In the aftermath of the shutdown of Wikileaks.org by a court order issued at the request of Swiss Bank Julius Baer, Wikileaks has called for the boycott of registrar eNom. eNom is best known as the domain registrar that complied with the federal government’s order to shut down a Spanish travel agency because it did business with Cuba — the agency was not under U.S. jurisdiction and so was hardly violating U.S. law, but their domain was registered in the United States, and that was good enough for the feds. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

ICANN has suggested it should become independent of U.S. Department of Commerce oversight when the current Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the agency expires in September 2009. However, some people have suggested the JPA should remain in place to provide accountability. Those include, Thomas Lenard, president and senior fellow at the conservative think tank iGrowGlobal, who has filed a comment with NTIA saying: “The fact that ICANN may be making progress toward meeting its responsibilities does not imply that the JPA is no longer needed…”
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Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Day two of Domain Pulse 2008 last Friday (see review of day one) focused on online security issues giving the techies amongst us details of security issues, and the more policy-orientated amongst us something to chew on in a few other presentations. Kieren McCarthy, these days of ICANN, also gave some insights into the drawn out sex.com drama with more twists and turns than the average soap opera has in a year! And Randy Bush outlined the problems with IPv6. Among other presentations… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

I don’t normally cheer for Google when I don’t own shares in the company, but this time I will make an exception. Alma Whitten, Software Engineer at Google, today posted to their Public Policy Blog that IP addresses shouldn’t be considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This is not a problem in the United States but it is in the EU, and if the EU actually were to legislate this it would most definitely affect Microsoft and Google’s business functionality in the EU… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Around 350 attendees came from Russia in the east to Ireland in the west, as well as a few people from elsewhere around the globe, to attend Domain Pulse 2008 in Vienna on February 21 and 22. Day one’s focus was internet governance. The future of the DNS was one of the key issues addressed by Michael Nelson of Georgetown University in Washington DC, with domain names becoming less important, but their numbers still increasing, as online access by a myriad of devices skyrockets connect — everything from the television, refrigerator, washing machine, pets, sprinkler systems and cars. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Internet issues from around the world are front and center in India as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened its 31st International Public Meeting today in New Delhi. “This year is an important one for the future of ICANN. The U.S. government is in the middle of its Midterm Review of its Joint Project Agreement with ICANN, and we’re arguing it’s time to take the final step to originally envisioned private sector model for ICANN,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN’s Board Chairman. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Domain Pulse, the yearly get-together of the German-speaking registries of nic.at (Austria), Denic (Germany) and SWITCH (Switzerland) is happening on February 21 and 22 in Vienna. The conference alternates between the countries — last year it was Switzerland, this year Austria and next year Germany… Domain Pulse covers everything in the domain name arena from management of the DNS, what’s happening in each of the ccTLDs, after market and domaining, security threats to the DNS and internet as well as wider issues affecting the internet’s development such as internet governance. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

ICANN has asked the US government to be freed from official control. The plea was made in a lengthy report [PDF] sent to the US Department of Commerce. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

I have written a short paper on the topic of Internet Governance. Since it includes a number of resources, it would be easier for me to just point to a link with the document itself. Below are some selected excerpts from the document. “Several myths have been spreading around the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), but especially after the first Internet Governance Forum (IGF): The critical Internet resources (CIR) consist only of the IP addresses and the domain name system… There are only 13 root servers…” More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

The Internet Governance Project has unearthed a consultancy report to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that makes it clear that the issue of root signing and DNSSEC key management has been recognized as a political issue within the US government for long time. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back