Domain Name Registration: Not a Technology Service Any More?

It didn't seem to make any headlines, but it is an interesting sign of the Internet times that, effective January 1, 2009 , the United State Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") changed the International Classification of "domain name registration services" to Class 45 (defined below). The reason that the move is interesting is that it is just one more indication that the world of the Internet is becoming less and less about technology and more and more about law and policy. more

Is Defining Broadband by Speed a Good Policy?

I’ve lately been looking at broadband policies that have shaped broadband, and I don’t think there has been any more disastrous FCC policy than the one that defines broadband by speed. This one policy has led to a misallocation of funding and getting broadband to communities that need it. The FCC established the definition of broadband as 25/3 Mbps in 2015, and before then, the definition of broadband was 4/1 Mbps, set a decade earlier. The FCC defines broadband to meet a legal requirement established by Congress and codified in Section 706 of the FCC governing rules. more

ICANN Suspends Digital Archery

Today, ICANN announced the temporary suspension of the Digital Archery system. ARI Registry Services applauds this development, as it's a clear signal ICANN is listening, considering and acting upon constructive feedback from the community. We encourage ICANN to not only reassess the Digital Archery system, but also the need to proceed with batching at all. more

Trump Orders Cyberattacks by US Companies

It is supremely ironic. A rogue national leader with the stroke of a pen, dictates that its companies will expose a foreign company's end users to cyberattacks. This is the net effect of denying security patches or operating system updates pursuant to Trump's order. In the US Great Rogue Leader's bizarro world, this is the very behavior that he claims makes his actions necessary. In fact, this Trump malware attack is worse because of the mass exposure to exploits. more

Gaming and Broadband Demand

Broadband usage has spiked across the US this year as students and employees suddenly found themselves working from home and needing broadband to connect to school and work servers. But there is another quickly growing demand for broadband coming from gaming. We've had online gaming of some sort over the last decade, but gaming has not been a data-intensive activity for ISPs. more

Fadi Chehadé Named as ICANN’s New President and CEO

Fadi Chehadé has been named as the next President and Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Chehadé, age 50, is a citizen of Lebanon, Egypt and the United States. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to Egyptian parents and left the then war-torn country in 1980 at the age of 18. He speaks fluent Arabic English, French and Italian. Chehadé succeeds current President and CEO Rod Beckstrom, who announced last August that he would leave ICANN at the end of his contract, which expires on 1 July. Chehadé will join ICANN on October 1 or earlier. Between July 1 and when Chehadé begins, Chief Operating Officer Akram Atallah will be the CEO. more

Saint Martin Launches Smart-IX Internet Exchange Under CaribIX Project

The recent launch of a new internet exchange point in Saint Martin has propelled the territory towards a better, faster and more resilient Internet. The French Caribbean territory's new IXP, called Smart-IX, was launched in October under the auspices of a recently launched CaribIX project, which is coordinated by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), supported by the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), funded by the INTERREG Caraïbes programme... more

NSA to Stop Collecting American Emails To and From Overseas

U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) will halt its controversial warrantless surveillance program which collects Americans' emails and texts sent to and from people overseas and that mention a foreigner under surveillance, according to a New York Times report today. more

The TLD Operator Webinar Transitions to the DNA University

Readers of my posts will have noticed that we've been working over the last two months to launch the TLD Operator Webinar which was held recently. Its purpose was to unite all new TLD applicants and collectively share our experiences in order to build momentum in the industry and support each other in our pursuits. With more than 300 registrations and 40 percent of all new TLDs attending, we were humbled and overjoyed with the success -- validating our 'educated guess' that there was a global appetite for information to assist new TLD applicants. more

Celebrating 35 Years of the DNS Protocol

In 1987, CompuServe introduced GIF images, Steve Wozniak left Apple and IBM introduced the PS/2 personal computer with improved graphics and a 3.5-inch diskette drive. Behind the scenes, one more critical piece of internet infrastructure was quietly taking form to help establish the internet we know today. November of 1987 saw the establishment of the Domain Name System protocol suite as internet standards. more

Is Cable Broadband Equal to Fiber?

As I have blogged over the years, I have to give kudos to the folks at the big ISPs who have steadily provided controversial quotes that are worth writing about. The latest comes in an article by Linda Hardest at FierceTelecom. She quotes Charter's CEO Tom Rutledge talking about comparing cable broadband to fiber. She quotes Rutledge as saying... more

The Internet and My 53 Years Online

With the upcoming celebration of the 50 years of the Internet, I'm trying to figure out how the traditional story misses the powerful idea that has made the Internet what it is -- the ability to focus on solutions without having to think about the network or providers. It's not the web -- thought that is one way to use the opportunity. The danger in a web-centric view is that it leads one to make the Internet better for the web while closing the frontier of innovation. more

Your App Is Increasingly Paranoid

In Canada at the moment a fight has been engaged between Bell Canada, a major carrier, and a recent decision of its regulator, the CRTC, concerning whether the CRTC (the Commission) made the correct decision when it said that the underlying transport system was "telecommunications", while the "app" that was carried was "broadcasting". The decision appealed from (the Klass decision) is important because it marks the first time the CRTC has made a decision on the idea that lies at the core of Internet thinking: that an application floats on top of transport layers. more

Does Broadband Boost Local Economic Development?

A paper out of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) examines answers to "Does Broadband Boost Local Economic Development?" Many might flame PPIC for daring to ask such a question, but with billions of dollars in public funds being spent by governments around the world, it seems appropriate for some science to be applied to study the benefits. more

Facebook and Privacy

Mark Zuckerberg shocked a lot of people by promising a new focus on privacy for Facebook. There are many skeptics; Zuckerberg himself noted that the company doesn't "currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services." And there are issues that his blog post doesn't address; Zeynep Tufekci discusses many of them While I share many of her concerns, I think there are some other issues - and risks. more