IE Domain Registry Annual Report 2019

IE Domain Registry  Annual Report & Review  2019 18 Corporate Governance Internet Governance One World. One Net. One Vision. The main theme of the UN’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2019 encapsulates the essence of Internet Governance. The 14th Annual Meeting of the IGF was hosted by the Government of Germany in Berlin in November 2019 under the overarching theme: One World. One Net. One Vision. The IGF 2019 brought together representatives from governments, the technical community, business and civil society to discuss amplifying digital cooperation. There were 3,679 participants from 161 countries, attending 200 sessions. The issues discussed included: „ Data Governance „ Digital Inclusion „ Security, Safety, Stability and Resilience Chancellor Angela Merkel and UN SecGen António Guterres supported the United Nations as the appropriate platform for reshaping global internet governance to ensure a free, open, and decentralised internet that is secure and stable and can support development for all. Both reinforced the IGF, a platform for all stakeholders to come together and address pressing policy issues related to the internet, as the most appropriate forum within the United Nations for advancing and evolving internet governance norms and frameworks. For decades, internet connectivity has generated innovative new services, capabilities and unprecedented forms of sharing and cooperation, however, it also created new forms of crime, abuse, surveillance and social conflict. Internet governance is the process whereby cyberspace participants resolve conflicts over these problems and develop a workable order. www.internetgovernance.org/what-is-internet-governance/ Internet governance refers to the rules, policies, standards and practices that coordinate and shape global cyberspace. No one person, company, organisation or government runs the internet. The internet’s governance reflects the internet itself: open, distributed, interconnected and trans-national. Just as the internet is interoperable, so are its governing parts. The illustration opposite, represents these relationships. The internet is a globally distributed computer network comprised of many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. As such, internet governance involves many different stakeholders. “Internet governance is conducted by a decentralised and international multi-stakeholder network of interconnected autonomous groups drawing from civil society, the private sector, governments, the academic and research communities, and national and international organisations. They work cooperatively from their respective roles to create shared policies and standards that maintain the internet’s global interoperability for the public good.” Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Global coordination ICANN’s role is to oversee the huge and complex interconnected network of unique identifiers that allow computers on the internet to find one another. ICANN was formed in 1998. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, it is a not-for-profit partnership of people from all over the world dedicated to keeping the internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN does not control content on the internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the internet. But through its coordination role of the internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the internet. ICANN has external as well as internal accountabilities. Externally, ICANN is an organisation incorporated under the law of the State of California in the United States, so it can be sued in court. ICANN is also a non-profit public benefit corporation and its directors are legally responsible for upholding their duties under corporate law. Internally, ICANN is accountable to the community through its bylaws, and its representative composition of the ICANN Board from across the globe. On 6 January 2017, an extremely important change in the governance of the DNS took place, with the completion of the transition of the IANA stewardship to ICANN. Governments can participate via the Government Advisory Committee (GAC). At the ICANN 52 meeting in Singapore in February 2015, the GAC welcomed Ireland, Kazakhstan and Mauritania as new GAC members. Membership of this influential committee was a major milestone for Ireland Inc in 2015, as it gives Ireland a voice on trans-national internet policy matters.