Policy & Regulation

A Civil Society Perspective on NETmundial Final Outcome: A Remarkable Achievement Despite Losses

few 'big picture' thoughts on the Netmundial meeting in Brazil this week and its final outcome document, adopted by its high level committee. Overall, there are some truly amazing and forward-looking principles supported in the "Netmundial Multi-Stakeholder Statement" that we as civil society should be proud of, and especially our civil society representatives who worked tirelessly for this achievement. more

Could Cybersecurity Become a New Driver for Business Transformation?

My involvement in the ICT industry over the last 40 years has always been to look at the strategic advantages that new technologies have to offer. I entered the industry through a proto-internet development called videotext. I looked at this technology, at what organisations could do with it, and assisted, for example, in the 1980s when the Commonwealth Bank introduced the world's first national online banking service called Telebank. more

Close to Half of America Not Using the Internet at Broadband Speeds, Says Microsoft

The US government’s most recent broadband statistics from the FCC claims 25 million Americans to be lacking access to a broadband connection. more

EU Rulings on Geo-Blocking in Digital Storefronts Will Increase Piracy Rates in the Developing World

For the longest time, it was an insurmountable challenge for those in the developing world to be able to afford to legally consume multimedia products. Prices originally set in Dollars, Euros or Yen often received insufficient adjustments to compensate for lower incomes, something that was compounded by local import or manufacture taxes that did little to alleviate matters. more

Canadian Report Tells ISPs to Deal with Hate Sites

A report calling for reforms to Canada's Human Rights Commission is calling for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to form their own monitoring body to more speedily deal with hate material hosted on their servers. The report calls for the Human Rights Act to be amended to remove provisions that have the government body censor hate speech, while at the same time calling for ISPs to invoke their terms of service to knock down hate websites. more

Scaremongering from Spy Agents

In an article for the Financial Times, Mr Hannigan -- the chief of the British spy agency GCHQ said: "I understand why they [US technology companies] have an uneasy relationship with governments. They aspire to be neutral conduits of data and to sit outside or above politics." "But increasingly their services not only host the material of violent extremism or child exploitation, but are the routes for the facilitation of crime and terrorism."... more

Content - The Next Regulatory War Zone

At the 2014 TelSoc Charles Todd Oration the former Chair of the ACCC, Graeme Samuel, warned against the looming content monopoly... "There is a constant risk that the exclusive tie-up of rights to content for new and emerging markets will allow the right holders to shut out competition across a wide range of services delivered over new networks." He didn't think that the current telcos have the right expertise to enter the content market... more

India’s eCommerce Policy: NOT a ‘Bollywood Drama’ but an Adaptation of Script of Acts from Elsewhere

The draft e-commerce policy paper of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of India raises valid observations concerning some of the imbalances, such as, on the excessive advantages gained by the "first movers" in the private sector, which implies advantages gained by the first -mover States on the Internet, on some of the prevailing gaps in the space and also on concerns about the abusive practices by a few e-commerce platforms and vendors. Most of these concerns are best addressed globally... more

Protests Erupt Over EU’s Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

In a blog post today, Michael Geist writes: "The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia). This has generated a flurry of furious protest..." more

NJ Content Liability Law Ruled Inconsistent with Sec. 230 (just like in Washington and Tennesse)

Back in a time before most members of Congress or prosecutors knew that there was an Internet, there was Prodigy. Prodigy, as part of its service, ran family-friendly chat rooms that it moderated in an effort to keep kids protected from unfortunate content. In a different Prodigy chat room, some unknown third party said something apparently bad about an investment firm Stratton-Oakmont. Stratton-Oakmont didn't like that very much, and sued. more

A Closer Look at the “Sovereign Runet” Law

In December 2018, a bill on the "stable operation" of the Russian segment of the Internet was introduced and got the title "Sovereign Runet" in mass media and among the public. It was adopted after 5 months later, despite doubts about the technical feasibility of its implementation. The law is very ambitious in its intent to simultaneously control Internet traffic and protect Runet from some external threats, but legislators still have no idea how it would actually work. more

Can the Internet Work Across Borders?

On the face of it, the answer is a rather obvious and simple "yes"! The Internet obviously works across borders. Technically, it is a global network servicing its users wherever they may be on the planet. But it is this very nature -- the fact that the Internet is not bound to a specific country or territory -- which has more and more people asking themselves whether it can really work across borders. more

ICANN, NTIA, Verisign and ANA Weighing In on ‘Name Collisions’ and the Readiness of New gTLD Program

Gregory S. Shatan of Reed Smith writes: "Last week, ICANN (the organization that oversees the domain name system of the Internet) was busy with nothing less than the security and stability of the Internet. At ICANN's recent meeting in Durban, those of us attending heard a drumbeat of studies, presentations and concerns regarding "name collisions": the conflicts that will arise when new gTLDs go live and conflict with existing top-level extensions in private networks..." more

World’s Growing Refugee Population Requires Access to Broadband to Mitigate Problems, Says Report

Many of the problems refugees and their host countries face can be mitigated and made easier to solve if internet connectivity gaps are closed, says a team of senior communications experts working with UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). more

From ICANN57 Hyderabad to the 3rd WIC Wuzhen Summit: A Moment of Consensus on Internet Governance

Two events that happened last month deserve an additional note. One is the ICANN57 conference held in Hyderabad on November 3-9. The other is the 3rd World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit held in Zhejiang Province on November 16-18. Though being completely overwhelmed by the result of President election in the United States, both events mark the victory of non-state actors and serve as good news for the community. more