Users scored an exciting victory over copyright-based censorship last month, when the Domain Name Association (DNA) and the Public Interest Registry (PIR), in response to criticism from EFF, both abruptly withdrew their proposals for a new compulsory arbitration system to confiscate domain names of websites accused of copyright infringement. But copyright enforcement was only one limb of the the DNA's set of Registry/Registrar Healthy Practices. more
My thesis is simple: the way we protect privacy today is broken and cannot be fixed without a radical change in direction. My full argument is long; I submitted it to the NTIA's request for comments on privacy. Here's a short summary. For almost 50 years, privacy protection has been based on the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs). There are several provisions... more
Despite numerous false starts over the last decade it appears that 2011 will be the year ICANN finally implements a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) process that will lead to the responsible expansion of the domain name space. One of the important remaining steps in this process will be the upcoming meeting between the ICANN Board and the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) intended to resolve a number of outstanding differences. more
Thursday, September 8, 2016 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for the prospects of the IANA functions transition being completed by October 1, 2016. Indeed, that same date - but in 2017 - may be the earliest that the handoff from NTIA to ICANN can be completed, given what last Thursday. The day began with the announcement that Sen. Ted Cruz would be making his first Senate floor remarks since exiting the Republican Presidential race, and that the talk's focus would be a continuation and escalation of his long-standing opposition to "Obama's Internet giveaway". Shortly after 11 am, Sen. Cruz began speaking from his Senate desk... more
Ahmed Mansoor is an internationally recognized human rights defender based in the Middle East and recipient of the Martin Ennals Award (sometimes referred to as a "Nobel Prize for human rights"), On August 10 and 11, 2016, Mansoor received an SMS text messages on his iPhone promising "new secrets" about detainees tortured if he clicked on an included link. Instead of clicking, Mansoor sent the messages to the Canadian Citizen Lab researchers. more
Do human rights come into the picture when technology and policy work are involved? If so, where? This is a question that has come up multiple times during the last dozen years, and occasionally even before, in Internet Governance discussions. These discussions have included debates on whether human rights were specifically applicable to protocol design or to the organizations developing protocol standards. more
The US government plan to move control of the internet's naming and numbering functions to ICANN next month may not move forward, reports Kieren McCarthy more
Over the course of the last year, the ICANN Board and Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) have constructively worked through a long list of their differences contained in the GAC scorecard. As we near the finish line with Monday's scheduled ICANN Board meeting to approve the Applicant Guidebook, there remains a small handful of issues that will hopefully be resolved in a similar responsible manner during Sunday's ICANN Board/GAC consultation. more
"The current Board-GAC relationship is dysfunctional and has been so for several years." Never has this line from the ATRT Report seemed so apt as now, when the ICANN board and the GAC are preparing to meet in Brussels. Part 1 of this blog will describe their impasse over the introduction of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). Part 2 will analyze that impasse and offer recommendations to begin resolving it. more
Brazil has been on the news lately, and not for good reasons: an electoral judge order the arrest of Google's Director in Brazil for not complying with a court decision that ordered the removal a YouTube video with allegedly defamatory content. A lot has been said about this, but it seems that many people got it wrong, so let's recap some of the misinterpretations that circulated, specially those at the EFF website. more
The Internet Society's NY Chapter (ISOC-NY) is delighted to present Milton Mueller's first full exposition of his new book Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance at NYU on Tuesday December 14 2010. Prof. Mueller is a co-founder of ICANN's NonCommercial User's Constituency and a renowned cyberlibertarian. 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
Recently, the Presidents of four Latin American countries slammed ICANN over its .amazon domain name decision. This added to a long list of geo-politically infused challenges which ICANN needed to render final decisions on after all delay tactics or deferments had already been fully exhausted. It is clear that ICANN is facing unprecedented challenges as it tackles issues that go beyond its current narrow mandate. 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
Internet governance is getting a thorough look under the hood, thanks to the National Telecommunication and Information Administration. NTIA recently concluded its public comment period under a Notice of Inquiry (NOI), which asked for public comments regarding the future of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the Department of Commerce and ICANN. At its core, the NOI asks whether the White Paper's original vision of privatizing the technical coordination and management of the Internet is working. For reasons I will explain, it would be deeply unwise for NTIA to terminate the JPA just yet. more