http://blog.cira.ca Byron Holland's Perspectives on the Internet and Domain Space. Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:18:36 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This past year has been an interesting one, to say the least. We witnessed major decisions that will affect the top-level domain business dramatically, including the approval of .XXX and new gTLDs. And while I made a few predictions at this time last year, there were some events in 2011 that ... http://blog.cira.ca/2012/01/my-predictions-for-2012/ This week we launched the second and final phase of our consultation to implement French character Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) (PDF) in .CA domain names.  Over a three month period last fall, we worked with The Strategic Counsel to conduct an online consultation to gauge Canadians’ interest in and thoughts ... http://blog.cira.ca/2012/01/french-character-internationalized-domain-names/ Tomorrow, a number of very high profile websites will go dark in protest of the proposed U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act. Though the White House has since made it clear that the President will not support the bill, the fact that it was proposed at all is an indicator of ... http://blog.cira.ca/2012/01/the-stop-online-piracy-act-sopa/ A few weeks ago, I spoke at a dinner at the ISP Summit in Toronto. The conference brought together Internet service providers from across Canada to hear about issues like DNSSEC, IPv6 and Internet exchanges, among others. Interestingly, the day of the dinner happened to coincide with the CRTC’s announcement of ... http://blog.cira.ca/2011/12/on-usage-based-billing/ A few days ago, I sat in a meeting here in Ottawa with our IT Director and Director of Marketing and Communications. These are two highly intelligent people working on the same team, for the same company, talking about a common subject. And yet, something was amiss in achieving mutual ... http://blog.cira.ca/2011/11/beyond-words-diverse-voices-and-miscommunications/ I am happy to announce that this week CIRA launched the 2012 Canadian Internet Forum (CIF). This is the second year for CIRA hosting the CIF – in 2010-11 we held the first ever CIF. It was a very successful event, with more than 500 Canadians participating in a dialogue about ... http://blog.cira.ca/2011/11/the-canadian-internet-forum-3/ As I thought, the issue of ICANN’s lack of a robust conflict of interest policy is a hot topic here at the ICANN meeting in Dakar. On my way here, I was working on the following blog post. Now that I’m here, there are a few quick points I’d like ... http://blog.cira.ca/2011/10/icann-and-a-conflict-of-interest-policy/ In 1964, Marshall McLuhan (a Canadian, by the way) famously wrote, "The medium is the message." This phrase popped into my head last week as I listened to the opening speakers at the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi. McLuhan meant that the form in which a message is delivered – the ... http://blog.cira.ca/2011/10/the-model-is-the-message/ Last week, I was in Nairobi for the United Nations coordinated Internet Governance Forum (IGF).  The IGF brings together governments, private sector, academia, and civil society in an informal, democratic and transparent structure. There are no mechanisms at the IGF to make binding decisions; its objectives are simply to facilitate ... http://blog.cira.ca/2011/10/regional-and-national-internet-forums/ Yesterday, we announced the names of the successful candidates in CIRA’s Board of Directors’ election. Congratulations to Kerry Brown (who is a returning Director), Bill St. Arnaud, Susan Mehinagic, and Andrew Escobar. I look forward to working with them over the next year. A full list of all the candidates and their ... http://blog.cira.ca/2011/10/ciras-election-results/