: “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”

It is not often that you read a book where afterward nothing seems the same again. Like Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Shoshana Zuboff's book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,, puts what we do in these times into a context and gives a focus to ongoing issues of privacy and governance with regard to the Domain Name System. This is even more astonishing as the book does not even mention the DNS, the Internet ecosystem or even Internet Governance directly. more

Filtering Spam at the Transport Level

An interesting new paper from the Naval Postgraduate School describes what appears to be an interesting new twist on spam filtering, looking at the characteristics of the TCP session through which the mail is delivered. They observe that bots typically live on cable or DSL connections with slow congested upstreams. ... This paper tries to see whether it would be practical to use that info to manage spam in real time. more

2015 Domain Year in Review

2015 was a challenging yet exciting year for brand owners. While new gTLDs continue to consume much of the news in the domain industry, there were other notable highlights. Global domain registrations reached nearly 300 million; ICANN had several initiatives in motion that were of particular concern to brand owners; and companies continued to face threats to their brand reputation, revenue and customer trust. Here's my top 5 domain highlights from 2015. more

VoIP Services Market Nears $50 Billion Mark

Market research firm Infonetics Research this week released VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers, a market share and forecast report that includes two Business VoIP Service Provider Scorecards that will be published later this year, and an IP Centrex Provider Tracker highlighting deployments by provider, region, service, and platform. more

ARIN Recognizes Interop for Returning IPv4 Address Space

ARIN today recognizes Interop, an organization with a long-standing presence in the Internet industry, for returning its unneeded Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address space. Interop was originally allocated a /8 before ARIN's existence and the availability of smaller-sized address blocks. The organization recently realized it was only using a small portion of its address block and that returning the remainder to ARIN would be for the greater good of the Internet community. more

New Top-Level Domains Emerging

With all the buzz surrounding new Top-Level Domain (nTLDs) at the last ICANN meeting in Mexico, I am sure many of you have already encountered or read information regarding the latest applications. For those who haven't been staying abreast of the latest, here is a quick review... There are two different general types of TLDs -- gTLDs and ccTLDs. ICANN is now opening the possibility of adding further TLD extensions, which can virtually be anything... more

The WiFi 6 Revolution

We're edging closer every day to seeing WiFi 6 in our homes. WiFi 6 will be bolstered by the newly approved 6 GHz frequency, and the combination of WiFi 6 and 6 GHz spectrum is going to revolutionize home broadband. I don't think many people understand how many of our home broadband woes are caused by current WiFi technology. WiFi has been an awesome technology that freed our homes from long category 5 wires everywhere, but WiFi has a basic flaw that became apparent when homeowners started to buy hordes of WiFi-enabled devices.  more

US-China Tech War Threatens Global Internet Infrastructure: China Plans $500 Million Subsea Cable Rival

Chinese state-owned telecom firms plan an extensive undersea fiber-optic internet cable network to link Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The cable, to be named EMA (Europe-Middle East-Asia), would cost approximately $500 million to complete and be manufactured and laid by China's HMN Technologies Co Ltd, a fast-growing cable firm whose predecessor company was majority-owned by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. more

By 2021 Cost of Cybercrime to Top Annual Natural Disasters and Global Drug Trade Costs, Says Report

By 2021, it is estimated that cybercrime will cost the global economy more than $6 trillion in damages, exceeding annual costs for natural disasters and the global drug trade. more