[NCUC-DISCUSS] NCUC Event News

[Seth Johnson]

Two things . . .

On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 6:20 AM, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:
> The IGF's Multistakeholder Advisory Group met here in Geneva over the past few days, and we approved the main lines of the IGF meeting in Bali 22-25 October.  The workshop proposals put forth by NCUC and its members fared well in the review process and should all go forward.  Official confirmation is pending, needed first are some last looks at the approved workshops as a group and efforts to prompt mergers between related sessions etc.


Do you have a link to the workshops?  I'm sure everybody else here
knows full well where to find them . . .

> I am also talking with staff about securing a space within the main ICANN Durban program for an NCUC workshop.  A priori, on both substantive and effort optimization grounds I'm inclined to do another prequel, this one to our IGF Bali workshop, The Debate on ‘Closed’ Generic Top Level Domains  http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/wks2013/workshop_2013_list_view.php?xpsltipq_je=253.


You want to get a jump on this issue?  I recommend the angle of
considering how this proposal integrates with the FNC definition of
the Internet, which the CNRI has advocated for the WSIS in general.
The FNC definition from 1995 essentially calls the Internet the
collection of networks that use universal identifiers (such as IP
addresses).  This leaves out anything about the packet layer enabling
flexibility for all endusers, and more to the point, is in line with
models where legal accountability can be assigned to endpoints (and
document identifiers) -- i.e., you have exclusive rights to control
(via key signing schemes and DRM, etc) what you put up on your
endpoint, and usage of information put out from your endpoint can be
tracked and controlled as a policy set by the endpoint.  This may seem
cool, but it's very much out of sorts with the collaborative use of
information online, the capacity to work within common "spaces" or
"contexts" without being hamstrung in advance.  Even more important in
relation to this topic of "closed gTLDs" is that the question of this
definition of the Internet is very critical to whether the WSIS ends
up rationalizing treating NGNs and specialized services that are
completely unlike the Internet we know, as included in the notion of
the Internet over which the WSIS is working to establish some form of
policy-making authority.

So I'd be much more interested in people pressing for a proper
definition of the Internet in the present context.

Not sure if you can use that as I've written it, but I note it here to
encourage people to watch out that various debates may work to
accommodate a fundamental subversion of the Internet.

The FNC Definition of the Internet from October 1995:
http://www.nitrd.gov/fnc/Internet_res.aspx


I think if you translated the topic into terms that relate to the
foundation of the WSIS, you'd instantly turn the proceeding into a
much more volatile "hot" political thing.


Seth



After all, it'd be nice to sponsor a debate on a hot topic in front of
a full ICANN crowd a couple of days before the Board may take action
one way or another on the matter (although that expectation could mean
some push back from ICANN on the topic, we'll see).  This seems like a
useful contribution we can make, and we have members and other
colleagues who'll be in Durban who have strong views on the various
sides of the matter who could serve as speakers.  The other option I
thought about was to broaden the focus and do a workshop on the GAC's
Beijing Communique, and the community responses to it.  But this might
be seen in a less favorable light in some quarters, plus we can get
into that via the closed topic anyway.
>
> Staff are asking for me to submit the workshop request within a few days, so time's a bit pressed.  I'd be interested to hear from members if the above sounds ok, or if there's another workshop topic we ought to be considering.  Needless to say, if we were to strike out in a new direction rather than take the path of least resistance with a closed generic prequel, there'd have to be a group effort to organize it, starting fairly soon.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bill
>
>
> **********************************************************
> William J. Drake
> International Fellow & Lecturer
>   Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
>   University of Zurich, Switzerland
> Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency,
>   ICANN, www.ncuc.org
> william.drake at uzh.ch
> www.williamdrake.org
> ***********************************************************
>
>
>
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