CIPA Supports Key Findings From Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies Survey

The Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) has posted here previously about the realities of people using the Internet today to purchase prescription medications. We've written extensively about the importance of access to safe online pharmacy websites -- run by licensed, legitimate pharmacies -- dispensing legally manufactured maintenance drugs to individuals with valid prescriptions. more

Unlicensed Millimeter Wave Spectrum

I haven't seen it talked about a lot, but the FCC has set aside millimeter wave spectrum that can be used by anybody to provide broadband. That means that entities will be able to use the spectrum in rural America in areas that the big cellphone companies are likely to ignore. The FCC set aside the V band (60 GHz) as unlicensed spectrum. This band provides 14 GHz of contiguous spectrum available for anybody to use. This is an interesting spectrum because it has a few drawbacks. more

FttH Is Not About High-Speed Internet Access - It Is About the Internet of Things

The future of our communications infrastructure will to a very large extent be based on the Internet of Things (IoT). What this means is that hundreds of millions of devices will be connected to the national broadband networks (NBN), gathering massive amounts of information and providing feedback in real time. In any single country, the electricity grid alone will have tens of millions of sensors and devices connected to deliver the energy efficiencies that we all so desperately need. more

The Internet And Its Governance: Where Should We Look For Models?

The US Department of Commerce (DOC) has recently signed a new contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for one more year. ICANN and the DOC are to continue to work together to design an organizational form that is suitable to administer and control the infrastructure of the Internet. That infrastructure includes the IP numbers, which are critical to the functioning of the Internet protocol TCP/IP. These numbers must be unique for the Internet to continue to function. The infrastructure also includes the protocols that make the Internet possible. Protocols involve the conventions or agreements that each network that is part of the Internet accepts in order to make communication possible across the boundaries of the different technical and political and administrative entities that comprise the networks of the Internet. Another component of the Internet's infrastructure is the domain name system (DNS). This system includes the names that identify various sites on the Internet and the translation of those names into IP numbers via the system of computers that make the one to one mapping between names and numbers. more

Recognizing ICANN’s Failures

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has failed on a number of fronts, resulting in sub-par products and services in a global monopolistic environment. Failures will continue if not recognized and immediately addressed. Leadership is about the future, a journey into uncharted territory, and it requires vision supported by technical, operational, and mind-changing competencies. ... It does not require a rocket scientist to recognize that ICANN has fallen short because it lacks... 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

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

Comments on Economics Study of ICANN’s New TLDs

ICANN has taken another crack at the question of the economics of launching new top-level domains (TLDs). The first report that the group commissioned on the subject was greeted by a loud and unhappy uproar. Now we have the preliminary draft of a new report, this one by professors Katz, Rosston, and Sullivan. It is insightful and analytic, but the final version needs to consider the theoretical and empirical issues... more

Over 50 Domain Operators in China Ask ICANN for Immediate Fee Waivers Due to Impact from Coronavirus

Over 50 domain name registries and registrars in China have sent a joint letter to ICANN requesting immediate consideration to remove the 2020 fees. more

Comparative Broadband Speeds - US Loses Again

Recently Google Labs added the Ookla Speedtest data set to their wonderful Public Data Explorer so I just had to try it out. These are not bogus statistics. These graphs show the average of all the millions of actual speedtests run in the respective countries over the past 4 months. more

DNS: The Basis for Billions

In the midst of "Cyber Monday", the day traditionally seen as one of the year's busiest days for online shopping, it is only appropriate to examine the importance DNS plays for online economies. With DNS being at the heart of Internet connectivity it is easy to understand why DNS is important to the growing health of economies whose online health in dollars and euros rest in the billions. more

CallService.biz Shut Down by the FBI

Gary Warner over at Cyber Crime and Doing Time has a good post up this week about the CallService.biz website being shut down. I have posted a few good excerpts and added my comments to the end. ... Warner's take on the world of spam, malware, hacking and phishing is that unless people actually go to jail because they are spamming, the problem of spamming will never get better. That's because when the security industry fixes the latest hole or comes up with a new technology to stop the newest threat, spammers simply move onto another. more

More on 700 MHz Block C Hits Reserve Price

This is big... For the upper band C Block, the FCC mandated that any winning licensee have in place "no locking" and "no blocking" provisions conditioning its use of this spectrum: "Licensees offering service on spectrum subject to this section shall not deny, limit, or restrict the ability of their customers to use the devices and applications of their choice on the licensee..." The no-locking, no-blocking requirements were hedged in by substantial limitations... But it's still important... Particularly if Google is the winning bidder, something we may not know for a month or so. more

Spam Kings: Book Review (Part 1)

A few months ago, I purchased the book Spam Kings, but only recently managed to get around to reading and finishing it. In case you've never read it, it chronicles the stories of some spammers and the anti-spammers who fought them. These anti-spammers are not people like myself in industry; rather, they are users who have received spam who hunt down the source of the spam and work to bring them down. more

SOPA Could Shutter Registrars and other Domain Name Industry Intermediaries

The Internet Commerce Association has just sent a letter to senior members of the House Judiciary Committee regarding the likely unintended but potentially devastating impact of H.R. 3261 ("SOPA") as introduced upon ICANN-accredited registrars and other participants in the broad domain name industry, as well as upon the domain registrants who use those services. more