On June 28, 2011, Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool) Professor Milton Mueller will present as part of the Hong Kong Institute of Economics and Business Strategy seminar. Mueller’s presentation, Critical Resource: The Economics of the Internet Addressing Routing Space, focuses on the new internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) address space, and analyzes the standards, policies and fee structures that are starting to be applied to IPv6.
“The internet is often seen as the Wild West, where there are no rules and regulations, a place before the emergence of civilization and civil society, a place without governance, like the Hobbesian state of nature,” Mueller said of his talk. “Interestingly, to address these problems the Internet has evolved governance institutions native to the Internet to provide workable solutions. Addressing and routing is a central issue in Internet governance.”
Mueller returns to Hong Kong to discuss these issues and their relevance to the industry and to Hong Kong in terms that can be understood by non-technical experts.
Mueller is a professor at the Syracuse iSchool where he teaches courses on information and communication policy and telecommunication management. His research focuses on property rights, institutions and global governance in communication and information industries. In October 2010, MIT Press released Mueller’s pivotal book, Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance, a book analyzing the conflict between the culture of the open and free Internet and the governments of territorial nation-states. His earlier book, Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002), was the first book-length analysis of the political and economic forces leading to the creation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Currently, he is doing research on the legal and regulatory responsibilities of Internet service providers, Internet Protocol addressing policy, the policy implications of Deep Packet Inspection technology and the security governance practices of network operators.
Mueller was one of the founders of the Internet Governance Project, an alliance of scholars in action around global Internet policy issues. As co-founder of the Noncommercial Users Constituency he has played a leading role in organizing and mobilizing public interest groups in ICANN. Mueller is on the Advisory Council of Public Interest Registry.