Friday, April 1st at 4 PM CEST, online, register here

Until now, sanctions on the Internet infrastructure have not been explicitly used, perceived by some as an unacceptable barrier to communication. However, recently, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainian government explicitly asked for such sanctions. In response to that, Internet governance organizations rejected this notion, but others proposed that sanctions and boycotts should also be imposed on various properties of the Internet.  

Sanctions are not new. The Internet and many Internet services have long been affected by economic sanctions that governments impose on other nation states. Such sanctions have blocked people’s access to online services and, to some extent, to Internet infrastructure. Considering the importance of the Internet in connecting people, nation states have come up with waivers for certain transactions that take place on the Internet. Today, in the face of atrocities being committed by Russia against Ukraine, is it time to reconsider whether sanctions are “absolutely” bad for the Internet? What can be learned from other examples of internet-related sanctions, such as Iran? Join us to debate the desirability and  potential intended and unintended consequences of explicitly Internet-oriented sanctions. Is it possible  to design sanctions and boycotts targeting Internet infrastructure and services that can be proportionate, precise, effective and that can provide relief for Ukraine and those affected by war? 

Panelists:

• Courtney Radsch, Fellow, Institute for Technology, Law & Policy, UCLA and ARTICLE19 US adviser (moderator)
• Andrew Sullivan, CEO, Internet Society 
• Farzaneh Badii, Founder, Digital Medusa 
• Bill Woodcock, Executive Director, Packet Clearing House 
• Yik-Chan Chin, Associate Professor, Beijing Normal University 
• Svitlana Matvitenko, Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University, School of Communication (video contribution)

Sponsoring organizations:

• UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy
• GigaNet
• Digital Medusa
• ARTICLE19
• University of Amsterdam, IN-SIGHT.it project

Details:

When: Friday, April 1st at 4 PM CEST/10 AM ET/7 AM Pacific Time

Please use the following link to register for the event: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqd-CgrTguHNbZiKa-Rq2ugJHXblvZlO45

You are invited to GigaNet’s 2022 workshop about Internet Standard-Setting Research Methods on 12 January 2022, from 12:00 to 17:30 UTC. Website here.  

This workshop will showcase the broad range of research methods used by Internet governance scholars from multiple disciplines to study Internet standard-setting bodies, such as the IETF, IEEE, W3C, WHATWG, 3GPP, ITU-T, ITU-R. The workshop is also open to the study of “de-facto standardisation” that takes place outside of formal organisations and processes (Musiani and Ermoshina, 2019).

The workshop aims to provide an opportunity for scholars and researchers to:

• Explore and perhaps discover qualitative and quantitative methods applicable to standard setting for information networks;
• Share open research questions and work-in-progress on methods;
• Discuss the feasibility of applying specific methods;
• Improve the understanding of specific methods;
• Receive feedback to improve the methodological approaches;
• Identify new and existing data sources; and 
• Outline novel topics of interest arising from these various methods for the general study of standardisation and Internet governance broadly construed.

The workshop will focus on the following methods for studying standardisation: 

• Network analysis; 
• Computational methods;
• Discourse analysis; 
• Ethnography;
• Mixed Methods.

Additionally, we will also consider what lessons can be drawn from studying non-Internet standard-setting bodies and how researchers can acquire the relevant data for their research (including but not limited to standards, patents, conversations, and other standardisation documents and resources).

The workshop will include brief presentations of the authors and group discussion delving into their methods (and findings) and we are excited to have Professor Jorge L. Contreras as a keynote speaker. 

We will share the full program  in due course. In the meantime, you can email us with questions at: intgovworkshop@protonmail.com and encourage you to share the workshop with your networks. 

Reference

Ermoshina, Ksenia, and Francesca Musiani. “‘Standardising by Running Code’: The Signal Protocol and de Facto Standardisation in End-to-End Encrypted Messaging.” Internet Histories 3, no. 3–4 (October 2, 2019): 343–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2019.1654697

Full program

7:00 EST / 12:00 UTC / 13:00 CET
Opening Corinne Cath and Niels ten Oever

7:15 – 8:15 EST / 12:15 – 13:15 UTC
Qualitative SDO analysis
Panelists: Jorge Contreras, Riccardo Nanni, Julien Rossi, Ashwin Mathew, Zuno Verghese
Chair: Corinne Cath
Discussant: Niels ten Oever

8:15 – 8:30 EST / 13:15 – 13:30 UTC
Break

8:30 – 9:30 EST / 13:30 – 14:30 UTC
Quantitative SDO analysis
Panlelists: Justus Baron, Christoph Becker, Olia Kanevskaia, Nick Doty, Brad Biddle, Margaret Ng Chair: Riccardo Nanni
Discussant: Julien Rossi

9:30 – 10:00 EST / 14:30 – 15:00 UTC / 15:30 – 16:00 CET
Keynote by Jorge Contreras
Chair: Farzaneh Badii

10:00 – 10:30 EST / 15:00 – 15:30 UTC
Break

10:30 – 11:30 EST / 15:30 – 16:30 UTC
Internet Governance analysis
Panelists: Albert Garrich Alabarce, Alison Gillwald, Freya Vandenboom, Kapil Goyal
Chair: Julien Rossi
Discussant: Farzaneh Badii

11:30 – 12:00 EST / 16:30 – 17:00 UTC / 17:30 – 18:00 CET
Closing remarks by Farzaneh Badii

Addition details here.

Presenting the Special Issue Vol. 45/6 of Telecommunications Policy

Norm Entrepreneurship In Internet Governance

Edited by: Roxana Radu, Matthias C. Kettemann, Trisha Meyer and Jamal Shahin.

Date • Wed, 14 July, 14.00-15.30 (CEST) • via Zoom

Registration • http://bit.ly/RegisterNormfare

Special issue • Telecommunications Policy

Featuring presentations from the authors of the special issue

Roxana Radu, Matthias C. Kettemann, Trisha Meyer, Jamal Shahin

Normfare: Norm entrepreneurship in internet governance

Nanette S. Levinson

Idea entrepreneurs: The United Nations Open-Ended Working Group & cybersecurity

Corinne Cath

The technology we choose to create: Human rights advocacy in the Internet Engineering Task Force

Julien Rossi

What rules the Internet? A study of the troubled relation between Web standards and legal instruments in the field of privacy

Robert Gorwa

Elections, institutions, and the regulatory politics of platform governance: The case of the German NetzDG

Nicola Palladino

The role of epistemic communities in the “constitutionalization” of internet governance: The example of the European Commission High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence

Chelsea L. Horne

Internet governance in the “post-truth era”: Analyzing key topics in “fake news” discussions at IGF

Nadia Tjahja, Trisha Meyer, Jamal Shahin

What is civil society and who represents civil society at the IGF? An analysis of civil society typologies in internet governance

Riccardo Nanni

The ‘China’ question in mobile Internet standard-making: Insights from expert interviews

Blayne Haggart and Clara Iglesias Keller

Democratic legitimacy in global platform governance