First Geographic NewgTLD, .RUHR, Now Delegated

Each week ICANN has been delegating more new generic top-level domains (newgTLDs) and it's been somewhat entertaining to watch the list of delegated strings to see what new TLDs will enter the domain name space starting sometime in early 2014 when they become generally available for people to register new domains under. more

ICANN 48 in Buenos Aires: What Happened and What’s Next?

Last month, some of my colleagues at MarkMonitor and I traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina for ICANN 48. With the recent delegation and launch of the first new gTLDs, the atmosphere had an air of both excitement and anxiety. In my opinion, there is much to be done before brand owners should begin to feel comfortable in the post-new gTLD Internet environment, which brings a host of new challenges, as companies attempt to scale monitoring and enforcement to the new (huge) domain name space. more

Identify DDoS Attacks with Monitoring of Internal Applications (Part 1 of 3)

Most cloud DDoS mitigation services are offered on demand meaning that customers can enable the service when they are the victim of a DDoS attack. But how can a company find out -- quickly -- that it is under attack? Sometimes it is difficult to know. In this three part series, we will examine multiple monitoring tools companies can use to capture DDoS, which can help determine whether you are under a DDoS attack. more

Brand TLDs Become Official

It seems that pigs can, after all, fly. From the start of its new gTLD program, ICANN ignored what was obvious to pretty much everyone else: corporations might wish to apply for their brands and run them as closed ecosystem TLDs servicing only the brands in question. No longer. By releasing a proposed addendum to its registry contract, called Specification 13, ICANN has done two things it has always said it would never do: acknowledged that "brand TLDs" should be considered in the new gTLD program, and created a new category of TLD for this specific class of application. more

Australia Aborting Its Ambitious $44 Billion Broadband Project

Rodney S. Tucker reporting in IEEE Spectrum: "In April 2009, Australia's then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, dropped a bombshell on the press and the global technology community: His social democrat Labor administration was going to deliver broadband Internet to every single resident of Australia... So now, after three years of planning and construction, during which workers connected some 210 000 premises (out of an anticipated 13.2 million), Australia's visionary and trailblazing initiative is at a crossroads. The new government plans to deploy fiber only to the premises of new housing developments." more

Internet Is Transforming Governments and Politics

All round the world we are seeing massive social changes in the way people interact with their leaders and with their political elite. In many cases governments and politicians seem to be behaving as though they are immune to the changes that are following on from these new grassroots-based democratic processes. They often do mention reforms and recommend reforms, but there is an equal need for them to transform their own sector and their own way of conducting politics and government. This applies to both the political leaders in developed and the developing economies. more

The Grapes of Wrath? An Insight Into .WINE, the Most Hotly Debated TLD in Government Circles

Everybody agrees, all .WINE applicants want to find where the buck is going to stop, as far as the strange stalemate we have been in for so many months. Situation? "What situation?" I hear you asking. In July 2012, when applications and the name of their applicants were released to the public, it appeared that 3 applicants had the same idea, when they applied for a .WINE Top-Level Domain. more

Canada’s Anti-Spam Law Coming Into Force July 01, 2014

Canada's Anti-Spam Law, CASL, is now a done deal. Last Thursday, Treasury Board of Canada President (and champion of CASL) Tony Clement approved Industry Canada regulations in their final form. Today, Minister of Industry the Honourable James Moore announced CASL will come into force in July 1, 2014. more

A Framework for Recent Internet Governance Discussions - From Montevideo Statement to 1net

There have been many significant Internet Governance developments in the last several weeks, and so I'd like to take this moment to provide a framework in which to consider these recent events. For the last several years, the leadership of several recognized Internet organizations (ISOC, ICANN, IAB/IETF, IANA, the 5 Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), and W3C; sometimes referred to as the "Internet technical organizations") have met periodically to promote better coordination between these groups. more

Those Who Remember History…

Tom Wheeler, the new Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave a speech today at Ohio State University. It was a good speech on his regulatory philosophy. But that's not so interesting. There's nothing out of the ordinary about a government official giving a speech. The unusual development was that the Chairman also released an ebook, called Net Effects. Even more unusual, it's not a bland ghostwritten policy whitepaper; it's a deeply researched work of history. more

Don’t Let Patent Wars Widen Digital Divide

For generations, large pockets of Africa were isolated from things many of us take for granted: access to medical treatment and advances that can make the difference between a healthy, productive life or debilitating illness -- or even an early death. These problems still persist, but over the last two decades technology has helped break through and enable medical professionals to reach the poorest and most remote populations and offer some hope. more

“African Women to Watch” - Sophia Bekele on Bloomberg TV

In its TV Special program, Bloomberg TV recently featured Sophia Bekele, Founder and Executive Director of DotConnectAfrica Trust along with Juliana Rotich as "two of Africa's leading ladies in the ICT sector" presenting their stories in their prime TV program ,"African Women to Watch". In the interview, Bekele talks about her ICT career journey and focus on helping bridge the "digital divide" that currently exists between Africa and the developed countries. more

The Rapidly Changing Governance Environment of International Telecoms

Late last year I participated in the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-2012) in Dubai, organised by the UN agency the ITU. I reported extensively on that event, which was aimed at updating the International Telecommunications Regulations... From the outset there were several reasons WCIT might fail, not the least of which was the fact that the various technological, political and regulatory issues facing the new much broader telecoms environment were not sufficiently separated and so could not be addressed in a rational and systematic manner. more

The 30th Birthday of DNS!

As Ond?ej Surý of CZ.NIC recently pointed out on the dns-operations list, it was 30 years ago this month, in November 1983, that two RFCs that defined what we now call the Domain Name System (DNS), RFC 882 and RFC 883, were published. They make for an interesting read today when you think about how far we've come in those 30 years -- and now how absolutely critical DNS is as part of the Internet's infrastructure. more

Spam-Friendly Registrar ‘Dynamic Dolphin’ Shuttered by ICANN

Neil Schwartzman writes: Brian Krebs is reporting in KrebsOnSecurity that ICANN last week revoked the charter of Dynamic Dolphin, a registrar that has long been closely associated with spam and cybercrime. "The move came almost five years after this reporter asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to investigate whether the man at the helm of this registrar was none other than Scottie Richter, an avowed spammer who has settled multi-million-dollar spam lawsuits with Facebook, Microsoft and MySpace over the past decade..." more