Comments

The White House Broadband Plan

• Comment posted Apr 07, 2021 7:46 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  When I was on the ICANN board I got to chat with many governmental officials.  One message that I carried was this: Modify your building codes so that over a span of several years fiber conduit and cable vaults will…

• Comment posted Apr 07, 2021 12:49 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  The term "broadband" is lobbed about like a ball in a game of tennis. But what, specifically, does "broadband" mean? It certainly must be much more than a number calculated by simple tools such as the popular Ookla Speedtest.  (See…

Universal Acceptance – Making the Internet Work for Everyone

• Comment posted Mar 30, 2021 8:02 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I've been doing a lot of work recently on very small devices that usually are covered under the name "system on a chip". These things are often buried inside things ranging from household appliances (such as light switches) to vehicle…

Now We Know Why It's Hard to Get a .COM

• Comment posted Feb 11, 2021 3:17 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Hi! Do I detect a hint of mockery?  ;-) By-the-way, because I tend to hang out with astronomers, I would note that the potential number of first level names possible in .com is much larger than the number of stars…

WordPress Now Powers 39.5% of the Web

• Comment posted Jan 05, 2021 11:24 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  That is an impressive number. Did you collect any metrics reflecting what percentage of total web *visits*, rather than percentage of web *sites* that represents? BTW, when we examined CMS systems we ended up picking Grav and Hugo mainly because…

NTIA Objects to Planned o.com Auction

• Comment posted Dec 22, 2020 9:56 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  If I remember correctly, even as long ago as when I was on ICANN's board, Overstock was pushing to a preferential "right" to obtain the ASCII letter "O" name in .com. Apart from my ever-present objection to the presumption that…

The Upload Speed Lie

• Comment posted Nov 10, 2020 9:17 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  A while back I wrote a blog item entitled "Why You Shouldn't Believe Network Speed Tests” The point made there is that there are many factors in play, ranging from packet maximum transmission unit to variation of the inter-arrival time…

The Pay-To-Play Reality of ICANN's Inclusion Illusion

• Comment posted Oct 02, 2020 8:19 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I can't say that I followed the course of your argument to its conclusion. However, a couple of observations:  Jon Postel's quote pertained to internet protocols:  That an implementation should be careful and be conservative in its use of protocol…

Implementing Natural Language Processing in Your SMB Organization: Now or Never!

• Comment posted Aug 18, 2020 8:10 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  When I saw the title I thought, what does neuro-linguistic programming - NLP - have to do with artificial intelligence?  -insert appropriate ironic/smiley emoticon here- I suspect I'm not the only one who might have lingering memories from the late…

Afilias to Protect TLDs Against Potential "Orphan Glue" Exploits

• Comment posted Aug 12, 2020 12:06 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Over the years I've left my share of orphaned glue.  Registrar tools are not really adequate for me (and I presume others) to remember and clean-up the servers I once used but forgot. I've noticed a lot of attack traffic…

DNS: An Essential Component of Cloud Computing

• Comment posted Jul 29, 2020 3:15 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I wrote a note about naming issues in cloud computing way back in 2010 from some meetings at SRI on cloud computing. On Entity Associations In A Cloud Network The basic point is that because cloud entities can move, split,…

2020's New Internet Success

• Comment posted Jul 29, 2020 1:05 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I, also, have been watching these new proposals, but not in depth.  Your note suggests that I (and others) learn more. Before I forget, I do want to remind myself, and others, that displacing the well established IPv4 world will…

The Legal Enforceability of PIR's Public Interest Commitment

• Comment posted Mar 10, 2020 7:36 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  The provisions you describe as enforceable by the community are most definitely *NOT* enforceable by the community. The issue is that of legal "standing".  Under most bodies of contract law someone who is not a party to a contract has…

Accountability Initiatives to Secure a Strong Future for .ORG

• Comment posted Mar 03, 2020 6:35 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I disagree. These "PIC"s are *not* enforceable by people who have acquired .org domain names. Rather those people must go to ICANN, beg ICANN to initiate an inquiry, and then hope and pray that ICANN does something. That offers no…

Explaining the Legal Enforceability of the PIC Proposed by Ethos for .ORG

• Comment posted Feb 25, 2020 7:38 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  All of this is, in practice, meaningless unless this contract contains an express third party beneficiary clause that allows domain name registrants to march into court and enforce these terms. ICANN has a long history of ignoring things that were…

Can 5G Replace WiFi?

• Comment posted Feb 20, 2020 1:03 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  There is scant discussion of fact that as we move to higher frequency/shorter wavelength bands we will see significant issues concerning the penetration and reflection characteristics of the radio link between the mobile device and the cell to which it…

Stop Propagating False Information About the .ORG Transaction

• Comment posted Feb 19, 2020 12:43 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  A 10% per year price increase is a doubling of the registry fee every 7.5 years. Given that .org/PIR has had roughly two decades to reduced costs and hone efficiency, that kind of run-away price inflation on the backs of…

Truth in Web Digital Identity?

• Comment posted Feb 12, 2020 6:21 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I'm not denying the identification and authentication issues.  One of the concerns is that a strong identification/authentication system also implies something akin to a king (or council) of names who has the power to say whether you exist or not…

5G Leadership Reality Check: January 2020

• Comment posted Jan 21, 2020 11:39 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  My company builds gear that acts as a man-in-the-middle device to introduce the kinds of packet issues that I mentioned.  Our customers use that to make sure that their code is robust as network conditions get sub-optimal.  (At the risk…

• Comment posted Jan 21, 2020 10:27 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  One of the confusing things about the phrase "5G" is that it is often lumped with millimeter wavelength technology. With my technical hat on I am very concerned about the ability of network stack implementations to handle the increased side…

Who Pays When .Org Prices Rise?

• Comment posted Jan 21, 2020 10:19 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  What services is PIR to provide beyond being the .org registry? Why should the cost of that business expansion be loaded onto the backs of captive .org registrants?  (I am among them - I support various thinly funded non-profits in…

If ICANN Won't Stand Up to EU in WHOIS Dispute, Then the U.S. Congress Should

• Comment posted Dec 31, 2019 10:20 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Your note makes a comment that WHOIS started in order to keep track of people with domain name.  That was not the case. Rather, the WHOIS list started well before there was a domain name system at all.  There was…

The Number Resource Organization (NRO) Issues Inspection Request to ICANN Concerning the .ORG Sale

• Comment posted Dec 31, 2019 10:07 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I hope they have an easier time then I had when I, as a sitting Director on ICANN's board, tried to exercise my legal right to take a look at ICANN's financial records: Auerbach v ICANN

Fadi's .ORG Fracasso

• Comment posted Dec 03, 2019 11:19 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  If I remember correctly .org was originally part of the portfolio of Network Solutions/Verisign.  And that .org was spun off from Verisign as part of the settlement between ICANN and Verisign in 2003. BTW, I've always maintained that the election…

Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

• Comment posted Dec 03, 2019 8:00 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree with your point that what ISOC is doing is in essence shaving money from other non-profits and their public-benefit goals to enhance ISOC's own public-benefit goals.  In essence ISOC is saying to other non-profits "our non-profit goals are…

• Comment posted Dec 03, 2019 7:53 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  You say that 10% per year after ten years works out to a "quite affordable" $26 - not counting registrar fees.  But you are falling into the compound interest trap - over short time periods, it seems not so bad. …

The Myth of 5G and Driverless Cars

• Comment posted Oct 15, 2019 5:47 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Don't have time for to fully engage with your article, however, a couple of weeks ago I was at a meeting at Qualcomm where some people deeply engaged in this were talking about how they are using point-to-point 5G technology…

The End of the Road: ICANN, Whois, and Regulation

• Comment posted Oct 03, 2019 11:22 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I (and I think everyone) does not disagree that there is a lot of evil gunk on the net. However, because we are familiar with DNS via ICANN, we tend to fall into the old "when all you have is…

• Comment posted Oct 02, 2019 7:47 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  @Reg Levy - I appreciate TuCows analysis of "data and obvious trends".  It is an interesting contrast to some of the possibly hyperbolic claims made by those who demand unfettered access. And that RrSG recommendation looks pretty good.  I think…

• Comment posted Oct 01, 2019 9:28 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I would challenge the assertion that "Meanwhile, the law enforcement, cybersecurity, consumer protection, intellectual property and other communities who rely on access to Whois for legitimate work" In order to be "legitimate" one must first make an accusation that some…

Keeping a Free and Open Internet Starts at the Root

• Comment posted Sep 10, 2019 7:05 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  The internet architecture can have several distinct DNS roots.  Yes they could lead to different TLDs but there are lots of forces that would incent consistency (consistency is slightly different than being identical).  The internet architecture has no means to…

Can ICANN Survive Today’s Global Geo-Political Challenges Under Its Existing Narrow Mandate?

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2019 2:23 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Let me deal with your six questions.  But let me begin by asking an even larger question: Is there any reason why ICANN should continue to exist at all? I ask that question because ICANN's original obligation was to assure…

Electronically Steerable, Flat-Panel Antennas for Satellite and Terrestrial Connectivity

• Comment posted Feb 26, 2019 9:43 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Back when I was at Sun we worked on a project that we described as the "Sparcman" (pun on the then popular Sony Walkman), i.e. mobile ubiquitous computing.  We worked with a post-Soviet company to develop a small flat panel…

Microsoft is Abandoning SHA-1 Hashes for Updates - But Why?

• Comment posted Feb 26, 2019 9:25 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  When reading your note I was imagining that the evil insider would be substituting the evil version in lieu of all instances of the pure version. In that situation would it not be easier for the evil insider to simply…

IETF and Crypto Zealots

• Comment posted Mar 14, 2018 12:37 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  My perspective on this may be colored by the fact that I was working on true end-to-end protection of network traffic even before there was an Internet.  The approaches that we always used back in the 1970's were to have…

DOJ Closes Probe of VeriSign Over .Web TLD

• Comment posted Jan 17, 2018 12:38 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Caveat Emptor: The .web TLD has existed and been operating in California for decades.  There is a potential for legal risk to anyone who uses .web or tries to sell .web registrations in California.  ICANN does not have the legal…

Hackers Hijack DNS Server for Cyrptocurrency Wallet BlackWallet, Over $400K Stolen From Users

• Comment posted Jan 17, 2018 12:35 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  This article does not say enough to be useful.  Was a DNS server taken over via a penetration, or was the registrar/registry penetrated (e.g. a password or phishing attack) and the delegation changed to a masquarading DNS server, or some…

Sorry, Not Sorry: WHOIS Data Must Remain Public

• Comment posted May 02, 2017 2:32 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree with you on the notion that those engaged in business activities ought to obtain appropriate business licenses.  But that is a matter quite divorced and separate from domain name registration information and the two activities ought not to…

• Comment posted Apr 28, 2017 5:08 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I believe that domain name registration information is private and must be kept that way. Those who want to play as if they were law enforcement must follow the same rules that law enforcement is supposed to follow:  Before they…

If Slate Comes in Standard Sizes, Why Not Broadband?

• Comment posted Jan 17, 2017 7:33 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I want to begin by saying I agree with Todd Knarr's point about the lack of choice making measurements an academic issue for many of us. As for the the attributes that have to be measured and reported: - For…

Court Dismisses .Web Lawsuit, Says Agreement Not to Sue Is Enforceable

• Comment posted Dec 07, 2016 4:33 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  AT&T;Mobility v. Concepcion made it pretty clear that clauses of this type are permitted to trump State laws, such as California's ban on unconscionable contract terms. This kind of provision is now found in a large portion of contracts. This…

Afilias' Cynical Attempt to Secure a Windfall at Community Expense

• Comment posted Nov 08, 2016 9:22 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree with Chris Ambler - .web is an operational domain name registry in California operated by IOD.  I have a fully paid up contract with them for cavebear.web; and I have been operating a website under that name and…

Almost Free Domains for Almost Everyone

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2016 8:03 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree with you that ICANN has not served the needs of domain name registrants, or what I call the community of internet users.  I do not believe that this is an accident. First of all, ICANN denies domain name…

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2016 6:03 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree with John L. that the ICANN model of renting domain names is utterly contrived for the benefit of a few insiders.  Verisign alone reaps roughly a $BILLION a year from registry fees that have never been subject to…

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2016 7:28 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I helped write dozens upon dozens upon dozens of new TLD applications for the last round.  They were nearly identical; the differences were largely limited to sections on marketing (which ought to have been irrelevant to ICANN). But the full…

ICANN Sued in an Attempt to Block .WEB Auction

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2016 10:52 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  With regard to .web one should not forget that IOD had an operational .web registry here in California dating from a very long time ago.  I still have a copy of my paid-up invoice for my cavebear.web registration and I…

The Irritating Irresolution of ICANN Jurisdiction

• Comment posted May 24, 2016 8:42 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  There are some other concerns that you did not mention. First is that ICANN now has some large financial assets.  Any unusual transmogrification of ICANN would raise issues of how those assets can be transferred, particularly given that ICANN-of-today has…

ICANN Accountability Progress Made in Second CCWG Draft Proposal

• Comment posted Jan 01, 2016 12:25 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  These attempts seem to be taking a big risk in regard to their validity under California Corporations Code section 5210 (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=corp&group=05001-06000&file=5210-5215) and sections 5033 and 5034 (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=corp&group=05001-06000&file=5002-5080)

The Christmas Goat and IPv6 (Year 6)

• Comment posted Dec 31, 2015 10:51 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Do you have any breakdown on the sources of that IPv6 traffic, in particular how much was from webbots from search engines and how much was from end users?  Or how much is from mobile devices versus more desktop-ish devices?

The Next ICANN CEO

• Comment posted Nov 24, 2015 8:35 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I've been involved in the final selection of two of ICANN's Presidents.  (Note, the proper term is "President", not "CEO" - the CEO job is but one of jobs that ICANN's organic documents assigns to the President.) One was a…

ICANN Compliance Lends a Hand to a Violent Criminal While Trashing a Legitimate Business

• Comment posted Oct 28, 2015 8:49 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I've recently been doing work with automotive network systems.  These tend to go under the heading "Vehicle To *" where * is either "vehicle" or "infrastructure" or something else.  This is a world of embedded systems with too many embedded…

$59M and Counting: ICANN Board Downgrades Community Say on Use of Last Resort Auction Proceeds

• Comment posted Apr 28, 2015 6:02 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Under California law (as well as the laws regarding corporations in many other places) the board of directors bears ultimate responsibility for making the policies of the corporation.  They can not delegate that responsibility in its entirety.  Boards may empower…

ICANN Getting More Control Could Mean Major Reform

• Comment posted Apr 11, 2015 7:56 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  If I remember right, ICANN once had elections, oops I mean "selections" for a few board seats - I remember because I occupied one of those, at least until ICANN erased even the possibility of director seats filled the public.…

Is the ICANN New gTLD Program a Draft for a V2 of the Internet?

• Comment posted Jan 02, 2015 5:43 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I am aware that IOD was unable to establish a Federal trademark in .web - because of USPTO policies about DNS names and trademarks. The real issue, however, is the fact that there was a operating business in California of…

NTIA Reveals How It Manages the Root Zone

• Comment posted Dec 23, 2014 8:36 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  One might wonder why there is no step 4 in which NTIA verifies that Verisign has correctly done what was requested.  (By-the-way, Verisign, as a top level domain franchisee and root server operator does have a signficant conflict of interest.)…

Is the ICANN New gTLD Program a Draft for a V2 of the Internet?

• Comment posted Dec 04, 2014 12:49 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Under legal procedures, the fact of violation of law is established.  Then the question of remedy is addressed; it is at that stage that quantitive measures are attempted.  But quantitive measures are not needed for relief - the law recognizes…

• Comment posted Dec 04, 2014 12:25 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  ICANN permission is not necessary to establish a business in California, or in any other location. IOD went into business. totally in accord with the law, with a product called .web.  Federal trademark registration is not mandatory; common law protection…

• Comment posted Dec 03, 2014 7:47 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Over the years there have been several competing roots.  Many have been operated with disregard for written internet standards and broadly honored operational practices.  They created a bad odor.  However there have been quality operators, such as the ORSN in…

• Comment posted Dec 03, 2014 6:31 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Any root operator that offers a TLD product that conflicts with an existing same-named TLD product offered by other roots will face legal arguments based on trademark and misrepresentation. But even worse, if users decide that a new root system…

ICANN New gTLD Auction Proceeds Approaching $30 Million

• Comment posted Dec 03, 2014 6:24 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  It is ironic that here ICANN is conducting rather lucrative auctions. Yet during the TLD selection process ICANN resorted to using a school bake sale raffle to chose between these TLD applicants.  Yes, ICANN used exactly the same mechanism as…

Is the ICANN New gTLD Program a Draft for a V2 of the Internet?

• Comment posted Dec 03, 2014 6:07 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I have long been an advocate of what I call "competing" roots.  I avoid the word "alternate" because I don't believe that any one should have primacy. The real issue is consistency.  Users do not like to be surprised.  What…

Beyond NETmundial: Initiative or Inertia?

• Comment posted Nov 17, 2014 6:24 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  The word "accountability" is often used when discussing ICANN. "Accountability" is not a vague concept - at the hard, concrete floor accountability is the question of who sets ICANN's direction and who is responsible to those for whose benefit ICANN…

Rape in the DNS

• Comment posted Jun 24, 2014 5:49 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Every interest is trying to play "pin the tail on the donkey" with ICANN.  Every interest wants ICANN enforce this or that rule. And your article is an argument to pin yet another law enforcement tail onto ICANN. I consider…

Proceedings of Name Collisions Workshop Available

• Comment posted Mar 27, 2014 12:20 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I was wondering - did anyone raise the intentional collision that was caused when ICANN allowed the creation of a .biz despite the prior existence of an operational .biz?  Similarly, there was (and still is in some quarters) a .web…

IETF Looking at Technical Changes to Raise the Bar for Monitoring

• Comment posted Nov 06, 2013 8:44 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I have spent years dealing with the isses of network diagnostics, repair, and management.  Diagnostics and repair often involve ad hoc activities that offend security policies.  Provision needs to be made to accomodate these very legitimate and very necessary activities.…

Domain Name Registrar Allows Completely Blank WHOIS

• Comment posted Oct 11, 2013 5:21 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I don't know what jurisdiction you are in but just yesterday I created a new corporation with nary a whit of public information about who the real owner (me) is. In fact it is extremely common for businesses to be…

• Comment posted Oct 11, 2013 3:36 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  You make the immediate jump from "there are criminals" to the conclusion that every one of us on the internet with a domain name should be naked to the world because we just might be one of those criminals. Guilt…

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2013 9:08 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I've also made recent (within the last year) multiple complaints to ICANN about ill behaved registrars - for example one that made it nearly impossible to transfer away and took weeks to complete its side of the transaction.  ICANN's response:…

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2013 8:32 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  All of what you wrote is completely valid and of concern.  Please don't think that I'm diminishing or dismissing your concerns.  I hate a lot of the junk and scams and crimes that are on the internet today and the…

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2013 7:11 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  The DNS was designed to give a hint, not an iron clad "this must be who I want to talk to" answer. There has been much confusion because the DNS protocols contain an "authoritative" bit - but that merely means…

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2013 6:00 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree that ICANN's response to complaints is inadequate - witness things like the RegistryFly debacle. On the other hand, if "law enforcement" shows up on ICANN's door with a valid warrant or subpoena then ICANN has no choice but…

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2013 5:54 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  In .ewe yes, I value privacy more than conjured fears. I am not among those who presume that anyone who registers a domain name is a criminal.  Nor do I believe that speculation is an offence against humanity.  And I…

• Comment posted Oct 07, 2013 7:30 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I was on the net when the domain name whois was essentially a club roster of colleagues.  That was OK.  And in the 1970's we did have reason to pick up the phone or drop an email when something went…

Moving Beyond Telephone Numbers - The Need for a Secure, Ubiquitous Application-Layer Identifier

• Comment posted Jun 04, 2013 6:19 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  In the old ISO/OSI stuff there was the concept of an "application entity title" (AET).  This was a name that is bound to an instance of an application.  Applications might be any of the things you mentioned in your article…

The GAC Strikes Back

• Comment posted Jul 06, 2012 5:21 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  ICANN always seem to forget that because of the GAC ICANN fits squarely into the defintion of 35002 (b) of the California Corporations code as refined by 35003 (b) of that code. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=corp&group=34001-35000&file=35000-35007

Towards a More Fully Accountable and Transparent ICANN

• Comment posted Jul 03, 2012 6:20 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  The President of ICANN is not where the buck stops. Rather, it is the Board of Directors which has the ultimate responsibility for, and is ultimately accountable for, everything that ICANN does. By-the-way, the proper job title for Fadi Chehade's…

Proposed New IETF Standard Would Create a Nationally Partitioned "Internet"

• Comment posted Jun 19, 2012 10:35 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  @Paul H. - The message is not technology, it is political. The argument that has been projected for so many years and which forms the foundation of ICANN-like bodies is that there must be a "global uniform name space" else…

• Comment posted Jun 19, 2012 8:52 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  The proposal is overly complicated and, as you indicated, because it does not use already deployed protocols it's future is dim. However, it is quite feasible to do what is being proposed without any change in existing deployed code in…

Conflict of Interest Mingled Into ICANN's DNA, Says Insider

• Comment posted Mar 27, 2012 7:07 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  If there is one word you hear in conjunction with ICANN it is "stakeholder". But if one stops to consider what that word means it becomes quite clear why ICANN is a bundle of conflicts. A "stakeholder" is one who…

Technical Comments on Mandated DNS Filtering Requirements of H. R. 3261 ("SOPA")

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 8:39 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Your logic is to punish someone merely because of their proximity to one who has been declared, without a trial, to be a criminal - and even though that someone has done nothing unlawful.  By that metric a lot of…

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 4:23 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  One of the most annoying things about the copyright/trademark klatch is that their answer is always "more, more, more..." Yet often less give better results. Copyright "violation" would be reduced if we also reduced the duration of copyright terms.  At…

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 3:39 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  SOPA/PIPA are intended to be weapons - don't forget that I am an intellectual property attorney - I go to the meetings where this stuff is created, discussed, and advocated. As we have seen from the cases with the DMCA…

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 3:06 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Section 103 of the proposed amendments has the "Qualifying Plaintiff" mechanism that allows an accuser to walk into court, make an accusation, obtain a TRO against the accused, and then use that TRO to cause third parties - banks, advertisers…

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2011 12:42 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I have no idea where you got the notion that SOPA does not impose constraints on people here in the USA and imposes strong sanctions on those who do not comply.  It's pretty clear in the text of the bill…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 11:38 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  The obligations of SOPA land squarely on residents and citizens here in the USA.  Don't comply with a private SOPA takedown order and the police, with guns, can show up at your door.  They may merely give you a warrant…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 11:02 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  SOPA/PIPA will be laws - not the kind of friendly, private cooperation you describe. Violate SOPA/PIPA and the other side can walk into court and get a court order.  Violate that order and guys will show up who have the…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 10:37 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  If there are fake drugs, meaning that they are chemically and mechanically the wrong thing, then we have plenty of laws already on the books to deal with those problems. If you are saying that law enforcement isn't doing its…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 10:27 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I own a software company; I depend on intellectual property protection.  I am also an intellectual property lawyer. So I think copyright and trademarks are great and wonderful things - when they are used for their intended purposes. (Even the…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 10:19 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  One should not jump so quickly to pejoratives such as "selling counterfeit drugs, selling Hollywood movies".  Drugs are not "counterfeit" if they are made, properly and legally, elsewhere - they may violate a patent in the US but that does…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 9:57 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  The panel was billed as "What's Wrong With SOPA", so it was not surprising that the speakers spoke about what is wrong with SOPA. (And if the "what's right with SOPA" voices are like that guy who said, in essence…

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2011 7:42 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  There were some folks from Paramount films present. They did little to advance their case - they were unwilling to concede that anything could possibly be amiss with the bill.  Nor were they willing to even discuss the idea that…

Now Begins the Third Stage of ICANN's TLD Triathlon

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2011 11:37 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  There are 40 applications that are still pending from year 2000.  Those people paid their application fee ($50,000 each) and ICANN did not refuse them but, rather, told them to wait - and they are still waiting. Simply refunding the…

New Top-Level Domains Approved by ICANN

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2011 10:08 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree with the notion that a zillion TLDs is probably not going to end global warming or bring on world peace.  In fact in cases like .christian it is likely to engender a lot of trouble for whoever has…

The U.S. "Scorecard" for Brussels: Draconian Trademark Rules & The End of Private-Sector Leaders

• Comment posted Feb 03, 2011 10:40 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  There is no technical means to prevent anyone from establishing their own DNS root, sans ICANN and sans ICANN rules, and filling it with TLDs and records (or simply pointing to existing TLD servers.) (In fact it has been done…

The Trembling Trademark Owners

• Comment posted Jan 19, 2011 2:06 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  One should not forget that a strong proponent of the .cat top level domain was a very well liked (and deservedly well liked) member of the ICANN board of directors from Barcelona Catalonia. This ought not to reflect negatively on…

Rod Beckstrom, Twiki and the Foswiki fork - ICANN Must "Get Things Right" on New TLDs

• Comment posted Jan 19, 2011 2:01 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  One of my favorite maxims is "Locus ab auctoritate est infirmissimus" ("The argument from authority is the weakest.") from Thomas Aquinas.  I find it amusing to cite a Saint of the Catholic Church, and thus one of its highest authorities,…

• Comment posted Jan 19, 2011 1:00 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I am both a techie and an attorney.  With my latter hat on your lack of faith in the legal system makes me uncomfortable. My discomfort is elevated as a result of my participation over the years in several internet…

• Comment posted Jan 18, 2011 9:44 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I disagree with your assertion that multiple DNS roots would necessarily mean "that identifiers would no longer be universal." First of all - DNS names are not universal - they never have been.  They lack several forms of stability -…

The Trembling Trademark Owners

• Comment posted Jan 18, 2011 9:27 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I am glad you wrote your note as it reflects something that I've been saying for years, which is that there is no need for a central authority of domain names for the entire internet.  The point you make, that…

Plutocrats and the Internet

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2010 9:17 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  California has a law leftover from the "are you now or ever been" period of the early 1950's. It is the "Subversive Organization Registration Law" - Sections 35000 et seq of the California Corporations Code - http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate?WAISdocID=572067361+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve ICANN is at…

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2010 12:40 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I can't get too worked up about ICANN's exclusion from the ITU after ICANN has so long excluded the public community of internet users, for whose benefit ICANN obtains legal existence, from any meaningful role in ICANN's decision making processes.…

ICANN Dressing Up for New gTLD Party in San Francisco

• Comment posted Oct 08, 2010 12:36 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  ICANN put 40 applicants on hold in year 2000. Those people paid $2,000,000 in application fees and met the rules of ICANN's game.  They were told to wait.  And they are still waiting. The deserve their 11 years of priority…

ICANN CEO Warns Against Exclusive Control of the Internet by Governments

• Comment posted Sep 21, 2010 7:38 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  It is disappointing when these kinds of grand pronouncements never bother to define what it is that they are pronouncing upon. There is a system that moves IPv4 packets from interfaces bearing one IPv4 address to another.  And there is…

NAF Caught Revising Past UDRP Decisions?

• Comment posted Jun 16, 2010 4:42 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  We who write code use tools called "source code control systems" - the one I use goes by the name of "subversion".  These tools maintain a repository that tracks changes in code over time, including the reasons why changes were…

The Real Issue About ICANN and .XXX

• Comment posted May 09, 2010 7:34 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I forgot to add my conclusion, which is this: ICANN ought to be blind to anything but matters of technical stability of DNS.  And as such, any semantics that some people take from .XXX ought not to be of any…

• Comment posted May 09, 2010 7:23 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  One of the ironies of this situation is that the triple 'X' is derived from the flag of the city of Amsterdam on which the three crosses represent the Christian symbol for the crucifixion on Calvary. Another irony is how…

Network Neutrality, UPS, and FedEx

• Comment posted Dec 27, 2009 9:59 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  What a surprising set of responses. First let's deal with the technical issues: There was a suggestion that it would not be "feasible" for a provider to degrade its service by injecting a constant delay on all packets. To the…

The ITU and IPv6 Transition: Controversy at the IGF

• Comment posted Nov 17, 2009 6:34 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In order to meet the claimed goal of improving IP address and routing information aggregation IP address registries should be created in conformity with the overall clusters of internet connectivity.  In other words RIR boundaries should roughly match areas of…

Misconfiguration Brings Down Entire .SE Domain in Sweden

• Comment posted Oct 13, 2009 6:17 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  On my very first day on the ICANN board of directors in 2000 I recommended that ICANN establish an "early warning system" to watch root and top level domain behaviour for signs of errors or instability. It would have been…

New Agreement Declares ICANN Independent

• Comment posted Sep 30, 2009 9:49 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  That "Affirmation" is hardly a grant of independence to ICANN. Rather, there are many other agreements in place that have a significant, in fact, overriding significance. For example, NTIA is still apparently the ultimate authority over new TLDs in that…

An Authenticated Internet

• Comment posted Sep 30, 2009 6:14 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree with Brett comments on the fact that the primary article is wrong when it says that DNSSEC provides "certainty that you have arrived at the correct website".  (I will skip my normal reaction when someone equates the internet…

Companies Trademarking Possible Future Top-Level Domains

• Comment posted Jul 01, 2009 12:14 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  The USPTO is not the only trademark authority.  In the US there are rights in names that can accrue without USPTO registration, particularly at the state level. For example, I have cavebear.web in IOD's .web registry and as an operating…

Appeals Court Revives the CFIT Anti-Trust Suit Against VeriSign

• Comment posted Jun 06, 2009 8:47 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I read the decision.  A significant part of it is based on section 1 of the Sherman Act which requires a conspiracy or combination.  The decision said that the case can go forward at the trial level to find whether…

Domain Tasting to Go Away for Real This Time

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2008 2:33 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In the unlikely but possible category: With ICANN getting $0.20 (or more when that tax goes higher) on every name registration, if a name is tossed about frequently by tasters and drop catchers it could end up that the money…

Splitting the Root: It's Too Late

• Comment posted Apr 12, 2007 5:18 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  With regard to whether competing roots have been established by China: It depends with whom you are talking whether Taiwan is part of China or not, but when I was on the ICANN board I discovered that Taiwan had established…

• Comment posted Apr 10, 2007 11:43 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Given the value of the marketing data that can be mined from a root server, assuming that it gets a statistically useful amount and distribution of query traffic, I am surprised that no one has built a system of roots…

• Comment posted Apr 10, 2007 6:41 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I can understand the concerns of Stephane and Edward. First with Edward's comment: In the more broad definition of "consistency" it is possible that the root that one uses at home contains boutique TLDs that are not found in the…

• Comment posted Apr 08, 2007 9:26 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  There is too much focus on the multiplicity of root systems. The real issue is not whether there is one single root but rather that those roots that are out are consistent with one another. There are differing views about…

Putting Some Circuit Breakers Into DNS to Protect The Net

• Comment posted Apr 03, 2007 11:17 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  After reading the comments above as well as the long thread(s) on Nanog, I'm pretty well convinced that this circuit breaker idea is really full of sharp edges and dangerous corners. But the question still remains in my mind: Do…

Please, Keep the Core Neutral

• Comment posted Apr 03, 2007 12:29 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I take it that you now think that no special preference (i.e. non-neutral treatement) should be given for names that happen to be trade/service marks over names that are merely names of dieties, schools, countries, geographic landmarks, people, pets, etc…

ICANN Asked to Adopt Specific TLD for Banks

• Comment posted Apr 03, 2007 12:25 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  As I mentioned previously, the same level of care can be applied to applicants for .bank or for a subdomain of any of the existing TLDs. But as was pointed out, because of the implicit assumption that ICANN will not…

• Comment posted Mar 31, 2007 7:54 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Given that the same stringent controls over who is allowed to put a name into "verysafebanking.com" as would be the case for names added to ".bank", I don't see any difference in the degree of protection that can be obtained…

• Comment posted Mar 31, 2007 5:11 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  If the banks are concerned about security, and I hope they are, then they can do what they want today. They can simply find a domain - or spend a few dollars to buy one - and create subdomains in…

Are We Slowly Losing Control of the Internet?

• Comment posted Mar 12, 2007 9:27 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Brett, I really appreciate how well you isolated the essential question whether we want the internet to be a lifeline grade utility. And I do like your suggestion that lifeline grade *applications* ought to utilize multiple kinds of communications mechanisms…

The Fragile Network

• Comment posted Jan 31, 2007 9:58 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In 1972 I was at System Development Corporation (SDC).  I was part of the R&D;Group.  We worked on what is now called the internet. It was expressly understood by us and our customer that we were building a network that…

Internet Zombies

• Comment posted Jan 12, 2007 12:28 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In response to Brett Carr: OK, I'm not locked into the word "luck". However, it is very fortuitious that, as ICANN continues to drop the ball on internet stability, we have an incredible group of root server operators. Fir example…

Domain Tasting in the Spotlight

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2006 3:46 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Responding to Chuck Hatcher's conclusion that tasting is "a private arrangement between registrants, registrars, and registries which ultimately has no discernible effect on the general public." I do not believe that we have the information to support that conclusion. We…

Legal Attack on ARIN Dismissed in Court

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2006 3:07 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I think one needs to be careful in describing who "won" and who "lost". Yes, Gary Kremen did not prevail on anti-trust claims against ARIN. But at the end of the day, Kremen will walk way with a substantial chunk…

Consensus Polling: ALAC Shows the Way

• Comment posted Nov 26, 2006 11:50 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  The current "ALAC" is intendended to be an interim body - as an interim body it is empowered for one thing only, to try to get the ALAC system running. When ICANN was required to create an Independent Review Panel,…

Why is .EU Trying to Destroy the Internet?

• Comment posted Nov 26, 2006 11:42 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  My own top level domain, .ewe, (not found in the NTIA/ICANN root zone) uses a business model that rejects even more of the artifical restraints that have developed under ICANN. For example, in .ewe one registers forever for one price.…

Consensus Polling: ALAC Shows the Way

• Comment posted Nov 06, 2006 10:28 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Not only am I not, as you put it, 'not "in" to the current structure of ICANN', neither are the millions upon millions - probably billions - of people who use the internet. The mechanism you propose does admit of…

• Comment posted Oct 29, 2006 5:15 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Am "I in" to the ALAC? No. The ALAC is like one of those toy steering wheels that parents put into their cars so that the kids can believe that they are driving. The ALAC is a sop that ICANN…

Response to Inaccurate .travel Wild Card Assessments

• Comment posted Sep 21, 2006 5:43 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Woof. You say .travel is on the net to "serve its consitutiency." Then you say that it is there to the "internet user".  Which is it? Personally I don't give credence to the claims that a TLD, and the years…

If You Adopt Vista, Your DNS Traffic is Going to Double

• Comment posted Sep 10, 2006 11:56 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I have long since learned to trust Paul M. on matters DNS. And I have observed actual degredation due to IPv6. The degredation has a large component and a small component. The small component is that on occassion the list…

Taking Aim at 8 Myths about ENUM

• Comment posted Sep 05, 2006 5:51 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I think you are missing the point - ENUM is only partially about caller control of where a call lands.  The larger part of ENUM about preserving telephone *numbers* and to a degree about preserving the historical, but obsolescent, hegemony…

USD Renews IANA Contract with ICANN

• Comment posted Aug 16, 2006 6:22 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  This "award" is only a renewall for the "IANA function", a zero-dollar purchase by NTIA (paid for by NOAA!?) of the actual task of maintaing the root zone file, doing number assignments for the IETF, and top level address allocations…

The Blurr-Cade Proposal on Root Zone Oversight

• Comment posted Jul 30, 2006 4:56 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I find the proposal deeply flawed, for the same reasons that the original actions of NTIA and its creation of ICANN are flawed - they are based on a fantasy about DNS. The only thing that makes a root zone…

Taking Aim at 8 Myths about ENUM

• Comment posted Jul 19, 2006 8:02 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I've been dealing with VOIP since Simon Hackett and my company put out the first Etherphones in 1991.  And I have yet to see anyone express an interest in actually using ENUM. The reason is simple - why should I…

Domain Tasting Target of US Federal Cybersquatting Lawsuit

• Comment posted Jun 17, 2006 2:22 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Comment to Jothan Frakes: That gathering seems useful. But there are some things that ought to be added to the agenda. First of all, please don't focus exclusively on "add grace" - it is merely one of four closely related…

• Comment posted Jun 13, 2006 6:19 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Response to John Berryhill: Lets make some calculations based on the numbers you give. On a single day this example registrar (the term "nameservers" in the dailychanges reports is misleading) generates 354940 name registrations and has on deposit with Verisign…

• Comment posted Jun 13, 2006 2:42 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Reply to John Berryhill: Of course I understand why the "tasters" are doing it - to make a buck. And making a buck is OK ... OK as long as that making of a buck doesn't generate costs that the…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 11:12 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Responding to John Berryhill: You say the 4-grace periods were established for four different purposes. A couple of points: - Since nobody ever said to the board what these were for, everything having to do with purpose is speculation.  (Ah,…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 8:25 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  In response to John Berryhill: You say that some percentage of the tasting results in actual paid registrations. Fine, but the fact that they pay for what they keep is irrelevant. Your calculation of X/Y is also irrelevant, becuse it…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 3:37 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  There are two responses here, first to Ram Mohan and then to John Berryhill First: (to Ram Mohan) You ask why new TLDs ought to reduce costs.  I'm not saying that the existing registries will necessarily incur lower costs through…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 4:15 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Ram Mohan writes above: "there are very real costs that are certainly orders of magnitude higher than the $0.03 that I’ve heard bandied about." I'm the source of that $0.03 calculation.  (There was actually another calculation as well that led…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 2:40 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  .By-the-way, it appears that Appendix G of the 2001 contracts superseded the section 5.4 of the 1999 agreement.

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 2:36 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Responding to John Berryhill: You suggest that those who are using the 5-day grace period deserve to pay $0.00 as part of a volume pricing discount. OK, then how come registrars, particularly large ones, don't also get a quantity discount…

• Comment posted Jun 11, 2006 2:27 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  In response to Suresh Ramasubramanian question: "was pushing “add grace” through a creation of ICANN’s staff?  Or ICANN’s law firm?" Is there a difference?  There may be a thin, translucent layer of insulation now, although I'm not sure there is.…

• Comment posted Jun 10, 2006 8:39 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Suresh Ramasubramanian said: In fact, if as John Levine says, this was an ad hoc decision by an ICANN staffer which then slipped through the board without anyone noticing, ICANN might want to find out which staffer it was, and…

In Bad Taste

• Comment posted May 07, 2006 10:06 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  When the grace period concept was raised to the ICANN board, the only kind of grace period discussed was a "redemption grace" period to help people who accidently forgot to renew.  (The board accepted "redemption grace" at the meeting of…

How Domain Name Traffic Testing/Tasting Works

• Comment posted Apr 27, 2006 5:46 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  There are several points to be highlighted. I touched on these issues in my recent blog entry - Internet Gambling, The ICANN Way: Using Someone Else's Wallet at http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000239.html.  I also commented on it in another entry entitled It's Time…

Vint Cerf's Keynote at Domain Roundtable

• Comment posted Apr 23, 2006 7:15 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  You ask: With regards to adding new TLDs, are you suggesting that anyone that meets minimum requirements should be able to start a new TLD? Yes indeed.  I have felt that way for years and years - A half dozen…

• Comment posted Apr 23, 2006 3:42 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Let me respond to three of the points cited in the main article. First. ICANN's chairman says that his position has been misunderstood and that his position is that ICANN should have "a solid rationale for adding new TLDs." Why…

Finding Good ICANN Board Candidates

• Comment posted Apr 12, 2006 10:25 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  We really didn't have any trouble coming up with a number of good candidates when there were real elections back in year 2000. In the election for the North American seat the candidates included the following people, all of whom…

Answers from Vint Cerf: The Road Ahead for Top-Level Domains

• Comment posted Mar 17, 2006 6:21 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In response to Jayson Vantuyl: You seem to be accepting without question the story that ICANN is engaged in some sort of assurance of internet stability. What is your definition of "stability"?  From what you write, it is a definition…

• Comment posted Mar 13, 2006 7:33 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Chris McElroy asked why ICANN believes it has the right, and authority, to decide who obtains entry into the domain name business place and who does not, based on ICANN's evaluation of the business plans and assets of the applicant.…

Finally the .com Discussion is Over...

• Comment posted Mar 09, 2006 7:04 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Your comments surprise me. You seem to be blaiming the community.  Yet the internet community, particularly the part involved with ICANN, was very vocal in its opinions (largely negative) about the ICANN-Verisign agreement. Not only has the community been very…

China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation

• Comment posted Mar 03, 2006 2:51 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  This is a very interesting thread, but it leaves me confused. It leaves me confused regarding what name manipulation is being done (in the style of new.net or the /etc/resolv.conf "search" directive) in the user's computer before the DNS name…

The Villain in the ICANN-VeriSign Struggle is the U.S. Government

• Comment posted Feb 26, 2006 9:59 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In baseball its three strikes and you're out. We see in this thread ICANN being defended by its first president and by the attorney who created it, who created the perpetual right for Verisign to retain .com, and who is…

• Comment posted Feb 20, 2006 8:13 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree that this whole mess is due to fuzzy-thinking from the outset and which continues through the present.  And although the US Gov't has certainly acted with flagrant disregard of even the most basic rules of administrative process and…

Questioning "Net Neutrality"

• Comment posted Feb 11, 2006 8:32 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  What you say is reasonable and sensible - we don't have to quibble over the internet was designed to be non-neutral or rather it was designed with the foresight to accommodate uses that need to differentiate among traffic classes.  The…

Europe is to the US Controlled GPS as Europe is to the US Controlled DNS Root?

• Comment posted Dec 30, 2005 6:07 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  To Suresh: The notion of competing roots, much less the forces that might drive a set of nations to establish a competing root system that is in parallal to (and consistent with) the US controlled root, has nothing to do…

• Comment posted Dec 30, 2005 9:00 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  To Bret: We seem to agree that the real concern is consistency of data not singularity of source of that data. My own feeling is that there is a natural coercive force that will drive consistency as well as a…

Forgotten Principles of Internet Governance

• Comment posted Oct 23, 2005 6:27 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Thanks for so clearly illustrating my point about hidden-agendas masked as techno-speak. The portrait of the internet future you paint is one that is very dreary: Users get neither voice nor choice.  The end-to-end principle is only for the privileged. …

The Non-Parity of the UDRP

• Comment posted Sep 22, 2005 4:08 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Do not forget that the UDRP was railroaded through an an ICANN that was, at the time, incompletely formed.  There were many affected parties who had no say whatsoever in the formulation of the UDRP. Moreover, the UDRP itself is…

About Those Root Servers

• Comment posted Aug 12, 2005 2:07 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Reply to JFC Morfin: I have long suggested that because the root zone file is so small - about 15K to 20K bytes compressed, i.e. smaller than many of the cutsie buttons and gifs that decorate web pages - that…

• Comment posted Aug 11, 2005 6:57 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Response to McTim: Why should the root-ops enter into a contract?  Because if they don't the author of the root zone file can point the name/IP address of the delegation to a more willing operator. Yes, it becomes a tug-of-war…

IGP on Future U.S. Role in Internet Governance

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2005 1:34 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  It would be useful if someone were to enumerate with precision and specificity exactly those tasks that ICANN does that constitute "technical coordination". As far as I can see it is the IANA function, a function that ICANN performs in…

A Balkanized Internet Future?

• Comment posted Jul 27, 2005 6:51 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Third response to Suresh Ramasubramanian: You make an assertion that I left ICANN.  That is untrue.  ICANN, contrary to the promises made at its formation, eliminated all publicly elected members to the board of directors.  Had ICANN not eliminated public…

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2005 9:06 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Second response to Suresh Ramasubramanian: You say that "the internet is just too valuable to fragment." That begs at least two questions: The first is what is the internet?  I always define it as the open system that transports IP…

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2005 3:58 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Response to Suresh Ramasubramanian: You say that you "do care if all these little pieces splinter off from the Internet". That's nice. But if I want to be one of those splinters why should your choice prevail over my choice?…

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2005 2:57 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Why shouldn't people be able to create their own internet namescapes? What ever happened to the end-to-end principle?  Why should users (and their proxies, ISPs) be refused the right to chose how they will use the internet. If a community…

The Internets

• Comment posted Jul 21, 2005 5:26 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I believe that you are jumping to the conclusion that consistency of naming requires that there be one and only one set of root servers. What is desired is consistency not singularity. The desired characteristic, naming consistency, can be achieved…

Putting Multiple Root Nameserver Issue to Rest

• Comment posted Jul 03, 2005 8:15 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I agree that coherency is important.  But you are making an unwarranted leap from "coherency" to "singularity". Coherency - meaning that similiar queries receive similar answers - does not require that there be only one DNS root. The nugget of…

Twenty Myths and Truths About IPv6 and the US IPv6 Transition

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2005 4:06 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  In your point #2 you say that IPv6 lacks QoS - I've stared at a lot of IPv4 packets, and every one of 'em contains an 8-bit type-of-service/quality-of-service field.  So I would not agree that IPv4 entirely lacks QoS hooks.…

Effects of ICANN's Legal Presence in the US, Under California Legislation

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2005 5:09 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  1. Jon Postel was never designated as ICANN's CTO.  It was clear during ICANN's formation that the position was likely to be filled by Jon.  However, it is incorrect to say that there was a formal decision to chose Jon. …

Hope for Human Resources with .Jobs Domain

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2005 4:45 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  100% of the benefits you claim for .jobs could have been obtained years ago simply through a subdomain of of one of the existing top level comains - where you say "companyname.jobs" it could have been "companyname.jobs.existing-tld". Or, as others…

An Infrastructure TLD: Avoiding the Side Effects of Today's .Net

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2005 1:55 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  To Joe Abley: A. .arpa would make a handy infrastructure top level domain.  There could be some national and cultural difficulties, however, because ARPA refers to a part of the United States Department of Defense. B. As for the hints…

Could IP Addressing Benefit from the Introduction of Competitive Suppliers?

• Comment posted Apr 29, 2005 9:06 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  In response to Suresh Ramasubramanian: You wrote: "ICANN, both the board and its At Large component, is fully open to people from any country, anywhere, standing for election" My opinion and experience (I was the only board member ever to…

• Comment posted Apr 20, 2005 5:30 am PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  I don't think that the word "competition" is really the right one to use; in the context of IP address allocation it is not a word that I would use. I agree that rational allocation of IP addresses is important.…

Protecting the Internet: Certified Attachments and Reverse Firewalls?

• Comment posted Mar 28, 2005 12:57 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Partial response to Bret Watson and Stephane Bortzmeyer: You are both right that it is very hard to define a good "reverse firewall" set.  But I remain convinced that a few relatively simple things - such as source address protection…

Shambles at the .Pro Registry

• Comment posted Mar 21, 2005 4:53 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Oops, I mean Encira - but than again I'm not the only one to make a typo - I note that the date on Encirca's letter to ICANN is in year 2004.

• Comment posted Mar 21, 2005 4:49 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In response to the comments of Thomas Barrett: I am a professional - I am an active, dues paying, card carrying member of the State Bar of California. It matters little to me whether the operators of .pro or ICANN…

Top-Level Domains for Addressing by Physical Context

• Comment posted Mar 31, 2004 5:55 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I want to extend my previous comment - I somewhat misunderstood what you are proposing. I believe that what you want to do is more in the realm of discovery of local resources than in the realm of the domain…

• Comment posted Mar 31, 2004 5:40 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  It is already possible to define a location for any name in DNS. (See http://www.ckdhr.com/dns-loc/ ) There already is a LOCation resource record defined for DNS. DNS allows many attributes to be associated with a name - this is why…

Paul Vixie on Fort N.O.C.'s

• Comment posted Feb 06, 2004 5:56 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  I'm happy to end this thread.  However, your assertion that I'm trying to impose some new kind of regime is rather at odds with the history of infrastructures, whether those be with regard to flight, electricity, food, or medicine.  If…

• Comment posted Feb 06, 2004 12:12 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Again you are confusing the limited oversight that the State of California applies to non-profits with the degree of oversight that the internet community deserves to ensure that DNS roots are operated in the future as well as they have…

• Comment posted Feb 05, 2004 6:29 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Your answer demonstrates the fact that there is no control, just a group of independent entites that are answerable only to themselves. Let's take, for instance the F root - you say "Server F is legally accountable to the State…

• Comment posted Feb 04, 2004 8:24 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In response to Cypher21's question: You've asked a good and important question.  And I agree with you that neither ICANN nor the US DoC have demonstrated either an ability or willingness to provide that oversight. My own sense is that…

• Comment posted Jan 30, 2004 5:25 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  In paragraph #2 you say: "The root name servers are not 'operated on a volunteer basis'" .. "For all twelve of us, operating a root name server is a concrete obligation, and not merely a 'sense of duty'" My question…

TLD Operators: Cleaning Up Lame Delegations

• Comment posted Jan 15, 2004 7:00 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  It isn't all that hard to do a lame check - Go to http://dnscheck.se and run it. The code is in perl and easily downloaded. It would take ICANN only a couple of minutes to create a script that would…

ICANN and the Virtues of Deliberative Policymaking - Part I

• Comment posted Dec 31, 2003 8:36 pm PST — by Karl Auerbach
  This article is based on incorrect premises. First, the article asserts that "ICANN is an experiment in deliberative, rather than 'democratic' or 'representative,' policymaking." Second, it asserts that ICANN is a "coordinator of technical resources". As to the first point:…

Bad Journalism, IPv6, and the BBC

• Comment posted Nov 24, 2003 10:20 am PST — by Karl Auerbach
  Address blocks are sized by "prefix", the smaller the prefix the bigger the block.  The biggest conventional unit of allocation is a /8 - there simply are not enough of these to hand out one to every country - yet…

Is Industry Underestimating the Ending Dot?

• Comment posted Oct 16, 2003 7:25 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  The Windoz community seems to have skipped the class titled "Introduction to the Internet" Software that doesn't handle fully qualified domain names (FQDN), i.e. names ending in a dot, is, in a word, broken.  And broken software should a) have…

ICANN: A Concrete "Thin Contract" Proposal

• Comment posted Aug 20, 2003 10:10 pm PDT — by Karl Auerbach
  Escrow of registration information has been a failure - it simply never got started. An easier approach is to require that TLD operators engage in good business asset preservation practices. In other words, the TLD operator would have to do…