CircleID

I think a number of US news sites (e.g. LA Times) still block EU traffic.

Furthermore, GDPR has caused a massive decrease in the number of newly registered domains that are successfully recognized as spam:

> Prior to the implementation of GDPR, security researchers were able to identify and block 1.8 million newly registered malicious domains in October of 2017 alone. Fast forward to February of 2019 and that number drops to less than 160,000.[0]

And it has caused a major annoyance for the general public, who mindlessly consent to almost every "consent" prompt they are given.[1]

Companies are also at the mercy of their regional government when it comes to compliance. A company in Greece was fined 150,000 euros, not because the law made it illegal to process data in the way they did, but because the reason they provided for processing was the "wrong" one.[2]

> PWC asked its employees for permission to process their personal data when it should have used a different legal basis (combination of contract, legal obligations and legitimate interest). [(2)]

In effect, their effort to follow the law made them break the law, even though their actions were legal under Article 6, Section 1 of the GDPR.[3] This flies in the face of the EU's language in 2018, where they suggested that companies attempt to follow the "spirit of the law" rather than to worry about dotting i's and crossing t's.

Oddly enough, regulators seem to be pleased with this outcome of seemingly arbitrary…

This is a great idea and caused me to go down a rabbit hole of learning what it would take to actually register a new gTLD.

Short version: The ICANN would need to do a new round of gTLD registrations. This is unannounced but rumored to begin some time this year.

Then, a corporation would need to apply for the gTLD string. This application cost $185,000, non-refundable, in 2012 [1]. Smart money is a steeper fee.

Next, they would actually need to be approved for the gTLD. This requires a company with enough funding to pass the ICANN's audit, and enough technical chops to maintain name servers with enough bandwidth and availability to serve the traffic generated by the new gTLD [2]. There is also a criminal background check and anti-cybersquatting check [3].

Finally, they would have to win in a contention process that involves any other registrar applying for the same string. This may be settled by an auction [4].

The buzz around the 2012 process is that it was generally a waste of time and money - many of the gTLDs far underperformed expectations by the registrars. Further, many of the corporate-owned gTLDs are unused (such as the 76! owned by Amazon)[5].

There were a few winners - the ICANN themselves made a hefty sum of money - some $212 million left over in 2020 [6]. Some other companies figured out the right way to "game" the contention process and intentionally lose the auction for the string [7]. Finally, a company named "Donuts, Inc", won some 270 gTLDs under…

We don't need to guess on this one. One of ISOC members who helped seal this greasy deal wrote a whole thinkpiece last year justifying it:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_org/

The short version is that guaranteed annual recurring revenue is great, but a billion dollars all at once is a lot of money, and could be used for all kinds of things.

Not in the article: because it would be Ethos who'd later raise prices on .org (had the plan gone through), the ISOC would have some deniability of not having been the direct infractor. It'd be a win/win: Ethos would still profit despite the high price tag, and ISOC would get a huge windfall while keeping its hands only a little grimy (not dirty, but not clean).

And if the piece's reasoning seemed sound to you, I'd call attention in particular to these sentences:

> Ethos has said that their plan is to "live within the spirit of historic practice," that is, to manage prices roughly as PIR would have under the stewardship of the Internet Society. If they impose the maximum 10% price increase plan for ten years, the price will be around $26 per year — still quite affordable.

Compare them to what the EFF wrote, and you'll see that notably absent from Richard's article is how the 10% increase cap is only active for the first eight years (not even 10 as stated). After that, Ethos was free to raise prices as much as they liked. Somehow, Richard mistakenly forgot to include this rather important detail.

It is worth reading the article this posted one is in response to. (http://www.circleid.com/posts/20180225_humming_an_open_internet_demise_in_london/)

It has the kind of inflammatory institutional chauvinism one usually expects from bureaucrats defending their turf and moralizing their powers, but it's important to understand the outcomes the people like them are aiming for.

Additionally, ignoring for a moment the usual appeals for intelligence and law enforcement, the coalition of interests the author is referencing includes those interested in enforcing "societal norms," and "support for persons with disabilities."

The first means censorship and those people never seem to go away. But the second has nothing to do with transport layer encryption and appears to be a dogwhistle offering tacit institutional support to political agitators who want to get onside with adding surveillance levers to the internet.

The article could reasonably be interpreted as a threat that if TLS 1.3 is adopted and imposes further costs on pervasive surveillance apparatuses, they will co-operate to further balkanize the internet.

SOPA would require sites to be blocked at the DNS level. This is not so different from how the Great Firewall of China is actually implemented. See this, for example, for how it works:

http://viewdns.info/research/dns-cache-poisoning-in-the-peoples-republic-of-china/

And here's what kind of harm that can cause:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120107_afilias_says_no_to_sopa/

While they promise to block "only" pirate sites, they'll soon find that the blocks are ridiculously unworkable until they block all the sites that allow you to bypass them. I don't know whether or not they'll do this, but I strongly suspect they will, because it's the choice every other country who has ever set up a blacklist has made. I've yet to see one where they didn't abuse it, either, for political reasons.

This will drag all sorts of non-pirate sites into the fray and hobble the services, such as VPNs, which can be offered to the public.

I follow this space and am currently doing some research into the renewal/transition of the IANA contract.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-transition-key-internet-domain-name-functions

For a good start read this and the linked PDF:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20140426_the_illusion_of_internet_governance/

TLDR; The DNS industry has an oversized representation in ICANN. ICANN makes a ton of money, and no one really seems to care.

You can read the actual contract ICANN has with the government(NTIA) here:

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/sf_26_pg_1-2-final_award_and_sacs.pdf

Mueller is someone who regularly criticizes ICANN. I don't always agree with him, but I think he's right on with this one.

http://www.internetgovernance.org/2014/04/16/icann-anything-that-doesnt-give-iana-to-me-is-out-of-scope/