Policy & Regulation

Policy & Regulation / Recently Commented

US House of Representatives Pass a Bill to Restore Net Neutrality Rules Repealed by Trump’s FCC

The US House of Representatives just passed the Save the Internet Act of 2019 on a vote of 232-190. 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

Article Expresses Concern That Google and Other Tech Giants are Quietly Buying Up Undersea Cables

Big tech's ownership of the internet backbone will have far-reaching, yet familiar, implications, says Tyler Cooper, a broadband policy watcher, and editor at BroadbandNow. more

US Government to ICANN - Move Quickly

David Redl has written to ICANN in relation to the ongoing work around whois and GDPR. The letter, which was shared with the GNSO Council last night, is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it offers the carrot in relation to what's been done so far, but then there's the not so veiled threat, which isn't a revelation by any means, of "domestic legislation." more

Are Inter-Satellite Laser Links a Bug or a Feature of ISP Constellations?

I hope each of these companies has someone in charge of thinking about what might go wrong with a single, satellite-based network providing fast, low-cost links anywhere on the global Internet. OneWeb, SpaceX, Telesat and Leosat all aspire to be global Internet service providers using constellations of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Their success will require still-unproven technological innovation, but there are also political stumbling blocks. more

Will PDP 3.0 Save the Multi-Stakeholder Model?

For the past several months, there has been much discussion within the ICANN community about something called "PDP 3.0". This has been raised in a number of different contexts including as part of ICANN's new governance review. But what exactly is PDP 3.0? And, will it save ICANN's multi-stakeholder governance model? I believe that if we are to save the multi-stakeholder model then now is the time to address the big issues not just the low hanging fruit on the surface - a new approach to achieving consensus across parties with widely differing views is needed. more

Still No Access to WHOIS Data

The ICANN 64 meeting in Kobe concluded two weeks ago, and we are no closer to accessing WHOIS data critical for law enforcement, cybersecurity threat investigators, intellectual property owners, or other consumer protection advocates who rely on the data to act quickly against online abuse in the domain name system. Instead of a balanced approach to WHOIS that serves the public interest, the ICANN Board is set to approve a new global policy that fails to even fully acknowledge critical... more

The EPDP on Generic Top-Level Domain Registration Data: Phase 1 Down, Phase 2 To Go

The ICANN community recently gathered in Kobe, Japan for its first meeting of the year and it was certainly a busy week for attendees. Much of the meeting centered around the work of the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) to address gTLD registration data. As a member of the EPDP team, we had been hard at work since being formed in August of 2018. Just prior to the Kobe meeting, we published the phase 1 Final Report. more

Cybersecurity Continues to Be the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Top Priority for 2019

For the fourth year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Office continues to include cybersecurity as one of the top enforcement priorities for 2019. more

EURid Pauses Brexit Plans

When the UK announced its intention to withdraw from the European Union it was clear to some of us that this would cause complications with .eu and possibly other domain name extensions. Over the past year, it's become clear that the European Commission, who mandate the .eu domain name policy, weren't interested in providing a "soft landing" for impacted registrants of .eu domain names. more

India’s Draft National E-Commerce Policy: A Bollywood Drama in Four Acts

India's recently published Draft National e-Commerce Policy, prepared by the Indian Commerce Ministry think-tank, can be read like the script of a four-act Bollywood drama... They were the dream couple: Princess India and Prince IT. She was full of cultural richness and diversity, with beauty, mystique and natural resources. She also a dark side. She harbored the world's largest number of impoverished people, with little infrastructure, and facing sparse economic prospects. more

ICANN Chair Elections Test Its Institutional Integrity

The ICANN Board will soon be considering candidates for election to the position of ICANN Chairperson and Vice Chair, which compels me to remind both the Board and the ICANN community of the fact that one of the members pursuing the Chairmanship is the subject of an on-going Australian Freedom of Information Act, which was initiated by the irregularities that brought about this individuals dismissal from the .au Domain Administration. more

Russians Take to the Streets to Protest Against New Internet Restrictions

Thousands of Russians in Moscow and other cities rallied on Sunday against tighter internet restrictions. The protest is reported to be one of the most prominent in the Russian capital in years. more

Thousands of UK Businesses, Individuals to Lose Their .EU Web Address in a No-Deal Brexit

The British government is urging close to 340,000 registered holders of .EU domain in Britain to make contingency plans as their web addresses will disappear if the UK does not agree on a deal with Brussels. more

Supporting Dot Amazon Strengthens Global Internet Cooperation

With the backlash against tech companies gaining steam, we've seen certain contrarian members of the media taking indiscriminate aim at companies and issues without due cause. This is what happened when Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett, in a paywalled March 7th editorial, inaccurately portrayed a process involving the Amazon's gTLD application for .AMAZON, an issue the i2Coalition has been engaged in for years. more