Citing instances of espionage and surveillance of its customers, Google announced in coordinated fashion yesterday that they are no longer willing to continue censoring results on Google.cn, and threatened that it might withdraw operations from China entirely. Some are wondering if Google would actually walk away from the China market. Frankly, China routinely leverages the size of its market and counts on the fact that no business dares to give up a market of that size. But when businesses are willing to play rough and threaten exit they are more likely to get positive results than when they kow-tow. That being said, you don't make the move Google did without a plan. And that makes me think we might be witnessing the precursor to a major development in the application of trade principles to Internet governance.   more »

Many thanks to our readers, both old and new, from civil society, industry and governments all over the world. Interest in IGP's work continues to grow dramatically, visits were up over 70% in 2009. Reflecting the growth of the Internet and those impacted by its governance, two-thirds of IGP's visitors come from outside the United States (although Washington DC is definitely following us). The greatest growth is among the BRICs, with visits from China up over 8000%. Here's to another year of in-depth coverage and analysis of global Internet governance developments! Keep reading to take a look at the top blog posts, papers downloads and visitors by country.   more »

This week's post on DNSSEC requirements for new gTLDs piqued my curiosity - what exactly are the differences between the registry agreements ICANN has executed to date and the proposed registry agreement in the DAGv3 with respect to technical standards requirements? A quick review of the documents reveals a stark difference.    more »

The ITU, in its comments submitted to the UN Secretary-General for a report to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on "Enhanced cooperation on public policy issues pertaining to the Internet," states that concerning management of critical Internet resources, specifically domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC) root signing authority:

The root signing authority is of critical importance to the security, stability and reliability of the Internet. The role and functions related to policies governing the harmonized and global coordination of such services for country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) must be assumed by a relevant intergovernmental body with the mandate from Governments and the experience in providing such services so that concerns and interests of sovereign States can be taken into account.   more »

As noted by previously by IGP, it is not entirely clear where requirements for DNSSEC in the Draft Applicant Guidebook emerged from within the ongoing consultation. Public comments to date from several organizations are mostly negative, including China Organizational Name Admininstration Center (CONAC), Uninet Bulgaria, Domain the Net (Israel), DotAfrica, Regtime (Russia), and CORE (Switzerland). They cite a variety of concerns, ranging from potential conflicts with deploying IDNs, to conflicts with local and national laws, to concerns about data escrowing, and question whether it is appropriate for all registries. In general, they argue that requiring DNSSEC could prevent new gTLDs.   more »