   7th meeting of the ICANN Studienkreis
Internet Governance and Domain Names: New TLDs, New Services, New Markets
The 7th meeting of the ICANN Studienkreis, which was established in 1999 as the network of individuals from different Internet constituencies and stakeholders, was held in Prague. This annual high-level expert seminar for 2006 focused on innovations in the field of domain names, services and markets. The unofficial meeting of the Sub-Regional Outreach Meeting of ICANN European At Large Organisation (EU-RALO) – tackling the way to enlarge the newly-constituted European At-Large network to the east – was seen as an important factor in the involvement of European countries in transition with the global IG process. The opening speech was made by Michal Frankl, council member of the Czech Telecommunication Office and former vice-Minister for Informatics, followed by the representatives of CZ-NIC (Czech ccTLD Registry) and the Czech Domain Name Arbitration Court. The overview on Internet strategy and the domain name market in the Czech Republic was an excellent example of the successful transformation of this important segment of the national system in a country making its final steps of transition. The afternoon session discussed remaining open issues, as well as perspectives, of the forthcoming IG Forum meeting in Athens, gathering well-known representatives of the main stakeholders – the EU, Siemens AG, ISOC, ICANN Global Partnership and At-Large Advisory Committee ICANN. After an introduction by Markus Kummer, secretary-general of the IGF, the panel shed more light on the concept of the IGF meeting. With a set of challenging questions, from youth involvement to the estimation of the role of IGF in year 3000 (!), the session ended with an optimistic feeling that IGF would, at least, help in exchanging experiences and implementing acceptable solutions at local and regional levels. During the morning of the second day of the meeting, the need for and the process of introduction of new Top Level Domains (TLDs) was analysed. As ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) Council has started a round of open discussions, several interesting proposals, based on cultural, language and geographical background, were mentioned: .cat for Catalan Language, .berling and .nyc for use by the citizens of these metropolises, and .cym for Wales. In the panel discussion that followed, DiploFoundation’s associates from Serbia, Moldova and Russia, together with their colleagues representing companies and organisations from Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, presented the Internet development status in the countries of Eastern Europe. The panel was chaired by Veni Markovski, (ICANN director). The huge disparities in the organisational, legal and economic concepts of Internet and TLD markets existing in these countries show that significant differences exist among Eastern European countries as well, not only between EU and the remaining regions. The accelerated regulation and constant growth of market incomes further underpin the need for the countries in transition to be fairly represented in the regional and global IG process. Axel Pawlik, CEO of RIPE NCC, gave a brief keynote address, presenting the current status of IP addresses and the level of deployment of IPv6. Mr Pawlik said that even though the two systems could coexist for a certain period, the transition to IPv6 was “a must”. However, the deployment policy should be carefully projected and implemented, since the number of IPv6 addresses, though being enormous, is still exhaustible in the long-term. New emerging services in the DNS environment were discussed in the last session of the morning. The introduction was made by David W. Maher, senior vice-president, Law an Policy, Public Interest Registry. Internationalised Domain Names were analysed by Philipp Grabensee from Afilias Ltd, and Khaled Fattal, chair of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium, anticipating a possible collision in the namespace unless global action is taken. A standard for mapping telephone numbers with E.164 identifiers to domain names was discussed from a business perspective by a representative from Electronic Numbering (ENUM). The importance and effects of Internet Advertising were presented, followed by a brief overview of VeriSign activities with Radio-Frequency ID tags. The last panel of the meeting tackled the future. The keynote speech was made by Andrew McLaughlin, chief policy officer of Google Inc. Mr McLaughlin gave details of recent online trends, varying from the very useful to amusing, based on search engines and maps, upload and download habits and needs, high-resolution photography, etc. Desiree Miloshevic (ISOC Board trustee) and Louis Pouzin (consultant) presented a set of future scenarios, related mostly to converging technologies and concerns of privacy, security and authentication. The debate that followed revealed the “other side of the coin” – technology shaping society’s habits, along with society shaping technology trends. The closing session, chaired by the organiser, Professor Wolfgang Kleinwächter, summed up the issues raised during this productive and successful conference, and announced the GigaNET meeting in Athens that would replace the meeting of the Forum. Informal meetings organised by the hosts, such as the cultural dinner in a traditional Czech restaurant, further motivated the participants to exchange the visions and missions of their respective organisations, searching for and finding a number of common areas for future co-operation. For details about the programme, presentations and participants of the ICANN Studienkreis meeting in Prague, visit www.icann-studienkreis.net.
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