News > Internet Governance

Logging onto Libya and Cote d'Ivoire

04/05/2007 (HANA) -- <i>By Remmy Nweke</i>
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Following the conclusion of the 28th public session of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in the Portuguese city of Lisbon, Africa topped the agenda as two out of the three formalised country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) managers at the meeting came from the continent.
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These are Libyan .ly and .ci for Cote d'Ivoire being managed respectively by the General Post and Telecommunications Company and Institut National Polytechnique Felix Houphouet Boigny, in addition to Russian .ru, under the supervision of Coordination Center.
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Speaking at the end of the session attended by over 830 participants from 81 countries globally, ICANN Chairman, Dr Vint Cerf, said that they just finished ?One of ICANN's busiest and issue-intensive meetings and it helped ICANN make substantial progress on numerous fronts."
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According to Verf, some of the top considerations at the meeting consisted of the formalization of three relationships with country code top level domain managers, including Libyan General Post and Telecommunication Company, Ivoiren Institut National Polytechnique Felix Houphouet Boigny and Russian Coordination Center.
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He also said that the formation of a new working group to develop the recommendations in the Final Task Force Report on Whois Services presented to the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GSNO), penultimate Friday, March 16, 2007.
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Dr. Cerf explained that the group would have broad and balanced participation, just as it has 120 days to consider input and report back to the GNSO council, which will in turn decide whether to recommend any changes on Whois policy to the ICANN board.
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Equally, he revealed that a discussion on Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAA) and how to improve them especially in the context of the enormous difficulties that registrants who have their domain names registered through the registrar known as RegisterFly.
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He said that the creation of three new Regional At Large Organizations will give Internet users from Africa, Europe and Asia-Australia-Pacific direct input into ICANN operations, just as ICANN had reiterated its position on the rejection of the .xxx sponsored TLD application.
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However, presentations he said, were made by Sweden and Bulgaria on the enhanced Domain Name System security enhancements in their respective TLDs; was also part of the agenda, even as ICANN launched a new website with better navigation and new features to increase transparency and accountability.
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On the Internet Protocol version Six (Ipv6), ICANN said that updates on moving to IPv6 to expand the number of IP addresses available to global Internet users and the process of introducing Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) to introduce non-Latin characters to the root.
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In addition, the release of the One World Trust (http://www.oneworldtrust.org) independent review of ICANN's accountability and transparency stated that in the overall, ICANN is a very transparent organization, pointing out that it shares a large quantity of information through its website, probably more than any other global organisation.
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Although the report also identified areas for improvement, as the ICANN President of ICANN, Dr. Paul Twomey, pointed out that the organisation would improve on transparency and openness.
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"ICANN is working hard to improve in the area of openness and transparency," he assured.
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Dr. Twomey also described public participation as a veritable key at meeting ICANN's objectives.
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If you couldn't be physically present you could participate through webcasting, chatrooms, and the ability to ask questions to speakers with our public participation website. Even the board discussion was made available for the whole world to watch live," he noted.
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The Lisbon meeting is one of the three held each year that is open for public participation and forms an essential component of ICANN's efforts to consult the global community.
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Meanwhile, the African Internet Community under the aegis of the African Network Operators Group (AfNOG) has concluded plans to gather at Nigeria?s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja for a four-day meeting in 2007.
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The event is being organised in collaboration with AfriNIC for to mark AfriNIC's sixth public policy interaction and Internet Society (ISOC) for its International Networking (INET) Africa summit.
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Manager, African Regional Bureau at ISOC, Mr. Dawit Bekele who made this known to Highway Africa News Agency (HANA) correspondent, said that the Abuja meeting will take place from May 1 to 4, this year at the Rockview Hotel.
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He also said that the four-day event would provide a public forum for the African Internet community and policy makers to discuss different aspects of the Internet on the continent, from network operations to Internet resources management policies and standards development.
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Additionally, he said that the subject of discussion would including the impact of International Domain Names (IDNs), unwanted traffic, security and the governance of the internet on national and regional information societies and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capacity building.
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He also pointed out that the forum is expected to concentrate on Internet governance and on the priorities for Africa for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) that will take place in Rio in November 2007.
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He also advised that interested people should visit https://www.afrinic.net/meeting/afrinic-6/registration.htm for registration.
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Just as he anticipates that over 120 participants would be gathering for the open house regulators, government and private sector continent wide.
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Mr. Bekele added that the meeting would commence with a five-day workshop organised by AfNOG.
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This, he pointed out would be followed by a two-day training on IPv6 networking scheduled to hold between April 28 and 29, which is specifically targeted at network operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
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On the other hand, African Network Internet Centre (AfriNIC) plans to holds its Annual General Meeting (AGM), which has been slated for May 3 while election follows for the AfriNIC board just as one NRO-NC representative will also take place.
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Source: <a href="http://hana.ru.ac.za">HANA</a>

Date: 04/05/2007
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Source: HANA