Internet Governance

Monumental Cybersecurity Blunders

Two recent celebrated cybersecurity standards history events brought together sets of people who were intimately involved with some of the most significant network security standards work ever undertaken. These included the X.509 digital certificate standards at ITU X.509 Day, and the Secure Digital Network System (SDNS) standards at the NSA Cryptologic History Symposium 2022. more

Initiative for the Future of the Global Internet

When reading some of the nonsense constituting this initiative occurring in Washington, one wonders what planet the proponents live on. It is like peering through some perverse wormhole back to a 1990s Washington view of the world that saw “the internet” as some salvation for all the problems of humankind. For a world now focused on rolling out 5G virtualization infrastructure and content-based services and meshed devices, the challenges of cybersecurity and network-based harm to society, the initiative makes the U.S. Administration seem utterly out of touch with reality. Simply goofy. more

Why ICANN Rejected ISOC’s Billion-Dollar Attempt At Feathering Its Own Nest With .org Sale?

As I've pointed out in recent articles, the promises and obligations of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) are merged by direct reference into the InterNIC licensing agreement between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN. This licensing agreement has been extended twice by mutual consent, most recently until January 2025. Therefore, the MOU's promises and obligations remain in effect through the InterNIC licensing agreement despite the fact that the MOU itself terminated in 2009. more

Digital Culture Wars: Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and China’s Social Credit System

We are on the cusp of a grave risk where unscrupulous groups with various agendas are using digital technologies to wage cultural war to stamp out dissent and gain control and power. The two most prominent recent examples are Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) and China's Social Credit System (SCS). The following piece was prompted by work on the UDHR and Internet Governance series, for CircleID to deal with UDHR Article 27 and the role of culture, arts, and science in the life of the community.  more

Ending U.S. Government Amnesia About Its Legacy Internet Registries is in the Public Interest

On July 2, 2002, Damien Cave published an interview on Salon.com with John Gilmore, "original 'cypherpunk' and all-around Internet supergeek," titled "It's time for ICANN to go." In this wide-ranging interview, Gilmore -- an early employee of Sun Microsystems who also co-founded Cygnus Software (acquired by Red Hat) and was an early supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Internet Society (ISOC) -- offered blunt insight and eye-opening historical detail... more

Internet Governance and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Part 6: Articles 18-19

Internet Governance, like all governance, needs guiding principles from which policy making, and acceptable behavior, are derived. Identifying the fundamental principles to guide Internet ecosystem policy making around digital citizenship, and around the integrity of digital practices and behavior, can and should start with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (UDHR). more

ICANN Should Keep Content Regulation and Other Arbitrary Rules Out of Registry Contracts

The domain name system is not the place to police speech. ICANN is legally bound not to act as the Internet's speech police, but its legal commitments are riddled with exceptions, and aspiring censors have already used those exceptions in harmful ways. This was one factor that made the failed takeover of the .ORG registry such a dangerous situation. But now, ICANN has an opportunity to curb this abuse and recommit to its narrow mission of keeping the DNS running... more

ICANN Doubles Down on Technical Internet Governance Label: What Are the Implications?

Back in September of 2020, ICANN CEO Göran Marby wrote a blog post discussing the implementation of "a common strategy for Internet governance (IG) and technical Internet governance (TIG)", raising the question of whether the ICANN org. intended to pursue this distinction moving forward, as debated in a previous article. This was proven to be the case during the 2020 IGF's Open Forum #44: "ICANN Open Forum - Technical Internet Governance", organized by ICANN itself... more

2020 Hindsight After 20 Years at ICANN

After two decades of involvement with ICANN, I am stepping down from the Board of Directors, where I served for nine years. I have spent considerable time of late reflecting on the past 20 years, and I have isolated some memories that help frame my time with ICANN. ... November 2000, ICANN07 in Marina del Rey, California - With only a scant idea of what ICANN is all about, I am warmly welcomed by the flag-wearing country code top-level domain (ccTLD) community, who come to ICANN to ensure that nothing happens to affect the independence of ccTLDs... more

The Whois Wars Go On

There is a lot of discussion about the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Phase 2 report on evaluating a System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (SSAD) to non-public gTLD registration data after the decisions taken by the GNSO Council on September 24th. Notably, the Business Constituency (BC) and the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) have voted against the adoption of the Final Report of the EPDP team. more

First Round of U.S. Layoffs Due to Huawei Blockade

Neophotonics, the Nasdaq-listed producer of various optical communications products, including silicon photonics and photonic integrated circuits (PICs), warned investor this week that the new restrictions on business with China's Huawei - its largest customer - could have a major impact on future sales. more

Too Little, Too Late? Why ICANN’s Proposed WHOIS Access System Isn’t Worth It

After two years of grueling, complex and contentious debate, the ICANN EPDP team delivered its Phase 2 Final Report on July 31st, 2020. Unfortunately, and disappointingly, the policy recommended for the so-called "System for Standardized Access/Disclosure" (SSAD) fails to meet the needs of the users it supposedly is designed to benefit. more

Freedom of Expression Part 1: Hate Speech, Linehan, Trans as a Protected Class in California

Graham Linehan was banned from Twitter last week. Graham Linehan is an Irish writer and creator of Father Ted and Black Books. Twitter closed Graham Linehan's account for tweeting "men aren't women though" which twitter perceived as "hate speech" and offensive to the Trans community. Context always shapes meaning, and so I thought it would be useful to explore how hate speech is interpreted in California and then to see how it is treated in Fiji. more

A Short History of Internet Protocol Intellectual Property

A little over 25 years ago, the Internet Society proposed that they assume responsibility for the DARPA Internet Protocol (IP) specifications Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that were being evolved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to facilitate their use by the mainstream network communication standards bodies and providers. Last week, the IETF, in an attempt to fend off alternative Internet Protocols emerging in the 5G ecosystem and create a standards monopoly, asserted... more

Namecheap, EFF and the Dangerous Internet Wild West

This past week I had two items pop up on my alerts. The first was about Facebook suing domain registrar Namecheap for allowing domains that impersonate the social media company and can be used for scams. The second was a plea by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to join in its crusade to stop the sale of the .ORG domain. It took me a moment to realize these are linked. more