ICANN has announced that it will not hold its 56th Meeting in Panama city due to the serious spread of the Zika virus. This is not the first time ICANN has had to relocate a meeting, in 2015, due to “Community concerns that would prevent maximum participation at its next global meeting (ICANN 52, 8-12 …
Days after US Congressman Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) sent a letter to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade urging him to abandon plans to weaken the Internet for users in the United States and around the world, another letter co-signed by US presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-Texas), James Lankford (R-Okla.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) has been sent …
The below is a Recommendation CM/Rec(2016)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on protecting and promoting the right to freedom of expression and the right to private life with regard to network neutrality (Adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 13 January 2016, at the 1244th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies) 1. …
For the first time in several years, residents of Pakistan can openly watch YouTube—just not the YouTube that the rest of the world is watching. Google, which purchased the video-streaming website in 2006, launched country-specific versions for Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka on Tuesday. “YouTube is already available in Nepali, Sinhalese and Urdu, and now having country-specific …
ICANN’s outgoing CEO has sprung a surprise support for a new Chinese government initiative to expand its view of internet governance. This came during the last day of the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, the conference organizers unexpectedly announced they had set up a new “high-level advisory committee” that would guide the agenda of future …
A judge in Sao Paulo has ordered WhatsApp to shut down for 48 hours, starting at 9pm Eastern tonight. WhatsApp is the single most used app in Brazil, with about 93 million users, or 93% of the country’s internet population. It’s a particularly useful service for Brazil’s youth and poor, many who cannot afford to …
CentralNic (LON:CNIC) which is a back-end registry provider for several new gTLD applicants including DCA Trust is acquiring the privately-owned domain name registrar, Instra Group, in a deal worth A$33 million. According to the press release “the purchase will extend CentralNic’s capabilities and “significantly increase” its retail offering.” Instra Group supplies companies in Australia, New …
First National Bank plans to change its online domain name from a dot-com to a dot-bank. The Hutchinson-based bank made the announcement this week about the switch, which will be done in phases beginning early next year. “There are a couple of reasons behind this change,” said Kris Doswell, vice president of marketing for First …
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has concluded its investigation into a data exposure issue in the New gTLD Applicant and Global Domains Division (GDD) portals blamed on several misconfigurations in the portals. The breach was first announced on 1 March 2015 where over 60 searches occurred, resulting in the unauthorized access …
ICANN has finally announced that it has opened its own blogs for comments. This is after a long and unusual manner in which any blog by ICANN staffers could not be commented upon as a form of reply, addition, suggestions or criticism. One of the notable stakeholders who have in the past commented on the …