In Praise of Relatively Dumb Pipes

Comcast's furtive and undisclosed traffic manipulation reminds me of a curious, red herring asserted by some incumbent carriers and their sponsored researchers: that without complete freedom to vertically and horizontally integrate the carriers would lose synergies, efficiencies and be relegated to operating "dumb pipes."... Constructing and operating the pipes instead of creating the stuff that traverses them gets a bad rap. It may not be sexy, but it probably has less risk. But of course with less risk comes less reward, and suddenly no one in the telecommunications business is content with that. So incumbent carriers assert that convergence and competitive necessity requires them to add "value" to the pipes. more

VeriSign’s Anti-Trust Claim Against ICANN Dismissed

ICANN confirmed today that Judge A. Howard Matz of the U.S. District Court, Central District of California has issued an order dismissing VeriSign, Inc.'s anti-trust claims against ICANN, with prejudice. In dismissing VeriSign's anti-trust claims, Judge Matz noted that VeriSign had failed in its first amended complaint to sufficiently allege an anti-trust claim. more

Sweden Makes its TLD Zone File Publicly Available

Patrik Wallström writes to report that as of today, IIS (The Internet Foundation In Sweden) has made the zone files for .se and .nu domain names publicly available for the first time. "The underlying reason for making the zone files for .se and .nu available is our endeavour at IIS to promote transparency and openness. IIS has made the assessment that the zone files do not contain any confidential information and, therefore, there is no reason not to make this information available." more

When the Defendant is a Domain Name: The Power of In Rem Proceedings Under the ACPA

A recent decision by a federal court in Virginia illustrates some interesting legal issues that arise from the global nature of the domain name system. It also highlights a powerful mechanism under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA") by which a plaintiff can proceed with a legal action to recover a domain name without regard to the court's personal jurisdiction over the registrant.  more

The Rumors of Sender ID’s Demise Are Exaggerated

While several news stories are reporting that Sender-ID has been killed, that is not entirely true. While Sender-ID in its current form is dead because of Purported Responsible Address (PRA), the compromise version with MAILFROM and PRA scopes is not. Also, the co-chairs want to stay away from any other alternative algorithms that do RFC2822 checking because of possible Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) claims by Microsoft on that as well. Andrew Newton, one of two co-chairs of the working group, wrote in an email today to the group's discussion forum... more

What to Expect From SpaceX Starlink Broadband Service Next Year and Beyond

Last May, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted "6 more launches of 60 sats needed for minor coverage, 12 for moderate" and SpaceX President and CEO Gwynne Shotwell recently said they planned to be offering service in parts of the US in mid-2020, which would require six to eight 60-satellite launches. The first of those launches will be in the middle of this month on a thrice-flown Falcon 9 booster. (They will also need customer terminals and Elon Musk has used a prototype to post a tweet from his home). more

What Did we Learn Today About .XXX From IFFOR Tax Return

The 2011 Tax return for IFFOR has been filed and our friend George Kirikos of Leap.com found it.. IFFOR's tax return is important for two reasons. First IFFOR return shows us how how much money the non-profit, which is suppose to receive $10 for each .XXX registration, actually received from ICM the operator of the .XXX TLD and how IFFOR spent the money. Second the return is important to see how the money ICM the registry operator of the .XXX TLD paid to IFFOR matches up to ICM reported number of .XXX domain name registrations. more

How Does the Acceptance of All Domain Names in Open-Source Software Look in 2021?

A recent study carried out by Governance Primer on behalf of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) identified trends in the acceptance of all domain names in software hosted at Github, the largest open-source repository globally. This research builds on top of previous efforts aimed at identifying the underlying issues that result in problems when different applications need to handle Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and new gTLDs, particularly when it comes to email addresses. more

An Opinion in Defence of NATs

Network Address Translation has often been described as an unfortunate aberration in the evolution of the Internet, and one that will be expunged with the completion of the transition of IPv6. I think that this view, which appears to form part of today's conventional wisdom about the Internet unnecessarily vilifies NATs. In my opinion, NATs are far from being an aberration, and instead, I see them as an informative step in the evolution of the Internet, particularly as they relate to possibilities in the evolution of name-based networking. Here's why. more

ClamAV and the Case of the Missing Mail

Some email discussion lists were all atwitter yesterday, as Sourcefire's open-source anti-virus engine ClamAV version 0.94.x reached its end-of-life. Rather than simply phase this geriatric version out the development team put to halt instances of V0.94 in production yesterday, April 15, 2010. In other words, the ClamAV developers caused version .94 to stop working entirely, and, depending upon the implementation, that meant email to systems using ClamAV also stopped flowing. more

.NET Bid Contenders

Yesterday was the deadline for the submissions of responses to the .NET re-bid RFP. As of my last count, there are five companies that I am aware of that submitted proposals for the .NET rebid. Three of these were quite publicly announced, Afilias, Denic, and Verisign. The other two bidders are Multi-Stakeholder groups. Sentan and Core++. Sentan appears to be a Joint Venture between .jp and Neulevel, and Core++ is ISC, Telfonica, and .br, with participation from Core, Nida (.kr), and .zaDNA (.za). more

AOL and Goodmail: Two Steps Back for Email, Part II

There's been a lot of noise this week since the news broke about AOL and Goodmail, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to change the direction of the dialog a little bit. First, there are two main issues here, and I think it's healthy to separate them and address them separately. One issue is the merits of an email stamp system like the one Goodmail is proposing, relative to other methods of improving and ensuring email deliverability. The second issue -- and the one that got me started earlier this week - is the question of AOL making usage of Goodmail stamps a mandatory event, replacing its enhanced whitelist. more

Comcast v. FCC - “Ancillary Jurisdiction” Has to Be Ancillary to Something

Big news today - Judge Tatel has written the D.C. Circuit's opinion in Comcast v. FCC, and Comcast wins. Bottom line: The FCC didn't have regulatory authority over Comcast's unreasonable network management practices because it failed to tie that authority to any express statutory delegation by Congress... more

Leading Domain Registries and Registrars Release Joint Document on Addressing ‘DNS Abuse’

A group of leading domain name registries and registrars have joined forces in the fight against abuse in the Domain Name System (DNS), by developing a "Framework to Address Abuse." Each contributing company has shared its expertise and experience mitigating abusive practices with the goal of submitting the resulting Framework as a foundational document for further discussion in the multistakeholder community.  more

Is the ICANN New gTLD Program a Draft for a V2 of the Internet?

A week ago I was discussing the alternative of a European Internet root with an ex-ICANN Board member. The idea that I like to develop in these discussions is to offer end-users a modern and cheaper naming system. Note that it does not mean that the ICANN root is a bad one, it means that a new and upgraded one could cohabit with the existing one. One will wonder what this article has to do with new gTLDs but considering the creation of an Internet "version 2", offers website and brand owners many advantages. more