A directive known as "Written Declaration 29," adopted last week by the European Parliament, calls for legislation that would require search engines to make a record of all search queries, as reported today by Startpage and Ixquick, anonymous search engine providers. "Framed as a measure to crack down on paedophiles, the controversial Declaration calls on the EU to require that search engines store all search traffic for up to two years for possible analysis by authorities." more
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post posing the question of whether or not more government regulation is required in order to secure the Internet. On the one hand, anonymity is viewed in the west as a forum for freedom of speech. The anonymity of the Internet allows dissidents to speak up against unpopular governments. However, the anonymity afforded by the Internet is not so much by design as it is byproduct of its original designers not seeing how widespread it would eventually become. more
ICANN's Board of Directors on Friday approved a set of Chinese language internationalized domain names which will allow millions of Chinese language users to access the internet using their native script. The new Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) and the associated organizations approved by the ICANN board include three different organizations: CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), HKIRC (Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Limited), and TWNIC (Taiwan Network Information Center). more
The board of ICANN on Friday gave initial approval for the addition of .xxx Top-Level Domain... Dot-XXX domains won't start appearing right away. ICANN must first conduct a "due diligence" study of ICM's business plan for the domain, and then the board will review the contract proposed for the operation of the domain. That may involve referring the matter to ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, which is next scheduled to meet in December in Colombia, said board member Bruce Tonkin. "There is a potential that this is a prolonged process,"... more
Those who have been involved in the ICANN process as long as I have naturally become accustomed to ICANN controversies at all levels. But the latest is a "wrong" of international ramifications. The four (4) versions of the Guidebook for the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) have been hundreds of pages long with a lot of The Good, The Bad, and to some, The Ugly. However, something new has appeared in the 4th and latest version called DAG4 can be called: "The Disturbing". more
When it comes to accountability, ICANN would rather be compared to other U.S. nonprofit companies than to the regulatory bodies it more closely resembles. If they truly wish to be treated like a nonprofit, rather than a regulator, there is a very simple solution: make all contributions strictly voluntary. more
In Brussels on Friday, an esteemed panel of experts got together to discuss the challenge of improving ICANN's accountability. It's just too bad nobody from ICANN came by to hear it. ... While their prescriptions varied widely, the panelists were remarkably similar in their diagnoses - namely, that ICANN has yet to meet the fundamental challenge of making its board and staff accountable and answerable to the community that it is intended to serve. more
The Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China has issued a statement on "Internet Policy in China." Released Tuesday, the lengthy statement covers a range of topics from promoting internal development and use, to freedom of expression, protecting Internet security, and international cooperation. A quick review reveals two interesting passages relevant to global Internet governance. more
Amy Smorodin writes: The Technology Policy Institute and the Centre for European Policy Studies are co-hosting "Internet Governance and ICANN: Emerging Policy Issues," scheduled for June 18th at CEPS in Brussels. The conference will feature discussion on issues stemming from ICANN's newly established operating structure under the Affirmation of Commitments. more
A self-appraisal of the ICANN Board has just been posted on the organization's website. In it, Board members rate 89 different measures of their own performance according to a seven-measure rating from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree". Unfortunately, despite plenty of figures in the documents, there is zero analysis of what this all means, so I have gone through them and prepared one. more
A fourth draft of ICANN's New gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook has been released. In addition to the Applicant Guidebook, ICANN has also published summaries and analysis of the public comment period. The latest version includes... more
The most recent episode of The Ask Mr. DNS Podcast offers up some disturbing corroborating evidence as to the extent of DNS filtering and outright blocking occurring in China. VeriSign's Matt Larson and InfoBlox's Cricket Liu, who co-host the geeky yet engaging and extremely informative show, held a roundtable discussion including technical experts from dynamic name service providers (better known as "managed DNS" services) DynDNS, TZO, No-IP, and DotQuad, as well as Google and Comcast. more
The first Internet domains using the Cyrillic script were launched on May 13 after Russia was officially assigned the .?? (.rf, for "Russian Federation") domain by the global Internet governing body. Representatives of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) handed Russia its Cyrillic domain administration certificate at an Internet forum that kicked off in Moscow. more
IT security specialists have known for years that the plain DNS is not to be trusted. Any hope for improvement rests on the DNSSEC protocol deployment. In this post, I will review the current status in one critical aspect, namely the DNS root signature key management. The other two foremost are the application usage of DNSSEC protocol functionality and the operational front, or the extent of deployment in the DNS infrastructure. The operational front includes the support by the DNS root nameservers, but my focus on signature key management leaves this issue aside. more
As we approach the World Cup in South Africa this June it's heartening to see the amount of attention being paid to the continent. As with ICANN's recent Nairobi meeting, the eyes of the world are focusing on Africa in a new way -- as a sophisticated marketplace, and as a destination for investment, technology, and yes, sports... Still, as we prepare for the Cup and as we celebrate ICANN's recent approval of more Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), our job as an Internet community remains unfinished. Too many scripts and thus too many key voices remain "off the pitch". more
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