The Narrative: October 1, 2023

Dispatches from the evolving digital political economy Taiwan Internet Governance Forum Taiwan will hold its own Internet Governance Forum a week before the UN IGF in Kyoto, Japan, which Taiwanese will not be allowed to attend. Organized around the theme “Critical Moment: Fragmentation, Geopolitics, AI Revolution and Resilience,” the program...

UN Cybercrime negotiations: No outcome may be the best outcome

The first day of September this year marked the end of the sixth round of negotiations of the UN Ad Hoc Committee (AHC) on Cybercrime. The two weeks of debates and informal consultations concluded with applause. Despite all the efforts of the AHC chair and many delegations to bridge the...

The Technical Community and Internet Governance: A Response to the Costerton-Curran-Wilson letter

As participants in – and long-time supporters of – the governance model of ICANN and the regional Internet registries, we were puzzled by a recent blog post by three leaders of these important institutions. Sally Costerton is the interim CEO of ICANN, the organization that operates the IANA and develops...

The Narrative: Orwellian redefinitions; Refugees from the UK Online Safety Law; Indian Platform Reg; the PNIF Mandate

March 1, 2023 TikTok Ban would repeal free speech protections A House Committee is set to vote on their attempt to ban TikTok. The bill empowers the president to impose sanctions on any entity that operates a “connected software application” subject to the influence of China, but tries to skirt...

ICANN’s Accountability and Transparency: A Retrospective on the IANA Transition

Editors note: On the 5 year anniversary of the IANA transition, a group of people began collaborating on this report. It is being released in conjunction with ICANN 75 in Kuala Lumpur Keith Drazek, Verisign Jordan Carter, auDA Wolfgang Kleinwachter, Aarhus University, EuSSIG Milton Mueller, Georgia Institute of Technology Thomas...

The End of Bottom-Up: The UN IGF’s “Leadership Panel”

Are you ready to be led? The United Nations Secretary General has appointed 12 people to its controversial “leadership panel.” The group is composed of prominent people, each with loads of honorary titles, fellowships and well-placed positions within business and government. What’s missing almost entirely from this group, however, is...

ICANN, Ukraine and Leveraging Internet Identifiers

Ukraine’s representative to ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to remove Russian-administered top level domains (.RU, .SU and .рф) from the DNS root zone. In a separate letter, Ukraine’s representative also asked RIPE NCC to withdraw the...