When 72 candidates vie for 8 positions, making tough choices are inevitable. ICANN's 2005 Nominating Committee (Nom-Com) on Friday announced the selection of a diverse and independent set of nominees for important roles in ICANN, including the Board of Directors, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), the At-Large Advisory Council (ALAC) and the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO). more
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is an annual UN conference on Internet governance which was held this year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The topics discussed range from human rights online to providing Internet access in developing countries. A somewhat secondary topic of conversation is Internet security and cyber-crime mostly limited to policy and legislative efforts. Techies and Internet security industry don't have much to do there, but I have a few updates for us from the conference. more
A brief report from the European Commission authored by Pedro Velasco Martins (an EU negotiator) on the most recent round of ACTA negotiations in Guadalajara, Mexico has leaked, providing new information on the substance of the talks, how countries are addressing the transparency concerns, and plans for future negotiations. more
This is an overview of the booklet, "Internet Governance: Issues, Actors and Divides," recently published by DiploFoundation and the Global Knowledge Partnership. "Internet Governance is not a simple subject. Although it deals with a major symbol of the DIGITAL world, it cannot be handled with a digital - binary logic of true/false and good/bad. Instead, the subject's many subtleties and shades of meaning and perception require an ANALOGUE approach, covering a continuum of options and compromises." Update: This article was reposted with additional information and a new title. more
Here are the top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry updates featured on CircleID during 2012 based on the overall readership of the posts for the past 12 months. Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership and best wishes to the entire community for 2013. more
Declan McCullagh reporting in CNET: "The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require the firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities..." more
As we, here in the United States celebrate our independence this Fourth of July, we are reminded that the liberties and freedoms that come with that independence have yet to be won online. As citizens of this country we are blessed with safety and security from threats both foreign and domestic, but those guarantees have not yet extended to our citizenship in the global Internet community. This is true not just for American citizens, but for all Internet users throughout the world. more
Netchoice, a lobbying group for the e-commerce industry had a strange reaction on the failure of the GNSO working group on Whois to reach a consensus. After all, they say, "Privacy concerns with Whois that were identified years ago have already been addressed by in the marketplace"... more
Now that we're into the New Year and deadline for public comment on the proposed new .CA whois policy nears and now that my term as a CIRA Director enters its home stretch, I wanted to take some time to elaborate further on my Unsanctioned Whois Concepts post from long ago and revise it somewhat. more
Doc's post and the impending comments deadline for the next iteration of ICANN's never-ending WHOIS saga finally pushed me to write up my thoughts on the latest iteration of ICANN debate. As Doc points out, much of the current debate is very inside baseball, tied up in acronyms atop bureaucratic layers. Small wonder then that ordinary domain name registrants and Internet users haven't commented much, while the fora are dominated by INTA members turning out responses to an "urgent request" to "let ICANN know that Whois is important to the brand owners I represent"... more
It has been just over 3 years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, and the work within ICANN (type "EPDP 2a" into your acronym decoder ring) to develop a permanent Registration Data policy is progressing at a snail's pace. At issue is a proposed mandatory requirement for Contracted Parties (really just Registrars), to differentiate between "legal persons" (a fancy way of saying corporations and similar organizations) and "natural persons" (the kind that eat and breathe and schedule Zoom calls). more
The Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) is the constituency group representing civil society organizations in the formation of domain name policy. In August 2004 it initiated a process to nominate people to serve on the UN Secretary-General's Working Group on Internet Governance, as representatives of civil society. Our purpose was to assist the Secretary-General to identify qualified and widely-supported individuals capable of serving on the WGIG on behalf of civil society. more
The report of the Whois Working Group was published today. The Working Group could not achieve agreement on how to reconcile privacy and data protection rights with the interests of intellectual property holders and law enforcement agencies. So the Working Group Chair redefined the meaning of "agreement." See the full story at the Internet Governance Project site. more
The American Bar Association/International Chamber of Commerce (ABA/ICC) recently released a survey on global Internet jurisdiction. The survey, co-chaired by Professor Michael Geist, involved nearly 300 companies in 45 different countries. It found that U.S. companies were far more concerned and pessimistic about Internet jurisdiction risk than European and Asian companies. The study has also found that an "Internet jurisdiction risk toolkit" is emerging where companies target low risk jurisdictions and take steps to avoid doing business in perceived high risk jurisdictions. more
FireEye announced a new piece of malware yesterday named MULTIGRAIN. This nasty piece of code steals data from Point of Sale (PoS) and transmits the stolen credit card numbers by embedding them into recursive DNS queries. While this was definitely a great catch by the FireEye team, the thing that bothers me here is how DNS is being used in these supposedly restrictive environments. more
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