IGP Blog

New Paper: Building a new governance hierarchy: RPKI and the future of Internet routing and addressing

Brenden Kuerbis — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:04:22 -0400

It's likely the most important governance issue you've never heard of. The resource public key infrastructure (RPKI) and efforts to secure the Internet's routing system could have a profound effect on the future of the internet. A new paper by the IGP attempts to broaden awareness of this issue by shedding light on the historical processes and policy issues raised by the RPKI. We explain why the RPKI has important governance implications for: 1) the autonomy of ISPs, 2) the centralization of institutional power and global compatibility, 3) the business models of the RIRs and their relationship to ICANN, and 4) the role of governments in Internet governance.

The paper's release occurs in conjunction with a workshop, Routing and Resource Certification: Self-governance and security at the core of Internet operations, at the IGF-Vilnius next week. The workshop, co-organized by the IGP and LACNIC on behalf of the NRO, will be held on Tuesday, September 14 from 9:00-11:00 EEST (6:00-8:00 UTC) in Room 5 of the LITEXPO facility. According to the Secretariat's website, remote participation options will be available. It will bring together numerous experts from the academia, government, the RIRs and elsewhere to discuss RPKI and other related policy issues that feed into broader discussion on management of critical Internet resources.

Real-name registration required for China mobile users

Sophie Wu — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 03:10:23 -0400

A real name registration policy for mobile users in China was issued on September 1st, 2010, requiring people to show their national identification card and complete a registration form when purchasing a new SIM card to activate mobile services.

U.S. National Science Foundation funds research on social impact of network surveillance technologies

Milton Mueller — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:24:46 -0400

Syracuse University Professor Milton Mueller was awarded $304,000 by the U.S. NSF for his research on “Deep Packet Inspection and the Governance of the Internet.” The research grant was made by the Science, Technology and Society program of the Social, Economic and Behavioral Science Directorate of NSF. The research will take place over two academic years, 2010-11 and 2011-2012.

Deep packet inspection (DPI) is a new network surveillance and traffic analysis capability that enables network operators to scan the payload of TCP/IP packets in real time and make automated decisions about whether to intercept, block, slow down, speed up or otherwise manipulate traffic streams based on that information. Mueller’s research will investigate whether the use of DPI by Internet service providers is producing major changes in the way users and suppliers of Internet services are governed.

Domain Names as Second-Class Citizens

Milton Mueller — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:47:16 -0400

A new book by Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis (Lecturer in Law at the University of Strathclyde) provides a passionate yet legalistic and well-researched overview of the legal, institutional and ethical problems caused by the clash between domain names and trademarks. This is really the first decent book-length treatment of what is now a decade and a half of legal and political conflict between domain name registrants and trademark holders. But this is more than a static compilation and description of the subject: Komaitis has an original and fundamentally important argument to make.

Challenges facing the US in global cybersecurity and governance

Brenden Kuerbis — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:30:00 -0400

The US General Accounting Office has released a new report which provides an overview of US government involvement and the challenges it faces in global Internet security and policy. Cataloging the breadth and scope of departmental and agency efforts to engage in multiple issues and institutions, it paints a picture of a government struggling to identify a cohesive strategic approach to Internet governance.

US and Canadian Governments support Chinese-style censorship of DNS in ICANN

Milton Mueller — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 14:13:18 -0400

The Chair of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee has issued a statement on the censorship of top level domain names. We are sad to report that the alleged GAC position is deeply flawed and outrageously wrong-headed. It is a recipe for global censorship, and although at this point it only applies to the DNS it can lead to the erosion of all internet freedom of expression unless it is stoutly resisted.

A new era in domain name economics?

Milton Mueller — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:22:52 -0400

As we enter an era of thousands of new top level domains, how will the industry evolve? The ICANN Working Group on vertical integration was one attempt to answer that question. In the course of its lively and extensive debates, the policy setting group confronted some fundamental issues about the organization of the domain name industry. Back in March the ICANN Board threatened to impose a draconian ban on any and all forms of vertical integration and cross ownership between registries and registrars if the group failed to reach consensus on a new policy. The working group (WG) will complete its work this week.

First, the bad news: the WG was not able to agree on a single, comprehensive new policy. It did, however, manage to reach consensus on one thing....

Open letter to the U.S. Goverment on domain name censorship

Milton Mueller — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:14:22 -0400

Editor's note: The following letter was initially sent privately to the U.S. government's representatives in ICANN. It asks why they - like all other governmental representatives - are completely absent from an ICANN group discussing the way to handle "sensitive" or "objectionable" top level domain name proposals. So far, I've received no response. The lack of participation by GAC members raises doubts about their commitment to a nongovernmental, multi-stakeholder process in Internet governance. The silence of the US government representatives raises even more serious questions about its commitment to its own Constitutional guarantees of freedom expression, and Secretary of State Clinton's Internet freedom initiatives.

Dear Daniel Weizner, Suzanne Sene and Fiona Alexander:

As you may know the USG's concerns about morality and public order (MAPO) objections to new TLD strings have led to the creation of a discussion list within ICANN. We are trying to come up with an adjustment in the policy; a fairly broad spectrum of ICANN participants are engaged in discussion of this problem. However, we have noticed that no GAC members have joined the list.

The MAPO issue is particularly sensitive and important given the way it converges issues related to freedom of expression, ICANN's legitimacy and the role of the Governmental Advisory Committee in ICANN.

Given GAC's role in this controversy, I see no way that the rest of us can have a productive discussion without the participation of GAC members. Therefore, I am hoping that the US Government will set a good example and join the rest of the community in good-faith discussions of the problems GAC is concerned about and help in the movement toward a solution, and that it will encourage other GAC members to join these discussions.

I am making this request both as a stakeholder within ICANN (Executive Committee member of the Noncommercial Stakeholders Group) and as a U.S. citizen who wishes to see that the U.S. Constitution and U.S. values regarding Internet freedom are protected in this process.

Best wishes Milton Mueller, Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies

IGF USA meets July 21

Milton Mueller — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:04:12 -0400

The U.S. Internet Governance Forum is convening in Washington DC July 21 (Wednesday) to discuss the challenges of Internet governance. It will cover key areas such as privacy, openness, security, critical internet resources and child online safety. Launched in 2009, the IGF USA’s purpose is to engage US-based civil society, government, technologists, research scientists, industry and academia, to cultivate partnerships, build coalitions and facilitate dialogues that demonstrate best practices and facilitate participation of all stakeholders at a national and global level.

The one-day event will focus on the changing Internet and the way forward for the international Internet Governance Forum, an initiative facilitated by the United Nations. Key speakers will include Markus Kummer of the UN Secretariat for IGF, Larry Strickling, administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Agency, Andrew McLaughlin, White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy, Ambassador Phil Verveer, U.S. State Department and key leaders from the technical, business and civil society sectors. Workshops and special sessions cover topics such as cyber security, critical internet resources, cloud computing, global governance of the Internet; the role of users in defining a future for Internet governance, e-crime and malicious conduct in the domain name system, and a best practice forum on child safety challenges in the always-on world that youth and children experience today. For more information, see: http://www.igf-usa.us

Hot news: UN discovers broadband

Milton Mueller — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:43:36 -0400

Yawn.

Just as WSIS represented a discovery by the UN that we were in an information society about 30 years after it happened and 10 years after its basic institutional parameters had been set, now the UN has discovered that broadband is important, a decade after everyone else. So it assembles a blue-ribbon commission with no capital and no authority, based on the assumption that collecting the pictures of as many status-quo luminaries from industry and government as possible onto a web site will actually accomplish something. Your tax dollars at work...

“Kill Switch” Bill: Ramifications for the DNS root zone?

Brenden Kuerbis — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:04:35 -0400

S.3480, The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, introduced by Sens Lieberman, Collins and Carper quietly passed committee last week on a voice vote and is now scheduled for debate on the US Senate floor. The controversial, nearly 200-page bill which amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 has been criticized by civil liberties and industry groups alike, who say it grants the President the ability to order operators of “covered critical infrastructure” to disconnect parts of the Internet. Our reading of the bill agrees with these general criticisms. We are also concerned with specific effects on the Internet’s DNS and possible extraterritorial effects of the legislation.

NTIA's NOI on signing the root goes mostly unnoticed

Brenden Kuerbis — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:32:59 -0400

Perhaps it's summertime blues, DNSSEC-fatigue, or simply recognition of fait accompli, but the comment period for NTIA's notice of intent to proceed with the final stages of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) implementation in the authoritative root zone has passed with only a handful of comments submitted. (although there seems to be some fishing going on for support) Root server operator Autonomica, registry operators Nominet and Neustar, AT&T, as well as Paypal and Connotech were generally supportive of the action and congratulatory toward NTIA, VeriSign and ICANN. However, one commenter criticized that the "US government crypto culture tainted the detailed arrangements." Paypal offered its support, but with a caveat.

.EU registry asks: Who owns the Internet?

Brenden Kuerbis — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:50:56 -0400

ICANN does the right thing on .xxx - but will the GAC?

Milton Mueller — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 03:51:33 -0400

It still isn't over.

At its public forum Thursday, the ICANN Board indicated its willingness to accept and act in accordance with the findings of an Independent Review Panel that ruled it had treated the .xxx top level domain application unfairly. In a presentation from its General Counsel, ICANN bowed to justice and issued two important declarations.

ICANN and GAC discuss censorship

Milton Mueller — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 06:11:32 -0400

At the Brussels meeting between ICANN's Board and its Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), a fascinating and important discussion took place over the right of ICANN to censor or restrict the kind of words that can be used as top level domain names. The issues being debated here have profound implications for global regulation of internet content.

Accountability is the Word at ICANN-Brussels

Milton Mueller — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:40:02 -0400

Everybody involved in Internet governance is in Brussels. It is one of the largest attendances at an ICANN meeting ever. Famous crypto expert Whit Diffie is here as a new ICANN employee and so is DNS developer Paul Mockapetris. Lawrence Lessig and Jon Zittrain are here for the Internet Society Board meeting. Paul Twomey, the former CEO, has come as "a civilian." The U.S. Commerce Department is out in force, including Larry Strickling. So is the European Commission.

Accountability is the theme here. It seems to have suddenly dawned on people that ICANN is a private corporation capable of taxing and regulating a critical part of the global internet's infrastructure -- and yet it has no members, no shareholders, no competition, and no real legal or regulatory oversight. And so a growing chorus of voices from very diverse sources is now raising questions about ICANN's accountability and making proposals about what to do about it. Asked to give one of the usually ceremonial opening speeches, Neelie Kroes, the European Commission Vice President pointedly asked, "Nowadays, how could any organisation with global responsibilities not be accountable to all of us?"

Sobering thoughts about IPv4 address depletion

Milton Mueller — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:21:33 -0400

Network World reports that "unprecedented levels of broadband adoption in the Asia-Pacific region" is depleting the free pool of IPv4 addresses faster than anticipated. It also states that "The acceleration of IPv4 address depletion is putting more pressure on network operators to migrate to IPv6, the long-anticipated upgrade to IPv4, the Internet's main communications protocol." Both statements are questionable.

Call for Papers: 5th Annual Symposium of Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet)

Brenden Kuerbis — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:36:08 -0400

The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) is seeking submissions of research about Internet Governance to be presented at the Fifth GigaNet Annual Symposium, on 13 September 2010, held one day before the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), in Vilnius, Lithuania. GigaNet is a scholarly community that promotes the development of Internet Governance as a recognized, interdisciplinary field of study and facilitates informed dialogue on policy issues and related matters between scholars and governments, international organizations, the private sector and civil society. Interested scholars should submit abstracts of research papers no later than July 15th, 2010. GigaNet is interested in receiving abstracts related to Internet Governance themes, especially those containing innovative approaches and/or emerging research areas related to the following topics.

Civil society orgs in ICANN overwhelmingly approve GNSO charter

Milton Mueller — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:03:17 -0400

Civil society organizations within ICANN have been holding a vote on the adoption of a new charter to form the Noncommercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG). Today, it was announced that the charter was successfully ratified. Approval of the charter required that at least 60% of the entire membership of the Noncommercial stakeholders vote in favor of the charter. Of the total 314 votes possible, 225 votes were cast - a very good turnout that constitutes 72% of the total. Of the 225 votes cast, 215 voted in favor of the charter and only 10 votes were cast against it. That means that over 95% of the civil society groups involved in ICANN's GNSO support the proposed charter. ICANN's Board will now have to recognize that it's time to let the NCSG move forward as a community.

The Magnificent Seven

Brenden Kuerbis — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:31:59 -0400

They were seven - And they fought like seven hundred!

With less than a week to go before the opening of ICANN's DNSSEC root key generation ceremony, there is a roaring debate occurring among the technical community whether or not the list of Trusted Community Representatives (TCRs) should be publicly revealed in advance. The TCRs were selected by ICANN to participate in the generation of the keys that will be used to digitally sign the DNS root zone file keyset, providing a single trust anchor for authenticating a global, secure DNS.

China's control over Internet map service

Sophie Wu — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:58:52 -0400

On May 17, 2010, State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping of China issued a new standard (in Chinese) regulating Internet Map services. The updated standard aims to reduce incorrect location information and prevent leaking sensitive information involving State secrets on maps.

Reading tea leaves: China statement on Internet policy

Brenden Kuerbis — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:15:35 -0400

The Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China has issued a statement on "Internet Policy in China." Released Tuesday, the lengthy statement covers a range of topics from promoting internal development and use, to freedom of expression, protecting Internet security, and international cooperation. A quick review reveals two interesting passages relevant to global Internet governance.

China: Real-name registration required in online bulletins

Sophie Wu — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:50:52 -0400

Last month, in a speech to China's top legislature, Wang Chen, director of State Council Information Office of China, introduced that "we are also exploring an identity authentication system for users of online bulletin board systems”. Identity authentication, or real-name registration in China’s online environment has been discussed intensively in the past few years, however, Wang Chen’s speech is regarded as the first official announcement of the government enforcement to disable anonymity in popular news portals and business websites.

What if they gave a new TLD party and nobody came?

Milton Mueller — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:04:34 -0400

ICANN has released its new "Draft Applicant Guidebook" (DAG) for new top level domains. As promised, it contains draconian restrictions on cross-ownership and bans any vertical integration. These restrictions are intended to spur the warring economic interests involved to come to an agreement on issues related to cross ownership and vertical integration. The threat is, the squabbling kids have to come to a reasonable agreement, or Mommy takes all the toys away. The problem with this strategy is that we may be dealing with small children who are perfectly willing to sacrifice substantial public benefits in order to protect their current position in the market.

Light shed on the Google-Italy case

Milton Mueller — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:42:45 -0400

Two Italian law scholars, G. Sartor and M. Viola, have written up a nice description and analysis, in English, of the Judge's decision convicting Google executives of "processing health data without authorization," apparently a criminal offense. Based on their description, the decision seems like a technically incompetent one as well as having bad policy implications.

Threats “everywhere:” A review of Cavelty’s “Cybersecurity and Threat Politics”

Milton Mueller — Mon, 24 May 2010 08:26:50 -0400

This is a book that deserves to get much more attention in this country. Cyber-Security and Threat Politics: US efforts to secure the information age by Myriam Dunn Cavelty provides a valuable historical and analytical perspective on the debate over cyber-security in the U.S. Cavelty links the cyber debate to securitization theory in political science; in this approach, what matters is how the threat is defined, how and when did a particular understanding of the threat gain acceptance and prominence, who promoted it, and what are its implications for policy and actions? Cavelty offers some important insights into the political, legal and economic implications of the way we define or frame cyber-threats.

How much DNS is blocked in China?

Brenden Kuerbis — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:23:06 -0400

The most recent episode of The Ask Mr. DNS Podcast offers up some disturbing corroborating evidence as to the extent of DNS filtering and outright blocking occurring in China. VeriSign's Matt Larson and InfoBlox's Cricket Liu, who co-host the geeky yet engaging and extremely informative show, held a roundtable discussion including technical experts from dynamic name service providers (better known as "managed DNS" services) DynDNS, TZO, No-IP, and DotQuad, as well as Google and Comcast.

After recalling the recent episode where queries to Net Nod's instance of the i root were intercepted and tampered with resulting in incorrect responses being returned inside and outside of China for facebook.com and other websites, Larson posed the question whether others were having similar experiences. (NB: Net Nod's i-root server instance in Beijing is still shut down, as their CEO has apparently stated it is not possible to offer authoritative root service in China) Unfortunately, several of the managed DNS services providers answered affirmatively.

Is the London Action Plan effective?

Milton Mueller — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:51:10 -0400

In a recent empirical study correlating botnet activity with ISPs, academic researchers (Michel van Eeten, Johannes Bauer and Hadi Asghari) used participation in the London Action Plan and adherence to the Cybercrime Convention as variables. The London Action Plan (LAP) is a loose transnational, multi-stakeholder network of public agencies responsible for enforcing laws concerning spam. It spans 27 countries and also includes a few industry and NGO members. In political science these are known as Trans-Governmental networks (TGNs). Could such a loose, nonbinding governance form have an appreciable impact?

Finally, a public comment on root zone signing implementation

Milton Mueller — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:49:12 -0400

The US government has pushed back the date of DNSSEC implementation at the root zone by two weeks. The announcement, made at ICANN's "Root DNSSEC" web site, was vague about the reasons, saying only that it was "for further analysis" and to "finalize testing." In a more important move, which may or may not be related, ICANN said that:

"the U.S. Commerce Department will issue a public notice announcing the publication of the joint ICANN-VeriSign testing and evaluation report as well as the intent to proceed with the final stage of DNSSEC deployment. As part of this notice the DoC will include a public review and comment period prior to taking any action."

The existing plans for signing the root and deploying DNSSEC at the root zone were imposed on ICANN and its community by the U.S. government as a product of closed negotiations between the Commerce Department, VeriSign and ICANN.