Internet Governance

ICANN at a Crossroads: GDPR and Human Rights

The European Data Protection Board certainly has been keeping its records straight. Its 27 May statement starts with the following: "WP29 has been offering guidance to ICANN on how to bring WHOIS in compliance with European data protection law since 2003." All internet users have dealings with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, yet the vast majority have never heard of ICANN. 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

US Laws Remain Set to Govern Upcoming Multilingual Internet via New gTLDs

U.S. laws remain set to govern the coming multilingual internet through ICANN's new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) yet the ramifications of this fact if you are Chinese, Arab, Indian, Russian or other are huge as ICANN published its 7th Applicant Guidebook in preparation for its board consideration on June 20th during the Singapore meeting. To many nations and citizens around the world, especially the non-English speaking communities, this will be seen as a strategically alarming direction for the global Internet. more

Take That Down Right Now - and Give Me That Too

Google has released a government requests tool. It's highly illuminating and may end up being quite disruptive. That's what surprising data visualizations can do for us. ... The tool allows us to see the number of requests from different countries that Google received during the last six months of 2009. More than 3600 data requests from Brazil during those six months and more than 3500 from the US. But just 40 or so from Canada and 30 from Israel. more

Fact Checking the Recent News About Google in Cuba

Google's Cuba project has been in the news lately. Mary Anastasia O'Grady wrote a Wall Street Journal article called "Google's Broken Promise to Cubans," criticising Google for being "wholly uninterested in the Cuban struggle for free speech" and assisting the Castro government. The article begins by taking a shot at President Obama who "raved" about an impending Google-Cuba deal "to start setting up more Wi-Fi access and broadband access on the island." more

ICANN Should Clarify Position On Key Word New TLDs

Back in September a number of domain name industry leaders wrote to ICANN to express deep-felt concerns about some companies' declared plans for generic domain name extensions. We have sent ICANN another letter this week which is also planned to be distributed in a press release included here in this post. more

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade is Misleading the US Senate, Says Sen. Cruz

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

Driver’s License for Web Users… Bad Idea

Maybe you saw the stories recently about comments that were made at a recent World Economic Forum debate on cyberwarfare. As one of them notes, Hamadoun Toure, Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union, proposed a treaty in which countries would pledge not to attack each other without having been attacked. This post isn't about Mr. Toure's proposal. It's about a comment the story attributes to Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer for Microsoft. According to The Raw Story, Mundie "called for a `driver's license' for internet users." more

Questions and No Answers to US Oversight transition, ICANN’s Role and Future of Internet Governance

Traditionally, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, which are key technical services critical to the continued operations of the Domain Name System (DNS)... ICANN has also evolved in its structures to use the 'Multistakeholder Model' in the dissemination of some of its functions and this has seen the creation of working groups and constituencies. more

Let’s Talk About “Internet Responsibility”

We need to talk about Internet responsibility, and we need to talk about it now. By "Internet responsibility," I am not referring to some abstract subjective connotation of it, but rather to an attempt to identify objective criteria that could be used as a benchmark for determining responsibility. For the past 20 something years we all have been using the Internet in different ways and for different reasons; but, have we ever contemplated what our levels of responsibility are? more

IANA: The World Loses if the Technical Industry Checks Out

On Friday, 14 March 2014, the U.S. Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention to transition the IANA functions to the global multistakeholder community. As expected, the announcement has sent adrenaline coursing through the veins of Internet governance experts and government policy people the world over. I'd argue, however, that it is an important point for the Internet's technical experts to sit up and take notice, as well: the fact that you are probably saying "what problem does this solve?" is a testimony to how much works well today, and we want to make sure it continues to work well in any future arrangements. more

An Anti-Competitive .com Fait Accompli?

In a recent article, Is ICANN Staff Misleading the Board Into Violating Obligations to the U.S. Government, I wrote: The referenced Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is the vehicle by which the U.S. government delegates to ICANN the responsibilities for overseeing the technical management of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS)... This is important for many reasons, and much remains to be analyzed for additional context that can help expose the rot at the Internet's root. more

ICANN’s Governance Conundrum

After reading Steve Delbianco's recent CircleID article entitled The Tale of Two Governance Models I was torn. On one hand I agreed and supported Steve's comments about the strength of the bottom-up consensus driven model upon which ICANN was originally founded. As I am about to begin my thirty fifth ICANN regional meeting over the last eleven years, it is a model which I still believe in and fiercely fight to defend. However, on the other hand I look back over the last eleven years... more

Asking a Better Question to Uncloak the Online Copyright Debate

The proverbial Pandora's box that is opened whenever the topic of online copyright infringement is raised throws into sharp relief a host of challenges that have confounded policy makers, internet service providers and consumers for many years. Chief amongst them is how to strike an appropriate balance between protecting the rights of content owners while continuing to promote the interests of the public and preserving the benefits of the internet, given its unprecedented ability to facilitate the rapid dissemination of copyrighted content. more

Will Harding’s Mistakes in International Telecommunication Cooperation be Repeated?

The International Telecommunication Union recently began a well-deserved celebration of one of the real success stories in international cooperation -- the 110th anniversary of the Radio Regulations as a treaty instrument. An ITU publication describes the historical highlights. Global cooperation among governments in managing radio spectrum via the Radio Regulations has been generally regarded as essential from the outset in the early years of the 20th Century and remains so today. more