In a victory for fairness and rule-based Internet governance, an independent review panel (IRP) has decided that ICANN was wrong to deny retailing giant Amazon, Inc. the top level domain AMAZON. Key elements of the decision were unanimous, particularly the conclusion that the Board “cannot accept GAC consensus advice as...
ICANN is a California nonprofit headquartered in the United States. ICANN’s accountability reforms included a discussion of how U.S. jurisdiction affects ICANN’s accountability and domain name users. Not satisfied with ending U.S. control over the DNS root, a few stakeholders wanted to get ICANN out of the U.S. altogether. It...
Will the Internet fragment? Professor Mueller gave a talk about his book "Will the Internet Fragment?" at Clemson University (his talk starts around 4:30). He says the network effects of global compatibility are powerful enough to defeat a technical fracturing of the web. The real threat comes from governments' attempts to align...
The impact of ICANN’s U.S. jurisdiction has been a subject of intense debate. Some say it doesn’t matter, some say it does. The time to provide evidence of domain name related problems caused by ICANN’s jurisdiction has arrived. If your domain names were confiscated because you live in a country...
We join the chorus of protest and outrage caused by the Trump administration’s Executive Order on immigration. In the name of protecting the country from terrorism, the Order restricted travel from 7 arbitrarily-designated countries, and has even refused entry to people with well-established legal immigrant status, such as Green Card...
One of the outstanding accountability issues at ICANN after the IANA transition is the jurisdiction of ICANN and how that affects its ability to execute its mission. As part of Work Stream 2 of the accountability reforms, an ICANN working group focuses on the issue of jurisdiction. While the accountability...
On May 11-12, 2017, the IGP's 3rd Annual Workshop convened at Georgia Tech's School of Public Policy in Atlanta. This year's topic: Who Governs, States or Stakeholders? Cybersecurity and Internet Governance Cybersecurity problems challenge existing institutions of governance. Global coordination is impeded by national boundaries, and government-industry cooperation is...
Our initial, entirely negative take on the 3rd Wuzhen summit has been upended by a remarkable article by Professor Peixi Xu of the Chinese Communication University in Beijing. The article draws a parallel between the post-transition ICANN and the 3rd Wuzhen Summit. Referring to the ICANN Hyderabad meeting and the...
Updated: Videos of workshops added below. The 2016 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is scheduled to take place at the PALCCO Centre from 6-9 December 2016 in Guadalajara, Mexico. Several partners in the IGP, which was recently reconstituted at Georgia Tech's School of Public Policy, will be there - as observers,...
China’s third annual World Internet Conference (WIC) ended on November 18, 2016. About 1,600 people attended the event, which is sometimes translated into English as the World Forum on Internet Governance. This second name makes clearer its attempt to become the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) answer to the multi-stakeholder UN...
“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.”
