Dear colleagues, I wanted to draw your attention to this "Open Letter to the United Nations”, signed by a range of current and former IETF, W3C, and ICANN participants: https://open-internet-governance.org/letter The text is already pretty tight and to-the-point, but some key quotes: "Technical architecture can enable and influence how the Internet is used, but on its own it cannot address abuse, misinformation, inequality, or many other issues. There is nevertheless a potential danger in regulation and legislation, if it undermines the fundamentally empowering nature of the Internet.” "The Internet is an unusual technology because it is fundamentally distributed. […] This feature is an essential property of the Internet, and not an accident. Yet over the past few years we have noticed a willingness to address issues on the Internet and Web by attempting to insert a hierarchical model of governance over technical matters." "Government engagement in digital and Internet governance is needed to deal with many abuses of this global system but it is our common responsibility to uphold the bottom-up, collaborative and inclusive model of Internet governance that has served the world for the past half century.” Secondly, ICANN is hosting two webinars in the coming 24 hours to discuss the latest draft (Revision 2) of the Global Digital Compact - I’d encourage anyone with an interest to join!

Two upcoming webinars will focus on the second revision of the Global Digital Compact:https://www.un.org/techenvoy/sites/www.un.org.techenvoy/files/GlobalDigitalC...

The one-hour webinars will provide a space for stakeholders to share information and engage in discussions on how to preserve and evolve the multistakeholder model of Internet governance.

Please register now and share with your networks!

Monday, 1 July, 12:00 UTC: https://icann.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAuf-6gqj4uGtJUiIHKJwTUwwc5qRu3ga5C

Tuesday, 2 July, 00:00 UTC: https://icann.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcucuypqz4rGNOPFu8JsTHEIQTajXrTOHrU

Best, Chris