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On February 11th, Professor Ben Leff of American University Washington College of Law (WCL) spoke on the panel: The Controversial Sale of the .ORG Registry: The Conversation We Should be Having as a scholar of charitable and nonprofit law. On February 21st, he posted a blog piece on WCL's PIJIP blog outlining and expanding his presentation. With Professor Leff's permission, I repost his piece on CircleID to join the timely discussion taking place here on the .ORG sale. more
Earlier this month, Google sent me several notifications for an article entitled "The Internet Is Widely Accessible in Cuba. Why Is the US Insisting It Isn't?" I checked it out and found that Reese Erlich had posted it on Truthout.org, a left-leaning Web site, on February 12. On the 13th, Cabasi.com published a shortened version of the article and Salon.com published the original version on the 17th. These were all in English, and both Salon and Cubasi credited Truthout. more
When ISOC, PIR and Ethos announced the sale in November they hoped for a quick transaction. PIR CEO Jon Nevett announced the same week that PIR would be going on a buying spree. This was optimistic. Six months, if at all, is now the more likely outcome. How many times in recent history have companies surprised stakeholders with their best-laid plans, only to discover we no longer live in a world where business has free reign. The glory days of the 2000s died with Lehman Brothers. more
ICANN's request for comment on amending the .com registry agreement to restore Verisign's pre-2012 pricing flexibility ended last Friday and, with 8,998 responses submitted by stakeholders, may have been a multistakeholder version of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Public interest in .com pricing is understandably high but the sheer volume of responses – nearly three times the number of comments submitted this summer on deregulating .org pricing – also suggests a show of force... more
Last month INHOPE, a global trade association of child abuse reporting hotlines, rejected a joint call from Prostasia Foundation, the National Coalition Against Censorship, Article 19, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, that its members should stop treating cartoons as if they were images of child sexual abuse. As our joint letter pointed out, INHOPE's conflation of offensive artwork with actual abuse images has resulted in the misdirection of police resources against artists and fans... more
No, this topic hasn't yet been exhausted: There's still plenty more conversation we can and should have about the proposed sale of the .ORG registry operator to a private firm. Ideally, that conversation will add more information and more clarity about the issues at stake and the facts that underpin those issues. That's why I'm planning to attend today's event at American University where the sale's proponents, opponents and undecideds will have a tremendous opportunity to better understand one another. more
The American University Washington College of Law announced it will be hosting a fireside chat on the sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR) to the private equity firm Ethos Capital. more
Very few African states today have developed a national cybersecurity strategy or have in place cybersecurity and data protection regulations and laws. Yet, the continent has made major headway in developing its digital ecosystem, and moreover, it is home to the largest free trade area in the world, which is predicted to create an entirely new development path harnessing the potential of its resources and people. more
On January 28, the UK government was set to announce whether it would allow Huawei, the Chinese information and communication technologies provider, to develop its 5G infrastructure. Given Brexit and its need to form new alliances, the decision was marked as a significant moment for the UK's trade future. Leading up to the day of the decision, the UK was subjected to a significant amount of pressure from the United States government to reject any deal with Huawei. more
Internet Governance like all governance needs to be founded in guiding principles from which all policy making is derived. There are no better fundamental principles to guide our policy making than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (UDHR). This article is Part 3 of a series exploring the UDHR as a guide and template for the digital governance and digital citizenship. We discuss UDHR Articles 6 through 12 and address topics such as fundamental digital values, cyberlaw, policymaking and the role of tribunals in digital governance. more
A notice released by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has disclosed that the Office of the Attorney General of the State of California has requested extensive information from the agency regarding the proposed sale and transfer of Public Interest Registry (PIR) from the Internet Society (ISOC) to Ethos Capital. more
For all of us at Public Interest Registry, working to remove child sexual abuse content from the Internet isn't just a part of our work; it's our moral duty. As stewards of the .ORG community, addressing the problem head on is the only option compatible with our values. Talking about Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) is challenging and uncomfortable. It's also far too important, and prevalent, of a problem to ignore. While it's impossible to know exact numbers, online CSAM is a major, rapidly growing crisis. more
Two and a half months ago, shortly after the ICANN66 meetings in Montreal, the ICANN stakeholder community was jolted by the announcement that the Internet Society (ISOC) had entered into an agreement to sell the wholly owned PIR non-profit that holds the .org registry contract. The sale was to be for $1.13B USD to the hastily assembled venture capital company Ethos Capital. The sale was presented as a done deal awaiting approval by the ICANN Board. more
ICANN's repeated betrayals of the public interest have created the conditions for Ethos Capital's proposed purchase of .Org. The growing outrage directed at ICANN is raising questions about ICANN's legitimacy and the wisdom of having entrusted ICANN with oversight over the domain name system ("DNS"). ICANN has shown itself to be out of touch with and unresponsive to the public interest. ICANN now has an opportunity to remember its mission... more
On the 5th of November 2019, the release of the first of ITU's Measuring Digital Development series coincided with Freedom House's unveiling of its Freedom on Net 2019 report. This serendipity prompted me to write this blog note after carefully examining both reports. On one hand, ITU's analytical publication, with its new friendly format, emphasizes that Internet use continues to spread, warning however that the digital gender gap is widening. more
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