Internet Governance Forum 2 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Openning Ceremony 13 November 2007 Morning Session Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the The 2nd Meeting of the IGF. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. (Gavel.) >>NITIN DESAI: Good morning. I am Nitin Desai. This to my right is my co-chair, ambassador Hadil da Rocha Vianna. And the purpose of this morning's session is to provide an opportunity to the people who have organized workshops to report in on what came out of the workshops. Today we have two people who are reporting in. And -- but before that, I need to hand the floor to the secretary, who has some announcements to make. >>MARKUS KUMMER: But just, basically, again, I would like to draw the attention of people to what the chairman just said. The sessions here are designed to allow people to report on the events they have organized. And we have tried to design the program in a way that related workshops take place before the main session. That is, yesterday, we had three workshops related to access. This morning, there was one workshop related to access. So they will be allowed to report. And that would be an input into the panel session we have right afterwards. And maybe it's a good thing if the workshops on access actually come last so that they are -- the hall fills up a little bit more. The fact that not many people are here yet should not deter anybody. The merit of this session is, we have it on record and it will be on our Web site, thanks to our real-time transcription. So there will be a record for that. And at the same time, I would also draw the attention of event organizers that they are encouraged, they should report on their event, and they can do so directly. We have organized our Web site in a way that allows them to upload their report on the Web site. We have a template for that. We asked -- of course, they have to say who they are and what the event was all about, and also about possible follow-up to the workshop or best-practice forum. So please, organizers, fill in your report forms. It would be nice if we had them already complete by the end of this IGF meeting. Last, but not least, we also made provisions for remote participation. We have live webcast, video cast from the main session, audio cast from the workshops. And we have a chat function on both the host country and on the IGF Web site. We have e-mail lists. Yesterday, we didn't have many responses, so I would also like to promote that. And if anybody has another functioning system, please signal it to us so that we can also put it up on our Web site. So with this, I hand back to the chairman. These were a few logistical remarks. Thank you. >>NITIN DESAI: Thank you very much, Markus. May I now first turn to Mr. Louis Pouzin. >> LOUIS POUZIN: Yesterday, there was a workshop. And the title was a little bit complicated. Multilingual directories and solutions provided by the semantic Web. We were supposed to have four panelists. Things didn't work quite that way. First, we were supposed to start at 1:30. But due to the fact that the room was behind in this room, it took some time to install the walls and so on, and the various equipment for the translator. So we started at 2:00 instead of 1:30. And second, one panelist was missing, it was an Indian scientist, but, finally, we were not able to collect the money for him to travel to Rio. So a week ago, I had started a request for having a phone link with India. But we never got it. So, finally, we had to go with three panelists instead of four. So, briefly, those three panelists were Dr. Robert Kahn, well-known person who was an Internet pioneer. The second one was Mr. Guanghao Li from CNNIC, Chinese institution for domain names. And the third one was Dr. Francis Muguet, from French research place called ENSTA, in Paris. So each one had a separate approach to multilingual directories. First, Bob Kahn explained a number of features of the Handle System. Perhaps not every one of you is familiar with handle, H-A-N-D-L-E, has been around for more than ten years already. And it's used in a number of applications, specifically, for indexing documents. And there is a foundation called the Document Object Institute, or institution, I'm not sure. Or foundation or something. And that uses the Handle System for all the libraries around the world. The system allows for indexing about anything, indexing, for example, part of a book or a phrase of the book, a chapter, a link or a reference in a book. It's got security features. It provides a virtual naming space which comes on top of the Internet. In other words, instead of having to rely on I.P. numbers or URL, which are not necessarily very convenient to use when you have mobility, it relies on an independent name space which is completely independent of Internet topology and which allows to develop the various elements of the database independently of the geographical location and of the organizational locations. This software is open, free for use, and it's been used by China to build its own domain name systems. In other words, the Chinese names use Handle for accessing the sites in China. So then Mr. Guangao Li explained the various services offered by China. They have, as you know, Chinese names, they have a -- browsers which use Chinese names for accessing sites. They have Chinese engine searches, Baidu, the major one. And most users in China use Chinese systems. And, therefore, they have a strong demand for local names in China. They have two scripts, two major scripts, traditional Chinese and. Two kinds. But they say it's not really a problem. It's like upper case and lower case. In that context, they have developed IDN. They think IDN fits a number of needs, has been a serious increase in registering IDN names, because it allows people to type Chinese names without -- for example, without the dot. We might think that the dot is a universal glyph, a universal symbol. It's not the case. It doesn't exist in China or in Korean names, for example. So by just typing dots is a has until a Chinese name. So IDN prevents that kind of inconvenience. But they also have developed key word systems. Key word systems are in a way a very simple way of accessing the Net. It's a little bit like Google. You just type a name, type a word, a series of words, and you get an answer. They have introduced a translation of Chinese names into URLs, into Internet names, so that users can just type a Chinese name, and they go search the (saying name) systems and offer the user the appropriate URL addresses which they can choose. So in a way, it's sort of a simplified Google system which works in Chinese and which allows a user to either type URLs, if they prefer, or just type Chinese names. And then there also was a wireless key word access. They can use their mobile phones, and they can type a Chinese name. This is translated into a number, and it sends an SMS message to an appropriate database which just sent back the results to the mobile user, like if they were accessing a Web site. The protocol they use for that is WAP. WAP is a standardized protocol that's been standardized by the ITU. They're developing constantly new services. They're very keen on accessing the market so that they respond quickly to users' demands. For example, the wireless key words have seen an increase of about 40% of users in a single year, which means that accessing in Chinese short names on the radio is very much in demand. The mobile phone is probably the PC of the future. Now, we also had Francis Muguet, who had another proposal for developing independent name space on the Internet using a feature which is part of DNS presently. It's called the class feature, which I personally wouldn't be able to give you details on that. It's a little bit subtle. And by using that feature, partly we can have a completely independent name space using the present DNS, which is a way of developing access to services which can be -- which can have rules of access, which may be, for example, designed for accessing semantic Web, in other words, request which accesses database with metadata, so that you have a much stronger protection for using -- in using the Internet, protections against, for example, pornography, protection against various kind of contents and so on. It can also be specialized in some very well-defined type of contents so that by using these different name space, you can restrict the view of the whole world into a much more significant kind of contents. Okay. Thank you very much. >>NITIN DESAI: You can complete. >> That's all. That's all. >>NITIN DESAI: Thank you very much, Mr. POISSON. Can I now turn to Mr. Masanobu Katoh. He's a member of our advisory group and also the corporate vice president of Fujitsu. >>MASANOBU KATOH: Thank you very much, Chairman Desai. This morning, I served as a moderator for workshop on access entitled "Qualifying, Quantifying, and Meeting the Challenge of Internet Access Costs." I would like to provide a short summary of our session and its conclusions. The session was organized by five organizations, one, Global Information Infrastructure Commission, GIIC, an initiative by ICT industry leaders to promote the infrastructure for the advanced Information Society. Two, igrowthglobal, an organization providing independent policy research on the major ICT policy issues domestically and internationally, including in the developing world. Three, the world information technology and service alliance, WITSA, an alliance of over 70 national I.T. associations facilitating the use of ICT. Four, packet clearinghouse, or PCH, a nonprofit research institute formed in 1994. It supports operations and analysis in the area of Internet traffic exchange, routing economics, and global network development. And, five, the Nippon Keidanren, the influential Japanese business federation, with the mission to accelerate growth of Japan's and the world economy. Our speakers included Mr. Kiyoshi Mori, Japan's vice Minister for policy coordination, and Dr. Olfat Abd El Monsef, vice president, national telecommunications regulatory authority of Egypt, Mr. Bill Woodcock, founder and research director for PCT, and Mr. Nishal Goburdhan from Internet solutions in South Africa. The speakers and the workshop participants discussed, among many other things, one, the role of international, regional, and domestic peering and transit agreements as a component of overall connectivity cost. Two, the identification of various best practice initiatives, such as construction of Internet exchange points, capacity building in skills and expertise; that Internet service providers, government officials, and other stakeholders have used in local, national, and regional communities to boost Internet penetration rates, particularly in Africa and Latin America. And, three, the proper role of regulation and competition in lowering end-to-end connectivity costs. We learned that, one, there is a need to promote local exchange traffic providers as a way to provide great Internet access and lower connectivity costs. Two, the existing regulatory approach in certain countries does not help or adequately address the need for local exchange traffic providers. Additional liberalization is required. Three, an initiative by private ISPs in South Africa calling attention to the need for deregulation and working with the government for reforms produced a healthy environment for ISPs to grow and provide more Internet services. Four, a program in Egypt to provide affordable Internet access and computers to those in need of assistance proved successfully with the added benefits of building up ISPs and facilitating e-government goals. Five, regulatory agencies should avoid creating, quote-unquote, "Islands of local access," unquote, by ensuring interconnection of various networks that begin to emerge. Six, lessons learned by Japan's deregulatory efforts to reduce Internet cost to consumers may be helpful to many other regulators. Finally, I think it is fair to say that our discussion highlighted the fact that access to the information infrastructure and Internet capabilities is one of the most fundamental measure of a society's ability to grow its economy, enhance its social well-being, and integrate itself with the global economy. All stakeholders must work together in countries so that the right policies are in place to ensure access. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. >>NITIN DESAI: Thank you very much, Mr. Katoh. And our last reporting is by Ms. Abi Jagun from the association of progressive communications, is reporting back on regulatory frameworks for improving access. >>ABI JAGUN: Thank you. Yelled, the national development research center, the learning initiatives on reforms for network economies, and the association for progressive communication had a workshop on regulatory frameworks for improving access. Discussions, comments, suggestions on this topic can be grouped into four broad areas: Issues on enhancing the development of an access to infrastructure, issues on enabling policies and financing frameworks, issues on offering technology choice, responding to demand, and addressing the challenges and opportunities of convergence. And finally, issues around advancing the development dimension of ICT regulation. We were interested, really, in coming up with suggestions that we could put forward for discussion. So under the issues around enhancing the development of an access to infrastructure, we suggested the need to address the reinforced monopolies that exist around access to international infrastructure by local operators, calling for including access to physical infrastructure and removing prohibitive licensing regimes. We also recognized the need to open up international and terrestrial backbone infrastructure, through stronger regulation of backbone infrastructure and also shared access in investment. We also recognize the need for the realization that competition works, and that principles of open access should be applied evenly to all areas of the telecom sector. Under our discussions on the issues around enabling policies and financing frameworks, we called for the recognition that the approach that is taken to regulation may need to be different for rural areas. There is a need to challenge the application of traditional (inaudible) centric, legal and regulatory frameworks that are normally focused on competitive markets where consumers have choice. In looking at rural areas, the business models there, the economic context, the communication needs and appropriate technologies are different. We also called for recognizing the opportunities and constraints of underserved areas, and recognized the importance of working with diversity in network operators and providers. Looking at including community operators, economic producers and organizations who might also serve as providers of ICT services. In our discussions around offering technology choice and responding to demand and addressing the challenges and opportunities of convergence, we recognize that the promotion of mobiles as viable technology for providing voice, access to the Internet, and a variety of financial and e-governance services, at least at present, should be taken into consideration. And therefore, the provision of enabling environments for the use of this technology for these purposes. In exploring potential of new generation community-driven networks, we're calling for them to be looked at as a platform for a variety of ICTs. Cheap telephony, community radio, and Internet-based content. We feel that this offers a potentially more economically sustainable basis for helping to aggregate and grow demand, for a range of ICTs and services, and can be provided on that -- that can be provided and are probably more responsive to current and changing community needs. We also call for the need to build up capacities of regulators, particularly in light of converging technologies that hold great opportunities for the delivery of these services, but that they also need to build up the capacities to deal with the great challenges and complexities that convergence introduces. Finally, in our discussions on advancing the development dimensions of ICT regulation, we suggest that there is a need to create incentives that promote ICTs as a development tool, particularly at the level of rural and local access. Incentives that do not take only a market-driven or address a market-failure situation, but locate ICT regulatory policy in the context of development and local development strategies. We feel that this would increase the need to enhance the priorities the ICT is given in development and investment decision-making spaces and the adoption of public/private partnership models. Thank you. >>NITIN DESAI: I didn't realize there were quite many more than I thought, so I request everybody to stick to a very tight time. I didn't realize there were many more than -- I was only looking on my left and there were three, but there are two here, others, I believe. Can I request all the reporting in to be compact as the previous speakers have been, the previous two speakers have been. I now turn to Mr. Izumi Aizu who is reporting on a workshop from IPv4 to IPv6. >>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you. Chairman, on the IPv4 to IPv6, we title it as challenges and opportunities. The workshop was held yesterday afternoon, and well attended by more than a hundred people. And wide ranging people, as you can imagine. We first shared the state of play, what's happening there about the IPv4 address spaces and the transition to v6 and we also discussed about the challenges ahead. The workshop was organized by nine organizations from JPNIC, NRO, the Number Resource Organizations of the global registries, Internet society, Internet association Japan, Japan Internet service providers association, and my institute, Institute for Infosocionomics, GLOCOM, and Internet global policy initiative. There were ten speakers and it was a real challenge, within 90 minutes, but we managed very well. Paul Wilson of NRO gave the first overall view of what's going on, why do you need IPv6, more addresses, more benefits, how much IPv4 left, it may expire around 2010 or 2011, perhaps. So not many years left. We also need the co-existence of both IPv4 and v6, so we are not simply changing from v4 to v6. v4 will remain to be widely used for another 20 or 30 years before it will gradually be retiring. So the challenges is that we are not really making the transition net. The challenge of the cost is still higher to deploy the v6 than the v4, so why do you need that? And also there is not explicit demand yet there. So far no one has failed, but the conclusion and overview is that we all need to work together. And then we shared each stakeholders' view by nine speakers. Mr. Yamada from Japanese government made the best practice on what they are working on, starting the study group, analyzing the situation. They are going to make a plan and perhaps reporting next March, and then take action. So this is received as a sort of offering some good practices by the government, for other governments if they want. Jonne Soininen from Nokia Siemens network showed their business community's views that the bad news is there is not clear business case yet. The good news is that there is good interest already within the business community to prepare. And ISP's view was shared by Mr. Maruyama of the JPNIC who conducted an ISP survey of their awareness and readiness. More than 70% of the ISPs in Japan is aware of the depletion will happen in 2010 or around that. But they are concerned about the take-up. The concerns are more on the business development cases, if there are no more addresses, then many new businesses or existing business may suffer. But although they are aware, only about 30% are starting to prepare, so there's still a gap between the 70% of interest and 30% interaction. I myself made some view from the users in the public interest. And we made -- We have to make a distinction between the individual users on the street and the corporate users actually providing services of the Internet such as Amazon, Google or other players. We also called for the government that they should provide their dual capacity on their government Web site to reach the entire public, if there will be new users of v6. On behalf of ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee we made some call in Los Angeles we shared which called for the open and inclusive policy development for both v4 and v6, and we are willing to participate in. Adiel shared the African situation from AfriNIC that there's very high interest in Africa but there's need for the support, training, awareness campaign which resembles the global situation, not a special situation, African only. Patrik Fälström from Cisco Systems also followed that situation by explaining why do you need IPv4 and IPv6 technical capacity in technical term, but also it is very important to ensure the new users in Africa, say in three or five years from now, should be accessible to all Internet, not only the IPv6 islands. That requires many technical business and policy support. Leslie Daigle shared the IETF's work and views that they are ready to technically support the (inaudible) capacity and willing to listen and involve into the game more. Bill Manning explained the DNS and IPv4 v6 situation, that all the name servers from the root server, gTLD, ccTLD servers should eventually be capable of the dual stack. The v6 and not backward compatible with v4 so you need to put extra measures to make this happen, and he emphasized that there's no flat day, no single day is determined to migrate to move from v4 to dual stack or v6, so it's the responsibility of all the server managers to prepare. And the last but not least was the business opportunities. Let me see. The Jordi mentioned about a lot of opportunities that you can expect from deploying the IPv6. So there's not only the negative side but a very positive side of the game. The final conclusion after the very interesting live discussion is that we better start sooner, don't wait too long, and we better work together by all stakeholders. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >>NITIN DESAI: I must complement, Mr. Izumi Aizu in accommodating ten speakers in 90 minutes. Maybe we will introduce a prize for the workshop which is most successful in accommodating speakers. I will now call on Karen Rose with the Internet society who will tell us about the workshop on Access: The local challenge. >>KAREN ROSE: Thank you, chairman, the Internet society, Global Internet Policy Initiative, Association for Progressive Communications and LACNIC organized a session yesterday called Access: The Local Challenge. And I have to say it was quite a privilege to be able to moderate this session. We had wonderful panelists, seven individuals with diverse and very interesting backgrounds, including representation from the Pacific, Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Europe. The diversity of their backgrounds, as I mentioned, was quite impressive. Individuals with experience in academia, business, development agencies and with specific development projects, technologists and network operators was included on the C.V.s of some of these very impressive individuals. I will give you a brief overview of what was covered in this is session. However, it will hardly give justice to the breadth and thoughtfulness of the discussion that was had, including, I might add, some very good comment that were received from our audience. One of the issues that came up during the session was the importance, again, to reaffirm the need to institute regulatory and policy-enabling environments that can help facilitate and enable local actors to grow, develop, and maintain Internet infrastructure. There are still problems in many areas of the world with monopoly providers, prohibitive licensing regimes, and regulatory uncertainty, which makes it difficult or prohibitive for local actors to deploy and to sustain networks. And this is not just focused, of course, on fixed networks. Wireless, of course, is a technology that promises to be able to solve a number of issues regarding the last mile and access to rural and remote communities. We also have to consider wireless in this area, spectrum licensing, for example, and even rights of way. These are important issues not just for large providers and large for-profit providers, but also for small, nonprofit, and community groups, who can hardly afford to make the investment to put in wireless networks or small public networks if there's going to be a problem that they're going to have to take them down because of regulatory uncertainty issues. There also needs to be certainty for local actors to invest in connectivity businesses. And, again, this is also important for local communities setting up their own networks to make investments in the infrastructure needed and for businesses, in particular, they need a certain environment with respect to the business environment and ensuring their investments will be protected. Of course, national ICT strategies that have been developed by many countries, it's important to note that they just can't remain on paper or filed in a filing cabinet. We need momentum to actually implement national ICT strategies. And, of course, all of these issues require a certain amount of political will. Education and training was an issue that came up. We need to build capacity with regulators on what's needed for local operators to thrive in the development of their networks. Of course, we need training for network operators as well as community groups to develop the networks that will be able to provide access, especially in rural and remote areas. And also there needs to be training for network operators on sustainable business models and education for network operators to be able to configure their networks in ways that are going to provide lower-cost access. For example, keeping local traffic local rather than using international links to serve local traffic. We also had a discussion about local content, the demand side, so to speak, of the equation. Of course, we spoke about the creation of creating new content in terms of Web content in local languages. But we also need to consider other issues and other forms of content, not just Web sites. For example, e-mail, VOIP, and other person-to-person technologies may be the real content applications, the killer applications that drive Internet access and takeup, rather than more ambitious projects and programs that sometimes we consider. We also covered the importance of keeping local traffic local. Again, the importance of hosting content in-country, including things like mail services, to reduce the need to use expensive international links when the traffic is merely going to the next town. One of the issues that we underscored was the need to understand more about the demand side of this equation, to understand more about what people in local communities want, what their communications context is, rather than just speculating on what people want. In conclusion, Chairman, it was noted that the challenges may be hard, but some of the solutions may be much more simple than we think. And, for the most part, they are local. >>NITIN DESAI: Before I -- we conclude, just a couple of things. The co-chair, I would now hand over to the co-chair before I just turn over to the floor for very, very brief comments, really brief comments. >>HADIL DA ROCHA VIANNA: Thank you, Mr. Desai, I have to rush to another meeting, but I would like to take this opportunity to express on behalf of the host country a most sincere thanks and congratulations to the organizers of the workshops that were held yesterday. I've been listening in the corridors to many expressions of appreciation for the opportunity to debate very relevant issues regarding Internet governance. In this sense, I would like to reiterate what the secretariat has just said with regard to the filling in of the templates that are available in the IGF Web page. I'm very sure that if the organizers feel like doing that, they will be helping very much those that have to report back on what has been happening here in Rio. With regard to the main session that was held yesterday, it was chaired by Mr. Plínio de Aguiar of the Brazilian national agency for telecommunications. He had the opportunity to express his personal views on this very important and sensitive issue related to critical Internet resources. The main session was efficiently moderated by Mr. Ulysse Gosset, and the balanced participation was a very good opportunity to allow for a thorough and important debate on this very important issue. It happened at an excellent atmosphere. I hope this has set the tone of our debate that will happen until next Thursday. I thank you very much, Mr. Desai for allowing me to leave. I have to rush to another meeting. And I just again would like to thank very much the organizers of the workshops for their efforts. Thank you very much. >>NITIN DESAI: And may I, on behalf of the organizers of the workshops, thank our host, Brazil, for the excellent arrangements they have made in terms of the facilities available for holding all of these workshops. Thank you very much. >>HADIL DA ROCHA VIANNA: See you later, then. >>NITIN DESAI: We have a few minutes left, and I really cannot take too many comments. But I -- there is one who had asked me earlier, Mr. Konstantin Novoderejhkin had asked for the floor. Where will you speak from? Is there someone with a mike somewhere around? Why don't you just come up -- oh, there is a mike. Quick comments, because we have to -- >> KONSTANTIN NOVODEREJHKIN: I have a few comments, because we have to leave the room. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the floor. I would like to make one short comment. (Two languages on audio channel). The discussion demonstrated that the critical resources -- it was an important issue. And, actually, there are many different points of view, and many times, these are in opposition to the Russian Federation. And, actually, if we consider the updating of the critical resources of the Internet, we propose to create a special working group for the forum to draw up practical manifestations to use the Internet resources under the control of the international community. The mandate of this group would be, they have to be forced to prepare recommendations to be studied at the next session. And in this working group, the principle of equal participation will be respected, that is, governments, civil society, and business, with geographic equality and between men and women, we have to propose a forum, and propose it to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. And that this should be part of the final document of this forum. >>NITIN DESAI: -- I was asking for comments from the workshops. These comments (inaudible) in the discussion, not here. And I would therefore now request that we have to stop the meeting now. But from subsequent reporting sessions will have to be by -- only on the workshops. We really do not have time to reopen issues which are more appropriately discussed in the plenary sessions. Are there any -- anybody, any workshop organizers who have failed to send me a piece of paper saying they wish to comment? Wish to report in? None? So thank you very much. And I would request all workshop organizers reporting in for the next reporting-in sessions to really stick to the time. Today we had five. My suspicion is that from now onwards, we'll probably have ten to 12 on each session. So we really have to compress it. And I'm not sure there will be any time left for comments afterwards. Thank you. The session is adjourned. The other -- new panel will start in a few minutes. (10:54 a.m.)