Today we have sent following to the Minister of Industry Canada, James Moore, as well as the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) Board of Directors. This is in response to the revelation that CIRA is positioning to enter the managed DNS space. As we outline in the letter, we are fine with more competition (in fact Google just entered the domain and DNS space too... No, competition is a fact of life, what we want is more of it, not less. Here's what we wrote to The Honourable James Moore. more
It is a safe assumption that if you are reading this post, you like technology. If that is the case, then you understand the tremendous economic, cultural, and human rights benefits an open, universal, and free Internet provides. That freedom is under attack. And it is our responsibilities, as stakeholders in a successful Internet, to balance governments and have an open dialog on the topic. more
In my job as part of a consultancy company, I know there are two types of reports our clients are interested in - those that are written for the customer to be used internally and those that are to be used externally. Quite often, instead of well thought out and researched pieces, these last-mentioned reports are created simply to underscore the opinion of the party paying for them. So when I received research by AT Kearney on A Viable Future Model for the Internet, I immediately checked who had paid for that report. more
One of the consequences of the Jan 6th events is a renewed attention towards Surveillance Capitalism as a key doctrine undermining democracy.2 This part 2 of the 2 part series of discusses the rise and fall of Surveillance Capitalism under the premise that the better we understand the danger at the door, the better we are able to confront it. more
The U.S. Department of Justice on Sunday night filed a lawsuit against California over the new net neutrality law after just an hour the bill was signed. more
It was just announced that every member of Congress will be able to create his or her own channel on YouTube. Viewers can go to the House or Senate home pages and navigate via a map to find the videos they're interested in. While it is good that citizens will have more insight into what their Senators and Representatives think, the way this is being done poses a serious privacy risk. more
On April 28, 2022, a "Declaration on the Future of the Internet," initiated by the U.S. government, was signed by 60 governments at the White House in Washington, D.C. According to Jack Sullivan, National Security Advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, the Declaration is intended to serve as a reference document for future international negotiations on Internet-related issues. Is there a reason why the U.S. government is launching an initiative on the "Future of the Internet" at this point in time? more
The Internet Society (ISOC) has condemned the U.S. Clean Network Program announced last week, which proclaims to safeguard America's critical telecommunications and technology infrastructure. more
The debate about the control of the internet is intensifying, with interesting discussions expected later on this year in Dubai at the WCIT conference organised by the ITU. Over the last 25 years the industry has moved from being mainly telephony-based to being mainly IP-based, and many say that what is now at stake is the future of the internet as we know it at this point in time... The reality now is that the political stakes of the internet have risen significantly. more
Eugene Kaspersky has warned global leaders that the world needs international agreements about cyber-weapons in the same way as it needs agreements about nuclear or biological weaponry. The chairman and chief executive officer of Kaspersky Lab, warned delegates at CeBIT Australia that cyber-warfare and terrorism was the number one internet threat facing the world today. He said the Stuxnet industrial virus had demonstrated that cyber-weapons were capable of damaging physical infrastructure, and were "a thousand times cheaper" to develop than conventional weaponry. more
The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a second draft of a proposed standards profile to support the implementation of IPv6 by government agencies. "NIST developed the 'profile' to help ensure that IPv6-enabled federal information systems are interoperable, secure and able to co-exist with the current IPv4 systems." ...The White House's Office of Management and Budget declared in 2005 that all federal agencies shall migrated to IPv6 by June 30, 2008... more
Respected ICANN Chairman of the Board Steve Crocker has wrapped up his organisation's 47th International Meeting, held in Durban last week, with a message to the community. This message, reproduced here in its entirety, provides both a useful and concise summary of the Durban meeting and insights into the Chairman's view of where ICANN stands at the moment, the successes it has notched up and the challenges it faces. more
In her blog EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes blogs on her stance on cloud computing. In short: this is a good development which the EU will embrace and advocate, but may need regulation in order to ensure a safe environment for industry and individuals in the cloud. Here's some thoughts on that. 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
There has been much said and written recently about the issue of registry-registrar cross ownership with regard to New Top Level Domains ("New TLDs"). It is clear that there appears to be a fair amount of confusion about the issue and the positions espoused by various parties. To assist the ICANN community in understanding the issue -- the points of agreement and debate -- I offer the following overview on behalf of Network Solutions and Central Registry Solutions... more
A World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments. Serving Since 2002.