The Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which runs the world wide web, has begun its 57th annual general meeting in Hyderabad on Thursday. This is the first meeting (thought the second one to be held in India) after the US Government relinquished its operational authority over the Internet in September this year.
Among other important topics, the conference will discuss the transitional issues of internet governance, which are now in a multi-stakeholder community mode, related to fixing of accountability through new by-laws for various stake holders besides issues related to the domain name system.
The other major issue that would be debated in the 7-day event would be on ways to address the issues of cyber security, particularly in the light of faster expansion of Internet of Things(IoT), which, experts think is the most vulnerable area for cyber attacks.
ICANN CEO Goran Marby comments :
ICANN57 is the Annual General Meeting for all of ICANN; the community, the organisation, and the board of directors. According to the recommendations of the meeting strategy working group, this meeting showcases the work of ICANN. ICANN57 will feature two public forum sessions and eight community-driven high-interest topic sessions as well as outreach and engagement activities.
The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Communication, which is hosting the meeting, is pursuing agenda such as the demand for establishing a Root Server that handles the domain name functions in India, and also pushing for the use of Indian language scripts in the Internet domain names. The process of finalising the necessary rule sets for 22 Indian languages identified by the Centre for this purpose is currently underway, according to the officials. ICANN has to facilitate the Universal Acceptance by working with all the downstream applications and systems including the e-mail service providers to start accepting these new addresses.
Samiran Gupta, Head of India, ICANN, added :
We are excited to welcome over 2,000 delegates who have signed up to attend ICANN57, in particular, the 1,000 Indian stakeholders. This is an excellent opportunity for our community to come and learn more about the Internet community. The hosting of this ICANN57 meeting is another milestone for India’s participation in the global multistakeholder community.
Watch this short video to learn about the first ICANN Public Meeting in Hyderabad.