Public participation site

I don't have strong religion on plural TLDs.

For that matter, I don't have strong feelings for or against closed generics either, an other new gTLD issue that has recently been discussed even though it is not mentioned in the rules new gTLD applicants had to rely on.

What I do care about is predictability of process.

Yet, as Beijing showed, the ICANN community has an uncanny ability to throw last-minute wrenches at its own Great Matter, as Cardinal Wolsey called Henry VIII's plan to divorce Catherine of Aragon.

And we should all remember that the new gTLD program is our own master plan. It is born out of the community's bottom-up process for developing policy. We all own it. We all sanctioned it when it came up through our community and was given a green light by the people we elected to represent us on the GNSO Council, the body responsible for making gTLD policy. So we should now all feel responsible for seeing it to fruition.

Impressed by governments

So can this issue of plural TLDs that came out of nowhere during the ICANN Beijing meeting week cause yet more delays to the Great Matter that is the new gTLD program?

First of all, I was surprised to see it mentioned in the GAC Communiqué which provides the ICANN Board with Advice on the new gTLD program as required by the program's Bible, the Applicant Guidebook. The GAC said it believes: "that singular and plural versions of the string as a TLD could lead to potential consumer confusion. Therefore the GAC advises the ICANN Board to (...) Reconsider its decision to allow singular and plural versions of the same strings."

For governments to react so quickly shows that they now have the pulse of what goes on outside their own circle like never before. I digress here, but I think this is an extremely important development we should all take great pride in. The government representatives that attend ICANN meetings are knowledgeable and engaged in the community they are part of in a way that is probably unique in the world of governance. The rest of us may not always agree with their decisions or opinions, but we cannot disagree with their level of commitment. To the point that individual GAC members coming straight out of a gruelling 8 days of meetings will not hesitate to stand up in the public forum and give voice to their own personal opinions only a few minutes after the GAC Beijing Communiqué was published. I am impressed.

But what about that advice? Will plural TLDs give rise to user confusion and should this debate even be opened at this time? And make no mistake, having GAC Advice on the matter is not the same as discussing it over coffee. Section 1.1.2.7 of the Applicant Guidebook is very clear: "If the Board receives GAC Advice on New gTLDs stating that it is the consensus of the GAC that a particular application should not proceed, this will create a strong presumption for the ICANN Board that the application should not be approved. If the Board does not act in accordance with this type of advice, it must provide rationale for doing so."

Stay the course

So will this advice from governments cause the new gTLD program to be delayed whilst its rules are rewritten for the umpteenth time? Not necessarily. ICANN is definitely learning fast these days. With a new business-oriented CEO to provide guidance on the importance of managing a project of this magnitude with some measure of predictability, the Board itself is showing increasing confidence to stay the course. ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker has said that as far as the ICANN Board is concerned, although the word of governments carries weight, it is not the be all and end all. "We have a carefully constructed multi-stakeholder process," Crocker explained in a video interview recorded at the end of the Beijing meeting. "We want very much to listen to governments, and we also want to make sure there's a balance."

That is reassuring. The Applicant Guidebook makes no mention of plural TLDs. Not one. These are the rules by which applicants have constructed their submissions for a TLD to ICANN. It is on the basis of this guidebook that they have defined their business models and done what ICANN itself was asking them to do: build a viable business and operational plan to operate a TLD.

The rules simply cannot be changed every couple of months. In what world is it OK to ask applicants to follow a process and then, once that process is closed, revisit it time and again and force change on those applicants? Would governments tolerate this in their own business dealings? Would those community members who call for rules revisions on a despairingly regular basis put up with it in their everyday commercial ventures?

So now governments have called upon the ICANN Board to act. But the Board always intended to keep TLD evaluations independent from those with interests in the outcomes. That is why evaluation panels were constituted, instead of getting ICANN Staff to evaluate applicants directly. And that is why we should not attempt to reopen and rearrange decisions of an expert panel basing its analysis on the program's only rulebook, the Applicant Guidebook as it stood when the new gTLD application window closed. After all, parties that disagree with panel outcomes have the objection process to address their concerns.

Singularity or plurality?

And anyway, is there really a case for prohibiting singular and plural TLDs? After all, singulars and plurals have always existed together at the second level and no-one ever took exception to that. Why is the fact that the domains car.com and cars.com are not owned and operated by the same entity less confusing to users than the equivalent singular/plural pair as a TLD? Wouldn't trying to limit the use of singular and plural TLDs amount to attempted content control and free speech limitations?

Isn't this call to limit singular and plural use just a very English-language centric view of the new gTLD world? Is it true that adding or taking away the letter "S" at the end of a string means going from a singular to a plural form in every language, for every alphabet, for every culture? And if not, then how can a level playing field be guaranteed for applicants and users alike if new rules are introduce that prohibit singular/plural use in languages and alphabets that the mostly English-speaking ICANN community understands, but the wider world is not suited to?

Can it really be argued that plurals are confusing, but phonetically similar strings aren't? Aren't we over-reaching if we try to convince anyone that .hotel, .hoteles, and .hoteis belong in the same contention set? And if that's true, why isn't it true for their second-level counterparts, like hotel.info, hoteles.info and hoteis.info?

As I've stated, I have no real preconceived opinion on the matter. So to try and form one, I am more than happy to listen to the people that have spent months, sometimes years, coming up with realistic ideas for new gTLDs. The applicants themselves.

Uniregistry's Frank Shilling thinks that "the GAC (while well-intentioned) has made an extraordinarily short-sighted mistake. For the entire new GTLD exercise to thrive in the very long run, the collective right-of-the-dot namespace simply must allow for the peaceful coexistence of singulars and plurals. There are words with dual meaning that will be affected, this will significantly and unnecessarily hem in future spectrum. Consumers expect singulars and plurals to peacefully coexist. If we want to move to a naming spectrum with tens of thousands of new G's in the future — a namespace which is easy, intuitive and useful for people to navigate, there is just no long term good that can come from setting such a poor precedent today."

Donuts, another new gTLD applicant, argues that the Applicant Guidebook sets an appropriately high threshold for string confusion as it is drafted now. Section 22112 of the Guidebook defines a standard for string confusion as being (text highlighted by me) "where a string so nearly resembles another visually that it is likely to deceive or cause confusion. For the likelihood of confusion to exist, it must be probable, not merely possible that confusion will arise in the mind of the average, reasonable Internet user. Mere association, in the sense that the string brings another string to mind, is insufficient to find a likelihood of confusion."

Donuts suggest that string similarity exists in today's namespace without leading to user confusion. ".BIZ and .BZ, or .COM and .CO or .CM, for example," says Donuts. "At first glance, association of these strings might suggest similarity, but reporting or evidence that they are visually or meaningfully similar clearly does not exist, and the standard of confusion probability is not met. By these examples, it is clearly difficult to confuse the average, reasonable Internet user. Broader Internet usage, growth in name space, and specificity in identity and expression are the foundation of the new gTLD program, and are suitable priorities for the community. In the interest of consumer choice and competition, multiple strings and the variety and opportunity they present to users should prevail over all but the near certainty of actual confusion."

Obviously, these quotes from applicants will have critics dismissing them just because they are from applicants. I can hear now saying "well they would say that, they want new gTLDs to come out asap." Right! And what's wrong with that? Why is it out of place for the people we, the community, have drawn into this through the policy development we approved, to want to get to the end point in a stable and predictable manner after they have invested so much time, effort and resources into this?

A professional ICANN is a strong ICANN

As usual with these calls for last-minute rule changes, we see the recurring argument that the rest of the world is watching ICANN and waiting for it to trip up and mess this up. And as usual, if we listen to those making this argument, the "this" is such a crucial issue that if it is ignored, the world as we know it may very well end. Really? Aren't ICANN critics more likely to be impressed by the organisation displaying an ability to properly project manage and get to the finish line? After having started a process which has brought in over $350 million in application fees, introduced the ICANN ecosystem to global entities, major companies and international organisations who are used to seeing rules being followed, after having shone the outside world's spotlight on itself like never before, wouldn't that be a real sign that ICANN deserves to be overseeing the Internet's namespace?

At this stage, with only a few weeks to go until ICANN declares itself in a position to approve the first TLD delegations, I contend that the real danger to the organisation is lack of predictability in the process being imposed by artificial limitations to the program's scope and rules.

Written by Stéphane Van Gelder, Chairman, STEPHANE VAN GELDER CONSULTING

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Top-Level Domains

What if there was a relatively simple fix that could be applied to home WiFi routers, cable modems and other gateway devices that would dramatically speed up the Internet access through those devices? Many of us may have heard of the "bufferbloat" issue where buffering of packets causes latency and slower Internet connectivity, but at IETF 86 last month in Orlando I got a chance to see the problem with an excellent demonstration by Dave Täht as part of the "Bits-And-Bytes" session (as explained in the IETF blog).

My immediate reaction, as you'll hear in the video below, was "I WANT THIS!” We live at a time when it's easy to saturate home Internet connections… just think of a couple of people simultaneously streaming videos, downloading files or doing online gaming. To be able to gain the increase in web browsing speed you see in the video is something, that to me, needs to be deployed as soon as possible.

To that end, Dave Täht, Jim Gettys and a number of others have been documenting this problem — and associated solutions — at www.bufferbloat.net for some time now and that's a good place to start. If you are a vendor of home routers, cable modems or other Internet access devices, I would encourage you to look into how you can incorporate this in your device(s).

Meanwhile, enjoy the demonstrations and information in this video: (and for the truly impatient who just want to see the demo, you can advance to the 3:08 minute mark)

Written by Dan York, Author and Speaker on Internet technologies

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More under: Broadband, Web

Recently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) unveiled its Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH), a tool it proposes will help fight trademark infringement relating to another of its new programs — generic top level domain (gTLD).

As Lafeber describes, criticism of ICANN's gTLD program and subsequent TMCH database is mounting. Skeptics have noted that given the significant cost of registering a gTLD — the application fee is $185,000 and subsequent annual fees are $25,000 — the program appears to be solely a cash cow, without adding much value to Internet users. In fact, Esther Dyson, ICANN's founding chairwoman, was quoted in August 2011 (during the nascent stages of the gTLD program's development) as saying:

"Handling the profusion of names and TLDs is a relatively simple problem for a computer, even though it will require extra work to redirect hundreds of new names (when someone types them in) back to the same old Web site. It will also create lots of work for lawyers, marketers of search-engine optimization, registries, and registrars. All of this will create jobs, but little extra value."

While the gTLD program lacks intrinsic value-added, and may in fact have anticompetitive effects given its exorbitant fees, I think there may be something more nefarious at play here. Essentially, ICANN has positioned itself as the Corleone family of the Internet space, making an offer no one can refuse. ICANN created a market in which individuals can launch new gTLDs, even using another's trademark-protected brand as their domain extension. Subsequently — and here's where the mafia-like "protection" arises — it has "offered" trademark owners the ability to head off infringements by either buying their gTLDs or receiving notification if an infringing gTLD is registered by another party.

Programs to monitor the use of one's brand in a domain name have long existed. The TMCH charges subscribers $95 to $150 annually to be notified of the registration of infringing gTLDs. Instead of extorting fees to be the watchdog for illegal activity ICANN itself facilitates, it could more ethically operate its gTLD program by mining publicly available government databases and instituting a freeze on registration of questionable domain names. Moreover, it could even provide a valuable service by offering a clearly defined resolution process for trademark disputes.

The gTLD-TMCH pairing is the proverbial horse's head in a trademark owner's bed.

Written by James Delaney, Chief Operating Officer at DMi Partners

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Policy & Regulation, Top-Level Domains

On April 16th at 11:00pm GMT, the first of two botnets began a massive spam campaign to take advantage of the recent Boston tragedy. The spam messages claim to contain news concerning the Boston Marathon bombing, reports Craig Williams from Cisco. The spam messages contain a link to a site that claims to have videos of explosions from the attack. Simultaneously, links to these sites were posted as comments to various blogs.

The link directs users to a webpage that includes iframes that load content from several YouTube videos plus content from an attacker-controlled site. Reports indicate the attacker-controlled sites host malicious .jar files that can compromise vulnerable machines.

On April 17th, a second botnet began using a similar spam campaign. Instead of simply providing a link, the spam messages contained graphical HTML content claiming to be breaking news alerts from CNN.

Cisco became aware of a range of threats forming on April 15th when hundreds of domains related to the Boston tragedy were quickly registered. Regarding the botnet spam-specific threat – from a volume perspective – peaks approach 40% of all spam being sent. (Source: Cisco)

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More under: Malware, Security, Spam

On April 16th at 11:00pm GMT, the first of two botnets began a massive spam campaign to take advantage of the recent Boston tragedy. The spam messages claim to contain news concerning the Boston Marathon bombing, reports Craig Williams from Cisco. The spam messages contain a link to a site that claims to have videos of explosions from the attack. Simultaneously, links to these sites were posted as comments to various blogs.

The link directs users to a webpage that includes iframes that load content from several YouTube videos plus content from an attacker-controlled site. Reports indicate the attacker-controlled sites host malicious .jar files that can compromise vulnerable machines.

On April 17th, a second botnet began using a similar spam campaign. Instead of simply providing a link, the spam messages contained graphical HTML content claiming to be breaking news alerts from CNN.

Cisco became aware of a range of threats forming on April 15th when hundreds of domains related to the Boston tragedy were quickly registered. Regarding the botnet spam-specific threat – from a volume perspective – peaks approach 40% of all spam being sent. (Source: Cisco)

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More under: Malware, Security, Spam

[While getting his feet wet with D3, Bradley Huffaker (at CAIDA) finally tried this analysis tidbit that's been on his list for a while.]

We recently analyzed the reputation of a country's Internet (IPv4) addresses by examining the number of blacklisted IPv4 addresses that geolocate to a given country. We compared this indicator with two qualitative measures of each country's governance. We hypothesized that countries with more transparent, democratic governmental institutions would harbor a smaller fraction of misbehaving (blacklisted) hosts. The available data confirms this hypothesis. A similar correlation exists between perceived corruption and fraction of blacklisted IP addresses.

CAIDA's Country IP Reputation Graphs (Click to Enlarge)
See the interactive graph and analysis on the CAIDA website

For more details of data sources and analysis, see:
http://www.caida.org/research/policy/country-level-ip-reputation/

Written by kc claffy, Director, CAIDA and Adjunct Professor, UC, San Diego

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More under: Cyberattack, Cybercrime, IP Addressing, Policy & Regulation, Spam

Today, more than 80 organizations, represented by The European Consumer Organization (BEUC) and European Digital Rights (EDRi), sent a letter [PDF] to the European Commission demanding the end of dangerous experimentation with the functioning of the Internet in Europe and the protection of the principles of openness and neutrality.

"The Internet's unique value is openness. The experimentation by certain European access providers with blocking, filtering and throttling of services creates borders in an online world whose key value is the absence of borders." explains Joe McNamee, Executive Director of EDRi. "This reckless experimentation will continue unless the European Commission puts a stop to it."

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More under: Access Providers, Net Neutrality, Policy & Regulation

Today, more than 80 organizations, represented by The European Consumer Organization (BEUC) and European Digital Rights (EDRi), sent a letter [PDF] to the European Commission demanding the end of dangerous experimentation with the functioning of the Internet in Europe and the protection of the principles of openness and neutrality.

"The Internet's unique value is openness. The experimentation by certain European access providers with blocking, filtering and throttling of services creates borders in an online world whose key value is the absence of borders." explains Joe McNamee, Executive Director of EDRi. "This reckless experimentation will continue unless the European Commission puts a stop to it."

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More under: Access Providers, Net Neutrality, Policy & Regulation

If you are interested in the current state of IPv4 address exhaustion within North America as well as the current state of IPv6 deployment, there will be a live stream today, April 17, of the sessions happening at INET Denver starting at 1:00pm US Mountain Daylight Time (UTC-6). The event is subtitled "IPv4 Exhaustion and the Path to IPv6” and you can view the live stream at:

http://www.internetsociety.org/events/inet-denver/inet-denver-livestream

Sessions include:

• IPv4 Exhaustion Update
• IPv4 Exhaustion at ARIN
• Address Policy Workshop
• Evaluation of Current Transfer Market
• TCO of IPv6
• Internet Society Initiatives and How To Get Involved

The list of speakers includes people from ARIN, CableLabs, Internet Society, Time Warner Cable, Google and more.

It sounds like a great event and I'm looking forward to watching it remotely.  It will be recorded so that you will be able to watch it later if you cannot view it live.

Written by Dan York, Author and Speaker on Internet technologies

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More under: Internet Protocol, IP Addressing, IPv6, Policy & Regulation

Machine to machine (M2M) communications may not be new, but with the rapid deployment of embedded wireless technology in vehicles, appliances and electronics, it is becoming a force for service providers to reckon with as droves of businesses and consumers seek to reap its benefits. By 2020, the GSM Association (GSMA) predicts that there will be 24 billion connected devices worldwide, while Forrester predicts that mobile machine interactions will exceed the number of mobile human interactions more than 30 times. To ensure competitive advantage, service providers must invest in their networks to enable M2M services more quickly, economically, securely and assuredly.

The principle of M2M communications is straightforward. Sensors are installed on consumer or commercial hardware to transfer application-relevant information to other sensors and/or to a centralized storage facility. Using this information, complicated algorithms infer decisions relevant to the specific application, and are executed accordingly. While this is simple in theory, in-practice, it actually requires the construction of a complex network, with a clear path between devices and storage; the ability to store, process and analyze large amounts of data; and the ability to take action based on this intelligence.

As evidenced by recent reports, it's clear that the industry believes that cloud computing is becoming a viable service option for mission critical business applications. In a 2012 survey conducted by North Bridge Venture Partners, and sponsored by 39 cloud companies including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Eucalyptus, and Glasshouse, found a meager 3% considered adopting cloud services to be too risky — down from 11% the previous year. In addition, only 12% said the cloud platform was too immature, and that's down from 26% the year prior. This evolution of the computing industry towards cloud has enabled the storage of vast amounts of data from devices and also made the analysis of this data more feasible. In fact, Microsoft recently said that its Azure cloud has more than four trillion objects stored in it, a fourfold increase from a year before. Its Azure cloud averages 270,000 requests per second, while peaking at 880,000 requests per second during some months. The requests per second have increased almost threefold in the past year, a Microsoft official wrote in a blog post. As a comparison, Amazon Web Services said that just its Simple Storage Service (S3) holds 905 billion objects, and was growing at a rate of one billion objects per day, while handling an average of 650,000 requests per second. As cloud becomes the de facto model for M2M communications, M2M vendors must understand what it takes to enable secure and reliable transfer of information via that vehicle.

It is also important to note that M2M communications can be triggered by both planned and unplanned events. For example, in a smart grid application, smart meters can send information about electricity consumption to a centralized database at pre-scheduled times. Sensors can also be designed to react to unplanned events, such as extreme weather conditions, and trigger increased communication in a certain geography or location. As such, the network that connects these devices to each other, and to the cloud, has to perform in both instances, adapting to both forecasted increases in traffic and random spikes, with automatic, assured performance.

Cloud Infrastructure Requirements for M2M Communications

The network platform that enables M2M communications has multiple segments: the access segment (wireless radio or wireline-based), backhaul to the cloud and the cloud network.

Figure 1: Information from billions of sensors is captured in data centers for processing. Sensor data is transmitted over a wireless access network, mobile backhaul and core network to the data centers.

Sensor data travels to the cloud over wireless/radio or wireline access infrastructures. The aggregation network has to provide highly resilient, scalable and cost-effective backhaul either from mobile or wireline access to be effective. If not the case, M2M communications would be unreliable and many of the new-age applications could never be fully realized.

In order to enable cloud as a platform for M2M adoption, innovation and communication, the cloud has to serve as a high-performance computing platform, often referred to as an enterprise-grade or carrier-grade cloud. High-performance cloud networks need terabit-level connectivity to be able to withstand the projected volume of M2M traffic. These networks will require a provisioning tool so that administrators can allocate resources to where and when they are needed, and also ensure that network assets are available to support delivery of bandwidth-rich applications and services. And, finally, data centers and the cloud backbone need to function as a seamless, single network — a data center without walls — to optimize performance and economics.

Widespread availability of M2M technology has already spurred innovative use cases across different industries, such as: smart grid in energy/utilities; communication between various devices for security and industrial/building control; environmental monitoring; and many applications in the consumer domain ranging from retail to home appliance intelligence.

For example:

• In healthcare, mobile platforms can be connected wirelessly to a patient's body or garments for doctors to observe glucose, blood pressure, temperature, EKG and imaging data to alert staff to any abnormalities without the patient having to be checked into the hospital.
• Innovative "green" solutions including, solar-powered, wireless parking meters that allow credit card payments to a web-based irrigation control system, which protects the environment and saves money and time for businesses and consumers.
• Fleet management specialists can optimize fleet performance through integrating GPS capability, vehicle diagnostics and wireless communications to provide real-time field status information, including current location and diagnostics alerts. Fleet managers are able to monitor and manage driving behavior to improve safety and reduce risk, as well as log drivers' hours to ensure they comply with regulations.

Keys to success

To foster adoption of M2M-enabled technology, initiatives such as GSMA's Connected Life regularly bring together thought leaders within the M2M ecosystem to share their insights to help increase availability of anywhere, anytime connectivity.

The successful adoption of M2M depends on the maturity of multiple elements in the ecosystem, including the wireless technology and business system; the network connectivity that connects the machines and sensors to the cloud; the cloud computing platform; and the software applications that translate the huge amount of data into useful intelligence.

To build an enterprise or carrier-grade cloud platform that can support the projected volume of M2M traffic, the underlying network that connects enterprise data centers, and data centers to the cloud, has to be reliable, high-performing, connection-oriented and have low latency. It must be responsive and integrated into the cloud ecosystem to satisfy connectivity requirements of storage and compute cloud subsystems. It must also enable elastic/liquid bandwidth to ensure the performance and economic benefits of the cloud are realized. Carrier-class network infrastructure — with the ability to scale to 100G today and terabit capacities in the future and with multiple levels of resiliency enabled by an intelligent control plane — will be critical to enabling these cloud networks.

Written by Mariana Agache, Director of Service Provider Industry Marketing at Ciena

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More under: Cloud Computing

After decades of talk, the time for IPv6 has finally arrived. There are several transition options available, but whatever approach you choose, the challenge will be to make sure that your subscribers don't experience a reduction in quality of service.

IPv4 is likely to co-exist with IPv6 for some time, so a native dual-stack migration strategy will be the best transition option for most providers. Dual-stack mode allows both IPv4 and IPv6 to run simultaneously over the network, which lets end-user devices communicate via whichever protocol they are equipped for. With dual-stack mode, there is no disruption to the service if a client requests an IPv4 address. Clients that receive both an IPv4 and IPv6 address will prefer to access the IPv6 network, if it's available. The DNS can determine whether the service is reachable over IPv6 or whether to fall back to IPv4.

Of course, dual-stack provisioning isn't perfect. Service disruptions can occur if you don't have enough IPv4 addresses to hand out to new subscribers. This is because dual-stack systems require devices to have both an IPv4 and IPv6 address. If this is a problem for you, it may be possible to use a tunneling technique or network address translation (NAT).

NAT, however, comes with its own set of problems, including:

• Impaired quality of service for internal and external systems
• Increased network complexity and fragmentation
• Security concerns when multiple subscribers share a single, public IPv4 address
• Difficulty with law enforcement compliance

Despite these issues, you may find it difficult to implement native dual-stack mode without NAT if you continue to delay your IPv6 preparations. The sooner that you can begin handing out IPv6 addresses to new customers, the sooner you will be able to store IPv4 resources to provide addresses to older subscriber devices. This means you need to start your IPv6 preparations now — even if you still have plenty of IPv4 resources.

If you're interested in learning more about dual-stack migration or want to explore other transition options, download our free ebook: IPv6 eBook Series: Migration.

Written by Stephane Bourque, Founder, CEO and President at Incognito Software

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More under: IP Addressing, IPv6

When names are borrowed from an Atlas, things happen. Use of Geographic names have always caused some problems for two reasons; one they are in the public domain so anyone else can use them and two they connote that business is confined to just that geographic area. Like Paris Bakery, Waterloo Furniture or London Bank. Geographic naming was the biggest thing during last couple of centuries, as using name of a village or a city as a moniker was considered being on top of the hill. The sudden worldwide expansion of markets due to ease of communications in the early Computer Society created a massive exit of businesses from geographical names.

Back in 1985, ABC Namebank conducted a major study of all of the corporate names listed in Fortune 500. Starting from the first ever list of 500 published in 1955 all the way to 1985 and concluded by this 30 year by year comparison that why most corporations replaced geographic names with appropriately border-less names to reach an international audience.

Amazon as a brand name for online book retailer is the largest and most successful. At this stage, it's not important where and why that business name was chosen; originally from ancient Greece for big breasted female warriors, or the Amazon River, the fact remains it's now a geographical name in public domain. So who should get the super power gTLD dot.amazon, the book store or the region of Amazon in Brazil? Names borrowed from the Atlas often face sudden crossroads.

ICANN gTLD name evaluations policy has only two clear options; either follow the proven rules of trademark registrability or follow the first-come, first-served 'lawless' rule of early domain name registrations.

To go granular on this early lawless domain name approval system, let's clarify two things: if the 'no questions asked' and 'first-come, first-served' original policy created massive domain name expansion, did it also not create some 25 thousand of UDRPs conflict resolution proceedings and also created a multi-billion dollar defensive name registration industry? Who are the real beneficiaries of such lawless registrations? When a legit multi-billion dollar company buys a name for a business, say ibm.com the same system allows a kid to buy myibm.com, next in line. Is this a way to earn few dollars on a sale or is it a plan to fuel massive global litigation and speculative markets on Intellectual Properties? Under this lawless thinking trademark system would have collapsed couple centuries ago. Now let's fast forward.

Name-centricity clashes with global branding

"A complete breakdown of the domain name registration system, a type of anarchy on the Internet, as allowing anybody to register anything. Registrars throw up the towels. Trademark offices threaten to shut down. Intellectual property becomes public domain. The part-time guy at the local Pizza Hut answers the phone "Hello this is IBM — how can I help you" Battalions of lawyers will band around the word, declaring war on each other, and forcing conflicting points of views in endless battles will win trademarks. This war, would be a great windfall for the profession, as monthly billings would only become perpetual ones." —Excerpted from Domain Wars, by Naseem Javed, Linkbridge Publishing 1999.

Back to gTLDs, on another example; if ICANN approves the name for the athletic brand Patagonia, already objected by the Region of Patagonia of South America, it will cause serious damage to the credibility of a gTLD ownership. Once it's cracked there will be no end as every tenth gTLD name poses special conflicting issues and giving in would chip away gTLD quality.

If, on the other hand, ICANN recognizes geographic gTLDs as rightly belonging to the locals and regions, it will send a shock-wave to all the global name brands with words borrowed from the atlas.

There are at least 10% very tough name approval decisions in the big list of 1930 pending applications. If this alone does not place ICANN in the eye of a storm of naming complexity than where else is it headed? ICANN is now approaching the crossroads where the seriousness and fairness of the usage of names under trademark laws must be clearly declared or it will crack the gTLD program where litigious and hyper-defensive registration mechanisms suck out the positive energy. The Trademark clearing house without such clarity and direction is poised to become the Achilles Heels on the gTLD battlefield.

ICANN slowly approaches the crossroads and so are the global brands with borrowed words from the atlas but still both sides need good maps.

Written by Naseem Javed, Expert: Global Naming Complexities, Corporate Nomenclature, Image & Branding

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Top-Level Domains

China and the United States will set up a working group on cybersecurity, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday, as the two sides moved to ease months of tensions and mutual accusations of hacking and Internet theft. Speaking to reporters in Beijing during a visit to China, Kerry said the United States and China had agreed on the need to speed up action on cyber security, an area that Washington says is its top national security concern.

Read full story: Reuters

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China and the United States will set up a working group on cybersecurity, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday, as the two sides moved to ease months of tensions and mutual accusations of hacking and Internet theft. Speaking to reporters in Beijing during a visit to China, Kerry said the United States and China had agreed on the need to speed up action on cyber security, an area that Washington says is its top national security concern.

Read full story: Reuters

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Mary Iqbal writes to report that ICANN has released the fourth round of Initial Evaluation results, bringing the total number of applications that have passed the Initial Evaluation phase to 131. ICANN is targeting completing Initial Evaluation for all applicants by August 2013. To learn more, see http://www.getnewtlds.com/news/Third-Round-of-Initial-Evaluations.aspx.

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More under: ICANN, Top-Level Domains

Mary Iqbal writes to report that ICANN has released the fourth round of Initial Evaluation results, bringing the total number of applications that have passed the Initial Evaluation phase to 131. ICANN is targeting completing Initial Evaluation for all applicants by August 2013. To learn more, see http://www.getnewtlds.com/news/Third-Round-of-Initial-Evaluations.aspx.

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More under: ICANN, Top-Level Domains

CircleID, once again, in collaboration with the team from Dyn Inc. and ICANN Wiki, brings you video blogs and updates from the 46th ICANN meeting in Beijing, China (7-11 April 2013).

Stay tuned as we keep this page updated through out the meetings.

Comments and questions? Please post them below in the comment section of the page or send us an email.

* * *

Update / Apr 12, 2013 — Ray King of ICANNWiki talked with Ben Crawford, CEO of CentralNic.

Update / Apr 12, 2013 — Dyn's Rich Peterson talked with UNH School of Law's Mary Wong.

Update / Apr 12, 2013 — As part of our ICANN 46 coverage, Ray King of ICANNWiki chats with Chuck Gomes, a member of the Registries Stakeholder Group.

Brought to you in partnership with Dyn Inc and ICANN Wiki. Please add your feedback and suggestions using the comment form provided on this page or contact us directly.

Video Coverage of past ICANN meetings:
ICANN 44 Meetings in Toronto
ICANN 44 Meetings in Prague
ICANN 43 Meetings in Costa Rica
ICANN 42 Meetings in Dakar
ICANN 41 Meetings in Singapore
ICANN 38 Meetings in Brussels
ICANN 37 in Nairobi, Kenya
ICANN 36 in Seoul, South Korea
ICANN 35 in Sydney, Australia
ICANN 34 in Mexico City

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Top-Level Domains

CircleID, once again, in collaboration with the team from Dyn Inc. and ICANN Wiki, brings you video blogs and updates from the 46th ICANN meeting in Beijing, China (7-11 April 2013).

Stay tuned as we keep this page updated through out the meetings.

Comments and questions? Please post them below in the comment section of the page or send us an email.

* * *

Update / Apr 12, 2013 — Ray King of ICANNWiki talked with Ben Crawford, CEO of CentralNic.

Update / Apr 12, 2013 — Dyn's Rich Peterson talked with UNH School of Law's Mary Wong.

Update / Apr 12, 2013 — As part of our ICANN 46 coverage, Ray King of ICANNWiki chats with Chuck Gomes, a member of the Registries Stakeholder Group.

Brought to you in partnership with Dyn Inc and ICANN Wiki. Please add your feedback and suggestions using the comment form provided on this page or contact us directly.

Video Coverage of past ICANN meetings:
ICANN 44 Meetings in Toronto
ICANN 44 Meetings in Prague
ICANN 43 Meetings in Costa Rica
ICANN 42 Meetings in Dakar
ICANN 41 Meetings in Singapore
ICANN 38 Meetings in Brussels
ICANN 37 in Nairobi, Kenya
ICANN 36 in Seoul, South Korea
ICANN 35 in Sydney, Australia
ICANN 34 in Mexico City

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Top-Level Domains

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released new guidance concerning the reporting and disclosure of bugs that affect the Domain Name System, including information of how ICANN itself will behave in response to vulnerabilities.

Until recently, ICANN, which is responsible for maintaining the root domain servers at the heart of the DNS system, had no specific guidelines for the reporting of vulnerabilities, leaving responsible disclosure protocols up to the researchers who discovered the bugs. With the release of the Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Reporting [PDF] document they hope to instigate a more unified and consistent process for disclosure.

The guidelines are intended to:

"define the role ICANN will perform in circumstances where vulnerabilities are reported and ICANN determines that the security, stability or resiliency of the DNS is exploited or threatened. The guidelines also explain how a party, described as a reporter, should disclose information on a vulnerability discovered in a system or network operated by ICANN."

The document outlines procedures that ICANN will follow in various roles, including as an affected party, where the vulnerability directly impacts ICANN's operations; as a reporter, when ICANN researchers discover vulnerabilities; and as a coordinating party.

Security vulnerability reporting is a controversial topic, with some researchers advocating immediate full disclosure, and others opting for responsible disclosure where vendors and stakeholders are notified privately before a full release is made only following the patching of relevant software. There is also a thriving black market for security vulnerabilities, where the information is disclosed only to the highest bidder for use in hacking attacks.

As an essential and ubiquitous part of Internet's infrastructure, the security of the Domain Name System is of particular interest to hackers and those engaged in industrial or state-sponsored espionage. ICANN is advocating a system of responsible disclosure with ICANN itself acting as a coordinator in some cases. Bugs that impact DNS can be reported directly to ICANN, who will then inform affected vendors or service providers.

Public disclosure is strongly discouraged until vendors have been informed of the vulnerability and have fixes in place. However, the methodology recommended by ICANN makes it clear that in the case of vendors who fail to respond to attempts at coordination, researchers may choose to disclose vulnerabilities.

None of these recommendations is binding, and researchers are still free to choose how to react to discovered vulnerabilities. However, the creation of these guidelines is a positive move towards a unified and coordinated system for handling security vulnerabilities in the DNS.

Written by Evan Daniels

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More under: DNS, ICANN, Security

Mandarin is a tricky language, but ICANN may want to learn the expression chóngfù before leaving the Beijing meeting. Chóngfù means "do-over" and that's what ICANN needs to forestall an entirely preventable disaster in the delegation of new top-level domains (TLDs).

The issue of "string similarity" seems straightforward. Nobody inside ICANN or out there in the real world wants Internet users to be confused by new TLDs that are confusingly similar. Imagine hearing an ad offering low rates at car.loans but you encounter something completely different at car.loan instead? And what would stop somebody from launching a new TLD by just tacking an "s" onto popular domains like .com or .org?

The Government Advisory Committee (GAC) is catching a lot of flack for it's Beijing Communiqué, but one thing the GAC got right was its advice that singular/plural strings are confusingly similar.

So how did we get to a point where ICANN inexplicably failed to find confusing similarity for 24 pairs of singular and plural forms of the same words, including .web /.webs, .game/.games, and .hotel/.hotels? More important, how do we fix this?

Chóngfù is hard for westerners to say and will be even harder for ICANN to do.

For starters, a little transparency is probably in order. The string-similarity review process was opaque by design. But many in the community want to know how ICANN's experts either failed to recognize the plurality issue — which would be troubling — or decided that single and plural gTLD strings can successfully coexist — which would be ludicrous.

Thankfully, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has basic guidance on similarity: "words used in the singular include the plural and vice versa, as the context may require." That's the kind of common sense ICANN could use to correct the Guidebook and do a quick do-over on those 24 pairs of singular/plural TLDs.

ICANN may get a convenient backdoor out of this dilemma from the International Centre for Dispute Resolution, which is reviewing string confusion objections on seven of the single/plural pairs. If ICDR makes the right ruling, ICANN should apply that rule to all 24 single/plural pairs.

And if all else fails, there's always ICANN's "reconsideration" process for a formal chóngfù.

ICANN's critics at the United Nations and within many governments are waiting for a highly visible misstep in the ambitious expansion of top-level domains. That could be used to justify having governments displace the private sector in its leadership role on growing and governing the Internet.

Better that ICANN find a way to do-over on singular/plurals, than to risk having governments impose a bigger do-over on ICANN itself.

Written by Steve DelBianco, Executive Director at NetChoice

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Top-Level Domains