A few days ago, ICANN announced that it had renewed Public Interest Registry’s (PIR) contract to run the .ORG top level domain. As an .ORG registrant, we are generally satisfied with PIR’s operation of the domain. Equally important, we approve of its use of .ORG revenues to support the IETF...
The UN High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation was convened a year ago to issue a report on the concept of “digital cooperation.” The panel includes some members from business, civil society, and government stakeholder groups. The well-known names include Vint Cerf, Melinda Gates from Microsoft, former ICANN CEO Fadi...
The new strategic concept “persistent engagement” is here, and it doesn’t mean what you think it means. Notionally, this strategy suggests that the United States will consistently confront its adversaries in cyberspace rather than wait for them to attack US networks. The 2018 Cyber Strategy employs the concept of “defending...
Content moderation online is a hot topic especially after the Christchurch Call, a New Zealand-France joint initiative to eradicate terrorist, violent extremist content online. At RightsCon this year, IGP is going to discuss the Christchurch Call and content moderation online during two sessions. Both sessions will be held on Wednesday...
ICANN's Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC) has published a new proposed governance model for the DNS Root Server System. Root servers are critical parts of the domain name system. While Public Technical Identifiers, which used to be known as the IANA, defines the contents of the root zone file,...
Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Public Policy teamed up with the Aspen Institute in Washington to organize an informative discussion of cyber attack deterrence and attribution. The panel included Milton Mueller, the director of the Internet Governance Project, and the current and former directors of the U.S. government’s Cyber...
In December 2018, a bill on the "stable operation" of the Russian segment of the Internet was introduced and got the title “Sovereign Runet" in mass media and among the public. It was adopted after 5 months later, despite doubts about the technical feasibility of its implementation. The law is very ambitious in its intent to simultaneously control...
For the past few days, we have been working with other civil society groups on the Christchurch Call process. The Christchurch Call involves a summit between the big social media platforms and a number of governments held in Paris May 15, as part of a reaction to the terrorist attack...
On 15 March 2019, an anti-Muslim terrorist attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 and injuring 49. Social media was immediately drawn into the incident as the gunman briefly broadcast the first attack via Facebook Live. Facebook, working with the New Zealand police, took down the footage and...
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is showing that it can be intimidated by governments. Such capture can only lead to more politicization of the domain name system and encourage more geopolitical tension over Internet governance. It is never the multistakeholder process that creates such problems, it...
“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.”
