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

Abusive Conduct: Domain Name Registrants and Rights Holders

Abusive conduct or cybersquatting is the essence of disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), usually by domain name registrants violating their warranties of registration but also (in appreciable numbers) by trademark holders overreaching their statutory rights. The UDRP remedies are asynchronous: there is forfeiture of offending domain names; for abusive use of the process there is reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH), essentially a shaming remedy that substitutes for a monetary penalty. more

China’s QUESS and Quantum Communications

In mid-August China launched "QUESS" (Quantum Experiments at Space Scale), a new type of satellite that it hopes will be capable of "quantum communications" which is supposed to be hack-proof, through the use of "quantum entanglement". This allows the operator to ensure that no one else is listening to your communications by reliably distributing keys that are then used for encryption in order to be absolutely sure that there is no one in the middle intercepting that information. more

Ten Stopgap Tips for Privacy and Security Risk Management in a Pandemic

As businesses adjust to the "new normal" in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to quickly take stock of where your organization stands on privacy and security risk. Even in these unusual circumstances, organizations of all sizes and sophistication continue to be expected to act with reasonable care and comply with their public commitments and regulatory obligations. Enterprises may be finding different or better ways to operate, collaborate, and service customers. more

NXDOMAINS, SSAC’s SAC045, and New gTLDs (Part 4 of 5)

In 2010, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) published SAC045 [PDF], a report calling attention to particular problems that may arise should a new gTLD applicant use a string that has been seen with measureable (and meaningful) frequency in queries for resolution by the root system. The queries to which they referred involved invalid Top-Level Domain (TLD) queries (i.e., non-delegated strings) at the root level of DNS, queries which elicit responses commonly referred to as Name Error, or NXDomain, responses from root name servers. more

IPv6 and Prepaid Electricity

When visiting a friend in the UK in my student days some decades ago, he asked me at one point in time if I had some coins to keep the electricity meter going. This was the first and last time I saw a coin activated electricity meter. In my mind, prepaid electricity now essentially belonged to a distant past when Scrooge like landlords would make sure renters did not disappear without paying their electricity bills. more

MailChimp Not Quite Ready for PrimeTimeML

With perhaps the most coveted valuation in the Email Industry at close to $10B, MailChimp is considered the most forward-thinking ESP on the planet boasting 12M customers, with outstanding brand recognition and an incredible leadership suite. But when it comes to installing RealTimeML, it's lollygagging mainly because it has not justified the actual value to productionalize RealTimeML across its client base. And also, because it is a challenge to execute! more

New Internet Domain Names Need a Backstory to Succeed

If web address registrations are any indication (and they may not be), the hundreds of new Internet domains (where .guru competes with .com and .berlin intrudes on .de) are seeing slow, but steady success. By one count, there are about 2 million new online addresses. Slow and steady may wind up being the best business model, but if the effect of the top level domains is to be felt in business, culturally and socially, there needs to be more done than create the opportunity to register a new name... more

A Third, More Interesting Round in E360 vs. Comcast

In the past week, Comcast filed an answer, denying all of E360's charges, and attached to it a motion to file a most impressive counterclaim. The court granted the motion on Monday so the counterclaim has been filed. At about the same time, E360 filed its response to Comcast's previous motion to dismiss the suit due to its utter lack of legal merit. more

Phishing: the Worst of Times in the DNS

The Anti-Phishing Working Group has released its latest Global Phishing Survey, written by myself and Rod Rasmussen. This report comprehensively examines a large data set of more than 250,000 confirmed phishing attacks detected in 2015 and 2016. By analyzing this cybercrime activity, we have learned more about what phishers have been doing, and how they have done it. Unfortunately, there's more phishing than ever, and phishers are registering more domain names than ever. more

And the Wait Continues for .Corp, .Home and .Mail Applicants

On 6 March 2017, ICANN's GDD finally responded to an applicant letter written on 14 August 2016 to the ICANN Board. This was not a response from the ICANN Board to the letter from 2016 but a response from ICANN staff. The content of this letter can best be described as a Null Response. It reminded the applicants that the Board had put the names on hold and was still thinking about what to do. more

Global Spam Levels Drop Following Certain Events

If you haven't noticed lately, spam levels around the world have started dropping especially in October after a couple of events occurred. The first is a Russian crackdown on alleged spam king Igor Gusev, thought to be involved in the operations of SpamIt.com. SpamIt mysteriously shut down in late September, perhaps because Gusev caught wind of law enforcement starting to take notice of him. more

Who is Responsible in Our Cloudy World?

A number of large technology companies, including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!, have announced that they have signed up to a voluntary code of conduct on how they do business in countries that curtail freedom of expression like China and Singapore... It's not surprising to see this sort of self-regulation being proposed as otherwise political initiatives like the Global Online Freedom Act, passed in one US Senate committee but currently floating in legislative limbo, could actually make it into law. more

To Block or Not to Block?

Domain blocking mechanisms are an important element of an organization's defensive domain strategy. With the introduction of the New Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Program by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 2013, brand owners were faced with a new challenge -- protecting their marks without overburdening their budgets. Defensive domain registrations were and still are an effective way in which a brand can protect itself in domain namespaces.  more

We Are All Internet Exceptionalists Now

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its defeat call attention to a delicious irony in public discourse on Internet governance. Even those who don't want the Internet to be an exception from traditional forms of regulation and law are forced to admit that something new and exceptional must be done to bring it under control, such as massive departures from traditional concepts of territorially bounded sovereignty through the use of in rem jurisdiction. more