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...
Last week's refusal of civil society organizations to endorse the OECD's Principles for Internet Policy Making was powerful. It killed any pretense that the OECD's call for Internet intermediaries to “assist rights holders in enforcing their rights” has consensual support. But news coverage of that phenomenon has overlooked two other, equally important questions. First, why was this struggle even necessary? The very same battle was fought in Europe only a few years ago and the rights holders lost. Second, why didn't the business interest advisory committee (BIAC) and the Internet Technical Community Advisory Committee (ITAC) join civil society in its dissent?
The European think-tank ECIPE has released a provocative new report, Digital Authoritarianism: Human Rights, Geopolitics and Commerce, that explores the ties between Internet censorship and human rights, commerce, national security and foreign relations. Looking at China in particular, it suggests generally that countries should be taken to the WTO for...
An official “Scorecard” has been posted in advance of the Feb. 28 showdown in Brussels between the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and the ICANN Board. The “scorecard” is intended to identify the areas where GAC differs from the positions developed by ICANN's supposedly official and open policy development process. Amusingly, the so-called GAC position follows almost verbatim the text submitted as the “US position” back in January. It's clear that the US calls the shots in GAC and other governments, including the EU, make minor modifications to U.S. initiatives. But there is one interesting change. The U.S. has been publicly shamed into backing down a bit from its initial demand for an arbitrary veto over gTLD applications.
“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.”
