Insight: .JOBS and New TLD’s - Are You Paying Attention?

A lot of the people are planning to attend the .nxt conference next month ask me to point out the benefits of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs), and today gave me a fantastic opportunity... If you are thinking of applying for a new TLD and haven't been paying attention to the latest happening with .JOBS, maybe you should be. Though .JOBS has been a bit of a quiet TLD, they've been a favorite of mine because of the specific focus of the extension. more

Permanent Denial-of-Service Attacks on the Rise, Incidents Involve Hardware-Damaging Assaults

Also known loosely as "phlashing" in some circles, Permanent Denial-of-Service (PDoS) is an increasing popular form of cyberattack that damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of hardware. more

India: Changing Trends in Passing-Off

In India, whilst the Intellectual property owners continue to face the problems of counterfeiting and infringements of their brand names/trade marks, the emerging trend amongst misusers appears to be adopting famous/well known marks as a part of their trading style/corporate name. Obviously, the intention is to choose a name that is easy to recollect and gives the impression of being associated with a well-known company. More often than not, in order to claim honesty in adoption, the marks are adopted in relation to a different business as that of the IP holder. Also it is common among misusers to slightly twist the name or add a descriptive suffix/prefix to the well-known mark. more

White House Issues Cloud Computing Policy Standards

U.S. Office of Management and Budget released a memo today establishing a program to reduce "duplicative efforts, inconsistencies and cost inefficiencies when assessing and authorizing cloud systems." The initiative called, Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), is aimed to develop a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services through standardized security requirements and controls. more

In Praise of OpenDNS and a Wii Factoid

If you are not already using OpenDNS on your home network I have one question for you. Why not? When it debuted, OpenDNS' main advantage was speed. It is a great deal faster than the DNS operated by most ISPs so, if you configure your border router/DHCP server to use OpenDNS name servers, the t'internet magically speeds up... On looking at the OpenDNS stats for my home network the other day, one item gave me cause to scratch my head a little. There was a non-trivial number of AAAA look-ups going on. In case you don't know (and I know you do), AAAA look-ups are IPv6 address look-ups... more

MOPO - The Latest Speed Bump on ICANN’s New gTLD Superhighway

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a Petri dish for acronyms. The latest one to be introduced into the ICANN lexicon is MOPO which is short for Morality and Public Order. MOPO is one of the four grounds by which a third party can challenge an application for a new generic top-level domain (gTLD). The profile of MOPO recently increased when ICANN's Government Advisory Committee (GAC) provided formal advice to the ICANN Board regarding the current MOPO procedures set forth in ICANN's Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG) for new gTLD applicants. The resolution of this issue will largely determine whether new gTLD applications will be accepted by ICANN in 2011 as planned or sometime in the far distant future. more

ICANN Pressured to Reserve Names: “We don’t accept any more reservations!”

It is not a secret that I have been (and I continue to be) against the requests made to ICANN by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Red Cross for special protection of their names and their variations. I am mainly against it because of the problems associated with these types of protection, the potential implications they may have and the fact that any attempt to reserve any names in the Domain Name Space will set a very bad precedent that will be detrimental to the whole new gTLDs experience. Well, the effect of this precedent is right upon us... more

How Rise in Nationalism and Industry’s Lack of Foresight Could Mean a Fragmented and Isolated Web

I have been thinking a lot lately on the topic of the free flow of information on the internet -- what kinds of tools are available now and in the future for governments (especially repressive ones) to control content, isolate their people and keep any contrary viewpoints censored. I had an interesting conversation with a Practice Lead from IFTF.org. The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a California based independent, nonprofit research group with 40 years of experience in identifying emerging trends that will transform global society... Turns out they are quite concerned about the fragmentation and control of the Internet as well. But will it be an inevitability? more

NAF Caught Revising Past UDRP Decisions?

In a previous CircleID article, it was discovered and documented that NAF Panelists and Complainants were systematically copying/pasting nonsense into UDRP decisions. It has been a couple of months with no action by ICANN, and no public statement by NAF. In a shocking new development, though, it turns out that NAF has quietly edited a past UDRP decision! more

Take Down Order by California Court Raises Issues of Censorship and Free Speech

The internet is abuzz with commentary about a recent case in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California concerning the web site wikileaks.org, a "website dedicated to leaking documents that are "anonymous, untraceable, uncensorable." Time Magazine allegedly described the site by stating that it "could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act." The case certainly raises important issues concerning First Amendment Rights, censorship and freedom of speech. The case involves the alleged posting of private internal documents of Bank Julius Baer & Co and its bank customers... more

Law and Disorder: When .Brand Meets .Crime

Barclays Bank is a .brand pioneer, having recently announced plans to migrate its primary online presence to two new gTLDs it will operate on its own behalf. But Barclays Bank has also just plead guilty to a major financial services felony and been fined $2.4 billion for that criminal activity. While the new gTLD Registry Agreement is clear that a registry operator must remove any officer or director convicted of a felony, it is ambiguous in regard to whether the Agreement can be terminated when the operator itself has been found to have operated a criminal enterprise. more

Singular and Plural New gTLDs: Costly Headaches

ICANN has recently stated that it will allow the public to register plural and singular gTLDs that are variants of words already registered as domain names. .Books will be able to join the currently allocated .book, and .pet will be able to join .pets. Of course, a pair like .blue and .blues, two words that look alike but have different meanings, isn't at issue here. The focus is just plurals and singulars. But that leaves plenty of room for trouble, and ICANN has to tackle some tough questions now, before the policy launch. more

How to Discredit Net Neutrality

On Tuesday (November 30) Internet backbone provider Level3 publicly accused cable-based ISP Comcast of trying to thwart competing video services delivered through the internet. Comcast was, according to Level3, suddenly choosing to charge it more because of its carriage of Netflix traffic. The accusation was consciously framed to raise net neutrality alarms. It appeared as if a cable TV giant was using its control of internet access to make access to a competing, over the top video service more expensive... Then the full story came out. more

Reading Tea Leaves: China Statement on Internet Policy

The Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China has issued a statement on "Internet Policy in China." Released Tuesday, the lengthy statement covers a range of topics from promoting internal development and use, to freedom of expression, protecting Internet security, and international cooperation. A quick review reveals two interesting passages relevant to global Internet governance. more

Some Internet Measurements

At APNIC Labs we've been working on developing a new approach to navigating through some of our data sets the describe aspects of IPv6 deployment, the use of DNSSEC and some measurements relating to the current state of BGP. The intent of this particular set of data collections is to allow the data to be placed into a relative context, displaying comparison of the individual measurements at a level of geographic regions, individual countries, and individual networks. more