I never meant to cause you any trouble, I never meant to cause you any pain The opening lines of Purple Rain serve to sum up the challenges faced by innovative SMEs around the world, seeking to protect their investments with IP. At the Internet Governance Forum, no one means [...]
At ACT, we’ve taken great interest in the media coverage of a possible pending broadband deal between Verizon and Google. While we know nothing more than what’s been reported in the news, this appears to be an interesting development in the net neutrality debate. Advocates of net neutrality have differing [...]
When it comes to accountability, ICANN would rather be compared to other U.S. nonprofit companies than to the regulatory bodies it more closely resembles. Instead of attempting to model accountability mechanisms after the global regulatory bodies ICANN most resembles, an ICANN Board member suggested that new accountability measures should be based on those of US-based nonprofits. I think this is a BRILLIANT idea.
When ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate-Thrush, an accomplished attorney, said last year that he wouldn't let one of his own clients agree to a contract that could be unilaterally changed after it was signed, the Internet community breathed a sigh of relief. But when the Chairman backed away from that stance earlier this week in Nairobi, it became clear that we should have held our breath a little bit longer.
Buddha teaches us that there are only two mistakes that can be made along the road to truth: not starting and not going all the way. In the brief history of Internet governance, few initiatives have been greeted with wider support than the recently signed Affirmation of Commitments between the [...]