On May 26, 2021, I submitted a complaint to ICANN's Complaints Officer, Krista Papac. In a nutshell, my complaint centers on ICANN's blatant violation of its Bylaws, specifically Section 2.2, named Restrictions, which expressly prohibits ICANN from acting as a registrar. However, despite the absence of any exceptions to this unambiguous prohibition, ICANN is acting improperly as a registrar for the purposes of warehousing and cybersquatting on certain domain names in the .com and .net registries. more
A little over a year ago, the FCC approved the use of 1,200 MHz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band for public use -- for new WiFi. WiFi is already the most successful deployment of spectrum ever. A year ago, Cisco predicted that by 2022 that WiFi will be carrying more than 50% of global IP traffic. These are amazing statistics when you consider that WiFi has been limited to using 70 MHz of spectrum in the 2.4 GHz spectrum band and 500 MHz in the 5 GHz spectrum band. more
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been a major contextual factor of global internet governance discussions over the past year, and it appears that discussions in ICANN are no exception. Threats to the integrity and security of the DNS have become a regular topic of debate within the ICANN community. In recent months, these discussions have increasingly focused on the idea of 'DNS abuse' and, more specifically, COVID-19-related DNS abuse. more
We're halfway into ICANN71, and early interactions are posing questions about ICANN Org's capability to carry out its mission to maintain an orderly domain name system (DNS). Or, if that's not the case, ICANN leadership seems bent on a hands-off approach to its oversight responsibilities to the DNS. For years now - years - the ICANN community has raised the volume level about acute issues -- a workable Whois management and access system (including clearly delineated controllership)... more
Last month, the Chinese government published space situational awareness and traffic management regulations and procedures designed to guard against collisions in orbit and mitigate space debris, and this month, at the G7 summit, delegates from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the USA, the UK, and the EU pledged to take action to tackle the growing hazard of space debris as our planet's orbit becomes increasingly crowded. more
In January Jörg Schweiger, DENIC's CTO from 2007 to 2014 and CEO since 2014, announced he was stepping down from his position in December. It's been quite a ride, and the domain name industry has evolved quite a lot. So we asked Jörg a few questions about his time with DENIC and the changes he's seen... he came up with some insightful views on why he thought new TLDs missed a great opportunity to do something with "innovative new business models," the importance of security to DENIC... more
It was not without a little trepidation that I planned the 2nd DNS Abuse Institute Forum to focus on the long-standing and often contentious definitional issues surrounding DNS Abuse. While the risk of getting stuck in the usual entrenched positions was real, it seemed to me that we had an opportunity to provide some clarity and if not change minds, at least provide perspective. more
The ways in which the Internet is embedded in our daily lives are too varied and numerous to catalogue. The Internet delivers information, access to goods, services, education, banking, social interaction and, increasingly, work space. The global pandemic has only heightened our dependence on the online world, which is why efforts to ensure that the Internet remains a trusted and secure environment are more important than ever. more
Using the lingo of Internet Governance, the "stakeholders" of digital technologies currently live in a state of confusion about their rights and responsibilities in the digital age. Digital technologies confront us with many questions we thought had been answered long before. We have a pretty clear understanding of our rights and responsibilities as citizens of our country, how a state should be governed, and how the private sector should conduct its business. more
It has been just over 3 years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, and the work within ICANN (type "EPDP 2a" into your acronym decoder ring) to develop a permanent Registration Data policy is progressing at a snail's pace. At issue is a proposed mandatory requirement for Contracted Parties (really just Registrars), to differentiate between "legal persons" (a fancy way of saying corporations and similar organizations) and "natural persons" (the kind that eat and breathe and schedule Zoom calls). more
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