Date: Nov 6th, 2008
Time: 16:00-17:00
Location: ICANN Cairo, Room TBD (if you're on the ground in Cairo, contact Robert Guerra, guerra at freedomhouse.org)

The Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) and The Public Interest Registry (PIR) invite you to attend a reception to meet Cairo based bloggers and local Internet users and experts who will discuss and share their perspectives and views of week's events at the ICANN meeting.

In addition, a locally produced video, "Internet Freedom in Egypt," will be shown. The short piece explains how blogs are being used in Egypt to expose human rights abuses, and how Facebook and Twitter have been used to organize pro-democracy demonstrations and strikes. It also looks at the gov't crackdown and surveillance of bloggers.

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The workshop entitled "The Future of ICANN: After the JPA, What?" will be held Thursday, December 4, 2008 from 11:00-12:30 (local Hyderabad time, 5:30-7:00 UTC) at the upcoming Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India. Co-sponsored by the IGP, the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, Pharos Global and The Go Daddy Group, Inc., the workshop brings together several experts and practitioners in the field Internet governance to explore future models for governance of critical internet resources. The event will be webcast and online attendees will be able to submit questions through the IGF host website.   more »

The main session panel entitled "Transition from IPv4 to IPv6 " will be held Friday, December 5 2008 from 9:30-11:00 (local Hyderabad time, 4:00-5:30 UTC) at the upcoming Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India. The panel brings together experts and practitioners in the field Internet governance to explore the IP address governance regime and issues of IPv4 scarcity and the transition to IPv6. Operational, social and economic aspects will be explored, as well as policies and incentives being considered. The event will be webcast and online attendees will be able to submit questions through the IGF host website.   more »

Milton Mueller, appointed as professor to the Chair of Security and Privacy of Internet Users within the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at the Delft University of Technology will present an Inaugural Address, "The Future of Freedom on the internet: Security, Privacy and Global Governance" on Friday, 17 October 2008 at 3:00 PM (Central Europe time), 9:00 am US Eastern time. The 30 minute address will be webcast.

Milton Mueller will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Privacy in Social Network Sites Conference to be held October 23-24, 2008 at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The program is available here. Recently, Social Network Sites (SNS) have been used to support the American presidential campaigns and to smuggle photos of the natural disaster out of the country of Myanmar. However, the centralized collection, processing and dissemination of such as large amount of identity-relevant information has lead to increased disclosure of sensitive information, identity theft and physical and mental harm. This calls for a thorough consideration of why we should restrain access to our identity-relevant information and how a concept of ‘privacy’ in Social Network Sites could be developed. This conference will deal with a wide range of topics that relate to Social Network Sites, varying from moral reasons to protect privacy to concrete ways to protect users’ privacy.

Milton Mueller will present (via webcast) the paper "Scarcity in IP addresses: IPv4 Address Transfer Markets and the Regional Internet Address Registries" at an upcoming ITU Workshop on IPv6. The presentation is scheduled for Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 14:15 UTC (10:15 EST) during Session 3: "Economic dimension of IPv6 adoption. What is at stake?" A link to the webcast will be posted here on the day of the workshop. The draft agenda is available here.

The workshop, to be held 4 — 5 September in Geneva, Switzerland, will provide a platform for dialogue where key players in the field, including all ITU sectors, as well as other interested entities will be able to discuss and address international public policy issues on the migration to IPv6, as well as the economic aspects related to IP address allocation. It is designed to stimulate discussion and interaction with the audience, rather than a string of presentations and speeches provided by panelists and speakers.

Several papers on Internet governance will be presented during the 36th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy (TPRC), which will be held September 26 - September 28, 2008 at The National Center for Technology & Law, George Mason University School of Law, Arlington, VA. IGP's Milton Mueller will be moderating the "The Future of Internet Addressing" session (Saturday 2:00 PM EST) and Brenden Kuerbis will be presenting a paper, "Regional Address Registries: The New Center of Global Internet Governance" (Sunday 11:10 AM). In addition, there will be panels Friday on Jon Zittrain's recent book and the "Future of the Internet Economy: Developing a Medium Term Policy Research Agenda," as well as work presented on Saturday looking at the "Internet and Fundamental Human Rights" as well as "The Political Economy of Internet Governance." View the entire program.

IGP's Milton Mueller, Jeanette Hoffman and Brenden Kuerbis will be attending the Internet Governance Forum open consultations that will take place on 16 September, in room XIX in the Palais des Nations. These consultations will be followed by a meeting of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) on 17-18 September. View the meeting agenda.

At the the upcoming Paris meeting of ICANN June 23 - 28 some reforms may be made which could greatly improve ICANN's representative structure. In a nutshell, representation of noncommercial users (public interest groups, NGOs, and individuals of a public interest bent) will be increased from its current 14%, possibly to 25% or one-third. This will also involve a change in the nature of noncommercial interest representation in ICANN.

The NCUC is inviting all civil society organizations with an interest in the Internet and its global governance to be aware of this and take advantage of it. You do not have to go to Paris to participate. They are using online collaboration tools to extend the meeting between the ICANN Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) and the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) globally. NCUC will be using the Elluminate platform to permit remote participation in the meeting. Attendees will be able to pose questions or participate in the discussion, as well as be able to hear discussions going on in the meeting.   more »

Initiated in spring 2006 in conjunction with the UN Internet Governance Forum, the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) is hosting several events this year, including an upcoming international workshop on "Global Internet Governance: An Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction" in Paris, 23 June 2008, from 08:30 to 13:30, concurrent with the ICANN-Paris meeting. [invitation-fr] [invitation-en]

The purpose of the workshop, the first of its sort, is to allow scholars involved in Internet Governance related research to describe their ongoing research projects to other scholars in the field, in order to share ideas, forge possible collaborations, and identify emerging research themes in the field. Scholars from various academic disciplines and all regions of the world are expected to contribute to this reflexive exercise, with the long-term objective of collectively building this interdisciplinary research field.   more »

Call For Papers: Third GigaNet Annual Symposium
2 December, 2008
Hyderabad International Conference Center (HICC)
Hyderabad, India
Call For Papers [pdf] [html]

The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) is a scholarly community that promotes the development of Internet governance as a recognized, interdisciplinary field of study and facilitates informed dialogue on policy issues and related matters between scholars and governments, international organizations, the private sector, and civil society.

Each year, GigaNet organizes a one-day research symposium in conjunction with the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and in the same premises. After the first two editions in Athens, Greece (October 2006) and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (November 2007), the third GigaNet Annual Symposium will be held on December 2, 2008, in Hyderabad, India, the day before the 3rd IGF meeting. Attendance at the Symposium will be open to all and free of charge. The Symposium will be at the same location as the IGF and registration with the UN as an IGF participant may be necessary to gain entry to the building. This is a call for papers from scholars interested in presenting an original research paper at the conference.

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