Internet Law

The end of Latin Characters dominance of website addresses

I cannot think of the types of security risks and implications this new change of website address naming scheme would bring but the challenge is great.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it would declare an end to the exclusive use of Latin characters for website addresses on Friday — the final day of its six-day conference in Seoul.

The full article:

SEOUL, Oct 26, 2009 (AFP) - The Internet is about to get more accessible for millions worldwide with the imminent approval of a new multilingual address system that uses Asian and Arabic scripts, a global regulator said Monday.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it would declare an end to the exclusive use of Latin characters for website addresses on Friday — the final day of its six-day conference in Seoul.
“This is the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was invented 40 years ago,” Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the ICANN board in charge of reviewing the change, told a press conference.
Thrush said he expected ICANN’s full board to grant approval on Friday — a day after the 40th anniversary of the Internet’s birth in a computer experiment by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.
When the change comes into force, it will be possible to use characters from other languages — such as Chinese, Arabic, Korean and Japanese — for a full Internet address, instead of just part of the address as now.
ICANN president Rod Beckstrom said the change — designed to serve the growing number of non-English-speaking Internet users — would come into effect in the middle of 2010. ICANN aims to start receiving applications next month.
“It will take some period of time to process the applications and then introduce the successful applications,” Beckstrom told the news conference.
“Of the 1.6 billion Internet users today worldwide, more than half use languages that have scripts that are not Latin-based,” Beckstrom said.
“So this change is very much necessary for not only half the world’s Internet users today but more than half, probably, of the future users as the Internet continues to spread.”
He said Internet addresses would no longer use limited “Generic Top-Level Domains” such as .com or .org, and instead use more flexible “Internationalised Domain Names” such as .post or .bank.
Beckstrom said the change would also allow Internet users to type fewer keystrokes to access a website which will “give companies a quicker way to get directly to their customers”.
He said the world would be able to “save roughly 60 to 100 billion human keystrokes a day” by getting rid of keystrokes that are currently needed to find Web addresses ending, for example, in individual country codes.
Thrush said that under the new system, all Web addresses ending .bank would only be available to “authorised” banks.
“Consumer confidence can be greatly enhanced,” he said.
The Seoul meeting will also debate cyber-security threats.
ICANN said in a statement the “threat to the domain name system is always increasing, as the world saw several months ago with the threat from the Conficker worm”.
It said this prompted an unprecedented collaboration between ICANN and top security experts from Microsoft, Symantec and dozens of other companies, software vendors and organisations.
Malicious code such as Conficker can be triggered to steal data or turn control of infected computers over to hackers amassing “zombie” machines for criminal ends.
ICANN, formed in 1998 by the US government, was recently given more autonomy after Washington relaxed its control over how the Internet is run.

http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidANA20091026T112400ZIOP73/lok112415091026?weeklynewsletter&zawyaemailmarketing

GLORIAD (Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development)

Linking Scientists in US, Russia, China, Korea, Canada, Netherlands and the Nordic Countries with Advanced Cyberinfrastructure
GLORIAD is built on a fiber-optic ring of networks around the northern hemisphere of the earth, providing scientists, educators and students with advanced networking tools that improve communications and data exchange, enabling active, daily collaboration on common problems. With GLORIAD, the scientific community can move unprecedented volumes of valuable data effortlessly, stream video and communicate through quality audio- and video-conferencing.
GLORIAD exists today due to the shared commitment of the US, Russia, China, Korea, Canada, the Netherlands and the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, to promote increased engagement and cooperation between their countries, beginning with their scientists, educators and young people. The benefits of this advanced network are shared with Science & Education (S&E) communities throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas.
GLORIAD provides more than a network; it provides a stable, persistent, non-threatening means of facilitating dialog and increased cooperation between nations that often have been at odds through the past century. This new era of cooperation will provide benefits not only to the S&E communities but to every citizen in the partner countries through:
• Improved weather forecasting and atmospheric modeling through live sharing of monitoring data;
• New discoveries into the basic nature and structure of the universe through advanced network connections between high energy physicists and astronomers - and the expensive facilities GLORIAD makes it possible to share;
• Support of the global community building the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), creating a technology which will someday provide a practically limitless supply of energy;
• Advancing joint geological sciences related to seismic monitoring and earthquake prediction;
• Enabling new joint telemedical applications and practices;
• Strengthening current programs in nuclear weapons disposal, nuclear materials protection, accounting and control and active discussions on combating terrorist threats.
• Increasing classroom-to-classroom cooperation to accessible scientists and students in other countries through the 24/7 EduCultural Channel, the “Virtual Science Museum of China,” the Russia-developed “Simple Words ” global essay contest, and a special partnership with International Junior Achievement.
Reference: http://www.gloriad.org/gloriad/index.html

Finland: First country to make internet access a legal right

It will start with one- megabit broadband connection with the goal to reach 100Mb of connection by 2015 for every citizen, http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/14/applause-for-finland-first-country-to-make-broadband-access-a-legal-right/

How far behind is the US on this race to make the internet available to every citizen?

For the first time, a cyber criminal punished harshly in Saudi Arabia

According to the Saudi newspapers, Al-watan (reported on Sunday Dec21-2008), the Saudi court system delivered its first verdict on a cyber crime. The court sentenced a young Saudi man to jail term of a year and nine months, 200 lashes and fine of 50 thousands Saudi Riyals for hacking into a young lady e-mail files and stealing her personal photos and threatening to publish her photos.

What is COBIT?

1. What is the purpose of COBIT?
The purpose of COBIT is to provide management and business process owners with an information technology (IT) governance model that helps in delivering value from IT and understanding and managing the risks associated with IT. COBIT helps bridge the gaps amongst business requirements, control needs and technical issues. It is a control model to meet the needs of IT governance and ensure the integrity of information and information systems.
2. Who is using COBIT?
COBIT is used globally by those who have the primary responsibilities for business processes and technology, those who depend on technology for relevant and reliable information, and those providing quality, reliability and control of information technology.

Can I use COBIT as a statement of criteria for specific audit conclusions?
Yes, basing the IT Assurance Guide firmly on the control objectives takes the auditor’s opinion out of the audit conclusion, replacing it with authoritative criteria. COBIT is based on more than 40 standards and best practices documents for information technology from standards-setting bodies (public and private) worldwide. These include documents from Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and the United States. Because COBIT contains all pertinent worldwide standards identifiable at the time of publication, it is all-inclusive with respect to IT controls standards. As a result, COBIT can be used as an authoritative source reference document, providing IT controls criteria on audits.

The above information and more FAQ about COBIT can be found at:

 http://www.isaca.org/Content/NavigationM…

Domain name ownership rights

In my last post, I talked about the problem facing my company regarding our domain name, basically, some IT guy who worked with our company as IT consultant decided to register our company domain under his name, and now he is black mailing us, asking us to pay him money in order for him to release the domain to us.

This case got me thinking about the latest development in this field, what the law says about domain names? Are they protected by any copy rights? If the company business name is officially registered with the local chamber of commerce or the local court, would that automatically give them the rights over companyname.com domain name?

We all heard in the early ages of the internet about how big corporations would pay millions for domain names; Is there any development on the legal side of this issue?

How can we re-claim our domain name?

I have a legal question concerning the ownership of a domain name.

While back our company setup e-mail accounts and registered its domain name. The person who did the accounts setup and domain registration was an IT consultant who was hired by some of our company’s managers, at that time, no one at the company new much about domain name registrations or about IT in general.

Now when I was trying to setup our company’s website I found out that the IT consultant registered the domain name under his own company name and not our company name. When I contacted the IT consultant and asked him how come he registered the domain name under his own company name and not under ours, he said “no one at your company cared”, and when I asked him to release the domain name to us, he sent me a long bill and said he wont transfer the domain to us unless we pay our bills. Keep in mind he is still hosting our e-mail accounts and we work with very big government agencies and for security and confidentiality, our e-mail accounts must be hosted under our own company name.

My questions are:
1- Are there any laws that regulate these matters?
2- We have proof that we have paid him for his services. Will that bind him to release the domain to us, will the domain reseller take this as a proof that the domain belongs to us?
3- He is hosting our company’s e-mail accounts up to this moment, and we use them daily, will the domain reseller or domain registrar take this as a proof that we are paying this IT consultant and he actually took advantage of our company’s staff members not being IT savvy and registered the ownership of the Domain and the e-mail accounts under his name?
4- The last thing I may add, I have asked this IT consultant “Are you trying to make money out of us by trying to sell to us our own domain name? and his answer was “YES.”