A brief report from the European Commission authored by Pedro Velasco Martins (an EU negotiator) on the most recent round of ACTA negotiations in Guadalajara, Mexico has leaked, providing new information on the substance of the talks, how countries are addressing the transparency concerns, and plans for future negotiations. more
For more than a decade, aggressive website registrants have been engaged in 'typosquatting' -- the intentional registration of misspellings of popular website addresses. Uses for the diverted traffic have evolved over time, ranging from hosting sexually-explicit content to phishing. Several countermeasures have been implemented, including developing policies for resolving disputes. Despite these efforts, typosquatting remains rife. But just how prevalent is typosquatting today, and why is it so pervasive? (Co-authored by Tyler Moore and Benjamin Edelman) more
Back in November 2008 a colleague of mine, Neil Watson (Head of Operations at Entanet International Ltd), published an article on Entanet's opinion blog about the government's proposed plans to centrally store records of all electronic communications throughout the UK. The Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) will be the largest surveillance system ever created in the UK and calls for a 'live tap' to be placed on every electronic communication in Britain including telephone calls, emails and visited websites. more
One of the most debated questions at the time of the opening of the .eu Top-Level Domain (TLD) was whether or not it was possible to register names on the basis of prior rights on signs which include special characters, such as an ampersand. The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of European Union has just published his opinion (4 years later...) more
The press, the blogosphere, CircleID - everybody has been discussing Craig Mundie's comment on the need for an "Internet Driver's License". Most of the reaction has been from privacy advocates fearing that this is simply another way to kill anonymity on the Internet. Oh well... that's the usual set of reactions. Now... the fun part is, a driver's license also shows that you have the competence to drive... more
We learned from The Wall Street Journal yesterday that "Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski gets a little peeved when people suggests that he wants to regulate the Internet." He told a group of Journal reporters and editors today that: "I don't see any circumstances where we'd take steps to regulate the Internet itself," and "I've been clear repeatedly that we're not going to regulate the Internet." We're thankful to hear Chairman Julius Genachowski to make that promise. We'll certainly hold him to it. But you will pardon us if we remain skeptical... more
Over time, people have grown accustomed to most Web site addresses ending in .com, .edu or .gov. Yet a proposed expansion of the generic top-level domain (gTLD) space by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will change the way we look at domain names forever... For businesses, this change means that protecting their trademarks and searching for and watching gTLDs will become increasingly complex. more
In 2008 KnujOn published a report indicating that 70 ICANN accredited Registrars had no publicly disclosed business location. The fundamental problem was one of community trust and consumer faith. Registrars extend their legitimacy to their domain customers who then transact and communicate with the public. more
One of the topics that keeps coming up in ICANN policy discussions and as part of the new TLD application process is "transparency". ICANN, and the internet community in general, has had plenty of issues in the past with "bad actors" who have caused a lot of issues for everyone (think of many of the registrars who have lost accreditation in the last couple of years for example). On more than one conference call or policy discussion the issue of a company or a person's track record has come up. more
e360 initially filed suit against Comcast early in 2008. They asserted a number of things, including that Comcast was fraudulently returning "user unknown" notices and that they were certified by ReturnPath. Comcast filed a countersuit alleging violations of CAN SPAM, violations of the computer fraud and abuse act, as well as a number of other things including abuse of process. In April of 2008 the judge ruled in favor of Comcast and dismissed e360's case, while allowing the countersuit to proceed. more
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