gTLDs: Why Are Your Overarching Issues Not Relevant In IDN ccTLDs?

"If I would have a voting right, I would vote like this" said Janis Karklins, chair of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) as he empathically raised two arms in the air. He was showing his, and the GAC's, overwhelming support for the ICANN Board unanimously (barring one abstention) passing the resolution that ratified the IDN ccTLD Fast Track process, propelling it toward an imminent release. A standing ovation was given from a grateful and exuberant audience and everyone seemed pleased with this momentous decision. more

A Look at the Facebook Privacy Class Action (Beacon) Settlement

Facebook announced on Friday that it settled the class action challenging its "Beacon" advertising program. Net result? Facebook establishes a privacy foundation funded with $9.5 million (or what's left of this amount after attorneys' fees, costs, and class claims are deducted)... Beacon was an advertising program launched in November 2007 which (roughly speaking) allowed the transmission of purchase and consumer-related information between partner retailers, Facebook, and of course, your Facebook friends. I don't think many people have a sense of all of the contours of the program... more

Unlimited VoIP Offers Starting to Appear in Africa

VoIP has been banned across most of Africa for a long time, feared by the state-owned telcos as a way for alternative service providers to bypass them with international calls, eroding a very lucrative part of their business. At profit margins of several thousand percent in some cases, it is not surprising that unlicensed operators have sprung up all over the continent, risking huge fines, confiscation of their equipment and even jail terms. more

Just Make It Stop

In a recent discussion among mail system managers, we learned that one of the large spam filter providers now has an option to reject all mail from ESPs (e-mail service providers, outsourced bulk mailers) regardless of opt-in, opt-out, spam complaints, or anything else, just block it all. Some of the ESPs wondered what would drive people to do that... more

Maybe Email IS Dead - Part of It, Anyway

I tend to chuckle at every new proclamation that email is dead. Google Wave won't kill it. Twitter and Facebook aren't killing it; they're using it. RSS didn't kill it. Instant messaging didn't kill it. "Push media" (remember that?) didn't kill it. AOL and Compuserve and Prodigy didn't kill it; they joined it. And before that, usenet and email lived happily side-by-side. more

Opposition Mounts in Europe to Three-Strikes Proposals

Multiple reports today indicate that opposition is growing in Europe to plans for three-strikes policies that could lead to the termination of Internet access for some subscribers. In the U.K., protests are mounting over those plans in the recently introduced Digital Economy Bill. The BBC reports that thousands of people have signed a petition urging the government to reconsider its approach, while the Open Rights Group says it has seen a big spike in membership. more

IDN and Email: The Harsh Reality

There has been a lot of talk about IDNs here and elsewhere but what does the reality look like for a plain user? As a test, I randomly choose 28 domains from Alexa's top 100 Sites and tried to create a user account with the email address user@??.com. The bleak result... more

New gTLDs: Let the Gaming Begin (Part I - TLD Front Running)

A series of recent applications for national trademark rights in terms that correspond to likely strings for new top-level domain names, or TLDs, (e.g., ".BLOG") highlight just one way in which ICANN's new generic TLD (gTLD) application process is likely to be "gamed." But it is also a strategy to which some trademark holders may feel compelled to resort to defend their rights to that string. Unfortunately, it does not appear that ICANN is addressing these important public policy considerations. more

Fraudsters Using Bogus and Legitimate Recruitment Sites to Con Job-Hunters Into Laundering Money

Reported today on BBC: "Police chiefs are urging people looking for work during the recession to be alert to online scams that trick them into laundering money. The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) says websites are currently being used to recruit 'money mules'. The 'mules are ordinary people who send and receive payments through their bank accounts to facilitate business." Neil Schwartzman has also informed us of a related report by RSA FraudAction Research Lab based on several months of tracking various reshipping scams engineered by online fraudsters. more

New gTLD Expressions of Interest: Proceed with Caution

The ICANN Board, at its October 2009 annual meeting in Seoul, passed a resolution directing staff to prepare an analysis regarding the feasibility of ICANN soliciting Expressions of Interests (EOIs) from prospective applicants for new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs)... While this latest initiative should not distract ICANN from the remaining four overarching issues, if well executed, this EOI initiative could provide valuable insights into two of the four overarching issues: economics and root scaling. more

A Thought About Not-Quite-ASCII Top Level Domains

ICANN has opened their new fast track process for "countries and territories that use languages based on scripts other than Latin" to get domain names that identify the country or territory in its own language. It's not clear to me what the policy is supposed to be for countries whose languages use extended Latin with accents and other marks that aren't in the ASCII set. more

Informal Working Group Publish Report On New TLDs

In an interesting move several members of the ICANN community formed an "informal" Working Group to discuss the concept of "expressions of interest" in new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). This all happened very quickly, which is more or less the opposite to how most ICANN related activities progress. ...The report, which runs to about 11 pages, is concise and seems to have covered most of the areas of interest. more

Muzzled by the United Nations

The Internet Governance Forum is winding down today in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. There have been a lot of very constructive conversations in workshops and panels over the past four days about how to advance security, privacy, child protection, AND human rights and free expression on the Internet. Unfortunately, the biggest headline coming out of the forum so far has been an incident on Sunday... more

The ITU and IPv6 Transition: Controversy at the IGF

At today's "Managing Critical Internet Resources" session of the Internet Governance Forum 2009, the ITU agenda on taking a role in IPv6 distribution once again reared its ugly head. In a heated exchange, Professor Dr Sureswaran Ramadass, the Director of Nav6 an ITU consultant/fanboy squared off with the new ICANN CEO about competition in IPv6 address distribution. more

Privacy Policies in the Real World

This weekend we took the car in for service. Instead of dropping it off at the dealership, we found a small, local garage. Prominently positioned on the counter was their Email Privacy Policy... If a little garage can provide such an understandable and readable privacy policy, how is it that so many email and internet experts fail to do the same? more