The 9th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Istanbul has been upstaged by the announcement of the Netmundial Initiative (NMI) in Geneva. The NMI is an attempt by ICANN’s CEO, Fadi Chehade, to enlist the resources and interpersonal networks of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in finding “solutions” to Internet governance...
Guest blog by Farzaneh Badii Recently the United States district court for the District of Colombia issued a judgment permitting the seizure of .IR and Iranian IP addresses. The court recognized all IP addresses and domain names managed by .IR ccTLD as assets that could be seized by the victims...
ICANN is now running two processes dealing with the accountability of its global Internet governance regime: 1) the IANA transition and 2) The “enhancing ICANN accountability and Governance process.” Unfortunately, the community is getting so deeply involved in the details of both of these processes that they are losing sight...
When the NTIA made its announcement to end its historic role overseeing the IANA functions, ICANN was eager to fulfill its assigned convener role. It initiated two concurrent processes, one for developing an IANA functions transition proposal (or, as ICANN prefers to frame it, its "stewardship transition") and another on enhancing ICANN accountability....
One of the criticisms often made of IGP’s proposal for the IANA transition is that taking IANA out of ICANN is not a good idea because creating a new organization and transferring critical functions to it is too risky and destabilizing. But guess what? Short of just giving IANA to...
One of the more pressing problems at ICANN is the participation of governments in the policy development process. All too often, the outcome is an eleventh-hour intervention from the GAC which short-circuits the GNSO bottom up policy making process. This is not for lack of effort to correct the situation....
The IANA transition process – the historic delegation of control of the root registry for the Internet’s unique identifiers from the US government to the Internet community – is underway. The group known as the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) met in London July 17 – 19. On the...
Guest blog by Farzaneh Badii, University of Hamburg In his article on Information and Efficiency, renowned economist Harold Demsetz pointed out that it makes no sense to compare the outcome of an ideal institution without transaction costs to the outcomes of a real world institution, and then conclude that the...
As we move toward the IANA transition, many observers are concerned about the relationship between an autonomous ICANN and Internet freedom. One proposal even went so far as to propose to replace NTIA oversight with an “Internet Freedom Panel” that could veto any ICANN decisions that threaten Internet freedom. That...
There were three big issues at the London ICANN meeting. The most important was the globalization of IANA; the second was the release of the Expert Working Group (EWG) report on Whois, privacy and future directory services. The least important, but equally contentious was the French revolt over geographical indicator...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
