On 13 May 2011, representatives of both the Coordination Center for TLD RU and the ICANN called on the RF State Duma Committee on the Information. The meeting focused on discussion of global regulation issues relating to the Internet and ways to implement them. Participants in the meeting debated ways of striking a certain balance between the current freedom on the Net and the need to combat illegal activities on the Internet.
Sergey Zheleznyak, the Chairman of the Committee on the Information Policy, stressed the importance of meetings of representatives from different countries, various public organizations, and different walks of life: “By just listening to each other, we can find a compromise.” Most of the Internet issues are not local but of the global nature, which means that we must find a global comprehensive solution which will suit all the stakeholders.”
The CC’s Director, Andrey Kolesnikov, noted that all the stakeholders must contribute to the discussion of the Internet regulation. He cited the most urgent issues, such as legislative regulation of the Internet, protection of the Web from crime, and granting tax benefits to Internet businesses. It is significant that these themes will be debated at the 37th summit of G8 in Dauville (France) in late May.
Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of the ICANN Board, emphasized that while even formally, Internet governance issues have nothing to do with ICANN and the Internet corporation is tasked to administer domain space, today ICANN attends to the Internet regulation issues due to a large experience accumulated in this sphere. “We try to take into account interests of various stakeholders when Internet regulation is at stake,” – commented he. Today ICANN, which boasts of a great prestige among global Internet community, can profess to be one of the engines of Internet regulation.
Olga Noskova, the Committee Member, , suggested that the current Russian legislation is lagging behind the rapid development of the Internet. “This is true not only for Russia, but worldwide. Even freedom on the Internet should have some legislative basis,” – said she. Peter Thrush agreed with the fact that no country managed to react to everyday changes in the Internet: “However, various countries have excelled in different spheres: for example, South Korea now has the best ant-spam system. This is because Internet business if well developed in South Korea and such protection is critical for businessmen.”
George Sadowsky, the ICANN Board member, coined a straight-to-the-point definition of the current state of the legislative base for the Internet: “Legislation in the Internet is a running deer, and it runs very fast. Much time will pass before we manage to tie up the Internet to any legislative platform: how much different it is from all other customary technologies,” – commented he.
