Created in a burst of exuberance about the contributions of multi-stakeholder dialogue to Internet governance, the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has gradually lost its momentum. The 2002-2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) created the IGF to overcome national governments’ inability to agree on global Internet governance. It...
The Whois database shows which organizations have been assigned which Internet address blocks. Maintaining that registration data is the Regional Internet Registries’ most important function. For many years, ARIN has made all of its Whois data available in “bulk” form for “Internet operational or technical research purposes.” Now, suddenly, without...
The UN last week passed a resolution on “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet.” The resolution reaffirms the human rights and fundamental freedoms already enshrined in existing UN instruments, and goes on to affirm that “the same rights people have offline must also be protected...
ARIN's Public Policy Mailing List was abuzz last week with debate over the merits of modifying the needs-based justification policy for IPv4 address transfers. The debate was sparked by a proposal to increase the time period organizations can use to justify their need for IPv4 addresses to 60 months (5...