Thailand’s Blacklist of Newly Banned Websites Leaked

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks has released the list of newly blacklisted websites by Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT). The list was leaked by advisory board member CJ Hinke, director of Freedom Against Censorship Thailand, according the WikiLeaks website. From WikiLeaks' announcement: "The 1,203 blocked websites are located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Vietnam..." more

Vulcan Golf v. Google Class Certification Denied

This is a complex lawsuit by trademark owners attacking domaining and the role of the Google AdSense for Domains program in funding domaining activity. When I first blogged on the case in 2007, I wrote: "the lawsuit could effectively fall apart if the judge rejects formation of a class. Trademark class action lawsuits are rare for good reason..." Last week, the court ruled on class certification, and perhaps not surprisingly, the court denied certification -- giving Google and the other defendants an early Christmas gift. more

US Department of Commerce Doesn’t Like ICANN’s New Domain Plan

ICANN's authority to manage top level of the DNS comes from a two-year Joint Project Agreement (JPA) signed with the US Department of Commerce in 1997, since extended seven times, most recently until September 2009. Since the DoC can unilaterally cancel the JPA which would put ICANN out of the DNS business, when DoC speaks, ICANN listens. On Thursday, the US DoC sent a scathing letter to ICANN about the proposed plan to sell large numbers of new top-level domains (TLDs). There's a long list of issues... more

Three Undersea Cables Cuts Cause Significant Disruption in Europe and Asia

France Telecom has reported today that 3 major underwater cables were cut: “Sea Me We 4” at 7:28am, “Sea Me We3” at 7:33am and FLAG at 8:06am. The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear. Most of the B to B traffic between Europe and Asia is rerouted through the USA. Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected, but traffic from Europe to the Near East and Asia is interrupted to a greater or lesser extent (read more for country). more

Apple iPhone Apps Store: Refreshing Openness or Walled Garden?

Apple Computer has received high praise for the diversity of applications available for the iPhone. The company shows great willingness to accept third party software innovations. But Apple also solely decides whether to accept and make available any application. Rejected software vendors for the most part do not exist if they do not have shelf space at the Apple store. more

Blocking BitTorrent in Britain

Virgin Media announced its intention of restricting BitTorrent traffic on its new 50Mbps service according to an article by Chris Williams in The Register. Does this mean that net neutrality is endangered in the UK? The question is important because advocates of an open Internet like me hold the UK up as a positive example of net neutrality achieved through competition rather than through regulation. more

Ranking Top Internet Service Providers in the World for 2008

In a post by Earl Zmijewski of Renesys, a number of observations have been made in the effort to rank all Internet service providers in the world for 2008 -- globally, geographically, as well as by market segment. Given the controversial nature of such a ranking in the industry, Zmijewski has pointed out that the changes in rank can be far more revealing than the actual rank itself. For instance it is noted that providers who are moving up in the rankings are doing so due, in large measure, to Asia. "China Telecom poised to enter the top-10 'global' providers, despite not being very global. Guess that is easy to do when you 'own' 1/6 of the world's population," says Zmijewski. Findings also include Sprint losing its long held #1 status to Level 3 and Global Crossing surging to #3, leaving their peers behind. more

Spam Peaked at 200 Billion per Day in 2008, Botnets Nexus of Criminal Activity, Says Cisco

In a 52 page security report released by Cisco, the company has confirmed what has been consistently been observed through out this year: "the Internet-based attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialized as profit-driven criminals continue to hone their approach to stealing data from businesses, employees and consumers." The 2008 edition of the report has specified the year's top security threats and offers recommendations for protecting networks against attacks that are propagating more rapidly, becoming increasingly difficult to detect, and exploiting technological and human vulnerabilities. more

The Report on “Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency”

A report "Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency" has just been released. While I don't agree with everything it says (and in fact I strongly disagree with some parts of it), I regard it as required reading for anyone interested in cybersecurity and public policy. The analysis of the threat environment is, in my opinion, superb; I don't think I've seen it explicated better. Briefly, the US is facing threats at all levels, from individual cybercriminals to actions perpetrated by nation-states. The report pulls no punches... more

Experts Predict Mobile as Main Online Access by 2020, Voice-Recognition, Internet Structure Advances

The Pew Internet Project has just released its third report on its "The Future of the Internet" series where it has surveyed experts about the future social, political, and economic impact of the Internet. In this latest web-based survey, 578 leading Internet activists, builders, and commentators and 618 additional stakeholders (1,196 respondents) were asked to assess thought-provoking proposed scenarios for the year 2020, which include the following quantitative results... more

Google Releases a One-Stop Reference Source to Browser Security

Today via its Online Security Blog, Google announced the release of its Browser Security Handbook aimed at providing web application developers, browser engineers, and information security researchers a "one-stop reference" to critical security attributes of modern web browsers. "Insufficient understanding of these often poorly-documented characteristics is a major contributing factor to the prevalence of several classes of security vulnerabilities," says the introduction to the 60-page document. more

Policy Review: Botnets are eWMD, electronic Weapons of Mass Destruction

The latest issue of Policy Review from the Hoover Institution, a public policy research center -- focused on advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy -- has an essay titled eWMDs – electronic weapons of mass destruction. The Policiy Review readers are warned that botnets should be considered a serious security problem and that "cyber attacks present a grave new security vulnerability for all nations and must be urgently addressed." more

Re-Examining the Domain Name Registry-Registrar Split

ICANN has released to the public a report they commissioned called "Revisiting Vertical Separation of Registries and Registrars," written by CRA International. It is being referred to as the "CRAI Report." Readers in the U.S. and the U.K. may not know it, but most top-level (TLD) domains in the world don't have registrars-you go straight to the registry and buy your domains from the source. more

Fiber to the Home: Ideal Economic Stimulus?

This week, the headlines seem to be full of fresh doom and gloom for wireline carriers, who employ people in every congressional district across America. Sooner or later, someone is going to call for Congress to tap some of the hundreds of billions in 2009 economic stimulus to help the LECs through troubled times, save lots of jobs, and preserve the way we do business in our critical last-mile communications infrastructure. Is this wise? Is there a better way? more

What Internet Governance Boils Down To

Listening to several of the discussions here at the IGF (so far), my post from yesterday seems to be close to what the focus of this meeting is, control and access to resources. Yesterday I highlighted areas of Governance where Governments actually could help, and make difference. Admittedly, that is not all the aspects of governance though. more