The International Telecommunications Society has published a call for paper and panel sessions for it's Regional European ITS Conference, to be held in Copenhagen from September 13-15, 2010.

The local organizer is Center for Communication, Media and Information Technologies (CMI), which is a research and teaching unit at Aalborg University in Copenhagen.

Topics at the conference will be – but not limited to:

• NGN and NGA – economics and regulation
• Investment and innovation
• New players and platforms in telecommunications
• User roles and social networking
• Regulatory separation
• Universal access/service
• Internet governance
• Media convergence
• Media economics and regulation
• PPP in telecoms
• Regulatory institutions

The deadline for abstracts and panel session suggestions is April 1, 2010. View the complete call for papers.

As we’ve been telling people for six years, the global governance of the internet is creating geopolitics of the highest order. With the Google-China rupture and the subsequent responses of the US and Chinese territorial governments, it is clear that the issues of cybercrime, censorship, trade and technology policy are converging on the problem of transnational governance of internet-based communications. As much as we appreciated Secretary Clinton’s ringing endorsement of internet freedom, however, to solve this problem we really need states to step back from the Internet. Politicians leading symbolic, flag-waving campaigns for their country’s values only provoke the same, polarizing response in the other country.   more »

The current Google/US-China conflict is bigger than is recognized. It could reveal that we have not settled core issues of global Internet governance. As a result, the Internet is a point of instability for international relations.   more »

In August 2009 the ICANN board decided to give its At Large community a voting position on the board. This change was hailed by many advocates of democratizing ICANN as a small but significant step toward improving ICANN's accountability to the public. Ideally, the new board position would be democratically selected by the world's Internet users to represent the voice of the public in ICANN. Last week, ICANN's At Large Advisory Committee released its proposed process for the selection of a Board member. It has issued a call for public comment on its proposals, and it appears as if you comment at the same link as noted above. But don't get too excited. In designing the process, the only question the 5 people appointed by ALAC to design the process seems to have asked themselves is: what process will maximize our own chance of getting one of ourselves a voting position on the Board?   more »

This comment from Professor Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski about the wider implications of Google's clash with China deserves the widest possible circulation. As they put it, at issue here is whether "the once unified global Internet space will begin a process of disintegration as countries define their own sovereign clouds."

The Dutch Ministry of the Interior has been preemptively buying domain names. Several hundreds of them. Some of them are outright bizarre, such as degeitwordtgemolken.nl ('thegoatisbeingmilked.nl') or hetbrooddesemiszuur.nl ('thesourdoughbreadissour.nl'). What is going on?   more »