How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it’s just one — if that one is Michael Jackson.
The biggest showbiz story of the year saw the troubled star take a good slice of the Internet with him, as the ripples caused by the news of his death swept around the globe.
“Between approximately 2:40 p.m. PDT and 3:15 p.m. PDT today, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson,” a Google spokesman told CNET, which also reported that Google News users complained that the service was inaccessible for a time. At its peak, Google Trends rated the Jackson story as “volcanic.”
As sites fell, users raced to other sites: TechCrunch reported that TMZ, which broke the story, had several outages; users then switched to Perez Hilton’s blog, which also struggled to deal with the requests it received.
CNN reported a fivefold rise in traffic and visitors in just over an hour, receiving 20 million page views in the hour the story broke.
Go HERE to discover the various reasons being reported on why one might register the Cameroon ccTLD, .CM currently running Sunrise Registrations until July 15.
A Dutch entertainment industry group has demanded Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay be shut down in the Netherlands and says Pirate Bay founders have been sent their court summons via Twitter and Facebook.
Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN said it used the social networking sites to deliver the court summons as it was unable to pinpoint the exact location of Pirate Bay founders Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg. A lawyer for BREIN said they are expected to appear in court in Amsterdam on July 21.
U.S. Urges China to Revoke Internet Filter Requirement
Top U.S. officials urged China Wednesday to abandon its proposal to require Internet filters installed on personal computers starting next month, warning the step could violate world trade rules.
“China is putting companies in an untenable position by requiring them, with virtually no public notice, to pre-install software that appears to have broad-based censorship implications and network security issues,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement.
China says the “Green Dam” Internet filtering software is needed to protect children from pornographic and violent images.
But critics in China have said the software, sold by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co, is technically flawed and could be used to spy on Internet users and to block other sites that Beijing considers politically offensive.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Internet users are calling on fellow web surfers to stay offline on July 1, the debut of a controversial software filter that critics say the Chinese government is using to tighten censorship.
New regulations from Beijing mandate “Green Dam,” a program sold by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., be pre-installed on personal computers manufactured or shipped after July 1. China says the filter is designed to block pornography.
The Eternal City wants it’s own domain extension: .roma as do New York, Berlin, London and Paris. A sign that there are folks ponying up for the new gTLDs set to launch from ICANN in early 2010. See the full skinny on .roma from PRWeb HERE.
Australia’s fledgling domain name trading sector has scored its highest ever sale, with sextoys.com.au sold for $25,500 on exchange site Netfleet.com.au.
The domain name trading market has been in existence for just over a year, since the Australian Domain Name Administrator allowed the buying and selling of domain names. There are two main companies providing an exchange for domain names: Netfleet and Domain Market Place.
ICANN Seeks Expressions of Interest for Bulk Transfer of Names
As the result of the recent de-accreditation of registrar Maxim Internet, Inc., ICANN is seeking expressions of interest from ICANN-accredited registrars that might wish to assume sponsorship of the gTLD names that were previously managed by Maxim Internet. This request for expressions of interest is made pursuant to the De-Accredited Registrar Transition Procedure posted HERE.
Starting this month, ICANN will be hosting a series of global New generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) events in various locations around the world. These events have been designed in a wide range of formats to address different community needs for those that have an interest in the Program and in the development of the Applicant Guidebook.
The live consultations will facilitate on-going discussions with the Internet community regarding workable solutions to some of the outstanding, overarching issues, particularly trademark protection and malicious behavior. Starting with ICANN’s the Sydney Meeting, a session dedicated to trademark issues will take place on Wednesday, 24 June . Subsequent consultation sessions are scheduled to take place in New York (13 July) and London (15 July); attendees will have the chance to meet ICANN staff and hear from those who have contributed to the ongoing process, including members of the Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) that submitted their report to the ICANN Board on measures to protect intellectual property.
