First “Middle East DNS Forum” Happening Feb 3-4 in Dubai - Live Video Stream Available

The first "Middle East DNS Forum" kicks off on this coming Monday, February 3, 2014, in Dubai. The event is hosted by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the UAE and was organized jointly by ICANN and the Internet Society. The event aims to bring together people from across the region to look at opportunities to advance the domain name industry within the region. more

ICANN Publishes New gTLD Timeline

On October 28th, at a Special Meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors, an updated New generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) timeline was adopted as a working plan. The new Launch Scenario indicates that the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook will be declared final at the December ICANN Meeting in Cartagena, Colombia. more

Radio Interview Discusses Domainers and Domaining

Damien Allen of VTalk Radio recently interviewed Professor Eric Goldman of the Santa Clara University School of Law on the topic of "Domaining". The interview covers the nature of domaining as a business and how it differs from cybersquatting. From the interview: "Often times the domainers are not particularly interested in profitable resale and, in fact, in my experience many times when domainers get complaints about domains, they'll just hand the domain name back, no questions asked and no money charged. They're not looking to make money from the resale of the domain names..." more

The IPTV Growth in South Korea

At the beginning of 2008, the South Korean government passed a law that allowed telecoms operators to broadcast programmes in real-time over their broadband networks. The KCC awarded IPTV licences to KT Corp, Hanaro Telecom and LG Dacom. KT was banking on real-time Internet TV services because growth in the traditional broadband and telephone markets had slowed. The company planned to invest more than KRW1.7 trillion (US$1.5 billion) in IPTV services by 2012 as part of efforts to cultivate new sources of revenue. more

Virginia Court Throws Out Spam Law; One Spammer Gets Away With It

The 2004 criminal spam case against large-scale spammer Jeremy Jaynes, which I've covered in several previous blog entries, appears to have come to an ignominious end with the state supreme court throwing out the law under which he was convicted. The Virginia anti-spam law was one of the first in the country with criminal provisions, but it failed due to the way that First Amendment cases are treated differently from all other cases. more

Funky Ninth Circuit Opinion on Domain Names and Nominative Use - Toyota v. Tabari

Every time I see a federal appellate opinion on domain names, I'm vaguely reminded of the Country Joe song I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag, whose course goes "And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?" Fortunately, domain name disputes do not lead to the senseless loss of life we experienced from the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, lengthy domain name litigation usually has little more strategic value. more

Aalyria, a Space Internet Startup With Nearly a Decade’s Worth of Intellectual Property From Alphabet

Aalyria, a new space Internet company, just burst out of stealth mode. It is based on work done on Alphabet's "moonshot" Project Loon and Alphabet transferred almost a decade's worth of technology IP, patents, office space, and other assets to Aalyria in return for an equity stake in the company. Spacetime is Aalyria's intelligent network orchestration technology, and Tightbeam is its advanced atmospheric laser communications technology. more

First RIPE NCC “Seizure of IPv4 Addresses” – Is This the Beginning of IPv4 as Collateral?

In a publication released on October 2, 2020, RIPE NCC reported its first seizure of IPv4 registration rights pursuant to a Dutch court order. Pursuant to the order, RIPE NCC effectuated a transfer of the IP Addresses from the liquidating debtor to its creditor. Although these IP Addresses could not be owned, they were apparently not legacy. Thus, they conferred no "property rights" - the registration rights were deemed an enforceable right that has value and were to be utilized towards satisfaction of a judgment. more

2008: A Historic Year for DNS

As we start the new year, it is worth noting some of the major events and news in 2008 that shaped the industry and fueled considerable discussions. Last year's occurrences made for a very historic year, bearing the seeds of future changes for the DNS and domain name industry. more

27 Countries Issue Joint Statement on ‘Advancing Responsible State Behavior in Cyberspace’

The joint statement was released on Monday at the United Nations ahead of the UN General Assembly's General Debate calling on all states to support the evolving framework and to join in ensuring "greater accountability and stability in cyberspace." more

ICANN Postpones Amazon Domain Decision, Crusade Continues Between Amazon Nations and Amazon Inc.

ICANN on Monday extended the deadline to April for Amazon basin nations to reach a deal with the tech giant Amazon Inc in their seven-year battle over the .amazon domain name. more

Sledgehammer DDoS Gamification and Future Bugbounty Integration

Monetization of DDoS attacks has been core to online crime way before the term cybercrime was ever coined. For the first half of the Internet's life, DDoS was primarily a mechanism to extort money from targeted organizations. As with just about every Internet threat over time, it has evolved and broadened in scope and objectives. The new report by Forcepoint Security Labs covering their investigation of the Sledgehammer gamification of DDoS attacks is a beautiful example of that evolution. more

ICANN’s Last Call for Whois Comments

From "Last Call for Whois Comments", a recent opinion piece by eWeek's Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer: "It's not a good sign when the criminals and the lawyers are on the same side of an issue; there may be no good solution to the problems of Whois service rules. Who would have imagined that so much business and so much abuse would center around Internet domain names? Certainly not the designers of the system, including those of the Whois service, which reports on ownership and some other data on domain names... more

Clearing up the “logjam”: ICANN Must Drop its Request for a Unilateral Right to Amend the Agreements

A very rare thing happened in the GNSO Council meeting this week - the ICANN community spoke with one voice. Registries, registrars, non-commercial interests, new TLD applicants, IP owners and businesses unanimously and unambiguously agreed that giving ICANN a "unilateral right to amend" the registry and registrar agreements is not compatible with ICANN's bottom-up processes and poses a fundamental threat to the multi-stakeholder model. There is true consensus that this change should be rejected. more

Another Big Step Forward for New TLDs

So after the initial reaction and "over-reaction" by some folks in the audience, I have been thinking about the implications of the ICANN resolution on new gTLDs at its Board meeting in Cartagena, Colombia. In short, the resolution and subsequent comments by the chair, Peter Dengate-Thrush have shown that there is positive momentum with respect to the program overall. "We have reached a turning point in the new gTLD program" he said. more