This year’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF) USA, held here in Washington, D.C.  at George Washington University (GWU), is a truly multifaceted meeting, which will inform the global IGF meeting in December in Joao Pessoa, Brazil.   Take a look at the program.  There are no holy cows.  There is even one panel which asks the question: “Can the Internet Cause Too Much Disruption?”

On Wednesday, Congress will take a look at how to Preserve the Multistakeholder Model of Internet Governance.  The Senate Commerce Committee hearing comes one year after the Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA) proposed a plan to transfer control over key Internet mechanisms maintained by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to a multistakeholder managed entity.

SIIA applauds Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) for their resolution calling for the designation of the week of February 8 as “Internet Governance Awareness Week.”  By passing this measure, the Senate would continue its oversight of the Administration’s proposed transfer of control over key Internet mechanisms maintained by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

District Court Upholds FTC Data Security Authority

SIIA’s Government Affairs Council met to identify the organization’s policy priorities for 2014.  Following the meeting, which took place Wednesday, SIIA announced that it will continue to take a leadership role in promoting the economic and social value of data-driven innovation, and to advocate for policies that enable innovation, rather than creating broad restrictions on the collection and use of data. SIIA also said that a top legislative priority in the year ahead will be enactment of patent litigation reform and legislative measures that assure that digital content providers can control the distribution of their products and services.