Session Transcript
Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the
The 2nd Meeting of the IGF. 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.
(Gavel.)
>>NITIN DESAI: Clearly, the Web site is very successful in the sense
that most workshops are reporting in through the Web site. But I do have one
person. I don't know whether others are there who have not yet surfaced who
want to report back. And so let's start. We've already waited long enough. So
may I just request Emily Taylor.
>>EMILY TAYLOR: I'm reporting back from the
CENTR workshop which was held this morning called "The Functioning of the
Domain Name System." We had a very well-attended session with over 120 people
in the room and a multistakeholder panel comprising representatives of
country-code registries, government, ICANN, the IANA function, and the Internet
Society. And it was moderated by Jeanette Hofmann, who's a member of the
Advisory Group. Presentations covered how the domain name system works and also
the IANA function, what it is, and the role of the United States government in
it. The panel members looked at and examined expectations and gave
observations from their different points of view, from government, country-code
registries, and the Internet Society. And the panel featured a case study on a
collaborative project called the e-IANA, which is really customers and supplier
working together to develop a solution to bring on the operational end of how
the IANA function works in updating zone file, the root zone file changes, to
country-code managers. Various themes emerged, and, in particular, how the
relationships between the country-code registries and ICANN have developed and
are maturing perhaps as the industry is maturing. These relationships used to
be characterized by quite a lot of embattled scenes. But now, as the work is
continuing, these relationships are evening out. They are maturing. There was
also a very strong sense of respect for local determination and decision-making
when it comes to changing the manager of the country code or what we would call
redelegation, and that the IANA criteria in this sense are objective and are
publicly available. We also looked at the many forms of interaction that there
are between country codes and the ICANN IANA. For example, there are regional
organizations: CENTR for Europe, APTLD for the Asia-Pacific region, LACTLD for
the Latin America region, and AFTLD for Africa. There is also the country-code
support organization, ccNSO. And also the Internet Society itself talked about
the way that it does outreach and capacity-building for smaller country code
registries to kind of get them on their feet. Capacity-building generally
emerged as a theme. People were informed, people in the room who perhaps were
ccTLD operators were informed about regional organizations that they could get
in touch with or involved with. The Internet Society talked about its
development and training program, and also it emerged that grants and
sponsorship are available to encourage people and aid participation in
international meetings. Also, lastly, the effect of automation on the IANA
function in strengthening respect for local decision-making was also discussed.
In all of these discussions, the importance of participation was emphasized,
whether that be through regional organizations such as CENTR in Europe, or
through the ICANN arena. Thank you.
>>NITIN DESAI: Are there any other
workshop organizers who wish to report? Yes? Come.
>> Thank you, Chairman. So
we had a workshop titled "Towards International Standards for a Truly
Multilingual, Global Internet." And that was organized by UNESCO, ICANN, and
the ITU. The workshop addressed different areas in relation to the theme of
Internet multilingualism. So among the topics, there were discussions about
multilingual Internet from developing countries, perspectives, private sector
vision regarding demand for multilingual cyberspace, developments in
internationalized domain names, IDNs, need for standardization, and the way
forward. The panel was -- There were different members representing different
stakeholders, from governments, private sector, and international organizations
so we had representatives from the governments of Egypt and India talking about
national initiatives in the area of multilingualism and the development of
content in local languages. There were representatives from the private sector
discussing development in relation to applications and different tools that
support different languages and multilingual user interfaces. There was also a
representative from UNESCO talking about UNESCO's contribution in making more
languages available in the cyberspace. A representative from the ITU, noting
the importance of multilingual content and the needed cooperation among the
different organizations and stakeholders in this area. So the discussions were
very good in the sense that they addressed the multilingualism from the broader
perspective. The focus was mainly on the area of standardization in languages,
character encoding systems, local content development. There were also some
questions from the audience around the need and the urgency to have standards
and standardization processes at the language level before getting to the
Unicode level. And there were agreements among all the participants that a lot
of effort and cooperation is needed to make standards more available and
mature. So I think that's it on this workshop.
>>NITIN DESAI: Thank you. Are
there any other? Any questions? Comments to the two reports? No? Thank you.
Reporting-in session is over. And in another 25 minutes, the diversity session
will start. Thank you. (3:33 p.m.)