Policy & Regulation

Policy & Regulation / Most Commented

.COM and .NET: Thick Or Thin?

The fallout from the failure of RegisterFly has been largely addressed as an issue of regulation and enforcement. ...ICANN has not historically enforced the escrow obligation, and in any case, if a company has failed, who exactly is going to take responsibility for updating the escrowed data? It seems to me that the problems that have arisen as a result of RegisterFly's collapse have more to do with the design of the "shared registry system" for the .COM and .NET TLDs than they do with ICANN's failure to enforce the RAA. more

IE Namespace: We Need Personal Domains!

In my day job I run one of the largest registrars / resellers of IE domains (the IE ccTLD is the domain name for Ireland). In the course of doing that I have spent quite a lot of time becoming accustomed to the rules and regulations that govern both the naming and general registration criteria of IE domains. In some cases I can understand why rules are the way they are, whereas in others I am completely baffled... more

Why Senator Stevens is Right on Net Neutrality

Several people emailed me about the actual things the senator said and why he is off-base. I decided to listen to his speech again, and write down the points I believe are critical. Senator Stevens who everyone is dissing on for his speech on Net Neutrality in my book spoke nothing less than brilliant. I will also tell you, in my opinion, exactly why... He nailed down the subject into the point that matters: Business. It's about profit. more

Protecting the Internet: Certified Attachments and Reverse Firewalls?

In many respects the internet is going to hell in a hand basket. Spam, phishing, DNS poisoning, DDoS attacks, viruses, worms, and the like make the net a sick place. It is bad enough that bad folks are doing this. But it is worse that just about every user computer on the net offers a nice fertile place for such ill behavior to be secretly planted and operated as a zombie under the control of a distant and unknown zombie farmer. ...Some of us are coming to the converse point of view that the net is being endangered by the masses of ill-protected machines operated by users. more

The Small, But Limitless World of .kids.us

Erica Wass is the editor and contributing author of the recently published book, "Addressing the World: National Identity and Internet Country Code Domains", (Rowman & Littlefield, October 2003). This book is an edited collection of original essays by domain name administrators, academics, journalists and lawyers that examine the connections between various cultures and the use and regulation of their country code domain names. This is the second part of a three-part series. "Congress and the President of the United States believed so much in the idea that the Internet needed a "safe zone" for children that they passed a law designating such a space. One year after its passage I sought to examine the development of the .kids.us name space. I found an initiative that has yet to live up to its potential, but has a limitless, albeit difficult future ahead." more

Market Forces Should Control Registry Services?

Sonia Arrison, a director of the Center for Technology Studies at the California-based non-profit Pacific Research Institute, writes an interesting op-ed piece in the Internet news publication CNET News.com. She argues that the job of privatizing the domain name system should be completed and that market forces should control registry services such as SiteFinder deployed by VeriSign for about three weeks in September...While not a position I would agree with, as I would prefer more government control and additional regulation, it is definitely insightful and well written. She makes some interesting quotes... more

Reaction to VeriSign’s New 36-Hour Deadline

ICANN today has made a formal demand stating: "Given the magnitude of the issues that have been raised, and their potential impact on the security and stability of the Internet, the DNS and the .com and .net top level domains, VeriSign must suspend the changes to the .com and .net top-level domains introduced on 15 September 2003 by 6:00 PM PDT on 4 October 2003. Failure to comply with this demand by that time will leave ICANN with no choice but to seek promptly to enforce VeriSign's contractual obligations." What follows is a collection of commentaries made around the net and by experts in response to today's announcement...
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A Threat to Europe’s Digital Human Rights Stewardship

In a contemporary era when the human rights, democracy, and the rule of law are under attack, Europe has asserted itself as the leading global digital steward for maintaining those values. However, doing so through its Digital Sovereignty initiatives is significantly dependent on the ability to produce timely technical standards that underpin the implementing legislation. more

Project 2025: The Internet and Cybersecurity

As the saying goes, elections have consequences. The consequences are underscored in the recent U.S. Presidential election and the potential impact on the Internet, infrastructure and cybersecurity. In the context of the CircleID global community, it seems worth asking where things are headed? It does beg for an analysis of what is actually proposed in Presidential Transition Project 2025 related to things internet and cybersecurity. more

The Standards Paywalls Fall: Everyone Benefits

Yesterday -- in a unanimous decision of the US Federal Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit (CADC) in ASTM v. Public.Resource.Org --- some of the worst standards paywalls came tumbling down. The court definitively determined that where governmental authorities incorporate private organisation technical standards into law by reference, non-commercial dissemination of those standards "constitutes fair use and cannot support liability for copyright infringement." more

Solving the .US Registrant Data Directory Services (RDDS) Conundrum

Recently ten Democratic Members of Congress wrote a letter to Alan Davidson, head of the NTIA, requesting that the "NTIA immediately cease the public disclosure of personal information about users of .US" country code top-level domain (ccTLD). This communication highlights a significant concern regarding domain registration data: the need to protect the privacy rights of Registrants. However, an equally significant concern regarding registration data was raised... more

NIS2: A New Cyber Jurisdiction Paradigm

The approval on 13 May by the European Council and Parliament of a near-final draft Directive on European Cybersecurity (NIS2) brings the world's most far-reaching cyber regime closer to realization. What is generally unknown, however, is the broad scope and global extraterritorial jurisdiction reach of the Directive. It applies to almost every online service and network capability that exists as infrastructure or "offered" anywhere in Europe. more

Monumental Cybersecurity Blunders

Two recent celebrated cybersecurity standards history events brought together sets of people who were intimately involved with some of the most significant network security standards work ever undertaken. These included the X.509 digital certificate standards at ITU X.509 Day, and the Secure Digital Network System (SDNS) standards at the NSA Cryptologic History Symposium 2022. more

Initiative for the Future of the Global Internet

When reading some of the nonsense constituting this initiative occurring in Washington, one wonders what planet the proponents live on. It is like peering through some perverse wormhole back to a 1990s Washington view of the world that saw “the internet” as some salvation for all the problems of humankind. For a world now focused on rolling out 5G virtualization infrastructure and content-based services and meshed devices, the challenges of cybersecurity and network-based harm to society, the initiative makes the U.S. Administration seem utterly out of touch with reality. Simply goofy. more

Why ICANN Rejected ISOC’s Billion-Dollar Attempt At Feathering Its Own Nest With .org Sale?

As I've pointed out in recent articles, the promises and obligations of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) are merged by direct reference into the InterNIC licensing agreement between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN. This licensing agreement has been extended twice by mutual consent, most recently until January 2025. Therefore, the MOU's promises and obligations remain in effect through the InterNIC licensing agreement despite the fact that the MOU itself terminated in 2009. more