Earlier this year, The Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP) released findings from their 2021 survey on American Perceptions and Use of Online Pharmacies. According to ASOP's data, U.S. residents' use of online pharmacies to purchase prescription medications continues to increase yearly. In 2021, 42% of Americans purchased medications from online pharmacies, either for themselves or family members under their care. This is a significant increase of 7% since just last year. more
Earlier today some of the biggest names in the tech industry sent a letter to Congress in support of the IANA transition and urging Congress not to delay it. The IANA transition relies on the expiry of the contract between the US Government's Department of Commerce and ICANN which is scheduled for the end of this month. As has previously been noted, some conservative politicians, most notably Senator Ted Cruz, have been very vocal in their criticism of the move and want to block it in Congress. more
Understandably, just now new gTLDs are uppermost in the minds of people in the domain name business. For the general Internet user, some other issues retain their crucial importance: upholding the global public interest, enhancing governance within ICANN and beyond, making the Multi-Stakeholder Model (MSM) truly efficient, sustainable, and equitable. "Making ICANN Relevant, Responsive and Respected" ("R3") sets out to identify the main challenges facing the Internet community, especially in ICANN, and offers recommendations in each of the areas explored. more
In the afternoon of March 29, the CAICT held the ICANN 58 China Internet Community Readout Session in the CAICT together with the ICANN Beijing Engagement Center. Mr.Li Xiangning, Deputy Director General of Information and Communication Administration under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), attended the event and gave a speech on the meeting. Over 60 representatives from related governmental agencies including the Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Beijing Communications Administration, domain name registries and registrars, industrial organizations, institutes and universities participated in the seminar. more
The Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) has organized and is holding a policy workshop, One World, One Internet? New gTLDs & Competition in a Changing Global Environment, next week in Beijing at ICANN-46. The program, which brings together top Western and Chinese experts, will explore pressures for integration versus fragmentation of the Internet and implications for ICANN, as well as different competition and regulation perspectives as they relate to new gTLDs. more
It’s now more than 6 weeks since the Cuban political protests and accompanying Internet service disruption. Will they lead to a long-run change in the Cuban Internet or the Cuban political situation? Let’s start with the Cuban Internet. Many of the Internet changes during the protests have disappeared. Total daily traffic, the ratios of mobile to fixed traffic, and human to automated posts, and the proportion of blocked Signal sessions are about what they were before the protests. more
With two simultaneous processes getting underway in the UN General Assembly's First Committee, the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on Cybersecurity, and several technology and multi-stakeholder initiatives pushing cybersecurity improvement, the world of cyber norms has become both more interesting and more complicated. more
The incredible pace of change of the Internet -- from research laboratory inception to global telecommunication necessity -- is due to the continuing pursuit, development and deployment of technology and practices adopted to make the Internet better. This has required continuous attention to a wide variety of problems ranging from "simple" to so-called "wicked problems". Problems in the latter category have been addressed through collaboration. This post outlines key characteristics of successful collaboration activities. more
J. Gordon Crovitz is making his case against the IANA transition again today, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. I think it's useful to once again go on record opposing his flawed logic against the transition. i2Coalition was among those that publicly praised the IANA transition report when it arrived this week. When the Washington Post covered our announcement, I was frustrated by a commenter who has a different take on the transition than I. more
Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: The US Federal Trade Commission is still "looking at" ICANN's new gTLD program amid concerns that most of the applicants applied defensively, it has emerged. ... "We have been very, very concerned about ICANN and their dramatic expansion of the domain names, which we think will cause consumer confusion and even worse lead to more areas where malefactors can hide from the law while defrauding consumers," FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said. more
As the expiry date of the current IANA Functions contract approaches (October 1st, 2016), some in the US Congress are challenging the validity of the proposal to transfer (or "transition") the ovesight role currently exercised by the US Administration, to a multistakeholder system equipped with checks and balances. A letter was sent to the President of the United States of America. Similar letters were sent to the Speaker and Leadership of the House of Representatives, as well as to the President pro tempore and Leadership of the Senate. more
Wolfgang Kleinwaechters Internet Governance Outlook on CircleID each year sums up the drama of internet governance as it is played out on the global stage. We assume that all players on the internet governance stage work under the premise that despite all our differences, ultimately, we are united in our quest for "freedom from fear and want" based on the quality and dignity of all human beings, as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). more
Reporting further on the recent Bodog.com domain name seizure case based on gambling charges, Michael Geist writes: "In the Bodog.com case, U.S. officials targeted a site with limited connections to the country as the site had licensed out the bodog.com domain name in 2006 and stopped accepting U.S. bettors late last year. The legal issues surrounding its operations will be played out in court, but the manner in which the bodog.com name was seized could have a lasting impact on Internet governance." more
China's newly released International Strategy on Cyberspace is marked by three distinctive layers with different degree of priority: (1) sovereignty (or cybersecurity, or UN Charter), (2) globalization (or digital economy, or WTO rules), and (3) fundamental freedoms (or human rights, or UDHR). The good point of the strategy is that it tries to make the three layers peacefully co-exist in one document. The failure, however, lies in the intentional ranking of relevance/importance of the three layers... more
Russian State Duma deputy, chairman of the Committee on Security and Corruption Control Vasily Piskarev told Russian reporters on Tuesday that Russia is studying China's legislative experience in dealing with corruption, cyber-terrorism and cross-border crime on the Internet. more
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