Internet Governance

ICANN and the Virtues of Deliberative Policymaking - Part I

In this two-part series article, Andrew McLaughlin takes a critical look at the recently reported study, Public Participation in ICANN, by John Palfrey, Clifford Chen, Sam Hwang, and Noah Eisenkraft at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School..."The study's presentation and analysis of data contain much of interest, and much that could assist ICANN (and other policy-making bodies) in improving its use and management of online public forums. But the study's value is diminished by two rather fundamental shortcomings: (1) its misapprehension of both the theory and the practice of ICANN's policy-development process, and (2) the sizeable gap between the broad scope of the study's conclusions and the very narrow -- indeed, myopic -- focus of the analysis from which they are derived. Simply put, the study scrutinizes a small and misleading corner of ICANN (namely, its online public comment forums) and leaps to a sweeping (and, in my view, unwarranted) conclusion." more

At the Moment, No One Governs the Internet

What's remarkable about this moment is that the hot potato of DNS standard-setting is still up in the air. The US government didn't want to appear to be in charge, and wanted to convince European governments that it wasn't in charge, and so it created (or called for the creation of) ICANN. ICANN was designed to keep other governments at bay. ICANN has, however, no particular delegated power beyond that accorded to it by the contracts it has signed with registries and registrars. In fact, it can't have more power than that, because if it pretends to be a regulatory agency it should be complying with the APA -- and if it pretends to be a regulator its private nature probably violates US law in a number of respects. more

Domain Name Theft Part II: Did ICANN Leave Foxes Guarding the Chicken COOP?

When it comes to stealing domain names, I suspect that there are two reasons why so many web bandits appear to be immune from ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers uses the acronym ICANN): the first reason I discussed in my last column on domain name theft (where I described a substantive void in domain name "regulation" as a primary factor for the increasing incidence of domain name theft), the second reason, which is the focus of this column, is the procedural anomaly that currently infuses ICANN's uniform dispute resolution process (UDRP) by providing no administrative forum for domain name registrants who become victims of domain name theft carried out by ICANN's registrars. more

DNS Abuse and Criminal Infrastructure: Beyond Definitions and Blocklists

Research suggests criminals may control a striking share of newly registered gTLD domains, raising questions about whether ICANN's definitions, contractual safeguards and enforcement mechanisms are keeping pace with the industrial scale of technology-facilitated harm. more

What Reagan-Era Cyber Strategists Can Teach America Today

Reagan-era cyber strategists anticipated today's transnational threats, proposing international treaties, public-private cooperation and infrastructure protections. As America again considers aggressive action against cybercriminals, their largely forgotten blueprint offers both lessons and warnings. more

The Dual-Front Challenge: Why Route Security (RPKI) is the Prerequisite for Quantum Readiness (PQC)

Internet security risks advancing unevenly: post-quantum cryptography may protect data while vulnerable routing still enables hijacks. Universal RPKI adoption, paired with cryptographic agility, is essential to build an Internet trust architecture ready for quantum threats. more

Poland Excluded from Starlink’s European Region: What Musk Dispute Reveals About Digital Sovereignty

Poland's exclusion from Starlink's new European roaming region has triggered a dispute with Warsaw, exposing how private infrastructure providers can shape cross-border connectivity and raising questions about digital sovereignty, accountability, and internet governance in Europe. more

The Web Has Become a Content Delivery Network

Cyberattacks, AI scraping and relentless bot traffic have transformed CDNs from performance tools into the Web's defensive gatekeepers, reshaping Internet architecture, governance and control as private intermediaries increasingly determine which requests reach origin servers first. more

What the i2Coalition Article Misses About DNS Abuse

Authors defend research showing malicious domain registrations occur at industrial scale, arguing that blocklist data is reliable and that policymakers must prioritize prevention alongside mitigation to curb cybercriminal exploitation of the domain name market globally. more

Continuity Is Not Legitimacy: Why Internet Institutions Need a Governance Stress Test

Internet institutions can remain operational while losing the legitimacy that sustains their authority. A proposed governance stress test distinguishes continuity from legitimacy, helping expose capture, substitution, and accountability failures before institutional crises become irreversible realities. more

When AI Answers, Who Decides What We Get to Know?

AI assistants are replacing search with synthesized answers, concentrating decisions about what information people see. As discovery narrows through a handful of platforms, preserving transparency, diversity, and accountable governance becomes increasingly urgent. more

What the Interisle Report Reveals, and What It Doesn’t, About DNS Abuse

Interisle's report illuminates malicious registration trends, but its broad blocklist methodology measures different questions than DNS Abuse, complicating conclusions about registry and registrar accountability by conflating reputation signals with actionable domain enforcement decisions for policymakers. more

How the AI Computing Paradigm Is Deconstructing Internet Governance

As AI giants build vertically integrated, compute-centric networks, they are bypassing DNS, reshaping routing, and concentrating infrastructure power, placing decades-old internet governance institutions under mounting pressure and raising the prospect of a fragmented, AI-driven Splinternet. more

Internet, Artificial Intelligence and the UN: How different is AI Governance from Internet Governance?

As the UN turns to AI governance, old lessons from internet governance loom large: multistakeholder rules matter, but sharper risks, geopolitical rivalry and machine autonomy make consensus harder and more urgent than before for all. more

Fixing Geofeed: From Self-Reported Data to Verified Trust

Geofeed data, long reliant on unverifiable self-assertions, faces mounting security risks. Integrating RPKI could transform it into a trusted, cryptographically validated infrastructure, strengthening routing integrity, regulatory compliance, and digital sovereignty across an increasingly contested internet. more