Nationalist Republicans who want to retain governmental control of ICANN have based their argument on a false premise. To call it a false premise, in fact, is to be polite. It would be more accurate to call it a rhetorical ploy, what Washington calls “spin.” This “spin” is invisible to...
As we move toward the IANA transition, many observers are concerned about the relationship between an autonomous ICANN and Internet freedom. One proposal even went so far as to propose to replace NTIA oversight with an “Internet Freedom Panel” that could veto any ICANN decisions that threaten Internet freedom. That...
We've asserted before that the US government’s Internet governance policy has lost direction and become confused and self-contradictory. Yesterday the U.S. Commerce Department confirmed the diagnosis. In preparation for the upcoming ICANN meeting in Durban, South Africa, the NTIA released a bizarre statement about top level domain applications involving geographic...
The "Independent Objector" (IO) is one of those unique ICANN creations that shows just how complicated and fraught with politics the simple act of coordinating top level domain name assignments can become. The IO is a special officer mandated by ICANN to review applications for new top level domains and...
At the Toronto ICANN meeting, the Council of Europe, which participates in the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) as an observer, released a report on the relationship between freedom of expression rights and new top level domain applications. The report emphasizes the link between freedom of expression, freedom of association and...
Public interest groups involved in ICANN will gather on Friday 12 October 2012 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Canada. The event, "ICANN & Internet Governance: Security & Freedom in a Connected World," is sponsored by the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC), the voice of civil society in ICANN....
Did you know that .BABY is an evil domain name? The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia thinks so, and wants to censor it. Not just in their little kingdom but globally, by insisting that ICANN not allow it. Never mind that the applicant for .BABY is the staid Johnson & Johnson...
The UN last week passed a resolution on “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet.” The resolution reaffirms the human rights and fundamental freedoms already enshrined in existing UN instruments, and goes on to affirm that “the same rights people have offline must also be protected...
The best summary of Rebecca MacKinnon’s book Consent of the Networked is its subtitle: “The worldwide struggle for Internet freedom.” This is a comprehensive, spirited, and rich journalistic account of the way the use of the Internet and its supply industries intersect with classic civil and political rights. Importantly, it...
America's largest ISPs - AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon - have agreed to actively police their users on behalf of copyright owners. Their cartel-like agreement makes it impossible for most American Internet users to punish them by switching to less intrusive ISPs. The big five have agreed...
“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.”
