[governance] Internet Governance Project Headlines

Mon Jan 17 14:29:28 EST 2011

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January 17, 2011

The most dangerous man in America then; the "most dangerous" man in the world now?
Dutch Study: Between 5-10 percent of all broadband users were part of a botnet
Call for Papers: Global Internet Governance: Research and Public Policy Challenges for the Next Decade
What is Evgeny Morozov Trying to Prove? A review of "The Net Delusion"
China, TLD censorship top topics in 2010
Guest blog: California Law Is No Impediment to Holding ICANN Accountable
The UN Sticks its Head in the Sand
Fate of new TLDs to be settled in private
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The most dangerous man in America then; the "most dangerous" man in the world now? <http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=53102144&f=175425&u=11399627&c=3961842>

Last night I got a chance to view the excellent 2009 documentary film “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://www.mostdangerousman.org/>.” Of course, it is impossible to mention the Pentagon Papers now without thinking “Wikileaks,” and I admit that it was an interest in the parallels and differences in the cases that put that selection in my Netflix queue. It turned out to be a far more rewarding choice than I had expected. The film brings the 40-year old Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers sequence of events to life as vividly as the Private Manning/Wikileaks case is alive now. And without that historical knowledge and context one’s awareness of the Wikileaks case is impoverished. A fascinating aspect of this film is the way it documents how different the technological and publishing environment was - but one is also struck by the similarities in the political debate. Despite efforts to drive a wedge between Ellsberg and Wikileaks,<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204527804576044020396601528.html?mg=com-wsj#articleTabs%3Dcomments> this documentary, which was made more than a year before the Wikileaks controversy hit, shows how fundamentally similar the cases are.
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Dutch Study: Between 5-10 percent of all broadband users were part of a botnet <http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=53048941&f=175425&u=11399627&c=3961842>

Between 5 to 10 percent of all broadband subscribers in the Netherlands had their computers recruited into a botnet in 2009. For 2010, the numbers are likely to be higher. These infection rates are similar in most other Western countries, we report in a study that was released yesterday.

Commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, my colleagues Hadi Asghari, Johannes Bauer and Shirin Tabatabaie and I have prepared a fact-finding study entitled ‘Internet service providers and botnet mitigation’. The ministry has now publicly released the English and anonymized version of the report. It can be downloaded here<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten-en-publicaties/rapporten/2011/01/13/internet-service-providers-and-botnet-mitigation.html>. The confidential findings of our study were only shared with the ministry and the Dutch ISPs that are collaborating in a covenant to fight botnets<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/when-it-meets-politics/2009/09/learning-from-the-dutch---isps.html>.

The report also contains rankings of the infection rates of ISPs in 40 countries. Somewhere in the next few days, we’ll write a more detailed blog post about the findings.
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Call for Papers: Global Internet Governance: Research and Public Policy Challenges for the Next Decade <http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=53041088&f=175425&u=11399627&c=3961842>

May 5 and 6, 2011
American University, School of International Service, Washington, DC

Building on the success of its first four regional workshops in Paris, France (2008), Brussels, Belgium (2009), Seoul, So. Korea (2009) and Montreal, Canada (2010), the purpose of the Washington, DC regional GigaNet workshop is twofold: Day one (May 5) is dedicated to outreach sessions exploring issues in global Internet governance among policy makers, academics and civil society at large. Day two (May 6) features presentations of scholarly research based on a rigorous peer reviewed selection process.

Deadline for abstract submissions is February 14, 2011. Submissions can be made through the Easy Chair web site<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=giganetdc2011>.

Decisions will be made by March 15, 2011.

Manuscripts expected by April 18, 2011.

[http://assets.feedblitz.com/images/icons/fblike.png]<http://www.feedblitz.com/f?FBLike=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IGPBlogCombined/~3/G2oc-0YpN74/4726798.html>  • Email to a friend<http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Fwd2FriendEdit=175425;12422;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IGPBlogCombined/~3/G2oc-0YpN74/4726798.html;Call%20for%20Papers:%20Global%20Internet%20Governance:%20Research%20and%20Public%20Policy%20Challenges%20for%20the%20Next%20Decade;3961842> • Article Search<http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Search=175425;12422;CFPs,Main%20Page;Call%20for%20Papers:%20Global%20Internet%20Governance:%20Research%20and%20Public%20Policy%20Challenges%20for%20the%20Next%20Decade;3961842> • [http://assets.feedblitz.com/images/audio.png] <http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://www.talkr.com/app/text_to_audio.app?feed_url=http%3a%2f%2ffeeds.feedburner.com%2fIGPBlogCombined&permalink=http%3a%2f%2ffeedproxy.google.com%2f~r%2fIGPBlogCombined%2f~3%2fG2oc-0YpN74%2f4726798.html&src=5> •

What is Evgeny Morozov Trying to Prove? A review of "The Net Delusion" <http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=53039615&f=175425&u=11399627&c=3961842>

Evgeny Morozov’s new book “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom”<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586488740/ref=nosim/intergoverpro-20> deserves an extensive review here. It grapples with key questions of Internet governance in a highly original way. But it is also a frustrating book to try to make sense of. The tone of the work is urgent but the take-home message is murky, if not confused and contradictory.

Here is an example of the kind of phenomenon that gives me concern. One of the many promotional events for the book summarizes its theme as follows<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://benton.org/node/47086>: “It is not the young protestors and dissidents but rather the regimes in Teheran and Beijing that are the Web's greatest beneficiaries.” Having read the book, I can say conclusively that that assertion is false on two counts: it is not an accurate encapsulation of what the book actually says, nor is it true of the real world as a general rule. But as we will see, Morozov himself is directly responsible for these kinds of misinterpretations. The book’s aura of Internet-powered publicity seems designed to capitalize on simplistic inversions of conventional wisdom (it makes for great tweets and sound bites, after all). And the book’s analysis is so full of logical contradictions that one could, in fact, find support for that interpretation - and many others as well.

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China, TLD censorship top topics in 2010 <http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=52771505&f=175425&u=11399627&c=3961842>

Judging from IGP blog's readership, which grew by about 25% compared to last year, the most interesting and important topics we covered were China's impact on Internet governance and the nexus between internet censorship and new Top-Level Domains. Wikileaks was third, with ICANN accountability rounding out the top of the pack. Individual posts on COICA, the Bredolab botnet prosecution, vertical integration and the move away from multistakeholderism at IGF also found their way into IGP's most popular blog posts (see below for a list of the top 15).

Our 8 December post framing the Wikileaks controversy as an Internet governance issue was the single most-read blog post in 2010 by far. Apparently, our emphasis on the continuing tension between nation-states and networked information via the Internet struck a chord.

But the "cyberwar" over Wikileaks only happened in the last month of the year. China and the Internet, on the other hand, was an unfolding series of events we covered throughout the year, and generated more traffic. Readers flocked to our discussion of China's attempt to implement "real name registration" requirements for online bulletins, especially after Blizzard Entertainment, producer of World of Warcraft, tried to follow their precedent (and backed off<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/706127/blizzard-backs-off-proposed-real-name-forum-policy.html>). But the Google-China and US-China conflicts also contributed great interest to this topic.

The TLD/censorship story was also an ongoing story only marginally less popular than China. It dealt with the the fate of the .xxx domain - still controversial and still targeted by some governments - as well as the attempt of the GAC to impose more general "morality and public order" restraints on new TLD applicants. We think we've made substantial progress in convincing more people that institutionalizing censorship via ICANN is an important - and potentially dangerous - precedent for global governance of the Internet.

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Guest blog: California Law Is No Impediment to Holding ICANN Accountable <http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=52514555&f=175425&u=11399627&c=3961842>

No other issue unites the Internet community quite like ICANN’s accountability deficit. Governments, contracted parties, commercial interests, NGOs, and ordinary Internet users—all have expressed their shared frustration that ICANN continues to evade real accountability.

The problem is partly explained by the complexity of ICANN’s structure and powers. It is both the overall global manager for the Internet DNS and a California nonprofit corporation. Its unique marriage of public power and private corporate form obscures familiar lines of thinking about how organizations work and how to improve their accountability.

But its unique form cannot alter ICANN’s legal character as a nonprofit corporation organized under, and therefore bound by, California law.

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The UN Sticks its Head in the Sand <http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=52334170&f=175425&u=11399627&c=3961842>

Now, for sure, you can discard all that talk about a "UN takeover of the Internet." The only things the UN knows how to take over are its own obscure departments. On December 10 the UN's Committee on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) announced that the Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will be composed exclusively of member states. No civil society or business organizations, no academic or technical representatives will be allowed to participate.
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Fate of new TLDs to be settled in private <http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=52299232&f=175425&u=11399627&c=3961842>

At the ICANN meeting in Colombia, the board passed resolutions<http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-10dec10-en.htm#2> indicating that it is one last step away from implementing the program to create new top level domains. The board considers the problems of trademark protection, root scalability, mitigating malicious conduct and economic analysis <http://www.feedblitz.com/t2.asp?/175425/11399627/3961842/http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2010/12/3/4694980.html> to be closed. But the Board recognized that censorship of top level domain strings on the grounds of "morality and public order" is still an open issue. Once again, the GAC has used the finalization process to reassert its power, which is not guided by any treaty or law.
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