Understanding the Brazilian Court Decision to Arrest Google’s Representative

Brazil has been on the news lately, and not for good reasons: an electoral judge order the arrest of Google's Director in Brazil for not complying with a court decision that ordered the removal a YouTube video with allegedly defamatory content. A lot has been said about this, but it seems that many people got it wrong, so let's recap some of the misinterpretations that circulated, specially those at the EFF website. more

Community Support Required for Alternative Trademark Clearinghouse Solution

It's time for the community to demonstrate its resolve to see ICANN implement a successful and effective Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). Let's be clear here. The current ICANN implementation model and approach is flawed and needs attention. Following more than three months of consultation and negotiation, today I'm pleased to be able to present the domain name and trademark protection industries with an alternative solution for the operation of ICANN's Trademark Clearinghouse for the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program. more

Letter to ICANN on Big Brands Proposed Usage of Generic Domain Extensions

We have been taking an active interest in the development of the new TLD program by ICANN and excited by the many opportunities and challenges that this "opening up" will bring to us, our customers and the internet ecosystem as a whole. However, we also have our concerns about how some entities wish to use generic domain name extensions as "walled gardens". more

Rebalancing Telco Infrastructure Investments

One of the reasons telecommunications has been so successful for more than 160 years is that it adopted a strategy that resulted in a seamless network all around the world. You can pick up a phone anywhere in the world and, with little or no instruction, make a call to anybody else in the world without worrying what phones and technology they are using on the other end of the line... But during that process the nature of the network operators changed. more

Unclear on the Concept, Sanctions Edition

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is an advocacy group that, among other things, tries to isolate Iran by pressuring businesses and organizations to stop doing business with Iran. This week they turned their attention to ICANN and RIPE to try to cut off Internet access to Iranian organizations. Regardless of one's opinion about the wisdom of isolating Iran (and opinions are far from uniform), this effort was a bad idea in an impressive number of both technical and political ways. more

National Broadband, Leadership or Procrastination

There is no doubt that any national infrastructure plan of the magnitude of national broadband networks as they are currently rolled out in 9 countries and which policies have been put in place in another 110 countries will have questions attached to it. Furthermore, this infrastructure is being developed for the digital economy, which, in itself, is a fast-moving world. Five years ago there were no smartphones, tablets, mobile apps or smart TVs. more

Mobile Infrastructure Running Out of Steam

The enormous growth in mobile usage, doubling each year, is set to continue for several years in a row. According to Ericsson, by 2020 mobile operators will need to provide one thousand times the capacity that was required in 2010. Our assessment at BuddeComm is that the mobile industry has already fallen behind in delivering the capacity needed today, let alone coping with the enormous growth ahead; and that this situation will deteriorate before it improves. more

ICANN Makes Senior Management Restructure to Fix Organizational Weaknesses

Kieren McCarthy reporting in .Nxt: ICANN's new CEO Fadi Chehade has embarked on a bold restructure of the organization's management on his first day in the job. Announcing two new senior management members -- Sally Costerton as head of stakeholder relations and communications and Tarek Kamel as head of governmental affairs -- Chehade says his focus was on engaging at a global level with stakeholders, building relationships and improving accountability. more

Global Internet Growth Is Driven by Flexible Governance, Not Restrictive Regulation, Says Report

A new report has been released by Analysys Mason suggesting recent proposals to regulate the global Internet will harm growth and innovation worldwide. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will hold a treaty conference, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), in December 2012, which will revise a 1988 treaty, the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR). more

RIPE NCC Distributed Last IPv4 Address Space from the Available Pool

On Friday 14 September, 2012, the RIPE NCC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, distributed the last blocks of IPv4 address space from the available pool. more

Internet Society ION Conferences: Call for Speakers - IPv6 and DNSSEC Experts

The Internet Society Deploy360 Programme issues a call for speakers for a series of upcoming global ION Conferences. ISOC welcomes submissions from IPv6 and DNSSEC experts to speak at any of the following ION conferences. more

Nitol and 3322.org Takedown by Microsoft

Reading this morning's blog from Microsoft about "Operation b70" left me wondering a lot of things. Most analysts within the botnet field are more than familiar with 3322.org - a free dynamic DNS provider based in China known to be unresponsive to abuse notifications and a popular home to domain names used extensively for malicious purposes - and its links to several botnets around the world. more

Internet Society Releases Paper on “What Really Matters About the Internet”

Internet Society has released a paper today highlighting the importance of understanding what is important and unchanging about the Internet. more

Should “Fake” Oakley Websites Be Insulated From UDRP Law?

Oakley, Inc. ("Oakley"), the maker of some very popular and trendy sunglasses, has also become a trend-setter in the area of UDRP law where it has been involved in two important decisions in the last few weeks. First, Oakley lost a UDRP decision last month for the domain name www.myfakeoakleysunglasses.com. In that case, the panelist Mr. Houston Putnam Lowry denied Oakley's Complaint on the basis that the domain was not confusingly similar to the OAKLEY mark. more

Rwanda Gets Control Over Its Domain .RW

After a seven-year long process of transferring Rwanda's Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), ".rw" from Belgium, finally Rwandans can now manage their national identity, reports AllAfrica. more