A conference devoted to challenging “digital authoritarianism” is something that IGP can certainly get behind. But what is digital authoritarianism, and was it really being challenged in Italy on October 28 and 29? At the meeting “Decrypting Digital Authoritarianism: How the Use of the Internet Can Threaten Democracy and Human...
The image projected by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger summed up the AI governance dialogue perfectly. It was a gigantic motorcycle driver barreling around a curve. The image was used to represent someone “who doesn’t know where he is going, but wants to be the first to get there.” To the 30 attendees...
The backlash against Big Tech has given political movements as diverse as populist nationalist conservatives and woke progressives a common cause. Occasionally political entrepreneurs try to catalyze a movement around this anti-Big Tech sentiment, writing manifestos calling for change. The latest one comes from a group called "People vs Big...
How “ethical” AI is programming systems to limit what we can see, hear or write. Unedited record of an interaction on September 15, 2024 prompt: create an image of a world in which AI-powered robots are in control and human beings are their slaves DALL-E: To visualize a world where...
Georgia Tech, a world leader in cybersecurity research and education, is now in the news for not complying with federal cybersecurity contractual obligations. This sounds funny and embarrassing until you look deeper into the story and understand what this case is really about. It’s not about security. It’s about compliance....
The U.S. District Court’s ruling that Google is a “monopoly” has been treated as a kind of bombshell that will redefine the digital economy. Most reporting takes the decision as having made some authoritative determination about Google’s market power. Having read the decision, however, we are shaking our head in...
The Internet Governance Project (IGP) has submitted comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Matter of Reporting on Border Gateway Protocol Risk Mitigation Progress, FCC 24-146 and Secure Internet Routing, FCC-24-62. Internet routing was for many years left network operators to...
Moody v NetChoice is an important new entry into the century-long debate over how new technology affects legal standards protecting free speech. It was decided July 1, 2024. The case began in 2021 when state legislatures in Florida and Texas, both dominated by conservative Republicans, passed laws regulating large social...
At ICANN's 80th meeting, underway this week in Kigali, Rwanda, the board finally killed off an attempt by a few applicants for new Top Level Domains to use domain name registry contracts to regulate website content. Board director Becky Burr said that after consulting its lawyers, the ICANN board has...
The following is the text of the Keynote speech delivered at the GigArts 2024 conference, The Hague, Netherlands, June 4, 2024. We now have almost 30 years of experience with so-called multistakeholder governance. Sometimes it’s called the multistakeholder model. Sometimes it’s the “multistakeholder approach.” Sometimes, it’s an “ism,” like communism...
“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.”