Staff vs Stakeholders as ICANN’s accountability comes under the radar

This weekend ICANN launched a new public comment period on enhancing its accountability and governance. However, its approach to the issue has come under fire, with questions raised over the lack of community input into the current process. In June, World Trademark Review reported on a call from the Generic Names Supporting Organisation’s (GNSO) various …

The 9th Internet Governance Forum to be held in Istanbul, Turkey

The 2014 and 9th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting will be held in Istanbul, Turkey from 2 to 5 September 2014.. The overarching theme of the Istanbul meeting is: Connecting Continents for Enhanced Multistakeholder Internet Governance. This year’s meeting will build on previous IGFs and further the dialogue on Internet governance and emerging Internet issues. …

UN Grabs for the Internet: CFR, Chatham House Lead Toward “Global Governance”

In a recent essay entitled, “The Strategic Significance of the Internet Commons,” former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff describes cyberspace and the Internet as a “global commons” that must come under “global governance.” This is the latest salvo in an ongoing campaign by a disparate congeries of internationalists, socialists, communists, and jihadists to turn …

Panel interprets Declarations as binding on the .Africa IRP, Lectures ICANN on core accountability implications

The IRP Panel has made yet the boldest statement that is set to shake ICANN’s legal team. These statements have been made explicitly in the latest IRP Procedural ruling that states Based on the foregoing and the language and content of the IRP Procedure, the Panel concludes that this Declaration and its future Declaration on …

Verisign Study reveals new gTLD usage patterns, but treat figures with caution

A recent study, by EURid and the Leuven Statistics Research Centre, set out to better understand the most common usage of websites that are linked to domains, and we thought it would be an interesting exercise to extend similar analysis to the new gTLD market.  So, we analyzed all second-level domains registered in new gTLDs …

Internet ‘global stakeholders’ handover sparks controversy

NOBODY owns the entire Internet, but forthcoming changes will have worldwide impact on its use for everything from commerce to political speech, writes Dr James Jay Carafano. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit private American company, currently manages core functions including assigning and managing domain names and IP addresses, under …

ICANN GAC receives reprimand for its new unnecessary advice on .africa that is in Independent Review Process

The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has been heavily criticized on its latest new gTLD advice to DotConnectAfrica’s application. During the recently concluded ICANN 50 international meeting, the  GAC provided new advice through London Communiqué asking the following: The ICANN Board to provide timely communication to the affected parties, in particular to provide clarity on the …