Can Trump’s Twitter Account be Deleted Under the New EU Hate Speech Code?

On 31 May 2016, The Commission together with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft unveiled a code of conduct that includes a series of commitments to combat the spread of illegal hate speech online in Europe. These IT Companies support the European Commission and EU Member States in the effort to respond to the challenge of ensuring that online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally. more

Mac Hit by Another Wave of Malware… Users in Denial?

In case you haven't been watching cyber news recently, last week various security researchers published that Macs were infected by the Flashback Trojan and that the total number of infections worldwide was 600,000. This number was published by a couple of blogs. I debated writing about this topic since we had a previous Mac outbreak last year that initially spiked up, caused Apple to go into denial about the affair before issuing a fix, and then the malware kind of went away. Will this follow the same pattern? more

Precrime Regulation of Internet Innovation

In the sci-fi movie Minority Report, a 'precrime' police unit relies on the visions of psychics to predict future crimes, then arrests the potential perpetrators before they do anything wrong. In the world of Internet governance, the future is now, as regulators want online services to predict and prevent safety threats before they actually occur. more

Meeting with ITU Secretary General Dr Hamadoun Touré

During the ITU Conference I had the honour of a private meeting with Dr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the ITU since 2006... Dr Touré has a fascinating background. Born in Mali and educated in Russia, he has brought with him a distinctly fresh approach to the ITU. He has been Africa's Regional General Manager for ICO Global Communications and worked at various levels at the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT). more

Schneier and Kerr on Encryption Workarounds

Bruce Schneier is a famous cryptography expert and Orin Kerr a famous cyberlaw professor. Together they've published a law journal article on Encryption Workarounds. It's intended for lawyers so it's quite accessible to non-technical readers. The article starts with a summary of how encryption works, and then goes through six workarounds to get the text of an encrypted message. more

So/Lo/Mo for Business

Lest you think the social + local + mobile (So/Lo/Mo) trend is just a fad, last week, Pew Internet released a new report that found that 18 percent of smartphone owners use a geosocial service to check in and share their location with friends. The report also found that 74 percent of smartphone owners get real-time location-based information on their phones -- up from 55 percent last May. Add to these impressive stats the finding from earlier this year... more

Department of Commerce Begins Re-Solicitation for IANA Contract

In follow up to the cancelation of IANA Contract RFP last month, the United States Department of Commerce (DoC), National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have just issued solicitation of the contract. more

New gTLDs Questions Not Answered: Which Kind of Auction?

I was expecting something that would discuss the unique properties, if any, of the domain name market, and the types of inventory theoretically available to allocate, and the expected outcomes for the various types of auctions, and some showing that for some desired policy goals, whether greatest gain to seller or lowest loss to buyer, or something entirely different, the expected outcomes. This would assist the better informed, bottom-up, stakeholder-driven, consensus policy making. Is the domain name market indistinguishable from the spectrum market? If name spaces are distinguishable from units of spectrum... more

Robert Soloway Pleads Guilty

Large scale spammer Robert Soloway, whose criminal trial was scheduled to start in a week and a half pled guilty to most of the charges against him. The indictment made three categories of charges. Counts 1-10 were mail fraud, due to Soloway delivering his spamware through the mail, and the product egregiously failing to be what he said it was, notably including 30 million addresses purported to be opt-in. Counts 11-17 seven were wire fraud, sending spam making false claims about the product, support, guarantee... more

What Happened to IPv5, IPv7, IPv8 and IPv9?

The IPv4 market has created serious interest in the protocol far beyond the natural confines of networking professionals. These assets are worth a lot. Marketplaces, IPv4.Global's especially, have grown to be large centers of asset transfer by buyers and sellers of IPv4 addresses. IPv4.Global has helped transfer over $1 billion in IPv4 blocks. more

An Update on the Closed Generics Debate

ICANN is currently seeking public comment on the subject of "closed generic" Top Level Domain (TLD) applications. A "Closed Generic" is a TLD that is a generic term, but domains within that TLD will not be sold to the public. There are those who object to generic terms such as .book being operated as closed registries, which means that domain names within the .book Top Level Domain as proposed by Amazon would not be sold to the public, but instead, Amazon.com would own and operate all domain names within the .Book Top Level Domain. more

Innovating with New gTLDs

One of the primary purposes of the ICANN New generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program is to foster innovation in the DNS industry and the wider Internet. While having a desirable TLD string that users can relate to is a good starting point, gTLD applicants may want to bolster their value propositions by offering innovative services and differentiate their TLDs from others. Defining the services to be offered is so central to a gTLD that it should be part of the initial strategy of any prospective applicant. more

Nominet Rolls Out DNSSEC for 9.4 Million .UK Domains

UK registry Nominet has enabled the deployment of domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC) for 9.4 million second level .uk domains. Completing the rollout represents over a year's work and marks an important milestone in making the web a more trusted environment for UK consumers and businesses, says Nominet, which is responsible for running the .uk internet infrastructure. more

The Battle for “.nyc”: Is RFP the Answer?

New York City government officials announced that they will be applying for the ".nyc" top-level domain (TLD) extension and are looking to choose a qualified vendor to operate the TLD on their behalf. New York City's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) recently issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to try to find a qualified vendor to manage and market the city TLD in hope that they can raise more revenues for the city, to help local small businesses, promote tourism and help extend the branding image of NYC. more

The Rising Cost of Digital Theft and Espionage in Germany

The German digital association, Bitkom, recently announced that the cost of IT equipment theft, data breaches, digital and industrial espionage, and sabotage is expected to reach a staggering 206 billion euros ($224 billion) in 2023.  more