Month: August 2003

Over on CircleID, Bruce Young tells a story of an Internet user who gets into trouble because “his” domain name was registered in the name of a webhosting provider that went bankrupt later on.He demands that ICANN should put in place safeguards which would prevent this from happening. In particular, Young suggests that customers should not just be able to transfer domain names between registrars, but also between “virtual hosts”; that ICANN establish rules to protect customers of such corporations in the event of business failure, up to the content stored there; and that ICANN mandate that when an intermediate company registers a domain on behalf of a customer, the domain record’s administrative contact, as a minimum, must reflect the customer, not the company acting on the customer’s behalf.As far as registrars are concerned, ICANN is currently doing its homework on domain name portability.As far as web hosting companies are concerned, though, these suggestions only look appealing at first sight. Upon closer inspection, they wouldn’t be good policy.

This announcement was just posted: The ALAC has received an infoDev iCSF grant to support travel of qualifying African participants to ICANN’s Carthage meetings, and to a workshop held in connection with the meetings.

Through Dave Farber’s IP List: Flawed Routers Flood University of Wisconsin Internet Time Server. Netgear had deployed DSL routers that sent requests to a hard-coded time server at a high rate, causing operational problems to the University. The article details how the University of Wisconsin has been dealing with this, how they plan to proceed, and what kinds of lessons to learn from this.

Reuters: Clinton narrates Wolf-Friendly Peter and the Wolf. (And Gorbachev provides introduction and epilogue.)

Martin Schwimmer points to a “not flattering” NY Times article on RCOM‘s latest financial moves: This Company’s Shareholders May Regret It if They Don’t Sell .

Ross Rader seems to be bored and points to a Wired article that explores the background of time-travelling spam. Also via Wired: A watch powered by snake oil that allegedly protects against “electronic pollution”, by creating a frequency that neutralizes the electromagnetic fields emanating from devices like cell phones, computers, and radios. As an appropriate countermeasure, I’d recommend the hi-fi garden chair.In other breaking news (from the BBC), UK police from Blackpool is helping Greek police on Rhodes deal with British tourists. Says one of the officers: I must stress that Blackpool should not be directly compared to Faliraki, although there are obviously some common issues such as people drinking excessively and engaging in criminal behaviour.Funny (but not outright mad) is the shock and awe expressed in this Associated Press item about RIAA’s investigation techniques. Writes AP: The RIAA’s latest court papers describe in unprecedented detail some sophisticated forensic techniques used by its investigators. For example, the industry disclosed its use of a library of digital fingerprints, called “hashes,” that it said can uniquely identify MP3 music files that had been traded on the Napster service as far back as May 2000. The FBI and other computer investigators commonly examine hashes in hacker cases. Now, that must mean that the RIAA is technically more advanced than file sharers…Oh well. Time for the week-end.

Luxembourg is a good example when it comes to the consequences of an Internet market that isn’t sufficiently competitive.Suppose you want to set up a small business, with a .lu domain name, a little web site and some e-mail addresses. You can purchase an “all-inclusive” Internet access and hosting package for small businesses with the leading (almost monopoly) provider, the national P&T. The domain name is registered directly with dns-lu, though, by faxing or snail-mailing a form to them. (Change requests are to be submitted in writing as well.)Fortunately, dns-lu is relatively quick when compared to P&T. After you have set up your web hosting and initial set of e-mail addresses (by, again, faxing a form), customer service degrades: You can call an always-busy hotline. You can send e-mail which is ignored. To successfully get an additional e-mail address, though, you have to resort to fax and postal mail again. They may even react to that — after four months.

Reports AFP (through Yahoo): Ferrero (known in domain name circles for the kinder.at case and known to the general public for Kinderschokolade and chocolate surprise eggs) attempted to keep competitor Haribo from using the word “Kinder” (children) in the product designation “Kinder Kram” (kids’ stuff) for sweeties, and failed in Germany’s highest civil court. The court decision is not yet available online.

Another one from the registrars’ list: Representatives from the Intellectual Property Constituency are going to call into the registrars’ meeting in Marina del Rey to discuss WHOIS privacy and accuracy.Also, the IPC’s Metalitz will be a witness at the upcoming Congressional hearing on WHOIS on 4 September, with Ted Kassinger (DoC), Ben Edelman, and an unknown FBI representative.

Elana Broitman’s note to the registrars list reminds me to blog this: ICANN is in the process of implementing its transfers policies, and has convened a Transfers Assistance Group to help with this. Sebastian Ricciardi and myself are representing the ALAC there. The group’s first call took place a week ago, and was very constructive. Preliminary results are expected for 9/11, when most of the group will meet in Marina del Rey.Questions the group has to deal with include what agreements to modify in order to implement the transfers policies, what a standardized form of authorization for a transfer should look like, what to fill in for some of the time lines left open in the policy proper, etc.