ICANN's thrice-yearly major meetings return to the U.S. in 2021, with Seattle hosting the 72nd meeting that Oct. 23-28. The 61st meeting was in San Juan last March. Locations for Nos. 70 and 71 will be announced soon," the group said Thursday: No. 72's "location was announced out of sequence due to contractual obligations."
An independent examiner recommends an ICANN panel improve some processes. Analysis Group reported Monday on its review of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee. It assessed SSAC along with findings and recommendations for improving its operations in the areas of: (1) The panel's effectiveness. (2) The relationship and interconnectedness between SSAC and other supporting organizations and committees and the wider ICANN community. (3) The existing membership and structure of SSAC. (4) How well the committee has implemented recommendations from its prior review. The report will feed into recommendations to the board on next steps, ICANN said.
Platforms should share online content moderation responsibilities with their users, said Tarleton Gillespie, a researcher at Microsoft Research, on C-SPAN's The Communicators, recorded earlier but shown for the first time over the weekend. Reddit is an example of a major platform that relies heavily on user content moderation. Given the size of these platforms, it’s basically impossible to moderate content proactively, said Gillespie, author of Custodians of the Internet. One thrust of the book is for platforms to take more ownership of content moderation, with a regime that addresses extreme content. Content moderation has become a major part of what platforms do, commanding a tremendous amount of resources, he said. The websites need to weigh a balance between creating a safe, open forum without committing politically biased censorship, he said. Gillespie regarded claims of anti-conservative bias as a “superficial” scoring of political points.
One of the chief challenges for the U.S. at the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) will be balancing the spectrum needs of satellite and international mobile telecommunications, especially as those use cases are increasingly "crammed together" in the spectrum bands, NTIA head David Redl said at a U.S. ITU Association meeting Friday. While that also was a fight at WRC-15, the world is now further along in development and deployment, meaning there's more relevant data guiding the discussions, he said. Also a big challenge is agenda item 1.13, regarding spectrum between 24.25 GHz and 86 GHz for mobile broadband, he said. Some issues that might have been particularly contentious at the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications have died down. "Six years, in internet time, is an eternity," he said. Other topics, like cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, will continue to be ITU hot buttons for the foreseeable future, he said. He said a big reason the U.S. wanted American Doreen Bogdan-Martin elected head of the ITU Telecom Development Bureau (see 1811010052) is its perception a leadership change was needed to help push along connectivity globally. He said the U.S. wants to see the ITU's focus not just on connectivity "but connecting them in a way that makes them equals … connects them to the global economy.” Redl said he didn’t know when the U.S. would appoint its WRC-19 delegation leadership, as that's in the purview of the State Department and he was not privy to those discussions. But NTIA, FCC and State Department staffs will have a lot of preliminary work done when the delegation leadership is decided, he said.
Internet law must derive from globally agreed principles, representatives from nine parliaments said in a declaration signed Tuesday in London. The members of an "international grand committee" investigating disinformation and "fake news" noted that the "world in which the traditional institutions of democratic government operate is changing at an unprecedented pace." Legislatures and governments must urgently ensure that citizens' fundamental rights and safeguards aren't violated or undermined by the unchecked march of technology, they said. "Representative democracy is too important and too hard won to be left undefended from online harms." The declaration's principles state: (1) The internet is global and the law relating to it must have globally agreed principles. (2) Deliberate spreading of disinformation is a credible threat to democracy. (3) Global technology companies must recognize their great power and show they're ready to accept responsibility. (4) Social media companies should be held liable if they fail to comply with judicial, statutory or regulatory orders to take down harmful and misleading content from their platforms. (5) Tech companies must demonstrate accountability to users by making themselves fully answerable to national legislatures and other organs of representative democracy. Signers represented Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore and the U.K. Lawmakers took testimony Tuesday from, among others, Facebook Vice President-Policy Solutions Richard Allan and U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. Legislators at the hearing called it unprecedented, given the breadth of countries represented. They chastised Facebook for not sending CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company declined further comment to us, as did the Internet Association. "I wouldn't characterize the decision as a 'blowing off'" of the invitation for Zuckerberg to appear, Allan responded to Charlie Angus of Canada's House of Commons, who used that phrase and said the company "lost the trust of the international community to self-police." "Our intent is to be there, to answer the questions that you have" at appearances in various countries, Allan said, apologizing. Zuckerberg and the company are engineering fixes, Allan said. "I will not disagree with you that we have damaged public trust through some of the actions we have taken," Allan said. He acknowledged the company had hired Definers, a firm it's stopped working with that targets critics (see 1811230021). He said a "regulatory framework" may be needed. It's not "up to Facebook to determine what regulatory structure it ought to be under, it's up to parliaments," the U.K.'s Damian Collins said. "That's why we're here."
Engaging in multiple languages and scripts through internationalized domain names and expansion of the internet through IPv6 are ways the internet is evolving, ICANN CEO Goran Marby said Wednesday. He blogged about his recent appearance before the ITU’s 2018 Plenipotentiary conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. There, he warned against “well-intentioned” policies and legislation “which can inhibit users to connect to” the internet.
The Senate Communications Subcommittee scheduled a hearing Tuesday to examine international internet policies and the impact on U.S. business. The session is scheduled for 10 a.m. in 253 Russell.
A German court will refer ICANN's case against domain registrar EPAG (see 1806220001) to the Higher Regional Court, ICANN blogged Thursday. The injunctive action, filed in May in the Regional Court in Bonn, asked for "assistance in interpreting" the EU general data protection regulation after EPAG said it will no longer collect registrants' administrative and technical contact information when it sells new domain names, for fear of violating the regulation (see 1805280001). The Regional Court ruled against ICANN, which then appealed for an order requiring EPAG to reinstate collecting the data. The court re-evaluated the decision with comments from EPAG and will now refer the case to the higher court.
NTIA is considering reversing its 2016 decision to transition coordination and management of the domain name system to the private sector, said a notice of inquiry this week (see 1806060036): “Should the IANA Stewardship Transition be unwound? If yes, why and how? If not, why not?” Comments for the inquiry are due July 2. NTIA Administrator David Redl and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in January expressed willingness to reverse the 2016 decision.
Blockchain technology could be a useful tool for competition regulators in accessing data, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggested in a recent issues paper. The OECD paper poses several questions about data access for competition authorities. “Whether it be investigations of mergers, abusive conduct or markets more generally, full access to a blockchain could provide the authorities immediate access to the necessary data,” Hogan Lovells partner Falk Schöning said.