"Handover of US internet control to ICANN now officially blocked by Republican policy," Kieren McCarthy reporting today in The Register: "The planned transition of the internet's critical technical functions from the US government to a technical body may come under further attack after the Republican Party officially agreed to block it on Monday. more
It's been almost six weeks since the NTIA announced "that the proposal developed by the global Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria NTIA outlined in March 2014 when it stated its intent to transition the U.S. Government's stewardship role for the Internet domain name system (DNS) technical functions, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions", and thereby signaled the start of the last lap of the IANA transition marathon. more
On 31 May 2016, The Commission together with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft unveiled a code of conduct that includes a series of commitments to combat the spread of illegal hate speech online in Europe. These IT Companies support the European Commission and EU Member States in the effort to respond to the challenge of ensuring that online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally. more
The IANA transition still appears to be on track for consummation at the end of the September 30th expiration date of the current contract between NTIA and ICANN in the wake of the May 24th Senate Commerce Committee oversight hearing on "Examining the Multistakeholder Plan for Transitioning the Internet Assigned Number Authority". That is, while there are clearly some concerns on both sides of the aisle about terminating the remaining U.S. government ties to ICANN... more
It looks like Senator Cruz' letter writing campaign isn't going to end any time soon. While previously the Senator and former US presidential hopeful was happy exchanging salvoes with ICANN he's now switched gears and is instead focussing on NTIA and the US Department of Commerce. The latest letter is focussed on a very strange interpretation of the IANA transition proposals. more
During the past few years, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has been a battleground where governments promote rival visions of how the Internet should be governed. Although there has been a recent cease-fire as Internet governance debates have focused more on the role of ICANN, those skirmishes may soon restart at the ITU... Co-authored by Ambassador Gross (chair of Wiley Rein's International & Internet Practice), Carl R. Frank, Umair Javed, and Sara M. Baxenberg (members of Wiley Rein's Telecom, Media & Technology Practice). more
This post I've been pondering on for a long time, but never found the right angle and perhaps I still haven't. Basically I have these observations, thoughts, ideas and a truckload of questions. Where to start? With the future prospects of us all. Thomas Picketty showed us the rise of inequality. He was recently joined by Robert J. Gordon who not only joins Picketty, but adds that we live in a period of stagnation, for decades already. "All great inventions lie over 40 years and more behind us", he points out. more
On March 20th, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Op-ed writer L. Gordon Crovitz published an article titled "Stop Obama's Internet Giveaway". In his opinion piece Mr. Crovitz opposed any near-term transition of the IANA functions... In the course of his article Mr. Crovitz also stated, "Icann already has been kowtowing to authoritarian regimes," alluding to former CEO Fadi Chehade's December 2015 decision to become a Co-Chair of the Advisory Committee to China's World Internet Conference... more
After two years of meetings, comment periods, and more meetings, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers submitted its IANA transition proposal to the US Department of Commerce last week at the end of the ICANN 55 meeting in Marrakech. While this is a critical milestone and the multi-stakeholder community should be commended for its efforts, several concerns still remain. more
On February 4, 2016, U.S. Senator (and Republican Party Presidential nomination contender) Ted Cruz, joined by Senators James Lankford and Michael Lee, dispatched a letter to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade stating that "we were surprised and dismayed to learn that you have agreed to co-chair a high-level advisory committee for the World Internet Conference, which is organized by the Chinese government, while you serve as the Chief Executive Officer of ICANN under contract with the United States Government". The letter continued by posing a series of nine questions... more
The 3rd meeting of the Inaugural Coordination Council of the Net Mundial Initiative (NMI.CC), hosted by Telefonica in Madrid on February 27, 2016, paved the way for the second phase of the innovative NMI platform. The council discussed how to adjust the strategic orientation and the structural design of the initiative, so that future activities are more focused on implementation of the Sao Paulo principles and roadmap. more
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has released a statement today regarding a letter that Cruz, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) received from Fadi Chehade, CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Friday. more
On Tuesday, Twitter announced the creation of the Trust and Safety Council, a body comprising 40 organisations and individuals from civil society and academia, tasked with "ensur[ing] that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter". The move is clearly a response to specific criticism of Twitter and its perceived inadequacies in dealing with hate speech?-- a theme so popular and well-trodden that it recently spawned a parody account. more
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a letter today stating "companies and organizations that run the Internet's domain name system shouldn't be in the business of policing the contents of websites, or enforcing laws that can impinge on free speech. more
In 2015 we saw many agreements on Internet Governance. 193 Governments agreed in the UN General Assembly on the WSIS 10+ Outcome Document. They agreed to extend the mandate of the IGF for ten years. They agreed to strengthen the multistakeholder approach. And they agreed to make more efforts to bring the next billion users online until 2020. The UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) agreed on a number of confidence building measures to strengthen cybersecurity. more
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