On Monday the NTIA released the agenda for the upcoming public meeting in Washington DC covering the Mid-term Review of the JPA between DoC and ICANN. And yesterday, in Geneva, the Internet Governance Forum opened its first preparatory meeting for the upcoming Forum in Hyderabad, India from December 3-6. It’s too early to draw conclusions, but the structure of the meetings suggests two distinct operational modes of Internet governance.   more »

The Internet Governance Project welcomes Dr. Michel J.G. van Eeten as a new member of its Scientific Committee. Dr. van Eeten joins the IGP from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, where he is an Associate Professor on the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management. In addition to his responsibilities at TU-Delft, van Eeten also teaches in several executive education programs at the Netherlands School of Public Administration in the Hague.

His research focuses on the reliability and security of critical infrastructures, most recently on the issue of Internet security. Recent work as a policy analyst includes advice for a variety of infrastructure operators and service providers in telecommunications, rail transportation, electricity provision, water supply and financial services. Currently, he is a consultant for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the OECD Working Party on Information Security and Privacy. Dr. van Eeten was the lead author on a 2008 OECD study (currently being declassified), the Economics of Malware: Security Decisions, Incentives and Externalities. van Eeten remarked, "Over the last couple of years, I've enjoyed reading the IGP's work and I look forward to joining the debate." Commenting on the new addition, Dr. Milton Mueller said, "In addition to strengthening IGP's global approach to scientific analysis of Internet policy issues, Dr. van Eeten brings expertise in the economic and organizational aspects of Internet security, adding a valuable perspective to the IGP's work. The IGP is privileged to benefit from his participation."

For some time it has been known that law enforcement authorities in Norway and Finland have prepared lists of alleged child pornography web sites, and demanded that local Internet service providers block access to them. This model of blocking access was avidly picked up by Internet law enforcement authorities in other countries, including the Netherlands, where pressure has been placed on ISPs to block these sites or risk being publicly smeared as aiding and abetting child abuse.

Using ISPs as intermediaries for censorship is a bad idea because mandated site blocking violates the principle of net neutrality. Truly illegal content should be handled by prosecuting the producers, publishers and hosts of the content rather than through attempts to block and control Internet access on a territorial basis. Governments, however, claim that they must block access because of the heinousness of child abuse and because the heinous sites were out of the reach of local law enforcement. Many people have bought that argument.

Until now. Recently, Finnish activists got their hands on the Finnish government's official list of blocked sites. The results of their discovery are astounding. Most of the censored sites are located either in the United States or EU countries -- and thus are not outside the reach of child protection laws. Equally disturbing, most of the sites on the blocking list are not child pornography sites at all, but legal adult pornography sites. And many are not even porn sites at all.   more »

Just who will be "it" and control the secure DNS root took another turn this week at ICANN-Delhi, when VeriSign unexpectedly announced it would implement a DNSSEC test bed for the root zone either later this year or the beginning of next year. In a discussion that covered root zone management process improvement and DNSSEC test bed implementation, VeriSign's Ken Silva acknowledged that the current process is somewhat of a "black box." The 20+ year telecommunications and security industry exec and former executive technical director at the NSA, cited their current role as publisher of the root zone and its need to be familiar with all the anticipated components that will go into future root zone database management as reason for the initiative.   more »

The Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) has added a new wrinkle to the ongoing domain name Whois saga. In a document released late last week, it identified some well known and other less talked about problems with the Whois protocol and it called on ICANN and its community to pursue a more holistic approach involving policy recommendations. Interestingly, it also called for consideration of a new “formal directory service for the Internet” standard to serve domain name interests.   more »

Bret Fausett's blog has cast new light on the ICANN JPA question. Many of us had assumed that the JPA was a replacement for the earlier, more prescriptive Memorandum of Understanding between ICANN and the US Commerce Department. The MoU was first drafted in November 1998 and was amended six times from 1999 to 2003. Ending the JPA, it is widely assumed, would eliminate all forms of Commerce Department oversight over ICANN's policy making and leave in place only the more important IANA contract, which is completely separate from the JPA/MoU. Doubts are now raised about this assumption.

As IGP warned an uncomprehending press corps back in 2006, the shift from MoU to JPA was much less of a "dramatic step" away from US control than ICANN's PR effort made it out to be. Now, if Fausett is right, it appears that getting rid of the JPA is less important than ICANN is making it out to be.

It all depends on what we mean by "the JPA."   more »

IGP today responded to a U.S. Department of Commerce proceeding seeking comment on the future of its political oversight over ICANN. The proceeding is part of a mid-term review of ICANN's 3-year Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with U.S. Commerce Department NTIA.

In a move that is likely to attract attention and debate we called for ICANN and the IGF to forge an agreement to institute a bi-annual review and public consultation concerning ICANN’s record and accountability. These ideas will be raised both at the U.S. Commerce Department public meeting February 28 and at the public consultation of the U.N. Internet Governance Forum in Geneva February 26.   more »