Domain Registrar Name.com Suffers Data Breach

If you’ve encountered online scams before, you know that any email that addresses you by name, continues into a form letter and gives you a link to change your password stinks to high heaven. Imagine, then, how surprised Name.com customers must have felt to discover that such an email from the domain-name registrar and Web-hosting …

Facebook Agrees To Buy WhatsApp For $19bn

Facebook has agreed to buy the mobile messaging company WhatsApp for $19bn (£11.4bn), the social network has announced. The company said in a statement that it would pay $4bn (£2.4bn) in cash and $15bn (£9bn) in Facebook shares as part of the deal. The app’s founders and employees will get $3bn (£1.8bn) of the shares …

The Asymmetrics, the WEF, ICANN, Brazil, and the ‘Little Red Book’ of Multistakeholderism

Few weeks ago, candid minds did wonder whether Brazil would challenge the asymmetric US governance over Internet, or be fooled by the ‘Asymmetrics‘, or even accept to be fooled for other ‘good’ reasons, since president Dilma Rousseff called for a rebalancing of Internet power structure and a full stop to US global surveillance and spying …

A step closer – impact of new generic top-level domains on brand owner rights

Several generic top-level domains (“gTLDs”) recently completed their Sunrise Periods, taking a step closer to realizing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (“ICANN’s”) gTLD expansion project from the existing 22 gTLDs (e.g. .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc.) to potentially 1,300 new gTLDs (i.e. arbitrary top-level domains). Read more Brand owners now face an uphill battle in …

EU Pushes to Globalize Internet Governance; too US-centric?

European Commission to Propose Steps to Curb U.S. Influence Over Key Web Functions, Commission says NSA revelations call into question US role in internet governance, which should be more global BRUSSELS—The European Union’s executive body is raising pressure to reduce U.S. influence over the Internet’s architecture amid what it called weakened confidence in the network’s …

EU: Europe’s role in shaping the future of Internet Governance

Press Release: EU Commission to pursue role as honest broker in future global negotiations on Internet Governance In the wake of large-scale Internet surveillance and reduced trust in the internet, the European Commission today proposes a key reform to the way the Internet is managed and run. The proposal calls for more transparent, accountable and …

Failed ARC come back to reclaim .africa as ZACR?

Latest reports on the unlikely status of Uniforum have emerged showing just how far the organization is going through continuous metamorphosis in a desperate move to take the reins of the controversial dotAfrica registry. While these new developments indicate that dotAfrica gTLD may not even be ready for delegation any time soon. Why? Two applicants …