Internet Governance

Policies and mechanisms for Internet governance have been topics of heated debate between many different Internet stakeholders, some of whom have very different visions for how and indeed whether the Internet should facilitate free communication of ideas and information. The definition of Internet governance has been contested by differing groups across political and ideological lines. One of the key debates centers around the authority and participation of certain actors, such as national governments and corporate entities, to play a role in the Internet's governance. The position of the US Department of Commerce as the controller of the Internet has attracted criticism from those who felt that its control should reflect its international nature. A hands-off approach by the U.S. Departmetn of Commerce helped contain this criticism. Other areas of controversy included the creation and control of generic top-level domains (.com, .org, and possible new ones, such as .biz or .xxx). There were also suggestions that individual governments should have more control, or that the International Telecommunication Union or the United Nations should have a role in Internet governance. Read the full background at Internet Governance Wikipedia

Internet Governance / Featured Blogs

How Can ICANN Improve Institutional Confidence?

This week ICANN held a public consultation in Washington, D.C., where ICANN's President's Strategy Committee (PSC) solicited remarks from a packed audience of intellectual property (IP) lawyers, domain name registrars and other Internet stakeholders on how the organization can improve institutional confidence. No surprise, ICANN's decision to add new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to the Internet was on many participants' minds. more»

Skype Messes Up, Badly

The Open Net Initiative's Information Warfare Monitor project has published a stunning report by "Hacktivist" Nart Villeneuve titled: "Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform." It has been covered by both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal... more»

ICANN Slaps Joker.com and DNS.com.cn

If you have rules and regulations but don't enforce them then there's little point in having any rules or regulations in the first place. One of the criticisms that is often leveled at ICANN is with regard to compliance issues. There are a number of areas where ICANN accredited registrars may be flounting the rules, but if nobody does anything about it then none of the registrars will have any incentive to actually comply. more»

IGF Meeting Blacklisted

I got an e-mail from someone currently attending the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting in Geneva. The e-mail ended up in my spam folder because the IP address used for the wireless LAN at the meeting is on a spambot/virusbot blacklist, namely cbl.abuseat.org. Apparently some guy there has his computer infected by a spambot or a virusbot... more»

Will John McCain Help the NEXT Blackberry Creator?

Today a senior McCain advisor, Doug Holtz-Eakin, proudly held up a Blackberry and declared: "You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create." Bloggers on all sides of the partisan divide are having a field day with this -- suggest that the McCain campaign is out of touch, desperate, or trying to top the trouble VP Al Gore got into, when he was falsely accused of claiming to have invented the Internet... more»

Caring About Cybersecurity or Preparing the Ground for an I-Patriot Act?

Few months ago in a talk given at the Institution of Engineering and Technology organised here in London by the Society for Computers and Law, Professor Lessig recounted a conversation he had with former US Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, where Larry asked the question that many had in mind... how the US Government managed to conceptualize, design and draft a piece of legislation as vast and complex as the USA PATRIOT Act in such a short period of time (a month and 15 days after 9/11), and the answer was what many people had imagined... more»

Help Define ICANN's Future

Mention ICANN in Internet circles and you will always find a multitude of views of what the organization should do, needs to do, and should have done; how it has to change, and why; and what it needs to focus on. Well, the time has come to make those views known and to try to persuade the rest of the community that they represent the best step forward. more»

Unreasonable ccTLD Registry Price Increases!

It highly concerns me when domain registries controlling a certain Top-Level Domain (TLD) raise the wholesale prices they charge to registrars (domain retailers) without consultation to domain registrants (domain buyers). When this happens, all the registrars will need to pay more to the registry for every domain which they register or renew for a customer. They will in turn raise their prices to cover the additional cost to them. Transferring the domains to a different registrar will not help, as all the registrars for that TLD will be forced to raise prices as they all have to pay more to the registry. Don't think it hasn't happened before? more»

New gTLDs Questions Not Answered: Which Kind of Auction?

I was expecting something that would discuss the unique properties, if any, of the domain name market, and the types of inventory theoretically available to allocate, and the expected outcomes for the various types of auctions, and some showing that for some desired policy goals, whether greatest gain to seller or lowest loss to buyer, or something entirely different, the expected outcomes. This would assist the better informed, bottom-up, stakeholder-driven, consensus policy making. Is the domain name market indistinguishable from the spectrum market? If name spaces are distinguishable from units of spectrum... more»

How Rise in Nationalism and Industry's Lack of Foresight Could Mean a Fragmented and Isolated Web

I have been thinking a lot lately on the topic of the free flow of information on the internet -- what kinds of tools are available now and in the future for governments (especially repressive ones) to control content, isolate their people and keep any contrary viewpoints censored. I had an interesting conversation with a Practice Lead from IFTF.org. The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a California based independent, nonprofit research group with 40 years of experience in identifying emerging trends that will transform global society... Turns out they are quite concerned about the fragmentation and control of the Internet as well. But will it be an inevitability? more»

Industry Updates

The Internet as a Democratic Utility

In the wake of our recent news that .ORG has officially registered 7 million domains, some comments made to CNN by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark this week really resonated with me. The article, entitled "Internet Can Strengthen Democracy" discusses many of the same issues we have found to be the driving forces behind .ORG's consistent year-over-year growth -- community building, interaction, and inclusivity. ›››

Did We Miss ICANN's Reply?

On July 29, the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) and Public Interest Registry (PIR) sent out a joint letter to ICANN asking it to consider the interests of the end-users as core to its policies in Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) implementation... As of today's date, August 21, 2008, we have yet to receive even an acknowledgement of receipt of our letter... ›››

Marshal Integrates Cloudmark Technology, Providing Faster and More Consistent Spam Detection

Integrated email and Internet content provider Marshal and Cloudmark, Inc., the global leader in carrier-grade messaging security, has announced a partnership to integrate Cloudmark's best-of-breed message filtering technology into the new SpamProfiler layer of Marshal's multilayered Defense-in-Depth Anti-Spam Engine. ›››

ICANN Opens 26th International Meeting in Marrakech, Morocco

The meeting, which runs until June 30th, sees stakeholders from the technical community, business and government and civil society, participate in over 30 meetings and workshops. ›››

ICANN Opens 25th International Meeting in Wellington, New Zealand

ICANN's 25th International meeting officially opens in Wellington, New Zealand today. These meetings constitute an essential part of ICANN's global consensus-development and outreach efforts. ›››

Domain Roundtable Welcomes Special Guest Keynote President/CEO of ICANN, Paul Twomey

Emerging domain industry event, Domain Roundtable Conference, hosted by Name Intelligence, announces Paul Twomey, President of ICANN, to be welcoming attendees in a Special Event Keynote Session on first day of conference, April 19, 2006. ›››

Letter from ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf to GAC Chairman

ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf has written to the Chairman of the ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee (GAC), Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi, proposing a special meeting of the GAC and the ICANN Board during the Board’s upcoming meeting in Vancouver to discuss what measures can be taken to make our cooperation more effective, including ensuring the participation of developing countries. ›››