In a landmark judgment issued this past Tuesday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Google is not liable for trademark infringement when an advertiser purchases a keyword based on a competitor's trademark to trigger a search ad, so long as it removes infringing ads promptly when notified by brand owners. However, and this is critical, individual advertisers could be held liable if ads triggered by a keyword involving a competitor's trademark are found to confuse consumers. So, what qualifies as consumer confusion? more
Yesterday's Wikipedia outage, which resulted from invalid DNS zone information, provides some good reminders about the best and worst attributes of active DNS management. The best part of the DNS is that it provides knowledgeable operators with a great tool to use to manage traffic around trouble spots on a network. In this case, Wikipedia was attempting to route around its European data center because... more
The 2010 version of the now-annual Messaging Anti-abuse Working Group (MAAWG) 'Email Security Awareness and Usage Report' was released yesterday. While un-belied by the title, the vernacular name might get a bit more attention: "The MAAWG Consumer Email Survey". ... Consumers were surveyed in North America and across Europe with variety of questions from computer expertise and savvy, to their preferences of email. more
In my consulting and working with clients, I rarely use the word spam. There are so many different definitions of spam, I have no way to know if my clients understand what I am saying, so I avoid the term as much as humanly possible. An example of some of the few definitions of spam I've seen used over the years... more
In addition to Egypt, Russian Federation, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia which had successfully completed the second phase of the Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Fast Track Process earlier this year, ICANN announced today that China, Hong Kong, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Tunisia have also successfully completed the second phase. more
In January we presented the glorious history of the MIT spam conference, today we present the schedule for the first day. Opening session will be from this author, Garth Buren with a topic entitled The Internet Doomsday Book, with details be released the same day as the presentation. Followed by Dr. Robert Bruen with a review of activities since the last MIT spam conference... more
Online fakes can be a lucrative business and difficult to crack down on, due to the ease and low-cost of setting up multiple virtual storefronts and the ability to obfuscate an operation's identity. A federal lawsuit filed on March 1, 2010 by Polo Ralph Lauren and VF Corp. illustrates these points and highlights many of the intricacies of an online counterfeit ring. more
The ICANN Board meeting undertaken recently in Nairobi was indeed eventful and there were many vital topics on the agenda, in particular for the new gTLD program that kept many interested parties on the edges of their seats as the meeting unfolded. ... One of the more controversial decisions was in regard to the Expression of Interest (EOI), a program intended to allow potential new gTLD applicants to pre-register for their desired TLD and provide ICANN and the community with invaluable information regarding likely volumes of applications. more
China's insomniac twitterati were on fire this afternoon U.S. time, powered no doubt by much caffeine and sugar in the the wee hours of the morning in China. Half an hour before Google's David Drummond posted his announcement that Google.cn is now effectively operating from Google.com.hk, Guangzhou-based open source programmer @LEMONed broke the
news that google.cn was being redirected to the Hong Kong service. Reacting to the news, @wentommy quipped: "One Google, One World; One China, No Google." more
The FCC proposal in its recently launched National Broadband Plan to share infrastructure is a very smart initiative indeed. Sharing infrastructure makes a lot of sense. Without it the business model for universal high-speed broadband will not stack up -- the costs of infrastructure is one of the most critical elements in any national broadband plan. Australia is following an identical course with the rollout of their National Broadband Network. In all six current rollout sites utilities are either already involved or are negotiating to become involved. more
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