At his first meeting as CEO of ICANN, Fadi Chehade showed up ready to work AND to listen. ICANN's new CEO described his objectives for the organization which included 1) affirmation of purpose, 2) operational excellence, 3) internationalization, and 4) evolution of the multi-stakeholder model on which ICANN is built. He also described significant organizational changes to ICANN leadership and staff... more
Censorship practices by governments and other private actors are becoming more increasingly more sophisticated, and their effects are increasingly being felt globally. A case in point, the YouTube incident in Pakistan was a recent example affecting both users and the DNS at a national and global level. Likely other incidents will occur in the near future. As such, I believe censorship should be considered as a threat to the stability and security of the DNS. In the context of Internet governance discussions, I believe the issue should be raised both at ICANN and the Internet Governance forum. Do others agree? more
The Internet, at nearly every stage of its evolution, has effected change in existing intellectual property industries as those industries struggle to keep up with the march of technological advancement. For example, the entertainment industry has seen widespread piracy and bootlegging of just and soon-to-be released movies as a result of the increased availability of broadband Internet access in the home, and efficient peer-to-peer file-sharing technologies online. In response the entertainment industry has backed a wave of proposed legislation including the maligned Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). more
The notorious social networking website 8chan was taken offline on Monday afternoon following discontinuation of support from various service providers to the platform over its links to the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. more
The 46th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) takes place this week in Beijing, China, and will bring together leaders from all over the world to discuss and debate a wide range of issues related to domain names and the surrounding industry. One can expect that the new gTLDs, a topic frequently discussed here on CircleID, will naturally consume a great amount of the discussion at ICANN 46. more
The Internet is not new. It has existed, in one form or another, since the 1960s. Since that time, it has been primarily the domain of the engineers and the other technology-minded individuals that built it. The organizations that were put in place to govern it predate the huge growth in end users the Internet experienced in the 2000s... They are able, in structure and capacity, to deal with technological issues. The issues facing the Internet in 2014, however, are very different from those in 1998. more
Potential trademark Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPM) at the 2nd level can be divided into three main areas -- each defined by their time relative to Top-Level Domain (TLD) launch... Of these, we believe the third, "After Launch," is the most fruitful path to explore. We believe it offers the most potential to protect the rights of trademark holders, the best balance between TM rights and the legitimate rights of others who may want to register names , and the most benefit to the trademark community at the lowest cost to them... more
After two years of grueling, complex and contentious debate, the ICANN EPDP team delivered its Phase 2 Final Report on July 31st, 2020. Unfortunately, and disappointingly, the policy recommended for the so-called "System for Standardized Access/Disclosure" (SSAD) fails to meet the needs of the users it supposedly is designed to benefit. more
On May 12th, European legislators head into their final trilogue negotiations around the NIS2 Directive. This week, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) shared guidance found below with negotiators, focused on the Directive's Article 23. i2Coalition has been detailing our concerns about Article 23 before even their public consultation in March 2021. more
In a recent workshop, I attended, reflecting on the evolution of the Internet over the past 40 years, one of the takeaways for me is how we've managed to surprise ourselves in both the unanticipated successes we've encountered and in the instances of failure when technology has stubbornly resisted to be deployed despite our confident expectations to the contrary! What have we learned from these lessons about our inability to predict technology outcomes? more
Sometimes you get what you are asking for. And this seems to be one of those occasions... and the US government can give itself a pat on the back for having listened to other stakeholder opinions. For years the world of Internet governance has been seen as its own special corner of the technosphere, full of arcane acronyms and quiet power deals. Despite efforts to make ICANN and the broader Internet community more transparent and user-friendly, many observers, including many African governments, still saw the stage as too much of an insider's game -- with the ultimate insider being the US Department of Commerce. more
As a follow up to Susan Brenner's Networks and Nationalization and my comment there, I will go further in this post and talk about the "cyberwar" and "offense" aspects of her article. I think I made this point elsewhere as well... but before getting into a war, it'd be a brilliant idea to actually know that you can win. Cyberwarfare is the sort of game where you don't really need to be a huge government with the largest standing army in the world and sophisticated weaponry in order to win... more
Within the next year, the ICANN Board may well face a decision that will help determine whether ICANN is capable of serving the global public interest or whether it is degenerating into an industry-controlled self-regulatory association. The issue can be framed quite simply: will ICANN approve a process for the creation of a new wave of new generic top level domains that will include "closed generic" gTLDs? more
ICANN has taken another crack at the question of the economics of launching new top-level domains (TLDs). The first report that the group commissioned on the subject was greeted by a loud and unhappy uproar. Now we have the preliminary draft of a new report, this one by professors Katz, Rosston, and Sullivan. It is insightful and analytic, but the final version needs to consider the theoretical and empirical issues... more
In today's world, it has become axiomatic that drastic change can occur overnight. One of those cherished concepts at risk is the idea of "One World – One Internet." In the wake of the war in Ukraine, the geopolitical tensions on the existing Internet have increased. If the "One Internet" will survive the 2020s is increasingly an open question, as good, bad, and not-very-helpful intentions strive to pull it apart. more
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