November 1, 2021 Facebook tries to change the subject After becoming the scapegoat of choice for all of society’s ills, from the “death of democracy” to teenage girls’ social comparisons to amplifying hate speech, Mark Zuckerberg announced a change to the company’s name and a shift in its focus. While...
October 15, 2021 Free expression advocates win Nobel Peace Prize The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia. Announcing the award, The Nobel Committee clarified that the two working reporters were chosen for the award because they represent “a...
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has issued a report "The Open Internet on the Brink: Recommendations for a Future Model." The report claims to attempt to advance liberal values. And its diagnosis of Internet problems is in line with those values. "Restrictions on internet freedoms are increasing globally,...
Last week Wall Street Journal reporters, relying on an internal whistleblower, released information showing that Facebook has created some exemptions from its own content moderation processes. “Millions of VIP users,” the article claims, are “shielded from the platform’s normal enforcement process.” According to the article. “the company’s automated systems [often]...
September 16, 2021 App Stores’ Market Power Challenged Legal and regulatory actions are beginning to target the economic leverage of Apple’s and Google’s mobile app stores, but the cases make it clear that the conflict is primarily among competing suppliers rather than between the platforms and their users. The two...
AFRINIC is the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Africa: a nonprofit, nongovernmental Internet governance organization. Like RIPE, ARIN, APNIC and LACNIC, it operates a registry for unique internet protocol (IP) numbers that serve as network addresses. The registry records which organizations hold rights to which IP address blocks on that...
Crisis at AFRINIC The African Network Information Centre (Afrinic), the African regional Internet registry (RIR) for IP addresses, has had its bank accounts frozen by court order, crippling its operations. The Supreme Court of Mauritius ordered the RIR’s $50 million account frozen as a result of its contractual dispute with...
A forthcoming research paper from IGP examines the rise of trade barriers between the U.S. and China in the digital economy. (We presented a first draft of the research at our conference on Comparative Analysis of Platform Governance in the U.S. and China. (A recording is available.) Our analysis uncovered...
IGP at UN Internet Governance Forum The UN Internet Governance Forum announced its draft schedule. The event will be held December 6 - 10; it is planned as a face to face meeting in Katowice, Poland, but, due to the evolving Covid situation, many of the pre-events will be virtual...
July 16, 2021 US, EU converge on global taxation In a move with major implications for global internet governance, the European Commission “put on hold” its work on a digital services tax (DST) until October. The announcement came after the G20 nations came to a loose agreement to adhere to...
“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.”
