Author: Kieren McCarthy (most popular articles)

Kieren McCarthy is an acknowledged authority on the Internet and Internet governance. He has written extensively about both for a wide range of national and international newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The Sunday Times, New Scientist, The Register, PC Week, Techworld, and others.

An engineer by training, Kieren has spent more than 10 years as an IT journalist and has, at some point interviewed, just about everybody in the Internet industry. The official blogger for both the inaugural Internet Governance Forum and an OECD conference on the Participative Web, and author of the book Sex.com, he was also ICANN’s General Manager of Public Participation, tasked with coordinating communication between the organization and Internet users for three years.

He is CEO of .Nxt. Inc, and created both the company and the conference to provide a space for positive information-sharing about the future of the Internet's infrastructure.

Most recent posts | Most popular posts

Story
31 August 2011
European Commission calls for greater government control over Internet

Series of ‘informal background papers’ promote online power grab

An extraordinary series of policy papers drawn up by the European Commission and published today by .Nxt have called for greater governmental control over the Internet’s domain name system.

Among a long series of measures promoted in no less than six papers by the EC’s Information Society and Media Directorate-General are:

  • A government veto over any new Internet extensions
  • The creation of a list of names, drawn up by governments, that would be banned from registration
  • Significant structural changes at overseeing organization ICANN, including at Board level and in the crucial IANA contract
  • An obligation for ICANN to follow governments’ advice unless deemed illegal or damaging to the Internet’s stability
  • Two new bodies to oversee ICANN decision-making and finances
Story
16 August 2011
ICANN fires its CEO

The CEO of ICANN Rod Beckstrom has announced he is leaving the organization at the end of his contract.

According to a tweet sent out by Beckstrom at 4.20pm PST: “I have decided to wrap up my service at ICANN July 2012”, adding “Press release soon.”

The press release [pdf] followed 20 minutes later and comprised largely of Beckstrom listing his achievements in the first and third person. “I can summarize my time here in four words: strong execution, great team-building,” he was quoted as saying.

Board chair Steve Crocker, who took over the post only two months ago, noted that: “The Board of Directors fully supports Rod through the completion of his July 2012 term.”
Story
13 March 2011
Issue guide to ICANN San Francisco

ICANN’s 40th meeting starts next week in San Francisco. Here is a guide to the most important topics, listed in order of importance, with added commentary, background and links to relevant resources.

1. New generic top-level domains (gTLDs)

Why this is important

New Internet extensions will radically reshape the Internet name space. Not only does this open up new opportunities (particularly in the new field of "dot-brand" extensions), but will also have significant legal and marketing implications. The issue should be discussed at top management levels.

New gTLDs will yet again be the dominant topic for an ICANN meeting, as the Board continues its efforts to bring this five-year process to a close.

The San Francisco meeting will be dominated by discussions between the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and Board, continuing on from a two-day meeting in Brussels earlier this month.

Story
8 December 2012
Leaked document confirms fears of UN Internet powergrab

A leaked document has confirmed fears that a world conference held by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will be used by some countries to expand government control over the Internet.

A draft of a document to be provided to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) on Monday morning and provided to website WCITleaks includes a number of proposals that have prompted fierce disagreement during the first week of the two-week conference in Dubai. The draft also includes a number of previously unseen additions.

In particular, the document proposes:

  • That governments be given a "right to know" what route has been taken by information over data networks - something that civil society groups have warned would enable widespread online monitoring.
Column
10 March 2012
Once registered, you can apply for up to 50 pointless statistics

Costa Rica is shaping up to be one of the biggest ever ICANN meetings with anywhere between 1,500 and 75,000 people expected to attend.

Over five days, between 100 and 5,000 sessions will be held in 600 different meetings rooms (or possibly 12). A huge range of topics will be covered - anywhere up to 2,000. It depends. We'll let you know once it over.

Imagine if you went to a supermarket and looked at the price next to the apples: "Fresh Granny Smiths: buy now for between 25 cents and $12.50." You complete your shop. That'll be $3,271.50, please. Sorry, I meant $65.43.

This is the world according to ICANN. It opened applications for new gTLDs on 12 January; it will close them on 12 April. In the meantime, it knows exactly how many applications for particular Internet extensions there are.

And yet for reasons that continue to elude those not living on Planet ICANN, no one is allowed to know what that number is.

Lies, damn lies, and TAS registrants

What we do have is the number of registrations in the application system. But isn't that the same thing? Well, no. Each registration allows for up to 50 actual applications, ICANN keeps reminding us. Some people will apply for one string; some for 50.

But that's not all: multiple applicants are also registering separately for different applications. Some of the time. So there may be overlaps. Then again, there may not. We don't know, but ICANN does.