Internet Governance

Facilitation Without Responsibility: ICANN and the Missing Warning Question - Part 2 of 3

ICANN's Smart Africa engagement shows how proposals can gain authority without formal endorsement, raising harder questions about CAIGA, ICP-2 and whether regional partnerships need earlier safeguards when RIR governance begins to shift under institutional cover. more

Procedural Resilience or Technological Rigidity? Reassessing Article 19’s DNS Abuse Framework in the Post-MLAT Era

As cross-border cyber enforcement falters, critics argue Article 19's DNS abuse framework prioritizes procedural purity over user protection, leaving courts too slow to counter AI-driven phishing, rapid-flux domains, and increasingly automated online threats. more

Inside Iran’s Shift From Internet Shutdowns to Tiered Connectivity

Iran's wartime internet restrictions transformed online access into a costly, unequal system, according to researcher Imad Payande, with black markets, selective connectivity and institutional privilege reshaping how citizens reached the global web. more

Facilitation Without Responsibility: ICANN and the Missing Warning Question - Part 1 of 3

An ICANN-backed African internet-governance initiative exposed a deeper institutional problem: whether global coordinators must warn when regional policy processes drift into RIR governance, before facilitation, silence and funding harden into implied legitimacy for contested reforms. more

Universal Acceptance Day and the Long Arc of Multilingualism

Universal Acceptance Day 2026 marks progress toward a multilingual internet, as UNESCO and ICANN deepen cooperation. Yet unresolved implementation failures and weak registry stewardship still hinder truly inclusive digital access worldwide. more

Internet Censorship Grows More Sophisticated, Warns OONI Co-Founder

Maria Xynou warns that internet censorship is becoming more sophisticated and less transparent as governments deploy targeted blocks, throttling and encrypted traffic interference, while OONI's crowdsourced measurements help researchers and human-rights groups expose restrictions and defend online freedoms worldwide. more

Running-Code Primacy - The Patch Needed to Preserve the Internet’s Original Design

This essay argues that Internet governance has drifted from technical coordination into unaccountable institutional power, and proposes "Running-Code Primacy" as a post-RIR framework grounded in distributed validation, interoperability, and voluntary adoption rather than registry authority. more

The Illusion of Digital Sovereignty (Part III) - Collision, Geopolitical, Compute Concentration, Future Governance

Geopolitical fragmentation is colliding with the internet's distributed architecture, exposing how sovereign cloud concentration and AI infrastructure can weaken resilience, amplify strategic vulnerabilities, and challenge whether governance can preserve interoperability while managing dependency under stress. more

The Illusion of Digital Sovereignty (Part II) - Emergence, Sovereign AI Ecosystem, the RIR System, Number Resources

As states chase digital sovereignty through clouds, AI and localized infrastructure, the internet's globally coordinated foundations reveal a harder truth: operational continuity depends less on control than on interoperable systems built on trust and governance. more

The Illusion of Digital Sovereignty (Part I) - Cloud Infrastructure, Survivability, and the Territorialization of the Internet

Missile strikes on Gulf data centres exposed a deeper contradiction at the heart of digital sovereignty: governments seek territorial control over internet infrastructure whose resilience still depends upon globally distributed coordination and interdependence across borders. more

Recent Advancements in the Rights to Public Knowledge: Technical Standards

Recent court rulings in Europe and America are reshaping access to technical standards, weakening paywalls and strengthening the principle that publicly mandated knowledge belongs to citizens, regulators and increasingly AI systems that depend on machine-readable information. more

DNS Censorship Report Warns of Rising Domain Suspensions

ARTICLE 19 warns that governments are increasingly exploiting internet infrastructure to silence critics, using domain suspensions to block entire websites while regulators and registry operators debate how to balance online safety, technical abuse prevention and freedom of expression. more

Registry Under Siege: Investigating NRS Outreach to AFRINIC Members

As AFRINIC rebuilds after years of litigation, the Number Resource Society is urging members to sign powers of attorney, raising fears that coordinated advocacy, commercial interests and geopolitical pressures could reshape African control over critical internet resources. more

The Post-MLAT Era: Why Dynamic Injunctions are the New Frontier of Access Blocking

As cross-border enforcement falters, dynamic injunctions are reshaping internet governance, allowing authorities to update blocking lists in real time and prioritize access deterrence over slow, often futile source takedowns across fragmented global legal regimes. more

Africa’s Digital Transformation Is Outpacing Its Cybersecurity Governance

Africa's digital boom is accelerating, but safeguards lag. Governments and firms deploy systems at speed, while weak enforcement and fragmented oversight leave economies exposed to mounting cyber risks. more