News
Jamboree 2015 – Mixing & mingling, discussing & sharing!
This year’s Jamboree saw an overwhelming number of participants eager to meet and discuss the topics from every possible angle with colleagues from their field of expertise and beyond. More than 200 participants came to Stockholm to attend the Working Group (WG) meetings in the morning and to get involved in the joint and interactive sessions in the afternoon. .SE made them feel at home in Stockholm and experience the dark and cold side of “Nordic Noir”, as well as the bright and convivial side of Swedish culture.
ICANN’s CEO, the “I” farewell tour
By Giovanni Seppia (.eu), Chair of CENTR's Board
Last week at the European Parliament, ICANN’s CEO began what can only be described as his farewell tour. The topic of discussion at the European Internet Forum – formerly known as the European Internet “Foundation” – dinner should have been about the IANA Stewardship Transition. The subject was hardly broached however and failed to engage a broader community in a process that so far has been very limited not in its scope, but in the way actions have been deployed to make it truly “multistakeholder”.
Blog post: ICANN’s CEO, the “I” farewell tour
By Giovanni Seppia (.eu), Chair of CENTR's Board
Last week at the European Parliament, ICANN’s CEO began what can only be described as his farewell tour. The topic of discussion at the European Internet Forum – formerly known as the European Internet “Foundation” – dinner should have been about the IANA Stewardship Transition. The subject was hardly broached however and failed to engage a broader community in a process that so far has been very limited not in its scope, but in the way actions have been deployed to make it truly “multistakeholder”.
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CENTR Board Comment on the CCWG Accountability Initial Draft Proposal
- Recommends the CCWG further detail the proposal implementation timeline to foresee worse case scenarios and/or scenarios where the deployment of one or more sections of the proposal might be postponed due to the lack of community consensus;
- Recommends that any enhancement of any accountability process be linked and strongly supported by actions that improve the accountability literacy, culture and attitudes of the ICANN Board and staff;
- Believes that introducing a distinction between “ICANN Commitments” and “ICANN Core Values” may just add unnecessary complexity within an already over-structured statutory framework;
- Agrees that the proposed improvements to the Independent Review Process would enhance ICANN’s accountability, however having ICANN shouldering all the administrative costs of maintaining the system (including the panellist salaries) might undermine its independence; invites the CCWG to investigate possible alternatives, including the option of having the IRP managed by an internationally recognised body;
- Reiterates the requirement that any appeal mechanism must not cover ccTLD delegation and/or re-delegation issues;
- Recommends that the CCWG further investigates the membership model from a legal perspective and present an ad-hoc paper about it to the community to explain who is expected to become a member, under which jurisdiction the body will be incorporated, obligations and duties of current ccNSO Council members, implications for current ccNSO members, engagement options for non-ccNSO members as well as possible financial and administrative provisions of such a body;
- Highlights the importance of keeping the multistakeholder model as one of the key principles of ICANN;
- Reiterates the request that ICANN be more transparent in terms of IANA’s function costs and their itemization;
- Is supportive of the IANA Function review to take place no more than two years after the transition is completed, but believes that subsequent reviews should occur more regularly and not every five years.
Second High-level Conference on the EU Cybersecurity Strategy
The European Commission is holding it's Second High-level Conference on the EU Cybersecurity Strategy on 28 May 2015 in Brussels. The conference focuses on trust and security issues (including the Euorpean Cyber Strategy, NIS directive, Digital Single Market / trustworthy ICT). Speakers include: Commissioner G
CSTD 18th Session: one step closer to deciding what WSIS will look like for the next 10 years CSTD 18th Session: one step closer to deciding what WSIS will look like for the next 10 years
The Commission for Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) is a United Nations (UN) agency unlike some of the other key UN agencies involved in the Word Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process. ITU, UNESCO, and UNCTAD all contain a membership of all UN-recognised Member States. CSTD, on the other hand, has a very limited membership: 43 out of the UN’s 193 Member States, less than a quarter of all nation states, form the CSTD.
.SE acquitted – domain names not to be forfeited by the foundation
The ruling regarding the forfeiture of the domain names thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se was announced on Tuesday. The city court did not uphold the prosecutor’s claim against .SE. However, the two domain names will be forfeited from their domain owner and be transferred to the ownership of the Swedish state.
Blog post: CSTD 18th Session - One step closer to deciding what WSIS will look like for the next 10 years
The Commission for Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) is a United Nations (UN) agency unlike some of the other key UN agencies involved in the Word Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process. ITU, UNESCO, and UNCTAD all contain a membership of all UN-recognised Member States. CSTD, on the other hand, has a very limited membership: 43 out of the UN’s 193 Member States, less than a quarter of all nation states, form the CSTD. Yet, despite the fact that the CSTD is not even a body where all Member States can participate on an equal footing, a number of members of the Internet governance community believe the CSTD to be a body more ‘friendly’ to open, multistakeholder internet governance processes than the traditional ‘big bad’, the ITU. However, less than a month before the UN General Assembly’s preparatory process for its December 2015 High Level Meeting on the WSIS 10-year review begins, it is a good time to review whether the internet community should continue viewing CSTD as a forum that is friendly to the principles of WSIS established in 2003.
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CENTR Board conclusions: ccTLD community pulls together to face upcoming challenges
After having reviewed and assessed the current environment and service levels, the Board acknowledged and agreed on the following:
- The cohesion among CENTR members and their expertise remain the key strength of the CENTR community. This cohesion should be fostered through consistency in handling membership applications.
- All action points identified in the conclusions of last year’s strategic retreat were addressed appropriately.
- The CENTR Secretariat is progressing well in achieving the 2015 Strategy Plan goals. In particular we note improvements in reports and publications and the profiling of the organisation as the centre of excellence for ccTLD/DNS related matters, e.g. through the recent EC training and the strong interaction with its membership and Internet organisations regarding the current debates such as the IANA stewardship transition.
- The DNS environment is currently going through major challenges and changes, including, but not limited to, the IANA Stewardship transition, the ICANN accountability review process and the renewal of the IGF mandate. CENTR has been playing a leading role in keeping its membership informed and will continue to do so in the future.
- The domain name market is likely to be impacted by significant industry changes in the mid-term that may affect the capacity of CENTR members to keep their commitment to the organisation at the current level. Therefore, the Secretariat should continue to monitor the evolution of the market and provide a yearly in-depth market analysis to the Board and membership.
- Considering the initiatives that have already been deployed at educational level, the Secretariat will produce a more structured strategy for dealing with the EU institutions. Furthermore, the Secretariat will prepare and deploy a communication strategy that supports the organisations priorities and membership needs. Both the EU and communication strategies will be presented at the next GA in Brussels.
- The role of observers was discussed further. The Secretariat is tasked to further investigate this matter and design a proposal to be presented at the next GA.
- Considering the time spent by the Secretariat in following and attending international meetings like ICANN, the Secretariat should assess the value of this engagement with its membership and eventually, streamline and/or optimise it in the coming years, taking into account the possible new configuration of the IGF meetings and the already approved new ICANN meeting structure.
- The Secretariat was instructed to look for ways to optimise future costs relating to CENTR GA´s and Jamboree meetings. The objective: to keep costs at a level where no member feels that being a host for a GA or Jamboree would be unnecessary burdensome.
The CENTR Board members
Elisabeth Ekstrand
Roadmap or dead end? Towards a 'digital single market'
By Nina Elzer, CENTR Policy Adviser
You may remember the Commission’s promise to keep the number of new legislative proposals to a minimum? A clever way of doing so is mixing legislative proposals (or packs of proposals) with as many 'reviews', 'measures', 'inquiries', 'analysis', etc. as you can. And thus was produced a strategy to 'complete the digital single market' (and a promise not kept).