Ukraine Arrests VPN Operator Facilitating Access to Russian Internet

Ukrainian authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man in Khmelnytskyi for running an illicit virtual private network (VPN) service that enabled access to the Russian segment of the internet, known as Runet. more

Cyber Crime: It’s All About Data (Part 1)

Cyber crime = crime. How do we make police forces understand this and how to get it prioritized? In this series of blogs I am looking into whether aggregating data can change the way cyber crime is approached and prioritized. At a seminar at the IT Security trade fair in Utrecht detective super intendant Charlie McMurdie, head of the cyber crime unit of the London Metropolitan police, said that cyber crime was recently prioritized by the UK government. She also said the following and I'm allowed to quote this... more

Why Regulate Cable Internet Access

The cable guys have their way of saying it: "What do you want to do, nationalize our businesses?" Another way of seeing this issue is: We have a very few very large providers of highspeed internet access in U.S. They have sufficient market power to decide how and when to prioritize internet communications. And all of these providers are competing with the internet in some way -- they are all (or are becoming) old media and old telecom companies that want to maintain control over their distribution channels. more

Do We Need IPv4 at Home/SOHO Any More?

CLAT/NAT64 is utilized across many mobile networks globally, and I am only talking about Ethernet and Wi-Fi in home and small office/home office (SOHO) environments. I experimented by completely disabling IPv4 at home and established a SSID where my MacBook Pro operates without an actual IPv4 address. The MacBook supports CLAT (RFC 6877), and by implementing PREF64 (RFC 8781) and DHCP Option 108 (RFC 8925) in my network, I was able to achieve a 100% IPv6 environment. more

Watch Live Thurs 28 May: The Way Forward for the WSIS+10 Review Process

Would you like to learn more about what the WSIS+10 Review process is all about? How can you participate in the process if you are not with a government? What is "WSIS" all about anyway -- and why should you care? Those questions and more will be part of a luncheon briefing on Thursday, May 28, 2015, from 13:15 - 14:45 Central European Time (UTC+2). more

Today’s Carrier Networks as Trollways?

As I keep pointing out -- there is indeed a viable alternative of a real marketplace not a fake one. Today's system is a fake because it depends on capturing the value of the application - communications - in the transport and that is no longer possible because with the Internet the value is created OUTSIDE the network. One example of the collateral damage caused by today's approach is the utter lack of simple wireless connectivity. Another is that we have redundant capital intensive bit paths whose only purpose is to contain bits within billing paths. more

Is ICANN Entering a Bold New Era?

When Barack Obama succeeded George W Bush and became America's 44th president, it seemed he could do no wrong. But this was arguably more a consequence of the perceived inadequacies of his predecessor than a realistic reflection on his own abilities. A fact highlighted by Obama being awarded the Nobel peace prize a mere nine months after taking office, before he'd had any real chance of having an impact on America or the world. When Fadi Chehadé was formally introduced as ICANN's next CEO, at the organisation's 44th international meeting in Prague last June, there was an undeniable Obama effect... more

New gTLDs Questions Not Answered: Which Kind of Auction?

I was expecting something that would discuss the unique properties, if any, of the domain name market, and the types of inventory theoretically available to allocate, and the expected outcomes for the various types of auctions, and some showing that for some desired policy goals, whether greatest gain to seller or lowest loss to buyer, or something entirely different, the expected outcomes. This would assist the better informed, bottom-up, stakeholder-driven, consensus policy making. Is the domain name market indistinguishable from the spectrum market? If name spaces are distinguishable from units of spectrum... more

Refutation of the Worst IANA Transition FUD

Of all the patently false and ridiculous articles written this month about the obscure IANA transition which has become an issue of leverage in the partisan debate over funding the USG via a Continuing Resolution, this nonsense by Theresa Payton is the most egregiously false and outlandish. As such, it demands a critical, nearly line by line response. more

ICANN Board Retreat Results in Specific New gTLD Directives

Over the weekend, ICANN's Board of Directors met in Norway to discuss the fate of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). As a result of the meeting, two resolutions were passed related to new gTLDs. First, the Board resolved to recommend further actions based on comments recently submitted by the Governmental Advisory Committee. The second resolution directed the ICANN CEO to incorporate a number of items into the fifth version of the Guidebook including... more

The Third Wave of Internet Exceptionalism

From the beginning, the Internet has been viewed as something special and "unique." For example, in 1996, a judge called the Internet "a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication." The Internet's perceived novelty has prompted regulators to engage in "Internet exceptionalism," crafting Internet-specific laws that diverge from regulatory precedents in other media. Internet exceptionalism has come in three distinct waves... more

Can Trump’s Twitter Account be Deleted Under the New EU Hate Speech Code?

On 31 May 2016, The Commission together with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft unveiled a code of conduct that includes a series of commitments to combat the spread of illegal hate speech online in Europe. These IT Companies support the European Commission and EU Member States in the effort to respond to the challenge of ensuring that online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally. more

Innovating with New gTLDs

One of the primary purposes of the ICANN New generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program is to foster innovation in the DNS industry and the wider Internet. While having a desirable TLD string that users can relate to is a good starting point, gTLD applicants may want to bolster their value propositions by offering innovative services and differentiate their TLDs from others. Defining the services to be offered is so central to a gTLD that it should be part of the initial strategy of any prospective applicant. more

Precrime Regulation of Internet Innovation

In the sci-fi movie Minority Report, a 'precrime' police unit relies on the visions of psychics to predict future crimes, then arrests the potential perpetrators before they do anything wrong. In the world of Internet governance, the future is now, as regulators want online services to predict and prevent safety threats before they actually occur. more

Key Steps for Operational Readiness and Successful Launch of a New gTLD

31 August 2013 marked a historic day for Internet users worldwide. It marked a very key day in the introduction of new gTLDs. On that day ICANN, who oversees the gTLD programme, six years in the making, announced the completion of gTLD Initial Evaluation (IE) results based applicant's ability to demonstrate their financial, technical and operational capability to operate and manage a TLD Registry. more