Internet Governance

NTIA Directs Smoke Signals Toward LA

On September 25th-26th the Cross Community Working Group developing enhanced accountability measures to accompany the IANA functions transition, and replace the "backstop" role played by the U.S., will meet in Los Angeles to review the 90 comments filed on their second draft Proposal and consider responsive modifications... As NTIA will be the primary evaluator of whether the transition & accountability package that is eventually forwarded by ICANN meets the criteria it set when it announced the transition in March 2014, CCWG participants in LA will be carefully reading the tea leaves of this latest NTIA statement. more

TMCH Review Recommends Status Quo

On July 25th ICANN announced the publication of the Draft Report of the Independent Review of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). This study was coordinated for ICANN by the Analysis Group, in conjunction with researchers from the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford as well the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School... while public comments on the draft report will be accepted through September 3rd, this Report was triggered by GAC concerns expressed before the Applicant Guidebook for the new gTLD program was even completed, and is not the work product of a GNSO-created working group and therefore will not directly result in the establishment of any new ICANN policy. more

Encryption, Our Last Line of Defense

Encryption is fundamental to our daily life. Practically everything we do online makes use of encryption is some form. Access to our financial transactions, health records, government services, and exchanged private messages are all protected by strong encryption. Encryption is the process of changing the information in such a way as to make it unreadable by anyone except for those possessing special knowledge (usually referred to as a "key"), which allows them to change the information back to its original, readable form. more

DNSSEC Root Signature, Almost There!

IT security specialists have known for years that the plain DNS is not to be trusted. Any hope for improvement rests on the DNSSEC protocol deployment. In this post, I will review the current status in one critical aspect, namely the DNS root signature key management. The other two foremost are the application usage of DNSSEC protocol functionality and the operational front, or the extent of deployment in the DNS infrastructure. The operational front includes the support by the DNS root nameservers, but my focus on signature key management leaves this issue aside. more

The Long-Run Effect of Cuba’s Recent Internet-Augmented Protests

It’s now more than 6 weeks since the Cuban political protests and accompanying Internet service disruption. Will they lead to a long-run change in the Cuban Internet or the Cuban political situation? Let’s start with the Cuban Internet. Many of the Internet changes during the protests have disappeared. Total daily traffic, the ratios of mobile to fixed traffic, and human to automated posts, and the proportion of blocked Signal sessions are about what they were before the protests. more

ICANN Should Keep Content Regulation and Other Arbitrary Rules Out of Registry Contracts

The domain name system is not the place to police speech. ICANN is legally bound not to act as the Internet's speech police, but its legal commitments are riddled with exceptions, and aspiring censors have already used those exceptions in harmful ways. This was one factor that made the failed takeover of the .ORG registry such a dangerous situation. But now, ICANN has an opportunity to curb this abuse and recommit to its narrow mission of keeping the DNS running... more

Freedom of Expression Part 4: Censorship, COVID-19, the Media and Assault on Freedom of Expression

As I write this, it is World Holocaust Day, 27th January 2021, a memorial of the atrocious events that shocked and outraged the conscience of humanity and gave birth to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the year that Holocaust victims majority of whom were Jews re-established the nation of Israel. Most of us can never begin to imagine the extent of the atrocities but relive the experiences through movies or documentaries, including but not limited to Spielberg's 1993 Schindler's List... more

Is There Any Room for Communities in The New gTLD Program?

With the start of hunting season for new gTLDs, attention needs to be paid to Community in all of its reality and diversity. After family, community is one of the strongest organizational principles in human society and has been since the beginning of history. With the rare exception of the classical hermit, everyone is part of multiple communities. Communities are important and need to be protected by society and by this new gTLD process. more

ICANN, Ukraine and Leveraging Internet Identifiers

Ukraine's representative to ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to remove Russian-administered top level domains (.RU, .SU and .рф) from the DNS root zone. In a separate letter, Ukraine's representative also asked RIPE NCC to withdraw the right to use all IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by all Russian members of the regional IP registry for the European region. more

Meta 2020: Talking Internet on the Internet

As with other meetings and conferences, the IGF-USA decided to move our annual event to a virtual format held on 22-23 July. We will discuss important matters of the Internet, using the Internet from our secure Internet access points. This format allows us to continue critical dialogue safe from viruses, murder hornets and whatever else is thrown at us this year. more

Facebook Is Right to Call the Australian Government Bluff

As mentioned in previous analyses, the way that the Government has approached its battle with the digital giants has been flawed from the beginning. True, its tough stand had made Google pay media companies well above what these companies would have been able to negotiate individually with Google, but the fundamentals of why these battles are taking place are still unchanged. more

Russia to Disconnect Entirely From the Internet as Part of Cyber-Defense Measure

According to various news outlets, Russia is reported to be planning a complete Internet shut down, as part of a test of its cyber-defenses. more

ICANN Accountability Progress Made in Second CCWG Draft Proposal

The December 21 deadline for submission of public comments on the latest CCWG-Accountability draft proposal is quickly approaching. In this second draft of the proposal, great strides have been made toward addressing the accountability issues that members of the community have raised (notably, Lawrence Strickling's recent remarks). As I have previously emphasized, any plan to ensure the accountability of the ICANN Board of Directors must be closely scrutinized before ICANN pursues its implementation. more

The IG Marathon, Who Will Win the Internet Governance Race

2015 has already started to make its own land marks in the internet of things world. A major thing that has definitely hit the headlines is cyber security issue, which gives an indication that organizations will probably have to make generous budgetary allocations to answer to these anticipated breaches. Internet governance is perhaps going to remain in the headlines for the rest of 2015. more

ICANN Takes a Wrong Turn on New TLD Contracts - “Post Signature Revision Process?”

The pen is mightier than the word...or should be. When ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate-Thrush --­ an accomplished attorney -- said last year that he wouldn't let one of his own clients agree to a contract that could be unilaterally changed after it was signed, the Internet community breathed a sigh of relief. But when the Chairman backed away from that stance earlier this week in Nairobi, it became clear that we should have held our breath a little bit longer. more