[governance] Report of the first Bulgarian IGF discussions

[Iliya Bazlyankov]

Dear All,

Please find attached the report of the first Bulgarian IGF discussions.

Kind regards,
Iliya Bazlyankov


---------------------------

The second Domain Forum and also the first Bulgarian Internet Governance 
Forum were held in Sofia, Bulgaria on 15 and 16 November 2012. This 
event is unique for the region of the Balkans. It gathered over 100 
participants from ten countries, including a significant number of 
representatives from Bulgarian Ministry of transport, information 
technology and communication.

Domain Forum – 15 November
----------------------------------

Owing to the huge interest in 2011 Domain Forum returned for a second 
time this year. Fourteen speakers presented the main topics in the 
domain industry: new gTLDs, participation in ICANN, domain market, 
technical issues. The community participated by asking questions and 
discussing the issues during the breaks.

The new gTLDs were a dominant theme for all participants, introduced by 
the presentation on the passing from namespace to names market where the 
speaker compared the own TLDs with the well-known company representative 
buildings, made by Amadeu Abril i Abril. This topic was followed by the 
effect on new gTLDs on ICANN and its community by Stephane Van Gelder. 
The media published articles for the challenges and issues of new 
domains based on these discussions.

Geo TLDs took a notable part in the discussions, and the community was 
encouraged by Dirk Krischenowski to work on '.sofia'. The European 
ccTLDs also received a detailed explanation and comparison from Wim 
Degezelle.

The domain market was another strong thematic area, started by a 
presentation by Giovanni Seppia on the IDNs World Report by EURid and 
UNESCO and a topic regarding building synergies between Cyrillic-script 
TLDs from Werner Staub. The main conclusion is that it is essential for 
Cyrillic TLD registries to work together in order to promote the 
visibility of their TLDs. In a presentation by Leonid Todorov, Russia 
was given as an example of stable working domain market.

The most expected was the legal presentation by Plamena Georgieva about 
dispute resolution in domain names, which included cases from Bulgarian 
law and court practice. Later Thomas Rickert focused on the 
international issue for the importance of RAA negotiations and their 
possible outcome and announced that Registrar Atlas 2013 will include 
data from Bulgaria. The community received an invitation to take part in 
the study.

The Vice President of ICANN for Europe Nigel Hickson made a general 
update on ICANN projects, followed by a topic on the overview of the 
ICANN model and the possibility for participation by the Bulgarian 
interested parties by Dr. Olivier Crepin-Leblond.

The first day concluded with technical presentations on IPv6 by Ferenc 
Csorba from RIPE NCC that included some statistics on the deployment in 
Bulgaria and other European countries and also an alternative 
authoritative DNS server that is fast, easy to configure and devoted to 
the community, given by Jan Kadlec from CZ.NIC Labs.

Internet Governance Forum – 16 November

------------------------------------------------


The mail goal of the first Bulgarian Internet governance Forum is to 
introduce the most important topics to the Bulgarian community.


Hristo Hristov, director of Directorate of Information Technology at the 
Ministry of transport, information technology and communication opened 
the second day discussions with an overview of the IT policies and 
projects of the Bulgarian government. He focused on the Bulgarian IDN 
ccTLD '.бг' and announced that the government will not close the 
Bulgarian application and will continue to participate in the PDP. This 
was one of the central topics discussed by the attendees and after that 
covered in the press.

A focused discussion about the problems in the development of the 
Internet took part for the first time in Bulgaria. Members of the panel 
were Justine Toms, an online media and marketing expert; Bisera Zankova, 
Bulgarian representative in the Council of Europe; Metodi Drenovski, 
member of the board of the Bulgarian Web Association and Biser Ivanov, 
member of the board of the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies.


The key elements of the discussion were:
- More active involvement by the institutions with industry and business 
organizations in discussing and resolving fundamental issues for 
regulation and development of the Internet. For example, it was 
mentioned that the business could be advising to the Ministry of 
education regarding the exact experts they need.

- Timely updating the educational programs and introduction of adequate 
time and training topics for using a computer - from kindergarten, 
primary school age to university because after five years, the business 
will have three times as many IT personnel needs than today. Even 
nowadays they are less than enough.

- The need for a clearer self-regulation for the rights of people on the 
Internet; protection of the data and the information of a sensitive 
nature; enlightenment and education of the population.

Then, James Lawson from the Council of Europe continued with their 
principles and strategies, and he put an emphasis on human rights. He 
was followed by a speech from Prof. Wolfgang Kleinwaechter about the 
basics of the Internet Governance process. After this presentation, the 
attendees learned about the Internet Governance policies in Romania and 
Russia from Dr. Eugenie Staicut of ICI Bucharest and Leonid Todorov of 
ccTLD.ru

Finally, the event concluded with a discussion on the best legal 
framework for Internet development by Veni Markovski and the World 
Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) by Dr. Olivier 
Crepin-Leblond. The attendees expressed their views that the current 
model of Internet Governance is not perfect, but should not be changed.

The topic of Internet Governance is entirely new for the Bulgarian 
community. It is essential to be discussed a lot further in order to be 
understood the necessity of it. We have put the beginning.

Conclusion
--------------------

The Bulgarian Domain Forum and IGF 2012 was extremely well-received by 
Bulgarian internet experts. The event woke an immense interest and led 
to a debate in the media and the personal websites of local bloggers.

The Bulgarian Internet community had a lot of representatives at Domain 
Forum but is not fully active and visible yet. The complete list of 
Domain Forum's participants is available here: 
http://domainforum.bg/participants/

Bulgarian Domain Forum and IGF 2013 in perspective
-----------------------------------------------------------

Bulgarian IGF 2013 will take place in November 2013 in Sofia, Bulgaria, 
and we will make an announcement as soon as the preparation starts. An 
official website will launch soon at http://www.igf.bg

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