Spain is undergoing a traumatic crackdown on freedom of expression, as part of a larger political convulsion over the Catalan province’s attempt to hold a binding referendum on independence. As one resident tweeted: Webs R closed or blocked. Media are summoned not 2 "inform" about referendum. Anybody expressing support [for...
The Internet governance implications of Charlottesville are becoming clearer. When a white supremacist protest resulted in the murder of Helen Heyer, the Daily Stormer published repugnant, hate-filled content about her on its website. This provoked numerous Internet service providers (domain name registrars, DNS proxy services, a DDoS mitigation service and...
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...
As part of its effort to improve the security of inter-domain routing traffic exchange, NIST has issued a request for comments on a proposed project to test RPKI and Route Origin Validation (ROV), a process by which route advertisements can be authenticated as originating from an expected Autonomous System (AS)....
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...
Late Wednesday September 28 the U.S. Congress passed a short-term funding bill to avert another government shutdown. The bill did not include any restrictions, prohibitions or riders related to the ICANN transition. As an organization that has been consistently advocating the end of unilateral U.S. government control for more than a...
A few Republican congressmen are still waging a futile campaign against the reform of ICANN. Yesterday four of them sent a letter to the Justice and Commerce Departments casting fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) upon the transition. The letter does not raise any new, specific legal or policy concerns that...
Since 1999, governments have asserted sovereignty over the delegation and re-delegation of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) at ICANN. Such assertions have no basis in international law, but that does not stop them. Now, ICANN has paved the way for them to assert sovereignty and property rights over two letter...
Someone needs to lose their job over this. An Independent Review Panel has exposed discrimination and unfairness in ICANN's evaluation of new top level domain applications. The case involves Dot Registry's applications for the top level domains .INC, .LLC and others. This is the third time ICANN has lost an...
The legal regime around ICANN and Internet governance will be affected by a milestone court decision handed down this week. Claiming that Iran was a terrorist state responsible for the deaths of their family members in the Jaffa Road bus bombings of 1996, a group of plaintiffs sought to take...
“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.”
