POSTS TAGGED: icann
Pat Kane | Mar 14, 2013
Recently I joined a number of world leaders, policy makers, NGOs and other groups at the first World Summit on the Information Society review event, WSIS+10. The discussions focused on how we can all make progress toward achieving a truly multilingual, open Internet for everyone and establishing a knowledge-driven society. Hopefully, some of the key learnings will help shape the next review event in 2014 and also encourage a continuing dialogue about how to lower the digital divides that prevents so many users around the world from navigating the Web in non-native scripts and languages. There were many interesting workshops, seminars and interactive sessions happening at the meeting, but I wanted to share some thoughts about a special panel I participated on regarding Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) with Janis Karklins, Baher Esmat, Minjung Park, and Christine Arida, hosted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
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Burt Kaliski | Nov 08, 2012
As much as the world has become more connected, so that people across the world can collaborate online at any hour of the day (even in the midst of weather events like Sandy), there’s still an important role for conferences that bring people together in person at a specific time and place.
I’ve been reminded of the value of this technical “networking” as I’ve attended some key events related to my own work in recent weeks.
In mid-October, I spent some time at the ICANN 45 meeting in Toronto, the triannual focal point for industry work on domain names (as well as IP “numbers”, the second “N”). Pat Kane, senior vice president and general manager of Verisign’s Naming Services, has blogged about his experiences at this important series of meetings, which, as he describes, exemplify “hard work and collaboration.” Good technical consensus, as I’ve learned through my past years in industry forums in cryptography and security, starts with trust. The many introductions and conversations that I enjoyed throughout my visit built on this value.
In addition to the in-person event, ICANN also offered a remote participation option. It’s encouraging to see so many conferences taking this approach to extend their reach into the connected world.
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Pat Kane | Dec 06, 2011
In developing its plan to create potentially hundreds of new top-level domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had to strike a difficult balance between technical stability and economic accessibility. And while ICANN did a good job of establishing that balance, a small market-driven adjustment to the organization’s policy could expand the program’s reach, without jeopardizing stability and security.
One of ICANN’s core responsibilities in creating the new gTLD program was to ensure that new top-level domains did not harm the stability and security of the Domain Name System (DNS), which is critical to the effective functioning of the Internet.
To meet that responsibility, ICANN has created an extensive and well-thought-out list of technical guidelines, resource requirements and financial benchmarks that new gTLD applicants must meet in order for their applications to be approved.
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Pat Kane | Nov 04, 2011
While in Senegal last week for the 42nd meeting of ICANN, I had the opportunity to sit in on the Forum for DNS Abuse. Lanre Ajayi of Pinet Informatics, one of the first ISPs in Nigeria, presented a case study on Nigeria. Mr. Ajayi stated, “There’s this perception that Nigeria is the cybercrime headquarters of the world.” He further observed: Is there SPAM coming from Nigeria? Yes. Are there phishing attacks coming from Nigeria? Yes. But, as Mr. Ajayi pointed out clearly in his presentation, “Our law is very weak on cybercrime.” All that, however, is changing, he noted.
The Nigerian Parliament is on the verge of passing legislation that will make SPAM and other nefarious behaviors illegal and also provide for the legal intervention by law enforcement agencies. With such new laws, the world may no longer have to block Nigerian IP space or deny credit card transactions from law abiding citizens.
The irony here as it pertains to the ICANN event in Senegal, is that Senegal has one of the most progressive sets of laws pertaining to the Internet in West Africa, but has a very small corpus of case law testing it. That comes from education as to what is best practice and what is commonly accepted around the globe, and applying that to the law in countries like Senegal today and Nigeria when their Parliament passes their laws.
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Pat Kane | Nov 02, 2011
I had the opportunity to attend the 42nd meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Dakar, Senegal last week, and what it may have lacked in fireworks, it more than made up in the kind of hard work and collaboration that will be needed to usher the Internet’s addressing system into the next stage of its evolution. Even now we are hearing the opening notes of what will become a symphony of new choices for individuals, businesses and communities around the world.
Just a few months ago in June, the eyes of the world were on Singapore, where ICANN voted to approve the implementation of the program that could potentially create a limitless number of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). For casual observers, that vote marked the end of a multi-year process, but for those of us involved with the development and upkeep of the Domain Name System, it was really just the beginning.
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