Yes, it’s a Ban – The Real Story Behind the New TikTok Law

The US Government is seeking new authorities to ban TikTok as a national security threat. If it sounds like deja vu, that’s because it is. In the year and three months since our study debunking the claims that TikTok is a national security threat, no new evidence or arguments have...

Fragmenting the Web: The EU’s Identity Power Play

The Internet Governance Project has signed on to a Joint statement of scientists and NGOs in opposition to Article 45 of the European Union’s eIDAS (Electronic IDentification And trust Services) regulation. Security researchers, digital rights groups and industry all oppose the regulation, as it shifts decision-making authority over whom to...

The Narrative: October 16, 2023

Dispatches from the evolving digital political economy NETmundial's 10th Anniversary: Inspiration or Nostalgia? At the Kyoto Internet Governance Forum, we learned that Brazil's CGI is thinking about holding an event to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the NETmundial event in April 2014. Netmundial was a transformative moment in global internet...

UN Cybercrime negotiations: No outcome may be the best outcome

The first day of September this year marked the end of the sixth round of negotiations of the UN Ad Hoc Committee (AHC) on Cybercrime. The two weeks of debates and informal consultations concluded with applause. Despite all the efforts of the AHC chair and many delegations to bridge the...

The Narrative: September 1, 2023

Reports on the evolving digital political economy Human Authorship and AI Images A lot of bad policy about AI is being made because people are overstating its risks. These overstatements usually derive from overestimating the autonomous nature of the AI. Now we are getting some bad law for the same...

The Narrative: August 15, 2023

Reports on the evolving digital political economy Oral arguments in Missouri v Biden appeal On August 10 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit listened to oral arguments related to an injunction that restricts the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms to request suppression of constitutionally...

The Narrative: July 15, 2023

“Censorship” and Social Media A U.S. District Court has issued a landmark ruling that would block the federal government from encouraging or influencing the suppression of content by social media companies. Citing the First Amendment, the court issued a sweeping injunction that would stop agencies such as the White House,...

The Narrative: Orwellian redefinitions; Refugees from the UK Online Safety Law; Indian Platform Reg; the PNIF Mandate

March 1, 2023 TikTok Ban would repeal free speech protections A House Committee is set to vote on their attempt to ban TikTok. The bill empowers the president to impose sanctions on any entity that operates a “connected software application” subject to the influence of China, but tries to skirt...