Internet Governance

Building Trust in Digital Travel: Interoperability, Privacy, and the Future of Global Mobility

Digital travel credentials promise to streamline air travel by enabling privacy-preserving identity sharing across borders. Their success will depend on interoperable standards, trusted governance and gradual adoption alongside passports worldwide as governments airlines cooperate. more

Mandate Laundering: From RIR Fantasy to Transition Architecture

Private internet registries have inflated narrow technical roles into quasi-sovereign authority, laundering mandate through ritual and rhetoric; a fragile system now faces legal, economic and political reckoning, prompting calls for coordinated transition urgent global reform. more

How DNSXplore Strengthens Internet Trust Across the Global DNSSEC Landscape

A once-trusted internet protocol is showing its age. DNSXplore, a global DNSSEC archive, exposes weaknesses, improves diagnostics and nudges adoption, helping secure the cryptographic chain underpinning online trust. more

Authority Formation and Legitimacy in Parallel Governance Tracks

Africa's internet governance faces parallel tracks as AFRINIC's community-led reforms unfold alongside a continent-wide blueprint, raising questions over whether legitimacy will stem from participatory processes or increasingly coordinated external alignment. more

Africa’s Digital Transformation Is Outpacing Its Cybersecurity Governance

Africa's digital boom is accelerating, but safeguards lag. Governments and firms deploy systems at speed, while weak enforcement and fragmented oversight leave economies exposed to mounting cyber risks. more

Iran’s Record Internet Blackout Deepens Civilian Isolation, Fuels Humanitarian Concerns

Iran’s unprecedented internet blackout, imposed after February’s strikes, has reduced connectivity to near zero, tightened state control over information, and set a global precedent for wartime digital isolation with significant humanitarian consequences. more

How Internet Sovereignty Is Reshaping Company Tech Stacks

As governments assert internet sovereignty, global networks are quietly fracturing. Data localisation, sovereign cloud rules and political risk are forcing companies to redesign technology stacks once built for a borderless internet. more

The Poverty Penalty: How the RIR Model Taxes the Poor While Calling It Equality

Critics blame IPv4 markets for inequality, but registry rules long rewarded scale and imposed regressive costs. Scarcity was managed, not equalized, leaving poorer networks paying more for slower, less predictable access over time and regions. more

Cyber Threats, Climate Impacts, Internet Sovereignty: CaribNOG 31 Takes It All On

CaribNOG 31 convenes in Kingston as climate risks, cyber threats and sovereignty concerns converge, pushing Caribbean engineers, policymakers and operators to strengthen resilient internet infrastructure through cooperation and technical exchange over three days of meetings. more

Registry Under Siege: Investigating NRS Outreach to AFRINIC Members

As AFRINIC rebuilds after years of litigation, the Number Resource Society is urging members to sign powers of attorney, raising fears that coordinated advocacy, commercial interests and geopolitical pressures could reshape African control over critical internet resources. more

Modernizing the Registry: How LAC-2025-5 Addresses the Reality of IPv4 Scarcity

LACNIC's LAC-2025-5 proposal formalises IPv4 sub-assignments, bringing grey-market leasing into a framework, easing scarcity pressures, improving registry accuracy, and lowering barriers for smaller providers while preserving incentives to adopt IPv6, across Latin America and Caribbean. more

Nominations Open for 2026 Public Interest Registry (PIR) Board of Directors

The Internet Society is accepting nominations for two seats on the 2026 Board of the Public Interest Registry, the non-profit behind .ORG and other domains serving civil society. Deadline: 30 January 2026. more

Who Authorizes Legitimacy if the Community Is Absent in the Redefined Procedural Space?

In African Internet governance, procedural authorship is quietly displacing community legitimacy. When conveners, not members, define reform processes, legitimacy becomes retrospective and trust erodes -- not by intention, but through unchecked structural roles. more

Massive Changes to the Chinese Tech Industry

It was on the cards. For weeks, Jack Ma, the digital tycoon of China, founder of Ant and of e-commerce giant Alibaba (the Chinese Amazon), disappeared off the radar after he was summoned by the Chinese Government and most likely lectured on the fact that his company was out of step with official Chinese policy. Consequently, the Government levied a multi-billion dollar antitrust fine against Alibaba, deleted its popular web browser from app stores and took several other actions against the company. more

ICANN Seeks Community Input for 2026 NomCom Cycle (Comments Due 21 January 2026)

ICANN's Nominating Committee is calling for community input to help shape its 2026 leadership selection. Feedback on candidate criteria, job descriptions, and process improvements is due by 21 January 2026. more