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Featured Blogs

What Does It Take To Repair Trust? What Will It Take ICANN To Win Back "Trust"? (Part I)

Khaled Fattal Some readers may wonder why I chose to raise the issue of "trust" now or even ask what it will take for ICANN to repair it. After all, the New gTLDs have been launched; applications have started being received, and all ICANN official announcements are that all is good and going according to plan. But many other readers and astute observers of this space, domestic and international, would not confuse the public dead silence we are hearing from ICANN and its insider community or the euphoria of the long awaited application submissions we are seeing to mean that all is perfect. more»

Green Revolving Funds Can Help Fund Costs of Cloud Computing and R&E Networking

Bill St. Arnaud There have been some interesting new developments in university Green Revolving Funds (GRF) that I believe could be a significant revenue opportunity for cloud suppliers and R&E networks. In this age of severe financial constraints and cutbacks for universities, new revenue models are needed to sustain advanced cyber-infrastructure in support of research and education. more»

Is ICANN Opening up Public Comment Periods in Bad Faith?

I read with interest that ICANN opened up yet another comment period on new TLDs. I believe that I speak for many when I question whether ICANN is opening up these comment periods in good faith, or instead whether these are smokescreens, mere distractions to pretend that ICANN is "listening" to the public while staff and insiders proceed with predetermined outcomes. more»

10 Reasons Why New gTLDs May Not Work For You

Naseem Javed World's mega businesses are about to wake up to the domain name expansion reality, where suddenly a name identity's exclusive ownership on global canvas of cyber branding and functionality will be ensured via gTLD. Something that traditional trademark system took years to achieve. A gTLD brand is not for everyone, structurally designed for powerful new ideas and established organizations around the world; however, following are the ten reasons why it may not work for you. more»

Phish or Fair?

John Levine It shouldn't be a big surprise to hear that phishing is a big problem for banks. Criminals send email pretending to be a bank, and set up web sites that look a lot like a bank. One reason that phishing is possible is that e-mail has no built in security, so that if a mail message comes in purporting to be from, say, accounts@bankofamerica.com, there's no easy way to tell whether the message is really from bankofamerica.com, or from a crook. more»

New gTLD Application Monitoring? Now?

Elisa Cooper Why in the world would any company sign-up for a "New gTLD Application Monitoring Service" when ICANN intends to publicly post all applications on May 1st? Domain Name Watching and Trademark Watching Services make perfect sense when new registrations and applications are being submitted and granted on a daily basis. I think that we can all easily agree that trying to understand new domain name and trademark registrations without an automated service would be nearly impossible. more»

The FBI and Scotland Yard vs. Anonymous: Security Lessons

Steven Bellovin A lot of people are fascinated by the news story that Anonymous managed to listen to a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard. Some of the interest is due to marvel that two such sophisticated organizations could be had, some is due to schadenfreude, and some is probably despair: if the bad guys can get at these folks, is anyone safe? more»

WIPO Provides New Top-Level Domain Resources for Rights Holders

Frederick Felman Courtesy of Brian Beckham from the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center in Geneva, here are a few important links with information that may be helpful for rights holders with ICANN's New gTLD program now launched and accepting applications more»

No Big Run on IPv4 in 2011

Daniel Karrenberg 2011 was an interesting year for IPv4: in February 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) handed out their last free IPv4 address blocks to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). In April 2011, the APNIC (the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific region) started allocating from its last /8. At the RIPE NCC we did not see a big jump in IPv4 address allocations in 2011, as anticipated by some observers. more»

World Notices That Verisign Said Three Months Ago That They Had a Security Breach Two Years Ago

John Levine The trade press is abuzz today with reports about a security breach at Verisign. While a security breach at the company that runs .COM, .NET, and does the mechanical parts of managing the DNS root is interesting, this shouldn't be news, at least, not now. Since Verisign is a public company, they file a financial report called a 10-Q with the SEC every quarter. According to the SEC's web site, Verisign filed their 10-Q for June through September 2011 on October 28th. more»

Value or Love for New gTLDs?

Alex Tajirian ICANN has started its historic and controversial program to expand the number of generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). This essay outlines the factors needed for the program to create economic value, warns against a cognitive trap that complicates selection of a new gTLD and considers the value contribution of the registries. I will not go into relevant macro measures, but I examine the problems associated with the popular measure of simply counting the number of registrations. more»

AT&T's Randall & Stankey: Wireless Data Growth Half The FCC Prediction

Dave Burstein 40%, not 92%-120%. "Data consumption right now is growing 40% a year," John Stankey of AT&T told investors and his CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed on the investor call. That's far less than the 92% predicted by Cisco's VNI model or the FCC's 120% to 2012 and 90% to 2013 figure in the "spectrum crunch" analysis. AT&T is easily a third of the U.S. mobile Internet and growing market share; there's no reason to think the result will be very different when we have data from others. more»

DMARC: New Email Authentication Protocol

Terry Zink A consortium of companies including Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Paypal have announced that they were collaborating and coming up with a new protocol known as DMARC -- the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. What is DMARC? more»

Holding Google to a Higher Standard in Search

Christopher Parente Danny Sullivan has been the go-to guy for understanding the world of search for over 15 years. This week he published a really good story on Google Plus Your World. A group of engineers have launched a site called Focus on the User that shows exactly how the new Google service could be including other social media content listings besides only Google Plus, but is not. more»

Reducing Unreachable ICANN Registrations

Wout de Natris Recently ICANN published a report on inaccurate registration data in her own databases. Now the question is presented to the world how can we mitigate this problem? There seems to be a very easy solution. ... The question to this answer seems simple. To know who has registered with an organisation. This makes it possible to contact the registered person or organisation, to send bills and to discuss policy with the members. more»

News Briefs

Study Indicates Nearly Half A Million Jobs Created from "App Economy" in US

A new study reveals close to 466,000 jobs have been created in the "App Economy" in United States -- up from zero in 2007. The total number of Apps Economy jobs includes jobs at 'pure' app firms such as Zynga as well as app-related jobs at large companies such as Electronic Arts, Amazon, and AT&T, as well as app 'infrastructure' jobs at core firms such as Google, Apple, and Facebook. In addition, the App Economy total includes employment spillovers to the rest of the economy. ›››

Mobile Internet Usage at 8.5%, Doubled From Last Year

Global internet usage through mobile devices, has almost doubled to 8.5% in January 2012 from 4.3% last year according to a new report from web analytics StatCounter. While this stat excludes tablets, firm's research arm highlights the increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet with market share doubling year on year since 2009. Nokia leads worldwide, most probably driven by its dominance in India. Apple is second globally but leads the US and UK markets. In the UK RIM is second only to Apple. ›››

SEC Filing Reveals Facebook Network Equipment Valued Over $1B at Close of 2011

"Facebook reported in its SEC filing that it owns 'network equipment' valued at $1.016 billion at the close of 2011," reports Rich Miller of Data Center Knowledge. "The number reflects the expense of rapidly building a massive Internet infrastructure, including Facebook's shift from buying vendor gear and leasing data centers to building its own servers, racks and custom data centers." ›››

DNSChanger Trojan Still Running on Half of Fortune 500s, US Govt

More than two months after authorities shut down a massive Internet traffic hijacking scheme, the malicious software that powered the criminal network is still running on computers at half of the Fortune 500 companies, and on PCs at nearly 50 percent of all federal government agencies, new research shows," reports Brian Krebs. ›››

Prof. Dave Farber on Where the Internet is Headed

"Internet protocols simply aren't adequate for the changes in hardware and network use that will come up in a decade or so," says Professor Dave Farber who was recently interviewed by Andy Oram. "Dave predicts that computers will be equipped with optical connections instead of pins for networking, and the volume of data transmitted will overwhelm routers, which at best have mixed optical/electrical switching," writes Oram.  ›››

Public-Private Cooperation Policy for Cyber Security Suggested by Commissioner Kroes

At a speech during the Security and Defense Agenda meeting on 30 January Vice-President of the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, showed how the Commission envisions public-private cooperation on cyber security. ›››

DDoS Attacks Increased by 2000% in Past 3 Years, Asia Generating Over Half of Recent Attacks

In the past three years, Akamai has seen 2,000% increase in the number of DDoS attack incidents investigated on behalf of its customers. The latest State of the Internet report released today by Akamai also identifies top countries from which this observed attack traffic originates, as well as the top ports targeted by these attacks. ›››

BT Working on 300Mbps Residential Pilot Project

Openreach, the lead deployment arm of BT, has issued an announcement asking residents and landlords of apartment blocks to join a pilot project that will eventually bring broadband download speeds of up to 300Mbps to residents. "Participants will gain access to Openreach’s Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology which delivers super-fast broadband speeds," says Openreach. ›››

Protests Erupt Over EU's Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

In a blog post today, Michael Geist writes: "The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia). This has generated a flurry of furious protest..." ›››

Making the Web Faster: Google Working on Enhancing Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)

As part of its efforts to speed up the delivery of web content, Google has proposed changes to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), "the workhorse of the Internet." Yuchung Cheng who works on the transport layer at Google wrties: "To deliver content effectively, Web browsers typically open several dozen parallel TCP connections ahead of making actual requests. This strategy overcomes inherent TCP limitations but results in high latency in many situations and is not scalable. Our research shows that the key to reducing latency is saving round trips. We’re experimenting with several improvements to TCP." ›››

NASA Website Blocked Due to DNSSEC Error

Dark Reading – A misconfiguration in NASA's DNSSEC implementation on its website caused Comcast's network to block users from the site last week. NASA had incorrectly signed DNSSEC in its implementation of the new security protocol that last week, causing Comcast's newly DNSSEC-enabled service to automatically block access to the site. the day part of the Web went dark in protest of controversial anti-piracy legislation, leading some users and pundits to inaccurately speculate this was Comcast's way of protesting the government-based bills. ›››

Exporting SOPA-Like Rules to Other Countries

"While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries," says Michael Geist in a blog post today. Geist writes: "With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11 ..." ›››

European Commission Proposes "Right to be Forgotten" Internet Law

BBC – A new law promising internet users the "right to be forgotten" will be proposed by the European Commission on Wednesday. It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted and firms will have to comply unless there are "legitimate" grounds to retain it. The move is part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the commission's 1995 Data Protection Directive. ›››

UPDATEDFeds Shut Down File-Sharing Website Megaupload.com, Seven People Charged

Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down one of the world's largest Internet file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, charging its founder and others with violating piracy laws, the Associated Press reports today. "The indictment was unsealed Thursday, one day after websites shut down in protest of two congressional proposals [SOPA & PIPA] intended to thwart the online piracy of copyrighted movies and TV programs." ››› Updated: Jan 21, 3:19 PM

UPDATEDWebsites Go Dark Protesting SOPA and PIPA, Senators Change Course

New York Times – Internet protests on Wednesday quickly cut into Congressional support for anti-Web piracy measures as lawmakers abandoned and rethought their backing for legislation that pitted new media interests against some of the most powerful old-line commercial interests in Washington. Freshman Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, was first out of the starting gate Wednesday morning with his announcement that he would no longer back anti-Internet piracy legislation... ››› Updated: Jan 19, 12:40 PM

Kuala Lumpur Mandates WiFi for All Restaurants and Bars

A new law passed in Malaysia's largest city, Kuala Lumpur, this month will require all food and beverage outlets to provide wireless internet access to customers by April of this year. The law makes WiFi access for customers a requirement for food operators when applying for a new license for a restaurant or renewing an existing license. Cafes, pubs, bars and club lounges are also required to provide WiFi services, the mayor of Kuala Lumpur, Tan Sri Fuad Ismail, was quoted as saying to a Malaysian newspaper recently. ›››

China's Internet Users Pass Half a Billion

The number of Chinese Internet users has surpassed 500 million, with nearly half of them using microblogs, or Weibo, according to latest official figures. About 55.8 million Chinese people became new Internet users last year, bringing the country’s Web population to 513 million, representing an Internet penetration rate of 38.3 percent, according to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). ›››

White House on SOPA: Protecting Intellectual Property Must Not Threaten Open, Innovative Internet

The White House today released a response to SOPA and PIPA petitions and the legislative approaches to combat online piracy. The response is prepared by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff. ›››

Protect IP Act to Be Amended in Response to Pressure from Technical Community

Computerworld – The controversial copyright enforcement bill the Protect IP Act, or PIPA, may be amended on the Senate floor later this month in response to ongoing concerns about its provisions affecting ISPs and the domain-name system, the bill's chief sponsor said. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chief sponsor of the Protect IP Act said Thursday he plans to offer an amendment that would require a study of the impact of the ISP provisions in the bill before they are implemented. ›››

ICANN Begins Accepting Applications for New gTLDs

ICANN announced today that after over seven years of planning, the organization has initiated the process for accepting applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). "We believe this program will do what it's designed to do, which is open up the Internet domain-name system to further innovation," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN chairman, during an event at the National Press Club in Washington today. More information on the Applicant Support program can be found on the ICANN New gTLD page. ›››

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Industry Updates

.ORG COO Discusses Priorities With DailyVista, Pursuit of .NGO Domain

PIR Nancy Gofus recently joined PIR as its chief operating officer to oversee marketing, sales, product and strategy functions, and work with Chief Executive Officer Brian Cute to expand PIR's global presence and further grow the .ORG domain in existing and new markets. more»

StarHub to Acquire '.starhub' New Top-Level Domain

ARI Registry Services StarHub has partnered with technical registry provider ARI Registry Services and digital brand management services provider Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services (DBS) to help it apply for and operate its '.brand' domain name. more»

ARI Registry Services Signs 21 Contracts in the First Week of New TLD Applications

ARI Registry Services ARI Registry Services today announced it signed contracts to provide technical registry services for 21 new Top-Level Domains within the first week of applications opening. "Critics of the program have suggested there is little demand for new domains. However, from the results we have seen in the first week of applications, we can clearly see strong demand exists." more»

Nixu DDI Awarded Gold Medal for Its IPv6 Support

Nixu Software The tests, which were carried out by an independent third party approved by the IPv6 Ready Forum, validated the interoperability between Nixu DDI Software Appliance platform and other networking products with IPv6 Ready Gold Certificate. more»

MarkMonitor to Exhibit at Internet Tech Policy Exhibition and Reception to be Held on Capitol Hill

MarkMonitor On Wednesday Jan. 25, the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee (ICAC) will host its 15th annual tech policy exhibition, the longest running technology exhibition on Capitol Hill. As part of the exhibition, MarkMonitor® will demonstrate its brand protection and antipiracy technology. more»

Sedari Signs With Dot Moscow Bidders

Sedari Sedari has been engaged by the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID), a not-for-profit Russian foundation which is preparing applications for the .MOSCOW and .MOCKBA (in Cyrillic) top-level domain names. more»

.ORG, The Public Interest Registry Welcomes Nancy Gofus As Chief Operating Officer

PIR .ORG, The Public Interest Registry (PIR) today named Nancy Gofus as chief operating officer. Currently, Ms. Gofus serves as board chair of the national board for Volunteers of America -- a national non-profit dedicated to helping those in need live healthy, safe and productive lives. more»

Minds+Machines Works with .bayern

Minds + Machines Top Level Domain Holdings' wholly owned registry services company, Minds+Machines, will provide the back-end registry services for the proposed new domain. Revenue to the Company will be based on a share of the revenues generated by the domain. more»

The New Domain For Japan, JP.NET, Launches With Exclusive Invitation to Trademark Owners

CentralNic The new domain for Japan launched today with an invitation for trademark owners to secure the domains matching their trademarks ending .JP.NET, in English and Japanese.  more»

Verisign to Award New Infrastructure Research Grants

Verisign VeriSign, Inc. today announced the expansion of a grant program designed to promote cutting-edge research into strengthening and improving the Internet's global infrastructure. This year's program will focus specifically on fostering infrastructure improvements that support safe and secure Internet access for users around the globe, especially in the developing world. more»

Being a .PRO When Choosing a Registry Services Partner

Afilias We're excited to bring a new top-level domain into the Afilias family and help grow the use of it. I also think it shows that the top-level domain business is a unique one -- and it's not one to be entered into lightly. more»

Industry Participants

Index of corporate sponsors and industry participants featured on CircleID in alphabetical order.

Community  –  CircleID Participants  |  View All  |  Join CircleID

Rebecca MacKinnon
Journalist and activist; Co-founder, Global Voices OnlineJoined on Jul 22, 2005

Daniel Golding
VP and Research Director at Tier 1 ResearchJoined on Oct 19, 2004

Paul Vixie
Chairman and Chief Scientist, Internet Systems ConsortiumJoined on Sep 17, 2003

Michael Hammer
Joined on Jul 28, 2007

Gadi Evron
Security StrategistJoined on Feb 22, 2006

Steve Atkins
Founding partner of anti-spam consultancy & software firm Word to the WiseJoined on Nov 23, 2009

Michael Geist
Chair of Internet and E-commerce LawJoined on Jan 09, 2004

Thomas Barrett
President - EnCirca, IncJoined on Jul 09, 2003

Jonathan Zittrain
Professor of Law at Harvard Law SchoolJoined on Nov 09, 2005

Kim Davies
Manager, Root Zone ServicesJoined on Feb 23, 2005

Amit Fridman
Vice President Engineering at Crescendo NetworksJoined on Dec 01, 2009

John Yunker
Author and consultantJoined on Dec 19, 2006

Sam Johnston
Director, Cloud & IT Services at EquinixJoined on Sep 02, 2008

Bruce Young
Senior Desktop Support AnalystJoined on Jun 14, 2003

Jay Daley
Chief Executive of .nz Registry ServicesJoined on Mar 15, 2004

Ross Rader
Director of Innovation & ResearchJoined on Jun 14, 2003

Khaled Fattal
Group Chairman, The Multilingual Internet GroupJoined on Oct 29, 2009

Timothy B. Lee
Adjunct Scholar at the Cato InstituteJoined on Nov 25, 2008

Dirk Krischenowski
Founder and CEO of dotBERLIN GmbH & Co. KGJoined on Dec 26, 2005

Eric Goldman
Associate Professor, Santa Clara University School of LawJoined on Sep 11, 2003

Daniel J. Weitzner
Technology and Society Policy DirectorJoined on Apr 09, 2004

Robert Rozicki
One of those domain name typesJoined on Sep 15, 2004

Suresh Ramasubramanian
Architect, Antispam and ComplianceJoined on Jun 21, 2004

Krista Papac
Chief Strategy Officer, AusRegistry InternationalJoined on Jan 30, 2010

Jean Guillon
Top-Level Domains specialistJoined on Aug 29, 2008

Geoff Huston
Author & Chief Scientist at APNICJoined on Sep 06, 2003

Neil Schwartzman
Executive Director, CAUCE North AmericaJoined on Sep 15, 2003

Garth Bruen
Internet Fraud Analyst and Policy DeveloperJoined on May 22, 2008

Kieren McCarthy
Internet consultant, journalist and authorJoined on Jul 09, 2006

Rod Dixon
AttorneyJoined on Jun 14, 2003