The Sixth Annual Internet Governance Forum was held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 27-30 September 2011. This year the overarching subject of the Forum is: "Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation". The IGF-2011 was the 2nd international event held in Nairobi. In March 2010, the 37the ICANN International Meeting was successfully held there.
Mr. Stephen Kalonzo, Vice President of Kenya, in his opening address noted that not only did the Internet become a unique information and educational resource, but also an instrument of effective governance, which provides civil society with an access to the official information and ensures its trust in and loyalty to the political process. Hon Samuel Poghisio, the Minister of Communications and Mass Media of Kenya, highlighted the fact that the IGF is a platform for dialogue ensuring relevance of the global solutions on Internet governance in the countries with very different political and economic systems.
This year the Russian delegation comprised Mr. Andrey Kolesnikov, the CC’s CEO, Ms. Irina Danelia, the CC’s Deputy CEO, Ms. Marina Nikerova, the CC Board Chairperson, and Mr. Leonid Todorov, Head of the CC’s government relations. On the 1st day of IGF-2011, Andrey Kolesnikov participated in a workshop "Blocking content: issues, principles and paths forward", which focused on legislative initiatives in the sphere of combating illegal content in the Internet, and first of all, child pornography and other materials, which infringe copyright law. One on the most controversial forms of refining illegal content discussed at the workshop was blocking content at the DNS level. This form of refining was originally promoted by governments in various countries. However, it was unanimously rejected by the Internet community as the most inefficient form. The workshop participants concluded that it was necessary, first of all, to combat cybercrime itself and not its consequences, which epitomized the illegal content. "Child pornography is an absolute evil. Today this fact is understood worldwide, - said Mr. Kolesnikov. – One should not only combat child pornography in the Internet but its existence in principle. Blocking such content at the DNS level is useless; it requires other forms of combating. Experience of the international social network INHOPE in combating child pornography may serve a successful example of an effective combat against illegal content". In general, attempts to criminalize copyright infringements in the Internet, ie. the shift of such infringements from the sphere of civil law to the criminal law stirs the IGF participants’ concern. Representatives of various public Internet organizations noted that the censorship in the Internet was ineffective and penalties clampdown would unlikely produce the desired effect.
Irina Danelia, the CC’s Deputy CEO, delivered a presentation at the session ""IDN: Implementations, Experiences and Challenges" and focused on the success of the introduction of Cyrillic domain .РФ in Russia. "Despite the fact that the main results can be summed up only in November, after a year since the launch of theopen registration in the domain, some conclusions we may draw even today, - noted Ms Danelia. – The sunrise phase in domain .РФ, which already into his second year , demonstrated that solely 5% of all registered during this phase domain names were dropped and 95% of domain names were extended by the owners for at least a year. More than a half of all Cyrillic domains are up and running and we expect that just as many as 10-15% of domain names will not be extended by the end of a year starting from the launch of the open registration in domain .РФ. We have overcome many challenges we faced when introducing the Cyrillic IDN and now we need to move ahead: to create a friendly electronic mail in .РФ, resolve the issue of integration into social networks. Facebook and Twitter still do not read URL in Cyrillic. IDN domains are an absolute novelty for the Internet and the entire community will need to do a very serious work before they become its full-fledged part".
In addition to the discussion of paramount issues related to the Internet governance, the Russian delegation played another important role at the IGF-2011. Marina Nikerova, the CC Board Chairperson, on behalf of the entire Russian Internet community presented the outgoing IGF Chairman, Markus Kummer, with the “Virtuti Interneti” award for the tremendous work he had done over the years. Markus Kummer is Vice President of ISOC in charge of public policy. He has extensive experience with Internet policy at the global, regional, and national levels.
