The Value of Trust in 2007

Applications and devices like cell phones, email, search engines, and automated programs handle the error messages differently; it would be naive for VeriSign to think only humans with browsers rely on DNS. When a user enters a non-exist domain name on their cell phone the DNS error message would prevent downloading. Now cell phones download VeriSign's SiteFinder webpage and Service Providers bill the cell phone user for that extra usage. SPAM prevention programs also rely on this error message to check to see if the domain is real. more

Blacklists Down from Fear of DDoS

Yet another DNS blacklist has been taken down out of fear of the DDoS attacks that took down Osirusoft, Monkeys.com, and the OpenRBL. Blackholes.compu.net suffered a Joe-Job (A Joe-Job is essentially spam designed to look like it's coming from someone else.) earlier this week. Apparently the Joe-Jobing was enough to convince some extremely ignorant mail administrators that Compu.net is spamming and blocked mail from compu.net. Compu.net has also seen the effects of DDoS attacks on other DNS blacklist maintainers. They've decided that the risk to their actual business is too great and they are pulling the plug on their DNS blacklist before they come under the gun by spammers. more

ICANN and DOC Announce New Three-Year Agreement

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the United States Department of Commerce (DoC) today announced that they agreed to extend their joint Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for three additional years until September 30, 2006. more

Quantifying SiteFinder Traffic

Want a sense of just how much traffic VeriSign is receiving from its SiteFinder service? Alexa, with its Alexa Toolbar and associated traffic tracking services, makes it easy to find out...Over the past three months, taken as a whole, VeriSign had traffic rank 1,559. But today its traffic rank is 19, meaning... more

Breaking the Internet’s Consensus Rule

The Internet, ultimately, is a fragile thing, as an entity. It depends upon the consensus of those responsible for its infrastructure to operate on a daily basis. Because of the inherent robustness as a technical architecture, there is no entity that can "break the Internet" in the sense of stopping the flow of traffic, but there are several entities that can create a variety of inconveniences, some minor and some serious, for the millions who use the Internet. more

PIR Opposes SiteFinder; Will Not Implement Similar Service for .ORG

Public Interest Registry, the .ORG registry operator, sent a letter today to ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey concerning VeriSign's implementation of a DNS wildcard redirection service commonly known as SiteFinder. The letter says that it supports ICANN's call for VeriSign to voluntarily suspend SiteFinder and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) preliminary position paper. It goes on to say that PIR will not be implementing any DNS wildcard to the .ORG zone... more

ICANN and IAB Ask VeriSign to Suspend Site Finder

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released an "Advisory" concerning VeriSign's deployment of DNS wildcard (Site Finder) service: "Since the deployment, ICANN has been monitoring community reaction, including analysis of the technical effects of the wildcard, and is carefully reviewing the terms of the .com and .net Registry Agreements. In response to widespread expressions of concern from the Internet community about the effects of the introduction of the wildcard..." more

Report on Reaction to Zuccarini’s Arrest

On September 3, 2003, United States federal law enforcement officers arrested the notorious John Zuccarini accused of allegedly creating misleading domain names to deceive children and direct them to pornographic websites. Zuccarini's arrest is the first to be made under the Truth in Domain Names Act, which took effect earlier this year prohibiting people from creating misleading domain names as a means to deceive children into viewing content that's harmful to minors, or tricking adults into clicking on obscene websites. What follows is a collection of commentaries made by experts in response to this event...
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Site Finder: The Technical, Legal & Privacy Concerns

It is openly admitted , in the same Implementation PDF file, that all accesses to the Site Finder service are monitored and archived. A further worry for users is the privacy policy and terms of service posted on the Site Finder service. Not only does the simple act of mistyping a URL implicitly cause you, the end user, to accept VeriSign's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy without the chance to review and accept or decline either, but critical information as described above is not disclosed in either policy (as of this writing). The Privacy Policy clearly states... more

Brad Templeton in Response to Site Finder Controversy

A harmful, highly unilateral and capricious action. Tons of software out there depended on the ability to tell the difference between a domain name which exists and does not. They use that to give a meaningful, locally defined error to the user, or to identify if an E-mail address will work or not before sending the mail. Many used it as a way to tag spam (which came from domains that did not exist). It is the local software that best knows how to deal with the error. more

Communicate.com to Receive $1 Million for Four Domain Names

An e-commerce company, Communicate.com Inc., that develops, owns, and operates a network of websites specializing in travel, consumer goods, sports/lifestyle and B-to-B (business to business) has announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell Automobile.com, Exercise.com, Body.com and Makeup.com for $1 million to Manhattan Assets, Inc., a private U.S. corporation. A non-refundable initial payment of $200,000 has been received. more

Rolling Out The New .Pro Domain

Professionals can extend their online identities and direct traffic using .pro - the last of seven new top-level domain names approved by the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Individuals and entities in the accounting, legal and medical professions became eligible to apply to defensively register as of April 23, 2003. In July, .pro domain names will go live. more

UDRP Dilemma In Proving Bad-Faith Domain Registrations - Part I

The purpose of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, known as the UDRP (hereafter the Policy), is to determine disputes relating to the registration or acquisition of domain names in bad faith. Under the Policy, the complainant must establish that (i) the disputed domain name is identical with or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; (ii) the domain name registrant has no right or legitimate interest in respect of the domain name; and (iii) the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith.

Whilst requirements (i) and (ii), at first glance, do not appear difficult to meet, it is not the same with requirement (iii). In fact, a serious problem arises for the complainant when a registrant has registered domain names in bulk, but has not used them i.e. they have not been resolved to any active website. more

Do You Agree With WLS? Your Chance to Comment!

Should ICANN's Wait-Listing Service be implemented?

Why yes or why not? What are the negative or positive consequences that are being overlooked?

In light of the recent events regarding ICANN's approval of the Wait-Listing Service (WLS), CircleID is requesting all stakeholders (all individuals or organization that own domain names or sell related services) to submit their comments 'for' or 'against' WLS. All comments gathered will be posted on CircleID WLS Speical Coverage and presented to key decision makers...  more

Exposing 9 Myths About IPv6

This is a special two-part series article providing a distinct and critical perspective on Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) and the underlying realities of its deployment. The first part gives a closer look at how IPv6 came about. This part exposes the myths.

Good as all this is, these attributes alone have not been enough so far to propel IPv6 into broad-scale deployment, and consequently there has been considerable enthusiasm to discover additional reasons to deploy IPv6. Unfortunately, most of these reasons fall into the category of myth, and in looking at IPv6 it is probably a good idea, as well as fair sport, to expose some of these myths as well. more