ICANN participation

This workshop was primarily an information session about Internet Exchange Points in the various regions worldwide; their roles and various sub-committees/bodies.

Those attending were able to find out about latest developments in various regions e.g. in LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean Region - 3 new IXPs launched in past year - Haiti, and Netherlands Antilles (St. Maarten, Curacao); Re-instatement of IXP in Africa on September 11, 2009)

Benefits of having these IXPs were outlined e.g. cos…

(Please note that I arrived late!!)

The session had presentations from the main players in ccTLD processes globally. Examples of processes and initiatives were given from a European standpoint among others. IANA's role was briefly discussed. There was an interesting explanation of Anycast by Bill Woodcock, the history of Anycast and why it is used. Some main points:

Need for a networking typology
Issue of sovereignty raised
Automation of delegation/re-delegation processes debated (most are not…

We are a generation that depends so much on the Internet. Many of us cannot live without it (just like electricity :) ). BUT do we know what is involved when it comes to Internet usage? Is there a difference between one's life online and offline? What information should or should I not put on a social network site like Facebook? The list goes on and on.

Human rights perspective.

The main session of the second day of IGF09 regarding Security, Openness and Privacy was excellent!!! The panelists have made great speeches and I would like to highlight a sentence said by Mr. Frank la Rue, from UNESCO, which is the “…human rights perspective”. This should be the focus of all polices considering the Internet. He also pointed out that equity in the ICTs distribution/access, diversity and pluralism are some of the principles that should be observed.

An…

Workshop 305- Sustainable Capacity Building for Internet Accessibility Public Policy Development

The workshop was addressed by Gunela Astbrink, Internet Society of Australia and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network and the presentation by Maliha Kabani, President, International Sustainable Development Resource Centre (Geneva) was carried out by Gunela Astbrink.

Strategies adopted to provide accessibility for persons with visual and hearing impairment was highlighted. The parti…

Location: Nile Valley Room, IGF09, Sharm El Sheikh

Panelist:

Joseph V. Tabone, Chairman CIGF
Anthony Ming, Commonwealth Secretariat
Alice Munaya, KICTANet
Fred Ruth Murray-Bruce, Nigerian Communication Commission
Jahid Jamil, Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center, Pakistan

Joseph V. Tabone:
Mr. Joseph opened the the forum with a key note address about Commonwealth Federation & Commonwealth Internet Governance Forum. He highlighted the role of CIGF for the future of IGF and the purpose of…

IGF2009 Opening Session Hot topics : ICANN fast track process, multilinguism, local content, accessibility, security and IGF continuation.

Here at the Internet Governance Forum there has been a lot of talk about 'Youth'. With a greater presence of young people at the event than before (I'm told), there are many discussions coming from diverse angles: from youth empowerment, to child protection.

But too often when people talk about Youth, they are not using the same understandings of what 'Youth' means. I've tried to pick up some of the different conceptualisations of Youth that I've been hearing explored here at IGF.

What do y…

The main issue of access and availability of locally relevant content was a ket feature that I observed during my initial intervention in an ICT4D project in Sri Lanka. www.v-village.lk

The project set up 2 telecentres and provided free access. Yet, it had a few users. The majority of users were youth who showed a keen interest to use technology. Besides learning email there were not many other activities the village youth could do as there was a language b…

More delegate perspectives from IGF09 in interviews by the Social Reporters from the Youth Booth.

Megan Richards from the European Commission


Amena Hashesh from the Kuwaiti Communications Ministry

The panelists called attention to the resources, training and expertise availability problem, that motivated the creation of 2CENTRE - http://www.2centre.eu/, which stands for Cybercrime Center of Excellent for Training, Research & Education.

The main focus of the workshop is the necessity of experts and proper training regarding cybercrime prosecution. According to Joe Carthy, the existent training regarding cybercrime is NOT sustainable, scalable, stan…

This morning saw deep discussion of the the role of the Commonw…

The IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process was successfully launched, as planned on 16 November 2009. It was done at exactly 00:00UTC with a very joyful count-down by the Fast Track Staff Team – followed by a wooohooo

The launch went smoothly. We have since monitored the system and everything is working.

As of 10pm Pacific time (15 November 2009) we have received:

- 6 requests from countries/territories
- representing 3 different languages

Following the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Final Implementation Plan, no additional details will be reported by ICANN – that is, until requests has been successfully processed.

That said, we will be providing additional stats (as the above) updates in regular time intervals.

No countries or territories has reported problems using the system, at this time.

All details for participants and access to the system is available directly from http://www.icann.org or directly at: http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/

Inquiries for the system are to be submitted to idncctldrequest@icann.org

A quick note to participants:

When uploading supporting material, please note that each file must be limited to 10MB. If you have larger files, please indicate that in the text box provided, and send the files to idncctldrequest@icann.org We will try to find a better solution to this soon.

We are very much looking forward to receiving additional requests and processing everything, to make IDN ccTLDs a reality for Internet users around the world!

We've got lots of coverage from the ChildNet and Cyber Peace Initiative session earlier on this morning. You can read Marsha's reflections on the session here, and below is the Live Blog I ran during the session.

A live blog tries to capture points as they are made, and using CoverITLive we've woven in twitter messages and comments from people outside the event.

T…

Subhodeep Kundu opened, stressing the importance of the potential for scalability and the power of the Cloud for increasing collaboration. Another major benefit is the cost saving possible through the sharing of resources. However it is key that regulation and Governance is addressed at the strategic level.

Bernard Sadaqa disagreed entirely, for several reasons:
1. You need high bandwidth
2. Quality of services is slow
3. Uneven quality of services across different geographical regions
4. Secur…

In the interest of time I am just placing points from the session. If you need any details drop me a line.

This workshop was presented by representatives from Childnet International. It was mentioned that a presentation was made to the UK parliament recently with some young people from the UK on issues affecting them.

There were participants present at this session from the Cyber Peace camp of the IGF. The theme for the camp is "Forming Young Digital Citizens"

A video clip was played with vie…

Workshop 529 : The Commonwealth IGF's base principles is to share, learn and improve on ICT sector.

The purpose of establishing the Commonwealth IGF was to share ICT knowledge globally in the commonwealth agencies and countries. the area of their focus is building policy and regulatory capacity, modernizing education and skills development, Entrepreneurship for poverty reduction and wealth, Promoting local access and regional networking. However, there are concerns from other developing countri…

Workshop 200: Remote Participation. In the IGF spirit of evaluation, the workshop mentioned the concern in order to increase the remote participation, so IGF will become more inclusive, legitimate, sustainable and accessible.

Olga Cavalli, from South School of IG, pointed out the importance of being aware of the IG process, illustrating that in South American few people are involved. Therefore, the dissemination of IG issues is one of the participants’ responsibilities.The question now is: what…

Workshop 93: Global Path for Ensuring Online Child Protection and Safety. Effective Strategies and Specific Actions. There were a lot of issues regarding the safety of children and youth online that had been mention during the session, including prevention, blacklists effectiveness, filtering and the responsibility of ISPs, digital citizenship, cybercrimes and availability of specific content for children.

It’s important to highlight one topic that has been discussed for a while and it hasn’t s…

ICANN ran an open forum at the IGF in Sharm El Sheikh yesterday. You can view a video of the event below.