Analysis of the US Broadband Stimulus Package

In January 2009 the US Congress began considering the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill 2009 aimed at kick-starting an economy in deep recession. The package, passed into law on 17 February, comprised $787 billion of mainly tax cuts, unemployment benefits and spending in education, health care, infrastructure and energy. Included in the fiscal stimulus package was a relatively modest $7.2 billion for broadband and wireless in unserved and underserved areas... more

Will Arrest Stem Tide of Spam?

Legitimate email marketers, anti-spam groups and beleaguered recipients got a bit of good news with the arrest last week of a man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers. Robert Alan Soloway, 27, dubbed "the Seattle Spammer" by federal officials, was indicted on 35 charges related to fraudulent Internet activities. Soloway pleaded not guilty to all charges at his May 30 arraignment. You can read more here. Although it's always great when a notorious spammer gets put out of business, such actions probably won't result in a drop in the amount of spam that gets sent... more

The Golden Dome and the Scramble for Spectrum: How Missile Defense Could Reshape Wireless Policy

A recently passed American spending bill, known as H.R. 1, allocates $24.5 billion for fiscal year 2025 to fund a nationwide integrated air and missile defense system. Although the term isn't used in the legislation, the new system is referred to as the Golden Dome. There will be higher costs coming in later years. The Department of Defense has already set a target to be able to test the new system by the fall of 2027. more

The Resurgence of Voice

One of the most interesting outcomes of the COVID-19 crisis has been a huge resurgence of telephone calls. While broadband usage is up 40% or more in some markets, the volumes of traditional voice calls have skyrocketed. Verizon says it's now seeing an average of 800 million calls per day, which is double the number of calls made on the last Mother's Day. Verizon also says the average length of calls has increased by one-third over recent averages. more

Experience ‘a Walk in the Shoes of a Registry Operator’ at ICANN 61

One of the ever-present questions in the domain name community is "have new TLDs been a success in the marketplace?" As many within the industry will appreciate, it's a difficult question to answer using traditional metrics (such as domain registration volumes), and it is important to remember that the new TLD expansion in 2012 was all about diversity, competition and choice. more

Google Partners with Internet Archive for Historical Web Context in Search Results

Google Search is rolling out a new feature that allows users to access historical versions of websites directly through The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. more

NYC Fiber Network Distributes Entangled Photons, Paving the Way for the Quantum Internet

In a groundbreaking development for quantum communication, researchers at Qunnect Inc. have successfully achieved the automated distribution of polarization-entangled photons over New York City's existing fiber network. more

You Cannot Tell Your Customers to ‘Shut Up’ Anymore - Consumer Review Fairness Act Signed Into Law

Bad idea: Set up a business and provide poor goods or services; receive bad reviews online for your poor goods or services. Worse idea: Instead of treating your customers' feedback as free expert advice and listening to their suggestions on how to improve your business, sue your customers -- experience the Streisand Effect -- resulting in increased media coverage highlighting your lousy goods, service, and treatment of customers. Ensure that negatives reviews of your business get the widest exposure possible. more

ICANN’s ePDP - An Insider’s Perspective

Amazingly enough, summer is rapidly ending as kids head back to school, the temperatures in the mornings are just slightly cooler, and soon enough jeans and sweatshirts will be upon us. It also means that the important work on ICANN's temporary specification regarding WHOIS relative to GDPR has already aged a few months. The ICANN Board adopted the temporary specification in May 2018 and it became effective on the 25th of the month. more

Study Looks at the Amount of Spam Over IPv6

A study conducted by RIPE Labs indicates that about 1.89% of spam are received over IPv6. "With the increased deployment of IPv6, we were curious to see how much the amount of spam sent over IPv6 increases. We looked at the e-mail system of the RIPE NCC and produced some statistics that could be seen as an indication for the overall trend of spam sent over IPv6," says RIPE in a blog post explaining the analysis. Group also notes that the study was based on one week’s worth of data and that it excluded messages already rejected by blacklisting and greylisting. more

When is a Typo Not a Typo?

I was reading about the Nieman Marcus lawsuit and on a phone call related to the "Working Group on Mechanisms to Protect Rights of Others", when suddenly it occurred to me that this whole rush to rid the world of typos could eventually head in a messy direction... How far can this go? Let me take you back to that phone call I was on where representatives of Yahoo indicated they would try to secure Flicker.XXX as a TYPO of Flickr.com (their made up brand name) during a potential new TLD sunrise period. How backward is that? A Typo that became a brand, trying to call the generic name a variant of their trademark! more

Opinion: UK Moving Quickly Down the Slippery Slope…

Admittedly, I'm a not Johnny-come-lately with regards to surveillance, intelligence, telecommunications, network security, law enforcement, and a cross-pollination of all-of-the-above. I actually have a very colorful background of working within all of the aforementioned disciplines - at one time or another - either through the U.S. Military, U.S Government contractors, private industry, etc. ... And unfortunately, I am not generally "shocked" very often by much of the abuses being perpetrated on unwitting Internet users, both by supposedly "trusted" entities (e.g. Democratic Governments, ISPs, etc.) more

ICANN’s Accountability and Transparency – a Retrospective on the IANA Transition

As we passed five years since the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition took place, my co-authors and I paused to look back on this pivotal moment; to take stock of what we've learned and to re-examine some of the key events leading up to the transition and how careful planning ensured a successful transfer of IANA responsibilities from the United States Government to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. more

Thoughts of an ICANN Public Interest Stakeholder on the Intended Sale of the .ORG Registry

The announcement of the intended Internet Society (ISOC) sale of the .ORG registry to Ethos Capital has caused a lot of frustration and anger while raising a lot of questions.
It's more than just about the money. It's more than who is behind it. It's about the soul of the DNS and the ICANN community with its multi-stakeholder model. Let's remember that the Public Interest Registry (PIR) was created, with ISOC as its sole legal owner, to provide ISOC with the funds to operate and to run the registry more-or-less as a Social Business. more

DNSSEC Workshop Streaming Live From ICANN 51 On Wednesday, Oct 15

Want to learn about the state of DNSSEC usage in North America? Or what is new in DNS monitoring? Or where DNSSEC fits into the plans of operating systems? Or how DANE is being used to bring a higher level of security to email? All those questions and much more will be discussed at the DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 51 happening on Wednesday, October 15, 2014, from 8:30 am to 2:45 pm Pacific Daylight Time (PDT, which is UTC-7). more