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Yahoo has made public its proposal to hack the domain name system (DNS) so as to resolve issues with migrating to IPv6 from IPv4. Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) was the first widely deployed version of IP that supports 32 bit addresses (equating to 4,294,967,296). The issue of exhausting the 32 bit address allocation was identified in the 1990's, prompting the development of IPv6. IPv6 supports 128 bit addresses, obviously offering a more expansive address system. The article claims that a 'significant percentage of internet users have broken IPv6 connectivity'. Yahoo thus proposes to switch users to IPv4 connectivity once detection of broken IPv6 connectivity is realised. Yahoo will forward its proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force, however questions of DNS trust and security will surely be the two topics of debate in testing this proposal.

Digital Due Process is the name of a new coalition composed among other companies by Google, Microsoft and AT&T advocationg for a new legislation to strenght online privacy laws to prevent government access to private digital information in the US

The article looks at the growing global trend for net regulation. Our interest is where Australia, as a result of our drafted internet filtering system, fits in this global picture of regulation. Reporters Without Borders has drawn up lists which groups nations in terms of their level of regulation. Appropriately as a democracy Australia is not listed under "Enemies of the Internet" which names China, North Korea, Egypt and Cuba. Yet disconcertingly we are given the label of "Under Surveillance" which lists us alongside Turkey, Russia, South Korea and the UAE.

Sudan has just had it's first democratic elections in 24 years. The results have not yet been decided. This blog, Sudan365 discusses various elements that surround politics in Sundan (the name of the blog refers to the proposed referendum to be held next year to decide the future of Sudan). This particular blog entry interviews Alsarah, a Sudanese born artist who has remixed an old Sudanese political song that aims to encourage people to get out and vote. Alsarah explains her motivations behind revamping the song, "Vote!"

PJFenwick is doing a PhD on facebook privacy and his explorations have shown that even when you lock up your settings, your friends (and friends of) can leak your information all over the place. "But by far the most interesting part of all of this have been dark users. Like dark matter, these users are not directly observable, usually because they've completely disabled API access. In fact, some of these users are completely dark unless you're a friend. They don't show up in search results. They don't show up on friends' lists. You can't send them messages. If you try to navigate to their user page (assuming you know it exists), you get redirected back to your homepage. These users have their privacy settings turned up real high, and are supposed to be hard to find. However like dark matter, dark users are observable due to their effects on the rest of the universe. If a dark user comments on a stream entry, I can see that comment. More importantly, I can see their user-ID, and I can generate a URL to a page that will contain their name. I can then watch for their activities elsewhere. Granted, I can't directly search for their activity, but I can observe their effects on my friends. For want of a better term, I've been calling this "dark stalking". What makes this all rather chilling is that I'm doing all of this via the application API. If your friend has installed an application, then it can access quite a lot of information about you, unless you turn it off. If your friend has granted the application the read_stream privilege, then it can read your status stream. Even if a friend of a friend has done this, and you comment on your friend's status entries, it's possible to infer your existence and retrieve those discussions through dark stalking."

'Educause', a not for profit organisation supporting education in Information Technology, has released an excellent guide explaining DNS Security. It explains the primary benefit of incorporating DNSSEC, namely that it will '...expand the trustworthiness-and thus the usefulness-of the Internet as a whole.'.

Internet Policy Task Force is the name of the new initiative the U.S. Commerce Department founded. During the next months it will take a closer look at current policy frameworks and explore ways to address challenges of the new internet economy and society. It will finally advise the White House on how to improve privacy for individuals online. The article mentions current discussions about privacy issues Google and facebook have to face. But obviously these did not directly lead to the kick off of the initiative.

ICANN allowed last year the use of characters different from latin for URLs, but only this week the first URL with arabic characters was published.

The Acadamey of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are suing domain registration giant (under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act) 'godaddy' disputing over 100 domain names they have 'parked' such as 2011oscars.com, academyawardz.com and oscarsunplugged.com. The lawsuit is 134 pages long and worth up to $10 million dollars in damages. GoDaddy run 'cashparking' offering customers the chance to earn cash when they buy a domain and park the page collecting funds when godaddy's advertising partners receive revenue based on a cost per click model.

The government's rules on the internet extend beyond websites to individuals. All forum and chatroom users will be required to make verifiable real-name registrations, while internet companies will have to make their search algorithms public to improve transparency.

Yugoslavia disappeared in the 1990s but the domain lingered on.

"When ICANN last considered ".xxx," board members also expressed worries that the suffix would leave the agency in the business of regulating content, or the type of material that would find itself there." Aside from all the ways, this is unworkable and unlikely to bring the results anticipated, let's not make ICANN or TLD administrators responsible for regulating anything... else.

"When ICANN last considered ".xxx," board members also expressed worries that the suffix would leave the agency in the business of regulating content, or the type of material that would find itself there." Aside from all the ways, this is unworkable and unlikely to bring the results anticipated, let's not make ICANN or TLD administrators responsible for regulating anything... else.

The website was designed by a University of Technology Sydney student named Chris Webster, the website examines the effects and severity of cyberbullying, and offers a wide array of information (types of cyberbullying, Internet safety, mobile phone tips, examples of cyberbullying etc) and surveys on cyberbullying and Internet safety. Cyberbullying causes incredible distress to those who fall victim to it. Cyberbullying does not leave physical scars, however the cruelty of others becomes evident through web pages, social network sites that exist on the Internet, as taunting does not only persist during school hours; but extends to time at home where cruelty is displayed through online text messages, posts, and other outlets that leave an extensive amount of emotional damage.

Andrew Keen gives his opinion about Hunch, the social recommendation engine. Keen has been named "the antichrist of internet" for his critic position against social web. Is he right on this one? As Jimmy Wales says here,  http://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/10766582402 I have the hunch that the site is not as bad as Keen claims...

The year was 2008. The person was Dan Kaminsky. The discovery: DNS has security flaws. Translation: the website you are visiting may not actually be the genuine site. This might take you 15 minutes to read through, and perhaps longer to absorb....but I highly recommend spending time on learning about the technicalities of DNS and the vulnerabilities of its functionality. The discovery of its weak points is what DNS security is addressing. Briefly, it covers the distributed nature of DNS, how cache poisoning occurs and patch recommendations to provide a 'fix'.

Gamers in South Korea have been accused of match fixing. It's interesting to see how "real world" problems have entered cyberspace. It raises questions as to what the scope of internet governance should cover, in this case games governance. Should there be rules to govern this kind of act or should a "name and shame" method be introduced?

A mapping data base of bloggers who have been threatened, arrested or killed around the world. This initiative gives names, location, actual status and draw attention to the campaigns to free them. Until now it reports 230 cases of threatened or arrested bloggers.

Concerns arise again regarding Facebook's privacy invasion as founder Mark Zuckerberg's Instant Messenger correspondence dated back in his College years is exposed. Offering his friend access to users' private details, the entrepreneur-to-be called them a foul name. In this commentary, the author notes the company's attitude toward privacy is reflected in Zuckerberg's early aggressive treatment of users' information.

A woman who believed her daughter died after being gang-raped by thugs associated with police, was supported in her efforts for justice by internet activists who posted allegedly "slanderous" material on the Internet. Rather than naming those who had allegedly been slandered, the court argued that the slander affected the state. Bloggers reported from the courthouse and spread messages via Twitter in support of the accused.