Policy & Regulation

Forward-Thinking Remedies

Just a year ago, I gave a talk at David Isenberg's 2005 Freedom to Connect conference. I said, essentially, that we should be careful in asking for regulation to protect the net, because the power to protect carries with it the power to constrain. This was a very troubling message for the audience, and the chatroom projected behind me went wild with disapproval. Since then, I've become very concerned about the concentration in broadband service provision in this country, and worried that there won't be any competition for unfettered internet access. more

Return of Net Neutrality: Discussion of European Net Neutrality Proposal Relevant for U.S. Broadband Market

There is an interesting recent discussion in Europe about net neutrality that has relevance to the U.S. broadband market. The European Commission that oversees telecom and broadband has started taking comments on a proposal to force content generators like Netflix to pay fees to ISPs for using the Internet. I've seen this same idea circulating here from time to time, and in fact, this was one of the issues that convinced the FCC first to implement net neutrality. more

CircleID Launches the First in a Series of Community Dialogues on COVID-19 and the Internet

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the rapid migration of the world's workforce and consumer services to virtual spaces, has amplified the Internet governance and policy issues including infrastructure, access, exponential instances of fraud and abuse, global cooperation and data privacy, to name but a few. The need for practical, scalable and efficient solutions has risen dramatically. more

Open Systems Lead to ‘Economies of Scope’

The 'economies of scope' is an appealing concept implying that if we share knowledge in an open way we can create new, healthy economies that do not just depend on 'scale'. As we have seen, over the last decade in particular, some of the companies that are trying to achieve exponential growth can endanger the economy and society in general - the global financial crisis surrounding the large financial institutions, the scandals around News Corp, the political lobbying (bullying) by the super rich and the destruction of the environment by some developers. more

Eight-Year Legal Battle Recap: DCA Blocked From Being Heard on Its Merit

It has been a while, nearly eight years since we have been in touch. I thought I would post an update to the DCA vs ICANN case, to the interested party of the global internet, towards the eight-year legal battle DCA had with ICANN. I believe there would be useful lessons learned that would shed some light on ICANN's activities in the Internet community. For those not aware, the DCA vs. ICANN case involved many twists and turns, spanning nearly a decade of DCA's efforts to hold ICANN accountable for the harm it caused to DCA over the delegation rights of the .Africa new gTLD Registry. more

Internet Society CEO Responds to Concerns Raised Over the .ORG Sale

Internet Society CEO Andrew Sullivan released a statement today in response to the recent concerns raised by the community with regards to the sale of Public Interest Registry (PIR), the .ORG operator, to Ethos Capital. more

Transmissions from the Past: Radio and Email on Mobile Devices

Apparently, along with trying to change who gets paid when the music gets played, the National Association of Broadcasters is lobbying Congress to require FM radio receivers to be built into phones and other mobile devices. I'm sure this is in part a reaction to the rise of streaming music apps like Pandora and the Public Radio Player, but they want FM receivers in not-so-smart phones too. more

Ladies and Gentlemen, China’s Netizen Day…

Just after the government announces a crackdown on Internet smut. Yesterday, they announced plans for "Netizen Day" on September 14th, which apparently marks 15 years since the first e-mail message was sent from China in 1987. The new celebratory day (I don't think it's an official holiday) was unveiled at an official ceremony presided over by Chinese government officials and Internet execs, many of whose companies - including Google, Sina, and Sohu, who were named in the smut crackdown just 24 hours before. more

International Law of Critical Internet Infrastructure [CII]: A Comparative Analysis

On Friday December 13, 2024 at 10:00–12:00 CET (09:00-11:00 AM UTC) the Lodz Cyber Hub at the University of Lodz Law School, an ICANN EURALO ALS, and the United Nations University – Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) hosts an online workshop 'International Law of Critical Internet Infrastructure: A Comparative Analysis of Europe and China'. more

Minding the Gap at the ITU-T

In 1992, Theo Irmer who had served as the organization's director for the previous eight years during its glory days, wrote that if there was any hope of saving what was left of the body, it must be privatised. That never occurred. Everyone pretty much left and migrated to dozens of other venues where all the world's information and communication technology standards have long been created and evolved. Essentially every major nation moved to competitive, private, marketplace-driven provisioning of communication products and services. more

We Need Smarter Governments to Manage a Changing Global Environment

The natural disasters, climate change and widespread social and economic crises that are taking place in the world today show that the human race needs to become smarter. The urban revolution that succeeded the Neolithic agricultural revolution has allowed us to build new city-based civilisations that are conducive to innovation and information-gathering in all aspects of life and beyond. While amazing civilisations have come and gone over the last 10,000 years it is only since the 20th century that we have seen a real explosion in the urbanisation process, leading to a doubling of the global population. more

Keeping Cyberspace a Public Space

I recently had an opportunity to re-read a pamphlet I wrote in 2000 for a series on new thinking about mutualism published by the Co-operative Party. In 'e-Mutualism, or the tragedy of the dot.commons' I talked at length about the co-operative basis of the Internet, the need for online public spaces which are not controlled or dominated by commercial interests, and the opportunities that the network offers for mutual organisations of all sizes, from small co-operatives to retailers like John Lewis... Re-reading it now I wasn't too embarrassed by my ten-year old analysis. more

IP Addresses and Privacy Sensitive Data - A Level Playing Field Needed

Reading Peter Olthoorn's book on Google (a link is found here), I ran into a passage on IP addresses. Where Google states that it does not see an IP address as privacy sensitive. An IP address could be used by more than one person, it claims. The Article 29 Working Party, the EU privacy commissioners, states that it is privacy sensitive as a unique identifier of a private person. It got me wondering whether it is this simple. Here is a blog post meant to give some food for thought and debate. I invite you to think about the question 'how private is an IP address'? more

China Sends a Wake-Up Call to All Multinationals - Are You Awake?

If you visit Marriott's China website today, you're likely to see this (see screenshot). I dumped the text within this page into Google Translate and included below is what it loosely said. So what exactly happened here? Marriott sent a survey in Mandarin to its Chinese loyalty members that referred to Tibet, Macau, and Taiwan as "countries." As readers of this site might know quite well by now, in the eyes of Chinese authorities, this is no trivial oversight. more

Over 190 Internet Engineers, Pioneers, Technologists File Comments with FCC on Net Neutrality

A group of over 190 Internet engineers, pioneers, and technologists today filed joint comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) explaining "Technical Flaws in the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rule-making and the Need for the Light-Touch, Bright-Line Rules from the Open Internet Order." more