ICANN’s mentions in the Wikileaks cables is investigated by Milton Mueller on the Internet Governance Project blog. In their searches, the terms copyright, Internet, ICANN and cybersecurity were all searched for.Mueller notes that “Regarding ICANN, the leaked cables are from the foreign policy branches rather than the Commerce Department, so most of the juicy ICANN-related stuff is not in there. Searching for ‘ICANN’ produces 39 documents, all but two of them unclassified. Some of the most interesting date back to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the debate it sparked over US control of the root.”To read Mueller’s analysis of the cables regarding ICANN as well as copyright, internet and cybersecurity, see:
blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/1/4890935.html
Tag: Wikileaks
-
ICANN and the Wikileaks Cables
-
ISNIC Issues Statement On Possible Reasons For Wikileaks.is Deletion
The registration of wikileaks.is has caused the Icelandic registry, ISNIC, to issue a statement stating under what conditions they would delete the domain name.The registry states the answer is simple – such an action would require a formal court order from an Icelandic court. But in 25 years of the organisation’s existence ISNIC says they have never been handed such a verdict about any .IS domain during its close to 25 years of history.
This is similar to Switzerland, where the registry also issued a statement stating the conditions on which they would delete the wikileaks.ch domain name. The registry there, SWITCH, also issued a statement on the issue saying that for them to delete a domain name in such circumstances would require a statutory decision, such as a court order, for the deletion of a domain name.
And similarly to the Swiss registry, ISNIC stated that ISNIC it “is not responsible for the registrant’s usage of his/her domain, the contents of email sent from the domain’s email addresses (e.g. wikileaks@wikileaks.is) or the content of the domain’s web pages (e.g. www.wikileaks.is). It is ISNIC’s duty and prime function to maintain uninterrupted service to all .IS-domains, at all times, anywhere in the world. Only Icelandic authorities, armed with a court order, can order ISNIC to delete or close down a particular .is-domain. This has, as said before, never happened.”
For more information and to read the ISNIC statement in full, see www.isnic.is/y/news/view/id/204.
The SWITCH statement and more information on .CH domain names is available from www.switch.ch/about/news/2010/wikileaks.
To register your .IS or .CH domain name, check out Europe Registry here. -
Bank of America Registers Hundreds of Domains in Defensive Move Against WikiLeaks Cables
Bank of America appear to have bought up hundreds of domain names that relate to the bank, including those that make negative comments about executives and board members in an effort to protect the bank.
On 17 December alone, there were over 300 domain names registered “that disparage BofA officials using variations on “sucks” and “blows”, including BrianMoynihanBlows.com and BrianMoynihanSucks.com, referring to the bank’s chief executive,” reports The Financial Times.
The reason for registering so many domain names has come about following the WikiLeaks threat that they will release cables that are damaging to the bank. There are reports the bank has a “war room” to “develop strategies to defeat any allegations or political or media back-wash that will probably develop if WikiLeaks publishes thousands of internal documents,” according to Fast Company.
“In addition to allegations that it has committed widespread fraud in the foreclosure process, Bank of America will be the subject of a new release of sensitive documents by international muckraking clearinghouse WikiLeaks in January. One Bank of America mortgage borrower has even claimed that the company broke into her home and stole the ashes of her deceased husband,” reported The Huffington Post.
The Huffington Post also points this could be the first time a megabank has an issue out of domain names instead of addressing real problems.
“BofA wouldn’t be the first megabank to make a big stink about domain names instead of, say, addressing real problems. Back in 2009, Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs attempted to shut down “GoldmanSachs666.com” after the site became a hotspot for criticism directed at the investment bank. Somehow, people managed to keep disparaging the company.”
-
WikiLeaks.org Back Online
The wikileaks.org domain name is back in action following the decision by EveryDNS to terminate registrar services for the domain last week at the height of the assault on the whistle-blowing website.The assault on WikiLeaks following the often embarrassing leaking of communications between government officials included companies such as Amazon ceasing hosting of the website and MasterCard and Visa stopping processing of donations to the website, although the credit card companies were still providing payment services for those wishing to donate to organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan.The wikileaks.org is using the US registrar Dynadot as its registrar and DNS provider while the website has been hosted by Silicon Valley Web Hosting since Friday night reports Netcraft, although as reported it “does not appear to be serving any of the leaked cables or other content that it used to hold. Instead, the site immediately redirects visitors to a WikiLeaks mirror hosted in Russia.”As Netcraft notes, “it is surprising to see WikiLeaks.org being hosted in the US again, even if it is only being used to redirect traffic.”
-
Swiss Registry Outlines Why Wikileaks.ch Can't Be Deleted
With the registration of wikileaks.ch, the registry for .CH domain names, SWITCH, has been receiving what they say have been a large number of enquiries as to the circumstances where they would delete the domain name. (more…) -
Swiss Registry Outlines Why Wikileaks.ch Can’t Be Deleted
With the registration of wikileaks.ch, the registry for .CH domain names, SWITCH, has been receiving what they say have been a large number of enquiries as to the circumstances where they would delete the domain name.SWITCH has said in a statement they are “not responsible for the content of websites. Whether the content of wikileaks.ch is of relevance for criminal law is a matter for the courts to decide on.”
To delete the domain name a court order is required specifying the laws that have been broken.
To register your .CH domain name, check out Europe Registry here. -
Wikileaks .ORG Domain Cancelled; Re-Registered With .CH Domain
Wikileaks has been forced to change its domain name after its registrar, EveryDNS, withdrew its services for the wikileaks.org domain. The whistleblower website has now re-registered a domain name in Switzerland and its new domain is wikileaks.ch.The change came about “after a barrage of attacks by hackers that threatened to destabilise its entire system,” according to the registrar and Wikileaks.Currently when trying to access the wikileaks.org website a server not found message or address is not valid message is received. However the website is still available when typing in a number of the IP addresses, including 46.59.1.2 and 213.251.145.96, addresses that have been promoted on Twitter.EveryDNS provides registrar services for around 490,000 domain names and its actions follow the withdrawal of website hosting services by Amazon, who was providing hosting services, possibly only temporarily while the current high demand for the website continues. Currently the Wikileaks website is hosted on the servers of the Swedish webhost Bahnhof.There are reports that Amazon stopped hosting the Wikileaks website “on Wednesday after being contacted by the staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,” according to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent of Connecticut, in a report in The New York Times.”Staff members had asked Amazon to explain its business relationship with WikiLeaks, which Senator Lieberman, the committee’s chairman, had criticized for publishing sensitive government documents,” the report in The Times continued.EveryDNS has noted on their website they terminated the Wikileaks domain around 04:00 Central European time (22:00 EST, December 2, 2010) on Friday.”The termination of services was effected pursuant to, and in accordance with, the EveryDNS.net Acceptable Use Policy,” says a statement on the EveryDNS.net website.”The services were terminated for violation of the provision which states that a ‘member shall not interfere with another member’s use and enjoyment of the service or another entity’s use and enjoyment of similar services.’ The interference at issues arises from the fact that wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites.”The EveryDNS statement said wikileaks.org “has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.” Such attacks usually involve bombarding a Web site with attacks, preventing legitimate users from access and designed to make a targeted Web site unavailable.”These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other Web sites.”