Date: Wednesday, November 19
Time: 4:00 - 5:00p

Location: 301 College Avenue, Seminar Room

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Abstract:

Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) are the nonprofit entities that allocate and assign Internet Protocol address resources. This presentation explains why this seemingly obscure technical function is becoming more contentious and central to global debates over Internet governance. It examines three major problems facing the RIRs and analyzes the political and economic forces behind them: 1) the possibility of a migration to a new Internet protocol standard, known as IPv6; 2) the depletion of the IPv4 address space and the concomitant need to institute efficient transfers and reclamation of IPv4 addresses; and 3) the attempt to introduce more security into the Internet routing system. The common thread here is scarcity, contention and distributional conflicts, and a general increase in the economic and political stakes of RIR policy decisions. I hypothesize that these factors will result in more institutionalization of RIR capabilities, more formal bureaucratization within RIR processes, and also new centralized control mechanisms that could become magnets for political contention (just as ICANN’s control of the DNS root did). The paper concludes that we will need stronger public policy frameworks for RIRs to operate within. These policy frameworks should retain and respect the RIRs’ status as independent self-regulatory entities, but should also ensure that their policies are constrained by basic human rights protections regarding freedom of expression, privacy and due process.

Bio:

Milton Mueller is Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies, USA, and also XS4All Professor at the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Mueller received the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. He was one of the founders of the Internet Governance Project, an alliance of scholars in action around global Internet policy issues. Dr. Mueller’s research focuses on property rights, institutions and global governance in communication and information industries. His book Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002) was the first book-length analysis of the political and economic forces leading to the creation of ICANN. He is currently working on a book about Internet governance in the post-World Summit on the Information Society environment: Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. The sponsor of his endowed chair at Delft University of Technology, a Dutch Internet service provider known for its commitment to social responsibility, XS4All, is interested in supporting the security and privacy of Internet users, and in connection with that position he is doing research on the policy implications of Deep Packet Inspection technology and the security governance practices of ISPs.

Mueller has played a leading role in organizing and mobilizing civil society in ICANN. He was a founder of the noncommercial users constituency and has served as its chair for several years. He was elected to ICANN’s GNSO Council and has worked on various task forces related to new TLDs, Whois/privacy, and the .org reassignment. Mueller is on the Advisory Council of Public Interest Registry (.org) and the Policy Advisory Board of .mobi.

For more information, please contact Corinne Russell.

11/18/08 Corinne