Alternative Perspective on Registrar Market Share: Measuring Market Share of Corporate Registrars. Verisign Digital Brand Management Services – Digital Branding Bulletin. (December 2003)
Alternative Perspectives on Registrar Market Share: The Fortune 1000, the Forbes International 500, and the Yahoo Directory – Revisited (2003 Update)
Alternative Perspectives on Registrar Market Share: The Fortune 1000, the Forbes International 500, and the Yahoo Directory – Revisited (2003 Update). (November 2003)
Registrar market shares are measured in selected subsets of domain names, providing a basis for comparison with overall registrar market shares across the entire domain name market. Registrar market shares are found to vary dramatically across these subsets, with implications on the future customer retention rates of the corresponding registrars.
The Aftermath: How ISPs Responded to Site Finder Around the World
The Aftermath: How ISPs Responded to Site Finder Around the World. CircleID. (October 26, 2003)
Registrar Market Share: An Alternative Perspective
Registrar Market Share: An Alternative Perspective. CircleID. November 25, 2003.
Technical Responses to Unilateral Internet Authority: The Deployment of VeriSign “Site Finder” and ISP Response
Technical Responses to Unilateral Internet Authority: The Deployment of VeriSign “Site Finder” and ISP Response. (October 2003) With Jonathan Zittrain.
Much of the day-to-day functioning of the Internet is thought to be “self-governing”: Engineers operating Internet systems at participating institutions (including ISPs) make daily decisions that help keep traffic flowing efficiently, without having to forge formal agreements with each other and without having to adhere to formal rules set out by a governing body. For those functions that are thought to require centralized coordination, organizations like ICANN have come to exist, and ICANN’s proper scope of “jurisdiction” remains in tension with the prior self-governing model. Arguments about the need for, and proper scope of, centralized coordination in part depend on the reliability and effectiveness of these informal self-governing alternatives.
A recent action by the registry of domain names ending in .COM and .NET — the creation of a “Site Finder” service to which Internet users are now directed if they ask for any unassigned name — has provoked reaction by ICANN as well as by individual network engineers and the institutions that employ them. As ICANN’s policy reaction is still unfolding, we sought to find out just how much the summed actions of the Internet engineering community affected Site Finder’s adoption. In the absence of any reaction, Site Finder would function for nearly all users seeking .COM and .NET names. However, as network engineers choose to adopt certain “patches,” Site Finder’s functionality is blocked for users of the corresponding networks. With help from data gathered by Alexa through users of its toolbar browser plug-in, we find that several large networks have already blocked Site Finder and that approximately 9% of users likely therefore no longer receive Site Finder content. We find particular evidence of blocking of Site Finder by networks outside of the United States — most notably, much of China.
Quantifying SiteFinder Traffic
Quantifying SiteFinder Traffic. CircleID. (September 2003)
Sites Blocked by ADL HateFilter with Jonathan Zittrain
Like numerous other Internet filtering programs, the Anti-Defamation League’s HateFilter attempts to prevent users from knowing which specific web sites are deemed off-limits. However, this research presents a method for efficiently determining which specific sites are blocked, and this site reports results. Numerous sites are blocked that no longer offer content meeting ADL’s definitions (if they ever did), including sites now offering other substantive content, sites that offer only error messages, and sites that no longer exist.
Continued: Sites Blocked by ADL HateFilter
Intentionally Invalid Whois Data – Testimony
I had the honor of testifying, in writing and orally, to the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Oversight Hearing on Internet Domain Fraud & US Government’s Role in Ensuring Public Access to Accurate Whois Data. My written testimony.
Intentionally Invalid Whois Data
Edelman, Benjamin G. “Intentionally Invalid Whois Data.” US House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, September 2003.
As the DNS is currently structured, registrants are under only an honor system to provide accurate Whois data. Meanwhile, it makes no economic sense for registrars to enforce Whois accuracy. The result is that in terms of accuracy, when compared with other compilations of public data (such as driver’s licenses and trademark registrations), the Whois database is substantially fiction. I suggest 1) a reduction in the lenience of opportunity to “cure” intentionally invalid data, 2) for registrants with multiple domain names with intentionally invalid data, forfeiture of all domains when any are to be cancelled, 3) statistically valid surveys of registrars’ Whois accuracy, with public reporting of each registrar’s accuracy, 4) public reporting of Whois accuracy complaints and their dispositions, and 5) financial and other penalties to registrars with poor Whois accuracy records.
Compliance with UDRP Decisions: A Case Study of Joker.com
Compliance with UDRP Decisions: A Case Study of Joker.com. (June 2003)
After a URDP panel orders a domain name transferred from respondent to complainant, the respondent’s registrar is obliged to do so. However, practitioners report that this process sometimes proceeds unduly slowly, if at all. This research attempts to quantify the magnitude of the situation and to report specific domains not transferred to their UDRP complainants, UDRP decisions notwithstanding.
Research yields 23 domains registered by registrar Joker.com, successfully challenged in a UDRP proceeding (one as long as three years ago), yet at the time of publication still registered to their original registrants at Joker.com. At least some of these domains seem to have been renewed by their current registrants, subsequent to UDRP decisions ordering their transfer.