[Chapter-delegates] Global INET Update

Thu Feb 2 10:18:40 PST 2012

Dear Chapter Delegates,

Here is the latest news on the Global INET.  Our session abstracts are in
near final form and we will be updating those details to our Global INET
website shortly.  For your reference, I've included the details of the
session abstracts in the body of this message (see below).  

A bit of background, we constructed our programme with feedback from a
number of sources.  During the Fall many of you had the opportunity to
contribute ideas for the Global INET, which are reflected in our program.
Additionally, we gathered feedback and ideas from our Board, our Public
Policy leadership team and our Organization members.  

While it is impossible to cover all the topics and issues we would like in a
short two day conference, our goal was to construct a programme that
addresses critical and current issues that face our Internet.  For example,
the Session "Digital Content, Intellectual Property and Innovation" will
address the tension between traditional intellectual property rights
protections and the innovative and creative character of the Internet.  Our
session "Youth and Social Networks - Transforming Business and Society" will
explore the complicated role social networking plays in our world and its
implications for the future.   As we continue to confirm speakers for our
Roundtable discussions, we would encourage you to send us names of senior
thought leaders who you feel would make valuable contributions to our
conference. 

All concurrent sessions are Roundtable discussions designed to produce
lively, informed debate.  We want all of you to take an active role in this
interactive format.  For those of you able to attend Global INET in person,
we expect you to engage our panelists and each other with thoughtful
questions and active participation.   For those of you not able to attend
Global INET in person, we will soon announce the details of a program to
support remote participation.  Our program will allow any chapter to serve
as a remote hub for the Global INET. 

You are already aware of, and working with ISOC staff on, the upcoming
Global Chapters Workshop, scheduled for 21-22 April, preceding the Global
INET.  A programme committee of Chapter Delegates to be named and announced
in the near future will be advising ISOC staff on the Global Chapters
Workshop agenda.  To ensure all the GCW participants have input into the
agenda, some aspects will remain unplanned.  And you should all have seen
the request for topics of interest, expressed through a survey. During the
course of the GCW, we will collaboratively determine many of the topics and
issues that the participants wish to add to the agenda.  Please complete the
survey so we can incorporate your feedback into our planning.

Another important aspect of our 20th Anniversary and Global INET is the
launch of our Internet Hall of Fame
(http://www.internetsociety.org/20th/internet-hall-fame).  This annual
program will honor the individuals who have fueled the development of the
Internet and used it to transform the lives of people throughout the world.
As a reminder, nominations for the Hall of Fame are due by 13 February 2012.
We hope you will join us in creating the Internet Hall of Fame by submitting
a nomination.  Nominations will be evaluated by the Hall of Fame Advisory
Board, and the 2012 inductees will be announced at the Global INET Awards
Gala, 23 April 2012.  

Should you have any questions regarding Global INET, please let us know.  We
look forward to your participation in this important program - either in
person, or remotely.

Best regards,

Ted

-------------------

Sessions Planned for the Global INET

Opening Roundtable

Governance in an Internetworked World: Wherein the public interest?

The Internet's impacts on the world economy, on our societies and on our
communication methods are all highly visible. The Internet's governance,
while less visible to users and most policy-makers, may ultimately be just
as transformative, as it is the first example of a large-scale, successful
multi-stakeholder governance model. 

The stakeholders in the Internet Governance Forum are charged with acting
"each to their official roles," but the appropriate roles have perhaps
become less clear than they were in 2005 when the World Summit on
Information Society created the IGF. The roles of industry and government
have become more pervasive. Private sector and technical community activity
have continued to grow, but may not be as well reflected.  

There are, however, natural tensions between different approaches to
governance and who leads in dealing with specific issues like human rights
and cyber crime. The multi-stakeholder model continues to advance and
thrive, though not without controversy.   

Join our conversation as we explore the tensions among the many approaches
to Internet governance and how best to serve the public interest.   Our
panelists will include both established figures and emerging leaders in
multi-stakeholder governance. 

-------------------

Session 1.1 

Contributing to the Global Internet: How the ecosystem learns and grows

As the Internet has grown from it's original relatively homogeneous set of
stakeholders it has had to adapt in order to incorporate new users, new
services, new infrastructure, and new use cases. Internet protocols have
proven to be extremely flexible and the developers of both hardware and
software have fostered several decades of constant innovation to support
continued growth and innovation. This session will introduce some of the
current challenges and opportunities in advancing the Internet as seen from
a regional perspective. Technical issues such as reliable power and
available infrastructure, cultural issues such as localized content and
support for multiple languages and scripts, and policy issues such as
privacy and data sharing and protection all need to be addressed in the
context of the global Internet. 

How we collectively address these issues will determine what kind of
Internet we can expect in the future. Solving for regional concerns while
maintaining global interconnection is a shared problem and the outcomes will
effect us all.

-------------------

Session 1.2

The Rule of Law and the Internet: Is the online world different from the
offline world?

The borderless Internet is creating a host of unfamiliar challenges for law
enforcement agencies around the world because many crimes occur beyond the
jurisdictions of national authorities.  Accordingly, some governments and
stakeholders have called for new national laws and international regimes to
facilitate more effective responses to these transborder challenges.
Conversely, others maintain that the existing policy frameworks are
generally sufficient since relatively few illegal acts are unique to the
online world (e.g. distributing malware or breaking into remote systems)
whereas many others are already criminalized under laws designed for the
offline world (e.g. identity theft, fraud).  The tension between borderless
crime and territorial-based jurisdictions also arises with respect to the
new technological tools being deployed by law enforcement agencies and their
private sector partners, such as deep packet inspection and DNS-based
blocking and disruptions.  Should the online world be policed in line with
standards that are not only different from but more expansive and permissive
than those we accept in the offline world?   Is there a risk that in so
doing, we risk losing sight of basic principles of due process, human rights
and the rule of law online?

This session will explore the principles and practices that are appropriate
for both worlds, and will consider how to deal with transborder issues that
cannot be effectively responded to at the national level alone. It will:

.           Identify the set of criminal acts that are unique to the
Internet environment and the set that are shared with the offline world;

.           Assess whether and how each set raises distinctive transborder
problems for both the effectiveness of national responses and the ability of
nation/states to pursue coordinated responses;

.           Focus on some key overarching problems and trade-offs in
designing solutions;

.           Ensure that the standards for utilizing new technological
solutions are consistent with fundamental human rights such as privacy
protection and freedom of speech;

.           Define the appropriate roles to be played by nongovernmental
actors that are increasingly being asked to take on more active roles,
sometimes without clear legal mandates, such as the CERTs, Internet Service
Providers, domain name registries and registrars, and content providers;

.           Avoid a situation in which the technologies, policies and
practices elaborated by democratic nations empower authoritarian governments
to suppress basic principles of rule of law, due process and human rights in
new ways;

.           Identify new modes of international and transnational
cooperation that are not only functionally effective but consistent with
multistakeholder participation and democratic accountability.

-------------------

Session 1.3 

Youth and Social Networking - Transforming Business and Society

The social networking revolution continues to extend its reach everywhere on
earth, opening doors, tearing through walls and creating thousands upon
thousands of virtual communities.  Social networking tools have long
eclipsed email as the de facto communication format for youth. Whatever is
next is already happening somewhere. What will it look like when it emerges
on the larger stage?  

This session will explore the complicated role social networking plays in
our world, how that role will evolve, and whether and how that evolution
should be or even can be guided   

.           How is social networking powering social and political change? 

.           In what ways is social media changing the very essence of human
interaction? 

.           What are the implications when transitory moments of our lives
are permanently documented via social media? 

-------------------

Session 2.1 

Digital Content, Intellectual Property and Innovation

The Internet has become a key driver of innovation in a global economy that
is increasingly dependent upon and defined by the expansion of human
creativity.  Its open architecture and generative nature have encouraged the
development of new forms of content creation by a greatly expanded range of
actors that employ previously unimaginable business models and practices,
such as globally distributed mass collaboration and remixing.  But while
celebrated by many Internet experts as heralding a new dawn of global
empowerment and creativity, these developments also have presented new
challenges for content creators that remain wedded to long-established
business models based on the rigorous definition and enforcement of
traditional intellectual property right protections.  This tension has
produced conflicts such as those recently experienced with respect to the
proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation in the United States, which seek to go
far beyond existing approaches to rights enforcement by targeting (and
arguably damaging) the Internet's critical resources.  So how do we
reconcile the need to preserve the Internet's fundamental character and its
empowerment of new forms of creativity with the legitimate desire of leading
content owners to control the revenues generated by their products?  And how
do we do this in a globalized environment where nation-states and
stakeholders often follow distinctly different policies and practices in
accordance with their local cultures and interests?

This session will explore the highly topical policy terrain that has
animated so much debate and action around the world and on the Internet in
recent months.

The session will:

.           Compare and contrast the relative merits of traditional business
models for content creation and dissemination with the new open and
collaborative approaches to harvesting the wealth of networks;

.           Identify possible third way business models that could meet the
baseline requirements of content creators by facilitating consumption at
reasonable but remunerative rates and thus avoid actions that could
undermine the Internet's contribution to the creative economy;

.           Assess the ability of existing national policies and
international regimes to adapt to the specificities of the borderless
Internet environment, and to strike a new and better balance between the
contending forces that opens a space for the emergence of new solutions.

.           Explore the problems and trade-offs of making technological
solutions central to business models and policy frameworks, and identify
options that would avoid doing damage to the Internet's stability and
security;

.           Assess the potential of international cooperation and reciprocal
agreements to assist law enforcement, while avoiding the unintended
side-effect of empowering authoritarian governments to limit dissent.

-------------------

Session 2.2 

Harnessing the Internet for Economic Transformation

Emerging and developing economies are at the forefront of Internet growth,
with many countries experiencing double-digit increases in Internet
penetration rates year on year.  Many are also experiencing some of the
fastest rates of GDP growth in the world, making emerging and developing
economies exciting markets for a range of Internet-enabled services and
trade. International offerings and investment will surely be part of the
growth equation.  However, there is also tremendous potential for fostering
"home grown" Internet and e-enabled services that cater not only to local
and regional markets, but also the rest of the world.

This panel will take a cross-sectoral approach to key questions including:
How do we catalyze the local entrepreneurship and innovation that will
transform emerging and developing economies from "Internet consumers" to
"Internet creators," brining with it local job and wealth creation?  What
are the broader opportunities and challenges for harnessing the Internet for
economic transformation?  What can we learn from successful ventures and
approaches to date?

-------------------

Session 2.3 

Collaboration: The Key Ingredient for Advancing Internet Innovation

The positive evolution of the Internet requires leaders who are able to work
productively within the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance. This
two-part session will address practices and processes for collaborating to
support an open and innovative Internet. 

Part 1: What Works? Stories of Successful Collaboration

In this part of the session, Internet leaders will share lessons and best
practices in collaboration at the junction of technical expertise and policy
leadership. 

.           How do the multiple stakeholders work collaboratively in
organizations like IETF, IGF and ICANN?  

.           How can we support their work and continue to advance the
multi-stakeholder model?

.           How do we ensure accountability within a multi-stakeholder
model? 

Part 2:  Collaboration: Design to Deployment

DNSSEC, IPv6 and new gTLDs are a few of the standards and technologies
involved in the long collaborative process that takes the world from design
to deployment.  This part of the session will address the challenges of
working in an environment where participation is open to all technical
experts and standards-based deployments are voluntary, while meeting the
needs of diverse users and the evolving network.

.           What are the challenges for the multi-stakeholder community in
advancing technological deployments?  

.           How do we detect consensus on new protocols across a range of
voices? 

.           How do we promote technology updates imperative to the health of
the Internet when they lack a clear short-term business rationale? 

-------------------

Closing Roundtable

Game Changers: Where will they take us by 2032?

Just 20 years ago, the Internet was very different from what we see today.
The Internet pioneers envisioned a world of opportunity and sharing - and
didn't focus much on business and commerce. Twenty years on, the Internet
has become a powerful force in every aspect of our lives.  It has also
become the locus for political, economic and social change, with all the
opportunities and challenges that brings.

If we look 20 years forward, what do we see?  Don't miss this incredible
opportunity to hear three generations of outspoken Internet game changers
and pioneers engage in a provocative discussion of where they believe we are
headed now.  Our roundtable of young entrepreneurs,  visionaries, and
pioneers, will engage one another in discussing their vision for the future
Internet and field questions from the audience.  

Join the discussion, share your views, and help us imagine how the Internet
will look when the Internet Society celebrates its 40th Anniversary.

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