Policy & Regulation

The Web Has Become a Content Delivery Network

Cyberattacks, AI scraping and relentless bot traffic have transformed CDNs from performance tools into the Web's defensive gatekeepers, reshaping Internet architecture, governance and control as private intermediaries increasingly determine which requests reach origin servers first.

Safe for Whom? A Pilot’s Take on the AI Incident-Reporting System

Drawing on aviation's trusted incident-reporting model, a former pilot argues AI safety needs confidential reporting paired with public learning, and that legitimacy, international participation and transparency must be built into SAFE from the outset.

National Internet Registries: Gatekeeper or Enabler?

National Internet Registries were created to give countries greater control over internet number resources. Yet where they add opacity and restrict transfers, they can trap scarce IPv4 capacity, slowing growth instead of strengthening digital resilience.

Community Networks: The Missing Piece in Africa’s Digital Transformation

Community networks can bridge Africa's persistent digital divide by shifting connectivity from infrastructure alone to community ownership, supported by strong governance, sustainable financing and enabling policies that make last-mile access resilient, inclusive and locally driven.

The AI Enclosure Movement

The battle over open-source AI echoes England's Enclosure Movement, pitting collaboration against proprietary control as technology firms compete to shape innovation, economic power and the future governance of the digital commons.

Call for Participation: DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN87 (21 October 2026)

ICANN is inviting proposals for its DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN 87, offering experts and practitioners a platform to share insights on DNS security, routing security, browser security, and emerging Internet infrastructure challenges.

From Human Trust to Machine Cryptography: The Infrastructure Deficit in AI Interoperability

As AI agents begin collaborating across the open internet, the absence of trusted identity, authorization, and accountability frameworks threatens interoperability, making cryptographic trust infrastructure essential to building a secure and scalable agentic economy.

ICANN Wiki, SHE.africa, AI, and the Integrity of Digital Platforms

As AI increasingly relies on digital archives, the quiet revision of ICANNWiki entries raises broader questions about platform accountability, historical integrity, and whether institutions can reshape the records that future researchers and machines will treat as fact.

From Access to Agency: Why the IGF-DCAD Fellowship Should Become a Global Standard

The IGF-DCAD fellowship shows that meaningful inclusion requires more than open access. By funding accessibility, leadership and participation, it offers a practical blueprint for making Internet governance genuinely representative of the one-sixth of humanity living with disabilities.

The EU Cyber Resilience Act Regime: A Failure to Know Your Limitations

A cybersecurity historian argues the EU Cyber Resilience Act overreaches through unworkable mandates, sprawling jurisdiction and outdated assumptions, urging a streamlined successor that embraces AI, existing standards and practical enforcement instead of bureaucratic complexity today.

Who Registers the Domain That Steals Your Data? The Registrar Accountability Gap in India’s DNS Abuse Crisis

India's DNS abuse crisis exposes a registrar accountability gap: malicious domains remain online while vulnerable users bear the cost. Concentrated abuse patterns suggest stronger oversight and faster mitigation could significantly reduce predictable harms nationwide today.

The Algorithmic Ceiling: How AI Surveillance Criminalizes Disability

AI surveillance systems increasingly classify human differences as algorithmic risk, leaving persons with disabilities vulnerable to exclusion, misclassification, and invisible barriers that threaten decades of progress in accessibility, accountability, and digital inclusion throughout public infrastructure.

Who Is “the Community”? The Missing Constitutional Question in Multistakeholder Internet Governance

Internet-governance bodies routinely invoke "the community" to legitimize decisions. The Constituent Community Doctrine asks who holds authority, how mandates are conferred, and when institutional claims exceed, distort or outlive the consent on which they rest.

Digital Sovereignty Is More Than Data Sovereignty: Understanding Africa’s Digital Dependency Stack

Africa's pursuit of digital sovereignty demands more than keeping data at home. True resilience depends on controlling the infrastructure, platforms, cybersecurity capabilities, governance, and human expertise that underpin an increasingly interconnected digital economy across Africa.

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.