Well, it's that time of year again. The time of year when I look back at all of the biggest domain news stories from the last twelve months, and also reflect on my predictions from last year. As expected, GDPR has had a major impact on the ability to access domain ownership information. And we did indeed see a number of M&A transactions over this last year. However, there wasn't a lot of new .Brand activity. This is one prediction where I may have missed the mark... more
Swedish Regulator PTS have today notified .SE, the Swedish (.SE) TLD registry that they have to change the rules... In short, the decision implies that any form of the sequence of the characters "b", "a", "n", "k" are illegal in domain names in Sweden. Further that checks of what domain names are registered are to be checked before registration. more
Posted here on behalf of DotConnectAfrica Trust as rejoinder and reply to Andrew Mark's recent article... In his article, Mr. Mark tried to re-frame the ongoing discussions and commentary about DCA Trust's recent IRP victory against ICANN as one about "requisite support for geographic string" to assist him reach the biased conclusion that ZACR's bid has the required support to run .Africa whilst DCA Trust's bid does not. more
Policies such as network neutrality and minimum speeds for broadband seek to limit the ability of carriers to favor some applications over others. Well-intended though these initiatives are, they still leave users negotiating for passage while confined to the carriers' "pipes". In this scenario, end users remain limited by how the incumbents choose to build their broadband content delivery networks. more
The Twitterverse is awash with catchy URL shortening services, which allow what would otherwise be long URLs to fit within the strict character limit of individual Tweets. Before the Twitter phenomenon really took hold, tinyurl.com was one of the more popular services; now much shorter options are available, using various Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) which have the significant advantage of being only two characters after the last dot. more
Internet security has been a primary focus this week for more than 1100 engineers and technologists from around the world gathered at the 88th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Participants are rethinking approaches to security across a wide range of technical areas. more
We are on the brink of the most serious threat to the open and public Internet for decades. ICANN, under pressure from domain name registrars and EU data protection authorities, has proposed an "interim" plan that will hide critical information in WHOIS. Security, threat intelligence, and anti-abuse professionals rely on WHOIS to track down bad guys and keep the Internet as safe and secure as possible. more
The awkwardly named International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) by any measure is a highly unusual body. It is the only global intergovernmental organization where Nation States produce detailed technical standards for telecommunications. Even more amazing is that it produces these standards for a field that is so dynamic and globally competitive as telecommunications. What is not well known is that the ITU-T was once a private standards body... more
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is hosting a workshop today discussing the state of IPv6 in the U.S. and its impact on the industry, government, and the Internet economy. The moderators for the workshop are Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer of the United States and Vivek Kundra, Chief Information Officer of the United States. Participants include... more
Unlike ICANN, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) responded graciously, promptly and substantively to inquiries from the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) regarding governance of the internet. CRE sent a letter to NTIA in mid-March asking about public access to documents prepared by ICANN under Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NTIA. NTIA provided a quick and clear response to CRE's questions. NTIA also reiterated its commitment to achieving transparency and accountability in ICANN's processes. NTIA's response to CRE, although clear and comprehensive, raised a number of important questions about ICANN and their governance of the internet. more
The growing interest in the "Internet of Things" is forcing us to think beyond the web to a much larger world of connected devices. We can tolerate the many barriers to connectivity because we expect that someone can provide the necessary credentials to log in to the providers' services and to adjust Wi-Fi access keys whenever the access point changes or simply to click "agree" at a hotspot. This doesn't work for "things" which can't recognize a sign-on or "agree screen". 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
The Internet controversy between the US and China is escalating. The Trump Administration is fighting against Huawei, TikTok and We Chat. China is pushing back with new export regulations for Chinese IT technology. August 5, 2020 the US State Department launched a "Clean Network" initiative, aimed to remove Chinese digital corporations from the global supply chain in today's interconnected world. September 8, 2020 the Chinese Foreign Ministry replied with a "Data Security" initiative, aimed to enhance global cybersecurity in "Chinese colours." more
It nearly goes without saying that if ".CA" means and should continue to mean, "Canada", the registration of a .CA domain name ought to involve some tie to Canada. As Canadian Internet Registration Authority ("CIRA") CEO, Byron Holland, aptly put it, "The fundamental requirement of having a Canadian presence in order to get a dot-ca domain name make sense...because it is a country code and there is an assumption that there is some "Canadian-ness". And that is why, in a nutshell, I support a Canadian 'presence requirement' for the registration of .CA domain names. Nevertheless, the question of what constitutes an appropriate 'presence requirement' is an interesting issue... more
Back in November 2008 a colleague of mine, Neil Watson (Head of Operations at Entanet International Ltd), published an article on Entanet's opinion blog about the government's proposed plans to centrally store records of all electronic communications throughout the UK. The Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) will be the largest surveillance system ever created in the UK and calls for a 'live tap' to be placed on every electronic communication in Britain including telephone calls, emails and visited websites. more
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