Tag: ICANN

Wikipedia goes data-free in Iraq

Mobile internet is available everywhere but the price can be expensive. As part of the Wikipedia Zero scheme that has operated in 59 countries around the world since 2012, the organization has announced that Access to Wikipedia will not incur mobile data charges to customers of the Asiacell mobile phone provider in Iraq The community curated content website says it wants to “bring the sum of human knowledge” to as many people as possible by removing one of the biggest hurdles to access to knowledge: data charges. However some argue…

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New ICANN CEO Göran Marby Will Take Over This Month

Fadi Chehadé’s replacement Göran Marby, will begin his job as the new ICANN CEO and President from May 23, next Monday. He takes over form Fadi Chehadé who was at the helm of ICANN since 2012. Mr. Marby, before his appointment served as CEO and founder of Appgate,  Swedish security software company (now Cryptzone in US), where he grew the organization to a global company with customers in 35 countries and operations in the U.S. He has over 20 years of experience that he brings to ICANN being a senior executive in…

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Q&A: DCA Trust Founder on Status of .Africa & Why Other African gTLDs failed to Go Live!

Staff Writer

ITBusiness: We spoke with the Pioneer of the .Africa gTLD and Yes2dotAfrica Campaign Sophia Bekele, also named African Trailblazer – Made in Africa – by the “Collector’s Edition” of UK’s Premium “NewAfrican Magazine” & one of top ICT Women in Africa by Bloomberg TV, on the status of the most controversial domain .Africa.     ITB Q1: What is the Status of .Africa battle S. Bekele: The status of .Africa is now at the US Court, mainly because of ICANN did not manage to oversee a proper evaluation process and generally mishandling…

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“Yedaly Declaration” on .Africa dismissed by US Federal Court as Conflict of Interest!

On April 12th 2016, The court determining the DotConnectAfrica Trust v. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers & ZA Central Registry ruled that it has granted a Preliminary Injunction for DotConnectAfrica, the decision for case no. 16-CV-00862 RGK (JCx) [PDF] on the .Africa new gTLD. The court gave several reasons to explain why the Court GRANTS Plaintiff’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction.   These include the likelihood of Success on the Merits where the court said The Release Does Not Bar DCA’s Claim at This Time as it found “serious questions regarding the…

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Guarding your online brand against cybersquatters

Staff Writer

If you had a business called Widgets R Us and somebody set up shop right next door with a business called Widgets R U, you’d probably be a bit miffed. Especially if the interloper then demanded money to move elsewhere. cybersquatters: But this sort of thing is happening all the time online. It’s called cybersquatting – buying up website addresses, or domain names, that sound very similar to existing well-known brand names. When Google recently launched its new parent company Alphabet, and the abc.xyz web address, there were more than…

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ICANN Hacked! Resets encrypted passwords after user profile database breach

Staff Writer
ICANN Was Hacked

The overseer of the Internet’s addressing system said Wednesday that someone obtained information related to user accounts for its public website, although no financial information was divulged. ICANN, short for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, said user names, email addresses, encrypted passwords and other data, such as bios, interests and newsletter subscriptions, were contained in the accounts. Despite the breach, the accounts as well as internal ICANN systems do not appear to have been accessed, the organization said in a post on its website. Although an investigation…

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DotConnectAfrica joins the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) at the CBC TECH 2020 Launch in Washington DC

DotConnectAfrica Trust joined, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on Tuesday, May 19 2015,  at the launch of CBC TECH 2020, a new initiative aimed at engaging the tech sector in increasing African-American representation and inclusion in the industry. The event was held at Madison Building, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue Washington, DC  20540. Photo: Congressman G. K. Butterfield, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) at the Tech 2020 launch  The CBC Diversity Task Force Members include Rep. G. K. Butterfield (NC), CBC Chairman, Rep. Barbara Lee (CA), Co-Chair,…

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US Internet Regulatory Authority (USIRA) Proposed, “No Legal Basis for IANA Transition”

I believe that such proven methods from contemporary US Public Policy experience must be applied in administrating any Internet Governance structure that would result from the IANA Transition proposals. This further underscores the need for Congress to establish a US Internet Regulatory Authority (USIRA) which I had called for in my December 2014 article (See Congress will Oversight ICANN – CircleID). Written by Sophia Bekele on CircleID “No Legal Basis for IANA Transition”: A Post-Mortem Analysis of Senate Committee Hearing Only proper regulation by an independent agency with full Congressional…

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Google’s Domain Name Land Grab: Consumer Convenience Or Coercive Control Point?

Privacy

Internet naming decisions are the sort of Internet plumbing inside baseball that only interests policy wonks and marketing mavens. That is until an 800 pound gorilla like Google GOOGL +0.54% decides to pay $25 million for a single generic top-level domain name (gTLD). Buying “.app” for almost four-times the previous record for a gTLD not only raised eyebrows, but questions about the strategy behind Google’s expansive and expensive domain name land grab. Although the most costly, .app is merely one of over 100 gTLDs, Google had already spent nearly $20…

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Sophia Bekele: The rise of “Exclusive Multistakeholder” – Analysis on ICANN Africa Strategy

Staff Writer

Sophia Bekele has taken an inside look into the ICANN Africa Strategy in the article on CircleID quoted below… ICANN Africa Strategy – A View from the Inside: The rise of “Exclusive Multistakeholder” “In fact, the implementation of the strategy, so far, in the opinion of many Africans, is a failure in the multi-stakeholder model of Internet Governance we aspired for. The entire ICANN Africa Strategy is an apparent usurpation of the model by a Special Interest Group who has appointed themselves as “Leaders of the African Internet Community” and…

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