Stakeholders Want Internet Sanctions Mechanism

The invasion of Ukraine challenges the concept of multistakeholder internet infrastructure governance, said representatives from ICANN, academia, the European Parliament, civil society, security organizations and others. At such pivotal times, "we must decide as a community whether Internet self-governance has matured sufficiently to address such newly encountered issues." Governments have historically imposed sanctions but the global Internet community hasn't developed a process for doing so, they said. Principles they set out Thursday for sanctions include: (1) Don't disconnect a country's population from the internet because that hampers access to information that might lead people to withdraw support for acts of war. (2) Make sanctions focused and precise, and minimize the possibility of unintended consequences. (3) Military and propaganda agencies are potential targets of sanctions. (4) While it's inappropriate for governments to try to compel internet governance mechanisms to impose sanctions outside the multistakeholder process, there are some effective and specific sanctions that could be considered. Signers backed forming of a "new, minimal, multistakeholder mechanism ... which after due process and consensus would publish sanctioned IP addresses and domain names in the form of public data feeds ... to be consumed by any organization that chooses to subscribe to the principles and their outcome." They urged the community to launch a dialogue on a mechanism to decide whether the IP addresses and domains of the Russian military and its propaganda arms should be sanctioned. After analyzing Ukraine's requests for various ICANN actions (see [2203020002), they concluded that blocklisting is the most effective solution.