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...
The European Commission (EC) has finally weighed in on the recommendations of ICANN's Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP). The EPDP is reforming WHOIS to make it consistent with GDPR and privacy rights. The EC comments, we are happy to report, are well aligned with the positions of privacy advocates. This...
DPI system to filter traffic is uncovered At the end of 2018, Russian legislators introduced the bill that got the “sovereign RUnet” title because of its attempt to insulate the Russian segment of the Internet from external threats. Among other provisions, the bill requires all Russian network operators to install...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s call for Internet regulation may be a turning point in Internet governance. In a blog post called “Four Ideas to Regulate the Internet,” the Facebook chief holds up a white flag of surrender regarding self-regulation of its own platform. It wants governments to come in to take over the...
This year's Canadian IGF was quite nostalgic. Its approach was similar to some of the past United Nations Internet Governance Forum. A couple of years ago at the UN Internet Governance Forum, the narrative that shaped the human rights discussions was more about our rights on the Internet than the...
March 4 was a landmark day in the history of Whois. The final report of ICANN’s Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP), setting out a new, more or less privacy-compliant Whois policy, was approved by the GNSO Council, ICANN’s policy development organ for domain names. The policy recommendations in that report,...
Today the Internet Governance Project published a new report indicating that the transition to a new Internet standard may get stuck somewhere between the old and the new. The data communications protocol supporting the Internet (IPv4) is almost 40 years old, and its 32-bit address space is too small for...
The ICANN policy process for bringing Whois into compliance with privacy law has just about reached the end of its first phase (we will report more on that when it releases the final report). The next phase will focus on what is sometimes called "access" but is more accurately described...
Not a day goes by without hearing that Russia wants to nationalize the Internet, fragment the Internet or block its citizens' access to the global Internet. Just yesterday, media sources announced that Russia will be testing its Internet shut down capabilities, which is a rather inaccurate account of Russia’s move...
In November 2018, US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added two Iranians to its sanctions list (known as the specially designated nationals), over a ransomware attack and blocked their access to their Bitcoin wallets. Specially designated nationals is a list of organizations and individuals with whom...
“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.”
