Report 2009: Ehsan Norouzi

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Permalink Reply by Diplo IGCBP on August 26, 2009 at 4:14pm

European Summer School on Internet Governance (Euro-SSIG) 2009, Meissen, Germany

Participating in the 3rd European Summer School on Internet Governance (July 26 - Aug 1) which was held in the very nice and historical city of Meissen in Germany, made it one of the most inimitable and most advantageous week of my life.

There was a group of about 30 faculty members (including professors from different universities, technical professionals and ICANN and IGF officials) from 15 countries and a group of 32 participants from 22 countries of the world. Among the participants there were also five persons who passed or were passing IGCBP and it was nice to meet some Diplo students in person.

This well organized summer school was benefiting from a very comprehensive agenda. Although the whole program was very intensive for the participants (from morning to evening,) I never felt boring during the program and I can say it was so useful. Meanwhile, it was a very good opportunity for all of us to have widespread international relationships to improve our knowledge about Internet Governance and also have some useful friendships all over the world.

Here in this report I will try to have a review on my experience in Euro-SSIG in Meissen and share what I got from these 6 days with all my friends and classmates in Diplo Community.

Permalink Reply by Diplo IGCBP on August 26, 2009 at 4:17pm

1st Day:

After all the participants arrived there, we decided to take some memorable photos together first! The entire group gathered in the yard of Evangelische Academy of Meissen and then shots! Then the organizers of the program surprised us with a remarkable innovation: shaping a circle based on the distance that each participant or faculty member travelled to arrive in Meissen. The first person in the circle was a lady from Czech Republic who traversed about 100 km, then I was the second one (although I’m Iranian, I’m now living in Berlin and they just counted the distance from Berlin to Meissen about 180 km.) How about the last person of this circle? A friend who had traveled more than 12000 km.

The participants were divided to two groups: Internet Governance and Euro-NF (Network for Future) Group. In the first group mostly theoretical issues were discussed and presented, and in the second group mostly technical issues. But there was no obligation and it was optional. You could choose which parallel workshop you want to attend.

With a brief introduction of each participant and a description of the whole program by Prof. Wolfgang Kleinwächter, the 1st day was over.

Permalink Reply by Diplo IGCBP on August 26, 2009 at 4:20pm

2nd Day:

We started the 2nd day with intensive lectures and discussions. After each one hour lecture we had the time for discussions and after that the lecturer received a traditional Meissen wine as a gift!

The 1st presentation was about ‘History of Internet Governance’. Professor Wolfgang Kleinwächter’s lecture was started with introducing four waves of IG, continued with a review on WSIS, ICANN and IGF’s agenda and ended up with looking ahead the challenges and opportunities in 2015 with an amazing prediction: ‘Whatever happens, Internet Governance will remain the subject of high level political controversy.’

The 2nd presentation was Bill Drake’s ‘Holistic approach to Global IG’ that raised the concept of Global IG as a major issue in WSIS negotiations from 2002 to 2005. He believes this issue was resolved but there are still some misconceptions like: Governance denial, ICANN fetishism and State fetishism and for resolving them, a neutral and generalizable view is needed.

In the 3rd presentation, Arno Meulenkamp from RIPE lectured about Root Servers and IP

Addresses: ‘The Migration from IPv4 to IPv6’. It was more a technical presentation about the transition challenges and opportunities.

The last presentation was for Euro-NF group about IT-Security. The IG Group volunteers could register for the National presentations about the situation of Internet in their country for the next two days.

After all, we went to a very nice boat tour on Elbe River. It was fantastic, with live music, summer wine and altogether in a boat which shows you around the city in a nice summer day.

Permalink Reply by Diplo IGCBP on August 26, 2009 at 4:21pm

3rd Day:

The 1st lecture of this day was Prof. Paul Lukowicz’s ‘Mobile Communications and Ubiquitous Sensing.’ Based on this thesis that ‘Mobile phones are multimedia computers with a broad range of communication facilities’ he presented some statistics and showed the influences of new mobile phones on our daily life and also explained P2P Ad Hoc Routing and some ways using emerging technologies to analyze crowd behavior. There was also a parallel workshop in the afternoon about this issue for Euro-NF group.

In the 2nd presentation, Avri Doria talked about ‘The Role of Protocols, Standards and Codes of IG’. She talked about different understandings of Principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures and programs in the definition of IG which makes a ‘Creative Ambiguity’. She also explained the divided views on IG and the offspring of standards and protocols like Standard Development Organizations (SDOs) and forms of multistakeholder governance (MSG).

Dr. Jeanette Hofmann from LSE was the 3rd lecturer and talked about ‘Public and Private Authority in Internet Governance.’ This lecture was really provocative, because she asked all the participants to discuss about the different kinds of authorities: public, private, technical, moral, theoretical … and their legitimacy. After this lecture she also held a parallel workshop about the importance of individual users’ participation in ICANN.

Prof. John Bing from university of Oslo was the last lecturer of the 3rd day and the topic was ‘Intellectual Property and Privacy in the DNS.’ He started from the history of copyright and the very first intellectual property laws. Then he referred to the relevance of domain names and intellectual property and also trade mark regulation. Then he explained the rules for UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution) and its inspiration for different parts of the world. Prof. Bing ended up with some descriptions about data protection and the related directives.

After dinner, it was time for students’ national presentations. Ladies first! There were 6 presentations and five of the lecturers were female! Just one Egyptian friend saved us. Five presentations were about the situation of Internet in Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, Mongolia and Egypt and one of them was about Council of Europe and its role in defending freedom of speech.

Permalink Reply by Diplo IGCBP on August 26, 2009 at 4:24pm

4th Day:

Prof. Milton Mueller from Syracuse University iSchool was the first lecturer of the 4th day and the topic of his presentation was ‘The Political Dimension of Internet Governance.’ He said the “arms race” between controllers and controlled, digital convergence and global connectivity’s stance against territorial states made Internet Governance interesting and hard. After referring to some non-national ODii (Organically Developed Internet Institutions) like IETF, ISOC, RIRs, and ICANN … he alluded to WSIS as a clash of governance models. In his opinion the four drivers of IG are: Intellectual Property, Cyber-Security, Content Regulation and Critical Internet Resources. Then he talked about the importance of accountability and reform of ICANN. “If we can’t solve the ICANN problem, we probably can’t have a global, free Internet” he said.

The 2nd lecture was ‘Pricing and Cost Accounting: Regulatory and Business Dimension’ presented by Stefan Felder und Bernd Hartl from Austrian Telecommunication Regulatory Authority. This was a pure technical issue and followed by two parallel workshops from Euro-NF group.

The next presentation was about DE-CIX (Internet Exchange) presented by Arnold Nipper, the founder of this company.

IG Group’s workshop this day was ‘Bridging the Digital Divide’ by Prof. Olga Cavalli from University of Buenos Aires. It started with a quick review on development agendas (from Geneva to Tunis), ‘Millennium Development Goals’ and the requirements for sustainable development, continued with the challenges of the IG in developing countries and the influence of Internet in development and ended up with investigating the governance challenges after transiting to IPv6.

Again after dinner, we had the students’ national presentations and this time more men! All the presentations were about the situation of the Internet in lecturers’ home country: two from India and then Bangladesh, Ukraine, Cote d´Ivoire and Cameron.

Permalink Reply by Diplo IGCBP on August 26, 2009 at 4:24pm

5th Day:

In the 1st lecture of this day, Bertrand de la Chapelle, Vice Chair of ICANNs Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) talked about the ‘Challenges of Multistakeholderism for Global Diplomacy.’

Prof. Jon Bing was the 2nd lecturer for this topic: ‘International Law, Internet and the ICANN’s Bylaws.’ He reviewed ICANN’s Articles of Incorporation and also its strategic plan till 2011. “At the end of the life of this plan, ICANN will be a global organization that has completed all the requirements set out in the Joint Project Agreement with the United States Department of Commerce for transition to full private sector management.” He also mentioned gTLD Registry, Registrars and Data escrow holders as some parties with whom ICANN must sign contract.

The next lecture was Markus Fiedler’s ‘Quality of experience.’ He defined it: “…how a user perceives the usability of a service when in use - how satisfied he or she is with a service.” There was a parallel technical workshop about QoE for Euro-NF group as well.

Massimiliano Minisci, one of ICANN’s senior officials was the next lecturer. His presentation’s topic was ‘The Management of Critical Internet Resources.’ He explained ICANN’s mission and structure, its policy agenda, and also about new gTLDs as an example of how policy development process works in ICANN. He ended up with offering some ways for Improving Institutional Confidence.

After that, there was a Q&A session with Markus Kummer, Executive Secretary of IGF: ‘The Road to Sharm el Sheikh.’ Many questions raised and he patiently answered all the questions.

‘The Business Dimension on Internet Governance’ presented by Ayesha Hassan from ICC was the last lecture in the academy. We were invited to a “domain party” in Meissen famous porcelain manufactory by .Berlin domain. After a nice tour inside the factory and the museum, there was another presentation by our host, Dirk Kirschenowski, CEO of DotBerlin: ‘Broadening the Domain Name Space: Regional Top-Level-Domains (GeoTLDs).’ Can you imagine after all what a nice summer evening we had? All members of the group were just chanting: Domaaaaaaaaaaaain! and taking photos together.

Permalink Reply by Diplo IGCBP on August 26, 2009 at 4:26pm

The Great Last Day: Appointing Ambassadors and Farewell

On the last day, we had just some case presentations about the management of ccTLDs. The cases of .br .eu .nl .ch .at and .de. After that we had panel discussion on future of the IG for 1 hour. While it finished, we had couple of hours to rest before going to the restaurant for the farewell dinner and handover of certificates. For the unforgettable dinner we all went to historic Wine-Restaurant “Vinzenz Richter.” After dinner, everyone, either from participants or faculty members, had to sing a national song. Don’t even think about escaping! As Wolfgang said: “in this free country, there is no freedom of escape!” We all sang and then certificates were handed over. All participants were appointed as the ambassadors of Euro-SSIG. Therefore, as an ambassador of Euro-SSIG I’d really like to invite and encourage you to apply for 4th Summer School which will be held July 25-31, 2010. (You can have all the presentations and more information HERE.)

The next day I came back to Berlin while I missed all my new friends. Hope to see all of them soon, somewhere.

Permalink Reply by Diplo IGCBP on August 26, 2009 at 4:30pm

Just to clarify: this entire report was prepared by Ehsan Norouzi and we are just uploading it on his behalf.

In case you have been to any other IG-related event, we encourage you to post and share your experiences, questions, ideas and notes here on the Community either as a blog post or a forum thread in any of our thematic groups.

If you have any difficulty, just contact the IGCBP team and we will be happy to facilitate the posting, as we are doing today for Ehsan!

Permalink Reply by Ehsan Norouzi on August 26, 2009 at 7:40pm

Dear Seiiti,

Thanks for your kindness. That would be great if you transfer the links from the original documents, I think they are lost. Specially the last one (HERE in the last paragraph) that is referring to Euro-SSIG website so our friends can see the presentations and download them if they want.

Permalink Reply by Seiiti on August 27, 2009 at 6:13pm

Great! I guess all the links are now there, and those interested to know more can find HERE

Ehsan Norouzi said:

Dear Seiiti,

Thanks for your kindness. That would be great if you transfer the links from the original documents, I think they are lost. Specially the last one (HERE in the last paragraph) that is referring to Euro-SSIG website so our friends can see the presentations and download them if they want.

Permalink Reply by Sorina Teleanu on August 30, 2009 at 5:04pm

Great report, Eshan.

Indeed, the summer school was a great opportunity for us, the participants, to learn about IG-related aspects both from the lectures held by the faculty members, but also from eachother, during the discussions we had throughout the week.

I can only subscribe to Eshan's invitation, encouraging everyone interested to take part in the next summer school. I'm sure you will enjoy it.