Ignore The Chicken Littles: Let’s Give New Web Domains a Try

Before the experiment has gotten off the ground, some critics have expressed concern about applications to operate domains referring to a "generic" product or service, like .car, .book, or .app. News reports indicate that Microsoft and other Google competitors have filed complaints about Google's applications, while authors' organizations have raised questions about some of Amazon's applications. These complaints assert that giving these applicants the right to operate these new domains would provide an unfair competitive advantage. more

Cyber Security: A Duty to Care?

Yesterday, in my post on three new threats in one day, I posed the question whether it was necessary to develop regulations that would set a minimum standard on cyber security for devices that connect to the Internet. I'm having second thoughts here, which I'll explain in this post, but also try to look at a way forward and ask you to engage. more

Russian IDN ccTLD .?? Opens for Registrations, Makes History

November 11, 2010, marked the day when the new Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) contry code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) .?? (Cyrillic for ?????????? ?????????, Russian Federation) was opened for general registration. Prior to that date the registration was open only for trademark owners and governmental institutions. ... It turned out they needed less than three hours to reach to the 100,000 domain names! Such a gold rush was not expected, and numbers continued to grow - 200,000 within 6 hours... more than 460,000 by today. more

ICANN Gives .amazon Talks a March Deadline

ICANN's board of directors has voted to put a March deadline on discussions concerning .amazon top-level domain. more

Remembering the Good Times

The most effective early email-borne viruses didn't need botnets. They didn't change your computer settings, or steal your login credentials. And they somehow convinced regular users to help them spread. The first warnings about the Good Times virus began to appear in November of 1994, and by December the warnings were seen all over as people did what the warning said, and forwarded it to all their friends. There was another outbreak the following March... more

Coming to Grips with an Internet that Never Forgets

My weekly technology law column discusses the implications of an Internet that never forgets. I note that the most significant Internet effect during the current election campaign in Canada has not been any particular online video, website or Facebook group. Instead, it has been the resignation of eight Canadian candidates based on embarrassing or controversial information unearthed online. more

Data, DNS Abuse and What to Do Next

To the annoyance of some, surely, the issue of abuse in the domain name system (DNS) has been high on the list of critical issues in internet governance circles. Personally, in my more than 20 years of internet governance experience, tackling DNS abuse is one of the more important issues I've participated in and seen debated. Despite this intense scrutiny, common-sense solutions (such as contract improvements) have been so far elusive, even as they fall squarely within its ICANN's remit. more

Researchers Uncover Massive Underground Link-Shortening Service Used by Malicious Actors

New research indicates that the .US top-level domain contains numerous domains linked to a malicious link-shortening service dubbed 'Prolific Puma' promoting malware and phishing. Infoblox has been monitoring this three-year-old service, which uses short domains hosted on uncooperative providers to disguise harmful landing pages. more

Is Bulgarian Cyrillic .?? (.bg) Really Similar to Other Latin ccTLDs?

Bulgaria has proposed for an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) ccTLD string .?? (Cyrillic for .bg, or U+0431 U+0433), but the proposal was turned down by the ICANN DNS Stability panel in May 2010 without any arguments or an option for appeal. The proposed string is composed of two characters... more

Why ICANN Doesn’t Need to Go Back to the GAC Over Dot-XXX

This Friday, it looks as though the ICANN Board will follow the clear conclusions drawn by its independent review and approve dot-xxx. Given the importance of the first use of the review process, the importance of the Board being seen to be accountable and the fact that the community was pretty unanimous in recent public comment, it is pretty much the only reasonable course of action. The question then is: how do things move forward? more

Eight-Year Legal Battle Recap: DCA Blocked From Being Heard on Its Merit

It has been a while, nearly eight years since we have been in touch. I thought I would post an update to the DCA vs ICANN case, to the interested party of the global internet, towards the eight-year legal battle DCA had with ICANN. I believe there would be useful lessons learned that would shed some light on ICANN's activities in the Internet community. For those not aware, the DCA vs. ICANN case involved many twists and turns, spanning nearly a decade of DCA's efforts to hold ICANN accountable for the harm it caused to DCA over the delegation rights of the .Africa new gTLD Registry. more

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Chief David Redl Resigns

David Redl, head of U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) resigned abruptly from his position on Thursday. more

Yahoo’s 1 Billion Accounts Hacked is a Chilling Warning: Start Doing Things Differently or Die

Today, this is how easily "TRUST" by your users/customers can be shattered, your revenues devastated, your share value plunged into the abyss, and your business destroyed. Furthermore, conventional thinking belongs only in university libraries, not in board rooms. It is time to seriously consider other innovative Out-Of-The-Box Solutions and doing things differently, or start writing your business obituary. more

Time to Take Stock: Twelve Internet and Jurisdiction Trends in Retrospect

With the growing tension between the cross-border Internet and the patchwork of national jurisdictions, it becomes crucial to keep track of key global trends that drive the debate on appropriate frameworks. One year ago, the Internet & Jurisdiction Project initiated a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process on these issues. To provide a factual basis for such discussions, it established an Observatory, supported by a network of selected international experts, to detect and categorize relevant cases via an innovative crowd-based filtering process in order to identify high-level patterns. more

Beyond Telco 2.0 and Quadruple Play

One of the great challenges has been to conceive a business model for next generation telephone companies. This is constrained by their limited core competences which do not match well with many of the opportunities that lie in entertainment and complex/customised bundles for consumers. Frost & Sullivan, a leading firm of industry analysts, notes the enthusiasm of service providers to offer connectivity, entertainment and information services, within a digitally connected world... more