September 16, 2021 App Stores’ Market Power Challenged Legal and regulatory actions are beginning to target the economic leverage of Apple’s and Google’s mobile app stores, but the cases make it clear that the conflict is primarily among competing suppliers rather than between the platforms and their users. The two...
The Chinese Communist Party's focus on building a governance regime for cyberspace has resulted in the rapid introduction of several new laws and regulations on data governance, cybersecurity, the digital economy, and online media content. The targeting of the digital sector with so many new restrictions, laws and regulations is...
AFRINIC is the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Africa: a nonprofit, nongovernmental Internet governance organization. Like RIPE, ARIN, APNIC and LACNIC, it operates a registry for unique internet protocol (IP) numbers that serve as network addresses. The registry records which organizations hold rights to which IP address blocks on that...
Crisis at AFRINIC The African Network Information Centre (Afrinic), the African regional Internet registry (RIR) for IP addresses, has had its bank accounts frozen by court order, crippling its operations. The Supreme Court of Mauritius ordered the RIR’s $50 million account frozen as a result of its contractual dispute with...
A forthcoming research paper from IGP examines the rise of trade barriers between the U.S. and China in the digital economy. (We presented a first draft of the research at our conference on Comparative Analysis of Platform Governance in the U.S. and China. (A recording is available.) Our analysis uncovered...
IGP at UN Internet Governance Forum The UN Internet Governance Forum announced its draft schedule. The event will be held December 6 - 10; it is planned as a face to face meeting in Katowice, Poland, but, due to the evolving Covid situation, many of the pre-events will be virtual...
July 16, 2021 US, EU converge on global taxation In a move with major implications for global internet governance, the European Commission “put on hold” its work on a digital services tax (DST) until October. The announcement came after the G20 nations came to a loose agreement to adhere to...
IGP’s conference on “Comparative Analysis of Platform Governance in the U.S. and China” brought together 21 papers and 30 scholars and policy influencers for three days of intensive (bilingual) discussion. Digital platforms and the data they generate are now the focus of business, government and civil society all over the...
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...
“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.”
