News

IETF 112 took place in early November, where close to 1,200 people participated to further the IETF's mission of "making the internet work better." Working in parallel with the IETF is the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), who focuses on longer term research issues related to the internet. The IRTF conducted a session at IETF 112 under the title of GAIA – Global Access to the Internet for All. This focussed on unlocking internet access for people in rural areas, particularly those in less developed countries. But developed countries also have their challenges in reaching those not yet online.

Guidelines for greening the networks will be on the agenda for the RIPE community in 2022. While this is not a new topic for the address managing body, considerable interest was expressed at the ongoing RIPE83 meeting this week. A RIPE answer to the climate crisis and the steps that were deemed insufficient at the recent COP26 climate conference in Glasgow could be in the making.

After almost 2 years of meeting online CENTR members met at the Annual CENTR Meeting in Brussels last week. Approximately half of the participants joined online, but it was almost as if they were in the room, as they were present on the screen in front, and participated actively during the meeting.

In a nutshell: the European Commission published its Work Programme for 2022. Discussions continued within the co-legislators to reach a position on the DSA and a consensus on e-Evidence. October, as the official “European Cybersecurity month”, lived up to its status with many updates on cybersecurity. LIBE adopted its opinion on NIS 2 and its report on CER, while ITRE adopted its position on NIS 2. Member State leaders adopted their conclusions following the European Council meeting, highlighting cybersecurity as one of the key priorities for the EU. The European Data Protection Board adopted its Guidelines on restrictions of data subject rights under Article 23 of the GDPR. The Slovenian Presidency emphasised the fight against child sexual abuse as one of its key priorities.

The topic of registration data accuracy is picking up again at ICANN. Be it due to the fact that the EU is negotiating the NIS 2 Directive and the corresponding registration data verification obligation put on registries and registrars. Or that data accuracy keeps coming up in the ongoing GDPR compliance discussions by ICANN contracted parties (e.g. gTLD registries and registrars) after more than three years of law enforcement authorities and rights holders claiming not to be able to investigate illegal activities online due to the “darkened WHOIS”. One thing is sure: the data accuracy discussion underpins many current cross-community issues at ICANN, including ‘DNS abuse’, contractual compliance and public interest concerns.

The DNS Abuse topic was omnipresent at ICANN 72. Webinars in prep week (At-Large Advisory Committee and ICANN Board workshops) set the stage and the tone for intense but overall balanced discussions.

In this post I am trying to capture the main lines of thought and initiatives that came out of what must have been 15 hours of meetings and as many hours of zoom chats.

Until a few years ago, one needed to climb an impossibly steep learning curve when engaging in the country code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO).

These days, thanks to the excellent work of the secretariat, it is much easier to join the discussions. There are now good prep materials, live note-taking and perfectly supported online meetings and recordings. All the information we need is at our fingertips.

At the end of 2020, the European Commission came up with a proposal to revise EU cybersecurity legislation, following the allegedly increased cyberthreats due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The NIS 2 Directive proposal aims to improve the resilience and incident response capacities of public and private entities, deemed to be critical infrastructures. These entities also include domain name registries, registrars, DNS service providers and root servers operators.

In a nutshell: Ursula von der Leyen delivered her speech on the State of the Union. Denmark and Germany’s ministers called for stricter rules in the Digital Services Act (DSA), while EEA EFTA states called for more balance with freedom of expression. JURI and ITRE adopted their opinions on the DSA. The Slovenian Presidency circulated its proposal for a compromise text on the DSA. Potential areas for consensus were debated in trilogues regarding the e-Evidence proposal. The Netherlands released a non-paper on the Data Act ahead of the EU proposal expected in December.

The CENTRstats Global TLD Report Q2/2021 has been published. It covers the global status and registration trends in all top-level domains (legacy gTLDs, new gTLDs and ccTLDs), with a specific focus on the European ccTLD market.