A week after the close of our conference comparing platform governance in the US and China, the Chinese government took another strong action to subordinate one of its major private platform companies. This time it was Didi Chuxing, China’s dominant ride-hailing platform. The government said it was conducting a “cybersecurity...
June 30, 2021 The USG goes after the platforms The attitudinal backlash against digital platforms (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter) has quickly been translated into public policy. The Biden Administration has appointed Lina Kahn, an Ivy League law professor whose work on antitrust has been praised and promoted by...
Biden didn’t “revoke” the TikTok ban President Biden issued an executive order June 9 on “Protecting Americans’ Sensitive Data from Foreign Adversaries.” The media widely reported it as “rescinding” or “revoking” two Trump executive orders that banned new downloads of WeChat and TikTok. But that framing is wildly inaccurate. First,...
Ransomware fuels talk of Bitcoin ban, Russia and the US clash over YouTube, WhatsApp backtracks on enforcing its new privacy policy, and IGP presents at the PLSC for the first time. Bitcoin and Ransomware Successful, highly disruptive ransomware attacks are prompting calls to ban Bitcoin or find ways to crack...
The program is set for IGPs’ annual workshop, “Comparative Analysis of Platform Governance in the US and China.” Registration for the free event is open and available via Eventbrite. The virtual conference, to be held June 23 - 25, 2021, is an ambitious attempt to foster scholarly exchanges between...
This week we cover some of Biden's Cybersecurity Order and a few 5G related developments. Biden’s Cybersecurity EO: Encrypted data at rest for me, why not thee? On the heels of the Colonial Pipeline, Microsoft Exchange Server, and SolarWinds incidents, the White House has issued a new Executive Order that...
It was Artificial Intelligence week. True to form, Europe released plans to regulate AI while the United States fretted about winning an imaginary AI race with China. Europe’s Artificial Intelligence Act “With these landmark rules, the European Commission is spearheading the development of new global norms to make sure A.I....
Ever since the GDPR thwacked it on the side of its head, ICANN has been trying to bring its registry of domain names into compliance with basic privacy principles. The good news is that ICANN has largely succeeded in doing that. Go to this URL, enter our domain name, internetgovernance.org,...
This is the edited text of a keynote speech given at the 2nd #ICANN-APAC-TWNIC Engagement Forum, a conference held in Tapei and virtually April 15, 2021. A video of the keynote can be viewed here. Social media Social media and the internet expand our capacity for communication and social interaction....
China fines Ali Baba for competing vigorously; platform governance becomes a thing; reports of a digital currency war are greatly exaggerated; NSA’s “we need visibility” thesis is contested. From China, with love China’s State Administration for Market Regulation has fined Ali Baba 18.228 billion yuan (about 2.79 billion U.S. dollars)...
“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.”
