The Technical Impact of New gTLDs: Are We Pushing on Regardless?

Have some security aspects been overlooked in the rush to conclude the new gTLD program and "give birth to the baby before it starts to get really sick" as ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé put it at a briefing jointly organised by ICANN and the European Commission a few days ago? Ever since 2008 when the ICANN Board approved the GNSO-evolved policy that became the new gTLD program, it has been reworked so much that it's difficult to imagine any stone has been left unturned. Yet a recent letter threatens to open up a new can of worms. more

Intelligence Exchange in a Free Market Economy

The U.S. Government is causing a huge disservice to protection and defense in the private sector (80%+ of CIKR) by creating an ECS that contains monetary incentive for a few large players to exert undue control over the availability, distribution, and cost of security threat indicators. While there may be a legitimate need for the federal government to share classified indicators to entities for protecting critical infrastructure, the over-classification of indicator data is a widely recognized issue that presents real problems for the private sector. ECS as currently construed creates monetary incentives for continued or even expanded over-classification. more

gTLD Contention Auction in May: Request for Comments

Many gTLD applicants with strings in contention have already heard about the Applicant Auction, a voluntary private auction for resolving string contention that my colleagues and I are organizing. In this post we'd like to share some updates on our progress. Most importantly, we realized that more than just an escrow agent is needed for the success of a private auction of this scale, and we have partnered with Morrison & Foerster, LLP, a global law firm, who will be acting as the neutral party for our auctions. more

To Tax or Not to Tax

Well it is not new that the US has always maintained that the Internet should be a tax free zone as per the US Congress's Tax Freedom Act 1998 which following expiry continued to be reauthorized and its most recent re-authorization (legal speak for extension) was in October 2007 where this has been extended till 2014. It is unclear whether there will be another extension post 2014. There is a moratorium on new taxes on e-commerce, and the taxing of internet access via the Tax Freedom Act. more

New gTLD Target Date is April 23? Or is it?

I detect some delight in the domain name community today resulting from Video interview with ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé. In that interview Chehadé states "We are now targeting to be able to recommend for delegation the first new gTLD as early as the 23rd of April..." On the surface this sounds like very good news. more

Much Ado About WCIT-12 and Multi-Stakeholderism

In the last month of last year, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) ended in Dubai amid, not hugs and fanfare, but finger-pointing and acrimony. The end, much anticipated as it was, wasn't the finest hour for international cooperation for the global public interest. Looking back, one would be forgiven to conclude that the WCIT-12 was doomed to fail. more

30 Years Ago Today, the Switch to TCP/IP Launched Today’s Internet

It was 30 years ago today, on January 1, 1983, that the ARPANET had a "flag day" when all connected systems switched from using the Network Control Protocol (NCP) to the protocols known as TCP/IP. This, then, gave rise to the network we now know as the Internet. more

The Only Winning Game at the WCIT

With Russia flipping its far reaching Internet takeover proposals into the WCIT pile this morning, it became apparent to WCITeers heading to Dubai in a couple of weeks that the entire show was on a fast trajectory into the wild blue yonder. Indeed, the event may provide an opportunity for Hollywood to film a sequel to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Unfortunately, the Russian proposals are only one of many wake-up indicators that this event may not be the exercise in rational, intelligent discourse that some in the preparatory process apparently believed. more

Microsoft’s Takedown of 3322.org - A Gigantic Self Goal?

I will first begin this post by emphasizing that this article is entirely my personal viewpoint and not to be considered as endorsed by or a viewpoint of my employer or any other organization that I am affiliated with. Neither is this to be considered an indictment of the sterling work (which I personally value very highly) that several people in Microsoft are doing against cybercrime. Microsoft's takedown of 3322.org to disrupt the Nitol botnet is partial and will, at best, have a temporary effect on the botnet itself... more

A Confession About The ICANN WHOIS Data Reminder Policy

With all the recent attention to WHOIS, it's time for a confession: I'm somewhat guilty for the infamous WHOIS Data Reminder Policy. With hindsight, it's a bad policy, and it needs to die. The year was 2002. ICANN's DNSO (soon to be renamed as the GNSO) had a WHOIS Task Force, and was trying to extract policy choices from an ill-conceived and worse-executed survey of assorted self-selected stakeholders. more

Is the Future of the Internet at Risk?

The debate about the control of the internet is intensifying, with interesting discussions expected later on this year in Dubai at the WCIT conference organised by the ITU. Over the last 25 years the industry has moved from being mainly telephony-based to being mainly IP-based, and many say that what is now at stake is the future of the internet as we know it at this point in time... The reality now is that the political stakes of the internet have risen significantly. more

DNS Resolution, Browsers & Hope For The Future

DNS is not something that most people think about when using the Internet. Neither should they have to: the DNS is just part of the infrastructure in the same way that IP addresses are. The only time a user ought to notice the DNS is when it breaks (and it should never break). If that's true, then we ought to expect any Internet client - including web browsers - to use the very same infrastructure as everything else and for the DNS resolution mechanisms to be the ones offered by the operating system. What makes browsers different? more

A Gap in the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook?

I strongly believe there is a serious "breach" in the Applicant Guidebook: I checked the scoring, I checked the possible objections, I am aware of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) early warning but I really could not find how ICANN is going to avoid Community applications to be submitted as Standard ones. The role of ICANN is to offer a solution to launching new generic Top-Level Domains, it is no party in saying whether a new gTLD is a Community or not. more

ICANN and the Red Cross: An Exceptional Exception

ICANN's policy on the special protection of the Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) names has triggered a very lively discussion including contributions by Konstantinos Komatis, Milton Muller, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, and myself (with Avri Doria's reply). There is an agreement that the exceptions are dangerous for ICANN's gTLD policy process which is in a formative and delicate phase. more

How Spam Has Damaged Mail Forwarding - And Ways to Get Around It

Courtesy forwards have been a standard feature of e-mail systems about as long as there have been e-mail systems. A user moves or changes jobs or something, and rather than just closing the account, the mail system forwards all the mail to the user's new address. Or a user with multiple addresses forwards them all to one place to be able to read all the mail together. Since forwarding is very cheap, it's quite common for forwards to persist for many years. Unfortunately, forwarding is yet another thing that spam has screwed up. more