For the past few days, we have been working with other civil society groups on the Christchurch Call process. The Christchurch Call involves a summit between the big social media platforms and a number of governments held in Paris May 15, as part of a reaction to the terrorist attack...
On 15 March 2019, an anti-Muslim terrorist attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 and injuring 49. Social media was immediately drawn into the incident as the gunman briefly broadcast the first attack via Facebook Live. Facebook, working with the New Zealand police, took down the footage and...
DPI system to filter traffic is uncovered At the end of 2018, Russian legislators introduced the bill that got the “sovereign RUnet” title because of its attempt to insulate the Russian segment of the Internet from external threats. Among other provisions, the bill requires all Russian network operators to install...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s call for Internet regulation may be a turning point in Internet governance. In a blog post called “Four Ideas to Regulate the Internet,” the Facebook chief holds up a white flag of surrender regarding self-regulation of its own platform. It wants governments to come in to take over the...
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...
Should domain name registrars have the right to cancel a domain because they don’t like the content of the website it supports? How many registrars’ terms of service contracts give them this right and how many don’t? Should ICANN’s Registrar Accreditation Agreement ensure registrar neutrality, or is competition sufficient to...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6t8dkRCVVQ&t=21s Governmental and social pressure have led YouTube to come up with algorithms to push down videos that YouTube suspects to be "fake news" or "conspiracy theories." An article in the Guardian blaming YouTube for "promoting" a video claiming that the Las Vegas shooting was a hoax shows the kind...
Spain is undergoing a traumatic crackdown on freedom of expression, as part of a larger political convulsion over the Catalan province’s attempt to hold a binding referendum on independence. As one resident tweeted: Webs R closed or blocked. Media are summoned not 2 "inform" about referendum. Anybody expressing support [for...
Recently, the Internet Association, a trade group for online service providers, introduced a praiseworthy idea into the NAFTA re-negotiation. It asked for the revised trade agreement to include a principle that online platform providers should be immunized from liability for the content that some of their users post. As the...
The Internet governance implications of Charlottesville are becoming clearer. When a white supremacist protest resulted in the murder of Helen Heyer, the Daily Stormer published repugnant, hate-filled content about her on its website. This provoked numerous Internet service providers (domain name registrars, DNS proxy services, a DDoS mitigation service and...
“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.”
