Brian McWilliams

Another influential voice has joined the small chorus that wants the

A group of prominent Internet scholars and professionals are among 23 people who have petitioned ICANN hoping to get the Internet’s governance board to slow its consideration of a United Nations report on how to resolve domain name and trademark conflicts on the Internet. The group sent the petition to ICANN Monday, asking it to […]

As the Department of Justice steps up its ongoing investigation of the business practices of Network Solutions, legal experts say the firm may find case law working against it. Reportedly prompting the government’s renewed investigation is NSI’s recent treatment of its database of Internet addresses as proprietary information. NSI said the WHOIS database is a […]

Some of the new testbed domain registrars are already reporting problems as the initial phases of the new system that will handle registrations is just getting underway. They are also expressing frustrations over the contracts that set the ground rules for competition. According to published reports, at least two of the five new registrars that […]

More than 100 online stores may be exposing customer credit card numbers and other order information to anyone with a Web browser. The security vulnerability was discovered by Joe Harris, a senior technical support staff member at Blarg Online Services,a Seattle Internet service provider. In the process of troubleshooting a customer’s online shopping cart, Harris […]

It may be one of the cheapest ways to buy a little traffic to a Web site, but now it’s also on very shaky legal ground. The practice of registering “stealth sites,” or Internet addresses that are variations on popular corporate names, was blasted by a Virginia federal court this week. A judge has ordered […]

A new research report from Prudential Securities says true competition in the Internet domain registration business may not arrive until year 2000. In a recent report on Network Solutions, Prudential analysts Paul Merenbloom and Aydin Tuncer write, “We find it hard to believe that the company is likely to face any material competition … within […]

The co-creator of the first free service for validating Web page design says his site has been hijacked by domain speculators. Mark Gaither is president of WebTechs, an Austin, Texas company that launched the first free, HTML validation service back in 1995. Since then, thousands of other sites have linked to webtechs.com, after using the […]

Enemies of junk e-mail have proposed a new tactic for stopping so-called spammers. Owen DeLong and other members of the North American Network Operators’ Group, a forum for Internet service providers, are trying to rally support for a plan, under which people who register Web sites would be required to provide contact information for handling […]

A new macro virus based on the infamous Melissa has been released into the wild, and it may be the latest phase in an infowar between hackers and a security consultant. According to virus experts, the so-called Papa virus is transmitted in the same manner as Melissa, sending copies of itself to addresses in a […]

America Online Inc. is in the cross-hairs of a conservative Washington, D.C. lobbying group. The Frontiers of Freedom organization is launching a counter attack to AOL’s campaign to try to open up cable TV networks for its Internet service. At a new Web site,the group blasts the AOL-led Open Net Coalition, which in recent months […]

Wall Street Friday will be keeping an eye on shares of Network Solutions to see if they can recover from Thursday’s 8 percent drop. Network Solutions (NSOL) fell after Asensio & Co. released a negative research report accusing NSI of misleading investors about its future prospects. While NSI may call itself “the dot com people,” […]