Policy & Regulation

Policy & Regulation / Featured Blogs

Time to Stop Talking About Unserved and Underserved

I work with communities all of the time that want to know if they are unserved or underserved by broadband. I've started to tell them to toss away those two terms, which is not a good way to think about broadband today. The first time I remember the use of these two terms was as part of the 2009 grant program created by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009. The language that created those grants included language from Congress that defined the two terms.

Holding Trump Accountable Under Public International Law

Trump and his enablers are well known to disrespect if not disdain legal systems, including public international law. He has effectively abrogated every treaty instrument relating to international communications at the whim of a tweet. His behavior has dishonoured the USA in a way that will take years to remedy. Trump's actions to ban access to Android Operating System updates on Chinese products have significantly harmed cybersecurity worldwide.

The Challenge of Access to Safe Internet Pharmacies and Medicines During Pandemics

With 300+ sessions and over 7,800 participants from 158 countries across every time zone, RightsCon Online 2020 (July 27-31) demonstrated the importance of convening people worldwide to bring about positive changes in a time of crisis. The Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research (York University, Canada) organized a panel of diverse experts and academics to discuss "Promoting human rights and access to safe medicines during pandemics: The critical role of Internet pharmacies."

Perspectives on Cyber Governance

APAN (Asia Pacific Advanced Network) brings together national research and education networks in the Asia Pacific region. APAN holds meetings twice a year to talk about current activities in the regional NREN sector. I was invited to be on a panel at APAN 50 on the subject of Cyber Governance, and I'd like to share my perspective on this topic here.

How Brexit Raises Risks for Non-Compliant .EU Domain Names

On June 3, 2020, EURid, the registry for .EU domains, published its timeline and action plan to withdraw and delete .EU domains registered to entities and individuals located in the U.K. ... Following the .EU regulations that were published on March 29, 2019, registrations of .EU domain names may be held by EU citizens, citizens of Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway, independent of their place of residence -- as well as organizations that are established in the EU.

The Internet Is for All

Over the past fifty years, participants in what began as the DARPA internet community have been turning out diverse technical specifications for TCP/IP network architectures and services. The first twenty years under government agency sponsorship were marked by rather free-wheeling sharing of ideas and collegial accommodation of divergent views typically found in most professional, academic activities.

Trump Wants to Change the Communications Decency Act

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." The law was passed in 1996 in order to shield ISPs that transported content or platforms that hosted it from lability. Bloggers were not responsible for comments on their posts, YouTube and Facebook were not responsible for things users posted, etc.

2020’s New Internet Success – Rejoinder

The posting with a similar name seems a bit contrived by anonymous in some strange attempt to enhance its significance. Many others, including myself, have been discussing this subject for some time. Indeed, a concerted lobbying effort and anti-competitive efforts by legacy TCP/IP internet stakeholders have been really ramped up over the past year to mischaracterize what is occurring.

2020’s New Internet Success

Chinese technology policy is now more effective even than their naval posture in the South China Sea, and both are playing out in full sunshine. This success is not about the hardware pillar of Chinese tech policy, though: its focus is the structural approach China and, increasingly, other stakeholders are taking to global Internet Governance... Late in the Year of the Pig just gone, China's offer of a New Internet Protocol was chewed over in senior-level advisory groups of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)...

Washington’s 5G Mania Endpoint – Global CyberBalkanisation

Over the past two years, governments and foreign intelligence agencies around the world have tried to understand the inexplicable, chaotic, irrational, indeed maniacal 5G policies of the Trump Administration. Revelations by former Trump administration officials and most recently Trump's niece confirm that there is no rational basis for Trumpian positions and policies and that the best response is to recognize that Washington is no longer capable of playing a meaningful role...