Policy & Regulation

The Question Isn’t Whether the Harm Is Real - It’s Who Should Act

Measuring online abuse can reveal its scale, but not who should intervene. Effective policy must distinguish harm from contractual responsibility, identify the actors best placed to act, and target remedies where they can work effectively.

The gTLD Registrar Market Is Uniform in Rules, Not in Structure

ICANN applies identical rules to every registrar, yet new research reveals a sharply unequal market where seven firms capture half of inflows, renewals dominate activity, and many accreditations barely operate at all in practice today.

What the i2Coalition Article Misses About DNS Abuse

Authors defend research showing malicious domain registrations occur at industrial scale, arguing that blocklist data is reliable and that policymakers must prioritize prevention alongside mitigation to curb cybercriminal exploitation of the domain name market globally.

Shaping the Future of the IGF: Integration, Relevance and Impact in the Post-WSIS+20 Era

The Internet Governance Forum has secured its permanent place in the UN system. Its next challenge is to strengthen its relevance, deepen multistakeholder collaboration, and deliver greater impact across an increasingly complex and fragmented digital governance landscape.

The Implementation Gap: Why Africa’s Digital Strategies Rarely Become Digital Reality

Africa has digital strategies in abundance, but weak institutions, inconsistent leadership, poor governance and limited execution keep ambitious policies from delivering trusted, interoperable public services and sustainable digital transformation across the continent in practice today.

Continuity Is Not Legitimacy: Why Internet Institutions Need a Governance Stress Test

Internet institutions can remain operational while losing the legitimacy that sustains their authority. A proposed governance stress test distinguishes continuity from legitimacy, helping expose capture, substitution, and accountability failures before institutional crises become irreversible realities.

Can Orbiting Data Centers Solve Terrestrial Deal Breakers?

Orbiting data centers promise cleaner power, cheaper cooling and relief from terrestrial opposition, but formidable engineering, regulatory and orbital governance challenges may keep ambitious space-based computing grounded for years unless launch economics improve dramatically first.

Quantum Readiness Governance: Why Regulators Must Measure, Not Just Warn

Quantum policy has shifted from warning about future threats to measuring institutional readiness, creating an urgent need for governance frameworks that let regulators, auditors and boards assess, compare and verify post-quantum migration before deadlines arrive.

The Multi-Stakeholder Mirage: How Internet Governance Turned Attendance Into Mandate

Internet multi-stakeholder governance mistakes participation for legitimacy, granting policy processes implied authority without public authorization. As IPv4 becomes capital, operator accountability, not attendance, should define binding decision-making and institutional legitimacy instead of consensus.

IP Geolocation: The New Infrastructure for Internet Interoperability

IP geolocation has evolved from routing metadata into essential Internet infrastructure, enabling compliant content delivery, cybersecurity, and digital governance while raising urgent questions about transparency, interoperability, and fragmentation risks worldwide for policymakers and providers alike.

When AI Answers, Who Decides What We Get to Know?

AI assistants are replacing search with synthesized answers, concentrating decisions about what information people see. As discovery narrows through a handful of platforms, preserving transparency, diversity, and accountable governance becomes increasingly urgent.

What the Interisle Report Reveals, and What It Doesn’t, About DNS Abuse

Interisle's report illuminates malicious registration trends, but its broad blocklist methodology measures different questions than DNS Abuse, complicating conclusions about registry and registrar accountability by conflating reputation signals with actionable domain enforcement decisions for policymakers.

The Hidden Socio-Technical Issues Threatening Africa’s Digitalization Agenda

Africa's digital ambitions face threats beyond software and infrastructure. Lasting transformation depends on governance, trust, interoperability, political continuity, and user adoption, making socio-technical challenges as critical as the technologies themselves.

Africa Does Not Have an Internet Access Problem: It Has an Internet Governance Problem

Africa's digital future depends less on expanding Internet access than on shaping the rules that govern it. Stronger institutions, cybersecurity, and global influence will determine whether the continent becomes a digital leader or remains a dependent consumer.

The 2026 New gTLD Round: A Strategic Framework for Risk Management

The 2026 new gTLD round is less a domain application than a high-stakes contest for digital territory. Contention, objections, opaque evaluations and information gaps can derail applicants long before launch, demanding rigorous strategic preparation.