As the ITU-T 2018 Plenipotentiary Conference rolls toward a close this week, its most controversial and contentious subject appeared baked into a new treaty instrument resolution that has apparently reached a kind of steady-state. After distilling the many input proposals through ten revisions and a corrigendum, the tasked drafting committee has produced a new resolution with the simple title of "OTTs." more
My thesis is simple: the way we protect privacy today is broken and cannot be fixed without a radical change in direction. My full argument is long; I submitted it to the NTIA's request for comments on privacy. Here's a short summary. For almost 50 years, privacy protection has been based on the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs). There are several provisions... more
The development of the Internet has arrived at a new Crossroads. The growing Internet Governance complexity is leading also to a higher level of confusion on how the digital future should be shaped. The French president Emanuel Macron and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will open both the Paris Peace Forum and the 13th IGF where Internet Governance is a key issue. Is the time ripe for a "New Deal" on Internet Governance? And which stakeholder should bear the primary responsibility for the normative framing of the key challenges internet governance is facing? more
Two months ago, the Trump White House published its National Cyber Strategy. It was followed a few days ago with the release of its draft NSTAC Cybersecurity "moonshot." The Strategy document was basically a highly nationalistic America-First exhortation that ironically bore a resemblance to China's more global two-year-old National Cybersecurity Strategy. more
The security of the global Default Free Zone (DFZ) has been a topic of much debate and concern for the last twenty years (or more). Two recent papers have brought this issue to the surface once again - it is worth looking at what these two papers add to the mix of what is known, and what solutions might be available. The first of these traces the impact of Chinese "state actor" effects on BGP routing in recent years. more
The .BEST new gTLD Registry was acquired 3 months ago by Cyril Fremont, a French Entrepreneur from Paris, and a team of investors. I took the time to meet with Cyril in the latest ICANN63 meeting in Barcelona to ask him a few questions about his future new gTLD project, three months after it was acquired from the previous owner... .best has just released the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of the social network. The ".best" social network will be officially present at the next Namescon... more
Recently, a blogger whose website features posts and ads from domain speculators wondered what the cost of registering a .com domain name would be if somebody else ran the .com registry. But this blog post asks the more relevant question: "How much could businesses and consumers save if the benefit of .com price caps were passed along to consumers?" Now is a good time to focus on this question, since Verisign and the US Department of Commerce just amended their Cooperative Agreement to allow limited, regulated .com price increases. more
Last week during the ICANN meeting in Barcelona I attended a short presentation from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Their mission is pretty simple: ...eliminate child sexual abuse imagery online. Fortunately, the presentation I was at did not include any of the actual material (which would have been illegal anyway) but even without seeing any of it the topic is one that I think most people find deeply disturbing. more
Mostafa Ammar, out of Georgia Tech recently posted an interesting paper titled The Service-Infrastructure Cycle, Ossification, and the Fragmentation of the Internet. I have argued elsewhere that we are seeing the fragmentation of the global Internet into multiple smaller pieces, primarily based on the centralization of content hosting combined with the rational economic decisions of the large-scale hosting services. The paper in hand takes a slightly different path to reach the same conclusion. more
This past Saturday, a self-professed neo-Nazi massacred eleven worshipers at synagogue services in Pittsburgh. The killer was reported to have lived on and was incented by an "Over the Top (OTT)" service purposely established to facilitate extremist activities known as Gab. Within hours, the cloud service providers hosting their services announced they would no longer provide hosting services. Presumably, the threat of both potential civil litigation liability among other penalties, as well as adverse publicity, provided the motivation. more
Are you passionate about ensuring the Internet remains open, globally-connected, secure and trustworthy - for everyone? Do you have experience in Internet standards, development or public policy? If so, please consider applying for one of the open seats on the Internet Society Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees provides strategic direction, inspiration, and oversight to advance the Society's mission. more
The controversial site gab.com has been shut down by GoDaddy and given 2 days to move the domain elsewhere. The deadline expires at midnight tonight Irish time. In recent days the site has seen itself become increasingly disconnected as various service providers and online platforms including PayPal have shut the door to them. At present the site is displaying this notice... more
This case illustrates the fact that political, security, and financial negotiations may be as difficult as designing satellites and rockets for a would-be global Internet service provider. OneWeb is investing billions of dollars in a constellation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) Internet-service satellites. In 2015 they placed launch orders for 21 Russian-made Soyuz rockets. more
When the Internet outgrew its academic and research roots and gained some prominence and momentum in the broader telecommunications environment it found itself to be in opposition to many of the established practices of the international telecommunications arrangements and even in opposition to the principles that lie behind these arrangements. more
Accessing Whois information and acting on a litigious domain name is becoming a nightmare for law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement agencies must have an access to the information provided by registrants in the Whois database and, in specific cases, have authority to act FAST on a domain name. The EU has a solution for this and it's coming in 2020. more
Without regulation, there is little hope companies will implement proper security protection measures for IoT devices, said author and security expert Bruce Schneier, during a panel discussion at the Aspen Cyber Summit. more
A paper published by the Naval War College titled, "China's Maxim - Leave No Access Point Unexploited: The Hidden Story of China Telecom's BGP Hijacking," accuses the Chinese government of manipulating BGP routing in order to intercept internet traffic. more
Tim Berners-Lee has called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new "Contract for the Web" that aims to protect people's rights and freedoms on the internet. more
NTIA released a statement today announcing the agreement reached to extend and modify Verisign's Cooperative Agreement. more
U.S. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden released an early draft of a bill today that would subject company CEOs and senior executives to tough penalties including 10 to 20 years of imprisonment for failing to protect consumer data. more
World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee speaking during an interview this week, warned Silicon Valley technology giants have grown so dominant they may need to be broken up. more
Karachi-based Bank Islami revealed Saturday morning that it had detected abnormal transactions resulting in 2.6 million Pakistani rupees, roughly $19,500 and precautionary steps where taken immediately. more
The Librarian of Congress and US Copyright Office has updated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act extending some essential exemptions ensuring that computer security researchers won't be treated like nefarious criminals for their contributions to society. more
IBM and Red Hat, leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion. This changes everything about the cloud market, says Ginni Rometty, IBM President and CEO. "IBM will become the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses." more
ICANN has lifted the stop on delegating the .amazon top-level domain, allowing the delegation of the domain to the company Amazon Inc. over the South American region. more
Yahoo today announced it has agreed to pay $50 million in damages and will offer two years of free credit-monitoring services to 200 million people whose email addresses and other personal information were stolen as part of the massive security breach. more
In a statement delivered during the ICANN63 in Barcelona, David Redl,
Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information (NTIA) said that while the community has greatly improved ICANN's accountability there is still room left for improvements. more
When it comes to fighting cybercrime, "being able to easily access ICANN and look up IP addresses is a lot more important than accessing the minutiae of encrypted data communications," says Jacqueline McNamara, head of cybersecurity at Telstra. more
A striking trend revealed in a report to be released next week by the Web Foundation, an organization set up by the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, indicates that the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015. more
According to reports, the majority of the U.S. federal domains have met the deadline to adopt an email authentication program to prevent fake emails from being sent. more
A report from the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre blames hostile foreign states for the majority of the 1,167 attacks dealt with in the past two years. more
U.S. Senators Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, both critics of China, have urged Canada to consider dropping China's Huawei Technologies from helping to build next-generation 5G telecommunications networks. more
The EU's privacy regulator is predicting that the first round of enforcement actions under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be exercised in the coming months. more
Akram Atallah, head of ICANN's Global Domains Division, has left the organization to join leading gTLD registry Donuts Inc. as its new CEO. more
Alphabet Inc.'s Google has announced that it will not compete for the Pentagon's cloud-computing contract with an estimated value of $10 billion; says the project may conflict with its corporate values on artificial intelligence. more
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ONLINE is one among the few nTLDs that have crossed the 1 million mark, which now makes it the 5th largest nTLD by zone size. more
The Town Hall will provide an opportunity for the community to hear from the .US team on the 2018 developments and for community discussions on how to build and grow the .US domain to meet the demands of the future. more
Verisign announces that קום., the new, Verisign-operated, internationalized domain name (IDN) extension that is uniquely designed for Hebrew language speakers, is now open for the registration of domain names by the general public on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to availability and the applicable registry policies. more
Neustar, Inc. a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information services, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Verisign, Inc. to acquire Verisign's Security Services customer contracts. more
Radix, one of the world's largest portfolio registries, today announced that it has made one-time premium name sales of more than $137K since August 2018. These one-time sales were made through domain marketplace SEDO and via top registrar partners. Names that fetched maximum value were across .online, .space and .fun TLDs. more
Verisign, the company granted exclusive rights to issue .com domains, is expected to request a price increase for .com domains when its current 'price cap' agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) expires on November 30, 2018. Will NTIA impose a price increase on millions of Internet users to further enrich Verisign, "The Most Profitable Company You've Never Heard Of", which is already enjoying huge windfall profits? more
Verisign just released its Q2 2018 DDoS Trends Report, which represents a unique view into the attack trends unfolding online, through observations and insights derived from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack mitigations enacted on behalf of customers of Verisign DDoS Protection Services. more
As the .brands program evolves, it's truly rewarding to see the space maturing -- as companies' use of their branded domains become more diverse and find clear connections with business strategy and corporate priorities. more
Afilias Australia Pty Ltd announced today that it has set the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for Largest migration of an internet top-level domain in a single transition following its transfer of 3,153,979 .au domain names on Sunday, July 1, 2018. more
DeviceAtlas has released its latest report exploring statistics for mobile device usage around the globe. The latest report shows a resurgence in the use of feature phones, which have eaten into smartphone share in some markets. more
Currently scheduled for October 11, 2018, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plans to change the cryptographic key that helps to secure the internet's Domain Name System (DNS) by performing a Root Zone Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) key signing key (KSK) rollover. more
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