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...
The longer it was delayed, the more conspicuous its absence became. Yet ICANN and Verisign have finally come to an agreement on a contract to perform the vital domain name root management functions. The draft was published for public review two days ago. The root zone management agreement (RZMA) controls...
Nationalist Republicans who want to retain governmental control of ICANN have based their argument on a false premise. To call it a false premise, in fact, is to be polite. It would be more accurate to call it a rhetorical ploy, what Washington calls “spin.” This “spin” is invisible to...
The revision of ICANN’s bylaws to reflect the new accountability measures is proceeding on schedule. Public comments close May 21 and it is clear that only a few revisions will be needed to fully align the draft bylaws with the proposals of the IANA transition and enhanced accountability working groups....
[caption id="attachment_3933" align="alignleft" width="215"] Source: http://www.runjackson.org[/caption] Ever since the formation of ICANN (and before), the mere mention of "alternate DNS roots" has inspired apoplectic reactions in certain circles. The idea of running a DNS root that competed with the one managed by IANA was seen as heretical at best, and an...
Lawyers have been busily working on taking the enhanced accountability and IANA transition proposals and revising the ICANN bylaw language to implement them. The first draft for public discussion was sent out Sunday, April 3. The community now has only a week or so to review them and catch errors...
The IANA transition and ICANN accountability processes are lurching to a conclusion. The Marrakech meeting in early March will finish the deal. The basic outlines of a proposal that seems acceptable to, but not loved by, most stakeholders is taking shape. It is time for an overall assessment of where we...
The ICANN board has interfered with the accountability process once again, and this time, just like the last time, its intervention is likely to delay the transition by another two or three months. It may even succeed in eviscerating key accountability reforms. Board comments circulated yesterday identify 3 areas where...
This is the story of how ICANN accountability reforms dodged a bullet (barely), and how a greedy GAC got its wrist slapped. Actually the story is not quite over, and we do not know for sure yet whether the ending is a happy one. But that is why the story...
“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.”
