The Narrative: October 1, 2023

Dispatches from the evolving digital political economy Taiwan Internet Governance Forum Taiwan will hold its own Internet Governance Forum a week before the UN IGF in Kyoto, Japan, which Taiwanese will not be allowed to attend. Organized around the theme “Critical Moment: Fragmentation, Geopolitics, AI Revolution and Resilience,” the program...

The Narrative: September 15, 2023

Reports on the evolving digital political economy A Victory for Free Speech on Social Media A federal appeals court has upheld a finding that U.S. federal officials violated the First Amendment by coercing or strongly encouraging social-media platforms to censor content. The court also narrowed the scope and targets of...

The Narrative: September 1, 2023

Reports on the evolving digital political economy Human Authorship and AI Images A lot of bad policy about AI is being made because people are overstating its risks. These overstatements usually derive from overestimating the autonomous nature of the AI. Now we are getting some bad law for the same...

The Technical Community and Internet Governance: A Response to the Costerton-Curran-Wilson letter

As participants in – and long-time supporters of – the governance model of ICANN and the regional Internet registries, we were puzzled by a recent blog post by three leaders of these important institutions. Sally Costerton is the interim CEO of ICANN, the organization that operates the IANA and develops...

The Narrative: August 15, 2023

Reports on the evolving digital political economy Oral arguments in Missouri v Biden appeal On August 10 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit listened to oral arguments related to an injunction that restricts the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms to request suppression of constitutionally...

US Restricts Capital Flows to China…Sort of

A new Presidential Executive Order authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to regulate U.S. investments in “countries of concern” (a nice euphemism that avoids calling China an "adversary"). The E.O. identifies three categories of “national security technologies” covered by the program: semiconductors and microelectronics; quantum information technologies; and artificial intelligence....

The Narrative: July 15, 2023

“Censorship” and Social Media A U.S. District Court has issued a landmark ruling that would block the federal government from encouraging or influencing the suppression of content by social media companies. Citing the First Amendment, the court issued a sweeping injunction that would stop agencies such as the White House,...

The Basic Fallacy Underlying the AI Panic

For the past two months, we've seen a sudden burst of panic about the social implications of Artificial Intelligence. One cannot help but note, with a mix of resignation and amusement, that the loudest noises are coming from computer scientists involved in AI. To some people, these sources lend an...