Following the successful completion of the IANA transition in late 2016, those practicing Internet governance had big shoes to fill in 2017. Looking back, there was no similar watershed event defining Internet governance this year. But that doesn't mean there weren't important developments and stories. Whether looking broadly at issues...
The Internet Society (ISOC) has released a new report on expanding multistakeholder approaches for Internet governance. The feasibility study was completed by Larry Strickling and Grace Abuhamad, who each played instrumental roles around the IANA transition while at NTIA and ICANN, respectively. In this post, we provide a brief synopsis...
For the big legacy top level domains like .COM, the registry holds a minimal amount of mainly technical information. But for some time ICANN has been trying to amend its policy to require registries to hold the contact information about the registrant as well. This compromises registrant privacy and is...
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is going to hold a ministerial conference from 10 to 13 December 2017. This conference could be of high importance for e-commerce and Internet governance. The WTO ministerial conference happens every 4 years. Delegates have discussed the e-commerce work program at every ministerial conference since...
With the influx of Internet connected devices into the market and with the increase in security incidents, IoT security is becoming a more prevalent topic in Internet governance and cybersecurity governance. Some argue there is a market failure in providing security in IoT and it is in need of regulation. ...
In case you missed it (you probably didn't), the Internet was hit with the Monday blues this week. As operator-focused lists and blogs identified, At 17:47:05 UTC yesterday (6 November 2017), Level 3 (AS3356) began globally announcing thousands of BGP routes that had been learned from customers and peers and...
How far can ICANN go to escape the nation-state? ICANN 60 (held in Abu Dhabi October 28 – Nov 3rd) made important progress on what has become known as “the jurisdiction issue.” ICANN is taking steps to reduce or eliminate the effect that U.S. sanctions against foreign governments would have...
Should domain name registrars have the right to cancel a domain because they don’t like the content of the website it supports? How many registrars’ terms of service contracts give them this right and how many don’t? Should ICANN’s Registrar Accreditation Agreement ensure registrar neutrality, or is competition sufficient to...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6t8dkRCVVQ&t=21s Governmental and social pressure have led YouTube to come up with algorithms to push down videos that YouTube suspects to be "fake news" or "conspiracy theories." An article in the Guardian blaming YouTube for "promoting" a video claiming that the Las Vegas shooting was a hoax shows the kind...
On October 6th a letter was circulated to the negotiators preparing for the World Trade Organization’s 11th Ministerial meeting (MC11), which will be held December 10-13, 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The letter purports to speak for all of “global civil society,” and singles out for attack the prospect of...
“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.”