Milton Mueller has posted the Internet Governance Project’s contribution to beginning of the year forecasting giving designations of critical areas of change and decision in Internet governance, where the outcome is still unknown.The posting notes ICANN and its relationship with the United States’ government and suggests the change in administrations and the expiration of the JPA “makes 2009 a watershed year for ICANN’s tether to the U.S. government.”There is also criticism of ICANN’s gTLD process, calling it “abysmal” and saying the letter from the US government “joined a chorus of big business and trademark interests who have always been against any new TLDs, but it also made some valid criticisms about the proposal’s incredible attempt to set up ICANN as global arbiter of ‘morality and public order,’ suggesting that that function might be better left to local laws.”Other issues addresses are:
- Deep Packet Inspection in the service of Internet control
- the new Internet Protocol: Can the Net reproduce itself?
- IGF renewal
- VoIP and the mobile Internet
- Can the ITU World Telecom Policy Forum revive WSIS?
- Will Governments make ISP intermediaries for security?
To read this posting in full, see blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/1/9/4051237.html.