March 28, 2022 The EC Digital Markets Act’s Misguided Moves The European Union’s Digital Markets Act is repeating all the mistakes made by telecom regulators 30-40 years ago in their attempt to promote competition by mandating interconnection and interoperability. They have decided to require certain forms of technical compatibility with...
March 8, 2022 The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put global interconnection to the test as never before. Every media outlet is now talking about “Splinternet.” The ruptures extend beyond the internet and web to include many forms of cooperation and trade, especially in financial systems. This Narrative briefly comments...
Ukraine’s representative to ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to remove Russian-administered top level domains (.RU, .SU and .рф) from the DNS root zone. In a separate letter, Ukraine’s representative also asked RIPE NCC to withdraw the...
We are aghast at the suffering and destruction caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. A wide-ranging debate is occurring about how the world should respond, short of direct military conflict. There is a danger that in our moral revulsion at Russian actions that we can damage a number of rule-based...
February 22, 2022 EARN IT Act moves forward The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a new version of the highly controversial Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (EARN IT Act). First introduced in March 2020, EARN IT Act pares back the immunity protections under Section 230 of...
The Metaverse will be territorialized Metaverses are being promoted as a virtual reality universe where users can interact and feel present “no matter how far apart…” Well, some users, anyway. The technology in VR headsets seems to be so advanced that it’s use is restricted by those on various USG...
A February 1 speech by India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, outlined some aspirational goals for the Indian Digital economy. Two announcements that stood out were the launch of Digital Rupee, India’s version of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC); and taxation of virtual digital assets. India will now tax income...
Europe’s industrial policy for recursive DNS The European Commission’s 2020 Data Strategy is intended “to make the EU a leader in a data-driven society [by] creating a single market for data.” As part of its misguided “digital sovereignty” effort, the plan budgeted an initial 14 million Euro for a recursive...
Representatives of the Biden administration are now saying that its “Alliance for the Future of the Internet” will be launched "in coming weeks.” Despite our earlier article indicating that the initiative might have some promise, the more we’ve heard, the more pessimistic we are about it. The Alliance has three...
1 January, 2022 Happy New Year! To start off 2022 we look back - and forward - at the granddaddy of Internet governance issues, domain names. TLDs go Hippety Hop ICANN is embroiled in a controversy about approving the transfer of a TLD (.HIPHOP) from its original owner (Uni Registry...
“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.”
