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Like many people, I was taken by surprised by Google's announcement about its threatened withdrawal from China in the wake of continued censorship and attacks that appeared to emanate from there. My immediate reaction was quite simple: "Wow". There's been a lot of speculation about just why they pulled out. Some reports noted that Google has been losing market share to Baidu... I don't think, though, that that's the whole story. more
Garth Bruen reports on a paper published by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics of Boston University School of Law authored by Bryan A. Liang and Tim Mackey titled, "Searching for Safety: Addressing Search Engine, Website, and Provider Accountability for Illicit Online Drug Sales". From the paper: "Online sales of pharmaceuticals are a rapidly growing phenomenon. Yet despite the dangers of purchasing drugs over the Internet, sales continue to escalate. These dangers include patient harm from fake or tainted drugs, lack of clinical oversight, and financial loss. Patients, and in particular vulnerable groups such as seniors and minorities, purchase drugs online either naïvely or because they lack the ability to access medications from other sources due to price considerations. Unfortunately, high risk online drug sources dominate the Internet, and virtually no accountability exists to ensure safety of purchased products." more
Reading through Brian Kreb's blog last week, he has an interesting post up on the White House's call upon the industry on how to formulate a plan to stem the flow of illegal pharmaceuticals...It is unclear to me whether or not the goal of this initiative is to stem the flow of online crime in general or to reduce the flow of illegal pharmaceuticals flowing into the United States (since presumably this cuts into the profits of large pharmaceutical companies... more
Recently during an afternoon meeting with a friend of mine, Bob Ochieng, who happens to work for ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Africa Operations, he lamented that at online Internet Governance discussions fora such as CircleID, and 1net.org, there is no serious frequent engagements from African Voices. This got me thinking and I realized that most African Internet Stakeholders would rather use a "wait and see approach" in matters as critical as Internet Governance. more
Six months following the April 11th issuance of the Beijing Communique by ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), ICANN continues to wrestle with whether to accept the bulk of the GAC's proposed safeguards for new gTLDs as set forth in Annex 1 of that document. On October 1st ICANN Board Chairman Stephen Crocket sent a letter to GAC Chair Heather Dryden summarizing the results of the September 28th meeting of the New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) that considered the remaining and still undecided advice received from the GAC. more
The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Hearing on ICANN's Expansion of Top Level Domain Names on December 8, 2001 was all about strategy. The strategy was simple: while the world has its attention turned to the debate on the copyright legislative proposals of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act, let's have another ICANN hearing and try to re-open trademark protection for new gTLDs. more
As previously noted, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation today held a full committee hearing on ICANN's expansion of top level domains (TLDs). The hearing was held to examine the merits and implications of the program and ICANN's efforts to address concerns raised. ICANN will begin accepting applications for new TLDs on January 12, 2012. more
When Steve delBianco from NetChoice testified (April 2, 2014) in the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology of the US House of Representatives on "Ensuring the Security, Stability, Resilience, and Freedom of the Global Internet", he proposed a stresstest for new mechanisms which could substitute the role of the NTIA in overseeing the IANA contract with ICANN. Stresstests are good. It is good for cars, it is good for banks and it is good for new mechanisms... more
ICANN seems to be out to re-prove Hirschman's theories of exit, voice, and loyalty by driving all of its good people to exit rather than giving them meaningful voices. Thomas Roessler, a long-time advocate of individual users' interests on the interim ALAC now suggests it's Time to Reconsider the structure of ICANN's At-Large, as he feels compelled to promise himself not to get involved with ICANN again... more
Jonathan Zittrain's recent book, The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It, has spurred a lot of discussion both online and offline, with blog posts lauding his insights or criticising his over-apocalyptic imagination. The book itself makes fascinating reading for those who have watched the network grow from its roots in the research community into today's global channel for communications, commerce and cultural expression... One of the reasons that Zittrain puts forward for the growing popularity of closed or, as he prefers 'tethered', devices, is that they are less vulnerable to hacking, security flaws, malware and all the other perils that face any internet-enabled system. more
In a move to be celebrated by many of us with a VoIP background, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today the appointment of Henning Schulzrinne as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As the release indicates, Henning's role as CTO will be to: ...guide the FCC's work on technology and engineering issues, together with the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology. more
On May 26, 2021, I submitted a complaint to ICANN's Complaints Officer, Krista Papac. In a nutshell, my complaint centers on ICANN's blatant violation of its Bylaws, specifically Section 2.2, named Restrictions, which expressly prohibits ICANN from acting as a registrar. However, despite the absence of any exceptions to this unambiguous prohibition, ICANN is acting improperly as a registrar for the purposes of warehousing and cybersquatting on certain domain names in the .com and .net registries. more
On December 1, 2014 the Cross Community Working Group (CWG) on Naming Related Functions published a Draft Transition Proposal. The comment period on the Proposal extended for twenty-one days; due to a requirement imposed by the separate IANA Coordination Group (ICG) that a final proposal be received by mid-January, there was no provision for a follow-up reply comment period as is standard ICANN Practice for issues of far less consequence. more
Someone needs to take a good hard look at those Internet surveillance stories being strategically placed on the front page of the New York Times. There's a trail here, I believe, that's worth following. Here are some data points... there appears to be a deep interest in the ability to declare war online, as evidenced by cybersecurity research and public speeches by Herbert Lin, a key player who has worked on several cybersecurity reports for the National Research Council.
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Proper, transparent, accountable U.S. NTIA's Transition of its oversight of the Internet to something other than a single country oversight is something I have always believed in and spoke and written about repeatedly for years and is long overdue. But NTIA's March 14th declared intent to transfer "Key" Internet roles is not only very ambiguous but leads to new questions and concerns that must be answered before anything starts taking place. more
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