Internet Governance or Internet Control?

Controlling the Internet has for a long time been the privilege of academics in the USA. However, with the evolution of the Internet as the world communication medium of the 21st century and the world-wide-web providing the infrastructure for business and public services in the digital era, the stakes have risen dramatically. The value of the Internet is nowadays considered extremely important in a number of key areas of public life ranging from business, law, local and central government to international politics. Various proposals as to who should be responsible for controlling or even policing the Internet have been considered and debated upon over the past few years. The issue has been raised at an unprecedented level with governments of the most powerful countries on the planet locked in serious and longstanding diplomatic negotiations as to which of the super powers should be in control. Yet the less powerful and smaller nations have repeatedly called for the establishment of an international organization to guarantee independent control of the Internet. This paper considers the above two proposals and attempts to answer the following questions: a) Do single countries deserve the right of having absolute control and acting as the sole guardian of the ultimate communication medium? b) Would an international organization be the answer? If so, how independent can it be and how much security can it offer to the smaller nations and the individual user? The study of each case is performed on the basis of what criteria would apply in terms of legal framework adopted, transparency of procedures and degree of acceptance of the controlling body on a world wide basis. The ultimate question raised is: can the guardian be trusted and if so how widespread this trust would be? The results of the first internet governance forum meeting in Athens in 2006 and the aims of the second due in Rio de Janeiro in November 2007 are also discussed

Internet Governance: A Developing Country Perspective

As the Internet gains an almost ubiquitous status in much of today’s world, the governance of the Internet has become an important subject of study. Internet governance affects various critical issues such as open access, freedom of expression, innovation and new applications, commerce, development, and security. To date much of the discourse on Internet governance has been within the ranks of politicians, political analysts, as well as I-School and Communications School researchers. Internet governance discussions are often dictated by geopolitical issues. The perceived hegemony of the developed West regarding the governance of the Internet is increasingly facing challenges from developing countries. Some of these developing countries have even sought to exercise control over the Internet within their countries. All of these issues make Internet governance a potentially important area of study for Information Systems researchers and academics. In this paper, I briefly trace the history of Internet governance, and using that as the basis, explore more deeply the issue of Internet governance from a developing country – namely India’s perspective. The paper examines various issues and their genesis, and then provides some potential approaches for dealing with global Internet governance

Unravelling Ariadne’s Thread: Exploring the Threats of Decentralised DNS

The current landscape of the core Internet technologies shows considerable centralisation with the big tech companies controlling the vast majority of traffic and services. This situation has sparked a wide range of decentralisation initiatives with blockchain technology being among the most prominent and successful innovations. At the same time, over the past years there have been considerable attempts to address the security and privacy issues affecting the Domain Name System (DNS). To this end, it is claimed that Blockchain-based DNS may solve many of the limitations of traditional DNS. However, such an alternative comes with its own security concerns and issues, as any introduction and adoption of a new technology typically does - let alone a disruptive one. In this work we present the emerging threat landscape of blockchain-based DNS and we empirically validate the threats with real-world data. Specifically, we explore a part of the blockchain DNS ecosystem in terms of the browser extensions using such technologies, the chain itself (Namecoin and Emercoin), the domains, and users who have been registered in these platforms. Our findings reveal several potential domain extortion attempts and possible phishing schemes. Finally, we suggest countermeasures to address the identified threats, and we identify emerging research themes