News

In a nutshell: The European Commission unveiled its Digital Targets for 2030. Four EU countries called for European digital sovereignty in a letter to the European Commission. The European Data Protection Supervisor issued an opinion on the Europol Regulation proposal and the NIS 2 Directive proposal. The European Court of Justice delivered a judgment about the admissibility of evidence in cases of access to electronic communications traffic and location data. The Council of the EU adopted conclusions on the EU cybersecurity strategy. The European Parliament adopted its resolution on the implementation of the GDPR. EUIPO published a discussion paper on challenges and good practices to prevent the misuse of domain names for IP infringements.

CENTR has published its Report on ICANN70, which took place virtually during the month of March 2021. This report focuses on the Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO) and the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) sessions.

Discussed since the 1990s, the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) add authenticity to DNS records. To understand the current state of DNSSEC deployment, we interviewed Ulrich Wisser, who works at the Swedish Internet Foundation, a CENTR member that operates the .se top-level domain. We also discuss an Internet Draft co-authored by Ulrich Wisser that proposes an algorithm and a protocol to automate operations for multi-signer DNSSEC. The text has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Quad9 is a free Domain Name System (DNS) service, focusing on privacy and security. In February 2021, the company reincorporated in Switzerland to provide its users even stronger privacy guarantees. The move was facilitated by SWITCH, a CENTR member and registry for the .ch and .li top level domains. To discuss this move and DNS privacy at large, CENTR interviewed Bill Woodcock, the Chairperson of the Foundation Council of Quad9. The text has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

After Oblivious DoH, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) were presented with Oblivious HTTP and Confidential Computing during the IETF 110 meeting. In essence these proposed mechanisms will try to shield users’ information from uninvited data krakens.

The CENTRstats Global TLD Report Q4/2020 has been published and report covers the global status and registration trends in all top-level domains (legacy gTLDs, new gTLDs and ccTLDs), with an additional focus on the European ccTLD market. 2020 was a historic year in that the median growth of European country-code domains (ccTLDs) reached a 6-year high of 4.4%.

CENTR is delighted to announce that last week, during its 2021 Annual General Meeting, members elected two new members to the CENTR Board of Directors (BoD): Gilles Massen (Restena Foundation) and Roelof Meijer (SIDN). They join Barbara Povše (Register.si), Philip Du Bois (DNS Belgium) and David Fowler (CIRA).

For the fourth time in a row, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is meeting fully virtually this week (8-12 March). This has not stopped the Internet standards body from driving a lot of work in the DNS area. Here is a quick overview of the packed agenda and some highlights for interested participants from the CENTR community and beyond.

In a nutshell: Portugal is holding the presidency in the Council of the EU until the end of June 2021. Trilogue negotiations on the e-Evidence legislative package have started. The European Data Protection Board adopted the statement on the second additional protocol to the Budapest convention, outlining the problems with its domain name registration provisions. The Council of the EU adopted its position on ePrivacy. The Dutch government set out its position on the proposal of the EU Digital Services Act. The EU intends to criminalise hate speech and hate crime.

On 25 February the CENTR Technical working group gathered for the 44th time since the group’s establishment for their dedicated online workshop.