Welcome Remarks and Introduction
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REAL TIME TRANSCRIPT: Welcome Remarks and Setting the Scene
APrIGF
9:30-10:30, Tuesday 15 June 2010
Hong Kong
DISCLAIMER: Due to the inherent difficulties in capturing a live
speaker’s words, it is possible this realtime transcript may
contain errors and mistranslations. An edited version of the
realtime transcript which amends the inherent errors, will
be posted later. LLOYD MICHAUX and APrIGF accept no
liability for any event or action resulting from the
contents of this transcript.
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>> : Welcome to Asia Pacific Governance Forum. Internet
Governance Forum, IGF, is a United Nations activity
initiated in 2006, as a global platform for stakeholder
policy dialogue on prevailing and emerging issues on
internet governance.
The whole APRIGF consists of three components. The
youth IGF camp on 12 to 14 June. Today and tomorrow
round table and the Hong Kong IGF on Thursday and
Friday.
The APRIGF will help shape the future of the IGF.
The event receive many support from many
organisations from different fields. Our hosting
organisation includes APNIC, APTLD, DotAsia
Organisation, Freedom House, the Hong Kong Council of
Social Service, The Hong Kong Federation of Youth
Groups, Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Ltd,
Hong Kong Representative of the Multistakeholder Advisor
Group, IGF, Internet Professional Association, Internet
Society Hong Kong, NetMission, the Office of the
Honourable Samson Tam, Legislative Councillor of
information technology functional constituency.
Also, we would like to our adviser, Office of the
Government Chief Information Officer, OGCIO, to help
enable this event to happen.
To make this event successful, we would like to
thank our sponsor for their kind support. Including our
grand sponsors, Microsoft and APNIC. Venue sponsor,
Cyberport, Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation
Ltd and our community sponsors, APTLD, impact, Japan
Registry Services and Singapore Internet Research
Centre.
There are over 30 supporting organisations which
make today’s event so successful together.
Now, we shall proceed to the welcome remark session.
May I invite Mr Jeremy Godfrey, Government Chief
Information Officer, HKSAR, OGCIO, to deliver the
welcome remarks to us.
Applause.
>> Jeremy Godfrey: Thank you very much. Good morning,
everybody. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
it’s a pleasure to welcome so many people, I think from
25 different economies and countries, coming to this
first Asia Pacific regional IGF.
The internet, of course, as we all know, is becoming
more and more important to more and more people.
I think we to you have almost 2 billion users of the
internet in the world. With that growth in importance
and growth in number of users, again, a number of
well-known challenges have emerged.
One of those is the digital divide. In Hong Kong,
we are quite fortunate. We have 81, 82 per cent
internet penetration and we have an average access speed
of 8.5 megabits per second, so we are very fortunate.
Of course, there is digital divide both between
economies, so I was talking to the minister from
Bangladesh earlier about the penetration in Bangladesh
and there the challenge is to go from about 50 million
I think up to 100 million.
But even within economies, even in Hong Kong, we
have a digital divide. 80 per cent is not 100 per cent,
so we are very focused on making sure that people from
groups like the elderly, people with disabilities and
particularly children from low income families,s whether
have access to the internet, so that they can play
a full role in the information society.
On Sunday, we launched a portal targeted at
producing content for the elderly and then later this
year, we’ll be rolling out a programme to make it easier
for children from low income families to get access to
the internet and to get access to computer systems.
In fact, even amongst our low income families, the
penetration rate of the internet is 87 per cent, which
is a tribute to the importance that parents place on the
internet as an educational tool.
But from a teacher’s perspective, if you have three
or four children in your class who don’t have access to
the internet, you’re going to be less willing to use
that as a teaching tool, so everybody in the class
suffers, not just the three or four who don’t have
internet access. That’s important for us.
Another of the challenges that we all are facing is
how to keep people receive on the internet. The
internet can be likened to a city with greater art
galleries, sports events, shops, plates to meet, but
also in there are criminals and dangers lurking.
In the real world, parents are able to give children
guidance and we grow up learning how to be safe in
a city. The internet has grown so fast that the normal
sources of guidance, what we found when we did some
research is parents are not at all confident in their
ability to guide their children about how to be safe.
In fact, there is something of a digital divide
between children and parents and so another of the
things we are having to do is roll out a programme to
help both parents and children understand how to be safe
on the internet.
Then the third thing we all are facing is how to get
the best out of the internet, how can we share
knowledge. In my own field of e-government, we do quite
a lot of talking to other governments about how they can
deliver services on-line, how they can use web to engage
more effectively and become closer to the people.
We all face these common challenges and the IGF, as
a multi-stakeholder group, forum, is a fantastic place
for us to engage and get better at addressing those
challenges.
I went to the meeting in Sharm El Sheikh last year,
it was the first time I had been to any of these forums.
I must say, the value of the multi-stakeholder forum
was, for me, very great. It was an opportunity to learn
about the perspectives of civil society, the
perspectives of people from other economics, at
different stages of development, so I came away there
that I hope a more knowledgeable person and maybe
a slightly more open minded person about different ways
of approaching problems.
Although the IGF is not a decision-making body, it’s
a body where everybody comes away more capable of making
good decisions in their daily lives or in the other
forums in which they participate.
One of the things I also found quite challenging
about the IGF, as a new person, is that the story of the
internet or the story of the mainstreaming of the
internet is now 15 or 20 years old and so there’s
a group of people who’ve been with that story right from
the beginning.
When you come as a newcomer, it’s a bit like
attending a third year mathematics lecture without
having done the first two years and you feel there is
a lot of catch up to do.
One of the really valuable things about the IGF,
about the regional IGFs, is the way that it enables
people to catch up on the story so far and with the
internet growing so fast, most of the people involved in
the internet are newcomers. The veterans are quite
a small group.
One of the challenges for the veterans is how to
include the newcomers, but without having to go back to
the beginning and repeat 15 years of education.
I think the regional IGF plays a very good role in
that. I was also particularly struck by the way in
which Egyptian growth people were involved in that forum
and also the effort that had been made to include people
with disabilities.
I think, again, something I hope we are able to
replicate, that’s why we have the youth IGF, is to
enable that to happen.
In fact, I had rather more modest ambitions for the
IGF, as we left last time, I said to Stephen Lau,
wouldn’t it be great to do a Hong Kong IGF and civil
society and youth and people with disabilities in these
issues and then in the lounge at Aman airport, on the
way back, we ran into Edmon and some other people from
other economies who said we should try and do this on
a regional basis, so I said if you’re sure and so
I think a great tribute to both the Hong Kong organising
committee and the it would err Asia Pacific organising
committee for pulling this together in relatively short
period of time. I’m sure that this is going to be the
first of many regional IGFs that will prove very
productive for the internet community and all the
stakeholders in the region.
I wish everybody a very good stay in Hong Kong and
a very productive conference. Thank you.
I have also now falls to me the very pleasant task
of introducing Markus Kummer. It was Markus who started
me on my internet governance journey. He visited
Hong Kong about a year ago and met me with Stephen and
explained to me about the IGF. Markus had distinguished
career as a diplomat in the Swiss diplomatic service,
posted to a number of places around Europe and was the
e-envoy for the Swiss Foreign Ministry. He is
a veteran, he was part of the Swiss delegation at the
world summit on the Internet Society and as joined the
UN in 2004 and has played a role in internet governance,
is now runs the secretariat for the IGF.
Can I ask you to welcome Markus. Thank you.
>> Markus Kummer: Thank you, Jeremy. Good morning to you
off. It’s great a pleasure and honour for me to be
here. I’m really excited to see how this came about,
this Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum.
You’re in very good company with your regional
forum. Over the past few years, we have seen similar
initiatives emerging in all parts of the world, in East
Africa, West Africa, in Latin America, in the Caribbean,
in Europe, also many national Internet Governance Forums
have emerged, USA, Russia recently, then many in Europe,
United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Portugal and
there is of course a fairly big European gathering which
has taken place for the third time this year.
All these initiatives, they very much came up, they
mushroomed in a bottom up way. They were not based on
any decision by the world summit on the information
society. They were local, regional, national
initiatives that just came about.
There was a perceived need for this kind of
gathering for this kind of discussion.
There is, in the Tunis agenda, an acknowledgment
that there is a need for coordination at all levels, at
the international level, regional level and national
level.
Most of the discussions, however, in the
international context is about international cooperation
at the global level.
Nevertheless, it was recognised that in order to
bring about policy coherence, there need to be policy
coherence at all levels, the national, at the global and
also at the regional level.
There are two ways of bringing about policy
coherence. One would be the more traditional top down
way of negotiating treaties and agreements to try to
create hard law, to meet all these challenges Jeremy
just talked about.
There is another way, which is more the IGF way.
That is to bring about policy coherence through
discussions, not through decision making, but sharing of
best practices, sharing of experiences to learn from
each other.
The internet, above all, as a network of network, is
very much a shared environment. This methodology of
sharing experiences is very much appropriate, very much
adapted to the shared environment of the internet.
The IGF was a decision by the World Summit of the
Information Society, but it was very carefully crafted
and heads of state, government, made sure that the IGF
would have no decision-making power.
However, it has the power of recognition. It can
recognise issues. It can put issues on the agenda of
international cooperation.
One example multilingualism and the IDN. The IGF
did not take any decision in this matter. However, it
signalled to those who can take decision that this is an
issue of concern and that many non-English speaking
countries, many countries that use other scripts and the
as I can script, attach great importance to this issue.
There is no scientific proof whether or not the IGF
has influenced the introduction of the IDN. But many
people feel that it has helped accelerate the process.
Quite often, when trying to explain what the IGF is,
I’m confronted with the difficulty that it may be easier
to explain what it is not. It is not a new
organisation. It is not an organisation with
membership. It’s not a tennis club where members with
vote whether they want to have a ladies afternoon or
not. No, it is very much a platform with an open door
policy where anybody can come in, anybody can come,
stand up and talk and can go to the microphone and talk
about his or her concern.
It is what I would call, it is based on a soft
governance approach that can shape public opinion and
decision making.
This novel character for international cooperation
on a global level leads also to different
interpretations with regard to its strengths and
weaknesses.
Some see the lack of decision-making power as
a weakness. They would like the IGF to go a step
further and to produce what is often called concrete
results.
Others, however, see this as its strength. This
apparent weakness, they say, is precisely the strength
of the IGF, as the lack of decision-making power creates
space for open dialogue, as nobody needs to be afraid of
a wrong decision resulting out of any of the IGF’s
meetings, so that creates a space where the dialogue can
much freer, where people express their ideas without
fears of wrong consequences.
Let me look back briefly at the history. Jeremy
said I’m a veteran of internet governance. I suppose
looking back for six years now, the internet is a young
medium, but I cannot compare myself to those who were
there from the beginning.
Indeed, many of the issues we are dealing with seem
to be rather archaic to the outsider. What I think the
newcomer is mainly interested in precisely these issues
which have more of a societal dimension, children, the
role of young people, people with disabilities,
questions of finding the right balance between the
security of the internet and the openness of the
internet.
However, at the origin was very much the discussion
relating to the very basic core physical infrastructure
of the internet.
Back in 2003, WSIS recognised, first of all, the
importance of the internet as a backbone of
globalisation, and it put the internet on the agenda.
But it then was very much also a clash between two
different schools of thought. On the one hand,
a traditional inter-government all cooperation, when
governments are on top of the pyramid, as it is the case
in all international organisations and the others are
let in almost through the back door, but they’re not
allowed to sit in the front row. They sit in the back
of the room and they can only talk when they are given
a slot, maybe at the end of the three-hour session for
10 minutes or so.
On the other hand, there is the new world, the world
of the internet, very much based on a bottom up
distributed cooperation, which is adapted to the
internet as a network of networks.
The they did not come to a concrete conclusion
saying this is right and this is wrong. However, it
adopted a very broad definition of internet governance.
That means that internet is more than just naming and
addressing and it identified a broad range of public
policy issues, issues the normal or the average user is
interested in.
Then it proposed a new space for dialogue, that is
the IGF.
The Tunis agenda also — and this is very
important — recognised that all stakeholders have an
important role to play.
The academic and technical communities was
recognised as a new stakeholder group and as I said at
the introduction, it recognised the importance of
a multi-stakeholder approach at all levels.
The roles of stakeholders were also — they were at
the beginning of the summit, maybe some illusions, it
was hailed as a multi-stakeholder summit, that all
stakeholders would have exactly the same role, but the
summit differentiated, it recognised that they have
different roles. The wording says in their respective
roles, clearly governments remain the decision makers,
but the decisions they make need to be based on a solid
understanding of issues. There is therefore a need for
dialogue between private sector and civil society, the
technical community and governments.
The governments need to signal to those who drive
the internet issues they are concerned about and the
other stakeholders need to advise on the feasibility and
consequences of envisaged solutions.
There have been a few cases in recent years, in
European countries, where decisions were taken that have
been heavily criticised afterwards, within their
countries, as being contrary to human rights obligations
and in all cases, without going into details, it can be
traced back to the fact that the decisions were made
without broad consultations of all stakeholder groups.
Back to the IGF history. The IGF has had four
meetings so far, in Athens 2006, Rio 2007, Sharm El
Sheikh 2009 and now we are preparing for September this
year.
The overall theme will be IGF 2010, developing the
future together. The agenda builds very much on the
previous years agendas, with a new issue, internet
governance for development.
Also, our traditional taking stock session will not
look inwards to the functioning of the IGF, but it will
look at the broad internet governance landscape and look
at the changes that have happened since 2006.
As an emerging issue, we will deal with cloud
computing.
Also, given the new importance of all these regional
meetings, we give space to regional meetings. There
will be an introductory session where the regional
meetings can compare and look what they had in common,
can look at their difference, different priorities and
also we will give each regional meeting a slot where
they can explain more in detail what they were all
about. I hope that the Asia Pacific regional meeting
will make use of both opportunities.
Also, there was a strong call for a greater
involvement of youth. I assisted yesterday at a youth
IGF here in Hong Kong and I hope also that we can bring
them together with young people from other regions.
Clearly, they are the future. They are the digital
natives and we have to recognise that.
I’m very much a digital immigrant myself, but
I remember last year in Hong Kong, I think it was
Charles sitting in the first row made the remark that
the paradox is in the real world, it’s the natives that
make the laws and not the immigrants and in the digital
world, it is the immigrants that make the laws and not
the natives.
Here we are trying to bring the two worlds together.
The IGF mandate, the original mandate was for five
years, subject to review. The UN secretary general was
requested to hold consultations on the future. These
consultations took place in Sharm El Sheikh and based on
that, the secretary general made a recommendation to the
UN membership to extend the mandate for another five
years.
The decision on whether or not to extend the mandate
will be taken by the General Assembly in December this
year.
Clearly, the consultations showed that many people
have many ideas on how to improve the IGF. Everybody
agrees that it is not perfect.
But we can safely say that there was overwhelming
support for a continuation of the IGF within existing
parameters, that is to have it continue as an open
platform with an open door policy, where all
stakeholders participate on an equal footing.
As I said, a final decision will be taken next year
and it will also be a decision on whether or not
multi-stakeholder cooperation is the best approach
towards internet governance.
With that, I invite remarks and I look forward to
your deliberation. Thank you very much.
>> : Thank you, Mr Kummer. Now, may I invite Mr Hasanul
Haque Inu to come on to the stage. Mr Hasanul Haque Inu
was born on 12 November 1946. He holds the Bachelors
Degree of engineering, chemical engineering.
Particularly, he is the president of Bangladesh group,
SAJASAD.
He is the member of Bangladesh Parliament, Chairman
of Parliamentary Standing Committee of Ministry of Post
and Telecommunications, Bangladesh Parliament. He is
also the adviser of Bangladesh Internet Governance
Forum, BIGF.
He is the member of Bangladesh and India People’s
Movement Forum.
Mr Hasanul Haque Inu, please.
>> Hasanul Haque Inu: Thank you. Good morning, everybody.
Thank you for hosting this conference. I thank the
co-organisers also, especially DotAsia.
The UNDP declared in the myth of the technology
revolution, we say in short GPT.
As you know in the past, the GPT was team India and
then the second phase of industrial evolution GPT of
that.
Now ICF is the GPT of our age.
This GPTs enabling technology, a tool to enable all
sectors. The ongoing ICT revolution combined with
globalisation has provoked hopes and fears among all
countries and at all levels of development.
The big question: can we adapt and adjust or be left
out of the loop?
I come from Bangladesh Bangladesh, 1971 under.
1971 is a remarkable year. Not only for Bangladesh,
but for the world. Because in that year, Intel invented
microprocessor and placed it into the market.
That started the ICT revolution. That started the
ITH.
1971 is the beginning of Bangladesh independence.
Now, everybody is pondering across the world and my
country how to master ICT. How to apply ICT. Why to
apply ITC. We are trying to find an answer. But at the
same time, across the nations, in the world, we are
trying to find an answer also.
Who will guard the guardians?
From democracy, we have not yet found full solution.
But apart from this question, the world is, again,
discussing and trying to find an answer, how to build
a sustainable economy?
The market economy recently has shown certain
problems and cracks.
The market economy roaring in the highway of
development has found that they don’t have shock
absorbers.
That is a difficult situation we are facing.
How to switch over from the paradigm of state
security to comprehensive security.
We have not yet found an answer.
This is 2010. Bangladesh is part of south Asia.
Bangladesh is caught between the twin forces of
globalisation and regionalism.
Politicians in our part of the world, in the last 50
and 60 years, tried to strengthen the state security and
in that, they tried to.
We could not ensure our state security, but the
whole south Asia landed on three dangerous bombs, the
atomic bomb, poverty bomb and communal bomb and this
twin dragon is poverty and terrorism in our part.
Meantime, the developed world moved forward on the
wings of ICT. Bangladesh and south Asia and also many
countries of the world are limping behind, stuck up in
the cobweb of bureaucratism, militarism, poverty, low
literacy rate.
You have heard of probably the great philosopher of
China, he said, in a well governed nation, porth is
ashamed of. This a badly governed country, wealth is
ashamed of.
Remembering his words, the challenge of the
millennium and for Bangladesh also to find a successful
solution to poverty eradication, to link a developing
nation like Bangladesh to the world highway of
development, the great boxer Mohammed Ali once said wars
are fought against nations to change maps. Wars are
fought against poverty to map changes.
Bangladesh decided to map changes with ITC.
Bangladesh decided to take up the challenge under the
bold leadership of the President-elect who declared to
digitise Bangladesh by 2021, the year Bangladesh will be
50 years old, to build a digital Bangladesh.
The question surrounding digital Bangladesh’s real
and often politically sensitive, should the government
implement a midday meal programme to attract students or
pay for a computer in a school which will cost at least
US$25? Which can feed 15 students for one year?
Should the government build a new bridge or
computerise the Roads and Highways Department? When
resources are similarly limited, these are valid and
difficult questions, but these should be answered in the
context of rapidly changing world and so sometimes needs
to make very hard choices.
The slogan of digital Bangladesh created difference.
IT now linked to development process.
Added a new dimension. This is the beginning of
a new economic paradigm. While IT is the driving force
and also a tool to enable all these sectors of economy.
Rather, than treating ITC as an isolated sector of
its own, I adapting to the new. It’s a process of
creative destruction.
Budget tall Bangladesh 150 million people of our
country from inactivity and digitised now to digitised
Bangladesh.
In spite of the big mountains of obstacles, like
backward education system, very old colonial
bureaucratic administrative system, shortage of power
and unfriendly regime for ITC development, I come with
good news, that BD has already applying ICT, in all the
sectors and BD, Bangladesh, has started to work on-line
legs.
Education, e-governance, e-agriculture, e-health,
e-commerce, e-industry, software and hardware industry,
e-law regime, e-communication infrastructure with
150 million people.
Bangladesh intelligence city is 38 per cent.
55 million people are using mobile phones or land
phones.
The internet users is almost 5 million. It’s only
two years development.
The population below 30 years is 60 per cent of the
country.
GDP per capita is only $643. But in spite of all
these problems, Bangladesh has embarked on the programme
of setting up village communication networks.
Communication information centres.
We are giving a lady with a mobile who is roaming
across the village, house to house, door to link,
linking mobile help lines, so that we are introducing no
exclusion policy.
We are introducing, we have already introduced
mobile banking. Now the only unbanked 14 per cent
people in our country, but now, from any part of the
country through a mobile, we can send through an SMS in
minutes, to the remotest corner of a village, you can
send money to your poor mother or wife.
We have already the mobile broadband network is
functioning. By 2014, our 18,500 secondary schools will
have a computer lab and a digital education system.
We have 18,000 community help clinics which are
reactivated and that will be computerised within four
years time.
These are few efforts we are taking to digital
Bangladesh. Not as important to develop and design
appropriate content and services. Here comes the use of
mother tongue language, the bangla language.
For that on 21 February 2010, the programme of our
country formally submitted our application to the ICANN
to include Bangla in the top level domain, ccTLD.
Digital technology clears the glasshouse, when new
moral issues have cropped up.
Also, the delicate problem of protecting the
secrecy, privacy of individuals and nation states have
or raised. The problem of ensuring the reliability of
the technology and thus arose the need to define the
responsibility of hardware manufacturers and software
designers and the right of end users.
We know that our email at least crosses through 18
gates to reach the destination.
We know the internet governance and management is
not yet at the hands of a neutral body.
We also know that by 2012, we need to switch over
from IPV4 to IPV6.
So we need to build a capacity technically in order
to protect and facilitate the digitisation process. For
that we need to cooperate globally and regionally.
Apart from these issues, the problem of mobilising
is always a big question to be answered by all.
ICT is innovation driven economy, innovation based
development, in fostering high rate of innovation.
For that, every nation needs to specify how the
government will play its role. Many important issues
are not yet answered and resolved.
What we are doing, what we are dreaming of, all
depends on the internet and its management.
So the management and governance of the internet is
very important for a developing nation and the poor
people of the world.
So it is required, we think that the IGF forum be
expended for another five years until 2015. The
internet governance mechanism to finance the developing
economy to be done, at the end, let me tell you the
vision of digital Bangladesh offers exciting new
opportunities.
I invite all to join in the journey that we have
embarked upon, which offers a successful solution to
poverty eradication, the challenge of the millennium,.
The key policy approach in our country, we have
taken to place people before profit, to put people
before power, to place people and put before politics,
profit and power and put ICT as an enabling tool.
As in Bangladesh, as Thomas Jefferson said, when
people fear the government, it is tyranny. When
government fears the people, it is liberty.
In Bangladesh, we have an atmosphere of liberty now.
The elected government, so your next destination is
Bangladesh, where you can invest relax in the scenic
tourism spots, bask in the warm tropical sun in the
largest and longest beach of the a world.
I invite you all to cooperate regionally and
globally.
Thank you very much.
>> : Thank you, Mr Hasanul Haque Inu.
The following three speakers are from the main
internet organisations in Asia which is APNIC, APTLD and
DotAsia Organisation.
First, may I invite Mr Paul Wilson, Director General
Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, APNIC, to come
on stage and deliver a speech for us.
Mr Wilson, please.
>> Paul Wilson: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here to
welcome you all to this meeting. It’s great to see so
many faces here in the room. It’s great to see so many
names here behind me. I would like to say thanks very
much to everyone who’s been involved with sponsoring and
organising the event, particularly to DotAsia and the
DotAsia staff and the other volunteers on the committees
who have made this event as good as it looks like it’s
going to be.
I had the privilege also to write a few words at the
opening of the brochure that you have in front of you,
but I would like to go on to say a few more words about
the area that I’m involved with, that my organisation,
APNIC is involved with, which is the area of IP address
management.
We are a sponsor of this event, but we are also not
at all disinterested in the outcomes of this event or of
the internet governance discussions that are under way.
Because our primary area of activity, which is the
management of IP addresses, in the Asia Pacific region,
in the case of APNIC, is a topic for discussion in the
internet governance sphere and it is of great relevance
to the internet, to the growth and the stability of the
internet that we all use.
In case you don’t know us I’ll say a few words about
the system that we at APNIC operate within.
It’s the system of regional internet registries.
It’s been operating for around about 15 years, which is
in fact about the entire life of the mainstreaming of
the internet, as Markus mentioned earlier.
We were established or the system was established to
address certain problems of address distribution or
routeing that were happening back in the early 1990s.
The system achieved that. It provided that
solution.
It then went on to support the internet through
a period of 15 years of sustained growth and success
that was never anticipated in those early days.
The regional internet registries, the RIRs of which
APNIC is one, have been described as a model of internet
governance in action.
The system does embody and has embodied many of the
aims and the ideals which emerged from the WGIG and the
WSIS processes, for instance, the policy development
system under which IP address policies are formed, these
are multi-stakeholder processes by nature. They admit
anyone with an interest in IP addresses to discuss and
contribute, but also to actually vote and to make, to
help to make decisions on these critical internet policy
matters.
That’s not to say that this system is perfect or
represents any form of perfection. Quite the contrary.
The policy development system that we have for IP
address management is ongoing and it allows a continuous
reevaluation of the current status of IP address
management, of best practices, of new technologies as
they develop.
Even that policy development process itself is
subject to the policy development process, so that it
can be changed via the process to admit whole new ideas
or new methods for development of IP address management
policies.
Even the outcomes of this meeting, as far as they
pertain to IP addressing, could come back into the Asia
Pacific regional address policy process and have
a concrete impact on that process.
It’s for that reason I’m really pleased to be here
with an opportunity to support this event towards some
really meaningful discussions on internet governance in
all of its aspects.
I do want to mention, though, about APNIC, that we
have very strong interests outside of this literal task
of IP address allocation and management. We strongly
support training and education in internet operational
matters for many years, including effects like the
anticipate cot annual conference, the very regular
training and information events which we participate in.
We have participated very actively also in the
internet governance discussions which started with WSIS
in 2003. We supported the UNDP ORDIG, Open Regional
Dialogue on internet governance regional dialogue which
were some here were involved in in 2005 and that
provided a very interesting snapshot back then or what
were the priorities for internet governance in the Asia
Pacific region.
These days, along with others in the internet
technical community, we participate almost continuously
in consultations with governments, through direct
meetings with governments and also in all sorts of
events, PITA meetings, the Pacific Telecommunications
Association, the Pacific — the secretariat of the
Pacific Community, ASEAN, ITU and of course ICANN
meetings.
These are continuous processes of consultation which
are happening not only within regional internet
registries, but across the entire internet community and
they’re a really good example of what was called
enhanced cooperation after the Tunis.
The discussions that we have are wide ranging about
internet matters, but these days these one topic that
we’re focusing on and being asked about a lot which is
IPV6 and the challenge we faced to achieve a successful
deployment of V6 in the next two years and a smooth
transition to follow that.
Just a few words on IPV6.
It does have its own IP address base. So the
challenge of IPV6 might appear to be an addressing
issue, but it’s actually not.
Today’s V6 address management policies are well
formed, they’re stable and they’re resulting in rapid
allocation of addresses throughout the world, to the
extent that we have well over 500 times as many
addresses allocated in the IPV6 network these days as in
the entire IPV4 internet.
The trouble is that allocating addresses doesn’t
make the internet and there’s a lot of work to be done
by ISPs, by equipment and software vendors and others to
ensure that IPV6 deployment actually does happen
smoothly over the next two years.
Let’s be clear. No one can creditably claim that
any challenge in IPV6 address management could have any
impact at all on the deployment of IPV6 today, except
possibly a negative impact.
For those who are interested in this topic, my
message to you is to put your efforts now into
deployment of IPV6, into the real challenge that we have
in the next 18 months to two years, to actually get IPV6
operationally deployed and working. The address
management system and for that matter, APNIC will
support you in absolutely.
It will be open to all ideas for change and
evolution in future years, but let’s get IPV6 happening
first.
There will be a bit more on the topic tomorrow in
the critical internet resources session, which is
happening in the morning.
With that, I would like to say thanks again and
I hope you have a very productive few days here in
Hong Kong.
Thanks.
>> : Thank you, Mr Wilson.
I now invite Mr Zhang Jian, General Manager, Asia
Pacific Top Level Domain Association, APTLD, to come on
stage to deliver the welcome remarks, Ms Zhang, please.
>> Zhang Jian: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.
First, I would like to say, I’m quite honoured to be
here today, since I was invited to give this opening
remark, although I prefer the other invitation to movie
premier much better.
Secondly, actually, to be honest, I’m quite
surprised, there are so many people sitting in this
meeting room today after last night movie premiere and
the World Cup soccer games.
While the rest of the world is crazy about the World
Cup, we are getting here to discuss internet governance
issues, but we’re still going to have some fun here.
Just like president Zuma said in the opening of the
World Cup, everyone’s time has come.
I would like to test that a little bit and say in
our internet world, actually, it’s already the time for
AP Pacific region.
The reason I’m saying that is because our Asian
Pacific region is a region with the most on-line
population.
Also, it’s still growing fastest among the regions
in the world.
We are the region that has the biggest demand on
internet resource.
We are the region with the most cultural diversified
region, actually, with so many Asian languages, nations,
with all kinds of regimes and after all, we have more
than half of the world population.
So that makes our region’s internet development have
its own character and its own needs, actually.
The internet has become the communication and the
information backbone of the globe.
More than half of the population in the world is
using the internet nowadays.
The internet continues transforming our lives and so
it behoves us all to take an interest in how it is run
and managed.
That is very much the spirit of IGF.
There has been four global IGFs and some IGFs
established on a regional basis or a national basis.
But until today, no regional IGF in Asian Pacific
has been held. So we appreciate very much our local
host on giving us this opportunity to get together to
discuss the issues we have concerns on the internet.
This forum brings together all major stakeholders,
governments, the private sector, civil society and the
academic and technical communities to debate on an equal
footing about internet governance and related public
policy issues, exchange information and share good
practices.
It has been only several months since we started
having this idea of running AP regional IGF after last
IGF in Egypt.
The Hong Kong internet community has put in
tremendous effort to make this happen.
On a personal note, I love to have this held in this
beautiful city and in this gorgeous called Cyberport,
although I got lost in this building this morning.
Thank you, Mr Stephen Lau, the chairman of
organising committee. Thanks for the support from
Hong Kong Government, especially Mr Jeremy Godfrey.
Thanks for all the co-organisers, especially DotAsia
and supporting organisations.
I wouldn’t list all the names here.
APTLD, Asian Pacific top level domain organisation,
is organisation for ccTLD for top level domain
registries in Asian Pacific region. APTLD works as
a forum of information exchange on technology and
operational issues of domain name registries in Asian
Pacific region.
Also, as an interface to other international
internet coordinating bodies, APTLD fosters and elevates
participation of AP ccTLDs in those global forums,
special acts in the best interest of our APTLD members.
In global internet policy making process, APTLD has
been one of the important drivers of initiatives like
international ccTLD. That’s also called IDN ccTLD.
That means, you know, soon err you are going to —
soon you are going to be able to put in using all kinds
of language, like Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, on the
address place in the internet.
We are going to have a session to discuss it in this
meeting later on.
That’s a successful example of collaboration among
local communities.
We also consolidated effort on internet security and
the representative voice of AP region on internet and
domain policy — domain name policy around the globe.
We participated in other regional forums, like AP*,
Apricot, APNIC and also we support model of the regional
RIs.
We are very happy to join in such forum, like AP *
regional IGF to discuss the topic on internet and share
ideas with others in the region.
More than half of the ccTLDs in AP region are
members now.
Also, we are open to not only ccTLD managers, also
we are open to anybody whose domain industry related.
So I would like to invite you to join the APTLD as
members.
I believe there is a brochure about us in your
registration bag, so if you need more information,
please come to me.
At last, I wish we all have a fruitful and
successful meeting.
Thank you.
>> : Thank you, Ms. Zhang.
May I now invite Mr Edmon Chung, Chief Executive
Officer of DotAsia Organisation, to come on stage and
deliver the welcome remarks for us. Mr Chung, please.
>> Edmon Chung: First of all, welcome, everyone, to
Hong Kong. As also part of the local host, really hope
you have a good time here in Hong Kong in the next few
days and hopefully we’ll have a fruitful discussion in
this forum.
DotAsia ourselves, we are very excited and very
privileged, we feel, to be part of the internet
governance discussion. I think we are a relatively
young organisation. We have been fully operational,
running the DotAsia registry only since 2008. However,
the idea started way back in 2000.
So we understand that a grass roots and
multi-stakeholder process takes a long time. It took us
eight years to get to operation and it takes us a few
more years, it will take us a few more years, to grow
up.
But through this period, we hope to — we have
learned the importance of multi-stakeholder approach,
the importance of collaboration.
Starting from just a few country code top level
domains that come together to form DotAsia, we now
already have 27 members going on to 28 and hopefully if
Bangladesh.bd would join us and .my will join us, we
will break 30 this year.
So I think the approach from DotAsia has always been
to try to contribute to collaboration and coordination
around the Asian Pacific region.
This brings me to — I think Markus mentioned as
well, last couple of days we had a youth IGF camp which
was held in a very remote area in Hong Kong. We are
really happy to have Wolfgang act as our headmaster for
the day yesterday.
What I wanted to talk about was that I was really
excited to see the young students that we have recruited
into the camp really take on the concept of
multi-stakeholder approach.
What I mean by that, the format of which, which was
actually dreamt up by my NetMission ambassadors, was
that there were 60 of them, they were separated into six
different stakeholder groups. Some of them role playing
as governments, some of them role playing as businesses,
some of them role playing as NGOs and some of these role
playing as themselves.
The discussions exceeded my expectations very much
and it really sort of exemplified the multi-stakeholder
approach.
That brought me to think that hopefully, in the real
IGF forum type of setting, we can have a very open
dialogue, understanding other people’s perspectives,
because remember that the students themselves didn’t
really know what the governments would have thought.
But over the three days camp, they had to research
what governments positions were, what businesses
positions usually were and engage in a open
multi-stakeholder dialogue.
So I hope that this is — it made me very hopeful in
bringing that spirit into future discussions in this
type of forum.
With that, actually, I want to, as I have the Mike
her, I wanted to take this opportunity to also thank all
the volunteers and people who made this possible.
Because it really took us a lot of time.
Also, especially those who made the youth camp
successful. That has been completed with great success.
A round of applause to the NetMission ambassadors.
With that, I have the honour to invite Mr Stephen
Lau, the chair from the local host organising committee,
to say a few words for us. Stephen is also Hong Kong’s
representative to the IGF multi-stakeholder advisory
group.
>> Stephen Lau: Thank you, Edmon. Good morning, ladies and
gentlemen.
I always love to be the last speaker in a series of
speakers in the same session, which means that whatever
needed to be said, has been said.
All I need is to make a few remarks in echoing the
sentiments and remarks made.
However, first of all, on behalf of Hong Kong
organising committee, I wish to thank all the
stakeholders, all volunteers, all the supporting and
sponsoring organisation in making this event as it is
and I believe it will be a success and I’m sure it will
be a success.
I just want to, particularly make a couple of
supplementary observations, particularly to Jeremy
Godfrey’s speech earlier on.
I think we all recognise that in the current IGF
activities, Asian Pacific has not had a kind of meeting
or IGF-like meetings in Asian Pacific, as distinct from
the other regions.
In recognising that, I think any Asian Pacific
economy could have taken up this challenge.
Hong Kong, I think, we took up this challenge, it’s
more a matter of at the right place, at the right time.
I think it’s sparked off by Jeremy’s representing
the government in terms of having the will and the drive
to take up this challenge and coupled with stakeholders
in Hong Kong who have come together, assembled, to
organise these events, as well as the willingness of
sponsors who recognise the importance of IGF and thereby
provided us with the necessary materials and resources
to be able to host this forum.
In taking up this challenge, I must say that the org
thising committee, the people in Hong Kong, I don’t
think we never had a kind of presumptious kind of pride
in taking up this challenge or I use the word arrogance.
We don’t have any of this.
In fact, we look at this as a kind of a humble
agent, a humble catalyst to spark off some IGF
activities in Asia.
But we do take pride in a couple of observations.
One is, we take pride in the Hong Kong Government,
in realising the multi-stakeholder composition of IGF
events and not saying this is not an official government
event, but providing all the necessary support and the
tangible and intangible and it’s a group of stakeholders
organisations in Hong Kong who take up this challenge
and do the organisation.
We also take pride in the speedy response across the
Asian Pacific region, in terms of the stockholders. If
you look at the distinguished audience here today, it
covers right across the Asian Pacific, in terms of the
entire spectrum, may it be civil organisation, community
organisation, government, academics, private sector, and
we do take pride in that.
But let’s not be complacent, because Asian Pacific,
as we all recognise, is the largest region in the world
with over half of its population, a multitude of
countries, a multitude of economies, with diversities in
custom, in cultures, languages, and in all aspects of
the requirements as far as internet governance issues
are concerned.
So we are should not be complacent.
This is the catalyst. This is the spark, fuelled by
your representation, hopefully would innight the wave of
sustainable interest, meaningful participation in hoping
that this kind of forum, this kind of meetings will be
sustained in Asian Pacific.
I look forward to, in the last session, when we talk
about the way forward in this round table, not just to
discuss the future mandate and looking at the future of
IGF, but looking at the future of IGF activities in
Asia, in Asian Pacific, on a sustainable platform, upon
which we can all take pride and perceive to be the
representative platform for all IGF activities to be
conducted in the future and.
With that, thank you for coming and we look forward
to the next four days of meaningful, sustainable and
interesting discussions.
Thank you.
>> : Thank you, Mr Lau.
Now, may I invite Prof Ang, from Singapore Internet
Research Centre, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore. He is also the APRIGF regional organising
committee, to come on stage and deliver the
introduction.
Prof Ang has been very supportive for the APRIGF.
He was instrumentally initiating and put all components
together in order to make this event successful. His
introduction will definitely paint the backdrop for our
two day round table discussion.
Prof Ang, please.
>> Prof Ang Peng Hwa: I know we have tea break coming up
professor told me once that should not try to hold back
your students from their lunch or tea breaks, so I will
try not to do that.
I have a brief introduction, but it is very brief.
Some background, first of all, at Sharm El Sheikh, I was
very surprised to learn that for Asian Pacific, we don’t
have a meeting that will give formal input to the IGF
process, so that’s when I said who do I speak to?
I spoke to various people and they all — of course,
Paul Wilson and they all pointed me to Edmon. So
I emailed it mon and it mon doesn’t reply.
I search for him and then I discover that he’s like
this guy, this author that I know, he wrote a letter to
his friends, to his fans, when they had questions and
then a few years ago, he wrote an email to his fan and
his fan scolded him. Why did you use email? Why didn’t
you use IM?
Edmon is in the IM group. He’s really I think more
in the email group and he’s IM group. So I have to IM
him or skype him. Final lewe connected and you can see
all these names here, a big credit to Stephen and Jeremy
and to Edmon.
I also must mention that looking for a lady with
antennas, whose name is Bianca. I think she’s an an
android.
Because I emailed her at 2 am and she replies and at
6 am, there’s another email, so I think she’s not real.
You don’t have somebody called Bianca?
But a big thanks to her and other volunteers as
well.
Now briefly about what we are trying to do in terms
of setting the scene.
Edmon has been very generous I he did a lot of the
work, you could do it, but he’s been very generous. We
are a friendly group and I hope we have it that way.
I know you guys will know that the IGF, because of
the political nature, can be rather contentious, but
I have been very glad working with Edmon, it has been
a very fun venture. Thanks to you.
I enjoy my time.
Why are we meeting?
We are in Hong Kong and the food is very important.
I’m from Singapore, so food is very important. You got
to have the right things together.
It should be meeting friends and then food in that
order.
We are meeting and the question of course is should
the IGF meet or not?
I think you would have seen this survey on the IGF
home page, the site. You can see that according to
this, about 90 per cent say yes, with some conditions.
A few say, very few say no. So I think I know you can
quibble with the research, only about a hundred people
responded, but in terms of the numbers themselves, the
percentage-wise, you can see it is overwhelmingly for
meeting.
The question is what do you meet for?
I have outlined some issues that we should think
about over the next few days, mandate would be one of
them. What should the IGF be talking about? What
problems you aim to solve? What should the format be
like? Is the current format as you know it suitable,
good? Can we improve on it or should we? What about
the structure? What about the focus? Currently we have
five topic areas. One of them under discussion already,
development, our colleague from Bangladesh has talked
about how important that is.
But that has been severely downplayed and I think
that has been mentioned in the most recent consultation
as well.
Given that what we should do with ICT4D some of the
issues that may have been solved to some extent or some
may have been heightened. I think cyber security is
a big issue that seems to have come up above late.
People have been put on cyber security, so maybe it’s an
area that we should be talking about more, as opposed
to, for example, openness. Openness, freedom of
expression, but openness and cyber security, they do
clash. How do we recognise that? What should we do.
The next move, for the IGF, I think we should look
at what it has accomplished. I mean, Mr Lau has
mentioned that accomplished some things. What should we
be looking at?
Markus has mentioned something that’s accomplished.
Maybe it’s not immediate obvious to us, but maybe it is
to you in your particular area, that IGF has contributed
in some way. We have talked about, Markus talked about
IDNS and we have here really the father of I DNS Tan Tin
Wee kind.
Those who are new in this area, he was the one, an
early pioneer and his question was if the internet were
in they’re language, would you have been able to access
it? He was an early pioneer.
Given that, what should the mandate be? Who
problems should be solved? I mentioned that.
Then looking now at the details, how often should
the IGF meet? My own sense is I thought it was
a radical idea, but I goer a lot of people have thought
about it. IGF doesn’t need to meet every year. In the
intervening year, we have our regional meeting, a place
where there is good food, like Hong Kong.
Advisers, how should members be selected? It is
written down, looking a bit more specifically at the
IGF.
My own sense, I’m developing a paper about this.
I think that the IGF is a global good. I think it’s
a global good, in the sense that it contributes to
something that it’s not easily available if you were to
do it yourself.
Global good and I put goods, because it’s adjective
good and goods meaning it is a product.
I think that it is a global good was it’s got
benefits that are available to everybody.
So we talked about examples would be like peace and
security. That’s a global good. Multilateral trade
regime, protection of the environment and then cyber
space.
I think that what we are looking at is not just
a meeting about how we can regulate the internet.
I think if you’re looking at that, that’s very narrow.
But we are looking at how we can improve this thing
called cyber space, the internet as it works, so that we
grow it, we benefit from it, we have our colleagues in
Bangladesh benefiting from it. Its development, its
education, its health, how can they do it so that we
have maximum benefit across the globe.
For global good, we have a major challenge. The
major challenge being that the demand is high. I mean,
we all want peace and security. We all want a better
trade regime.
We want a better environment for ourselves and for
our generations to come.
We want a better cyber space.
But supply is limited.
The supply is limited, because it is difficult to
get it together. It’s not always easy to get your
better environment, less pollution, better health across
the globe, a better cyber space. Not so easy. The
supply is limited.
I feel what we are doing here is contributed to this
global public good.
It is not necessarily for our own benefit, but the
public benefit.
On that somewhat sobering note, that’s why we are
meeting and I hope that we keep that in mind, that we
are trying to develop something that is of benefit for
Asian Pacific, but also beyond Asian Pacific.
So food, friends, for public global good.
Have a good time here.
>> : Thank you, Prof Ang.
As we are running a little bit late, our programme
will go on now.
Coffee and tea will be served on the left-hand side
outside. You may talk your drinks outside now or
between the sessions.
Coffee break will last for about half an hour.
Now we need a few minutes to set up, so we shall
continue after the set up.
Besides, in today’s events, open WiFi is available
to all of you.
Electronic sockets are on the floor, so you can use
it.
Tonight a round table dinner will be served at
Cyberport here.
Participants must get a ticket to enter. If you do
not have one, please go to the registration desk to ask
for one.
Seats are limited and tickets are given out on first
come, first serve basis.
Besides, each registered participant will have
a T-shirt free of charge. Please collect it from the
counter near the registration table.
Now please wait a moment and wait until the next
session begins.