The United States is attempting to assert moral leadership again in the field of internet governance. I refer here to the "new covenant" or "new alliance for the future of the internet" that Biden administration advisor Tim Wu is developing. Wu addressed the UN Internet Governance Forum Thursday in a...
The 2021 edition of the Internet Governance Forum, which will be held in Katowice (Poland), kicks off in less than a week. For the occasion, the IGP and the Free University of Brussels have come together to organize a session titled Beyond hype: what does digital sovereignty actually mean?. As...
The UN Internet Governance Forum has been targeted for significant changes over the last 4 years, with the impetus coming from the office of the UN Secretary-General. Some of the proposed changes are well-intentioned attempts to make the IGF more relevant. But many of them are leading to increasing stratification...
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has issued a report "The Open Internet on the Brink: Recommendations for a Future Model." The report claims to attempt to advance liberal values. And its diagnosis of Internet problems is in line with those values. "Restrictions on internet freedoms are increasing globally,...
AFRINIC is the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Africa: a nonprofit, nongovernmental Internet governance organization. Like RIPE, ARIN, APNIC and LACNIC, it operates a registry for unique internet protocol (IP) numbers that serve as network addresses. The registry records which organizations hold rights to which IP address blocks on that...
Crisis at AFRINIC The African Network Information Centre (Afrinic), the African regional Internet registry (RIR) for IP addresses, has had its bank accounts frozen by court order, crippling its operations. The Supreme Court of Mauritius ordered the RIR’s $50 million account frozen as a result of its contractual dispute with...
Ever since the GDPR thwacked it on the side of its head, ICANN has been trying to bring its registry of domain names into compliance with basic privacy principles. The good news is that ICANN has largely succeeded in doing that. Go to this URL, enter our domain name, internetgovernance.org,...
Facebook has unleashed a new PR barrage expressing its support for “updated Internet regulations.” As we pointed out two years ago, when a dominant media incumbent embraces government regulation, supporters of open markets and free expression need to watch out. But the problem with these ads is not just that...
Facebook’s Oversight Board is sparking discussion about global governance institutions for online content. Privacy, competition policy and cybersecurity are all implicated in the battle over enclosing platforms’ data. And an insurance company is demonstrating how cybersecurity information sharing really happens. Facebook Oversight Board sparks governance debate The Oversight Board, set...
Many large American businesses – notably, Facebook and the intellectual property interests – are strongly interested in retaining free and unrestricted access to domain name registrants’ personal information (known as Whois data). As it became clear that ICANN’s multistakeholder process would restrict that access to comply with Europe's privacy regulation,...
“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.”
