Two presentations at the recent IETF meeting in California underscore the way the Internet’s architecture is being shaped increasingly by advertising-driven content distribution networks.   more »

I’ve been forced to rethink my initially dismissive assessment of the ICANN board’s Nairobi resolution on the separation of domain name registries and registrars. As you may recall, I called the resolution “needlessly biased and poorly worded;” and while I recognized that it was “an attempt to clarify things,” I asserted that it “probably did the opposite.” Strange as it may seem, it is possible for both of those accusations to be true and for the resolution to be a stroke of political brilliance in moving toward the formation of a new policy regarding registry-registrar separation.   more »

Geneva, March 15 and 16, 2010. The first meeting of the IPv6 group of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) turned into a protracted and tedious confrontation between one government – Syria – and the combined weight of all the incumbent Internet institutions, the European Telecom Numbering Organization, equipment vendors and the governments of North America and Europe (plus Australia). Defenders of the IP addressing status quo showed up in force...   more »

The Internet Architecture Board issued a little-noticed statement February 12 that has the potential to revolutionize Internet governance - and not in a good way. The IAB is now claiming that the application of Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) to addressing and routing is "a prerequisite for improving the security of the global routing system." What may get lost in all the technical mumbo-jumbo is that RPKI is a technology of control and identification. We need to think long and hard before embarking on a path that would lead to the global centralization of such authority in a single institution's hands.   more »

The ICANN board issued a fairly large number of resolutions, at the conclusion of its Nairobi meeting. Give it an A for effort. But on substance? Give them an F. On the .xxx issue, the Board chose to ignore its independent review panel and refused to rectify what was officially determined to be unfair and discriminatory treatment. On the vertical integration issue, it issued a needlessly biased and poorly worded resolution that was an attempt to clarify things but probably did the opposite. There are other gems. We have done the painful work of reading them for you.   more »

From Avri Doria's blog: "While in a meeting with Board members, a member of my Stakeholder group had an opportunity to read part of one page of the Policy Staff’s briefing report to the Board from across the table (some of us read documents upside down better the we read right side up.) In this case it was all they could do to refrain themself from standing up and yelling “the staff lies.” Doria goes on to point out how inaccurate and biased these secret board briefings can be and how unfair it is that these critical messages are kept secret.

There is a vital structural issue here: ICANN's board faces too many issues and relies heavily on the policy staff to tell it what is going on. Unfortunately, during the past 5-6 years, the staff has chosen to take sides on policy issues and to favor some constituency groups over others. Often, this is caused by heavy lobbying of the staff by some of the professional, full-time lobbyists who can invest in constantly following and communicating with them. In other cases it is the staff's way of punishing those who were critical of ICANN, especially its policy staff. New CEO Rod Beckstrom has already made an important move to rectify this situation by replacing his policy vice chair with David Olive; it would seem, however, that lower level staff are still mired in the organizational culture established by his predecessor. There is a simple solution to this: make the board briefings public, with the usual exceptions for information considered confidential for legal, personal or personnel reasons.