In preparation for Monday's Joint Applicant Support (JAS) Working Group call, I spent some time reviewing various documents in connection with what are ICANN's actual costs in reviewing top-level domain name applications. One thing that caught my attention was the following metric in Rod Beckstrom's most recent CEO Monthly One Page Metric Report. more
In an age where the world has gone global in many forms and guises, the political attention is more and more focussed on national, populist issues, that arise from fear for the unknown. I can't deny it: the future undoubtedly contains many uncertainties. This usually comes with a general public that's afraid and in fear of things they cannot oversee. Thus it is easily aroused by a populist leader who feeds on this fear and throws flammable material on the already smouldering fire. In a time where leadership is called for, it seems lacking. The Internet governance discussion demands visionary leadership on a cross border level and it needs it soon. more
Gary Elliot, chairman of the Association of National Advertisers and vice president of global marketing at Hewlett-Packard, wrote a column in Advertising Age titled "ICANN's Promises Aren't Simply Speculation, They're Outright Fantasy." His arguments opposing ICANN gTLDs are similar to the other heads of various advertising associations around the world. While the main powerbrokers of the global advertising sector are mum, their association heads are using the same circulated message of cyber-squatting fears without any solid proof. Here is my analysis and an open challenge to the trade. more
In its informal background paper "Applying the Highest Standard of Corporate Governance" (August 2011) the European Commission proposes to revise the procedures of ICANNs Nominating Committee (NomCom). Instead of the confidential treatment of applicants the EU calls for an open publication of "a full list of candidates". Is this a good idea? I don't think so. The rationale behind the EU proposal is "to improve confidence on the selection procedure" and "to avoid conflict of interests". But the proposed improvement is based on a wrong assumption... more
The most notable thing about the EC Papers on ICANN, which were leaked by Kieren McCarthy last week, is that they are designed to completely subordinate ICANN as an institution. We have not seen such a comprehensive attack by a government on ICANN since the World Summit on the Information Society. One can infer that this is payback for the Board's decision to not treat the EC's views, expressed in its Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), as binding instructions rather than as nonbinding advice. more
The leaked release of the European Commission's working papers on the future of Top Level Domains highlights the impending collision between adherents of the present "multistakeholder" ICANN governance model, and an ever longer list of national governments who challenge that model. At the core of the controversy is the question of how ICANN can claim legitimacy in the DNS world when none of its Directors or Officers are elected. Even worse, its only answer, when challenged legally, is that it is responsive to its contract with an agency of the U.S. Government... more
A few days ago I wrote about a piece of my intellectual property, an article I wrote and posted on DaileyMuse.com, being stolen, plagiarized, and posted on another web site under a different authors name. I hadn't been looking for my work elsewhere, I was simply browsing the access logs and visiting other websites that stood out. As a result of finding my work posted elsewhere without my permission, I contacted the owner of the website by email and provided 24 hours to remove the content before I pursued legal action. more
The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) is a suite of IETF-developed specifications designed to validate information provided by the Domain Name System (DNS). ... When the root zone was signed in June 2010, this acted as a catalyst for TLD operators to deploy DNSSEC on their side. We have seen a gradual but significant increase in signed TLDs since then. The map in this post shows the level of DNSSEC deployment in Europe. more
As is well known to most CircleID readers - but importantly, not to most other Internet users - in March 2011, ICANN knowingly and purposefully embraced an unprecedented policy that will encourage filtering, blocking, and/or redirecting entire virtual neighborhoods, i.e., "top-level domains" (TLDs). Specifically, ICANN approved the creation of the ".XXX" suffix, intended for pornography websites. Although the owner of the new .XXX TLD deems a designated virtual enclave for morally controversial material to be socially beneficial for the Internet, this claim obfuscates the dangers such a policy creates under the hood. more
The chart in this post shows the amount of inbound mail that we see, both spam and non-spam, over the past three and a half years. You can see in the above that the amount of good mail that we see has continued to increase over time. This is because of an increased customer base, not because the total amount of good mail worldwide has gone up... However, the amount of spam has plummeted from 23,000 in mid 2010 to 5000 now, a drop of over 75%. The contrast couldn't be starker -- spammers are not spamming as much anymore. It almost looks like the battle against spam is almost over. What's still left to do? more
Why would the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), representing 400 member organizations and their 10,000 brands that spend $250 billion annually, be so wrong about ICANN's generic top-level domain (gTLD) program? They're complaining as if new gTLDs are being sold overnight in dark alleys with a no questions asked policy in exchange of a large suitcase filled with newly printed currency. This is definitely not the case, so what did they miss? more
At the time of this writing DNSSEC mostly does not work. This is not a bad thing - in fact it's expected... There is a significant last-mover advantage DNSSEC deployment (or IPv6 deployment) and that can't be helped. It's all in a good cause though - everybody knows we need this stuff and some farsighted contributors put a lot of money and other resources into DNSSEC years or decades ago to ensure that when the time comes the world will have a migration path. Sadly, this leaves current investors and application designers and developers wondering whether there's a market yet. more
If you choose a new generic top-level domain (gTLD), will it be able to compete with .com? A recent academic paper indicates that the answer is yes if your new gTLD is of outstanding quality. "How Quality Drives the Rise and Fall of High-Tech Products" by professors Tellus, Yin, and Niraj in the Sloan Management Review provides evidence that new products can beat out established rivals... more
When all you have is a hammer, everything appears to be a nail. The generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) are not just about trademark filing and battle posturing or cyber-squatting. They are about the potential to create unusual global intellectual properties offering multiple opportunities for rapid image expansion and - most importantly - the achievement of market domination via name identity. more
The future of our communications infrastructure will to a very large extent be based on the Internet of Things (IoT). What this means is that hundreds of millions of devices will be connected to the national broadband networks (NBN), gathering massive amounts of information and providing feedback in real time. In any single country, the electricity grid alone will have tens of millions of sensors and devices connected to deliver the energy efficiencies that we all so desperately need. more
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