Nom-Com Appoints Independent and Diverse Candidates to ICANN Leadership Positions

When 72 candidates vie for 8 positions, making tough choices are inevitable. ICANN's 2005 Nominating Committee (Nom-Com) on Friday announced the selection of a diverse and independent set of nominees for important roles in ICANN, including the Board of Directors, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), the At-Large Advisory Council (ALAC) and the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO). more

ICANN’s Picture of Itself

ICANN has released its draft new budget. The document gives us a good look at how ICANN sees itself. It's arguably an internally inconsistent view. ...This budget calls for ICANN to have almost 60 staff members by the end of the next fiscal year. Expenses under this budget are predicted to be twice those of last year ($16 million v. $8 million). more

Letter from Rome

I am at the ICANN meeting in Rome. The big story here is that ICANN is under attack for not sticking to its narrow mission -- technical coordination of the DNS and IP numbering system. People here are referring obliquely to the VeriSign lawsuit as "recent events" (as in "in light of recent events"). This euphemism reminds me of words used to reference the US Civil War ("the late unpleasantness"). more

Can We Get More Eyes on Britain’s Largest Scam “Watch List”?

The FCA has been naming and shaming financial scam domains for decades. Its "warning list" is probably one the most extensive databases of its kind. But does it do a good enough job of actually warning people? Let us begin with the FCA website, which would not exactly get full points for user-friendliness: locating the "watch list" is a task in and of itself, to say nothing of consulting and scrutinising it. more

Wired vs Wireless Debate Becomes a Core Policy Differentiator in National Election

I never thought I'd see the day when the difference in capability between a wireless and a wireline Internet would become a core policy differentiator in a national election, but this has now happened in Australia. ... It seems that everyone has an interest in a ubiquitous, fast and cheap internet. Now that interest has been taken up as a major policy differentiator by both sides of the political spectrum in the recent Australian election. What was this all about? more

The Verisign Shared Registration System: A 25-Year Retrospective

Every day, there are tens of thousands of domain names registered across the globe -- often as a key first step in creating a unique online presence. Making that experience possible for Verisign-operated top-level domains (TLDs) like .com and .net is a powerful and flexible technology platform first introduced 25 years ago. more

CMO Offers Fresh View on New gTLDs: “They’re a Channel, Not Just a Label”

Several years ago, I had a very interesting conversation with a talented marketing executive from Portland, Oregon who joined the DotGreen Community, Inc. Board of Directors. When I told him about the new gTLD program, which was then under development at ICANN, Dave Maddocks immediately understood the value of what new gTLDs would mean to all businesses that have an online location. more

WLS Deemed Illegal by Registrar Coalition

ICANN's announcement of a "Special Meeting of the Board", to be held on February 18, 2004, includes a number of topics in its "Proposed Agenda" including: "WLS Negotiations with VeriSign". In reaction to this particular item related to WLS, Newman & Newman, the law firm representing an ad hoc coalition of ICANN-accredited domain name registrars, has sent a letter to Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN expressing... more

How the First White House Website Came to Be

In doing a recent search, there it was: the first White House website archived at the U.S. Archives. It ended up changing the direction of markets and network development, if not world politics. How it came to be is known only to the few people involved. It is a great example of individual initiative, collective whimsy, serendipity, and unintended consequences... When Bill Clinton arrived at the White House on 20 January 1993, he brought with him a kind of rag-tag team who had helped him get there.  more

Rage Against the ICANN Machine

I'm going to do what no professional journalist should ever do: take a story at face value. So full disclosure: I have not checked the facts behind the story that sparked this little rant I'm about to embark on. But I've known the author for a number of years as being a consummate professional when it comes to reporting facts. And I've known ICANN, the organisation, for even longer. I have therefore seen first hand the organisation's ability to be at times borderline duplicitous in its attempts to reach a desired result.
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INTERPOL Leads Arrest of 1,209 Suspects in Pan-African Cybercrime Crackdown, Recovers $97 Million

Authorities across 18 African nations, aided by the United Kingdom and INTERPOL, have arrested 1,209 suspects and dismantled over 11,000 illicit cyber infrastructures. more

RIPE NCC Distributed Last IPv4 Address Space from the Available Pool

On Friday 14 September, 2012, the RIPE NCC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, distributed the last blocks of IPv4 address space from the available pool. more

Court Finds Anti-Malware Provider Immune Under CDA for Calling Competitor’s Product Security Threat

Plaintiff anti-malware software provider sued defendant -- who also provides software that protects internet users from malware, adware etc. -- bringing claims for false advertising under the Section 43(a) of Lanham Act, as well as other business torts. Plaintiff claimed that defendant wrongfully revised its software's criteria to identify plaintiff's software as a security threat when, according to plaintiff, its software is "legitimate" and posed no threat to users' computers. more

We Urgently Need a New Internet

Let's be honest about it. Nobody -- including those very clever people that were present at its birth -- had the slightest idea what impact the internet would have in only a few decades after its invention. The internet has now penetrated every single element of our society and of our economy, and if we look at how complex, varied and historically different our societies are, it is no wonder that we are running into serious problems with the current version of our internet. more

The Pros and Cons of Vectoring

Vectoring is an extension of DSL technology that employs the coordination of line signals to reduce crosstalk levels to improve performance. It is based on the concept of noise cancellation: the technology analyses noise conditions on copper lines and creates a cancelling anti-noise signal. While data rates of up to 100Mb/s are achievable, as with all DSL-based services this is distance related: the maximum available bit rate is possible at a range of about 300-400 meters. more