52nd meeting of ICANN corporation officially opened today in Singapore. More than 1200 delegates from over 100 countries of the world including delegation of the Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ will participate in its work.
The conference was opened by Steve Crocker, ICANN chair of the board, who underlined four main points that Internet community should focus on. These are: development of the Internet of things and necessity to implement unique identifiers for millions of gadgets, that will soon be connected to the global network; issues of information security and protection of personal data; issues related to the transfer of control functions over the domain space from US government to the global Internet community and, finally, improving the efficiency and transparency of ICANN corporation itself.
Participants of the meeting were greeted by Singapore’s Minister of Communications and Information Yaacob bin Ibrahim. He highlighted the important role of the Asia-Pacific region in the development of the global network and expressed content that his country closely cooperated with ICANN. Minister also reaffirmed the principles of multistakeholder model - equal participation of all stake holders in Internet governance.
After that, spoke Ira Magaziner, the former Senior Advisor to President Bill Clinton who has spearheaded the modern ideas about functioning of Internet economy and global network as a whole. He reminded the participants of the meeting how decisions concerning principles of global network governing were made 20 years ago and ICANN corporation established. Magaziner pointed out that even then it was obvious that the Internet can’t be forever controlled by the US government and can’t be managed by any of the existing international structures, that is why the optimum decision is its management based on the principles of equality, developed and implemented by the global Internet community itself.
At the end of the session spoke ICANN President Fadi Chehadé. He spoke about the recent performance of ICANN, expressed confidence in the correctness of the policy chosen by the corporation and wished the participants to have interesting and fruitful work for the benefit of Internet community.
