EFOW Wants Total Protection for Geographical Indications Domains in .VIN, .WINE and All Other TLDs

This is a letter sent from the European Federation of Origin Wines (EFOW) to the courteous attention of Dr Steve Crocker, Chair of the ICANN Board , Mr Cherine Chalaby, Chair of the new gTLD Program Committee Board, Mr Fadi Chehadé, CEO of ICANN and Mr Akram Atallah, COO of ICANN. This letter, sent by its President Riccardo Ricci Curbastro, was sent today to ICANN and is entitled "ICANN initiatives for the attribution of new generic top-level Internet domains -- PDO and PGI wines' concerns". more

ICANN New gTLD Program SWOT Analysis: OPPORTUNITIES (Part 3)

The SWOT analysis (alternatively SWOT Matrix) is a structured planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. The following is an attempt to apply the SWOT Analysis to ICANN's new gTLD program. more

Thinking Carefully About New gTLD Objections: Legal Rights (4 of 4)

This last article on the four new gTLD objections will look at the Legal Rights Objection ("LRO"). While other articles in this series have touched on trademark concepts at certain points, issues from that area of the law predominate in LRO. Here we review the pertinent LRO-related trademark concepts, with which many readers likely will have some familiarity from working with domains and the UDRP. Still, the theme of the first three articles applies here: Potential objections are more involved and complicated than they may seem, and require careful thought if they are to be made. more

Google Bows to Pressure on Closed Generics

The debate surrounding "closed generics", which has been covered several times in the past, has attracted a lot of attention in recent weeks. At the centre of the debate were a number of new TLD applications from large companies including Google, Amazon and others. Google had stated that they planned to establish a number of domain extensions and operate them as "walled gardens". At the ICANN public meeting in Toronto Google attempted to defend their plans and their position until today was unchanged. more

Time to Take Stock: Twelve Internet and Jurisdiction Trends in Retrospect

With the growing tension between the cross-border Internet and the patchwork of national jurisdictions, it becomes crucial to keep track of key global trends that drive the debate on appropriate frameworks. One year ago, the Internet & Jurisdiction Project initiated a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process on these issues. To provide a factual basis for such discussions, it established an Observatory, supported by a network of selected international experts, to detect and categorize relevant cases via an innovative crowd-based filtering process in order to identify high-level patterns. more

Russia Restricts U.S. Fiscal Sovereignty Using an ITU Treaty?

It seems outlandish. However, as incredible as it may seem - especially in these times of sequestration and dire Federal budget cuts - the U.S. has potentially fallen prey to a ploy hatched by Russia and allies artfully carried out at a 2010 ITU treaty conference to relinquish the nation's sovereign right to choose its own ITU membership contributions. Here is how it happened and what can be done about it. more

Moving the Multistakeholder Model Forward: Thoughts from The WSIS+10 Review Event

Ten years ago, global representatives assembled in Geneva in 2003, and again in Tunis, 2005, as part of the two founding phases of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). At the heart of proceedings, attended by representatives from across the spectrum of business, government, civil society, and the Internet technical community, was an acknowledgement that an inclusive approach was needed in all discussions pertaining to Internet governance and policy-making, to overcome the primary challenges in building this 'Information Society.' more

Security and Reliability: A Closer Look at Vulnerability Assessments

Building on my last article about Network Assessments, let's take a closer look at vulnerability assessments. (Because entire books have been written on conducting vulnerability assessments, this article is only a high level overview.) What is a vulnerability assessment? more

Interview with Avri Doria on the History of Community gTLDs

Community gTLDs play an interesting and even unique role in the ICANN new gTLD process. They reflect the community-driven nature of the Internet. Indeed the story of how Community gTLDs came about is a fascinating example of the how bottom-up process can give rise to innovative policy outcomes. It has been over six years since the community gTLD concept was first discussed. In the mists of time, it's easy to forget the deep foundations upon which this concept is based. more

Closed Generics Debate Rages On

The new gTLD program continues to throw up last-minute debates on what is acceptable as a TLDs and what is not. The latest such verbal joust centers around closed generics. These are generic terms being applied for by applicants whom, should they be successful, will not open the TLD up to everyone on an equal access basis. As an example, think .book being run by Amazon and only available to Amazon customers. more

Civil Society Hung Out To Dry in Global Cyber Espionage

This post was co-authored by Sarah McKune, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab. Public attention to the secretive world of cyber espionage has risen to a new level in the wake of the APT1: Exposing One of China's Cyber Espionage Units report by security company Mandiant. By specifically naming China as the culprit and linking cyber espionage efforts to the People's Liberation Army, Mandiant has taken steps that few policymakers have been willing to take publicly, given the significant diplomatic implications. more

Security and Reliability: A Deeper Dive into Network Assessments

As noted in the first part of this series, Security and Reliability encompasses holistic network assessments, vulnerability assessments, and penetration testing. In this post I'd like to go deeper into network assessments. I stated last time that the phrase "network assessment" is broad. more

The Internet Access Gap Survey: Right Conclusion, Wrong Numbers

A colleague sent me a story by Cecilia Kang in the Washington Post: Survey finds gap in Internet access between rich, poor students. With my interest in programs to get connected computers into low income households, my friend knew I would be interested in the article which talks about a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. Indeed, I would commend the Washington Post article and the survey itself to you for reading. I want to highlight the problem representing the survey results in the Washington Post. more

Can Plural and Singular New gTLDs Both Be Successful?

Now that ICANN has stuck to its guns and only placed 4 new gTLD's strings that look confusingly similar into contention sets, rather than those that sound identical, such as .inc and .ink or those that have the same meaning like .Law and .Lawyer or those that are singular and plurals of the same word, like .deal and .deals, we now that many new gTLD's are going to have a very a tough marketing road and face a lot of consumer confusion. more

The International Space Station’s Canadian Music Video Collaboration - and Google+ Hangout

As much as we talk here about the inner workings of the Internet's infrastructure, there are times when you have to just sit back and look at how incredibly cool some of the things are that are enabled by the Internet. For example, last week I was delighted to stumble across this excellent music video collaboration between the International Space Station's Canadian commander Chris Hadfield, the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies along with a Canadian student choir. more