The Republic of South Sudan has officially been designated the .SS country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) in an announcement from the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). As well as the ccTLD, South Sudan was allocated country codes for passports and financial transactions. These codes are a basic requirement for the world’s newest country, the Republic of South Sudan. Remarking on what the establishment of a country code means for a new country like South Sudan, Gérard Lang, Chair of the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, explains, “ISO country codes are fundamental for the international recognition and activities of a country. Without them, a country cannot have a currency code or Internet ccTLD, or even issue machine-readable passports. “Country codes are essential in banking transactions, as they form part of codes like IBAN (international bank account number), BIC (universal bank identifier). They are also used in various legal, cultural and scientific exchanges which range from numbering of archaeological sites to online identification of a user’s geo-location. One could say that country codes are one of the building blocks underpinning globalisation and, in particular, communication and exchanges on the web. “It was therefore crucial to establish ISO country codes for South Sudan as soon as possible. Now that the process has been finalised, the country can go ahead with other basic tasks like issuing a currency code,” emphasised Mr. Lang. ISO 3166 country codes are widely used as abbreviations to identify countries in contexts such as postal addresses, transportation, passports, library coding systems and online payment systems. Many codes, such as those for currencies and banking, are based on these. They have largely replaced some 70 different systems of country codes developed over time by individual countries, and public and private sector organisations, eliminating potential for confusion. The ISO codes are assigned under transparent procedures by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency which makes them available free of charge. ISO assigns the codes, but does not determine whether a territory is a country. ISO 3166 codes are automatically assigned to any new member admitted to United Nations and its name listed in either the Terminology Bulletin Country Names or in the Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use (M49 numerical country code assignments) maintained by the United Nations Statistics Division. The two-letter codes are the most commonly used, while the three-letter codes are for special uses where a closer identification of the code with the full name of the country concerned is required. They are used notably in machine-readable passports meeting the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Abstract: The Internet is emphatically not a government free zone. A central part is ICANN, the institution which regulates the ‘root’ of the internet (the domain name system and internet protocol addresses). This a fundamental element of the architecture of the Internet. We would be, literally, lost without it. In a sense, the code of the Internet, its protocols and languages are regulation – they control how the system behaves. ICANN is the regulator who regulates that ‘regulation.’ Principles of global administrative law can, once suitably modified for the context, suggest the most effective reforms. ICANN displays features characteristic of a hybrid public-private regulator. Authority is formally delegated by the US, but importance is placed on the acceptance of ICANN as legitimate by the wider community (including technical experts). It is formed as a corporation, and regulates on a contractual basis. However, it is charged (legally) with pursuing the global public interest due to the way in which it was set up as a non-profit organization, and is essentially a monopoly. Institutional design has been approached from the start, and through successive reforms, with democratic norms in mind. However, there has historically been capture by powerful interests – due to the accountability deficit, in particular. In order to pursue reform effectively, ICANN should focus on transparency, giving reasons, and strengthened review. To be successful however, requires strong backing from all states and an ‘entrepreneur’ type Board with the expertise, interest, and focus on GAL ideas, and genuine representatives to form a coalition to push for reform effectively. Counter-intuitively, a crisis of legitimacy created by criticism that ICANN is unaccountable might strengthen the force of democratic norms in its design, as NGOs and others are empowered to demand reform. To download and read this research paper in full, see: ssrn.com/abstract=1632885

A screenshot of the Cloudfoundry.org site, the home for the Cloud Foundry community (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Virtualization and cloud computing software developer VMware ( www.vmware.com ) announced on Tuesday that it has released a new open source platform for building cloud-based application development environments, along the lines of Microsoft’s Windows Azure, or Google’s App Engine, in an apparent effort to create the standard service providers will use to create platform-as-a-service clouds that compete with those services. VMware’s Cloud Foundry project, as the code base is called, was launched by the company today at a live event led by CEO Paul Maritz, and attended by thousands of developers, with a long list of speakers.

A screenshot of the Cloudfoundry.org site, the home for the Cloud Foundry community (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Virtualization and cloud computing software developer VMware ( www.vmware.com ) announced on Tuesday that it has released a new open source platform for building cloud-based application development environments, along the lines of Microsoft’s Windows Azure, or Google’s App Engine, in an apparent effort to create the standard service providers will use to create platform-as-a-service clouds that compete with those services. VMware’s Cloud Foundry project, as the code base is called, was launched by the company today at a live event led by CEO Paul Maritz, and attended by thousands of developers, with a long list of speakers. VMware says Cloud Foundry is the company’s first ever major open source project

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