Policy & Regulation

Do We Need Alignment Between Internet Governance and AI Governance?

A debate over aligning internet and AI governance reveals stark differences in origin, incentives and power. While lessons from ICANN's multi-stakeholder model endure, AI's corporate dominance and geopolitical rivalry demand new, bottom-up approaches. more

The IRP Docket Speaks Louder Than Theory - A Response to Charles Mok on ICANN and AI Governance

A critique of ICANN's multi-stakeholder model argues that its accountability record, revealed through more than a dozen IRP disputes, shows structural failures that should caution policymakers seeking institutional blueprints for governing artificial intelligence systems globally. more

ICANN’s Ultimate Demise?

ICANN's proposed overhaul of root server governance would empower a new council to revoke America's operator status, risking a clash with a resurgent Trump administration and potentially imperiling the multistakeholder model that underpins the internet's core infrastructure. more

Why the Blackout Never Happened: Internet Governance Lessons From Poland’s Energy Sector

Poland thwarted a large-scale cyberattack on its energy grid without disruption, offering a rare case study in critical infrastructure resilience, decentralised energy governance, and the balancing act between openness and digital security. more

Welcome to Meltnet: A Blueprint for Digital Sovereignty in a Fragmented World

Meltnet envisions a federated internet model led by BRICS nations, combining digital sovereignty with cross-border interoperability. It challenges US-centric governance by proposing a trust-based architecture rooted in shared standards and mutual recognition. more

The Case Against Regulating AI in One Chart

A three-decade natural experiment suggests America's centralized regulatory review fostered far greater wealth creation than Europe's precautionary principle, raising stark questions about whether importing EU-style AI rules would undermine US innovation and prosperity. more

The Internet’s Legitimacy Gap: When Governance Outgrew Its Architecture

Internet governance is shifting from participatory forums to security-driven mandates. As authority accelerates ahead of legitimacy, technical systems face growing instability and operators absorb the risks of politically motivated control. more

ICC Cyber-Enabled Crimes and DNS Abuse: Accountability Questions for Infrastructure Operators

The ICC's new cyber policy reframes Internet infrastructure as crucial to prosecuting atrocities, prompting DNS operators and network providers to grapple with emerging obligations around evidence, neutrality, and cooperation in international justice. more

Broadband Speed and Market Signaling: Strategic Constraints in U.S. ISP Policy

Despite early dismissals from cable giants, consumer demand and real-world use cases proved the value of gigabit broadband. Today, slow uploads and strategic pricing continue to signal an industry reluctant to embrace speed. more

The Public Interest and the Root: Why the Next Round Demands a Public Law Approach to DNS Governance

As ICANN prepares to expand the domain name space, calls grow for a public-law framework to govern the DNS root, ensuring global equity, transparency, and accountability in managing the Internet's core infrastructure. more

An Open Letter to the ICANN Community: Not the Community Priority Evaluation We Intended

Today, I share a warning about serious changes to the Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) of the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook. They are not driven by public comment, but by a few voices within the SubPro Implementation Review Team - and they are very likely to lead to disastrous misappropriation of well-known community names, including those of Tribes, Indigenous Peoples and NGOs around the world. more

Should WSIS End? A Call for Discussion

The future of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process will be one of the main topics of the 2025 Internet Governance Forum. Many in the IG community are heavily invested in the renewal of WSIS. They imply that if it is not renewed, there will be major, negative effects on the way we govern the Internet. IGP believes that it is healthy and productive for the community to consider the possibility of ending WSIS. more

Censorship-by-Infrastructure: How DNS Blocking Threatens the Open Internet—and How You Can Help Document It

What happens when governments don't just regulate content, but forcibly repurpose the very guts of the Internet's infrastructure to enforce their policies? The chilling answer, increasingly evident worldwide, is widespread, devastating collateral damage. Around the world, neutral systems like Domain Name System (DNS) resolvers and IP routing, the bedrock of our digital lives, are being weaponized as enforcement tools. more

The End of the Road: ICANN, Whois, and Regulation

There's a well-documented crisis facing the domain name system: very few who rely on domain name registration data from the Whois database to perform vital functions can do so any longer, which is escalating consumer harm and abuse on the internet worldwide. And the problems, thanks to ICANN's overly restrictive policy post-GDPR and a failing policy process, are piling up. more

A Threat to Europe’s Digital Human Rights Stewardship

In a contemporary era when the human rights, democracy, and the rule of law are under attack, Europe has asserted itself as the leading global digital steward for maintaining those values. However, doing so through its Digital Sovereignty initiatives is significantly dependent on the ability to produce timely technical standards that underpin the implementing legislation. more