Addressing Infringement: Developments in Content Regulation in the US and the DNS

Over the course of the last decade, in response to significant pressure from the US government and other governments, service providers have assumed private obligations to regulate online content that have no basis in public law. For US tech companies, a robust regime of "voluntary agreements" to resolve content-related disputes has grown up on the margins of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Communications Decency Act (CDA). more

The Multinational Nature of Spam

I received a spam message the other day that went to my Junk Mail Folder. I decided to take a look at it and dissect it piece by piece. It really is amazing to see how spam crosses so many international borders and exploits so many different machines. Spammers have their own globally redundant infrastructure and it highlights the difficulties people have in combating the problem of it. more

Cuba Reaches Five Million Mobile Accounts

Cubans now have 5 million mobile accounts. The five-millionth account was recently opened Guanabacoa, in the eastern part of Havana and we see here that growth slowed last year, but has resumed -- perhaps due to increased 3G availability. Most Cubans have 2G phones, which are used primarily for making calls and sending text messages that may have attached images. more

FCC Plans to Order States Not to Impose Laws Regulating Broadband Service, Senior Officials Revealed

In a phone briefing with reporters on Tuesday, Senior FCC officials revealed plans whereby state and local governments will not be able to impose local laws regulating broadband service.

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The DNSSEC Groundswell

It's been 15 long years since the standard for DNSSEC was developed and sadly adoption has been painfully low until recently, thanks to Dan Kaminsky, the infamous Internet Researcher who indentified that gaping hole in the DNS. The discovery of the fundamental flaw in DNS sparked industry wide attention! Every day, we move a little closer to widespread DNSSEC adoption, so I thought I'd take a moment and highlight some of the most notable milestones... more

Policymakers to Discuss Data Privacy at Caribbean Internet Governance Forum

Data privacy will be among the items topping the agenda at an upcoming Caribbean Internet Governance Forum to be held by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) in Suriname this month. The meeting is part of an effort by several Caribbean countries to establish and strengthen policies to ensure that Internet users' personal information is collected, shared and used in appropriate ways. more

The Christmas Goat and IPv6 (Year 10)

This year marked the 10th anniversary of collecting statistics for IPv6 from the Christmas Goat. It's the third year now with almost no snow, and with this crazy winters and climate, it's hard to get any good photos of the goat. The photo is only from 3–4 days in early December with little snow so far in Gävle.The measurements this year started very low with 20% IPv6, but it made some improvements and landed just like 2018 at a total of 41%. more

Upcoming Domain Pulse 2008 Within Central Europe

Domain Pulse, the yearly get-together of the German-speaking registries of nic.at (Austria), Denic (Germany) and SWITCH (Switzerland) is happening on February 21 and 22 in Vienna. The conference alternates between the countries -- last year it was Switzerland, this year Austria and next year Germany... Domain Pulse covers everything in the domain name arena from management of the DNS, what's happening in each of the ccTLDs, after market and domaining, security threats to the DNS and internet as well as wider issues affecting the internet's development such as internet governance. more

Industry Structure at the Core of WCIT Problems

At the WCIT in Dubai it is interesting to follow the debates surrounding the many issues being addressed at this world congress. There are the issues of internet governance in the broadest sense of the word - these have received widespread attention. But if we look at the core issues that an organisation such as the ITU can address then the scope widens - to topics such as the rules for the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), and particularly those in relation to the rules for rates and charges. more

DoT and DoH Guidance: Provisioning Resolvers

As part of a larger effort to make the internet more private, the IETF defined two protocols to encrypt DNS queries between clients (stub resolvers) and resolvers: DNS over TLS in RFC 7858 (DoT) and DNS over HTTPS in RFC 8484 (DoH). As with all new internet protocols, DoT and DoH will continue to evolve as deployment experience is gained, and they're applied to more use cases. more

In Broadband, China Is Definitely the Middle Kingdom - 270M In 2015

With a goal of 270M fixed broadband lines in 2015 and near-universal service by 2020, the new "Broadband China" strategy is extraordinary. OFweek, a valuable site in Chinese, breaks the plan into three phases. The first is a full speed stage, ending in 2013, that deploys basic broadband and 3G widely. The second stage, 2014-2015, is dedicated to a further takeup and wider deployment. That will include 400,000+ LTE cell sites. more

Broadband Demand-Side Management

Countries, cities and commercial organisations around the globe are facing problems associated with the rollout of fibre-to-the-home networks... We have been warning about these issues for well over a decade. The problem arises because the telecoms industry has been based on the principle 'build and they will come'. more

Analysis of the Global Telecoms Industry In 2016

The telecoms industry represents one of the most dynamic sectors in the world. Only 25 years ago 90% of all activities took place via telephone calls over fixed telephone lines. Now, within the broader ICT industry, telecoms is underpinning all of the new developments in relation to the digital, sharing and interconnected economies. It facilitates new social and economic developments in all sectors such as e-health, e-education, e-business, smart grids, smart cities, e-government, and so on. more

Internet Society Seeks Nominations for 2023 Board of Trustees

Are you (or someone you know) passionate about protecting the global, open Internet? And ensuring that it is available to everyone? Do you have experience in Internet policy, standards, or development? If so, please consider submitting a nomination for a seat on the Internet Society Board of Trustees to help guide the future of the organization. The Internet Society supports and promotes the development of the Internet ... more

Meltdown and Spectre: Security is a Systems Property

I don't (and probably won't) have anything substantive to say about the technical details of the just-announced Meltdown and Spectre attacks. What I do want to stress is that these show, yet again, that security is a systems property: being secure requires that every component, including ones you've never heard of, be secure. These attacks depend on hardware features... and no, many computer programmers don't know what those are, either. more