Internet Governance

Africa Is Becoming a Real World Test Environment for AI Governance

Africa is rapidly emerging as a critical testing ground for AI governance, where fast adoption, evolving digital ecosystems, and uneven institutional readiness are exposing regulatory gaps with global implications. more

Facilitation Without Responsibility: ICANN and the Missing Warning Question - Part 3 of 3

ICANN's AFRINIC episode shows how support can harden into perceived authority. A standing RIR Boundary Protocol would force early warnings, role disclosure and procedural safeguards before regional engagement drifts into governance redesign. more

The Quiet Value of .gov.ccTLD: Restricted SLDs as Trust Infrastructure

An official-looking renewal notice reveals how open namespaces shift verification burdens onto users. Restricted government domains like .gov.au function as trust infrastructure, embedding authority into the namespace and reducing fraud, confusion, and verification costs. more

Iran Threatens Subsea Internet Cables in the Strait of Hormuz

Iran is seeking to monetize and potentially weaponize subsea internet cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz, exposing how modern geopolitical conflicts increasingly threaten the digital infrastructure underpinning global finance, communications and trade. more

Facilitation Without Responsibility: ICANN and the Missing Warning Question - Part 2 of 3

ICANN's Smart Africa engagement shows how proposals can gain authority without formal endorsement, raising harder questions about CAIGA, ICP-2 and whether regional partnerships need earlier safeguards when RIR governance begins to shift under institutional cover. more

Procedural Resilience or Technological Rigidity? Reassessing Article 19’s DNS Abuse Framework in the Post-MLAT Era

As cross-border cyber enforcement falters, critics argue Article 19's DNS abuse framework prioritizes procedural purity over user protection, leaving courts too slow to counter AI-driven phishing, rapid-flux domains, and increasingly automated online threats. more

Inside Iran’s Shift From Internet Shutdowns to Tiered Connectivity

Iran's wartime internet restrictions transformed online access into a costly, unequal system, according to researcher Imad Payande, with black markets, selective connectivity and institutional privilege reshaping how citizens reached the global web. more

Facilitation Without Responsibility: ICANN and the Missing Warning Question - Part 1 of 3

An ICANN-backed African internet-governance initiative exposed a deeper institutional problem: whether global coordinators must warn when regional policy processes drift into RIR governance, before facilitation, silence and funding harden into implied legitimacy for contested reforms. more

Internet Censorship Grows More Sophisticated, Warns OONI Co-Founder

Maria Xynou warns that internet censorship is becoming more sophisticated and less transparent as governments deploy targeted blocks, throttling and encrypted traffic interference, while OONI's crowdsourced measurements help researchers and human-rights groups expose restrictions and defend online freedoms worldwide. more

Running-Code Primacy - The Patch Needed to Preserve the Internet’s Original Design

This essay argues that Internet governance has drifted from technical coordination into unaccountable institutional power, and proposes "Running-Code Primacy" as a post-RIR framework grounded in distributed validation, interoperability, and voluntary adoption rather than registry authority. more

The Illusion of Digital Sovereignty (Part III) - Collision, Geopolitical, Compute Concentration, Future Governance

Geopolitical fragmentation is colliding with the internet's distributed architecture, exposing how sovereign cloud concentration and AI infrastructure can weaken resilience, amplify strategic vulnerabilities, and challenge whether governance can preserve interoperability while managing dependency under stress. more

The Illusion of Digital Sovereignty (Part II) - Emergence, Sovereign AI Ecosystem, the RIR System, Number Resources

As states chase digital sovereignty through clouds, AI and localized infrastructure, the internet's globally coordinated foundations reveal a harder truth: operational continuity depends less on control than on interoperable systems built on trust and governance. more

The Illusion of Digital Sovereignty (Part I) - Cloud Infrastructure, Survivability, and the Territorialization of the Internet

Missile strikes on Gulf data centres exposed a deeper contradiction at the heart of digital sovereignty: governments seek territorial control over internet infrastructure whose resilience still depends upon globally distributed coordination and interdependence across borders. more

Recent Advancements in the Rights to Public Knowledge: Technical Standards

Recent court rulings in Europe and America are reshaping access to technical standards, weakening paywalls and strengthening the principle that publicly mandated knowledge belongs to citizens, regulators and increasingly AI systems that depend on machine-readable information. more

DNS Censorship Report Warns of Rising Domain Suspensions

ARTICLE 19 warns that governments are increasingly exploiting internet infrastructure to silence critics, using domain suspensions to block entire websites while regulators and registry operators debate how to balance online safety, technical abuse prevention and freedom of expression. more