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Upon being appointed as ICANN's new CEO in Sydney, Rod Beckstrom gave a rousing speech in which he stressed the vital importance of free expression on the Internet... Many ordinary, powerless people are indeed willing to fight and die. But is ICANN going to help them? Or at very least make sure that their decisions won't help those who want to muzzle them? more
When I read government arguments in defense of the NSA, an oft-repeated line was: We're not targeting Americans. We're targeting foreigners. Foreigners. I really dislike that word. And I'm sure companies like Apple, Google and Facebook do as well. Why? more
Domain name owners have traditionally complained that ICANN does not listen to us, and there is indeed plenty of evidence demonstrating the group’s obliviousness to community input. Nevertheless, as domain owners, we need to begin giving ourselves a share of blame too. It’s time to reflect on our failures so we can come up with an actionable solution... more
I've been ruminating on this for a while, this follow-up that was a decade in the offing. My article Trench Warfare in the Age of The Laser-Guided Missile from January 2007 did pretty good in terms of views since I wrote it. Less so in terms of how well the ideas aged or didn't, but that's the nature of the beast. Everything gets worse, and simultaneously, better, and so here we are: Using embarrassingly ancient approaches to next-generation threats. Plus ça change. more
Adolescents were fascinated by the book and film called "Hunger Games". The plot is about a government forcing people to watch, and forcing some to play, a cruel game for life and death. ICANN's own Hunger Games, the so-called "digital archery" or "batching" process, is not lethal to people, but shares all other features: it is forced upon the participants, it is destructive, unfair and unnecessary. more
It is not often that you read a book where afterward nothing seems the same again. Like Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Shoshana Zuboff's book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,, puts what we do in these times into a context and gives a focus to ongoing issues of privacy and governance with regard to the Domain Name System. This is even more astonishing as the book does not even mention the DNS, the Internet ecosystem or even Internet Governance directly. more
The ICANN latest reveal of the applications pending batching has shown a number of very crucial details of what the new domains system is like. The new system before batching presents new applications with the North Americas having the highest applications amounting to 911, Europe follows with 675, Asia pacific which already has one continental domain .asia has three hundred and three domains, Latin America which shares the same ecological niche with Africa has 24 new applications 7 domains higher than Africa which has presented 17 new domains. more
Recently ICANN published a report on inaccurate registration data in her own databases. Now the question is presented to the world how can we mitigate this problem? There seems to be a very easy solution. ... The question to this answer seems simple. To know who has registered with an organisation. This makes it possible to contact the registered person or organisation, to send bills and to discuss policy with the members. more
Amidst a firestorm of debate, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has experimented with various forms of governance of the domain name system (DNS) involving input from the Internet community since its founding in 1998. ICANN's experimentation in running a representative and open corporate decision-making process has largely failed. This failure has manifested itself most explicitly by ICANN's retreat from its effort to enable the direct election of a subset of its Board members and, less explicitly, by the extent to which other efforts to engage the Internet user community in the decision-making process have proven ineffective. more
Imagine that you are considering the purchase of your first self-driving car. You anticipate the benefits of sensors and steering that avoid accidents, conserve energy and keep you in contact with emergency personnel should you need help. You unlock the door, get situated in the driver's seat and are about to engage the ignition and then a question pops into your mind, "Is it really safe"? To answer that question, we need to understand first, that the car is not being controlled by Artificial General Intelligence... more
Surveillance capitalism monetizes private data that it collects without consent of the individuals concerned, data to analyze and sell to advertisers and opinion-makers. There was always an intricate relationship between governments and surveillance capitalists. Governments have the duty to protect their citizens from the excesses of surveillance capitalism. On the other hand, governments use that data, and surveillance capitalism's services and techniques. more
On December 9, 2009, the ICANN Board announced its intention to vote during its upcoming February 4, 2010 meeting to approve a plan by which ICANN would solicit "Expressions of Interest" (EOI) from prospective applicants for new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .BLOG. But given a number of significant governance and public policy concerns raised by the current EOI proposal, the ICANN Board should take no action on it before the next in-person ICANN regional meeting--in Nairobi, March 3-7, 2010. more
On Friday I was on a surprisingly interesting session at Rightscon 2018 in Toronto about GDPR and WHOIS. The panel consisted of Eleeza Agoopian from ICANN staff; Avri Doria who was recently appointed to the ICANN board; Elliot Noss who runs large registrar Tucows; Stephanie Perrin who has done a lot of privacy work for the Canadian government and as an ICANN volunteer, and me; Milt Mueller, who is now at Georgia Tech, moderated. more
Around the world, communities are racing to close the digital divide. From fiber deployments in rural areas to affordable smartphones and digital skills training, the goal is clear: connect the unconnected. But as we pursue that goal, a deeper question emerges that demands just as much urgency as infrastructure: When people get online, can they actually participate in the digital world? more
Like everyone else, former ICANN board members have been preoccupied by the horrific November 13th, 2015 attacks on Paris, France, by a bunch of cold-blooded mass murderers. Our email list discussion of the Paris attacks covered a number of issues, including the inevitable question: what, if anything, should ICANN do in response? Some list subscribers concluded that the events had nothing to do with ICANN's mission, and that we should just sigh and move on. Others, on the other hand, said: not so fast, it would serve ICANN well to take a closer look at the matter, and its ramifications on wider world of ICANN. more
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