Internet governance

A damaged process and a damaged community

January 25, 2011

I haven’t written for a while. There’s usually two reasons for that: either I have been horribly over-worked, or I need a break from the strange, incestuous and often bitter world of Internet policy and governance. In this case, unusually, it is both.
Here’s the big news from the world of Internet governance: some vague [...]

Read the full article →

ICANN Day 1: Sane Board, crazy community. What happened here?

December 7, 2010

According to chairman Peter Dengate Thrush, the ICANN Cartagena meeting is “not that much different” to others. I’d beg to differ.
Not only are there a number of very big topics coming to fruition here in Cartagena but there is a bigger change afoot in this organisation that oversees the Internet’s domain name system.
First off, and [...]

Read the full article →

Election race heats up for Internet users’ ICANN Board seat

November 26, 2010

The first round of voting has taken place for what is an important and historic election: a voting seat on the board of ICANN for a representative of ordinary Internet users.
In the lead after the first round is Sebastien Bachollet (with 43.75 percent of the vote); followed by Alan Greenberg (31.25 percent) and in third [...]

Read the full article →

ICANN begins to find its feet with published Board materials

October 29, 2010

Credit where credit’s due, the disclosure of Board materials of the organisation that oversees the domain name system, ICANN, has greatly improved since its first and woeful effort.
The materials for a special Board meeting held in September over the “new gTLD” process are clear, organised and understandable. They also help to publicly demonstrate the large [...]

Read the full article →

ITU Plenipot: Happy talking, talking, happy talk

October 20, 2010

In the 1990s, on Channel 4 in the UK, the Pakistani team game Kabbadi was shown Sunday mornings for several hours. The only explanation can be that the broadcasting rights were cheap.
Kabbadi is a silly but oddly fascinating game. A bunch of middle-aged, overweight men stand at opposite ends of what looks like a small [...]

Read the full article →

ITU Plenipot: Old men and young women

October 19, 2010

The International Telecommunication Union is a walking contradiction.
There are many things wrong with the organisation: its closed nature; its budgeting; its out-of-date and out-of-control procedures – and yet not only is the ITU aware of this, but there are formal proposals here in Guadalajara to make changes to fix many of them.
The ITU is stuck [...]

Read the full article →

ITU Plenus Potens: Locked in a room, locked in time

October 17, 2010

The International Telecommunication Union is a walking contradiction.
I’m here in Guadalajara, Mexico at the organisation’s Plenipotentiary – a meeting it holds every four years to decide the strategic direction of the ITU.
Here’s what you need to know about the “Plenipot” first off: it goes on for three weeks. Yes, three weeks. It used to [...]

Read the full article →

So what’s happened to the ICANN Board papers?

October 9, 2010

Nearly two months ago, I reviewed the ICANN Board and staff’s efforts at releasing the information that goes into the Board’s decision-making.
I was pretty scathing – and for good reason. It was a poorly managed, poorly handled, largely pointless exercise that saw huge chunks of information blacked-out for no discernible reason, and provided without notice, [...]

Read the full article →

ICANN review team: FAIL

October 8, 2010

I’ve sent the following note to ICANN’s Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) on its own mailing list that it pays no attention to.
I’m frustrated that they have become a part of the problem, rather than the solution. And in reviewing their draft recommendations, you can’t help but be struck by the vagueness, lack [...]

Read the full article →

Is ICANN’s independent review dead in the water?

September 29, 2010

I have avoided the meetings of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) into ICANN for a few months because it was so incredibly frustrating to listen to 60 minutes of people organising hotel rooms in different parts of the world while the ICANN Board and staff ran rings around them.
But the meeting popped [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →