Finally the .com Discussion is Over…

Well, at least one part of it. As ICANN has announced, the Board approved the VeriSign Settlement Agreement. Now, there will be many questions, many pros and contras, but for me the main question is that finally this discussion is over. Here's what I think about my vote and the agreement itself.  more

Akamai Reports 460 Times Increase in IPv6 Requests Over Its Platform Since Last Year

In its latest State of the Internet report, Akamai has highlighted industry numbers showing imminent global exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. Report has also identifies 460 times increase in IPv6 requests over Akamai's platform from June 2011 – June 2012. A fair amount of the IPv6 request growth is attributed to the "World IPv6 Launch" event held on Jun 6, 2012 organized by the Internet Society. more

A New Privacy-Focused DNS Protocol Released Called Oblivious

Cloudflare and Apple, along with Fastly, on Tuesday announced a new proposed DNS standard that separates IP addresses from queries preventing an entity from seeing both at the same time. more

Analyzing Data for Business and Security Signals

Domain name registries and registrars play a critical role in the functioning of the internet, serving as gatekeepers to the DNS. As such, they have an important responsibility to ensure the security and stability of the DNS but also to promote the use of a domain name in a meaningful way for the end user. To be more efficient in achieving these goals, the domain name industry has started to become more open to the idea of leveraging their own internal data to gain insights about their current business. more

President of Tucows in Response to SiteFinder

I have been thinking a lot about stewardship lately in my role as CEO of Tucows and how that relates to employees, a board of directors and investors. Where I've got to, which is not necessarily relevant for this post, is that stewardship needs to exist at EVERY level of a company and a life. With the recent dustup created by Verisign's new Sitefinder service it has crystallized for me what has always bothered me about the .com/.net registry and the way Verisign has approached it.
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The Highest Threat TLDs - Part 1

A domain name consists of two main elements: the second-level domain name to the left of the dot - often consisting of a brand name or relevant keywords - and the domain extension or top-level domain (TLD) to the right of the dot. Domain names form the key elements of the readable web addresses allowing users to access pages on the internet and also allowing the construction of email addresses. more

Why Can’t We Make the Internet Secure?

In a discussion about a recent denial of service attack against Twitter, someone asked, "Some class of suppliers must be making money off of the weaknesses. Anybody out there have a prescription for the cure?" Sure, but you're not going to like it. The Internet was originally a walled garden, where its operators knew who all the users were and could eject anyone who misbehaved... more

Time to Renew .coop, .museum, and .aero ICANN

Way back in 2000-2001, ICANN approved a handful of new top level domains, and entered into agreements with their promoters. Three of the sponsored domains, are coming up for renewal next year, so they've sent in their renewal proposals. A sponsored domain is one that restricts who can register to members of a particular community, in this case respectively co-ops, museums, and the airline industry. Let's take a look and see how they're doing. more

Voluntary Initiatives As a Source of Policy-Making on the Internet

For many years, I have observed that the Internet is adopting many self-regulation frameworks to address a variety of issues. Indeed the Internet has benefited from self-regulation as an efficient way to address jurisdictional conflicts -- particularly as compared to traditional law making. Since the Internet is global, jurisdiction is often the most difficult policy issue to address. To this end, voluntary initiatives are becoming increasingly popular in the digital space due to their ability to address dynamically issues related to the Internet. more

A Psychoanalysis of Corporate Domain Names and Branding - Part II

Naming for today's global e-commerce is very fragmented and every corporation is trying to cope with little or no guidance at all. When a name fails to deliver a clear and distinct message no amount of bizarre branding ideas will ever save it. Now to check on the health of a name here are some key reasons and if not corrected, a name will endlessly shout and eventually die. more

Internet Governance Forum Puts the Spotlight on Trade Agreements

"This year was the first year in which the spotlight fell on the use of trade agreements to make rules for the Internet behind closed doors, and a broad consensus emerged that this needs to change," Jeremy Malcolm reporting today from EFF. more

A Safe Pharmacy Environment in the Digital Age

Today's ever-evolving, digital world has fundamentally changed, enhanced and challenged the way in which businesses all over the world must operate. For organizations and professions that have existed for centuries, this has created the opportunity and the test of adapting to change to remain successful and relevant. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) was founded in 1904, at a time when there was little uniformity in the practice of, or standards for pharmacy. more

HTTPS Web Hijacking Goes From Theory to Practice

I've been privately talking about the theoretical dangers of HTTPS hacking with the developers of a major web browser since 2006 and earlier last month, I published my warnings about HTTPS web hacking along with a proposed solution. A week later, Google partially implemented some of my recommendations in an early Alpha version of their Chrome 2.0 browser... This week at the Black Hat security conference in Washington DC, Moxie Marlinspike released a tool called SSL Strip... more

Cornucopia: A Radically Different Approach to TLDs

Much of the discussion about proposed TLDs centres around domain names as a form of classification: ".mobi" for mobile device content, ".kids" for child-safe content, language codes for language-specific content, ".museum" for museum-related entities, and so on. Notoriously little activity has been forthcoming in actually implementing these proposals, and the select few that have been allowed out into the world are, shall we say, a tad arbitrary. I'd like to engage in a little thought experiment where we abandon the "few TLDs with carefully chosen meanings" paradigm, and instead consider the benefits of a cornucopia of completely meaningless TLDs. more

The Non-Parity of the UDRP

The UDRP is obviously not working. Two websites, fundamentally the same (criticism at trademark.tld), two opposite decisions, both within weeks of each other! A Complainant (Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc) initiated a complaint to WIPO about one of my criticism websites (biocrystpharmaceuticals.com). The Panel found in my favour. Another Complainant (Eastman Chemical Inc) meanwhile made a complaint to NAF regarding another of my criticism websites (eastman-chemical.com). The Panel found against me. The two websites are fundamentally the same, both websites in criticism of the practices of the individual companies concerned... more