A new study from AU's Internet Governance Lab co-authored by SIS Professor Derrick Cogburn in the Journal of Cyber Policy helps connect the dots between the Domain Name System and today’s cyber reality.

To assess the prospect of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) enabling global ‘private ordering’ for domain-name disputes, Cogburn and his graduate student co-authors Theodore Andrew Ochieng and Haiman M. Wong analyze textual data from 75,590 UDRP complaints involving 142,423 domain names.

Using data provided by DNS Research Federation’s Data Analytics Platform (DAP.Live), Cogburn, Ochieng, and Wong ask three major research questions: To what extent does the UDRP process differ between resolution bodies? What are the most prevalent themes as represented by keywords and topics? To what extent have these topics changed over time?

Using descriptive statistics and a series of inductive text-mining techniques (term-frequency, term frequency-inverse document frequency, and topic modelling), they find substantial evidence for the ongoing stability of the UDRP. Case growth has continued since 2000. Panelists heavily employ precedent when adjudicating complaints. Trademark holders continue to dominate the process, winning about 90% of complaints; however, successfully contested cases show strong UDRP jurisprudence supporting non-trademark holders. Topic models created capture both abstract (jurisprudential) and concrete (cybercrime) concepts and show spikes in cybercrime during COVID-19.

Read the full article here.