______________________________________________________________________ DRAFT TRANSCRIPT Internet governance discussion Tuesday 22 February 2005 4.00pm ______________________________________________________________________ IZUMI AIZU Dieter may want to start and Gaurab may follow. Should we do this physically? To make things more interesting, I may just randomly appoint you so you have to be prepared by any time after Gaurab makes his presentation, unless you want to carry on. Nobody wants to take the last. We'll see. OK. I think time is almost now and this is the panel so-called 'the wrong answers to the wrong questions?". The wrong answers to the wrong questions - policy priorities for the maturing Internet. Is the Internet maturing? I don't know. This is under the APNIC tutorial slot, co-hosted by the UNDP-APDIP Open Regional Dialogue on Internet Governance. Also, it is jointly hosted by the Internet Governance Task Force of Japan, for which Maruyama-san is presenting. My name is Izumi Aizu. I'm also the secretary of the IGTF. Today, I'm a last-minute addition to be moderator because the original one couldn't make it. To make a long story short, we have six panel members from Geoff Huston, APNIC Australia and Naomasa Maruyama from IGTF/JPNIC in Japan. James Seng from APEET in Singapore. Gaurab Upadhaya, from Packet Clearing House in Nepal and Dieter Zinnbauer from the UNDP-APDIP. Each will have five minutes on the subject of Internet governance. As you can see, there are some tentative themes the panel members indicated to talk about, which you can change at the last minute and these should be somehow related to the Internet governance. As you may - most of you may know, this subject of Internet governance became a very much heated debate in the United Nations WSIS, the World Summit on the Information Society. On the one hand, it is a very political procedural context and some governments don't like the current framework of the management of some of the resources such as domain name and server allocations and they couldn't really resolve this in the United Nations in the last Geneva summit of the information society and they decided to ask the United Nations to set up a working group, which had two meetings already. I just came back from the second meeting in Geneva, which took place on Monday last week to Thursday. They've just prepared a preliminary report of the group. Last night, I think, it was on the website. It was designed so because they don't want to put the content of the report subject to any negotiation of the governments at this early round. They're planning to have another two meetings, one in April and another one in June, to reach some kind of a final report, after which, the government will start the negotiation. I think that Dieter will explain more particularly why we are having this under the Europe initiative and what is the aim of this panel. I'd like to give the floor to Dieter. DIETER ZINNBAUER Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to thank APNIC for hosting this panel and also the Internet Governance Task Force of Japan for joining us in organising this. I'd like, basically, to do two things in my five minutes. First of all, I'd like a quick run through of who we are, what we've been doing and how to get involved and secondly to kick-start the discussion a little bit and, speaking for myself, basically, I'll give you one example of an issue area where I think things are going wrong in Internet governance and hopefully we can discuss this a bit further. What is APDIP? Who are we? For all of you who don't live in UN acronym country. APDIP Stands for the Asia-Pacific Development Information Program. It's a UN initiative which moved to Bangkok in early April. APDIP's main mission is to promote the design operation and use of ICTs for sustainable human development and combating poverty and, in late 2004, APDIP launched an initiative with relation to Internet governance. They call it is the Open Regional Dialogue on Internet Governance, for short, ORDIG. It was launched in 2004, October 2004. It's the product of a brainstorming meeting in July 2004 in Kuala Lumpur, with representatives from more than 20 countries held back to back with the ICANN meetings. ORDIG receives funding from the International Development Research Centre of Canada and are partners with various institutions on certain activities such as APNIC, UNESCAP or the Diplo Foundation. The objectives of ORDIG are to facilitate an open and inclusive dialogue on Internet governance in the region, so identify priority areas for research and commission targeted research on these issues and to, in general, strengthen the voice of stakeholder groups from the Asia Pacific in the ongoing international processes, such as WGIG, WSIS and other forums. Examples of activities we've undertaken so far and which are in the pipeline include the online forum, which was concluded last week, with more than 180 participants from the region, 27 countries of the region, all stakeholder groups, produced some very lively debates. I think many of you, um, participated actively in that and we've just published a report that's available on the website and you can visit the archives if you're interested. There are some pretty interesting case studies. We are right now conducting an online survey about Internet priorities in the region. It's an online questionnaire. It doesn't take much time to fill out. It can be done in 10 minutes. It's available in 12 languages of the region and we have so far received over 700 replies to that and the questionnaire is open for another 1.5 weeks. We will invite everyone to take the questionnaire and also support it - tell their colleagues to go in and fill out this questionnaire. Activities in the pipeline over the next month will include the update of training materials on Internet governance, specifically responding to the needs of countries in the region. And we'll also hold training sessions for Internet governance issues and explore opportunities to do more capacity building with regard to Internet governance. (Checks watch) One more minute, OK. So, how to get involved - just to sum this up - you can take our survey and promote the survey. You can - this is another issue I forgot to mention - we are launching a portal on Internet governance and ICT policies very soon. This will be a team block style, a kuro5hin and Slashdot thing. Eight team editors will oversee this. Everyone will be able to contribute comments and also resources. So we invite you all to participate there. Finally, just to clarify, being the UN, we always -- we're always under suspicion of taking one side or the other in Internet governance. I want to make sure that we see ourselves at UNDP-APDIP as facilitators of a dialogue. We want to support a dialogue between all stakeholder groups but we're not actively participating and taking sides. Our definition of Internet governance is also very undogmatic. It's not a narrow one. We consider Internet governance as a whole range of Internet policy issues and don't want to narrow it down. IZUMI AIZU Next speaker - we'll add questions for you later. You were 20 seconds past your time frame. The next speaker is Gaurab and he's talking about Internet connection and stuff like that. GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA Thank you to APNIC. I won't waste my time. I'll start off. When I was asked to speak on this panel, I was like, "What Internet governance?" I shall speak about things I know about. I'm going to talk about ISPs, transit and peering. A pre-condition when you go to the Internet governance forum is that there will be countries complaining about the cost of bandwidth. So I'll run through this very fast. This is how the Internet works (refers to slide). If a customer is going through an ISP to another third-party customer, then they are paying something. This is a general model of an IX. So, on the Internet, this is what happens - is there is equal flow of money from both sides, from the recipient to the ISP and so on. Is how the money flows, this is how the packet flows in the first case and how the money flows. Then, on the telco side, it's quite the opposite. In this case, this is how the call flows and how the money flows. You pay a huge amount of money to take their calls and the telco pays an equal amount of money and then the terminating site, your telco, also receives a huge chunk of money and then you actually end up paying your telco to receive the calls. So that's why companies are not happy that their source of revenue, which is at this point here, is being taken away by the Internet which is working on a more equal basis and that's a problem that we have seen and that's what keeps on coming. Any telco would like to be in this situation, they would like to receive their calls on the circuit and then use another ITU. At the same time, they'd like to flow calls through the Internet and save money. This is how the Internet is working right now. Let's look at two more definitions here. So when I say 'transit', you are basically paying to access someone's network. That's why you are paying them and that is transit. The cost of transit is very, very variable and that never seems to come up in discussions. We can buy transit at US $50 per meg all the way to $4,000 per meg and even higher. If there is only one person, your costs will be higher. It can cost $5,000 in some areas and up to $8,000 in the Pacific. Then there is peering, where you don't pay the other party to access. Two parties agree that the relative value of their combined network is higher than the individual components. And then local Internet exchanges provide the ability for on raters to exchange traffic at the lowest cost. So the question is whether we want to increase governance to protect the market or let it grow and evolve in itself. The current system largely works. The question to the audience and fellow panelists would be - do we want to have a system of IT regimes? Even if we do that, will the benefits be taken up by the big monopolies, as was done in the earlier days. Or do we create more viable local Internet economies and decrease the dependency on the international transit market, so that you stop complaining about the transit cost being too high because you no longer need transit, which means we make more Internet Exchange points and create more markets. That's my version. This is probably the question - do we want to protect the market or do we want to let the market decide itself and let it grow? I have 16 more seconds. IZUMI AIZU Quite. GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA My answer is probably clear. I think the system is largely working. We'd probably see more Internet Exchange points, more local content. The price of transit - if you decrease your dependence on transit, then the price of transit is definitely going to go down. You have to have that all the time. You can't complain that Im not willing to pay a certain price to access someone else's network. In that case, I will build up my own network. Otherwise, if somebody else has the capacity to set the price, I have to pay the price. If you try to distort that, the whole system will stop working. IZUMI AIZU Thank you, Gaurab. We can revisit this. There are still some governments complaining there is no fair distribution of the boundaries, that some international charges are higher than they should be. From Korean perspective, we're talking about domain policies. OK, Chun Eung Hwi, you have your five minutes. CHUN EUNG HWI Generally speaking, now, we have two different kinds of thinking on the definite of Internet governance. The first one is that Internet governance is set with ICANN and the change in the ICANN structure is an issue and specific countries like China, India, Brazil and Syria are saying ICANN's function should be replaced, it is too narrow within the framework of ICANN. The other perspective is that the whole set of Internet-related issues should be taken into account in the name of Internet governance or ICT governance. This position is taking another perspective and trying to cover up the whole issues like spam regulation, Internet-related crimes, privacy, consumer protection, intellectual property rights, etc. Maybe WGIG and WSIS has a study to collect the full issue lists depending on this kind of thinking. However, now, some governments are saying that this avenue of thinking is very sophisticated tactic to make the issue of ICANN out of focus. They are truly thinking that ICANN is only one target of the debate of Internet governance. Personally speaking, I think we cannot escape from taking ICANN related to things from this debate because Internet name scheme and authoritative route server issue is at the centre of all other issues. So, if we like it or not, ICANN should be the central concern of the Internet governance debate. I'd like to make some critical comments on ICANN in terms of its policies and its structures. To date, ICANN has accomplished many things. Many people are asking whether ICANN is working creatively, whether things have been rightfully done. To answer these questions, I want to illustrate a few policy examples which have been some successful achievements of ICANN for the last five or six years since its inception. The first representative achievement of ICANN was so set up a registry and registrar system. All registries are being shared now. Domain name market had been distributed over the registrar companies. So the proposal introduced competition to the domain name market. That seems to be very successful. While it is definitely a successful case, on the other hand, as a result of that mechanism, the whole market of the domain name market has been expanded to the global scale. Throughout the accredited registrars, looks like branches of the monopoly registry. Throughout this effective coordination activity of ICANN, only one monopoly company is dominating the whole global market of domain name. Does it make sense? And second successful case would be the UNDP case. That should have been undertaken by the United States courts or sorted out with resolution policies. So, compared with the past, definitely, after the introduction of UDIP, in terms of the protection of the market, it has become better. However, the proposal of UDIP was not to protect general users' rights. The balance between the market and users' rights has been severely broken down. We should remind that UDIP was given as one necessary mandate since the white paper. The United States Government wanted to make sure that the Internet would not be onerous in terms of domain name space. UDIP has resulted in the sunrise policy. Throughout this beauty contest, most applicants promised to introduce the policy of sunrise. Sunrise was to protect trademark rights onus. Since the year 2002 the structure of GNSO is under review. If my memory is right, that copy of UDIP review was surviving up to ICANN in the year 2003 but now it seems to be completely disappeared from the GNSO discussion. OK, that's it. IZUMI AIZU Thank you. So we heard about the Internet Exchange and then about ICANN's introduction of competition but whether it is fully implemented or not is your question. Geoff is sitting next to me and prepared for the slide so I will give the floor to Geoff, so the remaining two persons, be prepared for the last two slots. GEOFF HUSTON Firstly, I'd like to apologise for Paul Wilson. He unfortunately couldn't be here so I'm in his place. Welcome to the largest and most impressive achievement of the 20th century. The global communications industry is the one thing that will endure in history as what we did in the past century. It is the largest and most valuable activity centre that we have ever seen and it's changing. What was built originally was built as a public sector activity, largely through public sector investment. We call them monopoly telcos but that information infrastructure was a public activity. The characterisation of that internationally was the balancing of national interests in a common framework, treaties, international agencies and coordinated regulatory recommendations. The private sector operates differently. The private sector is a market dynamic, providers and consumers. The market is moderated through competitive supply disciplines - if I charge too much, my competitor can supply it for less. Demand determines supply. The market reduces what people want. And the communication sector is changing. All of you in your national environments are seeing deregulation. Competitive suppliers operating in open markets, whether it's even in the telco sector or the Internet sector. The regulatory power is now a reserve one about the operation of markets. So what do we have in the Internet today? Critics of the ITU-T would see it as an unreformed, recalcitrant historical relic of no further interest or relevance to the Internet and modern-day communications. Critics of ICANN would see it largely as the veneer of a self-regulatory private structure, further entrenching the privileged positions of the few at the expense of the remainder. Those are harsh comments but, beneath them all, I think, is a grain of truth. There is a real challenge here. Because when you have a set of private sector activities globally, what's the regulatory structure internationally that moderates that activity - fair and equitable access to the service to ensure fundamental principles that a communications service is only of value when everyone can use it. What's the role of public policy setting when all the players are changing? This is no longer governments and public sector activity. Something is very, very different here. The question I think is the most fundamental question that I would like to see is addressed and I think is before us all - is are the institutions we're dealing with the right ones? Is the ITU-T as an intergovernmental policy of less relevance than a World Trade Organisation looking at the aspects of private sector activity across an international space? And, indeed, is ICANN the right way of going forward given its sectorial interests and, indeed, is it even capable of reforming that entrenched position of the few to the benefit of the rest? Do we need to consider, quite fundamental changes? I would put to you in closing that the industrial revolution, the use of mechanical engines, fundamentally changed society. It didn't happen in 10 years of 50. It took a couple of centuries and we're still polishing off the final bits. This change is just as fundamental and will require, perhaps, just as much time. The answers coming out this year are merely temporary. We have a lot to learn and a lot to change. And I would hope the enduring outcome of the 21st century is a communications sector that is less concerned with getting richer and more concerned with actually servicing a global population with services, products and, indeed, the ability to simply communicate. Thank you. APPLAUSE IZUMI AIZU Thank you. You were so precise and you have 45 seconds. Without further ado, which one would you like to take? Maruyama-san? NAOMASA MARUYAMA Is this mic working? OK. I'm quite frightened to hear these people's speeches. They gave their opinion. That is something different from the plan of this session's organiser. He said that the opening comments should be very short and then wanted speech from the floor. So I'm not so prepared for this speech. But I have to say that the - I represent IGTF of Japan, that is the voluntary organisation that consists of the four organisations, JPNIC, JP RS and IAjapan and Japan Internet Service Provider Association. That is the IGTF. And, already, we gave some comments to the IG activity and that is something I want to say here. Just very short comments. WGIG, as you know, has a very hectic schedule. They are discussing a huge amount of things and we gave some comments to their papers and it's already on our website - www.igtf.jp. I don't want to talk so far about that so please refer to that. But one feeling I want to express here is the hectic schedule - what the hectic schedule caused for us, that is it seems that one thing is that Dieter is working very hard because he had to travel to Geneva to give the speech to WGIG and actually I appreciate that very much but probably that is something that he deserves because he is the only paid staff of IGTF. But the other thing is we have to work very hard and, to be quite frank, our comment is not consistent enough. I think we gave a fairly good piece of comments to look at the all of them, quite frankly, we didn't have enough time to make consistency among them. That is something I'm very regretful about that. But, anyway, it seems that also, there is not enough consistency in the work style of WGIG. That is one thing I want to comment here. Look at the very first announcement about the first meeting in Geneva that they planned to discuss the... let's see, where was it? (Consults papers) The first announcement in Geneva from the WGIG is that - was that they were planning to discuss in February about the preliminary report they were preparing. And the second one in the WGIG website is that the - IZUMI AIZU One minute left. NAOMASA MARUYAMA Yeah. About the issue papers, the issue paper, they say that the issue paper is are prepared for the development of the preliminary report, that is the second announcement I read in the website. And the third thing I mention here is about the issue papers. They did not necessarily present a consensus position nor do they contain agreed language accepted by every member. This gave me a very strange feeling about what is the strategy for the work plan? How they work for the preparation of the preliminary report? So the main - my concern is that there was a relation between the issue papers and the outcome of the preliminary report and it seemed that there is no consensus amongst them about the working procedure. That is one thing I have to comment here. And that is what I prepared for this opening speech. IZUMI AIZU Thank you Maruyama-san. The preliminary report is put on the website, I think yesterday or last night. As I said, it's more or less content-less at this stage. You made a very interesting comment in the Open Regional Dialogue on Internet Governance forum as well. Are you talking about this or something different? JAMES SENG Something different. IZUMI AIZU OK, the floor is yours. JAMES SENG First of all I apologise - I work for many organisations so I don't know which to choose. I work for the government of Singapore. However, I do not speak for IGF Singapore. On the other hand when I was asked before, I pulled one out of the blue. It could be any of the organisations I'm with. I will talk about - a little bit about Internet governance in general, especially the definition, which I feel that the working group for Internet governance, in a way, has avoided the topic. It is focusing on the issue and right down to the promise issues of a specific domain. If is too political-centric. It comes from different angles. Is it really governed because it has the implication of intergovernments or government involvement. Is it more in a coordination role where party A and party B are working together and we define a set of procedures for two groups of people working together? Well, the choice of words is definition and, in reality, actually, the Internet is a little bit of combination of both. There is coordinations of peering, coordination of BGP routing, the e-mail system, all by coordination but each jurisdiction of countries of laws. What is very clear from this whole exercise in the last two or three years of debate, is that everyone, everyone wants a piece of the action. Everyone sees this as a struggle for power where it's a chance to gain more power in this political space, to gain more control over the Internet. And there's also a general perception that power, the central power of the Internet today, is really in the US. That, in itself, is a wrong perception, because the central power is not really within the US - and I'm not denying that there is a lot of coordination and control of the Internet coming from the United States and that's where the Internet is developed. But, in reality, the power, the "power" is really distributed across a lot more organisations, is controlled by different organisations. The ASO, RIPE Regional Internet Registry allocates Internet addresses and they all work together and each of them has their own sets of responsibilities to the proper function of the Internet. And, very often, because of these perceptions, I get a general question like, "Are you for ITU or are you for ICANN?" It's a very common question, which, unfortunately, is the wrong question. I don't think we should be talking about the debate between whether it's ICANN or ITU in the role of Internet governance because each of them plays a role in the proper function of Internet. The question is what role? So, in trying to get - what I'm trying to say is that my position in the debates about the definition of Internet governance is that you will cover anything that relates to the proper functions of the Internet. So this may be IP addresses, route server, DNS, peering, interconnection, etc, etc. There's huge things under the sun. On the other hand, things that are not Internet-specific things, like privacy, things like copyrights may or may not fall under the Internet governance or perhaps a subset of those, Internet privacy is related to how data has been used over the Internet, may fall into the Internet governance domain but we should not lump that into the whole ICT problem. We should not lump those into one. And, in terms of organisation, as I mentioned - the decision-making process of the Internet governance is really spread amongst lots of organisations and they are really run by self-governance and I believe the self-regulation model is much better than the centralised model. There are concerns of consequences of centralised control. On the other hand, I do sport more developing countries, especially China, India, to get more involved in Internet governance process, coordination, if you like. It's not about intergovernment but really bringing the right people from these developing countries who has the right expertise or the right insight, into the decision-making process of how the Internet is to be coordinated. Additionally, I'm concerned about a few things. I'm concerned about the structure that the working group for Internet governance is talking about. There's huge debate about forming one central organisation and I'm concerned about the process, that issues continue to be raised, how issues will be raised and resolved in the Internet governance. People like IP telephony, most people have one of these (holds up a cellular phone) about internationalised domain names and we also, at the same time, see groups which try to lobby and put their own self-interest in the debate of Internet governance, things like user protection. Time's up. Thank you. IZUMI AIZU Sorry. Thank you. With all the efforts of the great panel members, we still have almost one hour to have a good discussion and we'll have by 5 30. Do we have to the really clear the room by 5 30 sharp? Can it be 5 33 or 5 35? Maybe. Anyway, just to summarise some of what I heard. First, Dieter outlined the activities of APDIP is trying to deliver more voices from this region. Am I right Dieter? DIETER ZINNBAUER Yeah. IZUMI AIZU That includes developing countries. After Dieter, Gaurab mentioned about Internet Exchange, that there is only one answer of more distributed or equitable distribution of the resources and don't go back to the old regime. Is that your message? Do you mean that the current framework is working under that or you need more change? Yes or no? GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA The current framework is working. IZUMI AIZU Maybe I gave the wrong question, perhaps. But the answer seemed to be right. Then, Chun, you were talking about basically ICANNs policy framework, which made certain accomplishments to introduce competition into the domain name market, if not IP addresses. But, in reality, these are far from ideal. There are a lot of rooms to be improved, that the real monopoly behaviour may not have been, sort of, adjusted to an acceptable level. Is that what you're saying? CHUN EUNG HWI Yeah. IZUMI AIZU You agree with the current framework in theory but in reality, the current framework needs to be improved a lot. Is that your message? CHUN EUNG HWI Exactly. IZUMI AIZU Geoff pointed out that the question is wrong, that neither of these two parties are not close to ideal, has been proved. But you didn't indicate where to go. What's your answer if these two are not functioning? What's pragmatic ways to go ahead? GEOFF HUSTON If I knew that definitively, I'd probably be employed by someone else doing a different job. This is actually an extremely hard question and we don't have models in other industries to work off. The issue about communications is its international, indeed, its global nature. As an activity centre, we're competing and cooperating simultaneously. I do think that the ITU-T does not have sufficient engagement with the private sector to truly be effective in this area but, equally, with ICANN, their efforts to start from industry bottom-up self- regulatory systems has already come into market distortions that in a national context we're moving to regulate that market. Where is the regulator in that larger space? And that is my most fundamental question? Do I have an answer? Unfortunately, not personally. IZUMI AIZU Thank you. I can share that, because we have this panel. Then, I believe, we heard from Maruyama-san. You're much more specific in this working method of the working group of Internet governance is not quite consistent. NAOMASA MARUYAMA Yeah, yeah, to be very brief, I gave the question about the working plan of the WGIG. This is a very short message and a little bit longer - I feel, when I saw the issue papers, I felt it's a good idea to think about not the existing organisation, but the functions which should exist in this. So that, if you look at each issue paper as the description of the functions needed now, that is the probably good start point. But what happened later, I mean, the how the issue papers will be treated, they are not consistent in that point so that, if you - as we can easily imagine, that if we discuss which organisation is good, then the discussion will be very political. So that, if someone wants to have a fruitful discussion, then one idea is to discuss the functions, not the organisation, then go to the organisation discussion. That is one way, I think, a productive way to discuss. But I'm not sure they are taking that situation now. IZUMI AIZU OK. We can come back to this, maybe with the audience in a few minutes. So, James, you're talking about the reality is different from what the political debate is saying. Is that true? That power may seem to be concentrated in the US but, in reality, it is more distributed and functioning well. Or am I wrong? JAMES SENG Yes. It might be a little bit sensitive. Let me see how to put this - a lot of people see ICANN as THE governance or coordination body for IP addresses and domain names but, if you look at it, ICANN, Internet governance issue actually covers more than what ICANN does. But if you just zoom in on the role of ICANN specifically, even that itself is not exactly sure that ICANN does most of it. Let's put it this way, let's see IP addresses, is the IP address issue for ICANN? If you go through it, it's IANA that coordinates it together with the Regional Internet Registries and the ISPs obtain IP addresses between the Regional Internet Registry. End users get it from the ISP that get the addresses from the Regional Internet Registry. If you go through that scheme, is ICANN issuing IP addresses? The answer is yes and no. Yes, because they do part of the chain of the organisation that is involved but they are not the final authority. And lot of that is based on coordination of different bodies and cooperation of these people working together and say some organisation - I don't want to put names, say X, Y, Z take over the function of ICANN? Not really, because the relationship is tight. When you say power is concentrated in ICANN, that's the wrong perception. It's not the power that is in ICANN but rather the coordination. It's done through multiple organisations. IZUMI AIZU OK. Maybe from the audience, you have a lot of questions and comments and also there are some remote participants. Do we already have some questions or comments? Oh, no? Really? Are remote participants watching? Anyway, we expect someone will make online comments later. Now the floor is open. IZUMI AIZU Go ahead. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR I work for an ISP in Hong Kong. My question was - how do you - is there - one of the main issues - IZUMI AIZU If you could just speak up. Just speak up. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR OK. One of the. (Microphone not working) It work. One of the main issues appears to be domain names, route servers and IPs. The issue papers seem to make a little or no distinction between all of these. I've seen so far it seems to be a direct, an attempt to set up a parallel structure for this. There seems to be a general perception given the telecom background of ITU-T that IP address allocation and domain name handling work the same way as for example the numbering system. And that it is perfectly feasible to set up more or less a structure for this supplanting or in some cases replacing the existing structure. Is this going to be feasible according to you and how do you reconcile, for example, ITU-T proposals that the recommendations and maybe data? GEOFF HUSTON I can provide some comment. APNIC has looked at this quite extensively. The issue around this area of how do distribute addresses is certainly a fundamental one. The example from the telephone industry has been you do it on a national basis. Then you string the national blocks together. The Internet is constructed differently. The issue about addresses is that by and large an Internet address as itself is about as useful as a wired telephone that isn't plugged in. Addresses need to be routed. One of the fundamental limitations of the existing Internet technology is that we do not have an unlimited routing space. We have a frighteningly limited one. We have to cram those addresses into quite small pieces of equipment, many hundreds of thousands of them. So we have to distribute addresses in a way that makes the network work. The approach we've taken as a body collectively, as an industry, has been to distribute the addresses according to the topology of interconnectivity. Because the way the Internet has been stitched together it doesn't quite align precisely with national boundaries, in fact it doesn't align at all well with national boundaries, so the address distribution system matches the network, matches the industry. That doesn't necessarily match geopolitical boundaries. Now, in that sense you go, well, what's the next answer? Is there a different way of doing it? I think there is, but it's a really tough pill to swallow. In the telephone network, telephone numbers are everything. In an IP network you can regard addresses as an artefact of the network. But frankly when you send me mail I don't think you know or care what my IP address might be. The fundamental limitations we have right now is an artefact of around 30 years of technology when an address became both on identifier and a routing token. If you're prepared to split the two and to say let's create an identity space that sits a little bit higher in the application stack then all of a sudden addresses resume their basic and fundamental property - a token of the network. We can wait, we can hope and personally I'm optimistic things will happen there, but right now don't break a very fragile situation where a routing system is perhaps the most vulnerable part of the entire equation and the existing address distribution system matches quite precisely the capabilities of the technology of routing. IZUMI AIZU I think James you want to say something. JAMES SENG I agree with what Geoff has mentioned, I just want to talk a little bit on different set of angles. Within of the things ITU-T proposes is to have a separate body, local - down to the regional government, very much centralised planning, coordination among intergovernment IP addresses. A pitfall of centralised planning or any policy making in general is the law of unintended consequences. Let me give you an example of this kind of figures of in centralised planning. In the case of Singapore for example, land is very precious so we have the land authority that makes very detailed study about the projection of how land usage is being done. One of that policy is really to look at how we distribute resources around Singapore And for example petrol stations in Singapore, to be evenly distributed, sounds like a great idea. So you have policy to encourage petrol stations to be as far as possible away and evenly distributed across the nation, in the small island. Unfortunate and unintended consequences because of that centralised planning policy means that because if you own a petrol station in a particular route you are guaranteed that there is no other petrol station within certain kilometres of yourself which means you are a mini monopoly of your own in that region. Because of that we get very high prices in petrol. Except in just one particular route where before the policy came into place lots of petrol stations have been laid. Those are the only places we see competition and creates competition where petrol stations are competing between each other. The pitfall of having an organisation trying to allocate addresses through a coordinated plan and assuming you can predict how IP addresses will be used across countries is precisely the law of unintended consequences, we do not know what is a pitfall. That's what scares me. IZUMI AIZU Yes, Chun. CHUN EUNG HWI I'd like to give short remarks on this specific issue. Personally, I'm not fully aware of the consumers group, in terms of consumers' eyes this issue has very, very serious dangers. Usually Government has deep concerns on the management of IP address allocation process, policies. Why? What could be of their concern? I think behind the scene there is a very serious concern on privacy-related things. You know, I dare to say this one, because government officials are trying to look after, looking for some problem points which they try to find out. Whenever a virus infected into PCs they're trying to find out which computer is - which services were in fact hit. So they are trying to find out such a thing. They are trying to have such a responsibility or obligation and the power to control over the whole allocation mechanisms, so I think this - have different motivation. I think we should look at these aspects. IZUMI AIZU Isn't your government made a law that all ISPs should receive IP addresses from the national NIC and it became purely governmental and the private, public partnership. Are you saying this may be the same for other governments and we have to be very careful about that? CHUN EUNG HWI Sure. Even before that was introduced. Even now I'm trying to fight against the policy. I am trying to revise that relating to the systems. Then, you know, I have such an experience. I have such a memory. Before, once, government tried to check up the whole systems we have connected with such a virus infected the systems. So I think this is a very dangerous proposal. IZUMI AIZU OK. Any more specific questions or comments welcome. Seemingly, on the one hand we are saying that the bad guys are governments if they intervene too much, something good will be broken or injured. I welcome more concerns if you have, or any response or answers to that. No, no, we need some government involvement. Are there - QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR Hi there. IZUMI AIZU Could you introduce yourself? TOM VEST I work for a packet clearing house. You used the word "power" many times. I haven't heard many of the panellists responding in those terms. It seems as if there is a temptation to create some conflict between the power and in the sovereignty and whatever else it is we have right now. In many places I think people are uncomfortable with discussing the idea of power without discussing legitimacy, legitimacy for that authority. Weve heard, I guess, several cases I think from the panels here where power or government power has been associated with something that might ultimately contribute to control without actually delivering something which is beneficial to citizens or to users. I'm wondering - so, OK, this is a legitimate question - are there examples that the panellists can cite of power or policies that have been promulgated that do contribute, to the greater good for Internet use? Cases in which national sovereign authorities have done things which contribute to the greater good? IZUMI AIZU Useful ones, Gaurab, you have the floor first, if you can. Otherwise Geoff will - no? OK. GEOFF HUSTON I have one word - deregulation. That in essence in most countries the Internet is a child of a deregulated environment and the deregulation was a government action. So when you cite what can governments do and what have they done to benefit the citizens - it introduced competition, it introduced phenomenal price efficiency on the supply side and you might say telephone companies are hurting or you might say telephone companies are learning what efficiency is all over again. The ultimate beneficiary in that case is indeed the consumer. JAMES SENG I think one specific example would be FCC - proving that the Internet is information service. That helps to make Internet, getting ISP to grow. At the same time to set an example to governments around the world especially in this region which looks at FCC in a lot of policy that we also do not follow the - of course not every country does that but most of us do that similarly. GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA What I'm more worried about is actually looking at the past few years, the big 7 companies in the US are now back to being four. So maybe the World Trade Organisation is the right place to discuss this, or maybe we need in place proper anti-competitive measures that companies don't become private. Public monopolies mightwork better than private monopolies! IZUMI AIZU Yes, sorry, Chun, please. CHUN EUNG HWI I have some different idea on this topic Because I think in most of the developing countries its initial stage of industry development I think a government has a very positive role to allocate resources and also they can cultivate the market through the policies. Particularly most of the developing countries it's true. Then one of the problems we are facing here in the debate of Internet governance many people are talking about - I'd like to emphasise a different - in developing countries usually they don't have strong market dominance, they don't have enough companies to go into this process, they don't have enough society, they have - even though they have some NGOs representing civil society, but they are not representing a civil society. Nevertheless, those developing countries they don't have any people representing their people. Only governments can represent their interests. That's why developing countries love to represent government. I think it should be underlined, it should be taken into account. IZUMI AIZU Meaning if you talk about government it's in reality the different kind of government positions or status in relation to the public sector, private sector of the society. Is that what you - summing up? Tom. TOM VEST I find it interesting - a great diversity about what counts as exercise of power. In some cases the panel spoke about the four barons - deregulation, the removal of some constraints. And in other cases perhaps there is a question about whether in fact the re-introduction of some. In the end the denominator, the common factor was some source of legitimacy for taking an axe to it. It seemed like there was a broad consensus that the source of legitimacy was the action taken which would ultimately contribute through, say Internet resource development, to more users and more access. And in fact that there are many examples that vary in terms of what the policy is. But ultimately the structure of legitimacy of those exercising power is the development of the Internet itself. IZUMI AIZU Is that a fair statement for the panel? Or do you have any different views about the source of legitimacy? Actually, the debate is about the legitimacy. Is the US government legitimate enough - one camp says prehistorically it's been the case and including the UN is not quite legitimate. The other is saying that yes the US is much more legitimate than ICANN. I think it's the wrong question. NAOMASA MARUYAMA I want to comment on the word legitimacy. If there is one solution for one specific problem and everyone agrees to that solution then people can make it legitimate. So whether legitimate or not is not the significant thing, I think. The important thing is that the appropriate solution to the specific problem, that is the very important thing and if everyone agrees to that then people can make it legitimate. So, the problem is something proposed by ITU is feasible or not, appropriate or not. That is very important. Or what exactly happening in ICANN is feasible solution to the question. That is very important. My position is basically the ICANN, the current structure of the Internet governance about IP addresses, that is working. It seems that the, for example, about the IP addresses, proposed by the ITU, that seems not to be working, so that the only legitimate solution will be ICANN. IZUMI AIZU Dieter, do you - you have observed the online debate from 27 countries by 180 people and believed that there was certain discussion around this legitimacy. Do you have any observation from the objective viewpoint? DIETER ZINNBAUER It created a lot of comments this discussion. But to add a bit of a personal comment to that, I have to say after we've been trying since 1999 to create awareness about Internet governance. Many of the issues haven't really changed much in the last five, six years. One approach which, in the - with hindsight didn't really seem to be very productive is this dwelling on first principles when it comes to discussing Internet governance issues. Very often you end up in antagonising positions. But when you move closer to the top, and I even sense this now in the panel you felt that actually we're not so far apart in terms of what kind of policies we would like to see in place. Someone on the panel was talking about deregulation, but Gaurab said - let's get the government out of this. Later he comes back and says, wait a minute, the cost structures in the industry are such there is a tendency towards monopolies. Maybe we have to have a smarter regulation in terms of anti-competitive message. In this whole interconnection debate, since this is all shrouded in secrecy. I am not sure what really reflects what is going on there but it was a big issue a few years ago, ITU study group, it was taken up. I think it's almost an understatement to say it felt like we kind of tried to raise this issue, we put it on the web site. We have this new service. It was a bit of an understatement that to say the technology industry loathed this idea. Now it's the telecom guys coming in and they're going to get stuck with their old models, they messed up the accounting rate. At the end of the day nothing much was coming out of it. The work is still going on. There was no feasible policy templates introduced into the debate and I would partly put the blame also on technology community which was completely staying out of this debate, as far as I could observe it. So it was a good opportunity, it would've been a good opportunity to come back with some of those anti-competitive measures, try to work towards transparency in the tariff system which we didn't have back then. A study was tried to be done but it didn't go anywhere because there are lots of disclosures in those agreements. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to put forward a sensible policy agenda, but this template was not really put on the table and the telecom guys got stuck with their interconnection models because there was nothing else to draw on and it became a self-fulfilling failure. So I think this is kind of like a lesson in the story. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR Coming back to the question of governance, I don't think there is one uniform model. Take a look at the industry revolution as Geoff mentioned. There is quite a few patterns. If you look at the industry revolution, how it is promulgated in different parts of the world, in the developing world it's promulgated in a particular way. But - sorry in the developing countries, - I guess it all depends on how big your growth is when you're talking about how the governance should be. That's just my comment. IZUMI AIZU Thank you. NAOMASA MARUYAMA One phrase, feasible policy template. What do you imagine with that word? DIETER ZINNBAUER There is legal precedence in many other industries, how you regulate central facilities. We had not very competitive international bandwidth markets back then. Transferring tariffs could've been put on the agenda. Non-discriminatory service would've been another one. There was a domestic discussion in the US because it coincided with the erosion of the peering system, this was an advanced discussion then, it didn't feed into the international arena. It was kind of separated. IZUMI AIZU I believe in 1997 the Asia Pacific Internet association which became the APRICOT, brought this issue of the international charging system on interconnection fees on to the table, I believe Telstra then, with other operators were very active to be vocal against the use. I don't know if you're directly involved or not, certainly you were very close to the debate. Where is the observation now? GEOFF HUSTON Life is a learning experience and as you learn you understand, you change. Understand, I suppose, one thing, that in a traditional model of national activities and international activities there were always clear demarcations, the international environment never tried to force a rigid homogenous national structure. The communications industry has remarkably diverse national regulatory structures. They suit differing environments, you see this heterogeneity, I'm not sure anyone would feasibly say let's impose one rigid model on all national environments. It won't work. However, the airline industry - international flights, domestic flights; the telephone industry - international calls, domestic calls. My email? My web surfing, where is the demarcation? There is no special environment of the demilitarised zone of international Internet. We see a different world of interconnection between providers. That's a challenge. When we talk about Internet governance in international space we look inside the network and say, wheres that? Where does the packet become the international packet? We don't have those facilities. You don't have that clear demarcation. What we see is direct interconnection of networks. Those networks span a very, very heterogenous regulatory environment. That's where I suppose when we see APEC talk about let's talk about international Internet accounting rates you can't find those circuits easily. The provider might own facilities at either end of the boundaries, either end of the ocean. Is their internal system now international? This, I suppose, has been an unanswered question that although we love to talk about this international part of the Internet we've never been able to physically understand where it sits or which routers are part of it and when does the packet automatically change its colour? IZUMI AIZU OK, Geoff, you're right that Internet doesn't of itself now the - know the national boundaries but many ISPs are international. When they brought this complaint about this huge expense, these are national telcos making arrangements, that's the telco regime which was growth through Internet traffic or am I making a long question? Then where are the other realities? While the Internet has no such a thing as a national demarcation on the one hand the rest of the world still is. We have the passports, national laws, boundaries, economy. These are the mindset of us. We are not truly globalised yet. The developmental stage different, Australia is very different from China. China is different from India. These differences are somehow coming to the Internet world and they're making things more confusing perhaps. That's our challenge. GEOFF HUSTON The economic barriers of entry for an ISP going international are now almost negligible. The world of fibre optics has fundamentally changed the model of how folk operate. If you think you're paying too much money, go and build out, buy the circuit and build out. The price has plummeted by over a thousand in the last five years. We shouldn't be arguing about how to make 1995 better, we should be looking to 2020 and beyond. JAMES SENG I just wanted to make a point, you made a statement that most of the other Internet is not international. But - IZUMI AIZU No, not Internet. JAMES SENG It's true that most of the non-Internet ones, why are we bringing those into the context of Internet governance? You say, SingTel, are they Singapore based? No. The whole network spans across Malaysia, Japan, Hong Kong. You look at say, China Telecom, NCI, global crossing - that doesn't exist any more, but it did! I mean - there isn't any international boundary so when ITU try to look at this issue from a national boundary perspective there isn't going to be a feasible tem placement. It's not likely to happen. IZUMI AIZU I'm sorry, halt. If somebody else who hasn't spoken up wants to take the floor, please. As well as any online comments? So far? Any comments? Tom. You have the floor. Others are highly encouraged to intervene later! TOM VEST I just want to, for the record, mention two things which I should before close. The directional national model which has been used as a strawman model for suggested Internet connection was broken in 1996 by changes to technology. It was no longer viable for the phone system. Institutional changes which made some markets more open than others coupled with technology which enabled anyone to put machines in foreign markets which generated outbound calls and therefore outbound requirements made that system quite untenable. So how long did the accounting system which was implicitly designed to subside development across borders, how long was that in place before 1996? Maybe about 30, at least 30, 40 years. At the end of that period of time the - it was very hard statistically to see any substantial difference in Communications environment, the outcomes as a result of that. In other words at the end of that 30, 40-year period there was still huge asymmetries in the communications infrastructure and landscape that those subsidies were intended to develop. It's not clear that the previous model was a good model, not sure it's one we want to recommend at this point on its own merits. Neither could you because technology no longer makes it possible. IZUMI AIZU I'm tempted to continue this, but there are other pressing interesting issues as well. So shall we put the period on this Internet national exchange thing or charging system and move on to the other areas? Chun, I have a question to you. You said that the developing countries may not necessarily have the fully fledged private sector of the civil society and then the major players goes to the government which you may not like to see it, but it is the reality. Is it - do you mean that multi-stakeholder approach is not effective? What's your solution to that suggestion? CHUN EUNG HWI I couldn't find the appropriate adjective. More or less, I think some kind of combination between government as one stakeholder. We should try to find out what's the appropriate government goals in handling with name space and IP address allocation. Anyhow, a government - government is overseeing everything, even private companies what they are doing in international boundaries. So anyhow, a government is intervening we should face the reality as it is. But we should make some appropriate law in place in reality. So, for example, a task force. It has some merits. IZUMI AIZU Geoff. Maybe I'm calling on you a bit. I'm surprised to hear your presentation. No government, no nothing. Rather today I heard something different, that you recommend some roles of government, bit similar to Chun or you have any other you learn from. GEOFF HUSTON I suppose one does learn over time. I don't believe that any open market would naturally sustain itself when there is an underlying dynamic where volume creates its own efficiency. So where the market dynamic aggregates so that when I can acquire more other players my own efficiencies get higher, the natural tendency of market is to aggregate and monopolise. Beyond a certain level you get the temptation of monopoly level. Then the game is over. Governments are there if that role as the controlling brake. As the trying to subvert and prevent deliberate attempts to subvert the market and distort it. The role of the government is overseeing the dynamics of the competition between suppliers. Making sure that there does exist to be healthy competition at numerous levels. The problem in communications is that in some areas markets and markets alone, are not an equitable distributor. In many countries you see aggregates of population and more disperse population in other places. A true open market might well regard the dispersed area as a monopoly free for all and concentrate competition small areas. Most countries have managed or are managing to try and get a productive equilibrium between a minimum amount of regulation that ensures fair distribution, but a minimum to the extent that private sector investment is encouraged and that indeed is fuelled. So that one can get private sector investment returns and so on. What about the international regime? Where are the controls? How do you make or make the judgment that a player is too big and is exerting monopoly or hoarding controls over international market. It's a deep challenge. Then you ask is the ITU-T, our current treaty organisation in this sector, equipped? Structured? And resourced to undertake that function? That's a very, very interesting question and I think many of us would agree that historically it has never been in that space and has no current capability to occupy it. That brings me back to this question of if you're trying to solve that problem you really have to examine what the appropriate institutional bodies are in the international space to fulfil that function. IZUMI AIZU Any comments around these areas? GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA Yes, please. I'm trying to remember in the last couple of years I've been to some developing countries. Each of those I've been to mostly, there was really a case where the government people had been - the government telecom people had been more competent than the private sector people. In Asia Pacific if anybody can tell me if there's still a completely dominated government enterprise ISP operating in that area. I can't recall if there is. Maybe Mauritius, Maldives and Bhutan, expect I clearly can't think of any country which has not deregularised yet. What I'm trying to understand is are you trying to say that eventually the government will get interested in this field? And will you define the function for the government which doesn't act any where in the current system? Is that the right turn of phrase? That's something that does concern me. Increasingly governments are thinking that this is a space we don't regulate. Some governments are fine. Some governments will think we need to regulate this. Take for example India. They want to regularise something. Do you want to define a function for the government in this whole system? Is that the right way to put it so that they don't overdo what they want to do? CHUN EUNG HWI I don't think this is not the case of controversy. I think we are talking about the same things but in a way very different perspectives. Deregulation, even the deregulation policy also contains some kind of ah, support to the private sector initiatives. So such kind of approach should be encouraged. In most of the developing countries government is taking such a job. Why not? Even deregulation policies - such an approach should be introduced and encouraged. This idea I think a government's role could be put more or less in the initial design stage in particular. But in the midst of the development, government should hand out. IZUMI AIZU I was just giving the 10 to 15-minute extension. So you have a little bit more say and time to think. IZUMI AIZU Bridging the digital divide. WGIG's mission is, To promote (Reads) ..the absence of any government is unacceptable. Which is a comment from India. So do you support this? Is that what you mean? GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA No, I won't support the statement especially if it's coming from India! IZUMI AIZU Come on, it's similar to what you just said, right? GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA No. I was trying to ask Chun what he meant because the governments are going to make statements like what you just said. At ICANN we don't have a refined role for the government anywhere in this space. Do you want to define it and limit it to a certain area where they can be constructive and put them out of other areas where they can be destructive? That's what I was trying to ask. That could be a reasonable position to talk about, if the thing that we can't put them off for a long time. I think that will put a lot of these countries be very interested on the Internet. Maybe the Internet community, IETF, et cetera, needs to sit down and think where do we put them? Do we have a closet we can put them so they don't bother us any more? JAMES SENG There are many people who the mention of the government and regulate start to get cold feet and become very frightened about government involvement or regulation. But it boils down to the principle, the fundamental of why certain things need to be regulated or not regulated. If the purpose of the regulation is to protect a national company or national entity or to protect certainly monopoly, then we should fight such regulation but if the purpose of regulation is to remove barriers and remove impedence from adoption of technology and to encourage competition, those are the regulations that we need to encourage. So it's not that we are fighting deregulation. Likewise, for government we are not against government involvement, we are against ignorant government involvement. I'm not sure whether that's a policy thing. IZUMI AIZU Any comments from the audience? NAOMASA MARUYAMA So whether it's good or not. So the government can do anything with the regulation. So I want to give a different view of this discussion. To think about the one carried out by the government or being carried out by private activity. I think it's good view to think this structure, if you view this discussion from the engineering point of view then the private sector initiative is something like a distributed system and something carried out by the government is a centralised system. So you can easily imagine, if you are an engineer, distributed system can employ lots of CPUs and it's more productive. So what is happening in lots of developed countries is just like that, that is my view. So lots of private sector are involved that is the distributed system that people can employ lots of energy from that. To compare to that, if - to look at some developing country there is no player, no government entities are involved in that activity. So we have to think of someone at least want some player there to solve the question. And that is something before the discussion of the government or the private sector. That is my view. So someone should be involved and if the ITU can serve in that point I am very happy to accept that. But if there is already lots of players in the developing countries and it's working as a distributed system then don't touch it. That's my solution. IZUMI AIZU OK, could you identify yourself. OLE JACOBSEN Ole Jacobsen from Cisco. I think one of the biggest problems with regulation of this kind of technology is that people who want to do it don't understand the technology. I'll happily pick on my own government which happens to be the government of Norway. Someone a few years ago in Parliament wanted to introduce a bill which made anonymous electronic use - use of anonymous electronic email addresses illegal because presumably they could be used for all sorts of nasty things, you can just imagine. Exactly how you would go doing that in one country of the Internet, the mind wants to explode when you think about it, but it seems to me to be a fairly good example of a regulatory approach where the people that want to regulate have no clue what they're dealing with. This is kind of what worries me a lot about the WSIS papers is that there's a huge mixture of use technology for the good of mankind coupled with specific recommendations that make absolutely no technical sense. Thank you. IZUMI AIZU Thank you. By the way, the author of the first paper was from your government of Norway. Just for your record. I have to correct my earlier remarks, the phrase I read was from China, not from India! But they are basically, almost the same thing! Sorry about that. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR So here what we have is technologists appointing to poor misguided regulation saying that isn't going to work or pointing out that the Internet has no national boundaries so traditional regulation - regulation is not going to work. On the other hand we have governments insisting we do need a route because we have substantial interests that are being affected by this. For whatever motive. To preserve a national monopoly that is bringing substantial money to the government for example an income in telco. Or for other even more - or from a sincere desire to do good and ensure good for the people by good governments. So where and how do we channel the energies of governments towards good governments where they can do the best. For example, you have a lot of issues that focus on international cooperation and cyber crime, for example, and anti-spam regulations, in the course of my job I work with a whole lot of governments working together with ISPs and the industry. In the case of telecom sector and pricing governments could help localise the industry, arrange appropriately equitable prices with other providers. That's what I was trying to say. How do we get them to participate without making the participation intrusive or harmful? IZUMI AIZU Thank you. We have only five minutes. With your question I'd like to take that as my final question to the panel. You have 55 seconds each to answer. How do you guide your - our governments into this discussion or what is your role, define yourself and what is your role for that? Dieter. DIETER ZINNBAUER I'm maybe a bit of an outsider at this because I'm not a technology expert but I think there has to be a lot more dialogue between the two sides, as simplistic as it sounds. I think as much as we miss the opportunity to have a policy with regard to interconnection, we are about to miss the boat on issues such as wireless and so on. So I think there has to be more input from the tech community not just pinpointing the disastrous ideas from the policy committee but getting engaged and putting some physical proposals on the table. IZUMI AIZU OK. Feasible. We need to spell out " Feasible" later. James. Do you have the answer? JAMES SENG I work for the government and I advise governments, so it's a bit sensitive. It's not that government involvement is a bad idea. It's really - we know that there are certain areas of government - where only government can solve a problem, like cross-border crime, cyber crime, cross-border spam, cross-border phishing attacks. Do we channel the government to doing the right things and not trying to fix things that don't need to be fixed? IZUMI AIZU Thank you. NAOMASA MARUYAMA To speak about my government, Japan. IZUMI AIZU You choose. NAOMASA MARUYAMA It seems the government has - the government I think they have to depend on the distributed system and I hope the government really wants - for the governance of the Internet in Japan. That's my hope. CHUN EUNG HWI Basically, my position is very sympathetic with - I think we should take an opportunity to increase the dialogue. On the other hand, I think check and balance should be set on government departments. The government is composed of many sector issues, so many government departments have connection to the other departments. So look at that competition a positive way. And as a civil society we should provide very strong messages. GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA More interaction between governments with their own countries. IZUMI AIZU I remember you were in the WSIS at one point! GEOFF HUSTON There's a difference between I think being prescriptive and being functional. When looking at this I'm reminded of the wealth of nations, the wealth of networks! You know what your government policy is. It incites and produces broad national prosperity. You know what poor government policy is - it doesn't. It's self-correcting. I would not dare to be presumptuous about what governments should or should not do, but observe that in general their motivation is to do the right thing. Their motivation is to promote prosperity. I'm optimistic, I do believe this is a self-correcting problem. You're seeing it at the very early stage. Its impetus is in a direction that will lead to conclusions. I'm not going to tell them what to do. I think they're going to find it out. IZUMI AIZU To conclude. I'd like to show something on the screen, which is the tentative working of the Internet governance under this working group. It's a two-part definition. The descriptive - (Reads) Internet governance means the collective rules, procedures and related programs intended to shape social actors' expectations, practices and interaction concerning Internet infrastructure and transactions and content. Second prescriptive sentence To the extent possible/as appropriate, et cetera, Internet governance should be multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full and balanced involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organisations. It should encompass both technical and public policy aspects ensure an equitable distribution of resources, facilitate access for all and maintain the stable and secure functioning of the Internet, taking into account multilingualism." Perhaps by listening to all the parts in this region, Asia Pacific, we will organise certain government roles, perhaps more so than the other developed economic regions because we have less civil society or the private sector perhaps in the social sector than the other areas. But equally speaking, there is a huge need for us to either share or educate or exchange views with our government colleagues as well as other aspects of the society. Thank you. With that I would like to conclude this session. Thank you very much. APPLAUSE