Excessive Offers to Sell Domain Names: Evidence of Bad Faith or Bona Fide Business Practice?

Not infrequently heard in domain name disputes are cries of shock and gnashing of teeth that domain name holders may lawfully offer their inventory at excessive prices. Take for example TOBAM v. M. Thestrup / Best Identity, D2016-1990 (WIPO November 21, 2016) (<tobam.com>). Respondent accused Complainant of bullying which Complainant denied... more

New TLDs: Finance Dept. Role, Part 2

Last week I wrote about accounting, reporting and promotions. This week, I want to focus on the financial department's role in launching services, renewals and foreign exchange risk management. ... In most businesses, the finance team usually takes a back seat during launch of services as business activity slowly increases in the months that follow. However, in the domain industry, with up to 30 percent of lifetime sales earned in the first three months of launch, it's essential that finance takes a hands-on role from the start. more

China: We Lead 3GPP Wireless Standards

In 2018, nothing can get approved in 3GPP that China strongly opposes. In the past, 3GPP often was a battle between a few American giants and their European peers. A Qualcomm or a Nokia will still be heard, but the power has shifted. I haven't seen evidence that the Chinese influence has made for better or worse standards. There are now over a billion 4G subscribers at the big 3 Chinese telcos, by far the largest equipment buyers. Nokia, Ericsson, and the other vendors do not dare oppose their largest customers. more

The Journey of IPv6 Implementation 9 Months Later

ICANN 43 in Costa Rica was in the heart of IPv6 implementation with everybody touching on how much it was needed as part of the internet ecosystem to fully utilize the ICANN expansion of the new gTLD namespace from 21 to the maximum number that will manage to get delegated at the beginning of 2013. more

ICANN Chief Announces Departure Via Twitter

ICANN's CEO and President, Rod Beckstrom, has announced that he will be stepping down in July of next year. The announcement came via Twitter of all places, with a press release, presumably with more details, due sometime soon... With the launch of the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program scheduled to officially launch early in 2012 maybe Beckstrom feels that his job "is done", or maybe there's another motive behind his departure. more

SpaceX Starlink’s Variable Pricing Pilot in France Is Good Business and Good Karma

Starlink is available in 37 nations, and the price for best effort service was the same everywhere until August 3, when variable pricing with throttling became available in France. I predicted they would eventually shift from uniform to affordable pricing some time ago, but why did they do it now? Starlink first became available in the U.S. and Canada, and sales are beginning to outrun the available capacity. more

When Proxy Services Enable Abuse

People are growing increasingly alarmed by recent examples of bad actors abusing proxy services offered by registrars. While proxy services are designed to protect the privacy of legitimate domain name users - they do the opposite when abused by cybercriminals. Responsible Proxy providers play a key role in mitigating abuse. When they don't act responsibly - it's clear they contribute to the problem. more

Tips for Ecommerce to Survive and Thrive with GDPR

The regulatory environment for brands and retailers that do business online is getting stricter thanks to regulatory changes in Europe with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as existing regulations in the U.S. Companies that adapt quickly can turn these changes into a competitive advantage. As we grapple worldwide with the implications of the incredible amount of personal data generated every day, consumers are pressuring brands and legislators alike for more control over their information. more

China Will Remember the U.S. Huawei War for a Generation

Only an idiot would believe that the U.S. is blocking TSMC manufacture of Huawei cell phone chips because of security fears. This is a commercial rivalry. The U.S. wants to put China's leading technology company out of business. We will fail, of course, at a price far higher than D.C. understands. The U.S. is ready for China's immediate countermeasures, even if Apple's stock price falls $hundreds of billions. But the long-run price will be devastating. more

Harm Caused by Typosquatting Is Still Modest, Research Suggests

Harm caused by domain name typosquatting is still modest, to both the user and the brand holder, and investment on anti-typosquatting products should be cautious, according to a paper published in Security and Privacy (SP), 2015 IEEE Symposium titled, "Every Second Counts: Quantifying the Negative Externalities of Cybercrime via Typosquatting." The paper presents a strategy for quantifying the harm caused by the cybercrime of typo squatting via an intent inference technique. more

Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictive Management?

We are all accustomed to purchasing and/or using copyrighted material in one fashion or another. From music, movies-(BluRay), e-books-(Kindle), computers-(software), mobile phones-(iPhone) and games; the umbrella of companies wanting to restrict access to its products continues to grow and become increasingly restrictive. more

Understanding the Threat Landscape: Basic Methodologies for Tracking Attack Campaigns

The indicators of compromise (IOCs) outlined in my last blog post can be used as a baseline for developing intrusion sets and tracking attack campaigns and threat actors. When launching an attack, threat actors use a variety of vectors and infrastructure, which Verisign iDefense analysts -- as well as analysts across the cybersecurity community -- correlate to group attacks, tracking actors and determining attack methods. more

Enabling Privacy Is Not Harmful

The argument for end-to-end encryption is apparently heating up with the work moving forward on TLSv1.3 currently in progress in the IETF. The naysayers, however, are also out in force, arguing that end-to-end encryption is a net negative... The idea of end-to-end encryption is recast as a form of extremism, a radical idea that should not be supported by the network engineering community. Is end-to-end encryption really extremist? Is it really a threat to the social order? more

Putting Cloud Providers to the Test - New Bitcurrent/Webmetrics Report

Recently Bitcurrent conducted a cloud performance test commissioned by my client Webmetrics, a business unit of Neustar. Bitcurrent describes itself as part blog, part analyst firm and part resource site for the web community. The research project was led by Alistair Croll, a well-known name in the space and program chair for the Cloud Connect conference. more

A Repeat Performance for Cable TV 3Q22

Traditional cable providers in the United States continue to lose cable TV customers at the same fast pace as the second quarter of the year. In the third quarter, the cable companies list 1.68 million customers after losing over 1.65 million customers in the second quarter. These numbers come from Leichtman Research Group, which compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. more