These are unedited transcripts and may contain errors.

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The cooperation session commenced on the 7th of October, 2009, at 2 p.m. as follows:

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Hello, everyone. Thank you. I wonder if it's because the weather is is a little bit nicer today than the previous days, people took a little bit longer lunch or maybe it's Wednesday and there was interesting things happening yesterday evening or something. But we do have pretty important things to talk about in this Working Group, so I am going to start this anyway. Patrik Faltstrom is my name. I am chairing this meeting because neither of the two co?chairs of the Cooperation Working Group could be here today.

We changed the agenda a little bit this morning and for people on the mailing list, so that we are added which is Constanze is going to talk about IPv6 in Germany. The other two main items Paul Rendek talking about RIPE NCC issues and IDF and we have Nick Thorne from ICANN talking about what is going on there.

We do have scribes and audio. The first bullet on the agenda has to do with co?chairs and it's a little bit awkward for me to maybe host the meeting and host this agenda point. I am going to do this anyway. There was a suggestion by the two co?chairs to add a third to ?? add me as a third co?chair for this Working Group and that is some decision we are making at the Working Group meetings, plus, of course, a potential discussion on the mailing list. It was announced on the mailing list about a week ago, and no one has said anything; I don't know really how to interpret that. But anyway, so the proposal from the Working Group co?chairs is to add me as the co?chair of the Working Group. Does anyone want to say anything about that?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hurrah.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: There was a silent hurrah at a microphone. I don't know how to interpret that, either.

BRIAN: Brian from HEAnet. The fact you are standing up doing this and the fact that no one has bodily removed you from the stage is indicative enough of the fact that, yes, absolutely.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: OK. So I interpret that as no one has dragged me off the stage, so I will see that we have Constanze in the room to accept me as a co?chair. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

OK. With that, let's move to the first presentation. Constanze is going to talk about IPv6 in Germany.

CONSTANZE BURGER: Perhaps I can say hello. My name is Constanze Burger from the Ministry of the Interior of Germany and for all the people, they saw me in Dubai, I learned the word. Reliability. So...

(Applause)

And I wanted to give you ?? I want to give you an update for our to?dos or what we have done in the or last weeks and months and so just a few words to the situation.

For warming up, for your patience with public authorities, future with v6. You don't need so much coffee. What we have done: The German Chancellor stated in 2008 that the development of broadband networks in the EU should be treated equally to traffic and railway infrastructure. I think it was too late. It should be easier and earlier. This overall goal was outlined in a broadband strategy paper on the Third Summit. And the broadband development requires the use of v6 in Germany. V6 flanks all these actions you see here in this picture. I think it's necessary.

What we have done: Stimulated by the third IT submit on the same I saw you, there was a mandate to break down the European v6 action plan into a national road map. This plan elaborated in 2009, in May, and presented at the German v6 submit. We are very proud of it because they had many matters to be taken to enable a efficient nationwide change?over towards the development and deployment of the new Internet protocol for German politics public service and science. The people on the picture was very proud to have Robert Kahn and our State Secretary CEO in May and we offered the action plan.

What else we have done: We are planning IPv6 guideline. We have in federal office for information security, somebody knows, BSI in Germany, it takes all of all security related aspects of v6 in its role as the central IT security service provider for German government.

Currently, BSI develop as guideline for a safe v6 network infrastructure to cover security?related aspects and issues of v6 specification and v6 migration.

Based on this guideline, extensions to the IT baseline protection are in scope in the medium term. In Germany it's called (in German). You can download a lot of interesting papers for IT security on the sites from BSI.

What else have we done: V6 enabled websites: In the middle you see our State Secretary, our CAO, Dr. Beus, and at the request of the German C I O and under the responsibility of federal ministry of the interior, my department, a first evaluation of website change?over to v6 is started. We are very proud.

In scope is the website www.cio.bund, primary to learn about technical and financial implications within the given IT infrastructure.

The status in Germany: Several network migration projects with the involvement of almost all public authorities are ongoing or partly coming to an end. The test at that Deutschland net ?? somebody knows? Migration to DOI, it's new, was finished in September. The application process with RIPE NCC made good progress. Not enough for me.

Due to the high number of stakeholders main efforts are currently focusing on collecting necessary decisions.

Another challenge is still to map effective RIPE policies to the more complex federal structure of Germany.

And if there is no agreement, you see me in my no role or in my old age provision job.

Thank you for your attention.

(Applause)

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Anyone have any questions? People are really busy with e?mail, right? OK. Constanze, for how long will you be here this week?

CONSTANZE BURGER: Until Friday. If you want to ask me something, you can come and I will answer all your questions.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Excellent. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Next presentation, Paul.

PAUL RENDEK: Good afternoon everyone, I hope you are going to stop reading e?mails for a moment to listen to a bit of this.

I have got an update prepared on what is happening in the Internet governs forum and what is happening in Internet governance in general. I have a lot of people stopped me and asking me as the RIPE NCC or NROs in this whole Internet governance circus that you see going on. I will put some into place and answer any questions that you have. I am Paul Rendek from the RIPE NCC head of external relations and communications.

So, basically we are coming up to the fourth meeting in a set of five meetings that were set out by the World Seminar on the Information Society, which took place a few years ago, and what sprung out of this was a set of five meetings called the Internet Governance Forum that would have this multi?stakeholder approach to people coming together and having dialogue between all the parties that come there.

So this is the fourth one. It's quite a pivotal meeting because there are only five so there are some decisions that need to be made and kind of preparing for the last one to see what is going to happen here, is this going toned, is this going to continue, so this is quite a significant meeting that is going to take place. So the meeting was labelled Internet governance creating opportunities for all, that was the focus of the meeting. It was be held from the 15th to 18 November in Egypt, so if nothing more, I am sure we will be blessed by some very nice weather in Egypt. There will be much more than that going on. Just to see how you get to an IGF meeting, what goes on. We have been following I think the RIRs either alone in their own regions or together as the NRO, following a lot of what has been going on regionally or in any particular country and what we see is that in Europe they have something called euro dig which is the local IGF area which gets the governments and other stakeholders together to talk what about what the European positions would be taking themselves to the IGF. There is also one that has been built by the commonwealth, the Caribbean, west Africa is taking place somewhere around now so they will be discussing their road to the IGF.

Some of the national events, I have listed the countries we know of, there might have been a few slip through my lines, of where we do see RIRs also taking part in, UK, Tanzania, Kenya, Italy, Denmark, Germany, Philippines, Nepal and USA. In all of these areas everybody is trying to form their country's opinion on things that should bring them forward in the IGF or regionally.

So basically, I just pipe this up. I know you can't see this. I want you to see how difficult it is to put a meeting like this together where all stakeholders are wanting too far workshop based on what they think is important in Internet governance. This is a four?day event and it's a ten?track event. It was eight last year but they have added more into this mix so it's a ten track meeting, so you can imagine what it will be like to put something like this together where you have a group called the MAG inside of the IGF which is the multi?stakeholder advisory group, which actually works to put this together and these people come from all areas. We also have representation there from our community. I know that here, even I think today we have Rajoul from LACNIC, he is on there and Patrik Faltstrom is on the MAG. And there are a few more, NetNod, she is on the MAG, Cathy Handley from ARIN she is also there and I am sure I am missing a few. I wanted to list that we do have representation there from the RIR community but also just the wider networking community in general.

So, as you can see here, there was a bit of some over 120 workshop proposals that were brought forward. 75 of these workshops were actually in the end put into the agenda. And I think the most important piece, there are seven areas that they are concentrating on, access, diversity, openness security, critical Internet resources that is really something that this community would be involved in directly for sure, development and capacity building. So if you look at the ?? everything has been colour?coded and I think the most important thing I want today highlight is the red bits because they are going to be talking about root servers DNS and IP addresses.

Moving on. The Critical Internet Resource workshops. They have all been bundled and grouped into the areas I have shown and out of this there were ten workshops that were put into the critical Internet resources area. Obviously we are not involved in all of them, but there are a few that we are involved in: There is three on IDNs, two on cc?TLDs, the introduction to Internet operations, this one was brought forward by NetNod, the RIPE NCC is also a partner in this particular workshop which is just a basic introduction for the ?? for basically any stakeholder that would come to this meeting, to just find out about general Internet operations. There is a workshop on mobile Internet, managing Internet addresses, which was brought forward by LACNIC, the needs based and market based Internet resource allocation which was brought forward by someone in the ARIN region, and the last one which is probably the highlight of this because it includes so many organisations is one on IPv6. And it's a basic one, what you need to know. So we are again addressing the, all the different stakeholders that would show up at the IGF

I have put this on the slide because the slide pack will be on?line and you can go in and see just to have a good reference point to like what would be put in on this v6 area. But I think what is the most important thing is that in order for a workshop to probably get accepted there or what they would like to see is a nice broad show that you have taken the multi?stakeholder and international presence into mind when you have brought forward your workshop proposal, so this workshop proposal has been brought forward by AFNOG, Cisco, ISOC, Intellect, the ITU, NomiNet, NetNod and the NRO, so of course that is a collection of us RIRs. The NRO is the one that is runing this workshop and was put together from five others so you can imagine we have all had to come together and try and see how we are going to work here.

It seems to be working thus far but we as the RIRs are taking the lead here so we are going to work with these other organisation toss produce quite a session. What they have done, because we did show due diligence in trying to get ourselves together, is they gave us a larger slot, a double slot which we see the oval circle over that red blob there, that is the double slot on IPv6 so we have got quite a session ahead of us and planning Sunday way already to see what we are going to do with that session. We have pretty much chosen a moderator, Patrik, may be moderating this session for us so hopefully he will agree to that. An idea of some of the main sessions, on the first day setting the scene,, an area for the newcomers and they have also got their traditional opening ceremony where they don't want anything in parallel with that session. There is a keynote panel, they have got a few high level personalities that will be come to go open up this event so that should be quite interesting.

And then just to show you what happens on the last day, again the circle on the far left of this at the bottom, they have something called emerging issues topic, and this year it's social networks, all of you have probably heard this term before. There is not much regulation going on in the social network spacial in the Internet and the governments and regulator have all cottoned on to this, we see we have a lot of talk on critical Internet resources and other things capacity building on the Internet, what is happening in a social networks the way that the Internet issy involving? So that is one of the topics they want to bring forward and you can probably be sure that in the next IGF, in the fifth one, that is to take place in Lithuania in 2010 you will probably see some workshops and things set around this or some talksed based on that.

And one of the main areas I wanted to point out here in day 2 is is a critical Internet resources main session. What they have done this year is instead of actually inviting a bunch of panel lists to sit up in the front and talk for 15 minutes about their area they thought they would have two moderators come in and have a moderated open discussion with the room. So pick a few people that would introduce some topics and give maybe a five?minute overview of a topic and then open it up for the room. We do know who the moderators are for this, they have chosen two, Chris and Jeanette who we ?? that work in Internet governance circles know them quite well. They have already given us the agenda of what they want to have done. So they'll choose someone to actually open each one of these little areas and as you can see there is something called transition from IPv4 to IPv6, we don't use that word in the RIR circles; we use the depletion of v4 and deployment of IPv6, but in the government circles they use the word "transition." So this has ended up as an agenda point brought forward by them. JPA has actually been changed recently, in the end of September, now called affirmation of commitments, basically a contract with a role of ?? basically what IANN is doing with the US government.

This has had quite a lot of attention in September, that affirmation of commitments was published. There is no end date on that. The JPA always had an end date and pretty much ran every year. So there will probably be quite a lot of discussion over what is going to happen or what the developments will be there. The internationalisation of critical Internet resources, the importance of new TLDs and IDNs for development. This was another area of contention because there are some parties believe new TLDs are important and some don't. Somehow the word "important," the importance of these things made it into this agenda, so it is how you see it.

And the last one is enhanced cooperation, a very, very big word. I think we have seen that here in the Working Group before, we have seen it in many other circles that governments talk about, enhanced cooperation. We as a community have not even defined what enhanced cooperation means to us. I think it's quite difficult to do. I think we do quite a lot of things that will probably encompass the area but there will be a general discussion on what that, on developments there.

And just some of the other areas here, obviously security, openness, privacy, access and diversity and another big open topic, Internet govern man's in the light of the WSIS principles. That is days two and three.

And so, in day four, in the closing day, they have another session here called take stock and looking forward. And this is basically a session that is unique to this meeting because they are going to be taking a look at what has happened over the last four IGFs, including this one of course, and what are they going to do looking forward to the fifth one and what is going to happen after that? This is actually going to be run by the UN department of economic and social affairs. It's one of the UN departments based out of the US and using UN principles. So out of all of the areas in the IGF this year this would run like what we see UN government meetings traditionally run as and the results will be fed into the CS TD EcoSoc, there is a report that is supposed to be coming out sometime in January or February somewhere around point, which will come through all these pieces and evently get to the UN general assembly. EcoSoc, RIPE NCC and APNIC are members which gives us the right to go to their meetings ?? well, we are invied to go to their meetings I believe, they have them once a year, general meetings that we are also invited to attend. If you look at all the things we do in these government circles or things to reach out to other stakeholders, this group actually is one of the ones that receives the documentation that is then sent up through the UN process. Our last continuing cooperation document that we produced as RIRs was actually the document that was submitted on what we do to actually fulfil our piece in enhanced cooperation and kind of the open dialogue between the technical community and the governments, so that is quite an important group there. I don't have it with me but I think we have copies of that, Chris. I am not sure if we have them here. We have an Enhanced Cooperation Second Iteration that we have just worked on. It's quite a difficult document to put together, as you can imagine, all five RIRs work on this together. So we managed to get that done, it's been printed, we have a copy for you here, if you'd like to take that, you can take that on your way out the door and this will be also probably a document that be used to submit through this UN process on what we have done as RIRs.

And basically, what will be discussed or what will be included in this report that will be sent is basically the 60 plus formal response that is have been received from different multi?stakeholder organisations of which the NRO is one of. You can find all of these 60 responses on the IGF website, so I am going to actually walk through the response that the NRO just give you an idea of what the response was of the NRO in this consultation process.

What you see here is NRO response to paragraph 76. That is a paragraph in the agenda, something that came out of the world submit on information society and it's one of the pieces where basically, the governments have asked for consultation on how things have been going with the IGF, what do we see needs to be brought forward and what works well and what doesn't.

So just to take a look at the impact of the IGF. There are various technical bodies have thank have worked together including the NRO and we have used this as basically an outreach area to address a lot of the confusion and misunderstandingings where, not only confusions and misunderstandings but generally enlightening those that aren't so up to speed on these areas so we think that this is ?? this was a great ?? we have had some impact there, the RIRs have put quite a lot of resources into doing this so it's nice to see we have seen something come out of that. Another positive impact we saw is we have seen improved involvement by not only governments but law enforcement and regulators in taking a look at the policy development process that exists in our RIRs communities and either partaking in them and if not acknowledging that they are there. They do see that. They do watch what is going on in these areas. So that is actually quite positive too.

Is continuation desirable? The NRO believes that of course it is. There are some barriers and issues, we believe, that need to be addressed if we think the whole I deal of a multi?stakeholder policy dialogue is actually going to be achieved, but we can it can and we will continue to make those known to all the various parties.

And basically the NRO advocates continued focus on community issues, larger than critical Internet resources, like equal access and development where collaboration by all these would mean we can make a difference in a positive way forward. So that is something that the NRO believes is very important.

Some possible improvements or things we would like to remain the same. We think the IGF is a valuable resource in having all these stakeholders come togethers and be able to make decisions in their own jurisdictions, but also that the IGF should have no decision?making role of its own. That is a very strong point brought forward by ?? we feel the way it operates now is great, it feels more equal than many things we have seen out there, but no decision?making role.

And basically, further development that we could see here, something that would be positive is probably needs to be a little wit more on?line discussion that takes place and remote participation because not everybody can travel to them, if you truly want as much participation as you can get and a good multi?stakeholder approach you probably want to encourage a little bit of on?line discussion.

So the conclusions that have come out of the NRO response here, is that the IGF is basically ?? we continue to stress the need for all stakeholders to work together here in ensuring the continued growth and stability and the security of the Internet. We believe that the Internet's quick growth is due to basically the way that it's adaptability and the direct result of actually main stakeholders being able to come together like in this room or any other RIR regions or events where we have a bought up process, we believe that is important.

And the last is multi?stakeholder engagement with a processes and structures that have been outlined or that we have ahead of us at the IGF, we believe they are there and they should be used for the ongoing growth and innovation of the Internet community.

That is basically all I have to say there.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Thank you very much, Paul. Any questions, anyone?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Bill Woodcock. Could you discuss the new wealth of regional IGF meetings in a little bit more detail, why there are so many this year, whether there is any perceived benefit from them and whether the IGF process needs this additional overlay? Of course I don't have an opinion on this but I would love to hear yours.

PAUL RENDEK: I can give you a personal opinion. I see Rajoul coming to the microphone. I have attended some, not all, I don't know what all of them would entail, I wouldn't have the cycles to follow them all. Eurodig was very interesting meeting that took place in September. It showed quite a nice approach, a multi?stakeholder approach, it's basically the Europeans coming together, mainly the European Community countries coming together. They did actually have a multi?stakeholder approach in running that meeting. It was quite productive. I know that the chair of this Working Group, Maria Hall, was also one of the leaders in Eurodig because Sweden holds the presidency, she was quite busy there, they could see that the RIPE dialogue was happening and forming what Europe's opinion would be in getting them to see Charlemagne. I have attended the UK governance forum in the past, to pull all of its focus together, some of their MPs that showed up at the Internet Governanace Forum, government officials there, lot of industry folks and dialogue there and I think there was actually help from the community or participants in shaping the government's address that would take place at the IGF. It wasn't wholly, of course they have political agendas that we wouldn't be really privy to, but certainly there were aspects they wanted to have feedback from. I have seen positive things but maybe we can have Rajoul say something.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I will speak on my own behalf here, my personal view on this.

In Latin America we have two meetings this year and last year, the motivation was that when the ICF meetings are organised far away from our region it is probably few people will participate in the ICF meeting. We had the opportunity to meet with more than 100 people and discuss all the issues basically in the regional situation from the regional perspective, so it is more or less the same agenda than IGF, the annual IGF meeting, but based on the realities of our region. So more people, more ?? in the regional situation and I think that it has been very beneficial for the discussion. But I would like to make a distinction between who preparatory IGF meeting and regional IGF. It's a different thing. I don't know anything about the existence of any regional IGF. As we make very clear when we are organising those meetings in Latin America that those meetings are just regional preparatory meetings for IGF so we organise the meetings under our own responsibility, but setting up regional IGF would need to recreate all the structure of the advisory group as create some process for designing the agenda, speakers and everything, so this is easier way to move ahead. If other people want to organise similar meetings we will attend, of course, but this is not exactly the same.

PAUL RENDEK: I think a lot of these prepatory meetings are not fully regional IGF meetings full?blown the way that Rajoul describes.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Continuing what the IGF ?? you said that there were some challenges and improvements that you'd be looking to see overcome. Could you elaborate on that and say what you would like to see improved in the future.

PAUL RENDEK: The two points I listed down were the ones that were most heavily stressed in the document that we published on?line and that was basically that we believe that there is probably a little more room for the word multi?stakeholder to actually take true effect because the governments operate ?? I mean, you are bringing together and I don't know if ?? I know that you are involved in these processes, but many in this room probably don't follow this; I mean you are bringing together two communities or sectors that operate extremely differently, you know everything from the government seems to be very top down. Although we have seen some changes coming through there but it's very top down. We tend to do everything bottom up and very inclusive, when these two parties come together it's like a bang. It's into the glove that fits very easily. So I think that you see governments that think they are taking a multi?stakeholder approach or believe they are and they truly probably believe they are but to us as a community we probably believe that was very closed or didn't happen very well, the process wasn't done correctly, not everyone was involved; I mean in, this sense, so I think that is what we are talking about in probably having a little bit more equal access in being a multi?stakeholder event. That is the first one.

And the second point that I mentioned on the slide, possible improvements, is basically what Rajoul has pointed out; I mean, it's very difficult for everyone in all ?? all over the planet, I mean that is global meeting. So it's very difficult for everyone who feels they are stakeholder to travel to any one of these distances; I mean this is one is in Egypt, we have had one inry owe in Brazil, how difficult that would be very many people in Asian countries to reach so just the sheer distances of having a global meeting like this.

And what is the preparatory process? How much of this on?line participation is there? Well, there isn't any currently in the IGF. This isn't webcast or this isn't done the way we are doing here where you have a Jabber session going on and people can ask questions remotely. So that is quite difficult. So if you really truly want this to have as much participation as you can, what are the things you are doing to enable access to even this meeting, much less access to the Internet, if you know what I mean, because that is probably one of their goals. So those are the two strongest points

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Are you making any specific recommendations for change to the MAG?

PAUL RENDEK: Paul Rajoul or Patrik want to comment on that one?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Maybe not a timely moment to ask, maybe later.

PAUL RENDEK: Thank you.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Not speaking as the Working Group chair, I think you made a really good point there when you pointed out and Rajoul the same thing, with the difference between creating a local multi?stakeholder process or adjust the existing processes into becoming true multi?stakeholder bottom up and the preparatory work that you have to do in coordinate to the large meetings, for example personally I think it's really, really good that the Eurodig meeting that was ?? that actually existed sort of before the IGF, sort of, organised very much by the Council of Europe that was pushing for that, I think it's really good that they don't have the word "IGF" in its name. We never, I was also part of organising that. We had Eurodig, we never claimed that it was a regional IGF. That was something that you pointed out.

PAUL RENDEK: Yes. They kind of see themselves as that.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: It's the closest we come in Europe and I think it would be very, very dangerous maybe to answer a little bit of your point there, Bill, to actually try to do things regionally. It's also, of course, let me take a step back; because there are issues which are specific within a certain area where you have a common context and/or a common legal sort of context that you are living in like Europe, where we need to discuss issues which are like just European and of course, some of the findings is of course that wait a second, this should not be discussed in the Eurodig, it should be discussed at the RIPE meeting, etc. But I don't mind having these kind of sort of meetings.

PAUL RENDEK: Yes.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Yes. Regarding multi?stakeholder, if we look at Sweden, was not part of that list which might surprise some people in this room because myself and Maria and others were Sweden were very active. What we decided in Sweden, we have enough meetings, OK.

PAUL RENDEK: That is a very good point.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: And we already drink enough coffee, etc., etc. But what we wanted to do was to ?? and we didn't think that ?? and regardless of nice the meetings we creating would be, it would not really solve the problem of increasing the partition ?? sorry, the participation in the existing processes, so what we tried to do or what we are trying to do, is to run a more open, inclusive process for, for example, what are the Swedish viewpoints on Internet governance and ICANN and whatever so we have initiated private sector and government together and open dialogue, literally the mailing list which anyone more or less can join and that is where the government compared to what they have done before, they are sharing draft documents that earlier was very, very close within the government process, so we are trying to open up the process instead and that is what we call IGF but just because we are not hosting any meeting we would never end up a that list but we believe we are solve the same problem.

PAUL RENDEK: Fair enough. And I am sure more that have is going on in other areas that are not listed there. I was listing the obvious where you can see they come together.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I feel this is a very useful distinction that is being made between the idea of regional Internet governance meetings and preparation for the global IGF and I think Rajoul, you might be giving short shift to the idea of regional meetings on the same topics per se because that seems to me to be a very valid thing. There is a huge community and as Patrik says, there are already a lot of meetings so we don't need more meetings for the sake of more. People who are already going and doing the work in the global IGF have demonstrably already figured out ways of preparing for that meeting, but the constituency of people who are not able to get to the global meeting and participate in it, are also the same people who are not already busy with the too many meetings and busy preparing for the global one, so serving that community seems to me to abperfectly valid goal and not one that we should just discount out of hand. On the other hand, looking at the United States regional IGF, that seemed to me very much an attempt to layer an additional layer of hierarchy on to what was intended to be a relatively flat system and gait entry to something that was supposed to be very multi?stakeholder. So I would find it unfortunate if IGF preparatory meetings got turned into filter by which some communities were denied access to or perceived themselves, even, to be denied access to the actual global IGF.

PAUL RENDEK: Yes. Yes.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: ICANN. Paul, you briefly touched upon the end of the JPA and commencement of the affirmation of commitments but I think it does deserve a little more substance because there is a change.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Nick is the next presentation, the rest of the session is actually on ?? on this very topic.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: That is why I am not touching on it, the next speaker is going to it be touching on that.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: It's a considerable change in substance, but I am sure that Nick will develop that.

PAUL RENDEK: Yes Nick is going to address that. I have left that for him of course.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: It's also the case we say quite a lot of the time on the agenda for open microphone and I have already talked to Nick and answering questions and asking questions most certainly.

PAUL RENDEK: The RIRs together, we spend a lot of resources on this, making sure that we do our bit for whatever enhanced cooperation would mean and that we are working together with the multi?stakeholder group that you see there. I think we have made some breaks there, we have certainly left our mark in many circles but I think there is still some work to do but we are committed to continuing in the process. So that is it.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Now, the last person, Nick Thorne, ICANN.

NICK THORNE: Hi, good afternoon, everybody. For those of you who don't me, I wasn't here a year ago ?? a British Ambassador dealing with voices and all that stuff, including...so I bear some responsibility for creating the IGF in the first place. I now act as an international relations advisor to the CEO of ICANN.

I have got a few notes here and then I hope we can have a discussion and I might very happy to get involved in that.

I am going to cover threats, basically. I tend to do the nasty end of the debate. I will cover threats and I will be quite frank about them. And I will talk a little bit about the IGF, Paul has just covered that very effectively. I will talk about the ITU, which is at the moment probably where the major threat comes from. And I will say a few words about the affirmation of commitments and we will be prepared to answer questions on that afterwards as well.

I guess the most ?? I have got two messages: One, we should all be co?operating more to defend our family, can I use that word, against external threats. And I use that word with a small T, it's no big deal, but nevertheless there are threats there. There are those who don't approve of the bottom up multi?stakeholder approach.

And the second one is multi?stakeholders. That does mean all of those need to speak up and it's my contention that not enough is being done in certain areas. Now, I look mostly at governments and business for that. Governments switched off after Tunis, I know my own did; I think I can say that without being shot by anybody in the audience, but basically, WSIS was a success from the point of view of western orientated liberal governments and so governments essentially said that is fine, it's OK we will switch off and thinking about something else. Now the threats are coming back and we live in interesting times. I think very interesting times. The JPA, the special relationship, if I can call it that, with the United States government, is over. It is finished. It has been declared a success. It has been affirmed as a success and the multi?stakeholder system has been affirmed, and again I repeat, that is final.

ICANN will no longer report on a regular basis to the United States government, to a single government, but, rather, ICANN has taken on a whole new set of responsibilities to allow itself to be held accountable to essentially its peers, to its own community. We have now got to make that system work, I am sure you have all read the affirmation document, there is details in there about who is going to be on these review committees. We have got to make that work and it's not going to beeesees because we are the Internet community, aren't we, and we tend always not agree with each other, even in organisations like this. So there is a lot of work to be done there and we will be looking for help from our friends, but the balance among ICANN's constituent parts, and this is important I think particularly for you here, has not changed. You will see in the affirmation document a particular role for the GAC, for the government advisory committee, that is quite deliberate to give governments an area where, if they play their role properly, they can make their influence felt, but I am going to be giving this sort of speech to a number of governments as well I'll be saying to them "you need to speak up." If you don't speak up, you won't be heard and your case will go by default.

Broadly, I think that the affirmation document is good news. I am not aware of any part of our community which thinks otherwise, but doubt somebody will stand up and tell me the contrary later on.

The affirmation document and the way in which ICANN has moved a bit away from a single government, should help us deal with some of the threats which were there throughout the WSIS's process and are now re emerging and many of those are being directed against essentially against the RIRs in the context of IPv6, where those of you who are in touch with what is happening in Geneva today will know that documents are circulating suggesting that the ITU should itself be set up as an RIR to deal with the needs of developing countries. And various members of the IT secretariat have been wandering around the world explaining to anyone who will listen that IPv6 addresses are being allocated in a way which is disadvantageous to developing countries. That is nonsense. Everyone in this room knows that. We, in ICANN, work closely are all of the RIRs have been developing a simple factual document which sets out what really happens, and that soon will be submitted to the leadership of the ITU with a request that they should distribute it to their membership so that their membership will know the facts. And amongst the RIR communities that document will be distributed again. It's purely factual, but the idea is to put a shot across the boughs ?? sorry, that is an Anglicism. A few words of warning to the ITU that we are not simply standing back and letting them get away with this.

The other areas where there are threats are ?? come again from inside the ITU but mostly this is governments who wanted to kill the IGF. The IGF was set up in Tunis mainly as a compromise to demonstrate that, on the one hand, the north, because most of this is about north/south, the north was prepared to set up a facility where everybody could debate their concerns, and on the other, to perpetuate the multi?stakeholder system. I am going back to where I started. That is why it's so important that all those multi?stakeholders participate. Now, the good news is, Paul explained that there was a five year review process, we are starting that now. The good news is that the Kenyans have offered to host the one after Lithuania. Now, that means the first IGF in the second cycle, upon which we have not yet agreed, but the Kenyans with a little bit of help from some of their friends, including me, will be making this into an after can position in the UN and once you have got an after can position, it's extremely hard to stop. I am departing from my notes, I want to get this point across that the stakeholders, multi?stakeholders really must get involved. There are real threats out there. We are moving to counter them, but that will not be easy. Rajoul, I think it was you who said to me when we were speaking privately last night that the trouble is we can all speak to our governmental friends, but when they go to Geneva and sit in the ITU, they sort of go bush and they do what their friends do and they all have fun and it's a bit like this meeting isn't it, nice evenings, it's probably why I am coughing, but the point is governments don't necessarily vote for what is sensibly in their interests and there is an uphill struggle which we are all going to have to cooperate on winning.

Final point I would make on the idea of regional and national IGFs. I think it's very important that these should not be seen as preparatory meetings for the global UN IGF. The regional IGF in Kenya was a real Africa, they talked about a lot about their problems which mostly means connectivity and money, mostly connectivity, in east Africa, you have got a wonderful story, four new fibre optic cables coming ashore in Kenya this year, not one but four, which may be daft it's competition, the prices haven't gone down yet, no doubt they will. There is lessons to be learned how Kenya and countries in the region deal with that. Those are the messages that can be taken by those countries to Egypt. They will be talking about their own experience of actually dealing with the fact that you have suddenly got this super connectivity and there are a lot of issues, not least governance, of dealing with that and making the best use of it. I am going to shut up and take questions, if there are any. I hope what I have said has been useful.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: We have about 32 minutes more. So, do you want much, much longer or one of those very nice coffee breaks? Seriously, I think we should use the opportunity to talk about Nick, to hear more about this and I doubt there are zero people here which have things to ask or say.

ROB BLOKZIJL: Hi, Nick. Your document, the fact explaining document which you sent to the ITU, will you only send it to the ITU leadership/secretariat and hope and pray they will be distribute it among their members or will you also send copies directly to the ITU national representatives? I take this ITU threat as extremely serious and I would not want to be dependent upon the enemy to distribute my information to the RIPE people.

NICK THORNE: Bless you, just the sort of question that I cherish. I will tell you the plan: The paper is down there if anybody wants T there is a little stack of them down there. It's got two or three things that need to be fixed in it, let me deal with that first of all. There is a reference to the possibility of pre allocation or reserving addresses which are ?? needs to be dealt with because that offends some. There is one particular question which Rob had pointed out to me which is not properly answered which I will have dealt with but I will show you, and there is the issue of a simple and here I need your help, please, a simple analogy to compare for the layman, think me, OK, for the layman to compare IPv4 space to IPv6 space. And it needs to be something simple. The latest one I had was a contact lens to Central Park and I pointed out that most Africans don't wear contact lenses so that wasn't really good. This was a layman's guide. It might be golf ball to the solar system or something like that, but I need an analogy, please.

What are we going to do with the document? Well the plan is as follows, Rob: I will probably send it to Malcolm Johnson. I will ask Rob Beckstrom if he wants to do it himself but he has not formally met...and we in ICANN have a series of bilaterals, with new innovation with the ITU where I lead for ICANN and we sit down and talk about areas where we don't like what they are doing. What they want to do with this of course is to develop an MoU so they can control us, so that is not going to happen. But it's at least useful, I think, to talk.

So what we will do is send the paper, making it's clear it's been agreed by ICANN and all the RIRs and we will ask and we will refer to the fact that we understand that the issue of IPv6 address allocation will be coming up at the ITU council in a couple of weeks' time and this should inform that debate would the ITU please circulate the following to its membership. Also in that letter will be a, by the way, we shall be doing that ourselves. And the way in which we will do that is mostly through the RIRs distributing this factual document through their customers around the world. ICANN will do quite a lot of that as well, it will be around and we will get the message out. So we are not going to leave it to the enemy to distribute our propaganda. Sorry, long answer to a short question.

PAUL RENDEK: I have a question. I know that this is happening but perhaps some of the deliberations that you are having you can share with the room. What is ICANN doing to reach out to this constituency, to the ASO arm of its organisation in dealing with the ITU or keeping the ITU at bay? I mean the ITU we all know is there for a reason but it seems to be moving into other remits, so what is it that you propose ICANN should be doing with us or what kind of cooperation do you expect?

NICK THORNE: I mean, you are just making me think a little bit forward. I mean, what we have agreed to do is to sit down in the quite near future to work out what we do next. After we have finalised this paper, which is, by the way, I think a not inconsiderable step in the right direction where sensible folk have sat down and said we need to be going in the same direction on this. It does not mean that anybody is encroaching or anybody is trying to take over anybody else's territory. But we need to face up as a family, I must find a different analogy, we need to face up together with the external threat. What do we do next? I think we need, this is what in my mind, I think we probably need to be thinking about how we present at the IGF in Egypt. I noticed on that useful slide that you put up, Paul, that you have got a double slot to deal with IPv6. Now, I haven't thought this true yet, but I think we'd better have our act together when we come to that, and I think that we should probably try and have a coordinated, not necessarily common, but a coordinated act for that and we probably need to speak to a few of the key factors to make sure they are saying the same thing as well. That is the way my mind is going.

Bill: Putting aside for the moment the issues of the process of becoming a new RIR and the central inapplicability of that process to an organisation that con receives of itself in the way the ITU does, the ITU has recently been making assertions that if they were to become a new outlet for IPv6 addresses, that this would not pose a technical threat to the stability of the Internet (conceives). At the time, they seem to be asserting that they could provide competition to the RIR system and one has to assume that if they are providing competition to the RIR system, that the criteria by which they would allocate IPv6 addresses are different than the criteria of the RIR system, else there would be no competition, they would be allocating an address to the same person who could get an address through the RIR system under the same terms and so there would be no net change. If they are providing addresses under a system that is different from the need based allocation system, that the RIRs use, and they are not taking into account the need to preserve slots in the routers forwarding tables, that is the need to reduce the number of prefixes out there, I don't find any room left for an allocation policy that would both be competitive and would fail to or would not negatively impact the stability of the Internet. Have they gotten as far down that ?? the road of that argument as having a rebuttal to that, is there something I am not noticing?

NICK THORNE: A couple of comments and then an answer if I may. A comment is, and here I need ?? Paul I need your help, Paul on that slide what time of the day and which day of the week is that one hour long IPv6 session.

PAUL RENDEK: 90 minutes.

NICK THORNE: Bill, why don't you go there and say exactly what you just said loudly and clearly because you do it much better than I can. Sorry about the "I can."

The ITU, some inside the ITU have developed the false premise that IPv6 addresses are being allocated in much the same way as IPv4 was allocated, and to the explicit disadvantage of developing countries who will only come late to the party. I have told you, I am a political guy, I am not technical, so if I am using the wrong language, you will please forgive me.

They have convinced themselves of this. Part of the reasoning for the paper we have produced is to say this is nonsense, there are so many addresses out there that it isn't going to happen. But I have to tell you and I am going to offend some, that is not going to stop them. The only way you are going to stop this argument inside the ITU is to find some way of swallowing your pre allocation principles, because the only way you are going to stuff them is to say look, whatever country, country X, there is a box up there on the shelf, I call it my shoe box argument, they are yours, whenever you need them come and get them. It may be possible to do this within the context of the RIR system and I believe some thought has been given to that because this is a particularly African problem, it's not that ?? that has ?? it's the power base in the UN throughout the system, it's 54 votes and they all stick together because they know that is where their power is. So they start from a false premise and they perpetuate that false premise and use what I call the poor little underdeveloped card, and that is where we must focus our coordinated attention to try and deal with that. We are halfway there by saying grains of sand on a Californian beach, the solar system, whatever, but I have to say to that you that will not stop the problem and you go talk to the IGF, please.

Who is next?

PATRIK FALTSTROM: I have a small comment on what you said, Bill. I also think that absolutely, you should say that, but as, to phrase what you just said, Nick, to look a bit differently: The key word here is "need." ITU claim they also talk about a need based system just like the RIRs, just as a suggestion when you think about how to tune your wording. I don't know whether Rob or Kurt was first.

ROB BLOKZIJL: I have a comment on your shoe box analogy. I see your point there. I think if that would solve this whole mess, the RIRs would happily create an artificial shoe box for 28 African countries. I don't think it will solve anything because the ITU immediately will find another false argument. Their aim is not ?? their interest is not in the Internet; their interest is survival of the ITU as a bureaucratic organisation. They are looking desperately for a new job to do, we are the victims and have been picked. So I think it is a matter of strategy to decide whether ?? which of their arguments we invalidate by just doing what they are claiming we are not doing and they are the right party to do it but we should be always ?? we should always understand that it will not solve the final problem we have with the ITU, they will always come up with something else and something new. I think the only way finally to stop this nonsense is to convince their members, the African countries, and some other members that this is going on and can you please help us to stop that.

NICK THORNE: I agree with everything until the last sentence, but having spent ?? and you are right, wouldn't it be nice if we could convince the African countries where their best interests lie, and this applies not just to Africa, it's the whole of the north/south developing argument; it's politics. It is not ?? it is not about reality, it is not about facts. It's about the game that is played, the political game which is played in the you into the United Nations. I think it's a debate whether or not one meets the current threat and deals with it on a protracted basis, bearing in mind that this would normally take a year or two, and meanwhile, the world moves on, and particularly you lot, you move on really quite quickly, so, my own instincts are to actually meet them, have a debate and say, OK, we have fixed the problem. You are quite right they will come up with another one, but then when you factor in time, my personal approach has always been to say let's win some time and the problem changes, but that is very much for debate, and at the moment we are not proposing the shoe box argument, just to be absolutely clear. Nick has given up on the shoe boxes but I might come back to it later.

KURTIS LINDQVIST: NetNod. Listening to this discussion, I am into the politician, I think the rest of my family is but I am not, but if you are driving politics as you said this problem was down to you can't drive politics unless ?? you can't do with having some sort of constituency behind you or trying to work in their best interest and you start by saying that ICANN and in the overall scheme of things had to work closer and work family you use was protected; the illustration that Bill gave was that a lot of the politics going on do have technical operational impact and while I do appreciate that ICANN is working very close with the RIRs I also think that historically, ICANN has been quite poor at reaching out to the operational constituency that build the RIRs and at the same time is also in many cases the constituency that allows these countries to form a policy. There is a big overlap there and that could be utilised a lot better and this might be a question or statement, interpret how you want to, what is ICANN's plans, I appreciate you coming here, I hope to see you for all the RIPE meetings, to bring the activities of the policy role into the RIRs and get the feedback of the operator community because unless they are on board it doesn't matter what the RIRs thinks or staff thinks, it's not going to help, you are not going to get the wide support you need to go and push these countries into the right direction. It might be a question or it might be a statement.

NICK THORNE: I take it as a statement, if I may, with which I agree and sympathise. This is designed to be a two?way street. I have learned an enormous amount about being here again, that is not difficult given the limitations on my knowledge in the first place but this is deliberately designed to be a two?way street and yes, I will be reporting back and I think that those concerned in top management in ICANN will be very welcoming of the willingness of the RIR communities to work with us, and that needs to be a two?way street. So I hear you, and by the way you are not the only voice, my ear has been bent fairly effectively.

Jim: Speaking personally. I think the problems have been outlined before have got a great deal of sympathy with the views that have been expressed but I think a degree of simplification has crept in there, and there is a lot of other factors that are involved with all parts of the world, not just Africa, about this Internet thing. So one of the issues that crops up in government and regulatory circles in certain parts of the world is these Internet addresss are like telephone numbers ? we get a block of telephone numbers from the ITU, they give us a country code and what we do with everything underneath that code is our business and nobody else's, so for a lot of organisations, for a lot of regulators and governments what they would like to have is national allocations of address space which they can manage for their country and be in control of it and I think what we have do to do as an Internet organisation is try to explain to those individuals why that approach doesn't quite work the way they might have thought it could work out for them and that is a hard argument, it's education. Another concern that these guys have is that when you deal with things like spectrum and deal with 064 telephone numbers and things like that, it's codified with treaties and contracts and stuff, they know how to deal with that and who to call if something goes wrong and for a lot of regulator, particularly in the developing world, they are not as that well developed in how they can interact with the Internet authorities, they know how to deal with things like conventional telephony but the idea for interacting with RIR or ICANN is something they are not comfortable with or unhappy about because it's not covered by international treaty and you have another perception, I have a sovereign state why should I have to go with an American company in order to get my national resources. That is another difficult argument. There is all this stuff going on, it's not all about need. And the question that Bill was saying before, if the current argument is being said having the ITU act as an RIR with a view to fostering competition, the question is: What do you mean by competition and how can an ITU administered RIR increase competition? How would that be better than the current system? What do you mean by that and we could start to tease out what these concerns are and then you have got the possibility of explaining to them this RIR Internet thing isn't quite as bad as you might have thought it was.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Might be more dangerous than you think they are.

Jim: You may think that, I couldn't comment.

NICK THORNE: First of all, I agree with your list of other issues and could frankly add a few more to it. Two, no, this is not just about Africa; it's essentially about haves and have nots. You can put whatever label. When we are dealing with the ITU, however, we are talking about power bases and the power base in the ITU is the African group, and what I believe is one should concentrate one's forces where those forces can have the maximum impact and to do that you need to know what you are up against, hence my references to the Africans and indeed I think we can do quite a lot with the Africans through enlightened Africans, for example the Kenyans who are going in the right direction and who will, with a bit of luck and drafting, which yes I will do, say the right things at the IGF but they are going to have to be quite brave to do that because they will be speaking up against what is seen as an African group position and in the UN that is not easy.

Two other points: One, I think in broad terms where we as RIRs ICANN, ICANN, we as a group get is wrong is that we are too mysterious. Inside ICANN I use the term "demistification." Nobody really knows what ICANN does to and perhaps, even more important, what it doesn't do or shouldn't do, and there is a great deal of work that needs to be done there. As the Internet has grown we can no longer get away with this nice little club which runs this rather important technical thing. We need to be out there saying this is the reality, which leads me to my second point, and this is what it can do for you. The ITU point in Africa, want this as alternative revenue source. If it's going to be a revenue source it means they are going to be charging for it doesn't it? So one of the first things we need to point out and one can do this perhaps not in front of the microphone, but it's to point out to your clients that actually they are getting it for free from you. What is the ITU going to organise? What is the added advantage for them? And that is the sort of argument which I think should be deployed more widely. We do very little with the press. It's just the sort of thing that people should be writing articles about, I see some PR people sitting in this room and and that is the sort of area where we need to be selling our story, we are getting too big to sit in closed rooms and talk techie. Sorry, I am not being in any way offensive, please don't take it that way, but really this has grown and become a major public resource and we need to treat it as one.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: I think as more generic response from the RIPE community is that I think the RIPE community has reacted to some degree on what you just said by creating this Working Group. That is one thing, for example.

NICK THORNE: Absolutely.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: My name is Roland Perry, public affairs officer for RIPE NCC and I thought I better not just sit here because I am actually working on this case on your behalf at the moment about eight days a week. One of the things which I think is most important is, and the position that is put in meetings at the ITU and I was at one in Geneva last week, I am spending most of this week apart from this session in Geneva, paying lots of money to Mr. Easyjet, is who can you trust? This is one of the big things that ITU is putting forward at the moment? Can you trust the Internet and they use examples which I don't know if we can play wack em all or refute them all but I heard yesterday somebody saying how much Spam do you get on your mobile phone? Not very much because it was designed by the ITU. How much Spam do you get in your e?mail? Lots and lots. That is because it wasn't designed by the ITU. So it's on all kinds of levels and misunderstandings, all kinds of reasons why the Internet, which we know and love and is a bit anarchic and most of us quite like that, unfortunately people in governments who don't understand the Internet, they like things a bit more stable, a bit more secure and trustworthy, and that is where I think the ITU is coming from in its whole campaign about cyber?security, trust us we are the ITU, we can make this safe for you. I suppose that is the same as IP addresses, we can make it safe for you to come to us for IP addresses rather than going to this other community that you don't really understand but seem to be Spamming you all the time. So, I mean that is my kind of 2Ps worth. I am not going to go into great detail because a lot of things we are talking about in Geneva this week and intercontinental hotel last night, at least one person here today has touched on what I think is the most important thing that we need to address and I will speak to people about that afterwards, so we are on the case, it's quite complicated, as Nick says it's all politics, we are in Geneva in a booth, RIRs at one end, ICANN at the other and ISOC in the middle. We are communicating with one another and firmly commit today doing that.

NICK THORNE: Hurrah.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I have a comment on what you said. There are research ?? there is researches coming out today and it's on mobile usage and Spam on mobile usage and the research shows two things: One, Spam on mobiles is on the rise, so sorry, ITU argument has failed. It is on the rise. It has nothing to do with design; it has to do with cost. Internet is free. So hey, if I am going to Spam I will use free medium. Are they proposing to charge per e?mail to stop Spam and bring it in line with mobile use? That is going to kill the Internet. The second one is, there is a cost and you are right, we have some PR people and we have to put the right message across and the right message is, the Internet is where it is because of how it is.

NICK THORNE: Absolutely.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: If it was for organisations like the ITU, the Internet would not be where it is today. It is where it is today because of all the people in this room and other rooms all around the world who have built it and put the policies for it and who have made it get there. They are worried and they are using national economy. Great, you know what, national economies are reliant on the Internet today. Yes, we accept this because the Internet works. If the Internet didn't work, national economies would not be so dependent on it, it would not be so critical to national economies. So let's stop, sorry for the term, but bullshitting and let's get down to it. ITU wants more control, we accept that, everybody wants more control but you put control on the Internet and you just stop it from growing. We don't want that, we have got to put the right message across.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Jim reed. I want to follow up on what was said there and I think this also goes back to what we were saying before. The Internet is a nationally economies are dependent on the Internet and for many people that starts to scare them because they don't have any kind of legislative framework if which they can see to their president or prime minister or whoever head of State to, say that "I have the control that is necessary to make sure my national economy's interests are being safeguarded and that is another problem that ICANN I think has to grapple with.

NICK THORNE: You are a bit of a Joaner like me, very good at listening to all the problems. That is a very important one. It's also the weakest link in that even if I put on my previous hat, I say, look, in my society, in Britain, we can deal with lots of things like child pornography on a voluntary basis. It works in the UK, why because it's the UK and voluntary things work in the UK. It would not work in an all of lot of other countries, but then when I go to the British parliament and sit down and talk to MPs, we have got our mechanisms and that is got, what about BotNet stuff? What about you know who did to the Estonians or to Georgia, that is national security and vital national interest. That needs control. If you have got the fairly liberal Brits and I just use them as an example because it's my country, if you have got them worrying about it, then it's an issue which we need to address and say we like it as it is, which we do, doesn't actually answer the question.

Jim, you are quite right. There has got to be more of this engagement and I hate to say this, once the people from the Internet are going to have more and more dialogue with ITU, IGF type meetings to try and explain things and get things across and that is going to be a never ending thankless job and has to be done.

NICK THORNE: It's a bit like the washing up.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Last person on the microphone.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Steve Kent BBN: I think apropos what a couple of other speakers said, one of the dig concerns is our dear friends in the cell phone community. I heard a frightening presentation at the APNIC meeting in August in Beijing by representatives from China Mobile and the half hour presentation could easily be CONS densed to if the Internet were just more like mobile phones everything would be fine. We have a giant population of users, we are running IPv6 so we know more about IPv6 than any other ISP in the world and we are going to try and organise a get together with mobile phone providers so we can fix IPv6 and the Internet going forward. That is the short form of their presentation. It ignores the fact that other than a few things like iPhones etc., almost nobody gets to run their own software on the device that is connect to the Internet, the charging model is completely different, etc., but I worry about them as much in terms of being allies of the folks at the ITU, because as you say, that is a model that more people are comfortable with, they feel that it's more control, the notion of how much Spam you get, whether or not it's technically accurate or not, people do have a different perception and they are a dangerous set of people from my perspective, based on that kind of presentation.

NICK THORNE: Thank you, I think that is a very valid comment.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: Anything else you want to say before you leave the stage?

NICK THORNE: I will say two things: The IGF is probably the best bet we have got for putting our case forward. We need to handle it better. I think we need to be much more interactive with the media. I don't think we get the coverage we deserve. And again, I do think we need to encourage all those multi?stakeholders, including parlimentarians, particularly one of mine which I am doing some work separately, to speak out, and we need to use alternative mechanisms. Paul mentioned the commonwealth. That just happens to be another one that I am involved in? Why? Because it straddles all sorts of frontiers, has big, small, massive, the works, and if we can get them standing up and speaking in our sense on the benefits, then that should, A, keep the IGF going, and B, keep the argument a little bit more balanced. Thank you all very much.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: And thank you very much, Nick

(Applause)

PAUL RENDEK: Actually before Patrik closes this session, I have a handful of right hot off the press, they have just come in from Geneva because we didn't' have them printed in time for this meeting, cooperation documents on what the NRO has done in Internet governance so please feel free to grab one and if I don't have enough I will take your card and mail you one.

PATRIK FALTSTROM: With that, I declare this meeting closed and see you at the next meeting.

(Applause)