The FCC has run three days of workshops on the National Broadband Plan now, for the purpose of bringing a diverse set of perspectives on broadband technology and deployment issues to the attention of FCC staff. You can see the workshop agendas here. The collection of speakers is indeed very diverse. As you would expect, the session on eGov featured a number of government people and a larger collection of folks from the non-profit sector, all but one of whom has a distinctly left-of-center orientation. Grass-roots devolution arguments have a leftish and populist flavor, so who better to make the argument than people from left-of-center think tanks? more
In a June court ruling, domainer Navigation Catalyst and registrar Basic Fusion lost a cybersquatting lawsuit to Verizon... This is an extremely interesting and potentially precedent-setting case regarding domaining and domain name tasting. The court condemns both practices, leading to a preliminary injunction against the domainer and its registrar based on the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). As far as I can recall, this is the first time that a domainer has lost an ACPA lawsuit in court, and it provides an important data point confirming that domaining can be cybersquatting (a previously unresolved issue)... more
.tk was once designated as the riskiest ccTLD. .ru is often said to be, after .com, the most used in the content of spam messages. But is there a ccTLD that is a favorite destination for copyright infringement? The question is worth asking in view of the growing trend for .com domain names seizures related to copyright infringement. more
I am at the ICANN meeting in Rome. The big story here is that ICANN is under attack for not sticking to its narrow mission -- technical coordination of the DNS and IP numbering system. People here are referring obliquely to the VeriSign lawsuit as "recent events" (as in "in light of recent events"). This euphemism reminds me of words used to reference the US Civil War ("the late unpleasantness"). more
With the same made-for PR timing that prompted a previous seizure of domain names just before shopping's "Cyber Monday," Immigration and Customs Enforcement struck again, this time days before the Super Bowl, against "10 websites that illegally streamed live sporting telecasts and pay-per-view events over the Internet." ICE executed seizure warrants against the 10 by demanding that registries redirect nameserver requests for the domains to 74.81.170.110, where a colorful "This domain name has been seized by ICE" graphic is displayed. more
Looking back at the year that just ended, here are the top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry news on CircleID in 2009 based on the overall readership of the posts. Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership in 2009 and best wishes to the entire community in 2010. more
As you've undoubtedly heard, the Equifax credit reporting agency was hit by a major attack, exposing the personal data of 143 million Americans and many more people in other countries. There's been a lot of discussion of liability; as of a few days ago, at least 25 lawsuits had been filed, with the state of Massachusetts preparing its own suit. It's certainly too soon to draw any firm conclusions... but there are a number of interesting things we can glean from Equifax's latest statement. more
After voting on the Comcast order today, Kevin Martin and his Democratic Party colleagues issued press releases telling us how they saved the Internet from Comcast's discriminatory practices, but they've failed to release the actual order they adopted and subsequently re-wrote. Commissioner McDowell wasn't allowed to see the revised order until 7:00 PM the night before the meeting. Rumor has it that high-level spin doctors are still trying to remove all the rough edges, inconsistencies, and factual errors. more
The purpose of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, known as the UDRP (hereafter the "Policy"), is to determine disputes relating to the registration or acquisition of domain names in bad faith. To succeed in a UDRP action (i.e. to obtain cancellation or transfer of the disputed domain name) it is necessary for the party bringing the complaint (the complainant) to show that (i) the disputed domain name is identical with or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; (ii) the domain name holder (known as the respondent) has no right or legitimate interest in respect of the domain name; and (iii) the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith. Each of the aforesaid three elements must be proved by the complainant to warrant relief.
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In a recent article, eWeek reports on researchers at Microsoft revealing large-scale, typo-squatting schemes that use "multi-layer URL redirection to game Google's AdSense for domains program". According to this report, the Microsoft Research Systems Management Research Group succeeded in tracking a ring of typo-squatters registering misspelled domain names that generated traffic for serving advertising from Google. more
A week ago, Paul Vixie wrote a thoughtful piece on the morality of DDos, for both sides of the equation of the Wikileaks issues. In it he summarizes things nicely: "Denial of service is not merely a peaceful protest meant to garner attention for a cause. Denial of service is forcible and it is injurious. It is not like any form of civil disobedience, but rather it is criminal behaviour more like looting." Well said, Paul... more
Maybe you've seen one of the news stories about the revised Georgia statute (Georgia Code § 41-1-12) that now requires sex offenders to turn their Internet passwords, screen names and email addresses over to authorities. The purpose of the revised statute is to give authorities the ability to track what sex offenders are doing online, to, in the words of one news story, "make sure" they "aren't stalking children online or chatting with them about off-limits topics." more
In Ian Flemming's Thunderball M sends 007 to the Bahamas on a hunch that SPECTRE is hiding something there. Well, it's been our hunch for a while that the Bahamas "office" for the Registrar Internet.BS does not exist. Now we have confirmation of such. It has been documented in an explosive undercover expose by LegitScript that Internet.BS address as stated could not be verified, could not accept mail, and that the business itself could not actually be found in the Bahamas. more
The first part of this article offered background examination on why Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) fails to apply to domain name renewals. Here, in the second part of this two part series, we will examine UDRP further by reviewing cases involving the renewal of domain name registrations. more
ICANN staff has published a draft report on dispute resolution procedures for IGO (inter-governmental organization) domain names. This proposal has deep flaws and should be rejected by the community, as it does not have the balance and protection of registrant rights present in the existing UDRP. Initially, the proposed policy would apply to new Top-Level Domains (TLDs), but via a Policy Development Process (PDP) it could be extended to existing TLDs. more
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