The contradiction between state sovereignty and cyberspace is the fundamental "Internet governance" issue of our times. Four years ago, I published a scholarly manifesto "Against sovereignty in cyberspace"in the International Studies Review. It was a systematically reasoned explanation of why cyberspace is a global commons analogous to the high seas,...
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the annual program of issue-oriented interactions hosted by the United Nations, has formed a stable and solidaristic community. IGF is still the most diverse and relatively open, bottom-up vehicle for converging a global community focused on digital policy issues – and it has become clear...
IGP is thrilled to announce its workshop (WS 257) at the 2024 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Riyadh: Emerging Norms for Digital Public Infrastructure: Tensions Between Globalization & Protectionism. Scheduled for December 17, Time: 9:30 am (local Riyadh time) 12 noon (Indian Standard Time). This session organized by IGP's Regional Director Jyoti...
A CircleID post by Alexander Klimburg takes aim at my article, "The Power to Govern Ourselves," delivered at the Gig-Arts conference in June. That speech, avaiable here on the blog, argued that "Multistakeholder does not describe a governance model. It never has. It was always a compromised Public Relations concept,"...
The backlash against Big Tech has given political movements as diverse as populist nationalist conservatives and woke progressives a common cause. Occasionally political entrepreneurs try to catalyze a movement around this anti-Big Tech sentiment, writing manifestos calling for change. The latest one comes from a group called "People vs Big...
We’ve learned a lot in the last ten days about the software update from Crowdstrike that crashed approximately 8.5 million Windows-based PCs. In retrospect, 8.5 million is a fairly small portion of the global Windows environment, 7 or 8% (according to MSFT less than 1% of Windows machines were impacted),...
The Internet Governance Project (IGP) has submitted comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Matter of Reporting on Border Gateway Protocol Risk Mitigation Progress, FCC 24-146 and Secure Internet Routing, FCC-24-62. Internet routing was for many years left network operators to...
The following is the text of the Keynote speech delivered at the GigArts 2024 conference, The Hague, Netherlands, June 4, 2024. We now have almost 30 years of experience with so-called multistakeholder governance. Sometimes it’s called the multistakeholder model. Sometimes it’s the “multistakeholder approach.” Sometimes, it’s an “ism,” like communism...
The NETMundial 10th anniversary event was held April 23 and 24 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. As we wrote earlier, “Netmundial was a transformative moment in global internet governance. Inspired by the Snowden revelations, and amplified by the U.S. government’s announcement that it would relinquish its control of ICANN and the DNS root,”...
As the global community grapples with various mis/disinformation laws, regulatory frameworks, community standards, and other governance efforts put forward by states, social media companies, and academia, the pivotal role of traditional media and journalists often slips under the radar. The article discusses information integrity efforts in East Asia, including digital...
Declaring Independence in Cyberspace tells the story of the struggle between governments and the global Internet community over control of the Internet registries (IANA). It offers new insights into a pressing question with profound implications: is state sovereignty the immutable foundation of global governance, or can new technological capabilities change the model?
“This is a book that needed to be written, and no one is better placed to write it than Milton Mueller. This full, rigorous account provides researchers and policymakers with a precious resource on global internet governance.”
