Beyond Limitations and What Good It Would Do to ICANN to Operate from Abundance

The ICANN community is conservative. A considerable number of dedicated ICANN volunteers from various constituencies believe that ICANN should follow the unusual logic of limiting its revenues to the levels of its CURRENT estimates of expenditure. The Board, acting on the advise of the ICANN community brought down the ICANN transaction fee per domain name from 25 cents to 16 cents and in the case of numbers, for various reasons the Address Registry fees that it collects from the Regional Internet Registries have been historically kept at a negligibly low level. more

Proposed Law Seeks to Expose Internet Addressing for Child Safety

U.S. Republican politicians on Thursday introduced a bill that would require Internet service providers and network operators to track the use of and maintain records for their publicly accessible wired and wireless networks. Two bills have been introduced... Each of the bills carries the title "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act," and is referred to as the "Internet SAFETY Act." more

In Which We Explore the Federal Laws that Apply to Cyberstalking

Tragedies frequently result in flurries of legal activity. Last years witnessed the Myspace tragedy in which a 13 year old girl committing suicide. Unfortunately stalking laws have been clumsy tools that are difficult if not impossible for law enforcement officials to wield. Where existing laws respond poorly to tragedies, the option behind Door Number One is to enact a new law, and the option behind Door Number Two is to argue for a reinterpretation of current law that would somehow miraculously shoehorn the tragedy into the law. Unlike game shows, legal contestants can pick both doors -- which is what happened in this case. more

Nominations Open for 2022 Public Interest Registry (PIR) Board of Directors

Are you interested in helping guide the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains? Or do you know of someone who would be a good candidate? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for three positions on the PIR Board of Directors. Read more for details if you are interested in being considered as a candidate or know of someone who should be considered. more

Assessing Intent to Cybersquat

It, perhaps, does not have to be said that cybersquatting is an intentional tort. No one would expect the respondent to admit unlawful intention, but complainant's proof must nevertheless support that contention. The Panel in Hästens Sängar AB v. Jeff Bader / Organic Mattresses, Inc. FA2005001895951 (Forum July 31, 2020) reminds us that it takes more than bad faith use of a domain name to find cybersquatting. more

Starlink Comes to Africa - Markets and Competition

SpaceX Starlink Internet service will be available in several African nations in the second quarter of this year, and the price in Nigeria has been announced -- $600 for the "residential" terminal and a monthly fee of $43. Is there a market for Starlink at that price in Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan African nations? The IMF projects a GDP per capita of $2,580 for Nigeria this year (and $1,900 in Sub-Saharan Africa and $2,260 for Africa overall) so the market for individual consumer accounts will be much smaller than in what the IMF refers to as "advanced economies." more

Sprint’s Big Deal: New Life for WiMax

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the terms of a yet unannounced deal which will finance a massive rollout of WiMax by a Sprint-Clearwire joint venture. Outside funding is to be provided by Intel, Google, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable as well as Bright House, a small cable company. Assuming the deal is for real, this is good news for US users of broadband and, indirectly, other users around the world. more

DNSSEC Workshop Streaming Live from ICANN 55 in Marrakech on Wednesday, March 9, 2016

What is the current state of DNSSEC deployment around the world and also in Africa? How can you deploy DNSSEC at a massive scale? What is the state of using elliptic curve crypto algorithms in DNSSEC? What more can be done to accelerate DNSSEC deployment? Discussion of all those questions and much more can be found in the DNSSEC Workshop streaming live out of the ICANN 55 meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, on Wednesday, March 9, from 9:00 to 15:15 WET. more

Kaspersky Lab Software Too Deeply Embedded in US Gov Network, Impossible to Get Rid Off by October

The law set by U.S. Government for all agencies to fully remove the controversial Russian based Kaspersky Lab security software by October is proving a lot harder than anticipated. more

Six Approaches to Creating an Enterprise Cyber Intelligence Program

As few as seven years ago, cyber-threat intelligence was the purview of a small handful of practitioners, limited mostly to only the best-resourced organizations - primarily financial institutions that faced large financial losses due to cyber crime - and defense and intelligence agencies involved in computer network operations. Fast forward to today, and just about every business, large and small, is dependent on the Internet in some way for day-to-day operations, making cyber intelligence a critical component of a successful business plan. more

Cyber Security and the White House, Part 2 - Cyberwarfare

This is a follow-up to my previous post on Cybersecurity and the White House. It illustrates an actual cyberwarfare attack against Estonia in 2007 and how it can be a legitimate national security issue. Estonia is one of the most wired countries in eastern Europe. In spite of its status of being a former Soviet republic, it relies on the internet for a substantial portion of everyday life -- communications, financial transactions, news, shopping and restaurant reservations all use the Internet. Indeed, in 2000, the Estonian government declared Internet access a basic human right... more

Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress - London, Sept 2013

In partnership with Momentum event group, CircleID will be updating this page to provide up to date information for the Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress taking place in London, September 26 - 27, 2013. more

Why Do Chinese Enterprises Ignore the Internet?

Judging from the development of the Internet in the world, the popularity rate of domain names is one of the primary parameters to measure whether the Internet is well developed or not in a country. The popularity rate of domain names is 11 percent in North America and reaches as high as 12.5 percent in Europe, while in China, which has over 20 million enterprises, there are only more than 300,000 domain names under .CN and the total number of domain names is only 1.187 million, including a lot of governmental and individual websites. more

Red Tape Set to Snuff Out Online Identity of Wales

Wales, a small Celtic country that has proudly withstood the depredations of Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and tourists, which has given the world everything from an enduring mythology to the world's longest single-world domain name, has been informed that they will not be allowed to proceed with .CYM (short for the Welsh name for Wales, Cymru) because that three-letter code is already claimed by the Cayman Islands. more

Widespread Compromised Routers Discovered With Altered DNS Configurations

A widespread compromise of consumer-grade small office/home office (SOHO) routers has been discovered by threat intelligence group Team Cymru. According to the report, "attackers are altering the DNS configuration on these devices in order to redirect victims DNS requests and subsequently replace the intended answers with IP addresses and domains controlled by the attackers, effectively conducting a Man-in-the-Middle attack." more