Senators Hatch and Blunt call for more awareness on issues of Internet governance

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, and Sen. Roy Blunt, member of the Senate Commerce Committee, introduced a resolution Tuesday to increase awareness of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s announced intention to transition its stewardship role over the Internet’s domain name system to the global community. …

Occupy NetMundial – Internet Social Forum to Torpedo NETmundial Initiative and Disrupt Davos Discussions

A new initiative is angling to torpedo the NetMundial Initiative. Philip Corwin brings into light the issues of the new initiative Internet Social Forum, you can read about it here Now, in the same week that global political and business leaders as well as prominent glitterati are meeting at the Davos event, a collection of …

Europe in Two Internet Related Battlefields

[Editors note:  Please welcome Farzaneh Badii, from Hamburg University’s Graduate School in Law and Economics, who joins Syracuse University’s iSchool and the IGP as a Visiting Doctoral Student for the next six months.] “Lord, deliver us from all evil and from French state justice.”[1] This was the French farmers’ prayer once their parliament and state got …

IpJustice: Civil Society Cautions Against ICANN Proposal to Give Governments a Veto Over New Domains Using “Geographic Names”

A group of twenty-four civil society organizations and individuals today submitted a joint statement regarding a proposal from an ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) sub-group on the use of “geographic names” in top-level domains.  The joint civil society statement cautioned against the adoption of the GAC proposal that would give governments veto power on domains …

WSJ: Congress budget bill requires the administration to maintain U.S. oversight of the Web

The U.S. Congress has saved the Internet from President Obama. The White House had planned to end American protection for online freedom next year, but Congress used its power of the purse in the recent omnibus budget bill to nix the plan. That should delay any change at least until 2017. It’s hard to imagine …

US Dept of Commerce Lawrence Strickling: No definite Deadline To Give Up Control Over ICANN

The WallStreetJournal.com, according to a letter in the Journal today , Commerce Department official Lawrence Strickling dismissed the importance of U.S. oversight of ICANN and said that there is no firm deadline for the U.S. to give up oversight of ICANN. “In March the U.S. announced it would not renew its contract with ICANN next …

Call for Volunteers to Participate on Enhancing ICANN Accountability

In brief The Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) was formed to deliver proposals that would enhance ICANN‘s accountability towards all stakeholders. The organizations that chartered the CCWG now call for volunteers to join this effort. How to participate There are two ways to volunteer: Individual Participants – anyone interested can volunteer to join the CCWG …

The Register: ICANN led ‘Internet Security Council’ struggling to launch with just 10 nominations, and one contribution

Plans for a new internet governance body are struggling to get off the ground after blowback from the internet community itself. The NetMundial Initiative was formally launched three weeks ago as an open source platform that would enable people to collaborate on internet governance issues. However observers immediately took issue with the fact that before …