[EURO-Discuss] Studienkreis

[Roberto Gaetano]

I made the mistake of not taking notes while the meeting was going on, so
there are details that I do not remember, please feel free to add/correct
what is needed.

 

This year, the format has been slightly different. With the exception of the
first session, there have been no formal presentations, but rather short
introductions by “resource persons” followed by wider discussion and Q/A
among all participants.

Fadi Chehadé was supposed to attend only part of the first day, but changed
his plans and remained for the second day as well, indicating that he was
extremely satisfied about the discussion and the contribution by the
participants. He also answered specific questions about the ICANN plans.

 

The first session was about the status of the Internet in Italy. Antonio
Amendola (Senior Advisor to Deputy Minister for Economic Development)
presented the apologies of the Deputy Minister, Antonio Catricalà, who has
been unable to attend. Several personalities (see the attached programme)
have presented different aspects of the Internet in Italy. I am not aware if
the slides of the presentations are available for distribution.

Now the coordination on Internet matters is ensured by the Ministry of
Economic Development, while in the past different ministries like for
instance the Ministry of Telecommunications and the Ministry of Industry had
partial responsibility on it.

The engagement of the Italian government on the digital agenda has been
stressed by several participants. Fadi has reported about his meeting with
the Deputy Minister Catricalà in Rome the day before, in which the
potentially important role that Italy can play in the Internet governance
matters has been discussed.

This session has been closed by the presentation of the .IT by the Director
of the Institute of Informatics and Telematics, an institute depending from
the Italian top research institution, the CNR (National Council of
Research).

 

The second part of the afternoon was opened by Fadi, with a description of
the challenges that ICANN is facing and the way he plans to address them.
The key point that he has addressed is ICANN’s “equal multi-stakeholder
model”, that has to guarantee that all stakeholder have not only “a voice”,
but “equal voice” in the process.

Then a session on Internet Governance was planned. However, due to the wide
impact that the Snowden case had on all participants, the discussion has
focused almost only on privacy vs. security issues. My personal impression
is that the vast majority of the participants were critical about the
principle of limiting the privacy and controlling the data exchanged on the
Internet even if this could address security issues like, for instance,
detecting potentially illegal activities. But, as I said, this is just my
personal opinion having listened to the contributions.

One key point of the discussion has been the role of the different
stakeholders in shaping the legislation and keeping a tight control to
ensure that rights are preserved. Fadi commented that this is another
example of the need for a multi-stakeholder model.

 

The first session of the second day addressed the issue of the introduction
of new TLDs. The different “resource persons” brought the perspective of
their stakeholder community: Registries, Registrars, Governments, IP,
Business. Although I was there representing PIR, I realized that there were
no other “resource persons” speaking for the user community, so I raised
also the issue of the scarce information available to registrants, that are
by and large unaware of the impact of the new TLDs.

The impact has been debated at length during the whole morning. It has been
recognized that there will be a big change in the marketplace, not only
because of the number of new TLDs, but also because the vertical integration
blurs the distinction between registries and registrars. This will require a
rethinking of the GNSO structure. The GNSO Review was planned for this year
but is likely to be postponed until we can appreciate better the impact of
the new TLDs in the Internet community and in the multi-stakeholder model.

Fadi commented that he changed the organizational structure of ICANN to
address the complexity of this problem. To a specific question, he answered
that he is confident to be able to announce in Buenos Aires that the first
TLDs are operational.

 

David Maher had the difficult task of bringing the meeting back to order
after lunch. In his keynote speech he addressed some legal issues related to
the development of the Internet in 2013. I hope that the text of his
presentation could be available.

 

The last part of the meeting saw some changes in the agenda, combining the
discussion on ATRT2 with the future development in Internet networks. This
is the part of the meeting that I remember least, but if I am not mistaken
there has been a discussion about accountability in terms of “accountable to
whom”, quoting again the point made the previous day about ICANN’s
legitimacy coming from the consensus of the stakeholders, and therefore the
ultimate accountability has to be to the stakeholders.

 

Next time I promise I will take notes!!!

Cheers,

Roberto