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,...
ICANN’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) has published a useful paper on the so-called “New IP” coined by Huawei technologists. So-called New IP's link to Huawei is a guarantee, in the current geopolitical environment, that it will be politicized. The “ITU is taking over the Internet” narrative that...
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which will be held online in 2020, opens officially November 9. IGP has organized a panel on DNS over HTTPS (DoH): Human Rights, Markets, and Governance. The aim of the panel is to build awareness of how the Internet’s technical standards and transnational governance impact...
ICANN's attempt to reconcile privacy law with its collection and disclosure of domain name registration data appears to have run into a snag. The surveillance interests wanted a centralized and standardized system for requesting redacted Whois data. They got one. But they are now pretending to reject it. “The value...
Although few people are aware of it, ICANN and the domain name system are on the front lines of the transnational data governance issues raised by the clash between European privacy law and American (and eventually Chinese and Indian) information industries. Prompted by Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ICANN...
Yesterday the ICANN Board refused to approve the sale of the .ORG registry to Ethos Capital. This is being hailed as a great victory for the public interest by some, and as a lamentable “failure to follow ICANN’s bylaws, processes, and contracts” by the parties to the proposed sale. In fact, it is...
Yesterday Ethos Capital proposed an amendment to its Registry Agreement to address the concerns that have been expressed by registrants about its acquisition of the ORG domain. The amendment is codified in what is known as a Public Interest Commitment (PIC). As its news release states, “These legally-binding commitments cannot...
On February 7, ICANN released an initial report on the next step in the reform of Whois. The report will be open for public comment until March 23, 2020. In the analysis below, we make it clear what issues defenders of privacy and individual rights should address in their comments....
This post notifies ICANN org and its board that Noncommercial Stakeholders are still waiting for a consultation regarding the sale of .ORG. It explains why such a consultation is not a courtesy to be offered at ICANN's discretion, but is a requirement based on ICANN's own Registry Agreement (RA) contract...
The controversy over the sale of ORG has taken an ugly turn. As we have made clear in several blog posts related to the sale, what registrants need is not emotional cries to “stop the sale” but an ICANN-mediated renewal of the commitments made in the original grant, and some...
“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.”
