Internet governance
Carlos Afonso, former chair of APC and member of the UN body charged with coming up with a definition of what ‘internet governance’ should encompass amongst other tasks has written an opinionative report on the first meeting of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance, November 23-25 2004, Geneva. For the first time published in English and Spanish from the Portuguese original. Translation by APC.
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process continues and two issues on which governments were unable to reach consensus during the first phase in 2003- ‘internet governance’ and ‘financing mechanisms’- are under the microscope. Last month saw the first open consultation on the ‘working group on internet governance’. APC briefs you on the discussions taking place.
Internet domains (such as .uk, .fr) are sold for a profit to any taker, even if the prospective holder does not have any legal binding with the corresponding country. Thus many ccTLDs are no longer identified with their countries on the Internet, having been sold to national or foreign companies for a profit – some are supposed to be identified with some specific sectors of activity instead o...
Carlos Afonso of RITS has been elected to the Brazilian committee which manages the internet in Brazil and controls .br. The election results were announced on July 15. He is one of four representatives from civil society. Other sectors represented are the scientific community, the business and telecommunications sectors, and internet service providers. It is the first time in Brazil that inter...
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – the body that’s responsible for managing the registration and distribution system of domain names (eg. www.apc.org) in the internet – held its first meeting of 2004. More than 600 people from different countries took part in 27 fora. In attendance was Carlos Afonso, planning director of APC’s Brazilian mem...
A global forum on internet governance organised by the United Nations in March was the most open and inclusive platform for addressing internet governance issues to date but time was too short to disaggregate the various areas of policy and regulation that are loosely grouped under “internet governance”. There are fundamental concerns around the accountability and legitimacy of current inte...
A Mission-Driven Business Planning workshop for environmental civil society online networks in the Balkans in February was attended by APC members from the Balkans and six fledgling electronic networking initiatives from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo/a, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro.
There’s a new openness since the Lula government came to power at the beginning of 2003 and began working hand-in-hand with Brazilian civil society to change the way the internet is being governed in Brazil. It’s been announced that the committee which handles all Brazilian-registered website addresses will be chosen in public online elections. For the first time since the .br registry was ...
The Brazilian government has decided to support this transition to a new internet governance structure for the administration of “.br”. ITI and Abong outline the process which involves elections and the nominations of candidates from civil society, government and the science and technology sectors in this article translated into English by APC.
As the WSIS opens, the international community finds it self drawn into the debate over whether the Internet’s core infrastructurethe domains should remain managed by industry or be taken over by governments, via the United Nations.
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