The expedited policy development group that is trying to reform ICANN’s Whois system post-GDPR met face to face in ICANN's Los Angeles headquarters September 24 – 26. The same old conflicts of interest underlying Whois policy for the last 18 years resurfaced repeatedly, but this time important progress was made....
“Keep right on lying to me. That's what I want you to do.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms Most liberal internationalists, particularly in the United States, are thoroughly committed to the idea that the development of cyber norms is the key to resolving inter-state conflicts in cyberspace. This is the...
Ever since ICANN’s creation, there has been a clash between the protection of personal data and its contractually-required Whois service. Under ICANN contracts, registrars were required to publish sensitive information about domain name registrants. The email addresses, names and other contact information of domain holders was available to anyone in...
ICANN* has a problem. One could even call it a disease - an organizational version of Sydenham’s chorea. What are the symptoms? This: ICANN has in place elaborate, well-defined, and reasonably balanced representational mechanisms for making policies. But every time it has an important decision to make, ICANN tries to...
The Internet Governance Project has prepared a draft response to a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) issued by the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on "International Internet Policy Priorities." We were happy to see that the NOI asked specifically about challenges to free expression and the free flow of...
As we anticipated, ICANN the organization, under the pressure of powerful interest groups, decided to come up with its own model for access to personal information of domain name registrants data. It is a draft for "discussion." But there is a timeline as well: Phase 1: Community discussion and consultations on...
On May 24-25, 2018, the Internet Governance Project (IGP) at Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy held its 4th Annual Workshop in Atlanta. This year’s workshop theme was “Digital Free Trade or Cyber Nationalism? Setting the Course for a 21st Century Digital Trade Policy.” The workshop explored the scientific and...
The collision between ICANN’s Whois regime and the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took a decisive turn May 25, 2018, when ICANN filed injunction proceedings against EPAG, a German registrar affiliated with Tucows. EPAG had notified ICANN that as of May 25 it would no longer collect administrative and technical...
At the International Studies Association convention in San Francisco, at an especially interesting panel on cybersecurity, we were privileged to hear excerpts from a forthcoming book by Michael Warner, Historian for the United States Cyber Command, and John Childress. Warner examined the last 20 years of U.S. Russia relationships in...
What's going on in China? I was invited there for a series of lectures at Beijing’s Communication University of China (CUC) during the week of March 18. Thanks to Professor Xu Peixi, who organized the tour, I got a chance to meet most of the academics, researchers and policy analysts...
“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.”
