News


EU Policy Update - September 2020
In a nutshell: Three European Parliament committees adopted their own-initiative reports on the Digital Services Act. The European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) published its Draft Report on the European strategy for data. The European Commission proposed a temporary e-Privacy Directive derogation to combat child sexual abuse, and published its first report on the status of the rule of law across the EU. The European Data Protection Board published guidelines on the concepts of “data controller” and “data processor”. The Advocate General (AG) of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) Szpunar issued a non-binding opinion in a case concerning hyperlinking.


VIDEO: CENTR explains the role of the DNS in tackling illegal content online
CENTR has released an animated video on ccTLDs and their technical role in relation to online content.


Registrars and ccTLD registries meet for online pan-European Registrar Day
On 6 October, CENTR held its annual Registrar Day online, welcoming a record number of participants. Whilst the face-to-face aspect was greatly missed, the fact that the meeting was held online made it far easier for people to join, including many new faces!


The Administrative Working Group meets virtually
On Thursday 17 September, the Administrative Working Group met online for their autumn workshop. The event was attended by one of the highest number of attendants for a stand-alone workshop, with over 25 registries and many new faces.


EU Policy Update – Summer 2020
In a nutshell: Germany took over the presidency of the Council of the EU starting from 1 July. The European Commission published the EU Security Union Strategy and the EU strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse. It is also planning to revise the intellectual property rights protection framework in the EU and is currently consulting the public on its eIDAS Regulation revision plans. The European Parliament’s Committees have finalised a few Opinions on the numerous own-initiative reports to give more context and drive the legislative debate on the Digital Services Act. The European Court of Justice ruled that intellectual property rightholders cannot require social platforms to give out IP addresses, and invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield Decision in its ground-breaking ruling concerning Facebook. The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice issued an opinion in the case about platform liability for intellectual property rights infringements committed by end-users.


Joint press release: New Digital Services Act Should Support Not Restrict the Internet
Amsterdam, Netherlands and Brussels, Belgium: The European Commission’s upcoming Digital Services Act will be a major piece of regulation that will affect online service providers across the Internet landscape and, ultimately, the Internet itself and its billions of users.


CENTR responds to the public consultation on the Digital Services Act
By Polina Malaja, Policy Advisor - CENTR has provided its feedback on an upcoming EU legislative reform - the Digital Services Act (DSA), as a response to the public consultation initiated by the European Commission.


Back to square one: encrypted DNS keeps developers busy – and divided
By Monika Ermert, eLance Journalist - For more than half a decade, DNS developers have tried to answer the question of how to switch from a traditional DNS resolver to one that allows the client’s DNS queries and answers to be encrypted. Encrypting DNS queries and answers was in part a reaction to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the widespread interception and surveillance of the internet, including DNS traffic, by intelligence agencies. While DNS over TLS (DoT) was intended to allow for an evolution of traditional DNS operations, it was eventually DNS over HTTPS (DoH) that was first ready for release (see CENTR’s interview with European DNS-engineer Sarah Dickinson from July 2018).


The second edition of CENTR's new Tech Trends Watch is out!
CENTR is excited to share the second edition of its new publication, the Tech Trends Watch, which aims to give an overview of current and upcoming changes in technology from a range of standards development organisations and other technology forums, keeping in mind underlying geopolitical and industrial movements and in particular tracing the trends that may have an impact on the addressing and numbering communities.


The CENTRstats Global TLD Report 2020/2 is out!
The CENTRstats Global TLD Report Q2/2020 has been published. The report covers the status and trends in top-level domains with a focus on European ccTLDs (country code top-level domains). The pdf version of the report can be found here.