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One of the main roles played by science fiction is to portray fundamental issues and questions that face humanity long before they actually become relevant to our daily lives. We cannot always be sure of where our reality ends, and fiction begins. Star Trek storylines including Borgs are a good example. In the storyline, Borgs are part organic, part artificial and created eons ago, yet they seem to presage the challenges in our contemporary personal reality and challenges in the Internet's cyberspace. more
The internet has come to play a vital role in the social and economic development of the Caribbean. Yet, countries in the region are, in the main, relying heavily on external interests to make important decisions about the technical specifications and security of the technology and rules that impact how the Internet is governed. "We find that the Caribbean governments are abdicating their seats at the table in global fora where major decisions are made regarding the future of the Internet. more
In the matter relating to O.COM, I've focused on the fact that VeriSign has -- in correspondence to the organization that is counter-party to its .COM and transliterated .COM IDN Registry Agreements, in earnings calls with its investors and financial analysts, and in policy published on its website for every innocent and unsuspecting Tom, Dick, and Harry in the world to be duped by -- stated an unequivocal and unwavering commitment . more
The internet started to take on momentum in the 1990s. At that time many analysts, myself included, marveled at the opportunity of creating a platform that would boost grassroot democracy. There was no need for a middleman and there were few barriers to ordinary people becoming involved. This included organizing groups, discussions and events, sharing knowledge, insights and information, publishing opinions -- just some of the potential attached to the internet. more
In a previous post, I spoke of Amazon's use of customer and market data in restraint of trade, but they are not alone. For example, leaked internal documents show that plans to sell access to user data were discussed for years and received support from Facebook's most senior executives. Facebook gave Amazon extended access to user data because Amazon was spending money on advertising and partnered with them on the launch of the Fire smartphone. more
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the internet Berners-Lee, the father of the internet, reiterated his suggestion for a radical change, which would improve the functionality of the internet for the benefit of society. He suggests a sort of refoundation of the web, creating a fresh set of rules, both legal and technical, to unite the world behind a process that can avoid some of the missteps of the past 30 years. While this most certainly would be an excellent development, I am rather pessimistic about a rapid implementation of such a radical change more
There are some who see the regulation of social media platforms as an attack on the open internet and free speech and argue that the way to protect that is to let those platforms continue to self-regulate. While it is true that the open internet is the product of the same freedom to innovate that the platforms have sprung from, it is equally the product of the cooperative, multi-stakeholder organisations where common policy and norms are agreed. more
Russian lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill to expand further government control of the internet proclaimed by backers of the bill to be a defensive measure against internet disruptions by hostile nations. more
David Redl has written to ICANN in relation to the ongoing work around whois and GDPR. The letter, which was shared with the GNSO Council last night, is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it offers the carrot in relation to what's been done so far, but then there's the not so veiled threat, which isn't a revelation by any means, of "domestic legislation." more
I hope each of these companies has someone in charge of thinking about what might go wrong with a single, satellite-based network providing fast, low-cost links anywhere on the global Internet. OneWeb, SpaceX, Telesat and Leosat all aspire to be global Internet service providers using constellations of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Their success will require still-unproven technological innovation, but there are also political stumbling blocks. more
For the past several months, there has been much discussion within the ICANN community about something called "PDP 3.0". This has been raised in a number of different contexts including as part of ICANN's new governance review. But what exactly is PDP 3.0? And, will it save ICANN's multi-stakeholder governance model? I believe that if we are to save the multi-stakeholder model then now is the time to address the big issues not just the low hanging fruit on the surface - a new approach to achieving consensus across parties with widely differing views is needed. more
The ICANN community recently gathered in Kobe, Japan for its first meeting of the year and it was certainly a busy week for attendees. Much of the meeting centered around the work of the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) to address gTLD registration data. As a member of the EPDP team, we had been hard at work since being formed in August of 2018. Just prior to the Kobe meeting, we published the phase 1 Final Report. more
When the UK announced its intention to withdraw from the European Union it was clear to some of us that this would cause complications with .eu and possibly other domain name extensions. Over the past year, it's become clear that the European Commission, who mandate the .eu domain name policy, weren't interested in providing a "soft landing" for impacted registrants of .eu domain names. more
India's recently published Draft National e-Commerce Policy, prepared by the Indian Commerce Ministry think-tank, can be read like the script of a four-act Bollywood drama... They were the dream couple: Princess India and Prince IT. She was full of cultural richness and diversity, with beauty, mystique and natural resources. She also a dark side. She harbored the world's largest number of impoverished people, with little infrastructure, and facing sparse economic prospects. more
The ICANN Board will soon be considering candidates for election to the position of ICANN Chairperson and Vice Chair, which compels me to remind both the Board and the ICANN community of the fact that one of the members pursuing the Chairmanship is the subject of an on-going Australian Freedom of Information Act, which was initiated by the irregularities that brought about this individuals dismissal from the .au Domain Administration. more
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