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2017-01-29

NewsReview: Ruby Glen Appeals .WEB ICANN Case to Ninth Circuit

News Review | ©2016 DomainMondo.com
Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news:

 Feature • Ruby Glen LLC (Donuts affiliate), in a case involving new gTLD .WEB, has appealed the judgment dismissing all of its claims against ICANN, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (excerpts):
For more info and background:

Other Internet Domain News:
"I really can’t see a legitimate upside where new benefits outweigh costs, and everyone I mention this to feels the same way. People just shake their heads. It’s all about the money. They [ICANN] are creating these [new gTLDs] extensions because they can."--Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader, May 21, 2014, Domain Name Land Rush: More Room for Companies, Competition and Scam Artists | knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu. 
•  Adding up the costs of ICANN's new gTLDs: INTA Impact Study on Costs of New gTLDs | inta.org January 15, 2017.

•  Coping with ICANN's new gTLDs--Question submitted at Mark Monitor's webinar this past week on Top Domain Management Strategies for 2017:  Q: Defensive registrations to save enforcement costs = caving in to ICANN's new gTLDs extortionate business model. What happened to the "global public interest"? Does the internet really need more than a thousand TLDs?

•  Draft Report of the Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Available in January | ICANN.org 21 Dec 2016: "... Although we initially planned to release the draft report in December, we believe it is prudent to take additional time to obtain additional information that will allow us to support our analysis. Before the end of the year, we expect to receive a report on a survey of new gTLD applicants as well as a response from Analysis Group (the study authors) to the public comments on the Phase II Assessment of the Competitive Effects Associated with the New gTLD Program. We intend to publish the draft report for public comment here in January 2017. Stay tuned! ..."  Status? As of January 29, 2017, 00:00 UTC, draft report not published.

•  Incompetent ICANN hiding data or just not collecting it? ICANN's Commercial Business Users Constituency, Intellectual Property Constituency, and the Internet Service Providers Constituency wrote ICANN (pdf) on January 5th to request that ICANN make the collection and publication of data a priority, and that the ICANN Board and ICANN CEO commit to expeditiously providing the public with "unfettered, routine access to raw, unfiltered data related to ICANN’s mission."  No response to date. (Domain Mondo Editor's comment: good luck to the above constituencies on that request as compliance by ICANN would be contrary to at least two of ICANN's real core values established during the Fadi Chehadé-Akram Atallah regime: dishonesty and incompetence.)

• Follow-up on new gTLDs registry operator Rightside (NASDAQ: NAME | domain: rightside.co) selling its eNom domain name registrar business (domain: enom.com)--in order to raise cash, pay off debt, and create "alignment between Rightside's vision, strategy and financial profile"--to Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX | domain: Tucows.com) on January 20, 2017: stock market investors have declared the winner of the deal: Tucows--UP  41.54% since Jan 19th--as compared to Rightside (UP only 6.39% since Jan 19th and trending DOWN most of this week):
Tucows $TCX
Rightside $NAME

•  Internet freedom isn’t free: five years after the SOPA PIPA blackout | TheHill.com and 5 Years Later, Victory Over SOPA Means More than Ever | Electronic Frontier Foundation | eff.org.

•  Will The Internet Always Be American? (video) | YouTube.com: video of Future Tense Jan 24th program in Washington, D.C., to "explore the internet’s nationality, the extent to which it’s an expression of American culture, and to ask if that's about to change."

•  China update:
  • A notice from China's Ministry of Information and Technology says that all virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow Chinese internet users to access blocked overseas websites, will have to be authorized by Chinese telecom regulators. The move is likely to make most current providers of VPNs in China unlawful, reports the South China Morning Post | scmp.com.  Virtual private network (VPN) services allow Chinese internet users to bypass internet restrictions in China known as the Great Firewall. See also: China cracks down on unauthorized internet connections | Reuters.com.  
  • How artificial intelligence can be corrupted to repress free speech | engadget.com: "... according to GreatFire.org, around 3,000 websites had been blocked by the country's [China] government as of 2015. Those include Google, Facebook, Twitter and The New York Times. This ubiquitous censorship is a testament to China's top-down design for its national network. Essentially, Chinese censorship halts the flow of dissenting ideas before they can even start by continually keeping an eye on you. Unlike in the US, Chinese ISPs and websites are legally liable for what their users post, which has forced them into becoming unofficial editors for the state." (emphasis added)
  • China Slams Western Democracy as Flawed | Bloomberg.com: "China’s rising wealth has brought greater global presence, but that’s not enough. The Communist leaders want that someday China will matter globally for the nature of its political system and create its own universal values.”--Zhang Ming, a political science professor at Renmin University in Beijing.
  • Document of Torture: One Chinese Lawyer’s Story From Jail | China Real Time Report | WSJ.com: The use of torture to extract confessions is commonplace in China, lawyers and human-rights group say, and many of the techniques Mr. Xie described to his lawyers have been previously documented in reports by groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Lawyers and activists said Mr. Xie’s account is nevertheless striking for its clarity, and for how it illuminates the territory Chinese authorities are willing to tread in their campaign against lawyers they see as threatening.

•  Internet shutdowns in Africa: Kenyan government warns of possible internet shutdown in August elections | htxt.co.za and Cameroon Pressures Mobile Operators to Shut Down Internet | DomainNewsAfrica.com.

•  Europol chief: ′Internet a more significant facilitator of crime and terrorism than Schengen′ | Europe | DW.com.

•  Domain Name System (DNS) is the ‘Achilles’ Heel’ of the internet: Arbor Networks' twelfth annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report (WISR), singles out the Domain Name System (DNS) as one of the internet services most targeted by DDoS attacks.--Computerworld.com.au

•  DDoS attacks enter the terabit era: "Deloitte Global predicts in 2017, Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, a form of cyberattack, will become larger in scale, harder to mitigate and more frequent. Over the past few years, it has been a game of cat and mouse in which neither side has become too powerful, but this might change in 2017 due to the abundance of insecure IoT devices and the fact that large-scale attacks which exploit IoT devices' vulnerabilities have become simpler to execute."--Deloitte.com

•  53% of the world's population still not using the internet:

•  ICANN Public Comment Periods that close in February:

4 most popular posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com:
  1. News Review: New gTLDs Registry Rightside Sells eNom, What's Next?
  2. Qualcomm $QCOM Quandary, Q1 FY17 Earnings, LIVE Webcast Jan 25
  3. Alphabet $GOOG $GOOGL Q4 2016, LIVE Webcast Jan 26, 4:30pm ET
  4. Alibaba $BABA Q4 2016 Results, Jan 24th LIVE Webcast Replay

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

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