Senate Appropriators Add IANA Language As House Requests GAO Study and Civil...
The Senate Appropriations Committee just reported out on June 5th its version of the Commerce-Justice-State Departments Appropriations bill for FY 15. In the course of its deliberations it added a...
View ArticleUDRP Failure Endangers Consumers
Yesterday I participated in a panel at the International Consumer Product Safety Conference sponsored by the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO) held at the European...
View ArticleRape in the DNS
It took three years for ICANN to issue a breach notice to BizCn over the invalid WHOIS record behind RAPETUBE[DOT]ORG. Throughout the history of this absurd case ICANN staff would repeatedly insist the...
View ArticleGNSO Constituencies Issue Unanimous Joint Statement on ICANN Accountability
In an unprecedented development, all stakeholder groups and constituencies comprising ICANN"s Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) unanimously endorsed a joint statement in support of the...
View ArticleIt's Time to Talk Solutions on Mass Surveillance
The Internet we depend upon will suffer irreversible damage — along with our societies and economies — if we don't The public discussion of surveillance one year on from the Snowden revelations remains...
View ArticleInter Mundos: ICANN's Accountability is a Matter of Human Rights
The debate over the IANA Functions transitions has captivated the minds of all stakeholders. The U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has...
View ArticleIs ICANN's .IR Response at Odds with the ACPA and ICE Domain Seizures?
An initial review of ICANN's response to litigation seeking it to turn over control of the ccTLDs of Iran, Syria and North Korea led to the conclusion that it had opened a "legal can of worms". A few...
View ArticlePatents and Standards, or: How a Court Case Will Affect Our Everyday Lives
Industry standards are indispensable for today's technology driven economies. Every time we use a mobile phone to place a call, or connect a computer to the Internet at a café, we rely on standardized...
View ArticleCigarette Smuggling and Cyber Security: Low-Tech Crimes Fund High-Tech Threats
You may not connect the cheap cigarettes sold under the counter (or out of a trunk, bodega or by a street vendor) with the mysterious charges on your credit card that you don't remember making or the...
View ArticleWhere Is Cyberspace?
In my first CircleID post, I compared the cyberspace to a farmland, which has to be cultivated and developed. I ended by asking: Where is cyberspace? I have asked this same question from many people,...
View ArticleHungarians Protesting Against Proposed Internet Tax
Hungary's leadership is under pressure to drop plans to tax Internet use, a move seen as a way to cut off public debate by limiting information not controlled by the rightist government of Prime...
View ArticleStopping Illegal Activity Online - It's More Complicated Than It Seems
There was a compelling article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) the other day about ICANN and illegal online pharmacies. The result of a six-month investigation, the reporter, Jeff Elder, calls into...
View ArticleEurope and Data Protection: We Need a Real Debate - Exactly What We Don't...
Europe is at the forefront of the global debate about data protection and privacy. Unfortunately that debate is characterised more by hyberbole and scaremongering than real discussion. Europeans...
View ArticleU.S. Court Overrules Attempt to Seize Iran's, Syria's and North Korea's Domains
In a landmark ruling, a U.S. federal court has agreed with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that the country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) are not property subject to...
View ArticleccTLDs Might Be Property
The long-running saga of victims who are pursuing 'state sponsors of terrorism' via ICANN has taken yet another turn. Some time back the Plaintiffs in Rubin & ors -v- Islamic Republic of Iran &...
View ArticleDoes the Internet Need "Governance"?
It's remarkable to me that there are now two powerful agencies fighting to "govern" the Internet — the ITU and the FCC. On any given day, it's hard to tell whether they are on the same side or...
View ArticleGerman Court Holding Domain Registrar Responsible for Its End User Actions
A German appeals court has held a German domain name registrar (Key Systems) responsible for issuing a domain name to H33t, a torrent-tracking site. The case was appealed, but the appeals court upheld...
View ArticleEuropean Parliament Backs Resolution to Break Up Search Giant
European Union lawmakers overwhelmingly backed a motion on Thursday urging anti-trust regulators to break up Google, the latest setback for the world's most popular Internet search engine. Google has...
View ArticleWhere We're Going: Leviathan or Golem?
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.1 —Voltaire The Internet never ceases to fascinate. I am referring not to its content, but to its governance. The...
View ArticleWhy OIRA Needs to Coordinate Federal Cyber Security Regulation
Two quick facts about American industry's resilience against cyber-attack, (1) our critical infrastructure is inadequately protected and (2) federal regulation will be required to fix the problem,...
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