Russia export controls and sanctions

"I appreciate NETmundial’s statement endorsing” NTIA’s transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions “to the multi-stakeholder community,” said House Communications Subcommittee member Mike Doyle, D-Pa., by email Monday. Scholars and lawmakers are divided on the political implications for NTIA’s transition at NETmundial, last week’s Internet governance conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil (CD April 29 p9). “The opposition of certain countries to this course of action provides proof, if any were needed,” that the transition is an “important step in maintaining the Internet as a platform for free expression and innovation,” said Doyle. A few autocratic regimes, including Russia, expressed concern over NETmundial’s final outcome document (http://bit.ly/1nLhMBC), which endorsed NTIA’s transition and the multistakeholder model.

Scholars and lawmakers were divided over the political implications of NETmundial, last week’s conference on Internet governance in Sao Paulo, Brazil (CD April 23 p19; April 24 p7; April 28 p13). NETmundial could generate interest among some Republicans in NTIA’s proposed transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, since some regimes, like Russia, expressed skepticism over the conference’s final outcome document (http://bit.ly/1nt0rA6), said Paul Rosenzweig, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and founder of Red Branch Consulting, which focuses on homeland security.

Cyber Europe 2014, a cybersecurity exercise, kicked off Monday under the aegis of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). In this first of three phases of ENISA’s biannual cyber-exercise, participants -- including 29 EU and European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) countries, computer security incident response teams, cybersecurity agencies, EU bodies, public entities, telecom operators and information and communication technology (ICT) vendors -- will try to resolve several large-scale technical cyberincidents similar to real-life cases, ENISA said in a Q&A document (http://bit.ly/S1fjJq). The next two stages will check the resilience of IT systems and response capacity at the operational and political levels, it said. This is a two-day exercise, ENISA said. Aggregated results “will be announced in overarching terms” at year’s end, ENISA Executive Director Udo Helmbrecht told us by email. The scenarios are “based on realistic potential incidents,” he said. The exercise goals are to: (1) Test how governments and industry work together on resilience of IT systems and response capacity in cases of serious cross-border security threats. (2) Check standard cooperation procedures in the EU. (3) Train and test national-level capabilities and see how effectively private-public and private-private players collaborate. (4) Analyze how events escalate and de-escalate; and understand those processes at all technical, operational and strategic levels as well as related public affairs issues linked to cyberthreats. The exercise wasn’t influenced by events in Russia and Ukraine, ENISA said in news release.

The Internet governance meeting NETmundial is expected to shape the transition process of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions and other Internet governance-related issues, said stakeholders planning to attend or follow the conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil (http://bit.ly/1lcUzai). Organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee and /1Net, an international multistakeholder forum, the event is Wednesday and Thursday. Few stakeholders we spoke with expect the conference to produce concrete results. The White House and other executive-branch agencies jointly said Monday that they hope conference attendees will stick to a transparent process in considering the IANA transition.

The Commerce Department, home to NTIA, NIST and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, faced pressure on multiple fronts on Capitol Hill this week. Lawmakers in both chambers scrutinized Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday and a House Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday, on the department’s proposed FY 2015 budget of $8.8 billion, 7 percent higher than in FY 2014. Key points of concern included Commerce’s management of patents, broadband projects and cybersecurity. Lawmakers also asked about the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, which NTIA has contracted out to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to global multistakeholder governance, an issue hotly contested among other congressional committees recently.

A Russian social network’s music service is the target of legal action by the recording industry for “deliberately facilitating piracy on a large scale,” said an International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1kuUDBq). Sony Music Russia, Universal Music Russia and Warner Music UK all filed separate cases against the social network, vKontakte (VK), in the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Arbitration Court, claiming VK “operates an unlicensed music service involving a huge library of copyright-infringing tracks that are stored on its website,” IFPI said. “The service provides unlimited access to this repertoire, enabling its tens of millions of users to search and stream music.” The companies are asking the court require VK to institute “effective industry-standard measures, such as audio fingerprinting” and for VK to pay over $1.4 million in compensation.

The Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act was introduced Thursday in response to NTIA’s decision to transition the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to a global multistakeholder body, said a news release (http://1.usa.gov/1gGRPmJ) from co-sponsors Reps. John Shimkus, R-Ill., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Todd Rokita, R-Ind., Thursday. The bill’s other co-sponsors are Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., and Bob Latta, R-Ohio, it said. “We can’t let the Internet turn into another Russian land grab,” said Blackburn, in the release. “America shouldn’t surrender its leadership on the world stage to a ‘multistakeholder model’ that’s controlled by foreign governments,” she said. “Russia and China have sought such a venue in the past through the United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union,” said the release. The bill would “prohibit” NTIA from “turning over its domain name system oversight responsibilities pending a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress,” it said.

Internet governance stakeholders should be wary of a government-controlled Internet, as the U.S. government transitions oversight of domain name functions to global stakeholders, said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, now a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, in a Friday blog post (http://tinyurl.com/ldku43y). NTIA announced March 14 it was asking the global Internet community to create an oversight plan for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). “If events don’t unfold as NTIA intends, however, Internet freedom, global prosperity and international political reform will be at risk,” McDowell said. If all goes according to plan, “existing, non-profit, private sector Internet governance groups [will] oversee ICANN’s management of these critical technical functions, just as they have other technical aspects of the Net for decades -- with a perfect track record of success,” McDowell said. “The worst case scenario would include foreign governments, either directly or through intergovernmental bodies, snatching the soon-to-be untethered technical functions for their own purposes.” McDowell pointed to foreign leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has “plainly asserted” a goal to have international control of the Internet conducted by the United Nations. “This concern is more than theoretical,” McDowell said. “Countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and their client states, have worked for years to absorb many aspects of Internet governance into multilateral organizations ... rather than the non-profit private sector."

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said Congress should closely monitor the NTIA’s proposal to spin off oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to a global multistakeholder body. “The current multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance has been a tremendous success,” he said in a statement Tuesday (http://fcc.us/1iA2FtX). “Any proposal to change that model therefore demands rigorous scrutiny.” Pai said he was concerned foreign governments may use the proposal process to increase government control of the Internet, saying “if I am not convinced that a different governance structure would preserve Internet freedom, I will strongly oppose it.” Other Republicans have also said they were concerned about the possibility of foreign governments abusing the transition process, including House Commerce Committee Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who said in a statement Monday that she believes the transition “will allow countries like China and Russia that don’t place the same value in freedom of speech to better define how the Internet looks and operates.”

Fiber-to-the-home/building (FTTH/B) is the leading global high-speed broadband solution, but regional uptake varies widely, IDATE analysts said Wednesday at an FTTH conference in Stockholm. IDATE’s world FTTx database provides data on the high-speed broadband market that covers more than 70 countries and 150 key players, said the firm, which is part of an institute that says it’s backed by “nearly 40 major players in the digital economy.” Revenue is expected to grow 95 percent over the next five years, to 182 billion euros ($250 billion) in 2017, said lead analyst Valérie Chaillou in a news release. Eastern Europe’s ultra-fast broadband subscriptions uptake rate will rise from 28 percent to 49 percent in the five years, much higher than in Western Europe, IDATE said. FTTH/B is clearly the technology of choice in the Asia-Pacific region, while fiber-to-the-last-amplifier leads in Western Europe and North America, it said. VDSL is, however, the technology of choice for some European incumbents, and Latin America and Middle East countries are just beginning their next-generation access network rollouts, it said. Some major European telcos still question the need for investing in FTTH/B, and some are “betting on the future capacities of copperbased networks,” it said. Six Asian and four American telcos make up the world’s top 10 FTTH operators, IDATE said. FTTH/B is gathering speed in Europe, with the total number of fiber subscribers growing by 29 percent in 2103, said the FTTH Council Europe. Thirteen EU countries have experienced subscriber growth of more than 30 percent, including Spain, the Netherlands, France and Portugal, it said. The region’s leaders, however, are France and Sweden, each with more than 1.2 million FTTH/B subscribers. Russia “remains a heavyweight” with around 9 million subscribers, it said. Outside Europe, China and Japan “are the unmatched world leaders,” it said. The numbers may sound impressive, but there’s still a long way to go, the council said. A country only reaches “fiber maturity” when 20 percent of its households are FTTH/B subscribers, and so far, only nine countries have reached that point, it said. The United Arab Emirates led the global FTTH rankings, it said. Germany and the U.K. have less than 1 percent penetration, “and once again conspicuously failed to qualify” for the ranking, the council said. “We need to do more and I can’t help but feel that some policy makers underestimate the danger of not getting to fibre to the home networks quickly enough,” said FTTH Council Europe President Karin Ahl in a news release. Within the next 30 years, Ahl said 70 percent of the economy “is likely to be driven by firms and products we know nothing about today."