Policy & Regulation

Moore’s Law and the Economics of Abundance

Moore's Law explains why the price of everything electronic keeps going down; but now Moore's Law is starting to have an effect on much more than technology prices. The costs of energy, medicine, law, education, financial transactions, and government itself are falling because of Moore's Law's relentless progress. But these cost decreases are not being fully reflected in the prices we pay for all these things. more

Neelie Kroes, the EU, Cloud Computing, Regulation and Good Ears

In her blog EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes blogs on her stance on cloud computing. In short: this is a good development which the EU will embrace and advocate, but may need regulation in order to ensure a safe environment for industry and individuals in the cloud. Here's some thoughts on that. more

Mooning the Porn Stars

Steve DelBianco did a great job of discussing the rocky relationship between ICANN's Government Advisory Committee (GAC) and the Board of Directors, in his piece entitled ".XXX Exposes the Naked Truth for ICANN". I've been keeping an eye on the adult industry press to see what their reaction is to the .XXX debacle. But before we start, let's get something out of the way. more

We Need Smarter Governments to Manage a Changing Global Environment

The natural disasters, climate change and widespread social and economic crises that are taking place in the world today show that the human race needs to become smarter. The urban revolution that succeeded the Neolithic agricultural revolution has allowed us to build new city-based civilisations that are conducive to innovation and information-gathering in all aspects of life and beyond. While amazing civilisations have come and gone over the last 10,000 years it is only since the 20th century that we have seen a real explosion in the urbanisation process, leading to a doubling of the global population. more

ICANN Approves .XXX Again

At Friday's board meeting, ICANN once again narrowly approved the contentious .XXX domain intended for pornography. What this vote primarily shows is that ICANN's processes have been broken for a long time, and aren't getting fixed. Two board members made thoughtful and eloquent statements before the vote outlining the reasons they were about to vote for or against the domain. more

Whois Scared?

Every time I witness another argument about changing the rules of the Whois system I marvel at how such an important core internet protocol could be so widely misunderstood. I don't mean that the protocol's technical details are not well understood -- it's a very simple device, easy to implement correctly and easy to use even for new users. I mean that the Whois system itself and its purpose in the Internet ecosystem is widely misunderstood. Everybody uses Whois and lots of people argue about Whois but precious few folks know why Whois exists in the first place. more

International Internet Governance: A Field Guide to 2011

If an important debate of our age is going on right now but you don't know where, no one can blame you. Part of the intrigue surrounding discussion of how the Internet will be governed is deliberate; the current process and forums were conceived by parties who want to make sure that if their agenda fails in one place that they can claw back ground in another. Part of that plan is the byzantine "commitology" of the UN system, which is now frighteningly relevant to the broadband industry and civil society. What follows is an effort to make this clear what, where, when, and how it all will happen in 2011. more

ICANN’s New gTLD Double Standard?

Over the last two days I have sat in a room and watched a rather interesting dynamic unfold between the ICANN Board and its Government Advisory Committee (GAC). While I remain optimistic of there being a responsible closure to the new gTLD implementation process within the next six months, an apparent double standard being used by the ICANN Board could be a potential stumbling block. more

ICANN Board: You Got It Right. Then You Got It Wrong. Now, Get It Right Again.

The ICANN Board has itself in a pretty pickle. The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Consultancy with the Board in Brussels was an apparent non-starter. After hundreds of man-hours' worth of comments provided by the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC), the Board continues to claim that it lacks sufficient information on trademark issues in order to respond to concerns. more

Blacklist Operations and Practices: Excerpts from an ASRG Draft

The Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) published a draft for an Overview of Email DNSBL Best Practices. We can take a step back and review paragraph 2.2.5 (Conflict of Interest)... Some DNSBLs used for blocking/negative reputation have had a practice of requiring fees or donations to charities from the listee for delisting. It is generally considered entirely appropriate for a DNSBL to charge for access to it by its users -- the definition of a commercial DNSBL. more

At the ARIN Meeting

I have been attending the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) meeting in Toronto. ARIN is one of the RIRs, i.e., the Internet address registry and policy making authority for North America. Although I have observed and participated on RIR lists for some time and interacted with RIR representatives at ICANN, WSIS and IGF, this is the first time I have been able to attend a meeting. I'm glad I did. more

AT Kearney Takes Side With Incumbent Telcos to Defend the Old World

In my job as part of a consultancy company, I know there are two types of reports our clients are interested in - those that are written for the customer to be used internally and those that are to be used externally. Quite often, instead of well thought out and researched pieces, these last-mentioned reports are created simply to underscore the opinion of the party paying for them. So when I received research by AT Kearney on A Viable Future Model for the Internet, I immediately checked who had paid for that report. more

The U.S. “Scorecard” for Brussels: Draconian Trademark Rules & The End of Private-Sector Leaders

The U.S. "Scorecard" for Brussels Proposes Draconian Trademark Rules - And May Mean the End of Unlimited New gTLDs and/or the ICANN Experiment in Private Sector-Led Internet Governance... On Friday, January 28th the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) circulated its submission to ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) containing suggestions for what positions the GAC should push for at its February 28 - March 1 meeting with ICANN's Board to air disagreements over provisions of the Proposed Final Applicant Guidebook (AG) for new gTLDs. more

Governments Should Promote Cultural Diversity on the Internet

The entire new gTLD applicant community is awaiting, patiently, the forthcoming Brussels meeting between the ICANN Board and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) to take place from February 28th. After years of delays to the new gTLD process, ICANN and the GAC will try to reach an agreement on how and when to launch the new Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) programme. The expectations for the outcome of the Brussels meeting is huge among potential new gTLD applicants. Despite this, the media attention will be negligible when compared to the news coverage that the next ICANN public meeting in March will receive. more

Lessons from Egypt: We Need to Protect Our Connected Minds

We need to protect the power that allows us to connect our collective intelligence, as described a few weeks ago in my blog on connected minds. I argued that in order to address some of our global challenges we have to start looking at a radically new way to address them. The events in Egypt brought home the fact that if it comes to the crunch any government can disconnect us simply by bringing the Internet and other communications systems down at will... more