Previous blogs about the ITRs emphasized the importance of interconnection agreements and flows of funds in driving the WCIT agenda. These articles, while correct, may have underestimated the degree to which bringing cyber-security into the ITRs is also a central arena for conflict and negotiation. I have argued that the...
For those worried about the threat of a state-based takeover of the Internet, there is no need to obsess over the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) exclusively. Three Chinese engineers are proposing a way to alter Internet standards to partition the Internet into autonomously administered national networks, using the domain name...
We have carefully reviewed the proposed modifications of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) contained in TD-64, as well as some other recent proposals and some ITU presentations made in the runup to WCIT. This review confirms that the most important potential effects of the ITRs on the Internet would come...
To understand what is really happening at the International Telecommunication Union's WCIT, one must return to an old question: is the Internet “telecommunications” or is it something else? That seemingly obscure definitional question has been at the center of communication and information policy since the mid-1960s and it – not...
A mysterious email arrived in my inbox, and that of at least one other Internet freedom fighter last night at 11:29 pm Eastern daylight time. It is CWG-WCIT12 TEMPORARY DOCUMENT 64, a 67 page pdf. All I can tell you is that it did not come from the ITU and...
The U.S. government and U.S. companies have pretty much succeeded in framing the International Telecommunication Union’s WCIT-12 as an “attempt by the UN to take over the Internet.” Whether that frame is correct or not is another question. There is still a lot of vagueness and hand-waving about what is...
Today a policy proposal that we submitted to RIPE NCC was published for comment. Policy Proposal 2012-5 wants to increase the transparency of the transfer market for IPv4 addresses by requiring the RIPE NCC to publish a record of all transfers conducted under their policy. IPv4 address transfer policies were put...
