IGF 2014

The .ORG is one of the globally identified domains, which have been shaping the identity of numerous global communities such as businesses, educational and academic institutions, large scale and small scale enterprises, communities, campaigns and individuals. Numerous entities all over the world today rely on the .ORG extension to propagate their various objectives ranging from strictly economic, commercial to more widespread political and social causes.

Globally across the Internet, the .ORG domain epitomizes a symbol of trust, global recognition, integrity, reliability and a tool to give that much needed edge for any organization to become visible and carve an identity in the highly networked information age today. The information producers and consumers on the web today not only strive to seek a virtual face and identity, but also seek an identity that, will speak volumes for the entity it represents to validate its authenticity. This is where the .ORG has been successful over the years in creating a benchmark standard for an organization’s visibility and credibility over the Internet.

The voluntary segment in India has been prominent since the post-independence days. However, these groups achieved a status of “non-governmental organization” (NGO) only in the 1980s. NGOs have had a huge role to play in India’s democratic functioning of the society by means of aiding Government agencies in addressing grassroots level issues or by bridging gaps in various development aspects of the society. Hence, these bodies come second in line to the government in terms of possessing huge amounts of information laying in the bottom most segment of the society.

India is home to more than 3.3 million NGOs, Self-help groups and other such units. However, more than 70% of them do not have a virtual face despite doing substantial ground work and having huge repository of information and content probably due to lack of funds, lack of accessibility to resources and lack of awareness. All this accumulates to the volumes of information that is just waiting to be showcased and tapped!

The Digital Empowerment Foundation who, actively works in information dissemination, community empowerment and digital content creation at the bottom most level using ICTs, found it necessary to tap such institutions and equip them with ICT and Internet tools to create a virtual presence and identity.

DEF along with Public Interest Registry (PIR) conceptualized the “eNGO” programme to address these issues. The “eNGO” is a web enabled facility for civil society and non-governmental organizations working at grassroots level to harness the power of modern information and communication technologies to help in dissemination of information, reach out to a wider audience and overall help achieve a holistic ICT integrated development in the communities served by these organizations.

The “eNGO” program since its inception has seen empowered over 2000 NGOs across India, Africa and South Eastern Countries and registered and created the much needed virtual presence and identity that has been lacking for these entities owing to lack of funds or awareness.

The session will make an effort to explain how eNGO programme has enabled grassroots organizations to not only must an entity have a virtual face and identity, the identity must also be such that it invokes a sense of recognition, integrity about its goals and trust and helps the organization achieve the visibility that it seeks. While the global world goes about creating online identities for information exchange and networking, only those organizations that have identities to vouch for their trustworthiness and reliability of the source of information will gain the extra mileage.

Format: Open session and small group work with moderator. The session will begin with brief comments by participant on priorities for this drafting process and then break-out groups.

Chair: Youth representing the Insafe network;

Assistant chair: Janice Richardson, Senior Advisor at Brussels-based European Schoolnet 

Session description:

In today’s society, children move seemingly seamlessly in and out of the rapidly evolving online social web, almost as soon as they are able to walk and talk. Wearable technology is fast coming into vogue and technology in our homes may well soon monitor our daily activities. As a USA Supreme Court judge recently ruled in a landmark decision on cyber-rights, our mobile phone has become “the sum of an individual’s private life” . In parallel with these developments, discussions on the online well-being of children on the internet have moved from their protection against harmful content and contacts to protection of their fundamental rights and responsibilities. The pendulum has now swung from safety to citizenship. What skills do children and young people need to develop if they are to cope with the challenges of a connected society, what is the role of the public, private and civil sectors, and of families and schools, in building these skills? How do we share the responsibility and what role does internet governance play?

The session will begin with each of 6 panellists setting out their priorities in a 5-minute plenary presentation to show the direction in which they would like their group to work. Participants will then choose a group to which they will actively contribute. The aim is to define and prioritise key aspects, roles and strategies in an interactive logical framework maitrix. A final plenary summary will enable participants to vote electronically on their priorities. Remote participants will be encouraged to contribute actively throughout the whole session.

 Refreshment will be served after the workshop as a means of encouraging ongoing discussion and networking.

  • Subject matter expected to be discussed.

- Issues raised by very young children going online

- The increasing amount of cyberhate – is it an issue?

- The reframing of the risks/opportunities agenda in terms of children’s rights

- The challenge of new/smart/personal devices

 Type of session: capacity building session with panel and interactive discussions

 Evaluation Assessment Criteria: level of interactive discussion and voting; number of blogs and tweets; short on-site evaluation by participants; take-up of ideas in IGF sessions on child protection, education, children’s rights; value of logical framework matrix in coming months.

Evolving Internet technologies, including the cloud, big data, and data analytics hold the promise to bring us profound benefits by addressing important societal issues in healthcare, education, transportation, energy and security, to name a few. But the power of these and related tools also raise important societal and legal concerns, including privacy, data security, and issues of jurisdiction and competition.

All stakeholders in the Internet ecosystem have an expectation of data protection and privacy of their communications. Businesses, governments, civil society and users are all presently engaged in dialogues that aim to restore and ensure trust in evolving Internet technologies through technical measures, legal developments, and policy advocacy.

The workshop participants will discuss key elements of these dialogues including but not limited to encryption and other privacy enhancements; the rule of law; the interplay of innovation, data use and societal benefits with risk analysis and mitigation; and the need to facilitate cross-border data flows, while ensuring data privacy and security.

At present, the global broadband industry has entered into a high-speed development stage. The growth of bandwidth requirements and optical fiber access lead to a global fiber optic network construction wave. To provide ubiquitous broadband access for users, countries around the world makes efforts to wireless broadband seamless access through a variety of means, for example, developing the LTE mobile communications technology and market. Broadband development has also led to the emerging of mobile Internet, cloud computing, Internet of things, intelligent terminal that broadband has become an important part of the strategic emerging industries and competition cores.

Broadband is helpful to promote the economic growth, and the effect is more significant for developing countries. In improving productivity, broadband will help boosting a rise of 5% in manufacturing industry, 10% increase in service industry and 20% for the information industry.

However, many developing countries still encounter lots of issues, such as weak infrastructure construction, imbalanced urban and rural development, less developed application service and original technology, pressure on saving cost. It is an urgent task to strengthen infrastructure construction and capacity building, more importantly from the design policy.

The workshop will invite multistakeholder from different angles to discuss:
(1) how developing countries carry out effective broadband network construction,
(2) what's the roles of different stakeholders in this process,
(3) how to strengthen the capacity building,
(4) how to design better policy to promoting broadband access and service,
(5) the best practice and challenges etc.

We propose a roundtable to explore the arguments for and against “zero-rating,” which refers to the practice of offering free access to certain popular online services for customers of particular mobile networks. Several major service providers have entered into arrangements with mobile network operators in a variety of countries to deliver low-data-usage, “zero-rated” versions of their services. In some cases, this means using those sites does not count against a subscriber’s data caps, while in other arrangements, users can access the service even if they do not have a data plan.

One of the main arguments in favor of zero-rating is that it brings down the cost of access to information in less developed countries. A user of Wikipedia Zero, for example, has unlimited, no-cost access everything in the online encyclopedia. Further, providing free access to popular content and services is preferable from an access-to-information perspective than no access at all, and such free access may drive demand for general-purpose mobile Internet access that can help encourage and fund investment in infrastructure.

But zero-rating can also be viewed as requiring discrimination among online content and service providers and may create skewed incentives for subscribers to access the “free” services of identified partners instead of competing services. To some advocates, such preferential treatment challenges fundamental principles of net neutrality, and may present particular development concerns by giving dominant web services an advantage over nascent local competition. Further, the hypothesis that zero-rating will lead to widespread access to a free, open, and neutral Internet is unproven.

We will use this roundtable to analyze and assess the arguments for and against the availability of zero-rated services and to engage in a focused examination of available research and gaps to be filled in this important area for development.

How can adults in charge of minors fulfil their duty of parenting while at the same time respecting the rights of the child?

Joint proposal by Zentrum für Kinderschutz im Internet - I-KiZ and klicksafe - EU-Initiative in the Safer Internet Programme together with Google Deutschland

Children and youths are accessing the Internet increasingly via mobile devices. A reliably available broadband infrastructure anywhere and high usability of devices like Tablet PCs and Smart Phones are the enablers of the fast growing mobile Internet usage among children and youths. This development raises new questions and challenges for parenting. Parents and other adults in charge of minors are asking for technical support to protect their children form unwanted encounters with harmful content and potentially risky contact with strangers. But at the same time children and youths themselves are holding fundamental human rights like privacy and freedom of speech that must be respected. With parental control as it is provided by technical tools often a high degree of monitoring of children's usage habits comes along that should be seen as intrusion into privacy and is therefore intolerable. Intelligent risk management in a mobile online environment should comprise both: protection of children and empowerment of youths by appropriate educational approaches and adequate technical means.
In this session light shall be cast on the current educational situation in families, media literacy of the parents and available technical tools for parental control but also new strategies like Safety by Design and the legal framework of children’s rights and parents duties shall be discussed.

Draft Agenda

Time Topic
0:00 – 0:05 Welcome and Introduction to the topic, Jutta Croll

0:05 – 0:10 What is the status quo of children's and youths' mobile Internet usage?
Findings from current research, Dr. Claudia Lampert
0:10 – 0:15 What are the most relevant threats to children's and youths' safety?
Findings from the field, Yuliya Morenets (TaC) / Amelia Gowa and Carla Licciardello – International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT) (as remote panelists)
0:15 – 0:20 What is the legal background to ensure children's and youths' privacy in a mobile online environment?
Findings from research, Abhilash Nair
0:20 – 0:25 What role can parental control tools play on mobile devices?
Clemens Gruber, SIP Benchmark III
0:25 – 0:30 What does industry do? Marco Pantini, Google

0:30 – 0:35 Introduction to the format of an Appreciative Inquiry Session

0:35 – 1:15 Discussion of the panelists with the plenary in four steps, each 10 min

1. Appreciating, valuing the best of what is – In the first step we will deal with the following questions and draw a positive picture: What is best of the current situation, what benefit does mobile Internet usage provide

2. Envisioning, what might be – In the second step we have a close look into the future discovering the challenges and positive impact of the developments regards future mobile technology and Internet services in view of parents duties and children's rights

3. Engaging in dialogue about what should be – In the third step we will engage the participants in a dialogue about the potential intelligent risk management for children and youth in a mobile environment.

4. Innovating, what will be – in the fourth step we will envision the future of responsible parenting in the light of respect for the rights of the child in a mobile environment.


1:15 – 1:30 Wrap-Up and Conclusions

The development of local content and applications are key drivers to spur the development of the Internet economy. However, a closer look at content and apps production reveals that the majority of content is produced by a few leading economies. A very moderate level of content is produced IN emerging and developing economies FOR these economies. In addition, apart from some few successful applications and content platforms, the local content and applications market has not scaled up in emerging countries and is currently fragmented.

Existing studies in Asia and Latin America have shown that a barrier to a higher adoption of the Internet and Internet services and applications, especially among low-income groups, is often that these income groups do not perceive the need of an Internet connection because no appropriate content is available for them that would add value to their businesses or lives.

If we managed to develop and promote policies that would significantly enhance content production and distribution in emerging and developing countries at a large scale, we would not only foster economic growth and social development in these countries, but also diversify the Internet economy and make it truly global.

This workshop intends to identify innovative policies and programmes that truly foster the development of content and applications in emerging and developing economies and that promote a local content ecosystem in these countries. Entrepreneurs producing local content in emerging economies will connect remotely from different continents to integrate their views on needs of developers in these economies.

Agenda:

1.Opening remarks on the production and distribution of local content and applications by moderator Andrew Wyckoff

2.Interventions by
a.Minister Diego Molano Vega – Local content and apps development in Colombia
b.Helani Galpaya – LIRNEasia research on developping an app ecosystem in India and Sri Lanka

3.Invitation to entrepreneurs from emerging countries to report remotely about their experience

4.Interventions by
a.Patricia Senghor – Fostering content development in Africa through the FIRE program
b.Konstantinos Komaitis – ISOC’s work and partnerships for local content

5.Discussion

Today, there seems to be more child abuse materials being circulated online than ever before. Whatever we have been doing up to now to get these images (stills, videos and live streaming) off the Internet has not been working well enough. Emerging forms of abuse involve one-time live streaming transmission of sexual abuse of children. Peer2Peer environments have superseded the web and other online environments as the major source of child abuse materials and the emergence of anonymous or hard to trace forms of electronic payment such as virtual currencies, appear to be online a new growth in commercial traffic in child abuse material.
Although there is clearly an important agenda which seeks to address the underlying causes of the child abuse depicted in all kinds of images, as well as a need to improve the speed with which law enforcement can identify victims in real life, rescue them, then pass them on to appropriate care or help agencies to aid their recovery, another key part of the challenge involves seeking to disrupt and reduce the traffic in child abuse images to the largest extent possible.
Given the volumes involved it is self-evident that technical solutions will play an increasingly important part in this struggle. Microsoft has produced PhotoDNA to deal with still images. Google is working on a similar product for videos. Other companies are working on or have developed similar or complementary measures. Google and Microsoft have both taken steps to reduce the potential for their search engines to be abused by those with sexual interests in children. "Splash pages" are now being deployed to discourage certain types of users from using search engines to locate child abuse materials.
This meeting of the Dynamic Coalition will look critically at the array of technical tools now being used in the fight against online child abuse material. How well are the tools working and, crucially, how widely are they being deployed? What more can be done to encourage wider take up? Is the Financial Services industry doing enough to interdict the abuse of their systems in relation to commercial exchanges?
We will organize a round table followed by an open discussion with the audience/members.

Economic activity, human development and civic engagement converge on the Internet. In connecting producers and consumers of information, online intermediaries serve as a valuable tool for growth and innovation. By organising and facilitating access to information, data and user-generated content, intermediaries play a crucial role in protecting the human rights of end users. While the economic benefits provided by online intermediaries is fairly widely acknowledged, a concerted approach to understanding their impact on human rights demands our urgent attention.
This workshop will consider the various roles and functions that intermediaries fulfil in the online space. Currently, the types of intermediaries covered by different liability regimes changes considerably across jurisdictions. Policy concerns raised by classification of functions and responsibilities across different types of intermediaries are not addressed systematically in existing law or jurisprudence, leading to widely differing regimes being imposed both across different legal systems and within the same legal system. The aim of this workshop will be, then, to come to a more in-depth and rounded understanding of what are the different classes of intermediaries, how they differ functionally and if their differing roles should bear an impact on their responsibility with regards to protection of human rights.
The workshop will be an opportunity to present and discuss ongoing research on the changing definition of intermediaries and their responsibilities across jurisdictions and technologies and contribute to a comprehensible framework for liability that is consistent with the capacity of the intermediary and with international human-rights standards.

More consumers now use their mobiles to go online to access information and services. Mobile plays a central role in driving economic growth and social opportunities. However, it is important that people can interact and access services in a trusted and secure environment that protects their online privacy.
Increasingly, mobile ecosystems acquire consumers’ data by default, while smartphones broadcast data by default. These ‘default’ positions challenge current data protection and privacy legal frameworks, and consumers’ ability to manage their privacy and online identities.
A key ingredient for strengthening trust in a mobile connected world is a user-centred privacy framework that applies to all digital and identity services whether in retail, healthcare, government, banking or any other sector.
The GSMA recently published global research showing trust matters and that mobile users want better transparency and choice over how their personal data are used. They also expect all companies accessing their data to treat their privacy consistently.
This workshop aims to bring together leading representatives from a broad spectrum of stakeholder groups to discuss privacy-related issues and ways to enhance mobile users’ trust.
Questions to address include:
• How can citizens – in both developed and developing countries – benefit from the responsible use of mobile-derived data?
• What are the key emerging issues and challenges of a mobile hyper-connected world?
• How can we ensure secure and trusted identities online?
• eds to be done to ensure consumers are able to access services in private, trusted and secure ways?
• What are the respective roles of law and industry self-regulation in enhancing trust?

This workshop discusses the issue of public interest or public responsibility and how different organizations in the Internet governance ecosystem have over the years evolved in this respect. Different organizations have certainly developed diverse approaches to the global public interest issue and how best to pursue it, while preserving the core objectives of the organization in question. Moreover, foundations and development agencies have been offering programs in developing and least developed economies using the tools and the powers of the information technology in general and the Internet in particular. 

Agenda: The Global Public Interest of the Internet 

 

Thursday, September 4, 2014

11:00- 12:30pm

 

Duration: 90 minutes

Schedule:

11:00-11:10 Introduction
Pierre Dandjinou


11:10-11:25 Defining the Global Public Interest of the Internet- the Work of Panel for the Public Responsibility Framework
Nii Quaynor 


11:25-11:50 How can organizations in the Internet governance ecosystem forge better collaboration in the global public interest agenda?
Nevine Tewfik
Rinalia Abdul Rahim

Titi Akinsanmi

11:50-12:25 Discussion
Led by Pierre Dandjinou

Pierre poses questions for floor discussion on defining public responsibility and the global public interest in the Internet, and the role of organizations, governments, and civil society in addressing this. 

Questions will also be taken from Remote participants.

12:25-12:30 Final Remarks from Panelists and Close

The process of moving to cities is putting tremendous pressure on sustainable growth and development globally, especially in developing countries. In this scenario, cloud computing and mobile Internet is becoming a key solution. However, compared with developed countries, development induced by Clouds and mobile Internet in developing countries is lagging behind.

Lacking of mature infrastructures is hindering developing countries to adopt Clouds and mobile Internet. More importantly, the shortage of implementation strategy is blocking developing countries to benefit from them in promoting economic growth and advance social development.

Despite of all these obstacles, some developing countries have taken some steps. With cloud computing and mobile Internet, development in China is led to a more sustainable way, by reducing the cost of growing business, raising the energy efficiency of IT infrastructure, and enhancing reasonable distribution of social resources. African countries is moving forward on advocating cloud computing by improving their interconnect speeds and reducing bandwidth costs.

With case studies, speakers from multi stakeholder groups from both developing countries and developed countries will address the issues on:
1.What are the challenges for developing countries to benefit from Clouds and mobile Internet?
2.How can we tackle the issues on IT infrastructure development in developing countries?
3.What are the practical strategies to make Clouds and mobile Internet contribute more efficiently in promoting sustainable growth and development of developing countries?
4.How can we encourage win-win multi-stakeholders co-operation between developed countries and developing countries, and among developing countries?

The proposed agenda is as follows:
1. Mr. Forrest Lin, the moderator of the workshop will make scene-setting remarks for 5 minutes.
2. Mr. Endong Wang will introduce Chinese Industry Cloud from two perspectives. High-end server, mass storage and cloud operating system; enterprise, industry and government informatization software, and terminal products and solutions developed in China all together form a solid foundation for the Chinese Industry Cloud. Then Mr. Endong Wang will present some cases of the construction of government cloud platform, industry cloud platform and enterprise cloud platform in China. The talk will last for 15 minutes.
3. Ms. Fiona Asonga from TESPOK will give an introduction of Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP) and how KIXP enhances Internet use with fast, efficient and inexpensive services. Ms. Fiona Asonga will lead the discussion on the adoption of cloud computing with the help of KIXP. The talk will last for 15 minutes.
4. Mr. Paulo Calçada from EuroCloud will discuss on how can developing countries benefit from the experience of European adoption of Cloud computing, especially the European Cloud Strategy. He would begin his talk with a brief description of European Cloud strategy followed with a case study on how European cloud strategy works. The talk will last for 15 minutes. The talk will last for 15 minutes.
5. Prof. Xiaofeng Tao from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications will briefly introduce 4G mobile Internet program in China and how Chinese benefit from 4G mobile Internet to promote Cloud Computing and other Internet services. The talk will last for 15 minutes.
6. Mr. Forrest Lin and Ms. Asonga will make a short conclusion of the above four talks for about 3 minutes.
7. Open Q&A will last 20 minutes allowing all the speakers and audience including remote participants to share experience, discuss on question of interest.
8. A short summary will be made by Mr. Forrest Lin and Ms. Asonga to wrap up the workshop.

There is an current trend among international IG organisations to work toward more globalisation, bringing and including more stakeholders.

As example, ICANN is increasing its efforts toward globalization and removing the perception of being an US-centric organization by establishing new offices and initiating new outreach projects. However, the main issues regarding developing countries’ participation, including all stakeholders, remain open and unresolved. These include, inter alia, incorporating developing countries’ issues into the policy development process, e.g .for the new gTLD program; under-representation of developing country applicants for gTLDs, and relatively few accredited registrars; and representation in policy development bodies like the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO). Stakeholders from developing regions often struggle to voice their opinions or to be effective within ICANN. Moreover, concern about developing countries’ challenges and interests has not always been been widely shared across the private sector community.

Accordingly, this workshop will explore such questions as:
1- How do we assess the extent to which the ICANN multistakeholder model for policy development is working for developing countries, particularly with respect to the new gTLDs?
2- How can developing countries’ concerns be systematically included in policy development processes in ICANN and other IG structures?
3- How can developing country participation in the GNSO process be enhanced?
4- How can ICANN become more fully globalized and responsive to the concerns of developing countries’ governments, civil society, business and technical communities?
5- How does the ICANN experience compare with civil society participation in other Internet Governance spaces.
6- What lessons does the ICANN experience offer for developing country participation in other global governance spaces?
7- What lessons can ICANN learn from different experiences in IG structures?

NCSG is the voice of civil society and nonprofit organizations in ICANN’s domain name policy
body, the GNSO, with more than 400 organizational and individual membership. It is composed of two constituencies, Noncommercial Users Constituency and Non ­Profit Operational Constituencies

Agenda:
1- Setting the scene : explaining context and objectives (10min)
2- Panelists' presentations: going through the questions above (25min)
3- Q/A session with the audience (40min)
4- Wrap-up: recommendations & actions (15min)

This meeting is aimed to rejuvenate the youth coalition on Internet Governance , bringing new leadership and setup a strategical plan for the next 3 years.
The meeting will involve new members working on setting new goals for the coalition and ensuring the transition.

The meeting will follow a roundtable format and will be facilitated by the interim coordinator (TBC). It will involve old and new members of the DC.

Do we really want to speak freely
- The topic concerns recent developments in different national and International courts that are setting standards for intermediary prior-control for free speech?
- Do we value our privacy rights over our freedom of expression? What are our wishes as users? As intermediaries? Other stakeholders?
- How to tackle offensive and potentially other illegal content online?