Lithuania to host IGF-2010
Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt: 18 November 2009
The United Nations Department of Public Information has published a press release following the conclusion of the 2009 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting that took place from the 15th to 18th November 2009 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. 1800 people participated in the meeting from 112 countries the largest attendance record since the inception of IGF in 2006.
The press release announces that the fifth IGF meeting will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania from 14th to 17th September 2010.
The press release states:
“The meeting also discussed new issues related to the continued growth of social networks, and the ensuing governance issues that are emerging, in particular, the need for new approaches regarding privacy and data protection, rules applicable to user-generated content and copyrighted material, and issues of freedom of expression and illegal content. Parallel to the main sessions on these issues, more than 100 workshops, best practice forums, dynamic coalition meetings and open forums were held around the broad themes of the main sessions and the overall mandate of the IGF.”
At the opening ceremony on the 15th November 2009 the European Union Commissioner Viviane Reding, the Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media in her speech titled: Why the Internet must be open, global and multilingual, stressed the key role governments have to play in keeping the internet free and open and went onto say:
“We all know that the Internet has grown so rapidly because of its openness. This is why it has become such a valuable economic resource. If users want an open and neutral internet, they must actively encourage their governments to protect it. And governments must respond as positively as the European Union, following the call from the European Parliament, did this month in the reform of Europe’s telecoms rules, where we reaffirmed for the first time in transnational law the fundamental rights of internet users against government measures that could limit their internet access, notably the right to effective and timely judicial review, to prior, fair procedures, the presumption of innocence and the right to privacy.”
The Commissioner ended her speech with the statement: “the IGF must continue, and I invite you all to support a first extension until 2015.”
The EU press release IP/09/1717, Brussels, 16 November 2009 titled: Internet Governance Forum: Commission welcomes landmark step towards a truly global internet states:
“At the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Sharm El Sheikh (Egypt), the European Commission today has welcomed a landmark step towards a truly global (and local) internet: the announcement that "Internationalised Domain Names" will be introduced at the top level. Until now, internet domain names were either fully or partly in the Latin "a to z" alphabet. ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which manages the internet's core directory, has announced that a fast track process would be launched today to open up country code top level domains (like ".eu" of europa.eu) to non Latin characters. This means that Europeans, especially in Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus, will be able to see domain names in their own alphabets. Viviane Reding, the EU's telecoms and internet Commissioner, heralded this major multilingual development. She also called for the timeframe of the Internet Governance Forum – a unique multi-stakeholder dialogue platform for the global internet community – to be extended.”
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