The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the subject of substantial controversy in the United States, and the domain name industry is squarely in the middle of the debate. Many DNS service providers and technology developers in the industry oppose SOPA, Afilias among them. Here's why.

The Internet is slowly beginning to adopt the new DNSSEC domain names standard, but significant challenges remain. That was the main takeaway from a four-hour workshop on the technology held during the recent ICANN 41 public meeting in Singapore, which heard from many domain registries, registrars and other infrastructure providers.

I recently wrote about the encouraging level of DNSSEC adoption among top-level domain name registries, and noted that adoption at the second level and in applications is an important next step for adding more security to the DNS. The root and approximately 20 percent of the top level domains are now signed; it is time for registrars and recursive DNS servers operated by the ISPs to occupy center stage.

Less than nine months after the DNS root was signed, the rollout of DNSSEC across the Internet's top-level domains is approaching the tipping point.

DNSSEC is being rolled out quickly in top-level domain registries around the world, but there's still some way to go to encourage other Internet stakeholders to adopt the new security technology. That was one of the key takeaways from a day-long, comprehensive session on Domain Name System Security Extensions implementation worldwide, held during ICANN's public meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, last week.

New service platform provides corporations and resellers with a flexible way to improve the reliability of their DNS network

DUBLIN, IRELAND – 17 June 2010- Today Afilias, a leading provider of Internet infrastructure services, announced the expansion of its Managed DNS services with the availability of its new FlexDNS^SM Platform. The FlexDNS Platform now provides Afilias' DNS customers with three different options for managing their DNS over Afilias' network: A Web-based portal, AXFR (DNS zone transfer), or an Application Programming Interface (API).

Redwood City, CA – August 10, 2009 – In an enlightened example of cooperation among competitors to improve online security, Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) today announced that Afilias and Neustar, Inc. are working with ISC to support ISC's DNSSEC Look-aside Validation (DLV) registry by providing secondary DNS service for the DLV zone.

.ORG is the first open top-level domain to fight DNS hijacking using DNSSEC

DUBLIN, IRELAND - 2 June 2009 - Afilias, a global provider of Internet infrastructure services and domain name registry technology, today announced that it has successfully signed the .ORG zone with Domain Name Security Extensions (DNSSEC) on behalf of its customer, .ORG, The Public Interest Registry (PIR). The .ORG zone is being signed in a phased manner with an initial period allowing for key partners to test the signed zone.