Well amazingly, it's that time again. Next week, individuals from around the world with a keen interest in Internet policy will head to Panama City, Panama for the second ICANN meeting of the year. As always, Brandsight will be attending to follow all of the important policy work being carried out by the community. Before I head off to the meeting (which based on my research will actually be my 32nd ICANN meeting!), I'd like to share a preview of the major topics slated for discussion. more
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) implemented the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) in 2013 together with three other rights protection mechanisms for trademarks. It "is not intended for use in any proceedings with open questions of fact, but only clear cases of trademark abuse"... It was designed to afford rights holders claiming abusive registration of domain names with new gTLD extensions an even faster route to remedy than the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). more
Jorge Luis Valdés Hernández, Director de Servicios Convergentes de la Vicepresidencia de Integración Comercial de ETECSA, described the forthcoming changes to their mobile Internet service in a recent press conference. (He also has a very long job title). To be honest, the press conference coverage left me a bit confused, but this is some of what he said as I understood it. more
Early June 2018 the European Internet community traveled into the Caucasian Mountains to participate in EURODIG 11. On its way into the digital age, Europe is, as EU Commissioner Mariya Gabriel said, at another crossroad. In cyberspace, Europe risks becoming sandwiched between US and Chinese Cyberpower policies. Social networks, search engines, smartphones, eTrade platforms - key sectors of today's digital economy - are dominated both by the US and Chinese giants: Alibaba and Amazon, Google and Baidu, Facebook and Weibo, Apple and Huawai. more
The Internet Society today announced a new working partnership with Consumers International, the membership organization for consumer groups around the world. more
Oracle today announced the launch of the Internet Intelligence Map website; a source available for free that provides country-level connectivity statistics based on traceroutes, BGP, and DNS query volumes on a single dashboard. more
TLDs such as .men and .loan are listed as some of the most abused domains in the world. Spamhaus says some domain name registrars and resellers knowingly sell high volumes of domains to bad actors for profit, and many registries do not do enough to stop or limit this endless supply of domains. more
The suggestion was recently put to the GNSO Council: anyone who becomes a member of a proposed new Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) must be able to demonstrate that they have basic knowledge of privacy and data protection. This makes a lot of sense: Would you trust a lawyer who had never been to law school? Or a doctor who had never studied medicine? Of course not. Recently I asked members of our ICANN Community: have you had any GDPR training, classes, or certification? more
The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) has ranked all 185 U.S. cities with that 50,000 households by the total percentage of each city's households lacking fixed broadband internet subscriptions. more
The results of the latest survey conducted by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration shows more American from all walks of life are increasingly connecting to the Internet. more
Six years ago today, organizations all across the Internet came together as part of World IPv6 Launch to permanently enable IPv6 on their networks. Today, from that tiny launch the global Internet has grown to where over 25% of users are regularly connecting over IPv6. In some regions, this is significantly higher. For example, 237 million people in India connect over IPv6. Some mobile operators have over 80 or 90% of their devices connecting over IPv6. more
Microsoft has placed an experimental data center the size of a shipping container on the seafloor near Scotland's Orkney Islands to test the feasibility of saving energy by naturally cooling it in the sea. more
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been accused of purposely misleading several news organizations by claiming that the comment submission section of its website aimed to solicit opinions on net neutrality was taken offline by a cyberattack. more
IPv6 adoption across federal government websites has been less than aggressive across the survey period conducted by Oracle Dyn's Internet Research & Analysis Unit; many agencies failing to deploy public websites on IPv6 by the end of FY 2017. more
Microsoft Corp. on Monday released an official announcement stating it has reached an agreement to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion, confirming rumors reported last week. more