Law

Responding to “The Case for Regulatory Capture of ICANN”

This past Monday, as ICANN65 was beginning in Marrakesh, the technical review blog Review Signal published a detailed expose, "The Case for Regulatory Capture of ICANN" authored by site founder and "geek-in-charge" Kevin Ohashi. The post was clearly the product of extensive investigative reporting – and what it reveals is deeply disturbing. more

Open Internet and Democratic Principles Under Attack

It is somewhat ironic that, several years ago now, Rupert Murdoch (while hinting at China) said something along the lines of the new media constituting a threat to totalitarian regimes, and that these regimes would have to open up and democratise. At that time the entire the western world, led by America (perhaps quietly), applauded his statement. ... However, now that those western leaders are being confronted with exactly the same issues, and are seeing for themselves the enormous democratic benefits of the Internet, they are behaving in a most authoritarian way. more

China to Require Face Scan for Internet Access and New Phone Numbers Starting December

Chinese citizens will be required to let telecommunications carriers to scan their faces in order to sign up for internet access or to get a new phone number. more

Thoughts on the Proposed Copyright Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy

A proposal from the Domain Name Association (DNA) would provide copyright owners with a new tool to fight online infringement -- but the idea is, like other efforts to protect intellectual property rights on the Internet, proving controversial. The proposed Copyright Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy is one of four parts of the DNA's "Healthy Domains Initiative" (HDI). more

The Future of Europe’s Fight Against Child Sexual Abuse

Like much of how the Internet is governed, the way we detect and remove child abuse material online began as an ad hoc set of private practices. In 1996, an early online child protection society posted to the Usenet newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children (yes, such a thing really existed) to try to discourage people from posting such "erotica" on the assumption that the Internet couldn't be censored. more

NTIA Seeks Nominations to Serve on the Online Safety and Technology Working Group

In the midst of the election season, Congress passed a plethora of Internet related laws. Most involved child protection. One involved webcaster protection. Wasting no time, the impact of the new laws is already being felt through federal agency implementation. On Friday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the Department of Commerce released the following notice... more

Are Domain Names Contract of Services or Property Rights?

There are several perspectives from which one can give various answers to the question of 'what are domain names?'. Originally the domain name system started and continues to be a human-friendly way of addressing to a set of machines or specific machine connected to the Internet. Hence, from the technical perspective, a domain name is simply an address consisting of a combination of alphanumeric and symbols to communicate with a machine which also happens to be hosting certain services in form of data and information on it. more

Gillette.ro WIPO Decision Provides Interesting Comments

One of the WIPO decisions published today relates to gillette.ro. The registrant (respondent) didn't make any submissions in their defence, so the decision could have been quite banal. However some of the panelist's comments under the "Registered and Used in Bad Faith" section are quite interesting... more

US Court Upholds FCC’s Net Neutrality Repeal But Says States Can’t Be Barred from Passing Own Rules

A U.S. court decision today determined net neutrality laws could return at the state level overruling Trump administration's effort to block states from passing their own net neutrality laws. more

A to Z on Internet Policy and Regulation – Brazil 2022

Time has come again, another year of general elections in Brazil. Some 30,000 candidates are running for Executive and Legislative seats: 1 President, 27 State Governors, 27 Federal Senators, 513 Federal Deputies, 1059 State Deputies, 24 District Deputies to govern 212+ million people and one of the largest economies in the world. For a few lucky industries, success and failure do not correlate with who is in power; for others, policy and regulation are everyday business. more

Cyber Security: A Duty to Care?

Yesterday, in my post on three new threats in one day, I posed the question whether it was necessary to develop regulations that would set a minimum standard on cyber security for devices that connect to the Internet. I'm having second thoughts here, which I'll explain in this post, but also try to look at a way forward and ask you to engage. more

WIPO Snafu Over britishmuseum.org Case?

WIPO just published a decision regarding the domain dispute over the britishmuseum.org domain name. At first glance, everything seems alright. The world famous British Museum won in a default judgment as the current registrant (the respondent) never replied). However, drill a little deeper and something is amiss. The "parties" section of the case lists the respondent as "British Museum Resources, Limited, West Bay, George Town, Kentucky, United States of America." more

Time to Take Stock: Twelve Internet and Jurisdiction Trends in Retrospect

With the growing tension between the cross-border Internet and the patchwork of national jurisdictions, it becomes crucial to keep track of key global trends that drive the debate on appropriate frameworks. One year ago, the Internet & Jurisdiction Project initiated a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process on these issues. To provide a factual basis for such discussions, it established an Observatory, supported by a network of selected international experts, to detect and categorize relevant cases via an innovative crowd-based filtering process in order to identify high-level patterns. more

A Sophisticated Online Counterfeit Ring

Online fakes can be a lucrative business and difficult to crack down on, due to the ease and low-cost of setting up multiple virtual storefronts and the ability to obfuscate an operation's identity. A federal lawsuit filed on March 1, 2010 by Polo Ralph Lauren and VF Corp. illustrates these points and highlights many of the intricacies of an online counterfeit ring. more

Debugging Legislation: PROTECT IP

There's more than a hint of theatrics in the draft PROTECT IP bill that has emerged as son-of-COICA, starting with the ungainly acronym of a name. Given its roots in the entertainment industry, that low drama comes as no surprise. Each section name is worse than the last: "Eliminating the Financial Incentive to Steal Intellectual Property Online" (Sec. 4) gives way to "Voluntary action for Taking Action Against Websites Stealing American Intellectual Property". more