The Last gTLD Round Taught Us the Wrong Lessons

Fourteen years after ICANN's last gTLD expansion, registration figures offer an incomplete verdict. The next round will test whether applicants can build namespaces with enduring relevance, rather than merely generating impressive launch volumes and revenues. more

DNS Abuse and Criminal Infrastructure: Beyond Definitions and Blocklists

Research suggests criminals may control a striking share of newly registered gTLD domains, raising questions about whether ICANN's definitions, contractual safeguards and enforcement mechanisms are keeping pace with the industrial scale of technology-facilitated harm. more

Whose Precedent Gets Remembered? Selective Amplification Has Its Own Amnesia

DotConnectAfrica's landmark .AFRICA IRP victory established an ICANN accountability precedent later expressly invoked by Amazon. Selective amplification has since detached that precedent from its origins, distorting the historical record. more

Safe for Whom? A Pilot’s Take on the AI Incident-Reporting System

Drawing on aviation's trusted incident-reporting model, a former pilot argues AI safety needs confidential reporting paired with public learning, and that legitimacy, international participation and transparency must be built into SAFE from the outset. more

DNSSEC Doesn’t Need a Better Story - It Needs a Better Tuesday

DNSSEC adoption is stronger than headline figures suggest, yet uneven across industries. New data indicate the bigger obstacle is not reputation but operational friction, especially key rollovers, registrar coordination and automation still missing across major domains. more

Why AI Traffic Needs Its IP Classification

As AI agents increasingly act on users' behalf, the internet's human-versus-bot divide is breaking down. A dedicated AI IP classification could replace guesswork with transparent, context-aware traffic policies that improve access, enforcement, and infrastructure efficiency. more

Poland Excluded from Starlink’s European Region: What Musk Dispute Reveals About Digital Sovereignty

Poland's exclusion from Starlink's new European roaming region has triggered a dispute with Warsaw, exposing how private infrastructure providers can shape cross-border connectivity and raising questions about digital sovereignty, accountability, and internet governance in Europe. more

ICANN Should Immediately Clarify if Applicants for the Same String Can Communicate Before Reveal Day

With more than 1,600 applications filed for ICANN's 2026 new gTLD Round, self-revealing applicants face uncertainty over whether pre-Reveal Day communications and agreements about overlapping strings could violate strict rules against privately resolving contention sets. more

What Reagan-Era Cyber Strategists Can Teach America Today

Reagan-era cyber strategists anticipated today's transnational threats, proposing international treaties, public-private cooperation and infrastructure protections. As America again considers aggressive action against cybercriminals, their largely forgotten blueprint offers both lessons and warnings. more

The Dual-Front Challenge: Why Route Security (RPKI) is the Prerequisite for Quantum Readiness (PQC)

Internet security risks advancing unevenly: post-quantum cryptography may protect data while vulnerable routing still enables hijacks. Universal RPKI adoption, paired with cryptographic agility, is essential to build an Internet trust architecture ready for quantum threats. more

The Long Wait for .web Ends

After a decade of legal disputes, Verisign has secured .web and will launch the long-awaited domain later this year, opening a new chapter in digital identity while raising fresh questions about pricing, adoption and competition. more

The Web Has Become a Content Delivery Network

Cyberattacks, AI scraping and relentless bot traffic have transformed CDNs from performance tools into the Web's defensive gatekeepers, reshaping Internet architecture, governance and control as private intermediaries increasingly determine which requests reach origin servers first. more

National Internet Registries: Gatekeeper or Enabler?

National Internet Registries were created to give countries greater control over internet number resources. Yet where they add opacity and restrict transfers, they can trap scarce IPv4 capacity, slowing growth instead of strengthening digital resilience. more

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in ICANN’s 2026 Round of gTLD Applications

AI can help applicants navigate ICANN's complex new gTLD process, from business planning and financial modeling to drafting and reviewing applications, pointing towards faster, cheaper and increasingly automated domain-name rounds in the future. more

What the i2Coalition Article Misses About DNS Abuse

Authors defend research showing malicious domain registrations occur at industrial scale, arguing that blocklist data is reliable and that policymakers must prioritize prevention alongside mitigation to curb cybercriminal exploitation of the domain name market globally. more