Internet Connectivity: Toward a Sustainable Funding Model

I'm writing this in the midst of policy discussions between the Internet world (as embodied in ISOC) and the Telecommunications industry (ITU). The Internet and Telecommunications are very different concepts. The Internet allows us to focus on the task at hand. That's why it is so exciting. Historically telecommunication assumed value was created inside the network and this creates conflict with creating value outside the network. more

When Did CIRA Become the Commercial Internet Registration Authority?

Nearly ten years ago, the Government of Canada wrote a letter to the chair of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) that set out the framework for the management of the dot-ca domain. The government articulated a vision of the dot-ca domain as a “key public resource” and called on CIRA to act in an open and transparent manner. CIRA has long sought to live up to those standards, but in recent months the organization has shown an unmistakable shift toward prioritizing commercial gain over the public interest along with a troubling move toward secret decision making... more

ICANN Approves At-Large Framework for Latin America

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently launched organizing of the individual Internet user community (At-Large) for increasing global participation and representation in ICANN. Under a framework approved by ICANN's Board of Directors, local and regional groups may now form in Latin America to involve their members in critical issues that effect their use of the Internet's domain name system. more

Sensitive Data Discovery: The First Step in Data Breach Protection

Users are tired of hearing about data breaches that put their sensitive information at risk. Reports show that cybercriminals stole 6.41 million records in the first quarter of 2023 alone. From medical data to passwords and even DNA information, hackers have stolen a lot of sensitive information in 2023. more

Not Quite Two Factor, or Is Your Phone Number Really Something You Have?

A recent article in the New York Times Dealbook column reported on phone number hijacking, in which a bad guy fraudulently takes over someone's mobile phone number and used it to reset credentials and drain the victim's account. It happens a lot, even to the chief technologist of the FTC. This reminds us that security is hard, and understanding two-factor authentication is harder than it seems. more

Internet Regulation in the Age of Hyper-Giants

As we enter the seventh round of the net neutrality fight, advocates continue to make the same argument they've offered since 2002: infrastructure companies will do massive harm to little guys unless restrained by strict regulation. This idea once made intuitive sense, but it has been bypassed by reality. ... When Tim Wu wrote his first net neutrality paper, the largest telecoms were Verizon, AT&T, and SBC; they stood at numbers 11, 15, and 27 respectively in the Fortune 500 list. more

Obama’s Broadband Plan Will Fail

We stand by our analysis from March 2010, in which we indicated that a national wireless broadband plan remains a second-class option as the infrastructure for the emerging digital economy in America. In his State of the Union address President Obama set the goal of enabling businesses to provide high-speed wireless services to at least 98% of all Americans within five years. To pay for this the government hopes to raise nearly $28 billion from spectrum auctions. more

How Will the New .AU Domain Licensing Rules Impact You?

The .AU Domain Administration (auDA) will soon implement new .AU domain administration licensing rules either late this year or early next year. These rules apply to new registrations and around 3 million existing domain names in the com.au, net.au, org.au, and more .AU namespaces... Previously, an Australian trademark application or registration may constitute the required Australian presence for an .AU domain name, but the domain name need not match the trademark. more

ICANN Finds Its Voice

I think we are finally getting somewhere: ICANN is no longer fluttering flusteredly whenever a lobbying group sends a nastygram over the transom. Case in point: a Association of National Advertisers (ANA) that arrived a few days ago, full of bombast and muscle-flexing, demanding that ICANN immediately stop the new gTLD program until a long list of demands from the ANA were met, or else the ANA would be forced to take some Very Scary Actions... more

Tips to Protect Your Brand in the New Domain Name Marketplace

Over time, people have grown accustomed to most Web site addresses ending in .com, .edu or .gov. Yet a proposed expansion of the generic top-level domain (gTLD) space by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will change the way we look at domain names forever... For businesses, this change means that protecting their trademarks and searching for and watching gTLDs will become increasingly complex. more

UDRP: The Liabilities for the Corporations and/or their Lawyers

This post is based on the scenario that a trademark.tld domain name is registered with a UK ICANN accredited registrar, (they have an exclusive UK jurisdiction clause in their contracts), the trademark.tld criticism website located at that domain name is strictly non-commercial, the servers are located in the UK, and the registrant is a British citizen. In the above circumstances, the corporations and/or their lawyers are taking a big risk when they use the Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policies (UDRP) in order to silence criticism at trademark.tld. more

Typosquatting as Per Se Cybersquatting Unless Proved Otherwise

The quintessence of typosquatting is syntactical variation: adding, omitting, replacing, substituting, and transposing words and letters. Since these minor variations are mostly indefensible, respondents rarely respond to complaints, although as I will explain in a moment there can also be innocent and good faith syntactical variations which are not typosquatting. It follows that if there are defenses, respondents should prudently respond and explain their choices because default generally favors complainants. more

5G Security Transparency

There is considerable rhetoric propagated today about 5G security. Some of the more blatant assertions border on xenophobia with vague assertions that the 5G vendors from some countries cannot be trusted and wholesale government banning is required. Existing treaty obligations are being summarily abrogated in favour of bilateral trade bullying. These are practices that the late President George H.W. Bush sought to eliminate a quarter century ago through intergovernmental organization initiatives... more

Heartbleed: Don’t Panic

There's been a lot of ink and pixels spilled of late over the Heartbleed bug. Yes, it's serious. Yes, it potentially affects almost everyone. Yes, there are some precautions you should take. But there's good news, too: for many people, it's a non-event. Heartbleed allows an attacker to recover a random memory area from a web or email server running certain versions of OpenSSL. The question is what's in that memory. It may be nothing, or it may contain user passwords (this has reportedly been seen on Yahoo's mail service), cryptographic keys, etc. more

GigaNet Announces Global Scholar Network, Issues CFP

The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet), an emerging scholarly community initiated in Spring 2006, has issued a call for proposals (CFP) to speak at its first conference to be held on 29 October 2006 in Athens, Greece prior to the inaugural Internet Governance Forum meeting. more