These are unedited transcripts and may contain errors.
Cooperation Working Group on Thursday, 27th of September, 2012, at 11 a.m.:
MARIA HALL: Hello everybody. Time is little bit over 11, we need to start, it's good to see you here and I see a few of my governmental colleagues as well. This Cooperation Working Group is really an opportunity to discuss certain Internet governance related issues, both public policy perspective but technical perspective and having this dialogue, I consider the governance be a part of the RIPE community, but it's a good opportunity to do that. And that's why we are here.
There are a lot of things happening, especially this autumn, we have a bunch of things going on in many different platforms and arenas so it wasn't that easy actually to put all the stuff in the agenda and make it valuable and make the possibility of qualified discussions. Nevertheless, this is the agenda that we made. So it's going to be tough because we are going to manage to do a lot of ?? cover lot of issues and hopefully have good discussions and questions and answers.
So I want to start immediately, and I would like to welcome Patrik, who will give an update from the very interesting panel debate which took place on Tuesday about the WCIT and concerning the IETF Internet governance stuff.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you very much. So on Tuesday, at the plenary, we had a panel discussion on Internet governance. It, of course, resulted in quite a lot of discussion on WCIT, the ITU meeting later this year in Dubai that specifically we will hear more about today. But I think the panel discussion itself was a good introduction for what we are ?? towards what we are going to do today, because a lot of people talked ?? we talked quite a lot about what would governance ?? what does imply and it seems to be the case, which I do understand, which I also think is correct, like Randy Bush stood up and said governance was something that we were doing sort of in the previous millennium. Today, in a true multi?state fashion, in processes, we are cooperating and we are coordinating, and that's a different thing than doing any kind of governance. So, of course, everything is about words, and I think one of the things that will be here in this session quite a lot are about words. We also had a couple of questions coming up, of course, on Tuesday where people asked so, this WCIT thing which has to do with signing up on treaties, whatever that is, some kind of agreements between governments, so why I am not a government, why do I have to care? That was what open question that was still hanging in the air at the end of the session on Tuesday and maybe we can dive a little bit more into the details today.
One of the things that we also talked about Tuesday, that actually got some very positive feedback on, actually the latest feedback I got was just five minutes ago, is that we encourage sort of understood this cooperation and cord nation is something that is needed at home locally, not only globally but wherever we are operating in our countries with our governments and whatnot. And what thing that seems to have happened already now between Tuesday and today, is that people have contacted whoever is working from their government side in the various ITU related processes, and I think that is a good thing; we already have better coordination and cooperation at home.
So, I think we had a good discussion, but I think the real needs regarding the ITU meeting and stuff is something that we will talk more about today, so I think I will leave it there, and go back to Maria.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Patrik. And I was a little bit quick in the beginning, I didn't even introduce myself because I think that everyone knows me, but if you don't, I am Maria working for the Swedish Government with Internet?related things and first RIPE meeting was 2004, so I pretty much know things, at least some of the things which works in this very good and very nice environment. Anyway, there are a lot of preparations you understand within the governments to prepare yourself before the WCIT meeting and of course a lot of work going on in other sectors as well but one of the tracks is to speak is the CEPT group which I want my colleague Anders from the Swedish Post and Telecommunications Agency. He was a former share of one of the CEPT groups called Come?ITU, I would like to give him the floor to tell you how we are coordinating ourselves in that group and what is CEPT. Maybe you need to give a few words about that one. Thank you.
ANDERS JONSSON: Yes, as Mary said, I am working for the Swedish regulator, and I have been following the WCIT worked in CEPT and also lot of ITU relate discussions and I would like to give a short overview of what has been done and some information about the processes as such.
If we go to the next slide. This is the ?? what we are discussing really, the ITRs, and I just wanted to set let's say the scene for the ITR and what it's all about. And it's relating to the international telecommunications service offered to the public, I think that is something we need to bear in mind when we discuss it, what is appropriate to include in the ITRs and how should we look at different proposals that will be put forward from European countries and from other interested parties around the world.
But first, if you look at what is the scene in Europe? I think we have a number of players that is working with the ITU. We have both the CEPT, which is 48 European States that has has been cooperating back since the '50s, when it was a small organisation, then have been added on a number of members, now it's 48 members and it includes all the EU Member States. So, I think we can say we have two groups of players, one is the CEPT in Europe and one is the European Union and its Member States. And hopefully they are going in the same direction. And I think since the majority of the members of CEPT are also EU Member States, I think that is one thing that could be sure that CEPT and EU is going in the same direction.
If we then look at the last phase of the preparatory process, I think there are two tracts here, one is what we are doing in CEPT and what is done in Brussels in EU. And I try to indicate them and the top we have the ITU and CEPT process where the final draft of this future ITRs were developed in ITU in June. And I think most of you have seen this document, it's published on the ITU website and it's publically available. Then there was a meeting with CEPT in mid?September, when the first set of European proposals were adopted. They are also freely available on the CEPT website and they will be sent to ITU in the beginning of October.
Then, there will be an information meeting in Geneva, 8 and 9 of October where the ITU will present the status of the work and the different regional organisations will have a possibility to also present their preparations, as you will see later on there is no and number of issues that is not finalised on the regional level.
Then there will be a final meeting of CEPT in mid?October and then we are running up to the conference that starts in the beginning of December.
In parallel, there are discussions in Brussels, in the European Union, there has been one meeting in the beginning of September, there is another meeting today, with Telecom Working Group and there are meetings in October, and the intention is that that will result in a council decision.
Then, within Europe, we have discussed how to treat the different proposals that is being developed, and we have set up a number of guiding criteria for the revision of the ITRs, and we have been trying to follow these both when we develop our own proposals and what we are going to look at proposals from other regions or organisations. The first is that the ITR is a treaty, is a treaty between Member States. Therefore, it should address high level and strategic policy issues. Not going into the details, not going into small issues that are better solved on a bilateral or agreements between operators or outside a treaty.
Then, it should be consistency with the ITU Constitution, and in particular, the preamble of that when it comes to, for example, enforcement of ITR ?? ITU recommendations and so on. And this is also important that this is a treaty that is developed within the framework of ITU so there is a need to make sure that it's in line with the treaty.
Then, we should also look at the consistency with other treaties ?? agreements that has been, say, developed or supported by CEPT members, and there are, for example, two, for the EU Member States there is the EU Treaty and for the members of the World Trade Organisation there are also rules that has to be applied, and we should not make proposals or support proposals that are in contradiction to other treaties where we are members.
Then, there is a number of areas which are the exclusive competence of the Member States. For example, legal and policy principles relating to national security and so on. These are also discussed back ?? were also discussed at the Plenipotentiary conference which is when they met in 2010.
And then we should also exclude issues which are not within the scope of the ITR, and this often beginning that it should be international telecommunication for the public and issues that are not related to that should not be included in the ITRs.
Then, what have we done in the first set of CEPT as proposals that has been developed? We have dealt with the not so controversial issues. We have changed the historical references, we have deleted a lot of obsolete definitions that at least from the European side we do not think is necessary for the future. We know there are different views in other regions of the world. We have deleted provisions regarding routing, references to collection of charges, accounting rates and settlement of accounts. Issues that should really be dealt between operators and not between administrations or Member States.
There thank would also be text added in the next phase regarding the transparency of tariffs and this is pending one of the unresolved issues and that is if it should be the ITRs should have recognised operating agencies or operating agencies, and we are coming back to that issue later on.
And then there is a discussion on how much should be included, if any, regarding robustness and security networks. What we can note in the first set of ECP, nothing added on fraud or dispute resolution or Internet connectivity, nothing on quality of service, nothing of spam, and nothing of routing or traffic. Mainly issues that should be dealt with between operators. There will of course be a second discussion at our October meeting, and then we will see what will be the final position on all these issues.
I mention other regions of the world. Well if you look at ITU, there is in practice six regions, and you may think that regions they are, one is Europe, one is Asia and so on with you if you look at the slide here, there is a small overlap in two areas of the world; we have two separate groups, let's say APT and Asia Pacific, CITEL in Americas, in we go to Africa, ATU or African group, there is an overlap between Arab group covering Middle East and northern Africa. Then Europe, CEPT which is 48 Member States in Western Europe and outside the major part of Europe and then we have RCC which is more, it's Russia and some other Member States around Russia. But that is small group, but that is an overlap we see so that complicates the situation when you say Europe or Africa or Middle East. There is an overlap between the different organisations and I think this should ?? this should be taken into account when we look at the proposals for the different regions.
Then, what have they done on the regional level up to now? Well, we know that APT has published its first set of proposals and the last meeting will be in October. And then we will probably have a complete set from their side. ATU will meet in September. 25 to 26th the Arab group had last meeting 8 to 13 but we haven't seen the result of that published on ITU website yet, but I think there will be a presentation later on on what was discussed there. CITEL has developed first set of proposals and met in mid?September. And we are still waiting for the official text from that meeting. And RCC had its last meeting also in mid?September. So when we see the proposals from the different regions, it will be possible for Europe to let's say react and maybe develop counter proposals on issues where there are big differences between the regions.
So, with this short presentation, I think I will stop here and open for any questions or anything that you would like to get more information on. I think there is a possibility to expand on some issues later on. In this presentation, there is also a number of slides with abbreviations for those who are not so into the business of ITU and developing proposals for conferences. I hope there will be at least some use for you. Thank you very much.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, and you can stay there for a couple of minutes. I suppose we have a few questions. I have one question myself actually. You mentioned a bunch of meetings for all these groups. How many of those meetings are open because I know that one CEPT meeting a few months ago was open but the next one is going to be closed, how does it work?
ANDERS JONSSON: Well, there are different rules in different organisations. If you look at the CEPT, we have the rule that we allow a number of organisations to participate. It means that RIPE is there, ICANN is there, ISOC is there, ETNO, Digital Europe and other regional organisations are invited to participate. If you look at APT, they also more or less apply the same principle, they have also a number of industry representatives as separate companies participating. But this comes down also to the way that the organisations are financed. Some APT meetings may have three to 400 participants and that is very difficult to arrange that type of meeting in Europe without a big organisation supporting it. But I would say that all organisations allow regional representatives to participate, but 2010 comes to the industry representation it may be different in different regions.
OLAF KOLKMAN: Thank you. This was a very clear. I have a question about something you said, there are no proposals on a certain set of issues and you said in your wording that those all have to do with operator independence and operator business. The question that popped up with me is, suppose that there is other countries that or other regions or other organisations that do inject proposals in that sphere, is it the guiding principle already by the CEPT to push back on those proposals based on this is operator business? Or is it just we will not do proposals but might entertain other proposals in that area? So this is sort of a matter of principle and policy already or is this ?? has that not been decided?
ANDERS JONSSON: Well, the principles that I was showing on the screen, they are included at the first set of European proposals that will be submitted to ITU. So they are the principle that we will act according to during the meeting. But then, I think all of you know that when you go to meeting, you are spending two weeks there, then the negotiations starts. And there may be issues that are more important for us than other issues. And it will be the same for other regions that they are very strong on some issues, issues that we do not want to see in the ITRs and some issues that we are strong on, they may have a completely different view so then it comes down to negotiations at the end. But the principles are there and they are the basis for the discussions that we will have with the other regions at the conference.
MARIA HALL: I can add to that, but also Anders said if it is the case that it shows up a proposal that is not in line with a CEPT principles, of course we can do counter proposals also. So that is another tool.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Carsten Schiefner. Pretty much the same question in particular regarding the criteria number one which is if I recall it correctly, the high level, what it was high level strategic and policy issues. So, to what extent is there also implicitly maybe something buried into this criterion that there is a prevention that, it's essentially impossible to narrow it down or to fall down below those high level principles; it's in some interested parties might actually try to circumvent of this idea of having it at a high level.
ANDERS JONSSON: Well, if you look at the different proposals that are circulating, you are sure there are a number of proposals that I would say are very detailed, and not appropriate for treaty between Member States. But the problem is that the views may be different in different countries. Different regions. I am not sure exactly what you are ??
CARSTEN SCHIEFNER: It's more or less the same question that Olaf has just asked, as in is it just that the ?? the CEPT, for example, stays at high level, or will you also ensure that all the other suggestions, contributions, etc., stay at high level and would rather go and object to any other ideas that fall below the high level principles?
ANDERS JONSSON: I don't know from a starting point we will follow the criteria that is put forward here, but then of course it's I responded before, it comes down to the negotiations. There may be some issues that are more important than others and we have seen that in many conferences, that you have to negotiate and some instances you have to compromise on, that is for sure. I think everybody knows and everybody goes into the discussion with that assumption.
PATRIK FALSTROM: So, I have two questions which actually are follow?ups on the discussion on Tuesday. The first thing is that the ITRs, as you said, are discussed within sort of an ITU context. We are like the Internet community is dependent on collaboration and cooperation, not only between us as actors but also cooperation between various multiple standard organisations like the IETF and the RIPE and many of them, ICANN and whatnot. How much are the ITRs impacting the work of ITU and the role of ITU, if any, that is the first question, compared to we will talk about TPF and others later. The second question is, this was also coming up on Tuesday, if you look at Criterion 1 that it should be address high level strategic policy use, one question that came up was of course the status of the ETNO proposal and submission to the ITU. Is that something that is ?? according to Criterion 1, is what ETNO is proposing, is that something that because of Criterion 1 is just out of discussion?
ANDERS JONSSON: Well, that was two good questions. I think the first one, yes, depending on what goes into the ITR it may have an impact on ITU and the scope of ITU's activities. Could you see it from other treaties that you nut issues that maybe in the treaty or resolution from the conference that ITU should do this and should do that. That is one issue. The second issue is if you start to change the definitions, you also change the scope of the activities. And we know that there are proposals to change, for example, telecommunications to telecommunications ICT, and the organisement is that everybody talks about ICT nowadays, but when we asked the proponents there is a difference, no, there is no difference. So the question from many European countries why do we need to change it if there is no difference. There is an issue I think there will be a lot of discussions.
The other one with the ETNO proposal is, I think quite interesting because it's a proposal from not from a Member State yet as I have seen. Then, you have to look at any proposal from two sides; one is to see is the proposal appropriate to be included in ITR; and then what to do with the specific subject. You may find that the proposal is not appropriate for the ITR and is not appropriate to discuss in another organisation, or you may find it's not appropriate for the ITRs but it should be discussed in other fora. And I think this is something we have to bear in mind when we look at the ETNO proposal and other proposals, that they may be interesting to discuss but are they appropriate for ITRs or not. And this is something that I think has not been discussed very much in the previous, let's say, discussions on the Internet and at meetings. Everybody goes into the proposal immediately, not thinking about should it go into the ITRs or discussed somewhere else.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Anders. I think that is a very, very important distinction, there might be a problem in a certain area but do we really want that into ITRs and in many cases the answer is no.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: My name is Tasha, I am speaking as an individual. For me it's a little bit serious because the Internet is something which build up by private companies, private organisations and it's done in a very transparent and open manner, and I didn't really discover the justification for now there is done something, oh, we will do a little bit of transparent things and where is the justification for doing this not in a completely transparent manner, why does it limit who can join this meetings and so on? Because you didn't build this up, the ITU didn't do that, this is the Internet, and my generation, for us it's completely, we can't understand what is this. And do they make up their mind, the participants, that they perhaps don't have the justification to do this?
ANDERS JONSSON: Well, I can only say that our idea is to keep the discussions to issues that are really issues between Member States. There is no proposal from Europe to expand the ITRs to deal with Internet, and I think that question has maybe to be asked to those who propose to include Internet issues in the ITRs. We are making proposals that are related to the relation between Member States, not the relation between individuals or between operators. And I am sure it's not a question to ?? a response to your question, but I would also like to draw the attention to something that happened yesterday in New York, that was a discussion at ?? just before the opening of the meeting of the Union Assembly yesterday morning on the Freedom, Security and Development of Internet. And participation was from the Swedish foreign minister, with the foreign minister, and Dr. Hamid, Secretary General from ITU, this conversation is available on the web to download. And there are some interesting statements made, I think both from Mr. Bilt but also from Dr. /TRA*EU on Internet governance that you can control or not the Internet. So you should listen to that. But that is the ?? those ?? the participants' view, it's not the organisation's view, just bear that in mind.
MARIA HALL: We have to rush on here because we have a lot of other things.
PAUL RENDEK: I have more of a comment than a question, sorry. I wanted to thank you on behalf of the RIPE NCC because I don't think the room knows but very up until very recently you were the chairman of the CEPT and I wanted to thank you on behalf of the RIPE NCC for actually including our organisation and our industry partners to be part of your meetings because we were at all your meetings and I don't think that the room knows that we were actually also asked or everyone in the room might not be aware we were asked to produce some papers outlining some areas on IPv6 and caller line identification which we have published of course on the RIPE NCC website, and these were given to you and we are very happy to be part of this process so thanks very much, thank you.
(Applause)
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Anders. And Anders will be here during the meeting, of course, and also during the day, so you can discuss a little bit more. There are a bunch of things going on which means we need to move to the next speaker, so welcome, have the floor, Phil Rushton, he is going to talk about other things that is happening regarding the WCIT because it's not only in the government field only, a lot of other things, thank you very much.
PHIL RUSHTON: My name is Phil Rushton, I work for BT, and as part of the UK delegation to CEPT have been involved in the Come?ITU discussions.
One of the points that I thought would be useful is to share with you the current definitions of recognised operating agency, operating agency and telecommunications.
If you recall, and we are in the meeting on Tuesday, there was reference to TD 64, this wonderful 300 page sleep creator, absolutely solve your insomnia, if you care to read it, but I think it's important to bear in mind that when you talk about these terms, they have been around for 25 years, and it's the use of these terms in today's environment, not necessarily changing what they are, but the application of these old terms today, that is the link into this community and this discussion that you should be having.
So with that as background, I am going to read out the three definitions that I think are important for you. The first is recognised operating agency. And this is an operator of a public correspondent or broadcast services authorised by a Member State to operate a telecommunications service.
Now, what is a telecommunications service? Well, you can think about many things but if you go and look in the ITUT recommendations you will see some of them defined. One being the international telephone service. So, that's the ROA.
An Operating Agency is an individual, a company or a government agency which operates a telecommunications installation intended for a telecommunications service. Now, government agency in 1988 I think were the old PTTs and ex?incumbents, but the text is still there. If nothing changes in the ITRs, both ROA and OA exist and can be applied in today's environment. Think about what those terms mean for your activities on a day?to?day basis. Anders referred to telecommunication and the fact that they have telecommunications/ICT being proposed. Well, telecommunication, without the ICT, is defined as any transmission, emission or reception of signs, signals, writing, images and sounds by wire, radio, optical or other. So, everything is included.
Well you would have thought so. So if nothing else changes, that is thank is your definition. Does this apply to you? It's up to you to decide.
One proposal to change the definition, such that it would read if this change was accepted by the WCIT, is any transmission, emission or reception, including processing of signs, signals, writing, images and sounds by wire, radio, optical or other.
Now, some might say that is a minor editorial change. I will leave to you to decide whether it is or it is not. So those are three definitions that exist currently in the ITRs, and if nothing else changes, they will continue to exist in the ITRs. And I think you should think very carefully about what the definitions are and whether and how they might apply to you.
That is all I have to say. Thank you. Any questions?
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much for to sort that out. Any questions? If not, we move to the next person that is going to tell us about the world telecommunication public forum, and I said it's a lot of things going on, we worked a little thing about WCIT but here come another platform with interesting interesting discussions. Cathy Handley.
CATHY HANDLEY: Good morning, thank you Maria, Patrik. I apologise, there are no slides or anything for this. But we are going to discuss a new four?letter term, we discussed WCIT and WTSA is a earlier in the week and WTPF will be the next challenge following Dubai in December in WCIT meetings. WTPF stands for World Telecommunication Policy Forum. This year, it is on international Internet?related public policies, which is kind of interesting, because you look at the acronym and you think, no, not such a deal, until you start looking at that. And it gets more interesting. Anders has explained we discussed on the panel on Tuesday about how you input into the WCIT and contributions. That is not the case with WTPF. WTPF, the sole input document, is a Secretary General's report. That is it. And to help the Secretary General make sure that the report is, you know, all correct and there is no misinformation in it, there is another acronym, an IEG, this would be the International Experts' Group ?? informal ?? I knew, I come up with it somehow ?? informal experts' group. Now, Paul Wilson and I from APNIC and I represent the RIR community on that. This is open to anyone that is interested, and I would encourage, if anyone wants to participate, it is open, if you go to dub dub dub dot ITU. INT and you look on the left?hand side, you will see a place you can click that says WTPF. All of the documents there are open and public for people to see. We put in as the NRO, we put in a document about, that corrected some miss ?? maybe some confusion about addressing and such and IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, but we are meeting again the week after next in Geneva, for two days, and we are going to talk some more, work on the report and come up with something called an opinion. Now, the difference between WTPF and like the WCIT or WTSA, that is a non?decisional group, we don't come out with decisions that say thou shall do such?and?such; you come out with an opinion. The last WTPF was held in 2009. We are still living with the opinions that came out of that meeting. So, even though it's technically non?decisional, we have to look really closely at what comes out. We don't have the opinions yet; we have had one meeting, it was a day?long. Bulgaria chaired the meeting. And now we are on to our next meeting and I can't really tell you what is going to happen or what the outcome will be of that, but I do encourage you. This is one of the ITU things you can follow without being a member. You can just click on it and take a look and see what it says. And what the activity is and if there has been, you know, any changes in what the opinions will be. The WTPF will be held unfortunately, I say, at the same time as the RIPE meeting next year, and while you are all having a good meeting in Dublin, we will be sitting in Geneva in suits and ties and trying to save the world. So that is it. If anybody has got any questions, that is anybody but Olaf.
OLAF KOLKMAN: I am struck by vagueness, so to speak. You said we have to live with the opinions of the previous one. Do you have a few examples of the things we have to live with? Because it sort of hooks into a feeling that I had with the presentation of Phil. I think you could have been a little bit more explicit of what that change of wording meant, like including data centres, because that wakes people up. It wakes people up to be a little bit more explicit. I am asking you for a little bit more of what we have to live with.
CATHY HANDLEY: I am trying to think what the last opinion was. I think it had to do with v6, I can find out and send it to you. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to prepare anything because I wasn't really kind of on the agenda. I will be happy to get the information and send it out to you. That is the best I can do right now, if that is all right.
MARIA HALL: I have a question, actually. I mean, there are a few of these foras that are more like discussion foras and you can come out, you don't really have a specific outcome or not even an opinion, but still, the interesting thing I think, does this forum, this public policy ?? this policy forum, does it have any impact on what is going to happen in the WCIT meeting in Dubai, is there going to be a lot of negotiations and there is going to be a lot of decisions around this ITRs, what is going to be in the ITRs or not, is it connected any way, because that means that it might be a good idea to know, to contribute in that forum.
CATHY HANDLEY: Yes, it's going to be connected. Awful these things, it's just kind of we progress through meetings. We are going to have WTSA and WCIT and the next meeting will be on the WTPF, we are going to talk more about Internet public policy and there is a growing theme here that there is more and more involvement from the ITU to put themselves in a world that we have pretty much had to ourselves. It's not going to go away. You are going to have more and more kind of cross pollonisation of issues that are going to be in the ITU, which, remember, is a Member State?driven organisation and what you are seeing is not just the ITU wanting to get more involvement but governments wanting to get more involved. There is a lot of money tied up on the Net now, there is national security issues, that sort of thing, and most governments feel a little more comfortable in the ITU environment than they do coming to an environment like this, and what we need to do as a community is work with them and get them to understand that you can come here, you can come to this meeting and help. We do the same thing at ARIN. Every one of the RIRs does it, and we really encourage people to get out there so they understand this isn't just a group of geeky engineers that are trying to get ?? pull something over on them. Thank you.
MARIA HALL: We have three questions including Anders. And then we have to wrap it up.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: To follow up on this a little bit, I mean, if these are just opinions and they are not decisional but they have these influences, then presumably all of this input that you can give if you are some geeky engineer as opposed to somebody who works high in some government, can be just an opinion or it can have an effect and so automatic wondering to what extent you expect contributions here to be effective? You know, I mean if the contribution is something that nobody wanted to hear is it just going to be ignored anyway?
CATHY HANDLEY: I'd love to tell you that I have all the faith in the world that whatever you write is going to be plopped right into the report. We are struggling right now. There are changes that Paul and I are looking at the that we would like to see in the report. But on the other hand, I guess maybe I am not optimist, that if you don't contribute, if you don't say something, then, you know, there is no chance and the more that do, and continue to, then eventually somebody has to listen.
DIMITRY: Just in personal capacity. Even though I am deeply involved in whole of this process, but I want to repeat my stupid question because I simply didn't hear anything significant. How public figures to speakers in this hall, please imagine how it's fantastic game around this three, four?letter acronyms, but how do you implement this strategy? Because when it was in 1988, the most of our countries have a national ?? it was just PTT and no markets, no privatised telecoms at all. For example, United States have got this problem in 1988, but they never defied the previous HRs. Now, how you can imagine how we put in our legislations, can you imagine the scale of change that we need in legislations because now we need to agree to get support from parliaments and so on, around 100 countries around the world. Is it real? Or it's still old international bureaucracy, fired with with new international bureacracy, someone belongs to new generation bureacracy? It's just a game or it can be really serious? What is the potential of such ?? because you can't simply order to business follow because it will break the laws. Hundreds of laws around the world. Maybe you can answer.
MARIA HALL: Well, I wish I could actually. That remains to be seen. As Anders said there is going to be negotiations, and I suppose that one of the negotiations is going to contain the status of the ITRs, but we have national legislation and EU legislation and so on, so that is actually remain to be seen and that is one of the things we have to ?? we already preparing for instance in the EU group. Anders you have a question as well.
ANDERS JONSSON: I am not sure what will happen in Dubai. I can guess but I am not sure. To respond to the other question, that is one issue you have to look into if you are go to use the word "shall" or "should," if you look at existing text, "I should," proposals, "should" from some countries, mandatory text from other countries and that is where a part on negotiation will be. Okay., this text should go in. "Should" it's not mandatory and so on. That is the way you find compromises.
Coming back to the question of the policy forum, if you go back to 2009 there is the opinion 6 which deals with ITR, and it's non?mandatory, it's just a list of issues that people at that time thought could be of interest to include. No evaluation if they were appropriate for the treaty or not. But I think it's important from the experience from 2009 up to now that those who are interested in the issues being discussed at the policy forum 2013, they participate in the work and make sure that their views are represented in the opinion because even if the opinion is non?mandatory and it's just an opinion, a recommendation, people start quoting it as it's a mandatory text. And then, after a few months or a year of quoting the text, it's suddenly in people's mind become more or less this must be true and I think that is the point that you have to make sure your views are represented there.
CATHY HANDLEY: On to what Anders just said, I have said that it was just the WTPF was just the next meeting in many. That would be preparation for the world conference for development, and then that all goes in to the Plenipotentiary which is the big overarching conference for the ITU. There is more and more, and what happens is, an opinion comes out and it's agreed to. Now, it might be agreed to because people just say it's a great opinion, and I think we should put it out there, and other people may say it's really stupid I am not going to bother talk about it. Not much difference in the way things happen around here. So it does, it takes on its own life and people start believing it. It was ?? it was there, therefore it must be true. People thought they liked it. So, again, you need to really speak up and whether it's to your government or you go on to the website and add your comments or whatever you think, because it's ?? this is one of the few forums, the WTPF is one of the few forums that you can comment on without being a member of the ITU and read the documents without being a member of the ITU.
DIMITRY: Very short. What I summarise what I understand I interpret. Because there is two positions, one it's treaty obligations. Another, oh, just recommendation, it's just exchange of ideas. What is declaration not treaty. And what is the future? Maybe it's we substitute real ideas what is behind. Maybe it's just now, just a place to exchange ideas because I don't see any real consequences. Yes, some countries can interpret as a treaty but opposite side as RFC.
MARIA HALL: To be honest on that one we don't want to see any consequences, actually. So that is ??
(Applause)
It's up to us negotiating. But the bottom line, I would like to say is a message thank you very much, Cathy, for doing this work with your colleague, because even though it might, it might be something that is worthless, why do we care about that text, why do we have to contribute on that one, you have to speak up actually, and you could, in this particular case you can change text and why, when a text, even though a text seem useful or ?? not used in any decision?making process it is there and it's going to be used and quoted, so finally, in the end, it might be some part of the text in a decision so that is why it's important so the bottom line is engage if you can and thank you for your contribution Cathy, and your work and so object. Anyway, there are things happen out in the regions as well so Paul has short presentation what is happening in other parts of the world.
PAUL RENDEK: I don't have any slides or anything but I have another presentation I have to give and there is probably some piece that is I would like to share with you from here. I am the director of external relations for the RIPE NCC. And actually, I have been following some of the things that have been happening in more than just the European region which is great because you really see the different perms on how governments are approaching their preparations to WCIT and I am happy I got to be part of this.
Wrapping up a bit about what happened in the CEPT, I think Anders gave us a nice update and showed us basically how the groups kind of divided in forming WCIT.
We were very happy to be invited to all of these CEPT meetings, we have been participating in them since February when we went to three of them in total. On top of that we also went to the council Working Group meetings that were held in Geneva, so they were the larger more global meetings that happened there. The RIPE NCC had formal representation there so that was also fantastic. I did mention very quickly that there were two submissions that came in from the RIPE NCC, one was on IPv6 and all the work we are doing with our community and also as a company and with our members, for the deployment and the support of IPv6, that was submitted and formally submitted to the CEPT group. We also had a document on the calling line identification that was submitted in May on request to the CEPT. That document we actually worked with a lot of our industry partners on, RIRs and a few of the others as you can well imagine and submitted that together as with our technical findings there on the caller line identification.
That is basically what we had in the European area and I have to say in the CEPT, it's been really fantastic, when they have had issues that they have talked about they have opened up the floor and the mikes and have asked can you please comment on this or ISOC can you please comment on this. So we feel like we have had a great spot in their meetings and there was good deliberations there, so I am happy to see that the CEPT was quite fashion forward in this area.
I can move on to what is happening in the Arab group. We also were invited to participate there. Now, here, things operate a little bit differently, as you can well imagine. And in the Arab States we work very closely with AfriNIC because the Arab group as Anders mentioned straddles a little further than the RIPE NCC service region; it covers the Middle East but also splashes right across the north of Africa. And there are ?? there are parts not even just the but sue Dan is included and they have a number of countries. So, in that Arab group they had a meeting in April, they had a kind of open consultation meeting that was ?? took place in Egypt and we were invited to go. AfriNIC represented us, we felt it was ?? it was in their region so they took the case for RIPE NCC in AfriNIC there. We also had presentations in and had he asked us for documentation on calling line identification so the Arab group was interested in that as well. And we also had some technical content to add for misuse and fraud of IP addresses and spam. That was of a great interest to the Arab group, I can say, those three topics coming from the technical community.
So we had those areas there. Then, there were some, you know, the way the Arab group organise themselves this time, I have to say they did do something they probably haven't done in the past; they actually went and got themselves together and went out to a few of their operators they invited to consultation meetings that they had in the various middle eastern and all the Arab State countries. I know that a lot of our members were invited to these areas, I know I had discussions with them before they went and were speaking with their governments. They came together, they have their paper finished. I haven't seen what was there. I know there is a number of submission that is have already been brought in from the Arab group, also taking a look at some of the things that the CEPT has added so there is a lot of text that has been kind of flowing back and forth, but at the last ITR round table meeting which took place in Dubai, and it was headed up by Mr. Taddik...who is a very large figure within the UAETRA. He formally announced the Arab position was fixed and finished and the document will not be modified further. I am not sure because I am not the massive expert in these areas, I am not sure whether or not they could reopen that and make changes. They probably can, judging by what I have seen happening in the kind of work that is done to prepare for such meetings like this in the UN. But, I know that as far as consultations from any other sectors or from any kind of multi?stakeholder area, it's shut for business. That was the word I heard. So, I think that basically, I would like to call on two points that were made. I know Olaf made a fantastic point which is one of the biggest concerns we have in RIPE NCC when we have our deliberations with any of these groups, and that is this treaty language, it's very broad, and the concepts are very large, so many times when you read the documents, and this is something that Cathy was pointing out too, and she is very well?versed in these areas, sometimes the impact is very unknown on what will happen for Internet growth or for openness and innovation and that is very big concern for us. So I think that Maria also touched on the definitions that come in to some of these documents that you see.
You know, we are a little bit new at this, all the different multi?stakeholders that have been invited to look at this so when we look at their definitions, at first they seem very simple, you know, but then when you look at them they are very broad, very vague and you are not really quite sure where it's going to hit. And this is a big concern for us, so we are say, you know, our questions are: How will this be implemented, how will this affect the openness and the Internet growth. We want to know this. And will we be consulted in this area? Equally is important. I think that what we are worried about is we will have fundamental changes to the operational practices of the Internet, and on top of that, what are the associated costs, not only financially but from a technical perspective and from a societal perspective. And I am getting a flag, so I will wrap this up by saying, well, we do have a delegation, a very strong delegation that will be following all of this in Dubai, at WCIT, I can't say that we have got ?? it's very nice to see, I have had some great chats with Geoff Huston, I Noelle be on deck and a fantastic asset for us in this area but a strong set of people coming from public affairs area and industry partners. The last thing I wanted to say about this piece, I have become extremely popular because everybody has found out that I am living in Dubai. So I have become actually, my mailbox is filled with people from different delegations asking me about where they can get some alcohol, what restaurant they should be eating at. So what I have spent most of my time doing is compiling lists of areas where we can actually eat and where we can drink and be merry and that has been really fantastic. So I hope we will have people coming together in Dubai. Thank you.
(Applause)
MARIA HALL: Thank you. I was just going to ask you, Paul, where you live, actually.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: My name is Valt, private consultant, going back to what some of the people have been saying is to give an example, I was at the Council of Europe's conference in this June in Strasbourg on international cybercrime and that sort of topics but there was a Russian delegation saying we are not ever going to sign the treaty of Budapest on cybercrime prevention, we are going to the ITU that is the only place for us to be. In other words, they disqualified a whole range of opportunities. So that is power forces that are not going to go away, discussion the Internet, international treaties and the ITU in the UN so that is something I think the RIPE NCC and the RIPE members that need to take into account in the way you are going to lobby.
Another example is that, and I think that maybe important for the individual members to contemplate is that a lot of BotNet mitigation centres are rising up around Europe and some other countries and that is a way to show your best practices to governments, because in other words, you get to do your own thing in the centre if you participate and you show your goodwill and faith to governments; in other words, that may be a way to keep the support you have at this moment, and you still have your own business within these centres because it's all privately held if you organise it in the right way. So maybe it's an idea for the next cooperation group to bring in some of the people that are working on these these and starting them around Europe and have a discussion with them on how you can participate in the future and show your goodwill.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much for the idea.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I am Meredith with NLab and Google, I wanted to echo a point that Olaf made and Paul touched on, I don't think we are defining the potential threat well enough. We don't have to be certain that that is what will happen; we have to be clear that that is what could happen, and be able to cat lies people in this community and outside the community who rely on the Internet but don't build it, may not understand its technology to understand what is at stake and that is this is a threat that will never go away when we have a stateless decentralised technology that allows people to communicate and organise. This is going to be ongoing and if the stakes aren't clear people aren't going to be able to act and if we don't help to distill those, we won't give them a toehold to act and that is an effort to needs to start and can't go away when the ITU fades and another organisation comes up because we face people in the US, it's the same beast and the way we were able to push that back was by getting people who loved the Internet, who loved Wikipedia and Facebook and like doing on?line banking, but they understood this was a threat to the Internet. So I just want to put that out there. Thanks.
(Applause)
ROB BLOKZIJL: Short remark and a short question, I don't expect an answer. The remark, the current document describing the 1988 ITRs, the current treaties, a document 66 pages. 33 pages are dedicated to the body of the treaty and 33 pages list governments, declarations saying we signed but won't implement it, probably. So this was when the world was simple; mainly State?owned analog telephony. What are the chance that anything will come out of the WCIT process? Of course there will be a document. How many pages will be text and how much pages will be the exceptions, governments saying, yeah, we signed but we won't do it?
MARIA HALL: As I said before, this remains to be seen actually, and this is part of the negotiation, of course, I mean how much text is going to be and how much going to be added and excluded.
ROB BLOKZIJL: No, no, that is the negotiations.
MARIA HALL: You mean people signing.
ROB BLOKZIJL: People say OK, I signed, but I don't take it serious. That was half of the document which is published by the ITU as the ITR 1988.
MARIA HALL: Well ??
ROB BLOKZIJL: It's a very interesting read.
MARIA HALL: A small part is negotiations. It depends the status of the ITRs but I don't think it's an option to sign it if you don't agree. But anyway, I am not an expert. I will have to ?? I am going to be there, I suppose I have to be an expert soon, real soon.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: From GCIX. It's not a question, it's more a comment. We are talking about we need to raise our voices and say what needs to be done because it's important for to us protect something we love so much but one thing we need to be aware of most of those governments are acting the way we are, for the same reason we are only on the other side: They are afraid. Something they have no control of. They don't understand what damage this can do to them or their way of life. A lot of ITU people, for example, want to protect what they know, want to protect their trips to the ITU and their meetings and their process and their control. Something they have no control on is something that is to be feared. They see it as this giant thing coming down about to mow them down and one of the things we need to make sure of is not just say you are wrong, but explain why this is not something to be feared. They have mostly forgotten the economic growth, that the free Internet has achieved for them, the wealth that this has brought into their countries, people don't look at the good of things, they look at the potential bad of things and it's really important for us to get them to put this into context. To do that, are we going to get heard? One person may not hear us but someone else may. The discussion doesn't stop when someone says I don't give a damn what you say, I don't give a damn, I will find someone else in your government and talk to them. This is how governments work. One person is not only decision?maker, they have a very distributed structure where everybody wants to have their say and make their mark so if someone comes who won't listen to you find someone else because I bet you he probably wants that person's job and there is a chance he is going to fight him. It's worth giving it a try. That is my comment.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much for for that comment. Actually, I think I am going to rearrange a little bit in the ?? it's Andrei here by the way? I think I am going to give you the floor, actually. Because then it's going to be Paul again.
ANDREI ROBACHEVSKY: Thank you for this opportunity. And I work for the Internet society. And Internet society is one of the originators of the initiative I am going to talk about today, which is called OpenStand and while this is quite a recent initiative, it actual leap documents more than, well a few decades of successful practice of standard development.
Anyway. So, well, well?known and well?established traditional model of standard development is basically country based where countries drive adoption on development of standards through borders based on treaties or other inter?governmental agreements, and this system is traditional and it's very well fitted to how historical markets were organised around the world, but the landscape is changing; well with globalisation and, you know, global Bordless commerce, there is another model that probably more successful with regards to standards, and this model is borderless, it's market?driven and that is the model I am going to talk about.
So, one thing, if you look at the Internet, which is a child, but also a facilitator of this new INO global economic model. You would see that the standards that the Internet is built on, they are not developed and not adopted through those traditional mechanisms. It's actually driven by the market and driven by the industry and the development processes are quite different. At the same time, those standards, they kind of sometimes they are second class citizens in the standards world, and sometimes well, I guess in part of the dress code of the participants, they considered less formal than other standards developed in the traditional model. At the same time those standards, they are actually based on principles and well?documented practices and a few companies got together and thought that would be very useful to articulate those principles and make sure that the world understands that those standards are not the second class citizens, they are built using robust and well?documented processes.
So, what are those principles? Well, I will go through them, there are five of them, and the first one is that OpenStand principle depends respectful cooperation amongst standards organisations whereby each organisation respects the autonomy, integrity processes and international property rules of the others.
A principle that is supposed the ?? supports the five fundamentals and those are due process, and due process means that decisions are made in this period of equity and fairness monk participants, that no one dominates the decision?making process, that the process is well?documented, there is an appeal process where you can appeal the decisions, stuff like that.
The decisions are based on broad consensus to ensure that the decisions are made across wide range of interests.
The process is transparent. Well, one thing is documented and another thing is that the decisions themselves are well?documented as well as the materials that are ?? that inform those decisions. There is also public comment period, for instance for standards before the adoption.
Balance, which means that no one particular group or individual or organisation dominates the standard development process and of course openness, that means that the process is open to all interested and informed parties.
Commitment to collective empowerment, another way of saying that this empowerment strives for standards that based on technical merit, judged by the contributed expertise. They provide global interoperabilities, scalability and res I will yen see, enable global competition and building blocks for innovation.
Specification are available, accessible to implementation and deployment.
And they are voluntary adopted, and they basically, their usefulness and value is determined by the market.
Well, I mentioned the originators, the Internet society among them, those are the five, the five originators of this initiative. But I'd like to say that reiterate, this is into the club, this is not a new consortium; this is a set of principles, no more no less, it's not an entity that you can join, but it's something that if you feel you can support, it's something that other organisations can use as a blueprint for their development of their standard development process to be successful, so it's a movement, and everyone can support this and to do this, I invite you to this site OpenStand site where you can express your support. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Andrei. Actually question that comes into my mind is actually whether ITU is interested to design ?? can sign this kind of principles or something, or did you have any dialogue with them or are they invited? ITU is one organisation. We have other standard organisations as well so I want to know how you work with them to try to make them sign this principles?
ANDREI ROBACHEVSKY: I think the main job was to distill those principles, there is a website where you can express your support but there is no audit process, I think the idea is that standard organisations that aspire that want to be part of this movement, they have to provide a statement where they would explain the world more clearly how those principles work for them. And I think, well ITU is certainly welcome in this club if they can provide a statement.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much. Actually, we are about to soon wrap it up but we have another last thing that we want to hear ?? RIPE NCC is going to contribute at next IGF in Baku in the beginning of November.
PAUL RENDEK: Thank you very much. I will try to keep this short, I realise I am keeping everybody from lunch, you have put me in a she difficult position. I am going to be giving you just an update on what is going up in the Internet governance forum circles. As you can see Internet governance stretches across a whole bunch of different areas, things happening in the ITU with WCIT and what have you, but there are still IGFs and some of the regional IGFs going on and some positive work that comes out that have and I think that needs mentioning. There are hurdles there too but I will show you some of the things we have been up to.
So, the next IGF, it's going to be taking place in Baku in Azerbaijan from the 6th to 9th of November. These are very large events. I think many of you have probably heard of them or have been kind of associated with them. We have two representatives, actually, from the RIRs on the multi?stakeholder advisory group for the global IGF, and that is the two Pauls, Paul Paul, Paul Wilson and myself. This year we had an overwhelming amount of workshop submissions, there was some 127 workshops submitted for the IGF, so it was a lot of reading to get through all those, and figure out how they would all fit into the programme of an IGF that really doesn't take place for so long.
One of the contributions that I gave was the critical Internet resources area, there are two main areas that have been identified as areas they want to showcase in the main plenary areas and that will be WCIT, which is not a surprise, the ITU WCIT and the other part of the plenary will be surrounding IPv4 markets. So I can say that the delegates have been chosen for these sessions already, we have done our work in critical Internet resources area, which is fantastic, we are ready to go and we have all of our speakers lined up. I am happy to say they come from a wide area and we have got gender balance, geographical balance, it's great and that is so challenging when you are trying to put together something like this because when you look at what the components are to make something like this happen in truly global and including everyone, you have to really be careful, you know, where you are finding this balance of what you are putting on the stage there. And it's very difficult because it's not always easy to find these things from the different regions of the world or the expertise in certain parts. So, we feel we are confident with what is going on with those sessions. The RIPE NCC also is co?organising three workshops inside of this IGF, one in IP addressing issues which you can well imagine we are going to be doing together with our RIR colleagues, Internet resource certification, because that is also coming to the front, I think governments are also quite interested and other stakeholders on what is going on in this arena, and the last one is capacity building best common practices. And I am happy to see that the RIPE NCC is involved in capacity building, I know that it's a word that you probably look at and go what? Vague words that come from the government scene but it's actually surrounding public and private partnerships or cooperation for kind of moving things forward in Internet development and the RIPE NCC does take this treaty seriously and we try to work closely with governments so we have got a workshop on this and we will be showing some of the things that have been happening out of this cooperation.
Arab IGF, there is also for the first time ever there will be a Arab IGF, it's organised in Kuwait from 9 to 11 of October. The RIPE NCC and AfriNIC both have representatives on the multi?stakeholder advisory group. My colleague were AfriNIC is there and I have a place on the Arab multi?stakeholder advisory group. They wanted to organise their meeting much along the lines as the global IGF is organised, all the different sections in there and a lot of workshops submissions. They were pretty successful, we have come out with 15 workshops that will take place along all the tracks you see maybe in the global IGFs and things surrounding security, openness, the critical Internet resources we talked about. So we are also Co. organising some workshops there, again IPv6 big issue in the Middle East they all know we have run out of IPv4 address space and my telephone rang off the hook. Everybody in the Middle East area called me and said have you run out of address space? I said yes, are you sure? I have none. So, unfortunately, they are going to be having to take up IPv6 because of course as you all well know the corridor from Russia thru central Asia down into the Middle East is exploding with Internet development there and we don't have the v4, the regular v4 address space to give them for this they will going to be have to be looking at other areas, we have a workshop on that. And capacity building workshop. We are doing a lot of capacity building in that region and we are planning on taking what is there into the global IGF. So some of the stuff that the RIPE NCC is giving:
I have to say it was really great for us to get involved here. We were invited by the UN he is qua and league of Arab states to be part of forming this IGF, I was quite happy to be on the delegation, the only non?Arab one that was on the delegation that the league of Arab states that appointed to form this Arab IGF, they did take it seriously and had us there, we had people from different multi?stakeholders groups there represented even forming this.
So, what we are doing at this Arab IGF, the RIPE NCC and AfriNIC will be supporting with remote participation, we will have rap tours there, actually forming the Arab position toss bring that to the global IGF for them and we are mobileising the technical community so I am calling on all of our members, some of the Arabs that I know that are experts in some of these areas and pulling them to this IGF and speaking to the governments that will come there. We will be feeding these regional issues into the global IGF so that is quite positive.
Capacity building, we are trying to look at this from a positive perspective, everybody likes to give Internet governance the thumbs down. I think it's really huge word in this, there are some positive things happening, what we look at in good capacity building is efforts between the public and private sector in moving forward in this and seeing where we can work together and we have found some great places to work in. I have outlined them here. We are working on the IPv6 roadshow which has been a real success in the Arab region, MENOG is providing these, and they work closely with governments and training all the government network operators there on getting themselves up to scratch with v6. In 2013 we are moving into Russia and central ace Jan region, they are very, very interested in working with us and getting this stuff going, I think that is positive developments there. We have had a lot of discussions on IXPs there because that is a touchy subject in the Middle East region, we all know. And IPv6 task forces, we have been invited, the RIPE NCC to be on many national task forces inside the Middle East region so that is really great, we have got a voice there and we can help them out. And actually, from all these efforts that we have done in cooperation with governments, these are the countries where we have worked with governments to do something positive from the technical community side, wow, check out the list. I mean, OK, the RIPE NCC region is enormous but in a very short space of time I think we have managed to get some great countries there.
And lastly, they had an ITU IPv6 correspondence group as I think we have actually mentioned here before in the cooperation group. We were involved in that and out that have what came in I was actually very surprised to see that there was a formal submission from the UAE delegation that came into this ITU IPv6 correspondence group and it was formally asking the RIPE NCC actually to engage little bit more and work on IPv6 security courses for the region, getting national level statistics that would be on IP address that is would come from the wealth of information the RIPE NCC holds on IP addresses, and actually working on IPv6 transition making sure that we are getting the info out there into the region. So that was ?? that is really fantastic. We heard that, they encouraged all their Middle East other delegations and Arab world basically to engage with the RIPE NCC, and I thought that was great. So that is something that came out of there as well. And just the upcoming events to close because Maria is standing which means she wants me to finish: In 2012 these are the events and there are 2013 EuroDig which is the European regional version of the IGF, will take place in May or June, they don't have it closed but we know we are going to lis done. If you would like to participate in that, by all means.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Paul. And as I don't think we have any other business, but I want to open the floor for anything, it could be questions for the speakers, for me, comments, or if anybody has any other bits to come up with?
STEVE NASH: Speaking personally although I work for Arbor Networks. We live in a ?? on a planet that we have carved into nations, and we can't pretend that governments are going to go away, and we can see ?? there is a huge compliment to everybody in this room and elsewhere that the Internet has become what it is, the fact that governments are taking interest, we have to find ?? continue, we are beginning but we do have to find ways to allow governments to have interest, perhaps even democracy, for people that are not ?? are outside of our direct community, so I am a little worried that ?? the ITU may not be a good vehicle, historic vehicle that perhaps needs to go away and perhaps ICANN needs to become the IIU, I have no idea. But we really have to I think take seriously how do we give governments the feeling that they can represent their people in the decisions that are made within the Internet.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much for that comment. I think that is very, very important. Thank you very much.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I usually want to remind please never call ?? unfortunately one of our colleagues mentioned but convention on cybercrime. I want to explain that why one statement of this convention was not accepted by Russian Federation, because this statement allowed law enforcement country, foreign, to make investigations and any actions to put BotNet or something else, anything, in investigation activity without any necessity to follow the national laws of this country and so on. I think that now when we discuss different situations, we have the real facts of the foreign activities on the territories of our countries and it's absolutely different, it's clear, that this statement of the conventions can be acceptable and I don't think that anyone from ?? that it will be legal for law enforcement of any country to put some kind of programme, some kind of software on your own mark. Thank you.
MARIA HALL: OK. Thank you very much. Well, with this last statement, I would like to wrap this up and I would like to say thank you very much for participating, thank you the speakers, thank you for all the material and the good discussions and the questions that you gave and the audience, and I am so proud of this Cooperation Working Group because this is one platform out of many others and increasingly coming up for having this kind of dialogue between governments and the RIPE community in this case, as I said to begin with I think the governments within the RIPE area are a part of the RIPE community. I feel that me and my government are actually. So thank you very much, have a good lunch, and hopefully see you soon again.
(Applause)
