FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
03 SEPTEMBER 2014
09:00
WS 80
ccTLDS: PARTNERS IN DEVELOPING LOCAL "IG LITERACY."
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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.
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>> GIOVANNI SEPIA: Okay. Thank you, everybody. Thank you all the panelists. How many ccTLD workshops we have produced so far? How many? 30 ‑‑ 13. Okay. So it's the 13th ccTLD workshop. And I'd like to start thanking all the panelists. This year we have decided to develop a workshop about how the ccTLD community has contributed to spreading information at the local level about Internet Governance. It's the past couple much years have been quite important in the ccTLD community. And because many of the ccTLDs have celebrated their 25th anniversary, the 30th anniversary, so they have been linked to the local communities for an incredible long time.
So it's really important to underline the interaction of the ccTLDs with the local communities as they have knowledge of their local communities as well as sort of heritage they got from the local community that probably few other stakeholders and I'm not going to say multistakeholder because somebody in this room is counting how many times the world multistakeholder is going to be said, and it's an exercise against the opening ceremony we had yesterday. So it's already three, no? One. I didn't say it. So basically there are really strong links. And it's not only between the ccTLD and the local communities but also between the regional ccTLD organizations who Thursday the organisers of this workshop and their local communities via their membership.
So, this workshop aims really to underline the importance of having ccTLDs active at the local level to spread information and improve what we call IG literacy within the local communities but not only.
It's a great panel with people with great expertise. And I would like to ask you to introduce yourself when taking the floor.
I'd like to start with the regional organizations. And I'm asking them: What have you done to promote IG, Internet governance literacy, within your communities through your communities? What are the best practices you can share?
And I leave the floor to the managers of the regional organizations that we have in the room. So thanks a lot, Peter and Carolina, for being here. We have an apology Don Hollander who couldn't be here today as well as Barrack is trying to get connected, he is the general manager of TLD and trying to get connected remotely, to the best of my knowledge, but I'd like to leave the floor to Peter and Carolina. And you have a mic upon the table, so please, you should use the mic because the workshop is recorded. Thank you.
>> I'm the general manager of from. It is the regional organisation from ‑‑ of the domains. We have 52 members which more or less covers the whole of Europe but a few very small exceptions, we're working on that. What we provide are members and the outside world is a platform to exchange information on all things related to ccTLDs and the ecosystem in which they are operating. So it's been a few years since some of my members have been coming up with explanations at our meeting, explain how they were reaching out to their local Internet communities, how they were bringing them together to discuss the topic of Internet governance, how they were bringing that information from a national local level to the international level at IGF. And at first they were the old ones out, Nominet were one of the early starters. Some of the Scandinavian countries quickly followed suit. So by now I think roughly half of the central membership is involved in national Internet Governance initiatives. Typically they are organisers of the national Forum. And in some cases they are the only organizer of that Forum and they bring together the partners so it truly becomes a local Internet community's initiative.
In those initiatives typically all stakeholders are represented. So ranging from governments to industry to local ISP organizations, the local Internet exchange, the end user, educational systems. In some countries it's already a very tightly woven network of participants and contributors to that local Internet Governance initiative. So we hear from those initiatives and our members learn from each other. They learn what works well and they understand what didn't work that well. Central members are typically quite straightforward towards each other when it comes to assessing the results of those efforts.
The second thing that we do is share that information. It happens in Brussels through our exchanges with the other organizations, associations such as Euro SSPA. But we also brief the parliament what is on the field. And that feeds on a regional level into initiatives like EuroDIG. That is the regional Internet governance. Supported by Council of Europe and parliament. So these are the two things we've been doing so far.
The next step is that we are going to bring together all those initiatives and work out probably small booklet or online publication where all those initiatives are and where I hope those who have not been involved yet as ccTLDs in local Internet governance initiatives or regional ones can learn from it and can share.
>> GIOVANNI SEPIA: Thank you.
>> CAROLINA AGUERRE: Good morning, everybody.
>> My name is Carolina Aguerre. It is the local TLD organisation for the Caribbean. We share the same spirit and work objectives that Peter has just mentioned, the idea of a regional organisation is to share ‑‑ is to provide an institutional platform to share and exchange best practices on several issues. And Internet Governance has been an emergingly important and important issue for registries. We have seen in the last 2 to 3 years a series of emerging initiatives in national contexts where the ccTLD has been involved in generating this ‑‑ being a very active player in the international ecosystem towards in the generation of this national mechanisms for discussion, coordination and raising awareness in the local community of Internet governance in general.
Although, I mean, if we just look at the roles that ccTLDs play in the region with respect to national IGFs, I would say that we're still in an emerging stance in the region. There's a few countries who have already sort of developed this national IG forums. We have some examples here and in the room of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica. They are countries that have been developing this increasingly this kind of forums. But if we look at governance as a process and governance involving policy decisions ccTLDs have also been sort of re‑visiting this idea about what the role is in the general Internet policymaking in the country. So in that respect, it's just making ccTLDs more aware of the role that they are playing and that they can still play to develop this field. In LACTLD in particular, we are very much focused and aware of the importance of this issue, and we are trying to make ‑‑ to generate a greater awareness for our community regarding IG in general and we have, for the first time this year, we have been involved in the programme committee of the LACIGF. And we have an increased participation of our members in this meeting. And we have also been involved in the generation of the national IG session at the LAGIGF to raise awareness and to promote the vision in the Latin American and Caribbean community about this role that ccTLDs as historical Internet players have developed in the region.
So basically, a very basic introduction. But thank you for the minutes.
>> GIOVANNI SEPIA: Thanks so much, Carolina, thanks a lot, Peter. It's very good to know that there will be sort of booklet coming up shortly to summarize what has been done in terms of IG initiatives from the ccTLD regional organizations.
I also think that over the years, the regional organizations that produce some sort of guidelines about Internet Governance and summaries, which I know that have also been used by government representatives to get familiar with this word of Internet Governance is becoming more and more complicated over time because every day we hear new organizations coming out and say "yes, I want to get involved in the IGF, yes, I want to do this" and sometimes it's hard to find the links between the different organizations.
So I'd like to leave the floor to the numerous representatives of the ccTLDs. And the question is: Is the Internet governance a real topic at local level? And what your ccTLD has been doing to promote what we have called the IG literacy at local level, and not only at local level. And I'm looking at all of you to see if there is a volunteer who can start to speak and tell us a bit more. Thank you.
>> We can start north from Norway. What we have been doing for some years is fund research in University of Oslo private law. They are doing research on DNS and different topics connected to Internet governance. And what we see from the research is that there is a fine balance between the DNS in itself and running the DNS and also the rest of Internet governance topics. So I have links for everybody who wants to see the research, of course.
One of the fellows is close to the research project so we see it's not only national but also internationally important for them to give it out and also for us as CCs to be able to give it out to our local community, which we try to do but it's of course a limited local interest, unfortunately. But we see also our registrars getting more interested. We have registrar seminars where we try to do information on Internet Governance. And also we made booklet of domain conflicts that we try to give out in our local community. And also it's a key role in this because they could also use the booklet to translate it to other national operators. And we are working on refining it to try to make it more suitable for lawyers and judges and the court system because we see that there is a lack of knowledge about DNS.
But overall I think the interest in Internet governance in Norway probably it's moreover to content, what is happening on the net? Yeah.
>> And from the east. My name is Sunxian Tang of China. National cooperation department. I would like to take this opportunity from the experience and some stories and also update some news about how the Internet governance situation in China.
At the beginning of this year, we have a new ministry, it's called cyberspace administration of China. Directly reported to our President. So it's quite level new ministry. The role of that ministry is to cooperate and collaborate with other Internet‑related ministries. Now we no longer belong to the science we belong to ministry of China and we sometime he we run the .cn and we just applied for the detail, the dot com, so we are still CNIC but we have new rules and also the Internet Governance situation in China, now they start to move forward today.
So before I talk about the how we see and manage the Internet Governance in China, I would like to share my view and the core philosophy of how we see the ‑‑ how and why we do Internet governance.
I believe the key value of the Internet governance is for the development and also that's No. 1.
Number 2 is to solve problem. And the key for the development and solve problem is to provide enough resource, provide good enough capacity building and have good collaboration channels with those three things we can have a very healthy Internet Governance model.
So from the role of CNIC, we are platform of Internet governance in China because now we are providing fundamental resource. I mean the domain name for the industry. So we have a committee in China. And also we organise meetings to bring the government from different ministries and from domain industries and also from the Internet industry like Ali Baba, like Baidu, like I mean everyone doing business related to the Internet.
And also we are a member of the academia. We bring researchers together. And we have representatives from the civil society, as well. So because we are providing the fundamental resource, we somehow relate to everyone. So this is natural advantage of CNIC to bring everyone together to have the meeting to provide suggestions and bring ideas and solve problem in a round table. And the other function of CNIC in terms of Internet Governance, we kind of have naturally neutral position when we see how the Chinese Internet develop. So we have annual report, statistical report how the Chinese Internet grow. We have the numbers and we can readily check the datas, members of the Chinese. So this kind of free service we provided to the whole industry. I mean the third value of Internet Governance from CNIC is we invest a huge amount of resource and funding to improve capacity building because China is still a developing country. We have a lot of rural area. They don't have good enough Internet. And the domain names being as servers, this kind of service is so important. So we do a lot in terms of that. And the last role of CNIC, I mean we have in the Internet Governance ecosystem. We bring international organizations to China and also we introduce Chinese development to the international organizations like the regional organizations APTeldi. APNIC, ICANN, ISOC, WSIS and even the NETmundial. I mean everywhere. We go there and introduce and to make friends. I think only development and problem solve and capacity building can bring a real healthy and a long term model for Internet Governance. Thank you.
>> Hi, I'm from Mexico. Let's talk a little bit about how we believe in Mexico it's the role of increasing IG literacy within local ecosystem in Mexico.
Given the fact that the ccTLDs are endowed with the responsibility of fostering an ecosystem and making technical availability of the Internet resources within our country, we believe that there is no better introduction than us in order to introduce IG literacy within the country. And let's talk a little bit what we have done. Nick Mexico has been around since 1999. It's our 25th birthday this year. So we have been making single efforts within Mexico. Sometimes partnered with several authorities, for example, in copyright topics in order to understand how the UDRP works, locally applied to the .mx.
But I believe we recently have been ‑‑ fostering in Mexico. One of these is that we are sponsoring ISOC Internet international leaders programme. The version in Spanish. It is sponsored by us. And this has made us we have been able to create young leaders and enthusiasts in Internet governance, leaders from 20 to 40 years old, national leaders that are supposed to take on the next years decisionmaking within Mexico. And this has worked very well because we have a list like a 15‑person community that is engaging very intensively in the Internet governance topics and decisionmaking in Mexico.
And another thing is that we have been creating ‑‑ we were crucial at creating our local Internet Governance, it is called ‑‑ initial group in English. And it's in charge of creating the Internet governance, that's our local IGF effort. We along with other organizations like Google and presidency and several academic organizations in Mexico have been working very strongly in fostering these IG literacy programme because we believe strengthening the understandings of these topics will help create a better understanding on how Internet Governance should work globally and how their local aspects might have impact within Mexico in order to keep the Internet as open and interconnected as we have known it from now. We are very open and always looking to increase our efforts in this increasing of literacy. And so far I believe that's what we have done, the main important topics that we have done in Mexico.
>> Morning. My name is Hiro Hotta the organisation is JPRS registry. In Japan, there's a small conference held almost annually called IGF Japan. Mainly promoted by ISP association. Unfortunately it has been just a meeting among a few dozens of people where most of them know each other for a long time. This means that IGF Japan has not been able to be an IG initiative in Japan. So especially from technical aspect of the mechanism about how Internet works with the focus on domain names, ccTLD registries like us have its audience those who are in the at least domain name market can reach them maybe with the help of registrars.
And us two, our organizations JPRS, that operates JP data registry, we are for profit organisation. Maybe different from almost of you. And people tend to accept nonprofit organizations as suitable leading advocate of the Internet governance. I don't know if that is correct or not but people tend to do so. And we strongly support JPNIC in establishment of Internet governance related activities in Japan. JPNIC is our parent portion who have been managed JP domain names before the JP was redelegated to us.
JPNIC is organisation in general in launching Forum concerning Internet governance which is called IGCJ, Internet governance conference Japan.
That is the Forum that was recently launched in Japan. It doesn't have IGM, the three letters, IGM in its name. It is just because at least we thought that when people see our stream, IGF in its name, they usually tend to think it works and operates like IGF, global IGF. As proper effective activities on Internet governance will be run, differently country by country. So we decided to avoid including the string IGF in its name, in the new organisation. We have had two meetings of IGCJ so far in these three months. The first one was June and second to Network Neutrality. We are now in the phase of characterizing the Forum through consultation with the attendees.
For example, whether we try to make a proposal by IGCJ on each issue or not is under discussion.
And I want to say some more. As many of us may agree, we believe Internet governance literacy should be based on Internet literacy. We believe raising Internet literacy is essential first of all and report to the community regularly what's happening in ‑‑ meetings to make currently know what the hot topics are, especially related to domain names. And to raise Internet literacy, for example, JPRS to raise Internet literacy by face‑to‑face education of the Internet. For example, what is the Internet? How does Internet work? And statistics related to the Internet and so on to companies, students. And we host contests, for example, for website creation by students and so on. So we poor resource to raise Internet literacy in Japan. Thanks.
>> Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Hiro. And I'd like also to invite any attendees to come up with questions at the end of every intervention, and I'll be glad to field those to panelists. Feel free to come up with any intervention and make sure they are properly addressed.
So I have seen that all the interventions are coming from one side of the table. And to balance these, I don't know if it's ‑‑ but as we are having a connecting continents as the theme of this IGF meeting, it would be nice to hear somebody from another continent who has been silent so far, thank you.
>> MOHAMMED EL‑BASHIR: Running QA registry and QA TLD registry and also my experience in running the SD as well.
I think coming from the developing world, ccTLD registries could be a model to multistakeholder organizations. I mean by having structured and governments which include multistakeholders is very important. For example, in the registry that I have managed back home in Sudan, we have a board consists of academia, government, civil society, and they all collectively engage in making decisions related to the management of the ccTLD. So that model in itself could be an example in the country related to Internet governance issues in general. Policy development is another aspect, as well. We could be a model by developing our policies in bottom‑up multistakeholder approaches. So that, as well, that could be an example to other Internet governance initiatives in the countries. I have seen that in practice. That brings change to other Internet organizations in my country.
Capacity building. We have been engage in capacity building in different levels., for example, promoting initiatives like IPv6 adoption to general academia to ISPs to the technical community in the country. And partnering with RARs I think is important as well. It's also crucial in the developing world. And from my experience, capacity building and educational awareness to governments. This is very critical. We did run some of the workshops directed to government officials and discussing issues related to Internet governance. Usually we do this before major event like WCIT like IGF and we're trying to give them an idea about the global perspective for this happening globally. And why we should take certain positions. So that role is important. And I think it's as engaged as currently we are in the global community and the ccTLD community we're able to influence the local views in Internet Governance issues because there is lots of perceptions, really, about really who's doing what. As Giovanni said, there's many players in the Internet governance arena, currently.
We did some work, as well, in the multilingual component of it because we applied for an IDNccTLD all show when you look at it from fewer demand perspective, there might be at that time there might be no interest in that area. But we took the initiative. We applied for the IDNccTLD. It is currently operational and we're facing issues in terms of adoption. And we're trying as well to work with other local Internet community to ensure that people are using the international as domain names with the current challenges we have.
And across Africa, as well, there's many organizations, many registries are also playing a role in the local Internet governance for us. For example, in Nigeria, NIRA which is the country's ccTLD registry is currently the Secretariat. They are also funding the local IGF. So you'll find the ccTLD as well taking a leading role in establishing a local IGF and sometimes even supporting it funding.
So I think most of the ccTLDs in the region come from ‑‑ are doing actually a role because they are the ones, really, to be an example. Thank you.
>> Good morning to everybody.
>> GIOVANNI SEPIA: Sorry, Demi, there are some lines coming up.
>> Demi Getschko: Next one. Thank you. Okay. Good morning, everybody. My name is Demi Getschko. I am from dot br. We are like NIC Mexico and others, we are in our 25th year of operation. And as you know, from the very beginning all the registration of domains were free. Dot com were free and.br were free all these domains were not charged. And the thing began changing in '95. In '95 also we went from the academic area but in '95 was created a body, a committee that has knowledge really personality but is bunch of people. This committee was created in some way to give some more formality to what we were doing at that time, registry of .br. The registry br.
One of the decisions of the committee in '96 was to begin to charge for the registration. To make the activity self‑sustained, self‑sustainable also. Then we began charging in '97 we have been lucky to have a good number of registries under dot br. And sometimes we began to be self‑sustainable and then we can begin to have some kind of surplus. And this surplus can help the CGIBR to begin some actions in the Brazilian Internet community.
Just to illustrate, this is the composition, the actual composition of the CGIBR. It's multistakeholder organisation, people from government, people from private sector, for nonprofit, for academics and one representative of the NICBR as liaison.
As I said, the CGIBR in '95 arise in 2003. The main objectives of CGI some foster these activities here. We have to propose policies and procedures related to the regulation of Internet activities. For example, we are very strong supporters of the Marco Civil law in Brazil. It took three years to become a law. But it is important to have some kind of law that protects the Internet. The Marco Civil protects the neutrality, the privacy of the individuals and the correct responsibilisation of the intermediary in the Internet activity.
We also make some studies, some technical proposals. For example, we suggested the proposal of the port 25 to avoid spam in Brazil. And it was a very good measure because we fall from the second place in the international spam to the 26th, I suppose. And it was a good measure. It's not mandatory. We do not any kind of mandatory things, we at CGI.
Of course as I said it was built around the dot br registry and we also promote some other kind of research, some other kind of work. Here you can check what are the main activities of the NICBR. We got all our money from the registries br the registry. And we give this money back to the Internet with some activities. There are a lot of others here you can check all of these others. Set br is our resident cert. Security plus the major actor behind the closing of the port 25. For the spam. We can we accumulate the reports on security, everyone has some kind of concern about attacks or maybe new viruses or new malware or so can report to Cert. We have a team of about 15 people in Cert working on that. And they are known internationally in many Forum.
This is the tenth year we generate statistics for Brazilian Internet. We have statistics also on the school level to regional or member of statistics. And we have this centre for research. This scepter has a main branch in doing SP operations. We have 23 ISPs operating in the country. In each ISP, we have the mirror of different root servers. Then we are very well provided with mirrors. We give IPCs who have developed good and maybe interesting way to measure quality of wide band and so in Brazil. We have a map with a lot of contributions with a lot of people around the country and how they fill the quality of the Internet connection.
We have software to do that. And also small boxes that can do the same. And also we host the regional office of W3C.
More or less these are the activities that NICBR do. And as I said, I think the major ‑‑ the different characteristics is that we can provide arms, hands to CGI to do things because we can provide research. We have two ‑‑ one IGF meeting in Rio with money came from the NICBR. We have two ICANN meetings cosponsored by resource. And if all goes well, next year the IGF in Brazil also will be sponsored by the resources coming from dot BR raised. Thank you.
>> GIOVANNI SEPIA: Okay. No fight. We have four panelists. Mikhail, please?
>> MIKHAIL MEDRISH: Thank you for question it was asked to answer. I mean IG literacy. And third about our activities through such prism.
I am from first, excuse me, Mikhail Medrish, Chair of the board of Coordination Center for dot RU for Top Level Domain ccTLD of Russia.
So I haven't thought about our activities through such prism, literally literate. And I was to ask myself: Who is illiterate? Who are such those persons? We can authorize education level, the level of literacy.
First of all, I got the question from my mind and I understood we are on the right way what I mean. First of all, who is illiterate? Why society? They don't know and I suppose there are not ‑‑ it's natural why they are to know about Internet Governance. They use Internet. But inside these huge amount of persons we know about one strata, which is very, very urgent. Kids. They are to educate. We are to help them to understand better. No matter what they will do in future, maybe they will make Internet. And they are to understand.
So we founded so‑called smart Internet foundation. This foundation registered dot domain name, the same as kids but in Russian. So one of the goals of this foundation is to educate, to educate kids.
Another part of our activities in the direction of literacy is something dealt with those who are not illiterate, absolutely. Government, technical, persons, registry and registrars. They're absolutely literate. But they are to have some fields, some meeting points to discuss new events, to discuss new ideas, to rise up the literacy.
We organised ‑‑ we hosted two such points, Russian Internet governance Forum five years, the fifth one took place in April, yes, April this year. And international conference for ccTLD registries and registrars of CIS central in Europe. The seventh conference will take place in Baku next week. And we understand very clear that we are to move forward with these processes to help all our friends, to help registrars, to help registries, to have governmental persons, persons from government to understand better new ideas and to move in the right directions. And we are doing this.
So, we are working in the field of IG literacy. Yes, it is.
>> Yes, my name is Vika Mpisane from ccTLD South Africa's Top Level Domain substantially I have been by some of the responses that have been given. I think for my country it is important to mention that or to point out that the extent to which the Internet has penetrated the society is fairly substantial but there's still some substantial way to go. Around 50 percent of our population use the Internet. This has been occurring in a fairly impressive way largely thanks to mobile telephony or mobile connectivity.
With that less than 50 percent of the population having access to the Internet comes the inevitable consequence of the fact that it means at least 50 percent of the population is not so much well taught of what's happening in the Internet and the issues of Internet Governance. So there's still a substantial lot of awareness that we need to do.
As the ccTLD, we are entity in South Africa that reports to government. And one of the requirements for us is to create awareness about the Domain Name System and the issues of the Internet. So, in essence, that's what we are working on currently. We will be starting our own campaign in the middle of this month. Part of that campaign innovatively includes Internet governance awareness and literacy. First in the first stakeholders in South Africa, ICT entities as well. We need to work on that area quite strongly. We are working with our government to finalise strategies on Internet Governance, not just awareness but also formulating South Africa's view of what is happening currently with the changes with how Internet is governed. Now it also important that we see in South Africa part of the ongoing ICT policy review of government and as the ccTLD we participate in one of the committees big, the role of different entities and the role of ccTLDs, their impact on South Africa. So this will follow as it develops but it gives us an opportunity, as well, to play a leading role in explaining or teaching more the other entities and even government entities about the importance of Internet Governance.
So, that's pretty much in a nutshell what we are doing in South Africa. And we are watching what other ccTLDs and what other countries are doing. And I think also in the ccTLD, the outcome is hopeful to get a strategy so that the ccTLD manager ZADNA has powers in these issues. Largely we play as a role because we are a ccTLD and we are required by government to advise on Internet issues. So that's where we are on South Africa.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you. I'm Ellen Strickland from Internet New Zealand. And we're delegated dot zd cc. We are a charity dedicated to the broader sort of aim through the better world through better Internet is our vision. So Internet Governance literacy is an interesting lens to look at the work we do. For us, our leadership on Internet Governance is about facilitation and really accountability being key in terms of our mindset you it is that the service to the Internet community comes first, that we are prioritizing the community.
And so the main sort of event we have in terms of the Internet governance initiative is NetHui. We have the fourth year of a national NetHui. Which has about 600 people attend and is very much an Internet community in terms of dealing with the myriad of Internet issues including international Internet governance issues but very much about the community. We also have what we call regional NetHui. So New Zealand has two main islands. And in the south island we've had a NetHui South, one in Dunedin and we're having one in Christchurch in two months to sort of reach out further into the community because our national events have been in the capital, Wellington and Auckland, which is the largest city.
And we have been very lucky in those national events and that we have a very active community from across sort of all the stakeholder groups, if you will. We have private sector sponsors, broad support from the technical community, from users. We have a quite good engagement with government, both the sort of public service but also we run a parliamentary Internet Forum with members of parliament who are very engaged with the Forum and as well as having an ongoing process with them that's about IG literacy, I suppose, with members of the parliament having sessions to learn about the Internet.
For us I suppose one of the key issues is when we made the decision to have this event, the idea of the Internet governance Forum was sort of as a term something that the community didn't find interesting, that they were interested, though, in Internet issues and regulation, legislation in the development of the Internet as users, as developers, as the private sector who are actively creating the Internet. So we've chosen that different name and we don't use that term or the term multistakeholder, either. People wear a lot of hats and don't identify necessarily with one stakeholder group the way we might.
So I think we've tried to have a lot of links within that event between the topics, internationally, at the regional Asia Pacific IGS but have it be very much bottom up. So we put a lot of energy into having the programme come from the issues and developments that are happening with our community and we've seen that lead to outcomes in terms of action that go on from there within the different communities. So with MPs, with the business community.
Directly we've also ‑‑ last year we had some fellowships. So we had fellows from NetHui come to attend the international IGF to make some links.
And I think broadly while that initiative is one of the main things, I would say that as our Internet governance sort of literacy, broadly a lot of the work we do around, we do a lot of community funding as well as engagement that I think is really important towards that literacy, if you will, the ecosystem, developing it. We have strategic partnerships with academic institutes, including the New Zealand version of the world Internet project to try to understand what's happening with the Internet in New Zealand and how that relates to the world as well as research on sort of intellectual property and law. And we've recently started instituting an annual community grant round that's about Internet research broadly. And that really was an outcome of NetHui and that we had a lot of researchers attending. And they sort of created an on the fly, birds of a feather meetup, which then became a formal session. And later this year we're initiating a New Zealand Internet governance research Forum sort of group and we're having a one day meeting just for them that's multidisciplinary technical and nontechnical track that is supporting the regional community on Internet issues. So these things sort of link to me, sort of funding and that engagement. And we sort of work to ensure that, yeah, that the breadth of our work with the community is helping understand what matters to them and relate that to the broader Internet governance. Thanks.
>> Hello, everybody. I'm from ‑‑ from AFRINIC. Registry of dot fr. So thank you, Giovanni, for your questions. You ask us if Internet Governance was a hot topic. In France, not at all. In France, no one cares. Internet Governance is something that is discussed within a group of people, maybe 10 or 20 for 10 or 20 years. They all know each other. It doesn't mean that people don't discuss Internet Governance‑related topics. And that's the point I want to make. When AFNIC go out and organise a special session on Internet Governance, you know, advertising it in newspaper saying go and say what you think, you always have the all 10 friends we know for 10 years, and that's great. But if there is something just like for ‑‑ I have to thank ICANN for it, by the way, for the dot y affair. You have a lot of people talking about this thing that no one knows that is somewhere in California that decide for the French wine makers, then, then you can talk about Internet Governance.
So it's not about really bringing the knowledge of what this is. It's more about trying to track each and every debate that can be related to Internet Governance and try to build on that a discussion, a dialogue, maybe not a consensus. And that's what we try to do.
For instance, as we are an association, we have some internal commissions that discuss various topics. And when it comes to the INR transition for instance, we open this internal commissions and try to bring people from the outside. But we have been a part of the first French IGF, that was this year. It took us some time to do it just before the IGF mandate is renewed, it was time, it was about time to make a French IGF.
Because at this time there were hot topics on the newspapers thanks to Mr. Snowden, thanks to NCIA, thanks to a lot of things. It was a success. We had a lot of people. And new faces in this French IGF. So once again it's always possible to discuss about these topics. And I really feel that it's difficult to discuss about Internet Governance in general except maybe in some academic places when people who are doing research and especially political research will try to understand how we work. But I'm not sure that average people are very interested by that. And last thing, we participate, of course, to several initiatives just like the young leaders initiative that was mentioned by Mexican colleague. Or we deliver sponsorships or scholarships for some young students to go to Internet Governance schools, because we have that. And we also found some discussions with our African counterparts sometime through an AFNIC initiative that is called college international du AFNIC for them to participate to the main Internet Governance international discussions. So that's what I wanted to say what we bring as literacy.
Just mentioning also that of course as the ccTLD registry, a lot of officials, governmental officials, parliamentary people ask us to explain when there is an international discussions. We participate through a lot of parliamentary auditions. We have discuss with the French administration. But it's still not bringing IG literacy to our country. It's bringing our point of view. We think we are in our role. We think we don't take position. In fact, we have been playing a part in Internet Governance discussions for years. And I think we see ccTLD when we are asking something by our government or by our parliaments, we give our position. We are not bringing some neutral information on Internet Governance. So we play that role. And we know that we are one voice in the middle of others in a country where there is a traditional strong opposition towards the main organizations that are within the Internet Governance such as ICANN, for instance. Thank you.
>> GIOVANNI SEPIA: Thanks a lot, Pierre.
Can I ask everybody here in this room, including the panelists, who has attended a local IGF? If there's been a local IGF initiative, who has attended it? Okay. I would say something like a bit more than 50 percent. Thank you. And I'd like to catch up on what Pierre just said, that it's difficult to, let's say, market Internet Governance as a whole. But there are some teams that are more or less relating to the Internet Governance debate that the registries and eventually even the regional ccTLD organizations can work on and then from there they can really link them to the broader Internet Governance debate.
Can I ask you what do you believe are the are the hot teams in your areas, in your countries. There have been some that have been mentioned like this northern case or Internet of Things or try to be forgotten IP rights. Human Rights. What do you think are the themes that just a couple or three or four hot things that you may have detected in your respective countries or regions as for the regional organizations? So no more than three words. Thank you. Mike is on the table. Thank you.
>> Privacy? And remarkably, at least I was surprised by it, access. It's still an enormously relevant topic in Europe.
>> I agree. Privacy access. And in Latin America, we cannot underestimate the effects of NETmundial in general and the overall presence of high level ministers attending the conference and being very participative and aware of the issue. And having actually effects on national policy authorities over the Internet just right before and after NETmundial.
>> I can say two words. Content management. Content management.
>> For South Africa, the terms that have been apply but the three key ones especially from what we are doing on Internet Governance currently is obviously the focus on these ICANN transition from the policymakers' viewpoint and linked to that is the issue of multistakeholders. There seems to be an emerging view that the multistakeholder model still has to be defined and its parameters need to be defined. They are not clear in how they impact on Africa is not clear. And then the third one is surveillance with others. Thanks.
>> Broadband access and access via mobile. That's a concern now.
>> Yeah. I agree with access to everybody, broadband also. But just to make a short comment about the Snowden. I think that Internet is carrying too heavyweight on that. The big problem was the infrastructure, telecommunication infrastructure and not the Internet yourself. If you say about linkages of cables optical cables, even cell telephony, this is not even Internet. It has a lot of guilt on that. But just to make the things balanced, thanks.
>> And sustainable development and the security and the stable Internet. I still believe no matter what form and what model Internet government is localising in particular country, the whole purpose is to have a more healthy and more developed Internet. So stability and secure is one of the key things to achieve this.
>> I have to agree about access, rural access, we have a rural network being roamed out. Privacy was probably the next biggest. And an ongoing issue that's really a you recall issue is around content access, geoblocking. That's sort of.
>> The three hot topics I think are Network Neutrality. That's discussed a lot. Privacy, of course. And more broadly how to apply local rules, whether they are taxing rules or content rules or cultural exception rules on the Internet.
>> Thanks. I think it's fair to say that Network Neutrality is also a topic in Norway and security and, of course, privacy.
When it comes to content management, I think we've had some discussion on intellectual property which is online. I think that's the most important.
>> Okay. In the case of Mexico, I believe it's access and reducing the digital divide. Privacy in cooperation with local authorities and content copyright is another hot topic. And foreseeing hot topic that's going to be debatable in the next year, I believe, Network Neutrality.
>> Thank you. The first one is definition requirements of multistakeholder model and how to apply multistakeholder process to each issue in each individual country or region. The second one is IANA, the third is Network Neutrality.
>> Thank you. It seems that privacy is the winner at present so far. So it's an extremely sensitive topic.
Now I'd like to, as time is approaching to the end of the workshop, I'd like to have two quite provocative questions. First one is about NETmundial and how much you think that your local communities have been aware of the NETmundial Forum, the outcome of the NETmundial Forum? Do you think there should have been more involvement at local level for the NETmundial, for contributing to the NETmundial? And do you think there should be more now involvement for what's going to be after the NETmundial?
And the second question, so feel free to answer one of the two, is for those of you working with registrars, so network of registrars, and as I said at the beginning, there is a basic rule that registrars in the rule are not allowed to ask questions.
[Laughter]
And they are also not allowed to make comments. So it's the second rule just crossed my mind. Okay. Twitters, they can ask questions. So how much you think that registrars should be involved in the Internet governance dialogue? How much you think you should reasonable to your registrar communities to make sure that they contribute constructively to whatever is discussed? Because contrary to the ICANN environment, which we are more or less used here in the Internet governance with not as many registrars business, let's say, element, business partners of our life in this dialog, they are not so much involved. Do you think they should be more involved in the IG dialogue? And what do you think you should do to make them more involved? So I leave the floor to you. Feel free, anybody, to answer. Start with Peter.
>> PETER VAN ROSTE: Thank you, Giovanni. Second question. Yes I think they have been more involved. Therefore we have invited them to our next general assembly which is about a month from now. And we're going to focus on things that we think we could or should be doing together.
Internet Governance related but more concretely related to some of the European regulatory initiatives that will change the Internet Governance landscape as we know it, in particular in the areas of security.
So to your second question yes. I think NETmundial was already in its setup and timing and what it was planning to deliver.
I think it delivered within the expectations. Trying to build NETmundial and even broader support bases I think would have been tough and we might have missed the useful outcome document we now have at the table. Where I think I see room for improvement is in bringing those conclusions downstream and making sure that the conclusions NETmundial are taken up in the local got initiatives and for an. It might not help in the meantime there has already been an IGF that will pick up some of these. There has been the NETmundial that in a nontransparent way has picked some of those topics up. So I think it's highly recommended for any ccTLD that is organising local Internet governance Forum to look at that carefully and see what they can take from there and move forward.
>> As for the involvement of local community or the French one in NETmundial, we are a session just before NETmundial but it was not very attended as I explained before. While I see that is really interesting with NETmundial is the outcome of NETmundial. This declaration, this paper that is short, that is clear and that can be very helpful to distribute and to explain what is at stake. I mean, this is the first document that is readable, being an outcome of an Internet Governance. So this is very useful, I really think. As for the involvement of registrars, some registrars in France are really involved in the Internet Governance and they are partners in the local IGF. Maybe because their business is that they give some advice to their customers. Some other big registrar are just registering domain names and I don't really see them getting very much involved in Internet Governance or maybe they would be involved but they would not talk about it. It's a different position from different business perspective. But of course we would like more registrars to be involved in the debate.
>> I couldn't agree more with Pierre.
I think we've got here with the NETmundial document, I mean there's a very concrete output and as the ccTLD community and every stakeholder can benefit from having something very concrete and tangible. And regionally we have worked from LACTLD and other stakeholders in trying to bring down the effects of this document and the LACIGF we are putting forward in our regional IGF meeting a process for 2015 where we aim at sort of building a regional agenda on the NETmundial document. So regionally we're doing that effort. And I hope that nationally that is taking place, as well.
Regarding registrars, when we talk about governance, it's very much, as I mentioned in my first intervention, we are talking about a process. And if we have processes, the more diversified the ecosystem is, the more diversified the players are, the better. And if we look at the Latin American Caribbean region where we've got less than 30 ICANN registrars, then we need more diversity. And registrars are an important business player for the community and the more diversification we have, the more complex and the more interesting this governance process becomes.
>> Pair of words about involvement of registrars. To be involved or not to be involved, that's not a question.
[Laughter]
Because if registrar, some certain registrar, wants to be involved, he will involve himself. So if he's active, if he understand his goals and your understanding that he can involve, he can influence to the processes, he will be there.
So, some are involved, they involve themself. And they are using all possibilities to speak about their understanding in the Russian Internet Governance forums. For example, one of them is here admittedly. He is one of the registrars. So they are involved, really. Who knows what they want to have?
>> Good morning. My name is Peter brook I'm coming from Austria. I'm the Chairman of the world summit award and we are parallelling what IGF does regarding governance. We are looking at globally in terms of how content is basically moving onto the Internet and what is best practice in using Internet for high quality content.
When I listen to your conversation, I am very much moved by the examples from New Zealand and what you're telling us about Brazil and other countries. And I also want to speak to the issue of what, Pierre, you said, regarding the NETmundial and also the outcome. It seems to me that there's a naivete of us ourselves regarding the infrastructure and the political economy of the Internet. We are not talking about who is putting in the basic network, what are the access costs. And we are actually not seeing the over‑the‑top players are actually cannibalising even the registry business.
So from my point of view, the question which I have to you is: How do you look at the political economy of the Internet in your own country? Because the Telco players do something completely different. And the over‑the‑tops do something completely different. And the community which is meeting at IGFs is actually sandwiched in between. And I would think that community is squeezed. And I think we are squeezed out and we are kept alive by some, I mean, business protocol and action plan. And if it's reviewed next year in 2015, we will see if there's a new setup.
But if you even look at the difficulty to fund the coordinator of IGF for two years we had an interim and nobody was willing to put up $600,000 for something like Anis could be appointed, then you see very much where we are at. And the key issue here is the Internet moves on. And we are actually holding onto a certain kind multistakeholder and if we are not looking at the issue and what kind of leverage we can have, I'm very skeptical that we can continue that way and have this kind of open discussions and also the very valuable, important issues.
So I want to put it to each and every one of you of how you address this in your own country and how actually for instance South Africa you have for the registry, I mean what is your relationship for instance with the people who put the Telcos in? And what is the relationship in other countries where Facebook comes in and says we are going to go and issue and solve the access issue. Sorry for speaking so long.
Jeep so, who is going to answer? Volunteers, please. Ellen, thank you. And Demi.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: I think it's a very important part of the Internet Governance initiative that we have is one of the things that we get out of it is understanding the political economy of Internet in our context and a bit more about how it relates internationally. I think in New Zealand we're lucky that it's a small country. And so getting to know, having relationships with our telecommunications, with the private sector, with government, understanding how things are changing and operating, we try to ensure that we have links to, as you said, Google, Facebook, have them come engage in these initiatives. So for us it's an opportunity to develop an understanding, relationships for other action that we take and for the community to understand it and the actions that they take.
>> GIOVANNI SEPIA: We have Demi first then ‑‑
>> DEMI GETSCHKO: I think this is ‑‑ competitive organs and protection of the consumer and so on. I think what we can do as the Internet is try to preserve the concepts of the original Internet like neutrality, like to provide to each user the whole experience of the complete Internet, not part of it. Then we are trying to do our job. But of course to have the Internet preserved, to have also the collaboration of all the ecosystem, the justice system. The antitrusting system and so on. This is regionally we have struggled to have a law in Brazil trying to protect the basic concepts related to the Internet. But this is not standing alone. You have to have the help of many others. Thank you.
>> Us in South Africa pretty much along the lines of Brazil. I mentioned that we have what is called the ICT policy review process. That is to find the whole ICT sector, the synergies and the relationships. As the law, the policies currently stand in South Africa, we have fell e comes regulate other and then we are outside the telecoms regulator where that is going forward not an ideal scenario and this ICT review process is meant to address this because you have certain side, for example, of the ISPs that falls under the telecom's regulator and gets licenses there. And then also the same ISPs come to us to get certain kind of licenses for domain name services and stuff. So it is not a tenable scenario but we are currently defining it. You are currently clarifying it.
And in the process of this ICT process we are also defining the whole economy agenda so it doesn't sit in different agencies or organizations. We cannot anticipate what will be the outcome of the process but one of our submissions that we've made as a ccTLD has been for our government to look at possibility of setting up sort of a comprehensive Internet agency that deals with issues of regulation, that deals with issues of education and awareness, security and all the stuff so that there is's cohesion in terms of the whole Internet economy agenda. Thanks.
>> Very quickly. Thank you very much for your question. I think that in most countries, the debate that you're calling for already exists but we don't call it the same way. Most of the people around the table talk about access. Some other talked about net neutrality. But if mix access with Network Neutrality, you have exactly what you said. Who is financing the infrastructure? Who has the power? And this is at the heart of the debate everywhere. And the role of the over the top and the economy of ISPs. So we are debating about that. It's a very hot topic with very great powerful companies in it. And as a small registry, we just give the room and the chairs and we come back at the end of the day.
>> GIOVANNI SEPIA: Thank you. Is there any other question from the audience? No. Any final point you like to make? Okay. If not, I'd like to thank all the attendees, the panelists and the technical support. There are some takes from this workshop. And it's true that Internet literacy is really at the basis of any Internet Governance literacy. And then we should really ask ourselves what is illiterate in this very complex environment? Are we literate of this complex environment? I personally don't feel to be fully literate in this environment because there are some areas which I don't have in my background and therefore is extremely difficult some point to catch up. So I think we can be literate to a certain extent.
Bud I'd like to also thank all the panelists who have contributed with their experiences and efforts in promoting what is Internet literacy and also Internet Governance literacy in their respective regions and countries. Your efforts are really amazing and so laudable.
So I think that the main take of this workshop is that the ccTLD community will continue to be with the ccTLD regional organizations. A key player in this dialogue, in this effort, in this work around the Internet Governance. And this work will be even more valuable if more players can be brought within this environment to make sure that we all become a bit more literate in the future.
So thanks, everybody. And I'll see you around. Thank you.
[Applause.]
(End of workshop.)
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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.
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