Зам.-министърът на съобщенията Валери Борисов за домейните и управлението на Интернет

Публикуваме речта на зам.-министърът на транспорта, информационните технологии и съобщенията Валери Борисов, произнесена при откриване на DomainForum на 7-ми ноември 2011 г.

This is full text of the speech of Bulgarian deputy-minister of transport, IT and communication Valeri Borissov, at the DomainForum in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Nov. 7, 2011.

УВАЖАЕМИ ГОСПОЖИ И ГОСПОДА,

СКЪПИ КОЛЕГИ,

За мен е чест и удоволствие да Ви приветствам с „добре дошли” на този Домейн форум, който е пръв по рода си в България. Ние считаме неговото провеждане за изключително навременно предвид новите предизвикателства, пред които е изправена глобалната критична комуникационна инфраструктура Интернет.Част от тези предизвикателства представляват въвеждането на многоезичните имена на домейни, както и изчерпването на свободния ресурс на IPv4 и въвеждането на IPv6. Тези въпроси, наред с въпросите на сигурността и защитата на личната неприкосновеност все повече ангажират вниманието на правителства, бизнеса и гражданите.

От 2000 г. в България се прилага напълно либерализирана държавна политика по отношение на Интернет, т.е. ние разчитаме на участието на всички заинтересовани страни в управлението (т.нар. multi-stakeholderapproach). Както е известно, този подход на равнопоставеност беше въведен за пръв път по време на Първата среща на върха за информационно общество в Женева през 2003 г. Всъщност единствената сфера от Интернет, която е предмет на регулиране в България, е сигурността и защитата на личната неприкосновеност. Държавата не предприема действия и по блокиране или филтриране на съдържание. Този модел дава свобода за изразяване на позиции, като основният принцип е това да става прозрачно, по разбираем начин и да бъде изпълнимо.

Предвид глобалния характер на Интернет, безспорна е важната роля на Интернет корпорацията за имена и адреси – ICANN – за поддържането на надеждността и прозрачността при управлението на Интернет ресурсите. ICANN провежда прозрачна политика основана на стриктни правила. Независимо, че останахме основателно неудовлетворени от отказа на ICANN да регистрира нашия стринг на кирилица, заявен по бързата процедура за IDN ccTLDs, българското правителство подкрепя този тип политика.

Една от целите на този форум е да популяризира възможността компании от цял свят, включително и български, да регистрират домейни с търговски марки, включително на български език. Това ще бъде допълнително конкурентно предимство за известните наши брандове в онлайн икономиката. В същото време това ще даде възможност на държавата да предприема мерки срещу злоупотребата с монополни права върху национални символи и значими за всички българи наименования. Министерството на транспорта, информационните технологии и съобщенията ще осигури максимално широка платформа за комуникация с всички заинтересовани – граждани и организации – относно евентуални опити за „присвояване” на наименования от национално значение и своевременно ще реагира по установените процедури.

Това е още една причина да изразя специална благодарност на организаторите на тази проява – сдружение „УНИНЕТ” и Регистър.БГ – които събраха в София всички вас експерти в различни области, хора от различни континенти, да поговорим и обменим опит и знание за новите домейни.

Убеден съм, че днешният домейн форум ще има определен принос за нашите общи успехи в по-оптималното използване на Интернет-ресурсите

Пожелавам на всички ползотворни дискусии.

По информация от запознати, в началото на януари 2012 г. в София ще се организира кръгла маса по въпросите на политиката в областта на домейните.

India formally proposes government takeover of Internet

A Friend of ISOC – Bulgaria, Mr. Kieren McCarthy, writes:

The Indian government has formally proposed a government takeover of the Internet at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

In a statement sent yesterday, India argued for the creation of a new body to be called the United Nations Committee for Internet-Related Policies (CIRP) which would develop Internet policies, oversee all Internet standards bodies and policy organizations, negotiate Internet-related treaties, and act as an arbitrator in Internet-related disputes.

The CIRP would exist under the United Nations, comprise of 50 Member States, be funded by the United Nations, run by staff from the UN’s Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) arm, and report directly to the UN General Assembly.

Despite the proposal representing an extraordinary shift from the status quo to a single, purely government-run Internet body, India’s spokesman, Mr Dushyant Singh, argued that the proposal “should not be viewed as an attempt by governments to ‘take over’ or ‘regulate and circumscribe’ the Internet.”

In a nod to the multi-stakeholder model of decision-making that currently defines much of the Internet’s processes – and where all actors from business to academia to the technical community and governments are given equal say in decisions – the Indian proposal foresees the creation of four “Advisory Groups” that would represent civil society, the private sector, inter-governmental and international organizations, and the technical and academic community.

Those groups would provide recommendations to the CIRP. The CIRP would consider them, along input from the existing Internet Governance Forum, at an annual two-week conference at the UN building in Geneva and then present its own subsequent recommendations to the UN General Assembly.

Read the whole article at dot-nxt.com.

ITU Council meeting – October 2011

ISOC-Bulgaria friend Kieren McCarthy has published three articles, dedicated to the just finished ITU Council meeting in Geneva.
Titled, ITU Council edges slowly, painfully toward the Internet, ITU Council sways back toward member states in final text, and ITU Council decisions summary, they provide a relatively good coverage of the events in Geneva, as people, who were present at the meeting confirmed.

We are reprinting, with permission from dot-nxt, portions from two of the articles, and encourage you to read the originals at the above urls.

… The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is continuing its difficult journey toward the 21st century in Geneva this week.
Picking up where the organization’s Plenipotentiary in Guadalajara a year ago left off, the ITU Council has been considering a number of proposals concerning the Internet and, not for the time, has hit the Internet’s culture of openness head on.
Following literally days of discussions spent trying to bridge the gap between a closed inter-governmental culture and the Internet’s open approach to policy, a series of odd compromises has been struck.
Key among them is future discussions of the “Dedicated Group on international Internet-related public policy issues”. The DGIRPPI (the worst acronym we’ve seen for a while) is transitioning to a more formal Working Group designation and is the hub of most of the work that emerges with respect to the Internet…

… as some country representatives pointed out, having an open consultation but a closed Working Group was a bit of a contradiction. Bulgaria noted for example that if the actual decisions and discussions are closed, it may discourage non-governments from bothering to take part in the open consultations. That argument was not accepted, nor was the subsequent suggestion that the Working Group documents at least be made public.
Almost all ITU documents – including all the ones for this Council discussion, including the agenda – are behind password protection, something that is a constant and stark reminder of the organization’s closed nature…

…Another main issue under discussion when it came to the Internet was discussion surrounding a meeting in 2013 that would discuss Internet governance.
There was a concerted effort to hold the meeting, despite subject and budgetary concerns, and to ensure that the meeting was a “forum” to give it some official weight. There was push back but again the inter-governmental voices prevailed.
The World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF) will take place in Geneva in mid-2013, be linked with the WSIS Forum, and focus on ITU resolutions 101, 102 and 133 – all the key Internet texts agreed at the Guadalajara Plenipotentiary.
The intent is clear – the ITU Council and Working Group on International Internet-related Public Policy Issues will work at scaling back the move toward a more open, multi-stakeholder model and then using the 2013 WTPF to redraw the resolutions that incorporated Internet organizations into the ITU’s processes, with the ultimate aim of having those resolutions edited in Busan.
The WTPF cannot produce binding, regulatory outcomes but it will produce reports and provide consensus opinions that will then be used to inform the Plenipotentiary discussions.
From the perspective of the Internet organizations that have viewed the ITU with anything from suspicion to contempt, this will be a worrying development.

ISOC-Bulgaria will continue its Internet governance project through 2012, and will continue to inform its readers, members and friends on the latest developments in that area. See the Internet governance section on our blog for more information.

September Documents on Internet Governance and Cybersecurity

See some public documents, which have been published in September of this year, all of them related to Internet governance:

UN – information secutiy code (SCO – Russia, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)

Inida, Brazil, and South AFrica (IBSA) recommendations on Internet Governance

Russian concept for an UN cyber convention – English

What is DONA – flyer

Presentation on DONA (.ppt file) from May 19, 2011 in Geneva

Report from the DONA meeting in Geneva (May 2011)

Read also the following relevant articles: At the IG project (on the IBSA recommendations), at Global Voices (on the Russian concept UN convention), and at the IG project (on the UN draft resolution). While ISOC-Bulgaria may not share all or any of the views or opinions, expressed in these articles, they are relevant for the general discussion on the above published documents.

UN Needs to Ensure Open and Inclusive Internet Governance

This message is from the international Internet Society, and ISOC-Bulgaria supports it:

In an extraordinary meeting on 6 December, 2010, the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) decided to create a Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) with a membership made up only of governments.

We believe this decision sets back the model of multistakeholder cooperation under which the IGF was established, and contradicts the instructions given to the CSTD for the establishment of the Working Group

Today, 9 December, 2010, the Internet Society joined the International Chamber of Commerce – Business Action to Support the Information Society, the Internet Governance Caucus, and many other Internet, business and civil society organizations in sending a letter to the CSTD asking them to retract their previous decision and to establish an appropriately constituted Working Group.

Read the letter: The letter can be read here (PDF 45KB).

Sign the petition: We need your support. Please sign our petition and ask the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development to ensure that Internet governance remains open and inclusive.

ITU Internet-related resolutions, accepted at Plenipotentiary 2010

The ITU Plenipotentiary conference, which took place in Guadalajara, Mexico in October, accepted several resolutions, related to the Internet.
These are WGPL/8, Resolutions 101, 102, 130, 133. Here they are in one pdf file (219 Kb).

Internet-related public policy issues at ITU (Bulgarian Internet development)

Bulgaria has sent a document to the ITU, published here, but requiring password for download. Since the document presents interest for the larger audience, we publish it on our blog, so that everyone can use it.

Here’s the beginning of the document, to make you interested in downloading the docx file. You can also download it in .odt format.

1. References: Resolutions 101, 102, 130; document 16/71 at PP-10,

2. Background

A number of documents have been circulated among the ITU members, dealing with Internet-related issues. We would like to focus the attention of the ITU Member States and Sector Members on the question, being raised in the above mentioned documents, mainly the Internet access charges in developing countries. Document 16/71 stipulates that,

“that advances in the global information infrastructure, including the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks and especially the Internet, and future IP developments, continue to be an issue of crucial importance, as an important engine for growth in the world economy in the twenty-first century, even if expectations in terms of the number of Internet users in developing countries have not been met due to high service subscription charges;”

These lines raise the following questions, to which we believe Bulgaria could provide some answers:

- What are the expectations of developing countries in terms of number of Internet users?
- Which developing countries have exactly that expectations?
- What are the reasons for their expectations not being met?
- Are there other reasons, besides the high service subscription charges?

Please, download the the docx file (Microsoft Word 2007) and in the better .odt format (OpenOffice.org).

ITU Council meeting – April 2010

Report from Geneva, April 2010

Purpose of the meeting

In accordance with Rule 1 of the Rules of Procedure of the ITU Council the 2010 session of the Council was held at ITU Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland from Tuesday, 13 April 2010 to Thursday, 22 April 2010.

Observations
The interest of ITU Member States Administrations to participate at this meeting was very high: more than 330 participants representing 46 Member States of Council, 36 Member State Observers, and 4 Sector Member Observers took part in the discussion.
In total ninety seven entities have been represented by 401 participants.
All five elected ITU officials did attend: Dr Hamadoun Toure, Secretary-General and Mr. Houlin Zhao, ITU Deputy Secretary General together with Mr. Sami Al Basheer Al Morchid, Director, Telecommunication Development Bureau, Mr Valery Timofeev, Director Radio communications Bureau and Mr. Malcolm Johnson, Director, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau.
The Plenary meetings were chaired by Mr. R.N. Jha, Chairman, India with Mr. Fernando Borjón, Vice Chairman, Mexico.
The meetings of the Standing Committee on Administration and Management were chaired by Mr. Reynaldo C. Gonzales Bustamante, Mexico.

This Council 2010 held total of 16 meetings – 10 Plenary Meetings and 6 meetings of the Standing Committee on ADM – without the need for weekend sessions, night sessions, or voting and with consistently reached consensus.
Total of 86 documents, including many contributions from Member States have been reviewed and discussed.

Formal texts were adopted and consensus reached on key issues as follows:
- Continuation of the work of the Council Working Group for the elaboration of the draft strategic plan and the draft financial plan for 2012-2015;
- Agreement to hold WCIT-12 in November 2012, back-to-back with the WTSA (Document C10/DT/6);
- Agreement on ITU’s role in ICTs and improving Road Safety (Document C10/63/Rev.1);
- Principles for the future of ITU Telecom were defined and we look forward to PP-10’s endorsement of a revised Resolution 11 (Documents C10/26, 66 and C10/DT/7);
- Approved four years report to PP on the activities of the Union (Document C10/35 Part 4);
- Reviewed preparations for WTDC-10 (DocumentC10/29/Rev.1) and PP-10 (Document C10/19/ Rev.1 and 47);
- Approved report on preparations for PP-1 (Document C10/34);
- Advanced in its discussions on the creation of an Independent Audit Advisory Committee (Document C10/75) with final results expected at next FinRegs and PP-10 on this issue;
- Agreed that a Group needs to be created to find a way forward in streamlining the ITU Convention and the Constitution, and
- Agreed the continuation of the work on conformance and interoperability testing, taking account of the extensive views expressed by Councilors (WTSA Resolution 76, Documents C10/15/Rev.1, 48, 49 and 64).

The Plenary Meeting on Thursday, 15th of April has considered in particular the following:
a) WSIS: ITU role in implementing outcomes (Resolutions 140, 1244, 1281 & 1282, as well as documents C10/24 “Reports on the main results of WG-WSIS an of the Dedicated Group on Internet-Related Policy Issues” and document C10/53, contribution by Russian Federation, on “ITU implementation of WSIS outcomes”);
b) Report on the Third Meeting of the Dedicated Group on Internet-Related Policy Issues Addendum 1 to Doc. C10/24; and
c) Internet Activities (Resolutions 101, 102, 133 and documents C10/13 & C10/35).

The delegations of many countries, as well as the Secretary-General, the Chairman of the Council WSIS WG and the Chairman of the Council Dedicated Group took the floor and the Council ruled-out that it will complete relevant reports after the summer meetings in June of WSIS and DG CWGs and present them for approval at the extraordinary session of the Council prior to PP-10 in Guadalahara, Mexico.

After interventions by some countries about GAG and ICANN (where ITU is observer), the Council held a discussion.
It was underlined that ITU has missed the opportunity to be central in Internet Governance as result of short sighted decisions taken by the ITU Council in the past and that nowadays ITU could only constructively assist for enhancing further the process of Internet Governance.
Strong requests were voiced by many delegations for both inviting established Internet players and stakeholders to participate in relevant Council Working Groups (CWGs) and for submitting contributions for further consideration by the above mentioned CWGs.
On the issue of free on-line access to ITU publications (documents C10/22, 52, 57) , many countries took the floor but no consensus was reached. This issue will be referred to the Plenipotentiary Conference 2010 for further consideration.

Many delegations took the floor on the following:
- IP address allocation and encouraging the development of IPv6 (WTSA Resolution 64 and document C10/45/Rev1;
- Strengthening the role of ITU in building confidence and security in the use of ICTs (Resolution 130 and documents C10/12,77);
- ICTs to bridge the digital divide (Resolution 139 and document C10/16); and
- CWG report on Child Online Protection (Resolution 1306 and document C10/44).
The Council decided to take note of the above-mentioned contributions.

It is worth pointing out however that many delegations requested that ITU should not get involved in the Cyber warfare and that the Union should open itself more for cooperation with established stakeholders in relevant domains of Internet and the work should continue to progress as appropriate at ITU Council Working Groups.

Other topics, not relevant to the Internet Governance issues, were also discussed.

ITU Council Working Group on IPv6 – First Meeting in Geneva

REPORT: ITU IPv6 Group meeting
Provided by: Bill Graham, ISOC

Geneva, February 15-16, 2010

The ITU convened the first meeting of the Council-chartered IPv6 Group in Geneva, co-chaired by the Directors of the Telecommunication Standardization and Telecommunication Development Bureaus. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Mohammed El-Khamis of the United Arab Emirates, and was attended by about 20 Member States and an equivalent number of Sector Members and invited experts. The latter group included the RIRs and the authors of two studies commissioned by the ITU: Dr. Milton Mueller and Dr. Sureswaran Ramadass. For ISOC, Bill Graham and Constance Bommelaer, Leslie Daigle and Mat Ford attended. In addition, all five Regional Internet Registry CEOs and four RIR staff attended the meeting. Three ICANN staff were available to attend, but ICANN had not been invited as experts, and after some discussion, attendees decided not to let them join this meeting. This decision will be revised for future meetings. No civil society organizations were present.

As you will recall, ISOC SGE prepared a briefing note for membership that was distributed in advance of the meeting, along with information about how interested members could reach out to government delegates to explain to them the ISOC view of the items on the meeting agenda. Those were:

- To draft a global policy proposal for the reservation of a large IPv6 block, taking into consideration the future needs of developing countries, as outlined in paragraph 23 of C09/29.

- To further study possible methodologies and related implementation mechanisms to ensure ‘equitable access’ to IPv6 resource by countries.

- To further study the possibility for ITU to become another Internet Registry, and propose policies and procedures for ITU to manage a reserved IPv6 block.

- To further study the feasibility and advisability of implementing the CIR [Country Internet Registry] model for those countries who would request national allocations.

- To assist in the implementation of the project called for by Resolution 64, taking into account the needs at regional and national level in terms of capacity building and allocation policies.

- To report to ITU Council 2010 [13-22 April, 2010].

During the ICANN meeting and in Geneva before the meeting, it was really encouraging to hear from several members that they had used the material to brief their governments. Equally encouraging, I heard from several governments that they had received the ISOC briefing from various sources, and that they had found it useful in their own preparations. Those reports speak strongly for the willingness and ability of our membership to inform their national governments about ISOC’s positions and the importance of the Internet model and maintaining support for the Internet ecosystem when they are well informed about an issue and are provided with briefing material to help them. That is a real strength of ISOC and should be developed further in future.

The meeting itself was successful from the perspective of effectively defending and even promoting the legitimacy of the existing Internet organizations, particularly the Regional Internet Registries. All Member States that spoke except one supported the existing institutions and tried to confine discussions of the ITU role to things it can do within its mandate. The strong and focused interventions by the Internet technical community were helpful and informative. The RIR group repeatedly provided detailed technical and organizational information to inform the debate. ISOC interventions were supportive of the Internet ecosystem, and concentrated on a higher level message, pointing out that issues about Internet address allocation and policies should be discussed in the appropriate existing forums. Those were well received by the governments and private sector representatives.

Despite incorrect and misleading statements by one delegate about the nature and influence of IP addresses and addressing policy, the Chair of the meeting remained scrupulously neutral and fair, and guided the meeting to a reasonable conclusion. The meeting ended by creating two “correspondence groups” to continue the discussion before its next meeting, beginning September 1, 2010. The first correspondence group is to start developing an ITU Development Sector project to do capacity building to help developing countries to implement IPv6 deployment, including studies of the costs and mechanisms associated with the project. The second correspondence group is assigned to identify specific cases where member states have identified a problem obtaining IPv6 addresses, and to study ways of dealing with those problems within the existing system. The draft report recognizes that efforts to include ongoing study of the Country Internet Registry proposal from the NAV6 document, or of the rules for ITU to become some kind of global Internet Registry would be premature, in spite of some efforts to have the correspondence group focus on evaluating the viability of that proposal.

Sixteenth Meeting of the ITU Council Working Group on WSIS

Report from 2-4 February 2010, Geneva, Switzerland

Purpose of the meeting

The ITU Plenipotentiary Conference held during 2006 in Antalya (PP-06) has adopted Resolution 140 on ITU’s role in implementing the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), simultaneously requesting the ITU Council to maintain its Working Group on WSIS (WG-WSIS) in order to facilitate membership input and guidance on the implementation of relevant WSIS outcomes and to elaborate proposals to ITU Council for adapting ITU to its role in building the information society as need arises.

In 2009 a Dedicated Group (DG) on international Internet-related public policy issues was established as an integral part of WG-WSIS, open to all Member States in accordance with Resolution 75 (WTSA, 2008) and Council resolution 1282 (Mod. 2008). The said Dedicated Group was mandated to contribute to the work of WG-WSIS pursuant to the relevant Resolution 102 of ITU PP-06 and to ITU Council Resolutions (C08-1282 and C09-1305).
In order to carry out the above-mentioned mandates, the Sixteenth Meeting of WG-WSIS was convened from 2 to 4 February 2010 in ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.