November 1, 2021 Facebook tries to change the subject After becoming the scapegoat of choice for all of society’s ills, from the “death of democracy” to teenage girls’ social comparisons to amplifying hate speech, Mark Zuckerberg announced a change to the company’s name and a shift in its focus. While...
At this point, it’s certainly not news that the Kremlin has been seeking to exert full control over what it regards as its national, Russian-only information space (информационном пространстве). For almost a decade – that is, since Putin returned to office for his third presidential term in 2012 – the...
October 15, 2021 Free expression advocates win Nobel Peace Prize The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia. Announcing the award, The Nobel Committee clarified that the two working reporters were chosen for the award because they represent “a...
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has issued a report "The Open Internet on the Brink: Recommendations for a Future Model." The report claims to attempt to advance liberal values. And its diagnosis of Internet problems is in line with those values. "Restrictions on internet freedoms are increasing globally,...
Last week Wall Street Journal reporters, relying on an internal whistleblower, released information showing that Facebook has created some exemptions from its own content moderation processes. “Millions of VIP users,” the article claims, are “shielded from the platform’s normal enforcement process.” According to the article. “the company’s automated systems [often]...
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...
“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.”
