Who Are the Major New gTLD Applicants and… (Part Three: Minds + Machines)

Minds + Machines was the first "new gTLD portfolio applicant" I spotted early in 2008, when .PARIS started being mentioned. Then came a few other projects like .HORSE and later .VODKA. Being French, my vision of good new gTLD suffixes may be slightly different to those native English speakers. Therefore, I favour some TLDs such as .SURF and .ART over some clearly English terms others such as .HORSE. more

Learning to Love the WTO: How Trade Policy Can Save Open Internet - and Bridge the Digital Divide

From the dawn of the mainstream commercial Internet in the late 1990s until quite recently, the world trade and Internet communities have been almost entirely disconnected from one another. This isn't surprising, given that trade policy historically follows technological developments with a considerable 'lag.' As the senior-most 'permanent representative' on the ground in Geneva from the for-profit tech sector, a big part of my job is to try and translate the Internet for the Diplomatic Corps across many different policy subjects. more

Beyond the Top Level: DNSSEC Deployment at ICANN 40

I recently wrote about the encouraging level of DNSSEC adoption among top-level domain name registries, and noted that adoption at the second level and in applications is an important next step for adding more security to the DNS. The root and approximately 20 percent of the top level domains are now signed; it is time for registrars and recursive DNS servers operated by the ISPs to occupy center stage. more

IPv6: Zeno’s Paradox and Invisible Brick Walls

As we continue our ride toward the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, Regional Internet Registries public discussion groups remain filled with endless discussions on how large swaths of allocated IPv4 addresses are unused, should be reclaimed or recycled one way or another, maybe be put on the free market and sold to the highest bidder or parsed out in more egalitarian controlled ways. Although everyone now accepts the notion of IPv4 address exhaustion, it seems to be for some an invisible glass wall and for others a gold brick wall worth the death of the internet to get a piece of it. more

Challenging Domain Names for Abusive Registration: UDRP and ACPA

There are predatory-domain name registrants, and there are registrants engaged in the legitimate business of acquiring, monetizing and reselling domain names. That there are more of the first than the second is evident from proceedings under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). "Given the human capacity for mischief in all its forms, the Policy sensibly takes an open-ended approach to bad faith, listing some examples without attempting to enumerate all its varieties exhaustively. more

PayPal Sells X.com Back to Its Previous Owner, Elon Musk

PayPal's corporate communications director confirmed that the company has sold the domain X.com back to its previous owner, Elon Musk. more

Russian Hackers Have Penetrated U.S. Electric Utilities

U.S. federal government officials have revealed Russian hackers have been able to gain access to the networks of electric utilities in the country, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. more

Freedom of Expression Chilled by ICANN’s Addition of Speech Restrictions in DNS

Freedom of expression on the Internet is at risk from ICANN's recent decision to prohibit anyone but one specific type of doctor from using the word within the .doctor new gTLD space. Last month, ICANN's New GTLD Program Committee decided that only "medical practitioners" would be allowed to register a domain in the .doctor name space. ICANN's decision to exclude numerous lawful users of the word, including a broad range of individuals who are in fact doctors, comes at a time when the world is watching ICANN to see if it can adequately protect Internet users' rights in the absence of US Government supervision. more

Net Neutrality and the Obama Stimulus Package

As long as US telecom is duopoly dominated, a neutral Internet is endangered if not impossible; regulation of this kind of concentrated power is necessary but is unlikely to be sufficient. The solution, IMHO, is to dilute the power of the duopoly so that consumers can buy whatever kind of Internet access they want. Countries like the UK with a competitive ISP market do not seem to have net neutrality problems nor require net neutrality regulation and have better Internet access than we do at lower prices. more

Microsoft, Federal Agencies Take Down Rustock Botnet

Neil Schwartzman writes: "There is a lot of press on the profound effect the take-down of the Rustock botnet, affected by Microsoft, some U.S. federal agencies, and countless others working in the background to assist in the effort. CAUCE has aggregated a few of the best stories and data-points. A community congratulations, and thank-you to all those involved!" more

Call for Proposals: ICANN 64 DNSSEC Workshop in Kobe, Japan (March 2019)

Will you be at the ICANN 64 meeting in March 2019 in Kobe, Japan? If so (or if you can get to Kobe), would you be interested in speaking about any work you have done (or are doing) with DNSSEC, DANE or other DNS security and privacy technologies? If you are interested, please send a brief (1-2 sentence) description of your proposed presentation before 07 February 2019. more

ICANN Board Rejects the Proposed Sale of .ORG to Ethos Capital

In a decision made on Thursday, the ICANN Board said: "withholding consent of the transfer of PIR from the Internet Society (ISOC) to Ethos Capital is reasonable, and the right thing to do," based on various factors that the Board believes will create unacceptable uncertainty for the future of .ORG, the third-largest gTLD registry. more

Open DNS Resolvers - Coming to an IP Address Near You!

Three vectors were exploited in the recent DDoS attack against Spamhaus: 1) Amplification of DNS queries through the use of DNSSEC signed data; 2) Spoofed source addresses due to lack of ingress filtering (BCP-38) on originating networks; 3) Utilisation of multiple open DNS resolvers While. 1) is unavoidable simply due to the additional data that DNSSEC produces, and 2) "should" be practised as part of any provider's network configuration, it is 3) that requires "you and I" ensure that systems are adequately configured.  more

Native Web Applications (NWA) vs. Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

A rewrite of the Rich Internet Application (RIA) article is my latest contribution to Wikipedia following last year's full rewrite of the Cloud Computing article (which is now finally fairly stable and one of the main authoritative sources on the topic; according to the article statistics I've just done my 500th edit, or one every eight hours on average so it's about as up-to-date as you'll find). Needless to say I agree wholeheartedly with Mozilla's Mark Finkle in saying RIA is Dead! Long Live Web Applications... more

One Year Later: Who’s Doing What With IPv6?

One year on from the World IPv6 Launch in June 2012, we wanted to see how much progress has been made towards the goal of global IPv6 deployment. Both APNIC and Google are carrying out measurements at the end user level, which show that around 1.29% (APNIC) and 1.48% (Google) of end users are capable of accessing the IPv6 Internet. Measurements taken from this time last year show 0.49% (APNIC) and 0.72% (Google), which means the amount of IPv6-enabled end users has more than doubled in the past 12 months. more