Tag: ICANN

Ethiopians in diaspora allowed to invest in banking, insurance sectors after a precedence setting court victory in 2017 by Sophia Bekele

Editor

“Sophia took up the gauntlet and headed to the court to vindicate her right” The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), the agency in charge of regulating the financial sector of the country, will soon introduce a new regulation that will allow Ethiopians in the diaspora to invest in the financial sector that includes banking, insurance and micro finance. The Council of Ministers during its extraordinary meeting approved the Draft Banking Business Proclamation, allowing Diaspora citizens to establish banks in Ethiopia. This was indicated by Yinager Desse (PhD), Governor of NBE,…

Read More

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…

Read More

Victory for DCA Trust: Judge Moot ZACR from .Africa case, Outs its Reconsideration

Editor

Africa applied for 17 new gTLDs, among these, .Africa which as remained in the news due to a precedent setting court case in California may be available after the jury determines the case in February 28, 2017.  ICANN  recently terminated 9 out of the 17 African new Top-level Domain (TLD) as a result of missing their deadlines. Last week on June 20, 2016, the U.S. District Court determining the DCA Trust vs ICANN case for .Africa denied  ICANN’s motion for reconsideration [PDF] on the Order enjoining ICANN from delegating new…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

“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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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,…

Read More

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…

Read More