Policy & Regulation

Regulating and Not Regulating the Internet

There is increasingly heated rhetoric in DC over whether or not the government should begin to "regulate the internet." Such language is neither accurate nor new. This language implies that the government does not currently involve itself in governing the internet -- an implication which is clearly untrue given a myriad of laws like CFAA, ECPA, DMCA, and CALEA (not to mention existing regulation of consumer phone lines used for dialup and "special access" lines used for high speed interconnection).

Hello, Australia: Please Vote These Guys Out

So I heard about this ridiculous news the other day that now Australian customs officers have been given new powers to search incoming travelers' laptops and mobile phones for pornography, according to The Age. Really? Come on. Really? First the Internet filtering, a la porn wall, and now this?

The Extent of DNS Services Being Blocked in China

The most recent episode of The Ask Mr. DNS Podcast offers up some disturbing corroborating evidence as to the extent of DNS filtering and outright blocking occurring in China. VeriSign's Matt Larson and InfoBlox's Cricket Liu, who co-host the geeky yet engaging and extremely informative show, held a roundtable discussion including technical experts from dynamic name service providers (better known as "managed DNS" services) DynDNS, TZO, No-IP, and DotQuad, as well as Google and Comcast.

Facebook and YouTube Blocked in Pakistan

After the court's decision, the PTA ordered all the operators in the country to block the website, www.facebook.com, until further orders. It said the directives had been issued by the ministry of information technology and telecommunication in view of the LHC's order. All the ISPs of Pakistan have blocked access to all the hosting servers of www.facebook.com. ...all the Mobile Network Operators of BlackBerry Services in Pakistan were also trying to block access to the FaceBook.com but they could not do it because the Blackberry Services are routed through RIM...

Genachowski to Broadband: Reduce Prices, Increase Speeds, Increase Access, Embrace Competition

Broadband providers are not taking the recent move by the FCC to reclassify broadband under Title II; i.e., put broadband under its regulation arm along with the likes of telephone companies, very lightly and have come out swinging to stop that effort... Seemingly at issue; an appeal brought by Comcast with the D.C. Court of Appeals and the subsequent defeat of the FCC's perceived role as a broadband regulator, ruling the communication had no authority under current legislation to sanction Comcast over a 2008 Internet throttling incident.

Facebook, Privacy, and the Loss of Trust

Facebook sure is getting beaten up recently. There's even a crowd-funded initiative to replace it with something open, called Diaspora -- everyone on Facebook is talking about it. Yet it wasn't even two full years ago that Facebook was the darling of the ditherati. For a while it seemed as if nearly everything Facebook did was hailed as the future of messaging, perhaps the future of the Internet - or maybe the Internet didn't matter anymore, except for Facebook.

Scene Behind the Screen of IDN ccTLDs

Fundamental & imperative story behind this enablement of a meaningful string as IDN ccTLD name script in local language is very interesting. Previously there was a limitation of two letters as abbreviation for the IDN ccTLD name script and it is I, who proposed and convinced ICANN to remove this limitations that enabled all countries and territories of the world (who use non-Latin base script of their official language) to apply for a meaningful abbreviation or full name of the country as IDN ccTLD.

The Sad State of WHOIS, and Why Criminals Love It

I'm not even sure how to begin this post, but let me tell you -- my head explodes when I try to contact WHOIS "contacts" about criminal activity - FAIL. I think ICANN wants to do the right thing here, and has stated on multiple occasions that inaccurate WHOIS data is reason for registrar termination. That's a Good Thing...

Network Neutrality and the FCC’s Inability to Calibrate Regulation of Convergent Operators

For administrative convenience and not as required by law, the FCC likes to apply an either/or single regulatory classification to convergent operators. Having classified ISPs as information service providers, the Commission unsuccessfully sought to sanction Comcast's meddling with subscribers' peer-to-peer traffic. Now Chairman Genachowski wants to further narrow and nuance regulatory oversight without changing the organic information service classification.

Say No to WIPO’s Proposal to Amend the PDDRP to Create New Law

A number of comments to ICANN's proposed Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Process for new gTLD Registry Operators support a proposal by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to hold a registry operator accountable for trademark infringement that occurs within a TLD if it "knowingly permitted, or could not have reasonably been unaware of" infringing domain names within the TLD.