Having been passed over by the "old guard" Board Governance Committee of ICANN Board of Directors, I took the occasion to speak from my heart to provide the "new guard" with the observations of a 16-year ICANN volunteer. For those of you in the community who are wondering what happened, what follows is word for word what I shared with the Board of ICANN at my closed door proceedings. more
Are you (or someone you know) passionate about protecting the global, open Internet? And ensuring that it is available to everyone? Do you have experience in Internet policy, standards, or development? If so, please consider submitting a nomination for a seat on the Internet Society Board of Trustees to help guide the future of the organization. The Internet Society supports and promotes the development of the Internet ... more
There is no doubt that any national infrastructure plan of the magnitude of national broadband networks as they are currently rolled out in 9 countries and which policies have been put in place in another 110 countries will have questions attached to it. Furthermore, this infrastructure is being developed for the digital economy, which, in itself, is a fast-moving world. Five years ago there were no smartphones, tablets, mobile apps or smart TVs. more
On 19 February 2020, ICANN announced that ICANN67 would be held via remote participation out of an abundance of caution associated with the COVID-19 outbreak. Little did we know at the time that twelve months later, ICANN meetings would still be held via remote participation. For a community that has been accustomed to meeting face-to-face at least three times a year since ICANN1 in Singapore in March 1999, this has created a tremendous challenge for how we conduct our business. more
In response to the European Commission surprise announcement last week that British domain owners may no longer be entitled to keep their ".eu" domain names, EFF is urging the registry for .eu (EURid) no to follow through. more
The original Netmundial was a unique Internet governance event that took place in 2014 and set out to map new avenues for global cooperation around the theme, uniting diverse stakeholders to discuss the future of IG in a broad manner. It was initially convened by the Brazilian government and ICANN as an answer to the Snowden revelations of global Internet espionage performed by various nations (primarily the USA), in part due to these two actors being directly affected by the implications of the revelations. more
The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) joined a unanimous vote at the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) meeting today, approving the voluntary U.S. Anti-Bot Code of Conduct for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), also known as the ABCs for ISPs. As a member of the CSRIC appointed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the OTA has been working with the FCC and leading ISPs to develop this voluntary Code. more
Honesty is the best policy. At the risk of anthromorphizing a regulatory agency, at the very least the FCC has not told the complete truth, or put itself in a position not to know the truth. The FCC has contributed to debates about what constitutes credible facts and statistics, and what this data means. For example, soon-to-be former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin asserted as the gospel truth his factual conclusion that cable television operators collectively have a 70% market share... The FCC should acknowledge that it may not know all the facts. more
Australia, New Zealand and the USA have taken international leadership in relation to their approaches to the infrastructure investment their countries are committed to in relation to the multi-billion dollar investment in national broadband and smart grid infrastructure. This is based on open networks, which will allow multiple access to infrastructure that can be used for e-health, smart grids, tele-education, as well as, of course, to telecoms, Internet and entertainment services. more
Something over 55% of landline broadband users are in the "Global South," about 500M. The South is about 65% if you include "wireless-only" many of which are 4G LTE at ten megabits or more. The gap is widening rapidly and will increase by well over 70M in 2018. Six large developing countries are growing 5% or more in the last year, compared to only one in the developed world. China is adding ~30M more each year. Most developed countries are between 75% and 95% connected. That leaves little room for growth. more
The IGF has a tendency of slowly shifting from a place of a discussion about the way the world accesses information resources, into a place where only topics that make the headlines are being highlighted, with many of the same players being among the loudest speakers. We believe that due to cross-cultural reasons, these people are mainly coming from North America and Western Europe. We urge the IGF to allocate equal time for people from regions outside of those two. more
The Australian has a good article describing the efforts some of their ISPs are making in an attempt to clean up their act: the government is encouraging ISPs to detect computers on their network that are infected and part of botnets, and to communicate to the customer that their system is compromised... Unless the customer feels a little bit of pain they will not change their ways. more
Few people would suggest that much of the life in the U.S. national political scene these days has any nexus to the real world. At national election time, the disconnect and hyperbole in Washington get worse. "Unhinged" seems to be a common term. The recently released GOP platform on "protecting internet freedom" followed up by the "twenty-five advocacy groups" letter to Congressional leaders is definitely an unhinged a journey into the land of the clueless. more
Just in the last two weeks, two stories in the United States hit the press that highlight behavior from ISPs that would have likely have violated the Net Neutrality rules that were killed by Ajit Pai's FCC. The big ISPs have been surprisingly quiet and have not loudly violated those rules, even though they are no longer in effect. The industry speculation is that the big ISPs are treading lightly because they don't want to trigger a regulatory overreaction should there be a change of party in the administration or Congress. more
The United States House and Senate Democratic leaders are about to unveil new legislation today proposing to restore federal net neutrality rules on Internet providers. more