In this project we focus on monitoring the possible effect of AI on Internet governance. For each of these terms we use the almost standard definitions. Artificial Intelligence means digital products that use an amalgamation of machine learning, data, and advanced automation such as Generative AI. Internet governance means the processes, norms, organizations and standards that connect people to the Internet and ensure sustainable connectivity. We monitor AI issues that could potentially create challenges for Internet governance. At this stage many of the consequences of AI for Internet governance are speculative. We have created a list of a few topics and monitor and identify the developments:

• AI and Web-crawlers
• AI and Governance of Digital Services
• AI and Cybersecurity
• AI and Internet Standards Organizations

The open Internet is in need of a sustainable and decentralized digital infrastructure. While studying emerging technologies to keep the Internet open is a worthy attempt, we should not ignore the infrastructure elements that have been critical to the functioning of the Internet for the past three decades. Such critical Internet infrastructures require strategies and collective action to maintain their decentralized nature and contribution to an open Internet. One such critical Internet infrastructure is Domain Name System resolvers. Resolution of domain names is critical to the operation of the Internet and people’s access to web-services globally. Geopolitical issues as well as consolidation of DNS resolvers affect global interoperability of the Internet. Even when consolidation is done by an altruistic organization that doesn’t collect utilization statistics, the fact of consolidation leaves the DNS open to commercial attacks with global implications. Centralization of such a critical component of the Internet leaves the DNS vulnerable to attacks on infrastructure, on the privacy of users, and on the content of the Internet.  Understanding this trend and how it might be reversed is of utmost importance and this project tries to understand the reasons behind consolidation.

Final Report

Resolving the Future: DNS Resolvers and the Power to Navigate the Internet

DNS Resolvers and the Power to Navigate the Internet 

Preliminary Report + Project Status Update

This early paper captures our mid-year findings and open questions.

Is Big DNS Taking Over? State of the Art report

Digital Medusa will at the upcoming DNS Oarc and RIPE meetings. The meetings will be held in Czech Republic 26-27 October: https://www.dns-oarc.net/node/239

 Is Big DNS Taking Over? — FOSDEM 2025, Brussels

Date: February 1–2, 2025

Location: DNS Devroom, FOSDEM, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Farzaneh Badiei delivered a lightning talk raising the question: Why are only a few public DNS resolvers trusted? The talk explored the risks of consolidation in the DNS ecosystem, and Farzaneh explored the reasons behind the limited number of trusted public DNS resolvers and how we can re-decentralize the DNS and internet infrastructure.

 Watch the talk

DNS Resolver Trends & Centralization — DNS OARC 42, Prague

Date: October 26–27, 2024

Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Farzaneh presented new findings from Digital Medusa’s DNS resolver research, examining shifts in public resolver usage and raising questions about infrastructure trust, accountability, and consolidation.

Watch the presentation

Panel on DNS Resolvers & Law — RIPE 89, Prague

Date: October 28–November 1, 2024

Location: Prague, Czech Republic

At RIPE 89, Farzaneh joined a panel discussion focused on legal and regulatory interventions affecting the internet’s technical layer, especially DNS resolvers. She emphasized the importance of policy best practices to facilitate DNS resolver compliance to provide their services globally.

Watch the panel discussion

This project is funded by The Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund (D//F), a collaborative effort supported by Ford
Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Omidyar Network, Schmidt Futures, and Open Collective Foundation.

Geopolitical conflicts and wars have been affecting access to the Internet since the Internet became more formalized and in a way, industrialized. This project focuses on “economic sanctions”, their effect on access to the Internet and the value of interconnectedness without discrimination.

Because of its history, the Internet and access to it were always affected by geopolitical conflicts and wars. Once it became widely accessible to consumers, however, the Internet became subject to trade sanction regimes in the US and Europe and possibly elsewhere.  There are debates about whether sanctions are effective for changing States’ behavior and what can be effectively sanctioned. As the Internet is a relatively new industrial area, this project proposes to adopt a systemic approach and document how sanctions are currently applied to the Internet, why there have been previous attempts not to apply sanctions to the Internet, whether contemporary problems necessitate application of sanctions to the Internet, and what a desirable outcome might be for sanctions and Internet access in the future.

– Policy solutions: considering past sanction exemptions, what are the potential pathways to arguing for policies that can diminish the impact of sanction on access to the Internet but at the same time help governments achieve their sanction goals.

– Strategies for compliance with sanctions while keeping the Internet global: the research discovers why businesses over comply with sanctions and how the risk strategies can change to maintain provision of services while still being in compliance with sanction rules.

– Institutional changes: the research will also look into whether we need institutional and governance changes in Internet governance organizations in order to maintain interconnectedness.

Related meetings

MENOG 2022

Internet Governance Forum 2022

RIPE 85 (2022)

Articles

Sanctions and the Internet (2023) final report:

Progress reports

2022: How do sanctions impact the Internet: https://labs.ripe.net/author/farzaneh-badiei/how-do-sanctions-impact-the-internet/

Researchers 

• Farzaneh Badiei, Digital Medusa
• Zhenye (Ryan) Pan, Columbia University

Funding

This project was funded by RIPE NCC 

Contact 

From January 15 to May 31, 2022, the Working Group on Crisis Response Protocols (CRWG) – a subgroup of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) – met with stakeholders across civil society organizations, governments, academics and companies (through a series of individual and group meetings in addition to tabletop exercises). The output of this effort is the present report that aims to: 1. Outline the lifecycle of a terrorist incident on the Internet and its human rights impact; 2. Propose a framework for crisis protocol operators and GIFCT to use for explicating the lifecycle of incidents and to consider human rights implications in crisis response; and 3. Clarify the relationship between human rights and GIFCT’s mission through explaining the human rights impact at each stage of the crisis lifecycle. It also provided one of the first “categories of terrorist attacks with an online angle”.

Digital Medusa led the working group and wrote the report with the help of the working group members.

• Year of collaboration: 2022
• Status: Complete

• Download the Report Here
• Categories of terrorist attack with an online angle (page 15)
• Human Rights Matrix (page 36)

This syllabus was designed for the United Nations Internet Governance Forum. The syllabus is an advisory document that may guide those who wish to convene a school or teach Internet governance, or know more about the structure of IG courses.
In addition to explaining how the syllabus was created and how it could be used, the document contains the following sections:.

• Core Internet governance modules and elective modules, learning outcomes as well as a sample of faculty members and topics they teach.
• Teaching methods such as practicums, hands-on industry presentations, moot courts and others, How to find lecturers and experts?
• How to build coalitions, contribute to the Dynamic Coalition on Schools of Internet governance (DC-SIG)?
• Teaching methods such as practicums, hands-on industry presentations, moot courts and others, How to find lecturers and experts? How to build coalitions, contribute to the Dynamic Coalition on Schools of Internet governance (DC-SIG)?

• Year of collaboration: 2022
• Status: Complete

• Download the syllabus here
• Meetings: Teaching Internet Governance, stakeholders consultation )
  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mj1GloSHQ1nQso5pl_9v3DcTzqZ7mCCw/view?usp=sharing

• Year of collaboration: Started in 2022
• Status: Ongoing

Related Events

Immersive technology is poised to transform the way people work, play, and learn. From an emerging creator economy of virtual goods and services to cutting-edge applications that can improve education, health care, and manufacturing, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies are unlocking new opportunities to communicate, access information, and engage with the world. These changes raise important questions, and how policymakers respond will have profound implications for the economy and society.

https://itif.org/events/2022/09/14/ar-vr-policy-conference-2022/
Watch here: ARVR Policy Conference 2022
Trust and Safety Research Conference 2022: https://www.tsresearchconference.org/
OECD Ministerial meeting: Building an Inclusive Digital Future: Digital Ministerial 2022