Amid Covid concerns, IGF meets in Poland As of this moment, the UN Internet Governance Forum will still hold a hybrid meeting in Katowice, Poland. The hosts made an announcement affirming that "it goes ahead with the physical meeting as planned as it has taken all necessary precautions to make...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Biden didn’t “revoke” the TikTok ban President Biden issued an executive order June 9 on “Protecting Americans’ Sensitive Data from Foreign Adversaries.” The media widely reported it as “rescinding” or “revoking” two Trump executive orders that banned new downloads of WeChat and TikTok. But that framing is wildly inaccurate. First,...
Ransomware fuels talk of Bitcoin ban, Russia and the US clash over YouTube, WhatsApp backtracks on enforcing its new privacy policy, and IGP presents at the PLSC for the first time. Bitcoin and Ransomware Successful, highly disruptive ransomware attacks are prompting calls to ban Bitcoin or find ways to crack...
This week we cover some of Biden's Cybersecurity Order and a few 5G related developments. Biden’s Cybersecurity EO: Encrypted data at rest for me, why not thee? On the heels of the Colonial Pipeline, Microsoft Exchange Server, and SolarWinds incidents, the White House has issued a new Executive Order that...
China fines Ali Baba for competing vigorously; platform governance becomes a thing; reports of a digital currency war are greatly exaggerated; NSA’s “we need visibility” thesis is contested. From China, with love China’s State Administration for Market Regulation has fined Ali Baba 18.228 billion yuan (about 2.79 billion U.S. dollars)...
“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.”
