Wikileaks Calls for Boycott of Domain Registrar eNom

In the aftermath of the shutdown of Wikileaks.org by a court order issued at the request of Swiss Bank Julius Baer, Wikileaks has called for the boycott of registrar eNom. eNom is best known as the domain registrar that complied with the federal government's order to shut down a Spanish travel agency because it did business with Cuba -- the agency was not under U.S. jurisdiction and so was hardly violating U.S. law, but their domain was registered in the United States, and that was good enough for the feds. more

IPv4 Addresses Not Property, Canada Weighs in on the Nortel/Microsoft Transfer

The recent tempest in a teacup on ARINs PPML list over the transfer of IP address blocks from Nortel (a company in Chapter 11) to Microsoft has some interesting Internet Governance dimensions that are yet to be discussed. One aspect that has been overlooked amidst all the sound and fury, is the governmental perspective on IP address transfers. more

Why Brands Need Their Own TLD - The Mulberry-Sale Site that Scammed Me

As a seasoned internet user, even an old 'Domainer', I was there when ICANN launched the first round of New TLDs. I remember the criticism we received from the media back then. We were invited to countless roundtable discussions, press conferences, and local internet events at which we were expected to answer the key media question: "Why are new TLDs necessary?" Dot BIZ, .INFO, and four more were the test bed new TLDs -- I represented .BIZ in EMEA. more

IPv6: Beware of Dirty, Muddy IPv4 Addresses as the Pool Dries Up

Mid March a special plenary session of the Canadian standard committee isacc was convened in Ottawa to review the final report of the Canadian IPv6 Task Group. It was unanimously approved and the essence of its 66 pages are seven recommendations for Government, Industry, Service and Content providers, and the regulator, CRTC to proceed with diligence, even some sense of urgency. One paragraph provides an interesting new twist... more

IPv6: A Lost Decade?

A 'decade from hell', according to Times Magazine, a 'dazing decade' says Newsweek. In Copenhagen, at the Climate Change Conference, the World Meteorological Organization talked of the 'hottest decade on record'. BusinessWeek characterized the decade as one of 'innovation interrupted'. All this gloom made me wonder how to qualify our IPv6 decade? more

CENTR Publishes the CENTRstats Global TLD Report for Q1 2021

CENTR has just published the latest edition of its CENTRstats Global TLD report, a quarterly publication that presents statistics and trends in domain name registrations of European country-code domains and the wider global market. more

ICANN Meets in Kuala Lumpur

Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released the following announcement today for its upcoming meetings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: ICANN, the international organisation responsible for managing and coordinating the Internet's Domain Name System is meeting in Kuala Lumpur 19-24 July, amidst reports that Internet usage in Asia is growing at an increasing pace, and that ICANN's model of public-private partnership is succeeding. more

DNS Reflection/Amplification Attack: Proved

Last year there was a "threat" by anonymous group to black out Internet by using DNS Reflection/Amplification attack against the Internet DNS Root servers. I even wrote a little article about it: "End of the world/Internet". In the article I was questioning if this was even possible and what was needed as general interest and curiosity. Well, looking at the "stophaus" attack last week, we are getting some answers. more

New gTLDs and Endangered Languages

While exploring the UNESCO's interactive atlas of the world's languages in danger, I am happy to see that new generic Top-Level Domains could help save some of these languages. .CAT for Catalan language already exist; .BZH will probably have the "Breton" language to help survive; "Basque" is vulnerable but there is a .EUS initiative; .CORSICA will certainly help the "Corsican" language to develop... more

Measuring the Use of DNSSEC

The canonical specification of the DNS that is normally cited are the pair of quite venerable RFCs, RFC 1034, "Domain names - concepts and facilities", and RFC 1035, "Domain names - implementation and specification", both published in November 1987. However, these two specification documents are just the tip of a rather large iceberg. One compendium of all the RFCs that touch upon the DNS lists some 292 RFCs. more

“Seven Dirty Words” Restriction Policy Lifted from .US Domain Name Registrations

Neustar, the registry operator of the .US domain and NTIA have reversed course, allowing the inclusion of previously restricted "seven dirty words" from future .US domain name registrations. more

Microsoft to Acquire Skype

In an press release today, Microsoft has made the official announcement for the purchase of Skype — one the most expensive acquisitions to date according to the company. more

Universal White Spaces: Moving Beyond the TV Bands

The FCC's recent decision allowing license-exempt access to TV White Spaces, i.e. unused TV channels, is a small but very important step in spectrum policy. But, more important than the TV bands, is the policy approach and the fact that it was adopted in the face of extreme lobbying by well established vested interests. 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

M3AAWG Releases Anti-Abuse Best Common Practices for Hosting and Cloud Service Providers

Jointly published by the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2C) and the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group, the new document outlines proven activities that can help Web hosting services improve their operations and better protect end-users. more