ICANN and Governance

Governance Theater: ICANN’s gTLD Program: A Toll Booth, Not a Market

AI Governance, Digital Sovereignty, Economic Policy, ICANN and Governance /

Published Exclusively for CircleID.  Part of the ICANN & Governance Series  Last week I wrote about what happens when you win an accountability ruling and still walk away empty-handed. The IRP merry-go-round keeps spinning, and the applicant keeps paying to ride it. That piece is here: Accountability Without Remedy Is Just Documentation. This article is […]

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The Messi of gTLDs: How ZACR, the AUC-Aligned Registry, Became the Protected Beneficiary of a Rigged System

The Messi of gTLDs: The .Africa Applicant That Never Had to Play by the Same Rules

AI, AI Governance, Digital Sovereignty, Economic Policy, ICANN and Governance /

Published First on Linkedin Part of the ICANN & Governance Series  ICANN in the Public Square Again | Part II   Gianni Infantino is in trouble. After his failed plan to commercialise the World Cup, UEFA and several major European federations withdrew their support. He is now counting on the Confederation of African Football’s 54-member bloc to

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Polictical Interference, ICANN GAC, Kenya

Kenya Lost .africa. Here Is the Story The Citizen Kenya Left Out

AI, AI Governance, Digital Sovereignty, Economic Policy, ICANN and Governance /

Published Exclusively for CircleID.  Part of the ICANN & Governance Series  Kenya already had a chance at an African domain. It did not end well. The Citizen Kenya recently ran a piece encouraging ICANN’s 2026 gTLD round as an opportunity for Kenya to run custom web domains and strengthen its digital identity. Someone brought it

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Infographic showing the precedent chain from DotConnectAfrica Trust v. ICANN IRP Final Declaration, Paragraph 74 (2015) to Amazon EU v. ICANN IRP Final Declaration, Paragraph 88 (2017), with the caption: One ruling. Cited. Applied. Endures."

Whose Precedent Gets Remembered? Selective Amplification Has Its Own Amnesia

AI, AI Governance, Digital Sovereignty, ICANN and Governance /

Published Exclusively for CircleID.  Part of the ICANN & Governance Series  Whose Precedent Gets Remembered in the Multistakeholder model I read Amin Dayekh’s piece on the Constituent Community Doctrine a few weeks ago and recognized every mechanism he described and found it real. I left a comment laying out what happened with .africa. He responded saying he is already

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ICANN Wiki SHE.africa, AI, and the Integrity of Digital Platforms

AI, AI Governance, Digital Sovereignty, ICANN and Governance /

Published Exclusively for CircleID.  Part of the ICANN & Governance Series    The ICANN Wiki Case Study and the Governance of Institutional Memory The integrity of digital history is becoming one of the defining governance challenges of the AI era. Every day, platforms edit, revise, and remove information. Most corrections improve accuracy. Some quietly alter

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Did the AUC-Aligned ZACR Actually Deliver .africa?

.africa Commentary, ICANN and Governance /

10 Years. 55,000 Domains. 1.5 Billion People. A Performance Review Africa Deserves — As the 2026 gTLD Round Opens. March 20,  2026 This article is part of the.africa Commentary Series — a living archive of analysis, precedent, and warnings from the architect of the .africa domain.  Executive Summary: ICANN’s new gTLD application round is now

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Split composition image for the article "Scientists Have Spoken. Now Who Will Build?" Left side shows scientists in a lab with holographic data. Right side shows architects at a round table, representing governance builders. Text overlay reads: "Scientists Have Spoken. Now Who Will Build?

The IRP Docket Speaks Louder Than Theory – A Response to Charles Mok on ICANN and AI Governance

AI, AI Governance, ICANN and Governance /

First published on CircleID — March 6, 2026Part of the ICANN & Governance Series → A Stanford research scholar asks whether the multi-stakeholder model can guide AI. The record of more than a dozen IRPs offers answers he hasn’t considered. Charles Mok’s recent CircleID article, “Do We Need Alignment Between Internet Governance and AI Governance?”,

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Estoppel Blocks Courts, Not History: The .africa Case

.africa Commentary, ICANN and Governance /

February 21, 2026This article is part of the .africa Commentary Series — a living archive of analysis, precedent, and warning from the architect of the .africa domain. In 2015, we won an Independent Review Process against ICANN. The IRP panel ruled that the ICANN Board had violated its own bylaws by failing to conduct due

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