Three Years With ICANN

I joined the ICANN board during the December 2004 ICANN meeting in Cape Town. I served for a three year term and stepped down at this last meeting in Los Angeles and didn't run for another term... Before joining ICANN, I thought that ICANN was the only part of the Internet that wasn't really working. I knew that there must be a better way to do what ICANN does, but I couldn't be bothered to figure it out. I'd agree with people who said things like, "it should just be distributed" or "it should just be first come first serve" or "we should just get rid of it." People from ICANN would say, "it's more complicated than that" or "at this point that would be impossible." After being part of the process for three years, I find myself saying those same things... more

Whois: If You Want Privacy, Pay For It

Netchoice, a lobbying group for the e-commerce industry had a strange reaction on the failure of the GNSO working group on Whois to reach a consensus. After all, they say, "Privacy concerns with Whois that were identified years ago have already been addressed by in the marketplace"... more

Do Spammers Change Their Tactics Based on Recipient Verification? Yes, They Do

Or, to be more precise, it sure looks like they do. I wrote on another post on a publicly available spam tool, and I mentioned that I came across a page that allowed people to verify whether or not an email address is actually live. The question naturally arises: do spammers clean up their email contact lists based upon whether or not the address is legitimate? Spammers would have an incentive to do this... Do we actually observe spammers changing their sending patterns? I believe that we have evidence that they do. more

On the Hunt for “Critical Internet Resources”

I'm writing this column in November, and that means that it is time for the traveling circus known as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to come down to earth, unpack its tents and sell tickets for its annual song and dance routine. The script for this year's show has been changed, and after being excluded from the main arena last year at the Athens gig, the headline act of "Critical Internet Resources" is taking a starring role this year in Rio. Some folk are even saying that it is the single most contentious issue to be scheduled at this year's IGF show. So what are "Critical Internet Resources" anyway? If folks are going to spend all this time, energy and carbon emissions traveling to Rio to talk on this topic, then wouldn't it be helpful to understand what it means in the first place? There are probably a number of ways to answer this question, so in this heavily opinionated column I'd like to look at the range of possible answers to this question. more

Study Shows German Internet Users Prefer Memorable Domain Names for Cities and Regions

The majority of private Internet users in Germany favour the increased usage of local domain endings as in .city or .region in the future because the more memorable names will help them to better find the information that they are looking for. That is the core result of a representative survey that was commissioned by eco Verband der deutschen Internetwirtschaft and conducted by the market research company eResult at the beginning of October. eco is the registered association of German Internet enterprises... more

Phishers Now Targeting Domain Registrars

This is an issue of some concern and should be watched carefully: phishers are now trying to get passwords of domain registrants (domain owners). Currently, correspondents inform me that GoDaddy is the target, but there's no reason to think the phishers won't expand to other registrars. Normally, phishers go after bank accounts or other financial information, or sometimes the online accounts of users so that they may send spam. It's not known precisely why phishers are after domain registration information, but the possibilities are chilling... more

To Fight Domain Name Theft: Sex.com Gives Birth to a New Property Right

For those who are Star Wars fans, the following scene from the prequel, Attack of the Clones, will be easy to recall: a young and misinformed Jedi, known as Obi-waan Kenobi, opines about how an army of clones had been able to snatch a victory from imminent defeat. Yoda, a Jedi Master and virtual fountain of wisdom, immediately gushes forth an important correction: "Victory? Victory you say? Master Obi-waan, not victory." Yoda explains that winning a battle is not a victory, if the win merely signals that the war has just begun. Yoda's apparent perception seems particularly apt for the precedent setting federal court opinion involving the sex.com domain name. Notwithstanding that individual domain name registrants may seek comfort in the victory obtained from the Ninth Circuit's opinion in Kremen v. Cohen, that decision merely signals a beginning -- not an end -- to the controversy over the proper legal framework for resolving domain name theft.  more

iREIT Drops TM-Typo Domains?

As faithful CircleID readers will know, iREIT (Internet REIT, Inc.), a Texas domain name portfolio investment corporation, has been sued by Verizon and by Vulcan Golf for cybersquatting. It appears iREIT is taking steps to clean up its portfolio by deleting obvious typos of famous trademarks... more

ICANN: WHOIS Back to Rathole #0

ICANN's GNSO council had WHOIS on its agenda for today. The options on the table: (1) Accepting the outcome of years of policy development processes; (2) rejecting that outcome (again?), but calling for some kind of fact-gathering to feed into future policy work, in order to keep the space occupied; (3) acknowledging that there is broad dissent in the Internet community, and calling for a sunset on the WHOIS clauses in current agreements, as these clauses are not backed by community consensus any more. Not very surprisingly, motions (1) and (3) failed; (2) was accepted; all that after lengthy discussion, with lots of procedural bells and whistles. more

Gmail as an Email Honeypot

You all remember cybersquatting, a popular sport in the late 90s, right? McDonalds.com, JenniferLopez.com, Hertz.com and Avon.com thankfully all point to the right web sites today, but thaiairline.com, mcdonald.com, luftansa.com, gugle.com, barnesandnobles.com and other misspellings are fake web sites intended to trap the casual surfer with a hand that's a bit too much quicker than the eye... If you want to go to the McDonalds web site, you don't even spend the 10 seconds to look it up -- you will type McDonalds.com and expect to see the latest dollar meal menu. But the same is true for the other popular form of communication -- email... more

NANOGGING

There are many network operator group meetings being held these days. Even in the backwater of the South Pacific where I live there is now AUSNOG, and NZNOG is just next door in New Zealand. We now have MENOG in the Middle East and AFNOG in Africa. The original NOG was the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), and they have the T-Shirts to prove it! NANOG meets three times a year, and I attended NANOG 41 in October 2007. NANOG meetings cover a broad variety of topics, from operational tools, measurement, and peering practices through to a commentary on the state of the Internet industry. Here are my impressions of the meeting. more

Comcast’s Wrong Approach

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have to do a lot more than just provide a pipe from your residence to their facilities to assure that you have a good Internet experience. There is a raging debate, inextricable from the debate on Network Neutrality, both on what the proper responsibilities of an ISP are AND what methods are proper for carrying out those responsibilities. more

IPv6 Deployment: A Very Complex Time Bomb with an Uncertain Trigger Date

I did a 2 hour interview on October 23rd with John Curran, Board Chair of ARIN the North American Regional Internet Routing Registry for the last decade. I now understand what is at stake with IPv6. Outside of a key core group of network engineers I think darn few people do understand. And not all of them agree on how the scenario plays out though virtually all say the situation is very serious. John believes that it is huge. It is as big as Y2K except no one knows a precise date by which everything has to be done... more

WHOIS Redux: Demand Privacy in Domain Name Registration

Doc's post and the impending comments deadline for the next iteration of ICANN's never-ending WHOIS saga finally pushed me to write up my thoughts on the latest iteration of ICANN debate. As Doc points out, much of the current debate is very inside baseball, tied up in acronyms atop bureaucratic layers. Small wonder then that ordinary domain name registrants and Internet users haven't commented much, while the fora are dominated by INTA members turning out responses to an "urgent request" to "let ICANN know that Whois is important to the brand owners I represent"... more

Temporary Restraining Order Issued Against Domainer’s Use of “mylennar.com”

Companies sometimes find that opportunistic purchasers of domain names (often referred to as "domainers"), will purchase a domain name quite similar to that of the company, and establish a site at the URL loaded with revenue-generating sponsored ads. To accomplish these purposes, domainers seem to prefer the services of companies like HitFarm and Domain Sponsor. A web user types in the confusingly similar URL and is bombarded with pop-up ads and sponsored links to goods and services, often competitive to the company whose name or trademark is being appropriated in the URL... more