Wednesday's announcement by the Obama administration, that former Washington state governor Gary Locke has been nominated as the next Secretary of Commerce could be a good sign for Internet governance, and the continued globalization of the ICANN regime. The Chinese-American Locke brings key political capital and experience to the table. He is well respected within and has access to the most senior levels of the Chinese government. And his firm, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, has deep expertise in Internet policy, having represented companies in China and on ICANN issues related to free expression. But, if confirmed, he will have his work cut out for him.
2nd International Workshop on Global Internet Governance: An Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction
The a href=”http://giganet.igloogroups.org/”>Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) invites you to participate in a scholarly workshop to be held in Brussels, Belgium, on 11 May 2009. This full day workshop is organized in cooperation with three thematic sections of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA): International and Intercultural Communication (IIC), Communication and Democracy (CD), Communication, Law and Policy (CLP) sections. Building on the success of its first edition in Paris, France, in June 2008, the purpose of this workshop is the presentation and discussion of work-in-progress in Internet Governance-related research with the aim to identify emerging research themes and design a research agenda.
“Focus on the Internet” Seminar: The role of national governments in Internet governance
The March 2009 "Focus on Internet" seminar will examine the role of national governments in Internet governance. It will be held at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Bezuidenhoutseweg 30, The Hague, Room 0.32 on March 12, from 16:00-18:00 CET. The Internet is known to be transnational in its content,...
Revenge of the .xxx domain?
In what may prove to be the biggest sleeper Internet governance issue of the year, ICM Registry has publicly posted its filings for the Independent Review Panel that will decide whether ICANN acted improperly in rejecting its application for a .xxx domain. ICM Registry participated in ICANN's 2004 round of “sponsored” top level domain additions. Its application to run a top level domain reserved for adult content provoked a global controversy when the Bush Administration, responding to a mass mobilization from its base of religious conservative groups, pressured ICANN to reverse its June 1, 2005 vote that the .xxx domain met its eligibility criteria. ICANN's Board eventually killed the application in March of 2007.
This is the first usage of ICANN's Independent Review Process. The ruling in this case will have major implications for ICANN's accountability and the continuing controversy over the role of the U.S. government in ICANN's affairs.
SOTN: Private sector borrows IGP's ideas; govts apparently balk at splitting ICANN
With civil society unfortunately not invited to participate in Wednesday's State of the Net panel on the “Future of ICANN and Internet Governance,” it was heartening to see that IGP's work infiltrated the discussion anyway.
The Washington-insider panel centered on what should be done when the USG-ICANN Joint Project Agreement (JPA) expires in September 2009. Unfortunately, no audio or transcript of the event was made available. Based on other accounts the usual positions were laid out for the audience. NetChoice's industry advocate Steve DelBianco pleaded for trademark interests and religiously played the “takeover by other governments” fear card, Brazilian government official Everton Lucero expressed the mantra of other powerful governments that the U.S. has “inappropriate control of ICANN and the DNS,” and ICANN's Paul Levins maintained that ICANN was already an “independent organization” and sought to dispel fears of ICANN gone wild in a post-JPA world.
Only when DelBianco suggested that ICANN's responsibilities could be split in two – with ICANN continuing to regulate gTLDs and some other organization overseeing ccTLDs – did things become revealing.
IGF Workshop Report: “The Future of ICANN: After the JPA, What?”
ICANN, which coordinates and sets policy for the global domain name system (DNS) and IP addressing, is linked to the US Government through a Joint Project Agreement (JPA) that expires in September 2009. The JPA and its renewal process provides what, during WSIS, became known as “political oversight” over ICANN. The US government says that it is committed to “completing the transition” to private sector coordination of the DNS, which implies an expiration of the JPA. During the 2008 mid-term review, ICANN made it clear that it also strongly supports an end to the JPA. ICANN's call was supported by some stakeholders. Other parties, however, expressed concerns about its accountability without some kind of governmental oversight.
This workshop, held on Wednesday December 4, 2008 at the Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India, was designed to provide a careful and balanced exploration of whether ICANN is ready to be free of US government oversight, and if so what kind of external oversight – if any – should replace it.
IGF 2008: Epilogue
While the uncertainty surrounding attendance at this year’s IGF was mostly unfounded (there were more than 1200 attendees despite the Mumbai attack, an amount comparable with previous years IGFs), the usual doubts surfaced about what the Forum is accomplishing. Nonetheless, it seems that more participants are pushing the Forum to engage in substantive policy debate, and to identify a process for producing tangible outputs.
Fellowship Opportunity: Yale Information Society Project Fellowships for 2009-2010
The Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School is seeking applicants for 2009-2010 postdoctoral fellowships. The ISP resident fellowships are designed for recent graduates of law or Ph.D. programs who are interested in careers in teaching and public service in any of the following areas: law and innovation; Internet...
New Publication: Regional Address Registries, Governance and Internet Freedom
Leading up to IGF 2008 in Hyderabad the IGP is releasing a second publication, Regional Address Registries, Governance and Internet Freedom. This paper looks at the Regional Internet Address Registries (RIRs), which are private, nonprofit and transnational governance entities that evolved organically with the growth of the Internet to manage...
IGP files comments with NTIA on DNSSEC at the root
IGP submitted comments yesterday to the Department of Commerce regarding the deployment of DNSSEC at the root zone. The Notice of Inquiry raised numerous questions, and put forth six proposed process flows, including ones submitted by ICANN and VeriSign. Just over 35 comments had been submitted by last night, with comments filed by organizations and individuals from the technical community, registries, government contractors involved with DNSSEC deployment, and others. We'll have more analysis on the comments filed later, but my first impression after quickly scanning them is that while there is general agreement that signing the root would obviously be helpful for DNSSEC deployment, it should not be done in haste for a variety of reasons. And numerous parties raised the point that it is critical that any process flow implemented serve the global Internet community, otherwise the presumed benefits of signing will be for naught.
Our comments argued that the act of signing the DNS root raises political and economic issues as well as technical ones.
