Policy & Regulation

Internet as Non-Kinetic WMD

With each passing day, a new public opinion article appears or U.S. government official pronounces how the open internet is abetting some discovered catastrophic effects on our societal institutions. In just one week, the examples include increased information on FSB & GRU attacks on electoral systems and infrastructure, Trump's obliging tactical destruction of societal norms and propagation of the QAnon cult, U.S government agency officials playing "cyber security spin-the-bottle" at press conferences... more

ICANN Sets the Schedule to Kill Domain Tasting

Domain tasting, as everyone probably knows by now, is the disreputable practice of registering lots of domains, seeing how much traffic they get, and then using the five day Add Grace Period (AGP) to refund the 99.9% of them that aren't worth paying for. A related abuse is front running, registrars speculatively grabbing domains that people inquire about to prevent them from using a different registrar. more

Who Pays When .Org Prices Rise?

When .org prices rise, who suffers – nonprofits or speculators? Will Ethos Capital raise prices more aggressively than ISOC would? Vint Cerf attributed concerns about higher prices to speculators: "Of course, companies that hold domain names in the tens of thousands for speculative purposes might find such increases more troubling, but I don't have much sympathy for that business model in the context of the organizations the .org brand is intended to serve." more

We Have a Paradigm for Surveillance That’s Broken, Fit Only for the Analogue Past

As each day brings new revelations about surveillance online, we are starting to see increasing activity in national legislatures intended either to establish more control over what the security services can do to their nationals (in countries like the US), or to limit access by foreign secret services to the personal information of their citizens (countries like Brazil). Unfortunately, neither of these approaches address the underlying problem: we have a paradigm for surveillance that's fit for the analogue past, not the digital present, let alone the future. more

What Does an Administration Change Mean for the FCC?

Just as the last change in administration changed the course of the FCC, so will the swing back to a Democratic administration. If you've been reading me for a few years, you know I am a big believer in the regulatory pendulum. Inevitably, when a regulatory agency like the FCC swings too far in any direction, it's inevitable that it will eventually swing back the other way. more

The 2-Character Answer to this GAC Advice Should be “No”

ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has reacted to the ICANN Board's November 2016 decision to authorize the release of two-character domains at new gTLDs with advice to the Board that does not have true consensus backing from GAC members and that relates to procedure, not policy. The Board's proper response should be to just say no, stick to its decision and advise the GAC that it will not consider such advice. more

A Packet of Lies

I've been reading the kerfuffle around Comcast's blocking of various random network protocols with interest. Whilst I remain convinced that blanket "network neutrality" legislation remains just a form of digital gripe water (cures colic for cybernauts), there's clearly a problem. As I previously alluded there's a definite consumer protection issue over what you buy when it says 'Internet' on the tin. So here's tuppence worth of additional input... more

5G Frequency Fees Are Waived in Singapore to Help Drive Market Tests

Singapore government has waived telecom frequency fees for 5G trials until December 2019 in order to catalyze market growth and discovery of potential use cases. more

Luddites of the 21St Century Unite?

In the past few weeks doom and gloom stories about the future were printed, discussed and opined in the press. The down and out of the message of futurists is that the middle class is going to be swept away in the coming years because of software and robotic solutions (from here on: automated processes), making humans redundant... Do Luddites of the 21st century need to rise? I want to look at the topic from a few angles. more

Telcos Cannot Wind Back the Clock

The proposals by the European and Arab telcos that are being considered at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) conference in Dubai later this year are most certainly facing defeat. This is not because the USA believes that the international telecommunications regulations (ITR) cannot be discussed by the ITU. America has a rather strange set of national regulations in which they have combined internet infrastructure and content -- and as such they claim that this no longer has anything to do with telecommunications. more

Google’s Gigabit Gambit

Want a gig (1000 megabits per second) of Internet access bandwidth? Google says you could have it by the end of next year "from Manhattan to rural North Dakota (sic, I think they meant Vermont)" if their proposal to the FCC is accepted forthwith according to CNET's newsblog. Not only a gig but a mobile gig, accessible by cellphone or roaming computer -- no fiber required. Sound too good to be true? -- it isn't, IMHO! Engineering is not the problem... more

Dear U.S.A. – Observations on the Cyber Solarium Commission Report

I am writing to you as someone who is not your citizen, (although I had the fortune to wed the most beautiful of your daughters), to share my thoughts about the recent US Government Cyber Solarium Commission report. U.S.A. We owe you one! Without you and your citizens there would be no free Internet as we know it. Thank You! Your constitution is our inspiration. We, the global digital citizenship want to be "the people", in order to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..." more

IP Address Distribution Doesn’t Fit in the Registry/Registrar Model

At the IGF2010 in Vilnius, two folk are floating a trial balloon about separating the allocation function from the registry services function. Currently, these functions are seen as indivisible by the Internet addressing community. In other words, one gets an allocation or assignment from a RIR and the RIR adds the assignment to their database... The question being asked is "Is it time for a split between allocation and services for Internet number resources as was the case for domain name resources?" My answer is no more

Will Cisco Make a Comeback in Cuba?

Is the recently announced Cisco Networking Academy at the Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas a belated drop in the bucket or the first step in a significant opening? Cisco dominated the infrastructure equipment market in Cuba and elsewhere during the early days of the Internet, but Huawei replaced them in Cuba... What does this mean? It might be a belated drop in the bucket. UCI has only 19 trained CNA instructors while the CNA curriculum is being taught by over 20,000 instructors at over 10,000 institutions. more

Russia Restricts U.S. Fiscal Sovereignty Using an ITU Treaty?

It seems outlandish. However, as incredible as it may seem - especially in these times of sequestration and dire Federal budget cuts - the U.S. has potentially fallen prey to a ploy hatched by Russia and allies artfully carried out at a 2010 ITU treaty conference to relinquish the nation's sovereign right to choose its own ITU membership contributions. Here is how it happened and what can be done about it. more