Policy & Regulation

European Commission Killing Off Thousands of EU Domains Due to Brexit

After the Brexit vote, I wrote that there could be an impact on EU registrants based in the UK. Over the past year, the UK government has been engaged in negotiations with the EU to navigate the application of Article 50 and the UK's exit from the European Union. While there has been a lot of focus on issues like the customs union and the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the eventual departure of the UK from the EU will have a tangible impact on the European digital economy. more

Berners-Lee Warns Rise of Dominant Platforms has Resulted in Weaponization of the Web at Scale

The World Wide Web turned 29 today and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, web inventor, has shared some stern warnings about the direction it is headed. more

Washington State Passes Country’s Toughest Net Neutrality Legislation

Washington may be the first state to approve a net neutrality law that applies to all wired and wireless Internet providers in the state. more

GDPR - Territorial Scope and the Need to Avoid Absurd and Inconsistent Results

There is an urgent need to clarify the GDPR's territorial scope. Of the many changes the GDPR will usher in this May, the expansion of EU privacy law's territorial scope is one of the most important. The GDPR provides for broad application of its provisions both within the EU and globally. But the fact that the GDPR has a broad territorial scope does not mean that every company, or all data processing activities, are subject to it. more

Montana Becomes First State to Require ISPs to Abide by Net Neutrality Principles Despite FCC Repeal

Montana Governor Steve Bullock signs an executive order requiring ISPs with state contracts to adhere to internet neutrality principles. more

Next on the US Telecoms Agenda: Downgrading Broadband

The American industry lobby (AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast) successfully pushed the regulator to get rid of net neutrality, but they are not stopping there. They can sense the opportunity under the Trump Administration to roll further back any regulations that stand in the way of maximising their profits. As all three largely enjoy geographic monopolies in their regions of operation, there is little competition driving innovation forward, so their aim is to milk the networks that they currently have in place for as long as possible. more

Is it Finally Time to Eliminate Needs-Based IPv4 Transfer Policies?

Two weeks before depletion of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) IPv4 free pool in September 2015, we published an article recommending that the ARIN community adopt transfer policies that encourage trading transparency and improve whois registry accuracy. By eliminating needs justification as a pre-condition to updating the registry, we argued that ARIN could eliminate existing policy-based barriers that have kept many otherwise lawful and legitimate commercial transactions in the shadows. more

Net Neutrality Not a Serious Issue Outside America

Most countries, don't have to fear internet quality problems in the same way as would be possible in the USA. The US competition watchdog has little power to hold telcos accountable to the nature of their broadband services. Back in 1996 broadband was classified as a content service and not a telecom service. So, for example, if a telco wants to provide preferred access to Google, it can sell them a superior broadband services which could create a two speed internet service... more

FCC Doesn’t Understand How the Internet Works, Say Internet Pioneers in Open Letter

Internet pioneers and leading figures published an open letter today calling on FCC to cancel the December 14 vote on the agency's proposed "Restoring Internet Freedom Order." more

Voluntary Reporting of Cybersecurity Incidents

One of the problems with trying to secure systems is the lack of knowledge in the community about what has or hasn't worked. I'm on record as calling for an analog to the National Transportation Safety Board: a government agency that investigates major outages and publishes the results. In the current, deregulatory political climate, though, that isn't going to happen. But how about a voluntary system? more

Berners-Lee Talks Net Neutrality in Washington, “ISPs Should be Treated More Like Utilities”

Tim Berners-Lee is in Washington urging lawmakers to reconsider the rollback of net neutrality laws. more

The Darkening Web: Is there Light at the end of the Tunnel?

In his book "The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace" (Penguin Books, New York 2017), Alexander Klimburg, an Austrian-American academic, gives "Internet Dreamers" a "Wake Up Call". He tells us the background-story why people start to be "anxious about the future of the Internet", as the recent ISOC Global Internet Report "Paths to Our Digital Future" has recognized. Klimburg refers to Alphabets CEO Erich Schmidt, who once said that "the Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity does not understand". more

The Internet Must Remain Open - Even for Those We Disagree With

Over the past couple of weeks, following the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, there has been significant discussion in social and traditional media about various technology companies removing websites from their servers, or otherwise making them unavailable. As the operators of Canada's Internet domain, we at CIRA are getting numerous inquiries about our stance and policies on this issue. I'd like to use this opportunity to make a couple of clarifications about how CIRA works and what CIRA actually does. more

The IoT Needs a Paradigm Shift from Security to Safety of Connected Devices

Building IoT ventures from scratch by prototyping hardware devices and their backend systems as well as working for a large company that tries to sell IoT devices itself, we learned a lot about the pitfalls and problems concerning security in the IoT. Nearly every connected device out there proved to be vulnerable to attacks. Researchers showed that it's possible to remotely take control over autonomous vehicles, implanted medical devices were manipulated, voting machines compromised and of course all sorts of other "smart" devices... more

Amazon.com Inc Given New Chance to Secure .AMAZON TLD

An arbitration panel has given Amazon.com Inc. a new shot at securing the .amazon top-level domain which the company has been fighting for since 2014. more