Internet Governance

Who Would You Nominate for the Internet Hall of Fame? (Nominations Open Until March 15)

Who do you think deserves recognition in the Internet Hall of Fame? Do you know of someone who has played a key role in the Internet's development who should be recognized? (And is not already among the existing IHOF inductees?) If you know of someone who deserves the recognition, nominations are open until March 15, 2017. As outlined by Internet Society President & CEO Kathy Brown in a blog post today, the Internet Hall of Fame seeks to honor three types of inductee. more

Booting Up Brazil

The improvised alliance between ICANN and the government of Brazil is now beginning to take shape. The "summit" that President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil announced last month now has a name: the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance. It's no longer a summit, it's a GMMFIG. (Shall we pronounce it gum-fig?) The meeting will be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 23 and 24. Don't book your tickets yet, though -- we are still debating how open this meeting will be. more

Supporting Dot Amazon Strengthens Global Internet Cooperation

With the backlash against tech companies gaining steam, we've seen certain contrarian members of the media taking indiscriminate aim at companies and issues without due cause. This is what happened when Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett, in a paywalled March 7th editorial, inaccurately portrayed a process involving the Amazon's gTLD application for .AMAZON, an issue the i2Coalition has been engaged in for years. more

Relinquishing IANA Would Be a Mistake for NTIA

In comments to the U.S. Government, ICANN sought to convince the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to relinquish its oversight of the Internet Address and Number Authority ("IANA") functions. At its heart, ICANN's presentation is a plea for NTIA to declare the privatization of DNS management finished. For several reasons, ICANN's plea should be refused. more

Why Over Compliance With Sanctions at Internet Infrastructure Level Can Have Devastating Effects on Ordinary People

On Friday, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's digital transformation minister, asked Cloudflare and Amazon to stop serving Russian web resources and protecting Russian services. He said in a tweet that Ukraine was "calling on Amazon to stop providing cloud services in Russia." He also said that "Cloudflare should not protect Russian web resources while their tanks and missiles attack our kindergartens." more

Would the Internet Survive a Trump Apocalypse?

Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump and his supporters are pursuing platforms to create an altered America in a different world that is profoundly different in almost every respect from what has existed until now -- it is a new world best described as the Trump Apocalypse. Would the Internet as we have known it continue to exist? The short answer is probably not. Here is why. more

EFF Urges EURid to Refuse EU Commission’s “Misguided Advice” to Eliminate UK-Registered .EU Domains

In response to the European Commission surprise announcement last week that British domain owners may no longer be entitled to keep their ".eu" domain names, EFF is urging the registry for .eu (EURid) no to follow through. more

ICANN Africa Strategy: A New Approach to Africa - Welcome, But Not Inclusive

There is a new attempt to refocus on Africa. A recent announcement titled "A New Approach to Africa" was greeted with excitement but deliberations that transpired in a Global mailing list have projected a whole new dimension and caused a certain amount of dissatisfaction in some quarters. Africa had a good opportunity in the current ICANN new gTLD programme to submit applications for at least 17 gTLDs. more

Important Milestone in IANA Stewardship Transition: NTIA Says Proposal Meets Criteria

Today, the global Internet community reached an important milestone. The US Department of Commerce National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) announced that the community-developed proposal to transition the stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions meets the criteria it set out in March 2014. more

Don’t Give up on Membership

Most of the ICANN community is headed to ICANN 54, the critical meeting in Dublin where some kind of an agreement on accountability reforms needs to be reached if the historic IANA transition is to take place. Only a few months ago, an open, multi-stakeholder process proposed to enhance ICANN's accountability by creating a very limited form of membership. It did not allow any individual in the world to become a member. It did not even allow any individual or organization with a domain name to become a member (as it should have). more

Connectivity Policy and the Open Internet

The goal of public policy for connectivity should be to assure access to our common facilities as a public good by adopting sustainable business models that don't put owners and users at odds with each other. Such balances are typically difficult to achieve which is what makes connectivity so unusual - we can achieve both once we fund the facilities as a public good apart from the particular applications such as telephone calls and cable content. more

Uncivil Society: The NETmund*al *n*t*at*ve’s Missing I’s

When I last wrote about the NETmundial Initiative (NMI) project developed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in conjunction with ICANN it was noted that its August 28th announcement event "ended with significant dissent from the broad groups comprising "civil society", and only lukewarm support from the business sector". Indeed, during the concluding session on that late summer day, "NTIA head Larry Strickling appeared to startle the participants when he intervened to observe that perhaps the event was over-engineered... more

Important Progress on Accountability and Transparency

The ICANN Board made a couple of important decisions regarding accountability and transparency at its 8 December meeting. Specifically, it approved compensating Directors and also enhanced ICANN's conflicts of interest rules. These are positive developments for the organization, and come at a critical juncture as the Internet governance debate heats up in 2012. more

What is ‘On-Tap’ at ICANN 38 - Brussels (There’s More to Belgium than Beer!)

As the shorter of the ICANN interregnums comes to a close and the ICANN faithful finalize their dinner reservation agendas for Brussels, it is time again for a preview of what will be 'on-tap' at next week's ICANN meeting. While, as always, there is a lot going on in ICANN Land, a scan of the blogosphere and ICANN list serves suggests that the four most discussed topics will be... more

Access to Safe and Affordable Prescription Medications Online is a Human Right

I recently served on a panel at the Toronto RightsCon 2018 conference (Making Safe Online Access to Affordable Medication Real: Addressing the UN Human Rights resolution for access to essential medicines), where I represented the perspective of Americans struggling to afford their daily medications and desperate to have safe, affordable Internet access to their prescriptions. more