Today is the Internet Watch Foundation’s (IWF) awareness day.  It’s a day when the Internet community and others come together to raise awareness of the IWF and the work they do to minimise the availability of illegal content, specifically, child sexual abuse content hosted anywhere in the world and criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.

They are reporting latest research which indicates that over three quarters (77%) of UK adult internet users who have stumbled across images of children being sexually abused are unsure how to report them. In addition, 71% of those surveyed ranked the availability of online child sexual abuse images as their top concern about the internet.

Nominet supports the IWF and wishes them continued success with their awareness raising.

We have announced the shortlist for our annual Best Practice Challenge, a competition that recognises British organisations, groups or individuals who have embraced the challenge of making the Internet a secure, open, accessible or diverse experience for all. Symantec, Barclays, E-Victims organisation and the British Computer Association of the Blind are four of thirty organisations to make the shortlist in 2008.

The winners will be announced at an award ceremony in London on 9th July 2008. These outstanding entries will be promoted as examples of best practice to industry, government, academia and in the media in the UK and internationally. They will also be invited to take a leading role in the UK preparatory meeting for the next Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting in Hyderabad and be showcased at the IGF on 3rd to 6th December as examples of the best of British in the Internet world.

A twelve-strong panel of independent judges, from organisations including the Confederation of British Industry, the British Computer Society, the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Press Association is being chaired by Rt Hon Alun Michael MP. The judging panel met on 10th June to discuss the high calibre entries and decide on the winners for each of the six award categories:

Best Development Project
Best Security Initiative
Raising Industry Standards
Personal Safety Online
Internet For All
Open Internet

The full shortlist is as follows:

Best Development Project

§ ActNow Cornwall
§ Age Concern Edinburgh Information Technology (ACE IT)
§ Cambridgeshire Council’s Community Access Points initiative
§ Childnet International
§ Citizens Online - EverybodyOnline
§ Solihull community housing and CI-Net

Best Security Initiative

§ Business Crime Reduction Centre
§ Barclays PINsentry
§ BeCrypt
§ Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)

Raising Industry Standards

§ Internet Watch Foundation
§ NSDesign Ltd
§ Safebuy

Personal Safety Online

§ E-Victims Organisation
§ Get Safe Online
§ Information Security Awareness Forum
§ Symantec

Internet For All

§ AbilityNet
§ British Computer Association of the Blind (BCAB)
§ British Library
§ Common Knowledge (CKUK)
§ Describe Online
§ myguide

Open Internet

§ Blitz IT Hub
§ Bristol City Council
§ Connecting Bristol
§ mySociety e-petitions
§ Open University - OpenLearn
§ University of Kent – Greenfoot
§ Youth Net

Recently we were pleased to be a part of the release of Unbound, a new open source alternative to the BIND domain name system (DNS) server, which we helped to develop.

Released by NLnet Labs, VeriSign Inc, Nominet and Kirei, Unbound is a recursive DNS server, which is used by Internet Service Providers to support DNS look-ups by Internet users. DNS is the feature of the Internet that matches domain names (such as www.nominet.org.uk) with IP addresses and is used for web browsing, email, messaging, and Internet-based telephony.

From its first prototype in 2004 Unbound was designed to be a faster, more secure alternative to BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) which has been the most popular choice for DNS servers since the 1980s.

One of the main advantages of Unbound is that it is high performing and very fast. It also supports DNSSEC, a security enhancement that is essential to help protect DNS transactions. By making the software freely available to developers (at http://unbound.net/) we hope to spread the deployment of DNSSEC. This in turn will enable Internet Service Providers to provide a faster, safer Internet experience for their customers.

Recently, the UK Internet Governance Forum was launched at an event in Parliament attended by over 100 people from industry, government, parliament, academia and civil society. The launch event featured a report from the Internet Governance Forum in Rio last November; a plan of action up until the next IGF meeting in India and beyond; the launch of Nominet’s Best Practice Challenge 2008 and a debate on the future of the Internet.

UK Internet Governance Forum

The UK Internet Governance Forum is a collaborative partnership between Nominet, the UK Department for Business and key parliamentarians. Its aim is to provide a local forum in the UK to engage industry, government, parliament, academia and civil society in debate on Internet Governance issues, stimulating partnerships and coalitions to deliver solutions and demonstrating best practice for others to learn from.

Other influential stakeholder groups that are taking part include the London Internet Exchange, the Coalition on Internet Safety and Amnesty International.

One of the key messages to emerge from the first UK IGF meeting is that the UK is taking a leading role in Internet governance, and that other countries are seeing what we are doing and beginning to start running their own processes at the national level. Brazil, France and Finland are among the first countries to follow the UK’s ‘best practice’ model. The UK is proving to the rest of the world that the Internet Governance Forum works, as a collaborative partnership between Government, business, civil society and academia, because it is not subject to Government legislation and is free from bureaucracy.

The UK IGF will concentrate on developing examples of UK best practice and serve as a potential prototype model for other national IGFs. Rt Hon Alun Michael MP commented that Tanya Byron’s recent review of the online child protection sphere has highlighted successful partnership initiatives in that area, particularly between the Internet Watch Foundation and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Unit. They have successfully combined resources and expertise from law enforcement, Industry and the third sector, while working closely with the Home Office’s Online Child Protection Task Force.

This kind of precedent paves the way for a cooperative template to be applied in the field of Internet governance. The key projects for the UK IGF going forwards will be to explore UK concerns around the IGF themes of security, diversity, access and openness at a seminar in May, and then to identify the UK’s best practice agenda for the IGF in Hydrabad at the awards ceremony for Nominet’s Best Practice Challenge in July.

Best Practice Challenge 2008

The Nominet Best Practice Challenge will recognise organisations, groups or individuals that have worked to deliver a safer, more accessible, diverse and open Internet experience.

This year there are six categories, as follows:

· Best development project award
· Best security initiative award
· Raising industry standards award
· Personal safety online award
· Internet for all award
· Open Internet award

You can find out more about these categories and how to enter by reading our Best Practice Challenge leaflet and this page of our web site.

We would encourage UK companies and organisations to send us their entries – the closing date is 25 April 2008. Winning entries will be announced at an awards ceremony in July 2008 and invited to a leading role in the UK preparatory meeting for the Internet Governance Forum meeting in India.

At the launch of the Challenge, our CEO Lesley Cowley commented that last year’s entries proved that the UK has much experience to share and promote in terms of best practice, and much to contribute to Internet Governance discussions. We’re looking forward to seeing more compelling examples of the same this time.

We were interested to see two high profile examples of organisations taking a stand against domain tasting recently.

Domain tasting is the practice of registering domain names, assessing revenue generation potential and, if they create an insufficient return, deleting the domain names before the registry requests payment.

Yesterday ICANN announced that they are proposing to remove their five-day ‘Add Grace Period’ which previously allowed registrars to rectify errors when registering new domain names without cost. Due to serial abuse of this facility by speculators testing the profitability of domain names through advertising revenues, ICANN will instead debit the payment as soon as the domain name is registered.

Although this change will clearly deter tasters from registering high volumes of domains speculatively, it will also make the process of registering less flexible for registrars. It remains to be seen exactly how the new process will work, but it is probably safe to assume that if the registrar has to pay these costs upfront they will ultimately be passed to their customers.

When we took steps against domain tasting in August 2006, we decided to introduce limits on the number of domains a registrar could delete. Our limit for deletions to rectify spelling errors etc is five domains or 5% of the total number of domains registered but not yet invoiced (whichever is higher) but the limit for practices such as domain tasting is zero, and the limits form part of our registrar agreement, the formal contract that all our registrars sign up to. We believe this solution is neater, as it effectively counters the practice of domain tasting but at the same time allows some flexibility for registrars where genuine errors have occurred.

In a separate move, Google announced last week that they will start to monitor domain names that are repeatedly registered and dropped within the current five-day grace period, and exclude them from their AdSense program. Such a move would clearly strike at the heart of the problem. If tasters stop receiving revenues for pay-per-click ads associated with the domains they are testing, they will soon stop trying.

Both proposals have their merits, and it is encouraging to see that concerted efforts are being made from various sectors within the industry that could herald the beginning of the end of this practice.

There has recently been some suggestion of governments attempting to control their citizens’ access to the Internet. In Russia, the government is reportedly planning to create a web that operates in the Cyrillic alphabet and is independent from the rest of the Internet and the Japanese communications ministry is recommending that their government starts regulating the internet by 2010, in response to concerns over libellous flaming on forums.
The situation in Russia illustrates the complex issues surrounding the implementation of internationalised domain names. The transition to the widespread use of non-ASCII domain names combined with a majority of users operating non-ASCII keyboards could result in a situation where citizens find themselves restricted to a single language Internet and cut off from the rest of the world wide web.
There is also speculation that in some territories citizens will need a password authorised by government agencies in order to use the global internet, thus giving governments the ability to control what communication individuals have with the outside world. One of the key arguments in defence of this practice is that it helps monitor cybercrime. However, this stance does not convince security experts who have suggested that such a move would make it very difficult to track cybercrime as it would put a wall between the criminals and their victims.
Elsewhere there have been further moves towards web censorship in response to concern over citizens using the Internet to launch critical attacks. In countries where the media is heavily regulated and subject to a lot of self-censorship, the Internet has represented an oasis of freedom where citizens can openly criticise people without fear of personal reprisal, thanks to the protection provided by anonymous posting. There are however, an increasing number of stories about web sites that have caused sufficient uproar to have been closed down and placed on government lists of sites that are apparently “unacceptable and harmful to Society”. Some see that these heavy-handed shutdowns may be the first step to introducing filtering software to control what appears on the Internet in countries where governments are keen to eradicate vitriolic protests in the public arena. Such powers of censorship would most likely be held by governments alone without the buffer of any independent watchdog to arbitrate on what constitutes ‘unacceptable’ content.
All of this activity seems a world away from the wide-ranging Internet freedom we are used to in the UK. Nevertheless, it is a debate that has been running for some time on a global level at the Internet Governance Forum which has been discussing access and openness as two of its key themes. Whilst progress is being made in some aspects, these recent developments highlight the political complexities involved and give credence to those who espouse the theory that fragmentation of the global Internet is inevitable.

ENUM is an internationally approved method for connecting the telephone communications network to the Internet. It will allow you to call someone on different electronic communications devices and software applications by using a single identifier – a telephone number converted into a domain name.

While the technology may initially remain out of sight of the average end-user for the next few years, its take up and impact for consumers and business could be significant. This will certainly be the case for the VoIP and Telcoms industries. It’s an exciting development which is currently being used in several countries across the globe and we’ve just won the contract to run the Tier 1 registry for UK ENUM.

In terms of how it works, a standard phone number such as, 01865 332211 becomes 1.1.2.2.3.3.5.6.8.1.4.4.e164.arpa where ‘44’ is the UK’s international dialling code, ‘e164’ is the name of the telephone numbering system and ‘.arpa’ is the Internet infrastructure of .uk or .com. A computer can understand and connect to this address in a fraction of a second which makes ENUM a quick, stable and cheap link between the telecommunications system and the Internet.

One of the main uses of ENUM will be to link different VoIP servers so that telephones within businesses that use VoIP technology can connect to other businesses who use other VoIP providers via the Internet. As a result, telephone calls between businesses using this technology will be much cheaper or possibly even free as there will be no need to connect to the telephone network for the call.

At present it is easy to connect from one employee within a company to another in the same company using a VoIP server. That still works if an employee is a home worker who connects over the Internet – the VoIP server recognises the numbers within its system and connects the call as if the home worker was in the office.

However, if someone in Company A currently wishes to connect to someone in Company B using their VoIP server, they need to connect to a telephone network provider who will make the connection to the second company. The advantage of ENUM is that it will link Company A’s A’s VoIP server via the Internet without having to connect to the telephone network for the call.

As the technology develops, local control of the information associated with your ENUM domain name will mean calls can be connected to your desk telephone or mobile ‘on the fly’ as you move in and out of the office environment.

We are really pleased to be involved with this emerging technology and look forward to seeing how the market for ENUM develops in the UK.

For further information see here

Last week we presented our domain name industry report at our first .uk registrar conference. It was well received and has provoked subsequent interest from a broader audience.

The report shows that the domain name industry both globally and in the UK is healthy. The report demonstrates the extent of the uptake of the Internet in the UK. It reveals areas of potential future growth and gives pointers as to current trends in domain name registration and the changing nature of the UK registrar market.

It’s clear that despite impressive growth to date, this is still a relatively young and certainly rapidly changing market. Trust remains a key issue for consumers and businesses alike. The winners in the industry will be those that have developed the strongest, most trustworthy reputations.

Another finding that stands out is that businesses and individuals should prioritise renewing their domain names, as failure to do so could result in their online brand identity being snapped up by someone else. It shows that 70% of registrants renew their domain names, and a large proportion do so well ahead of time, either a month (25%) or a day (14%) before they are due to expire. However, a surprising 14% of businesses do not renew their domain name until the day after renewal is due.

Renewing a .uk domain name is a relatively easy process, and it is possible to renew the registration up to 6 months in advance of its expiry date. For full details please see here.

However, if a registrant has incorrect contact information associated with the domain name they may not receive any renewal reminders from Nominet or their registrar. In such cases they may lose the domain name when it is eventually cancelled and made available for re-registration.

Based on current renewals trends revealed in the report, in the next two years alone, over 140,000 .co.uk domains will be re-registered in less than 10 seconds after they become available. There is an active market in buying, selling and storing domain names, with regular sales exceeding £100,000 and peak values reaching more than £1 million. Domain names are either being registered for resale or for monetisation, by creating a web site that makes money for the registrant through pay-per-click and affiliate advertising.

The point here is that there really is no good reason for any business or individual to lose their domain name in this way, provided that they keep their contact details up to date, and advise their registrar that they wish to renew.

The second meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) took place earlier this month in Rio. It follows on from where the first one left off in Athens last year, discussing the key themes of access, diversity, openness and security.   

As part of a programme of preparation for this month’s meeting we hosted an interactive workshop in October in Westminster for key UK internet stakeholders about the issues of internet governance from a UK perspective. The session highlighted several key issues and opportunities alongside several examples of best practice in internet governance from the UK which we are sharing during this week’s IGF meeting: 

• The majority of people present felt that the most relevant IGF theme from a
  UK perspective was security. When asked to consider what the key theme would be from an international perspective the majority voted for access, with security a close second.
• It was also felt that the theme of security is particularly broad, and it is likely that the Rio meeting will only begin to scratch the surface of many of the security issues.
• Another realisation was that (particularly for the UK) there is a lot of overlap between three of the IGF themes of access, openness and diversity.
• In terms of openness, we are sharing excellent examples of self-regulatory codes of practice, as demonstrated by the Internet Watch Foundation with regard to policing images of child abuse on the internet.
• Diversity is going to be a critical issue on the Rio agenda as the world grapples with how to empower many different cultures and minorities on the Internet.
• As part of the day, Nominet showcased the winners of the Best Practice Challenge. The Challenge was designed to showcase world class Internet governance, based on the Internet Governance Forum’s four tenets - Security, Access, Diversity and Openness. The entrants in Nominet’s Best Practice Challenge displayed encouraging examples of innovation, creativity and determination to overcome some of the obstacles which will also be faced by less developed countries. It’s clear that the
  UK has a wealth of examples to share of how self-regulation works in practice. 

At the pre-Rio event, Alun Michael MP, who was Chair of the Judge’s Panel for Nominet’s Best Practice Challenge, laid out three possible routes forward for internet governance. The first was to leave it to companies and countries to do their own thing (which he dubbed the ‘Wild West option’); the second was to go for ‘international ownership’ through a bureaucratic ‘UN Agency’ approach; and the third was a partnership approach based on self-regulation which he advocated as the best way forward.  

With the additional theme of critical internet resources being added to the agenda, the IGF will certainly be a place of much debate this week. We hope that the debate remains focused on practical examples of good practice and that the attendees from government, business, civil society and academia will be inspired by and able to learn from some of the UK’s leadership in this area.