ICANN has opened a comment period in relation to whois conflicts with local law / data privacy law. Of course anytime ICANN, or anyone else, tries to make any changes to whois policy there are issues. Whois is, for a variety of reasons, an emotive subject... under EU law many feel that registration details for domain name registrants need to be handled in a manner that is more compatible with the EU Directives and local law more
It has now been about eight months since I joined the Internet Society as the Director of Deployment & Operationalization and I still get asked on a fairly regular basis "what do you do?" Well, with ISOC's Chief Internet Technology Officer Leslie Daigle's recent departure, and with my time here having exceeded both my first 120 days and my first 6 months, this seems like the right moment to reflect on my brief tenure here so far and perhaps pontificate a bit on where we're going - and why. more
The timeline of the Net Neutrality issue has been detailed here. And quoting from Vox: 'Wheeler said that peering is "an issue that we are investigating, it's an issue we are very interested in, but it's not the issue here today."' more
In an unanticipated move a third Committee of the US House of Representatives has weighed in with concerns regarding the NTIA's proposed transition of the US role as counterparty to ICANN's IANA functions contract to one with the "global multistakeholder community". On May 13th the House Armed Services Committee Report for HR 4435, the Defense Authorization bill, was released. more
The Internet was replaced by a dual system created in 2014: a fiber optic network called "Net2Cash". It has a speed of one hundred Petabits per second (equivalent to 100 million Gigabits per second or 100,000 million Megabits per second). We no longer talk about Megabytes or Gigabytes because that is old school. Nowadays a couple of Exabites store the content of all written by man, from books and newspapers to Sumerian clay tablets; from Inca quipus and Egyptian hieroglyphs to all homework made by kids registered in elementary school. more
The United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announcement that by end 2014, there will be nearly three billion Internet users -- two-thirds of them from the developing world -- with mobile-broadband penetration approaching 32 per cent. This information is so timely that it needs to be put in proper perspective by asking: What will the majority of these two-thirds do online? And how do we in the ICANN community deliver on our mandate of serving the global public interest? more
Mozilla says that the FCC shouldn't look at an Internet line only as a relationship between an Internet provider and a subscriber. Regulators should formally recognize that there's a third party involved: Content providers such as websites, apps, gaming and more, Mozilla says. more
On April 24th the NETmundial "Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance" concluded with the issuance of an eight-page statement. This non-binding document falls short of the "Magna Carta for the Internet" called for in an opening statement delivered by Tim Berners Lee, but it does set the stage for the other two major 2014 events that will affect the course of Internet Governance (IG) - the IGF meeting in Istanbul, Turkey and the ITU meeting in Busan, Korea. more
Peering has come back in the news with the FCC mentioning it in its set of reviews of the telecommunications market in the USA, following its Network Neutrality decision. The peering and interconnect issues are going to the heart of the telecoms matter in relation to competition, innovation and the Open Network. You don't need Network Neutrality rules, if you have a well functioning, transparent, interoperable and competitive infrastructure environment. more
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
There's been a lot of controversy over the U.S. Government's proposal to give up their supervisory role over ICANN. This lead Karl Auerbach, one of the only people ever elected to represent end-users in cyberspace, to write this letter to Congress. Karl did an excellent job as North America's first elected representative in cyberspace. He fought for things that would have made Internet governance more representative, and more transparent. more
We could see it as a victory for those advocating changes and adjustments in the system of internet governance. Au contraire... we could consider it as the debacle of the good intentions... all ending up in not knowing if it was worth it. I say and maintain, that the effort and the earned contributions were worth it. The final result is that ICANN should be strengthened to recognize its merits and achievements, not underestimate what this organization has accomplished in fifteen years of hard and continuous work. more
We live in a world of information abundance and the proliferation of ideas. Through mobile devices, tablets, laptops and computers we can access and create any sort of data in a ubiquitous way. But, it was not always like that. Before the Internet information was limited and was travelling slow. Our ancestors depended on channels of information that were often subjected to various policy and regulatory restrictions. The Internet changed all that. more
The internet affects every individual in this world whether directly or indirectly. For example, a medical professional somewhere in Goma, Congo might access the internet to read and post reviews to current medication available and this might have an impact on the kind of medication that he/she recommends to the patient, whether the patient has access to affordable internet or not. Since the internet affects everyone, Africans citizens who are aware of internet governance discussions, expect African stakeholders to engage in these discussions. more
ICANN has been sent a letter by the European Data Protection Supervisor calling them out with respect to both data collection, retention and privacy within the context of the 2013 Registrar contract (RAA). The letter is the first instance of one, to my knowledge, which makes reference to the ECJ's recent ruling that rendered the data retention directive null and void. more
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