Political New gTLDs: One Year in Review

Once a month, at the end of the month, a snapshot of domain name registration volumes is taken according to categories of new gTLDs. Twenty categories are covered and this article covers Political new gTLDs. These snapshots allow having a global overview of which extensions increase their volume of domain names registered from a month to the other, in a period of 12 months. Below is what I noticed from January 2018 to December 2018 for domain name extensions related to politics. more

Why Are the EU Data Protection Authorities Taking Away Our Fundamental Right to be Safe?

What if we created a rule that gave everyone - good or bad - the right to hide their license plate, where they live, who they are, and just go incognito? What if we made it a right to walk into any building in the world, and simply say "No, thank you" when the security guards asked for one's identification? The criminals would celebrate, and we'd all be utterly alarmed. We would immediately be afraid for our personal safety. more

The Fight Is on to Save Access to WHOIS: A Call to Action for Brand Owners

Late last week, ICANN published the guidance from the Article 29 Working Party (WP29) that we have been waiting for. Predictably, WP29 took a privacy maximalist approach to the question of how Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to WHOIS, a tool widely used by cybersecurity professionals, businesses, intellectual property owners, consumer protection agencies and others to facilitate a safer and more secure internet.  more

Extraterritoriality

Black's Law Dictionary defines it as "the extraterritorial operation of laws; that is, their operation upon persons, rights or jural relations, existing beyond the limits of the enacting state, but still amenable to its laws. The term is used to indicate jurisdiction exercised by a nation in other countries, by treaty..." Extraterritoriality is also the most significant emerging development today in the law shaping virtual network architectures and services that includes OTT and NFV-SDN. more

Why I Want a .PAYPAL New gTLD

I use Paypal, and I am quite satisfied with how it helps me with my business: it is still a little hard to use, and I don't use all functions of the tool, but it is not so expensive, it is fast and efficient, and Paypal does not send so many emails. In one word, Paypal rocks... The only problem that I have with Paypal is the number of fake emails that I receive. Of course, I easily identify them as they come in and luckily, G Suite (Gmail) does an excellent job at blocking all spam and phishing. more

Making Sense of the Domain Name Market - and Its Future

With ever more TLDs, where does it make sense to focus resources? After four years and a quadrupling of internet extensions, what metrics continue to make sense in the domain name industry? Which should we discard? And how do you gain understanding of this expanded market? For registries, future success is dependent on grasping the changes that have already come. For registrars, it is increasingly important to identify winners and allocate resources accordingly. The question is: how? more

Refutation of the Worst IANA Transition FUD

Of all the patently false and ridiculous articles written this month about the obscure IANA transition which has become an issue of leverage in the partisan debate over funding the USG via a Continuing Resolution, this nonsense by Theresa Payton is the most egregiously false and outlandish. As such, it demands a critical, nearly line by line response. more

DotConnectAfrica Trust Response to John Jeffrey’s ICANN Legal Blog Posting

The attention of DotConnectAfrica Trust (DCA Trust) has been drawn to a recent blog posting by John Jeffrey, the ICANN General Counsel and Company Secretary, who wrote to clarify what he termed as "misinformation and erroneous reporting that have framed parts of the discussion" regarding the recent DCA vs. ICANN IRP Final Declaration. As we can't see a way of making comments on his blog, DCA Trust as a directly affected party, will respond to the issues Mr. Jeffrey has advanced... more

Out of .Africa - Process Failures Don’t Change the Facts

I've heard a lot of discussion of the .africa controversy of late -- from conspiracy theories to questions about staff competence to concerns about the role of the GAC. And it's hard not to find faults galore in the way this process and the IRP reporting has played out. But before we get too lost in the weeds of procedure or the future of ICANN, lets not lose track of what this debate was first and still is fundamentally about: a string. more

Branding with New gTLDs: The Next Marketing Frontier

New gTLDs can be an efficient way to immediately propel a registrant's online relevance and profitability. Registrants are the companies, organizations and individuals who seek to better utilize the Internet to reach their goals. Marketing Professionals acting on their behalf should understand that protection mechanisms for new gTLDs have been created by ICANN. New gTLDs are powerful and inexpensive marketing tools that have improved measures of online stability and security... more

Beyond Neutrality - Enabling a World of Connected Things

The growing interest in the "Internet of Things" is forcing us to think beyond the web to a much larger world of connected devices. We can tolerate the many barriers to connectivity because we expect that someone can provide the necessary credentials to log in to the providers' services and to adjust Wi-Fi access keys whenever the access point changes or simply to click "agree" at a hotspot. This doesn't work for "things" which can't recognize a sign-on or "agree screen". more

Whose Customers Are Those Typing Brand Names in the Browser’s Address Bar?

Fourteen years ago, we had so much hope at the start of a new century. We thought the global economy was going to improve a lot because of the emerging Internet technologies. But where are we today? What has happened in the last 14 years? We know that even advanced countries are suffering from economic difficulties today. What happened to these advanced countries with high speed Internet? more

IP Addresses in Cars, Car Manufacturers as Internet Registries? - Another Need for IPv6 Now!

I recently came across an interesting piece about the use of IP addresses in the Tesla model S. The part that caught my attention and led to this post is that the car uses the private IPv4 address subnet 192.168.90.0/24 to address different nodes e.g. the centre console is 192.168.90.100 and the dashboard/navigation screen is 192.168.90.101. Put your geek hat on for a moment as you ponder that! more

Plumbing Neutrality

I've been having arguments about Network Neutrality with a lawyer. My position is that you can't adequately regulate ISPs to be neutral, because there's no agreement what "neutral" means in practice. He points out that the courts aren't interested in technical details like what packets are dropped, it's that all traffic has to be treated the same, and ISPs should just figure out how to do that. So I contemplated a city with Plumbing Neutrality with the simple rule that all people must be treated the same... more

Chromecast Set to Revolutionise the TV

The principle behind Chromecast is probably the magic formula that is needed to finally revolutionise television watching. Google's latest product was launched yesterday... TV revolution didn't come from the traditional broadcasters or their suppliers. Everything developed by them has been aimed more at protecting their traditional business than at looking for completely new opportunities - truly new TV innovations will most certainly come from the direction that the broader market has taken since the arrival of the smartphones and the tablets. more