The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) invites you to participate in its third scholarly workshop to be held in Montreal (QC), Canada, on 30-31 May 2010. This workshop is organized in cooperation with the Canadian Communication Association and Media@McGill, during the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS) 2010 Congress week in Montreal. Building on the success of its first two editions, respectively in Paris, France in June 2008 and in Brussels, Belgium in May 2009, the purpose of this third GigaNet workshop is twofold.
Bill centralizes coordination of USG reps in cybersecurity standards development
H.R. 4061, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009, passed the House of Representatives February 4, 2010. The bill requires the Director of NIST “to ensure coordination of United States Government representation in the international development of technical standards related to cybersecurity.” NIST and DoD have long been active, directly or indirectly, in development of Internet standards. If this advances, it will be interesting to see if/how it impacts the IETF process.
CFP: 38th Research Conference on Communication, Information, and Internet Policy (TPRC)
TPRC is now soliciting abstracts of papers, panel proposals, and student papers for presentation at the 2010 conference. Proposals should be based on current theoretical or empirical research relevant to communication and information policy, and may be from any disciplinary perspective. TPRC seeks submissions of disciplinary, comparative, multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary...
CFP: 21st European Regional ITS Conference
The International Telecommunications Society has published a call for paper and panel sessions for it's Regional European ITS Conference, to be held in Copenhagen from September 13-15, 2010.The local organizer is Center for Communication, Media and Information Technologies (CMI), which is a research and teaching unit at Aalborg University in...
Could Google-China smackdown lead to WTO complaint?
Citing instances of espionage and surveillance of its customers, Google announced in coordinated fashion yesterday that they are no longer willing to continue censoring results on Google.cn, and threatened that it might withdraw operations from China entirely. Some are wondering if Google would actually walk away from the China market. Frankly, China routinely leverages the size of its market and counts on the fact that no business dares to give up a market of that size. But when businesses are willing to play rough and threaten exit they are more likely to get positive results than when they kow-tow. That being said, you don't make the move Google did without a plan. And that makes me think we might be witnessing the precursor to a major development in the application of trade principles to Internet governance.
The Top 10 of 2009
Many thanks to our readers, both old and new, from civil society, industry and governments all over the world. Interest in IGP's work continues to grow dramatically, visits were up over 70% in 2009. Reflecting the growth of the Internet and those impacted by its governance, two-thirds of IGP's visitors come from outside the United States (although Washington DC is definitely following us). The greatest growth is among the BRICs, with visits from China up over 8000%. Here's to another year of in-depth coverage and analysis of global Internet governance developments! Keep reading to take a look at the top blog posts, papers downloads and visitors by country.
Nonstandard standards action at ICANN
This week's post on DNSSEC requirements for new gTLDs piqued my curiosity – what exactly are the differences between the registry agreements ICANN has executed to date and the proposed registry agreement in the DAGv3 with respect to technical standards requirements? A quick review of the documents reveals a stark difference.
ITU on root signing and ccTLDs
The ITU, in its comments submitted to the UN Secretary-General for a report to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on “Enhanced cooperation on public policy issues pertaining to the Internet,” states that concerning management of critical Internet resources, specifically domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC) root signing authority:
The root signing authority is of critical importance to the security, stability and reliability of the Internet. The role and functions related to policies governing the harmonized and global coordination of such services for country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) must be assumed by a relevant intergovernmental body with the mandate from Governments and the experience in providing such services so that concerns and interests of sovereign States can be taken into account.
DNSSEC requirement for new gTLDs raises concern outside US
As noted by previously by IGP, it is not entirely clear where requirements for DNSSEC in the Draft Applicant Guidebook emerged from within the ongoing consultation. Public comments to date from several organizations are mostly negative, including China Organizational Name Admininstration Center (CONAC), Uninet Bulgaria, Domain the Net (Israel), DotAfrica, Regtime (Russia), and CORE (Switzerland). They cite a variety of concerns, ranging from potential conflicts with deploying IDNs, to conflicts with local and national laws, to concerns about data escrowing, and question whether it is appropriate for all registries. In general, they argue that requiring DNSSEC could prevent new gTLDs.
Emerging Threats to Internet Security: Incentives, Externalities and Policy Implications
The Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management has published a new article by IGP's Michel van Eeten and Johnannes Bauer, Emerging Threats to Internet Security: Incentives, Externalities and Policy Implications. The paper, based in part on numerous interviews conducted with network operators, is particularly useful for cutting through the often analytically empty cybersecurity dialogue. Using a marginal security (law enforcement) vs. precluded-event security (national security) framework, the authors identify why the issue of botnets leads to such controversy when it comes to policy responses.
