Author: Staff Writer

In The World Of Internet Policy, Online Freedom Hangs In The Balance

Staff Writer

Leave it to the National Security Agency and the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court to put the “spook” back in “spooky.” In recent weeks, the general public has learned what many of us specialists have long known, which is that vast swaths of the communications of ordinary citizens have been swept into intrusive dragnets, and, the legal framework for all this snooping is itself the product of a secret body of law generated by a secret special court. Yet these revelations of how much the US government has been spying on…

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House Defeats Effort to Rein In N.S.A. Data Gathering

Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — A deeply divided House defeated legislation Wednesday that would have blocked the National Security Agency from collecting vast amounts of phone records, handing the Obama administration a hard-fought victory in the first Congressional showdown over the N.S.A.’s surveillance activities since Edward J. Snowden’s security breaches last month.  The 205-to-217 vote was far closer than expected and came after a brief but impassioned debate over citizens’ right to privacy and the steps the government must take to protect national security. It was a rare instance in which a classified…

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Comments and Questions by DCA Trust on .Africa at the ICANN-47 Public Forum, Durban SA

Staff Writer

This is a complete unabridged version of the comment/questions raised by Ms. Sophia Bekele, Executive Director and CEO of DotConnectAfrica Trust, at the ICANN-47 Public Forum Meeting in Durban, Republic of South Africa on 18th July 2013. A shorter version was read out at the ICANN Public Forum Meeting on Thursday, July 18, 2013 due to constraint of time. * * * Background DotConnectAfrica Trust’s application for the .Africa generic Top-Level Domain name (Application ID: 1-1165-42560) received a GAC Objection Advice at the ICANN-46 Beijing Meeting in April 2013. According…

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ICANN 47 in Durban: More gTLD Applicants Sign On With ICANN

Staff Writer

ICANN’s Durban Meeting Kicks Off with Signing of New Registrar and Registry Agreements If you read our update on T+B earlier today, then you already know that dotShabaka Registry was the first to announce its signing of the new gTLD registry contract. During Monday’s Welcome Ceremony, three more new gTLD contracts were signed by applicants: 游戏 (which translates from Chinese to .games) had prioritization number 40, and was applied for by Donuts, Inc., the company that submitted the largest number of gTLD applications; .сайт (prioritization number 9) and .онлайн (prioritization…

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‘.nyc’ Domain Approved For NYC Online Addresses

Staff Writer

NEW YORK — New York City likes to think of itself as a domain like no other, and now it’s close to being able to boast as much on the web. The city has gotten a key approval for a “.nyc” suffix online, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced Tuesday. That would mean web addresses could end in “.nyc” instead of such common suffixes as “.com” or “.org.” “Having our own unique, top-level domain – .nyc – puts New York City at the forefront of the…

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Update on the Status of our new gTLD Application & Current Engagements with ICANN

Staff Writer

DCA’s .Africa application passed all the Evaluation Panels including the technical, operational and financial evaluation criteria, but the Geographic Names Panel Evaluation for the application was not completed. PRLog (Press Release) – Jul. 5, 2013 – Update on Initial Evaluation Result for .Africa Application The Initial Evaluation result for DotConnectAfrica Trust’s application for the .Africa domain  name string with prioritization draw number 1005 was released by the ICANN new gTLD Customer Service Centre on Thursday, 4th July 2013. DCA’s .Africa application passed all the Evaluation Panels including the technical, operational…

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Online retail begins to click in Africa’s biggest market

Staff Writer

The headquarters for this Internet startup is cheekily nicknamed “Graceland” and its co-heads are young Harvard graduates with grand plans who have rapidly expanded the business over the past year. Silicon Valley? Not even close. This emerging world Internet company, called Jumia, is now located in Nigeria, and the founders of the business here say there is no better place to pursue their strategy. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest market of 160 million people, has seen Internet access expand rapidly in recent years, opening opportunities for companies to exploit. While major obstacles…

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Brands set to lose ‘closed generic’ gTLDs

Staff Writer

Scores of controversial brand-owned generic top-level domains (gTLDs) could be under threat after a ruling on Thursday that defers their approval until further notice. ICANN has ruled that applications for ‘closed generic’ gTLDs – dictionary words not available for public use – must be discussed further with the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). “The NGPC [New gTLD Program Committee] directs staff to defer moving forward with the contracting process for applicants seeking to impose exclusive registry access for ‘generic strings’ to a single person or entity”, a statement says. Adapted worldipreview.com

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Spy program gathered Americans’ Internet records

Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration gathered U.S. citizens’ Internet data until 2011, continuing a spying program started under President George W. Bush that revealed whom Americans exchanged emails with and the Internet Protocol address of their computer, documents disclosed Thursday show. The National Security Agency ended the program that collected email logs and timing, but not content, in 2011 because it decided it didn’t effectively stop terrorist plots, according to the NSA’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander, who also heads the U.S. Cyber Command. He said all data was purged…

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Ad group blasts cookie-privacy project from Mozilla, Stanford

Staff Writer

Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO Randall Rothenberg calls the effort to determine which cookies should be blocked or allowed a “Kangaroo Cookie Court” that will hurt small Internet publishers. The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is working with Mozilla on a project called the Cookie Clearinghouse to try to improve Internet privacy controls. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a group that represents hundreds of Internet advertisers, has attacked Mozilla’s involvement in a Stanford Law School privacy project to judge whether individual Web sites can be trusted to set…

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