Liberalising Internet Governance: ICANN and the role of governments

“ICANN’s mission is stewardship and operational stability, not the defence of its existence or the preservation of the status quo.” Stuart Lynn, ICANN President, Feb 2002 There has been much debate this month among internet circles about the future of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Much of this was discussed at …

Privatize, Don’t Internationalise, Internet Oversight, Academics Say

The Snowden revelations have spurred yet another discussion on how to internationalise or globalise the oversight over the management of core infrastructures of the internet, namely the so-called IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) functions. Why not let the private sector decide? This week, academics Prof. Milton Mueller and Brenden Kuerbis of Syracuse University, experts in …

GAC Communiqué: Wants To Look At “Public Policy Implications of Holding Auctions to Resolve String Contention”

The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) just issued its Buenos Aires Communiqué from the ICANN Meeting and “requests a briefing on the public policy implications of holding auctions to resolve string contention (including community applications)”. The GAC considers that new gTLD registry operators should be made …

NGPC Accepts GAC Category 1 and 2 Safeguard Advice

ICANN New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) has finally given its safeguard advice response to Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) The result of the NPGC action is that some new gTLD’s in the same vertical will be open to anyone who wants to register a domain name, while others will fall into the highly restricted category and can …

Uniforum’s Pass huge Debacle – Who is to save African Union from itself?

An African internet showdown that has refused to end is looking once again. According to DotConnectAfrica, the Company bidding for .africa alongside the embattled Uniforum ZACR, DotConnectAfrica whose application was flagged as “incomplete” due to the fact that it did not go to the Geographic Review Panel, despite passing highly all the other panels has …