Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Those interested in internet governance will have to put some money aside for 2014: rarely have there been so many conferences to talk about how to manage core internet resources and develop the common rules to govern more general aspects of global net communication.
European Union Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht today announced a three-month public consultation on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
The European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs today received an oral summary of the draft recommendations on mass surveillance, after hearing the testimony of former Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald.
Mike Rogers, chairman of the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, today defended the work of the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies in the US at a meeting with members of the European Parliament, and called for a united front against the theft of intellectual property by China.
In time for the start of the third round of trade negotiations between the United States and European Union, EU transparency organisation Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) published the first interesting leak on the substance of the talks.
Even for the “low-hanging fruit,” the 125 ministers gathered in Bali at this week’s World Trade Organization Ninth Ministerial Conference will have to work hard. After talks on food security and subsidisation broke down last week in Geneva, the WTO has rearranged the agenda to allow more space for ministers to engage in direct negotiations, WTO Spokesman Keith Rockwell said at a briefing on the eve of the event.
European Union Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht today (27 November) defended the inclusion of an investor-state dispute settlement provision in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). De Gucht argued the out-of-court settlements allowing private sector to sue governments were necessary because the TTIP would not per se give EU companies a standing in US courts.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), celebrating its 15th birthday during its 48th meeting in Buenos Aires this week is not only busy pushing forward the introduction of new top-level domains. ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé also inserted the organisation into the middle of preparations for a conference on the future of internet governance to be held in Sao Paolo on 23-24 April. ICANN is the overseer of the internet domain name system.
The original 10 internet governance principles that formed the basis for Brazil's Marco Civil legislation were presented proudly by the Brazilian delegation to the Internet Governance Forum in Vilnius. That was in 2010. In 2012, civil society organisations warned that an amended Marco Civil could erode freedom of the internet. It took yet another year and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to bring the original ideas, developed in a forward-looking broad public consultation process, back to the floor of the Brazilian Parliament – and there the fight was going on tonight (14 November).
Cypto-guru Bruce Schneier, who has analysed thousands of documents provided by Edward Snowden on the secret surveillance programmes of the US National Security Agency, has called on the technical community to add encryption to the network and also come up with a new model for internet governance.