It’s early March in Marrakech, and a gleaming conurbation of hotels run in the kind of rare equilibrium of slick organisation and genuine friendliness that Tyler Brûlé might dream about.
Inside, the people who run the internet’s naming and numbering systems have been meeting with some of the governments who would rather be doing the job themselves. Eventually they cut a deal, and then negotiators from countries mostly in the northern hemisphere staggered blinking into the sunlight and splayed like lizards around the azure swimming pools, almost too tired to drink. Almost.
What they have agreed is a plan for Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to end direct US government oversight control of administering the internet and commit permanently to a slightly mysterious model of global “multi-stakeholderism”.
Like any settlement of a long-running conflict, the trick is to spread the unhappiness evenly and not celebrate too much, lest anyone think they’ve lost more than they’d reckoned. Though the French government was still seething over a spat about “dot champagne”, it rallied the naysayers the weekend before the official meeting started. Yet the real worry was the United States.
The Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon has said she is still losing work because of her outspoken...
A Pennsylvania police officer was charged on Tuesday with voluntary manslaughter for last week’s fatal shooting...
During a settler attack aimed at stealing sheep, the Israeli army killed a Palestinian boy and...
Omaha police recently agreed to stop carrying gloves that can deliver electric shocks to students in...
