Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

Isn’t weird that Internet governance suddenly becomes a hot topic of this place? People who have no background on research and education are all of a sudden upgraded to the position of top experts or advisers. Billions of state funds find the new way to enter into corrupt pockets. New so-called excellent courses or training programs are set up. The reason, obviously, that more useful idiots are needed.

I was so amused when attending an absolutely boring window-dressing meeting to assess an irrelevant university’s newly born LLM program. Apart from listening from a couple of colorful-nail middle-age women’s suggestions to the meeting host on how to fool the assessment criteria, a seemingly half-drunk man intervened that governance means solely and completely governmental administration and shall be categorized as administrative law. The meeting hosts who applied to run the LLM program and self-claimed experts on IG nodded with greatest consent. I was so overwhelmed at that moment. I might be Alice in the wonderland.

The European Summer School on Internet Governance offers annually (end of July) a one week academic course (48 hours). 4th Summer School was on July 25-31, 2010 in Meissen, Germany.

The course covers the political, legal, economic, socio-cultural, technological and other dimensions of the governance of the Internet. The course includes also practical oriented lectures covering the management of critical Internet resources as well as the development of the domain name market. Each academic lecture is followed by a Q&A Session. There are smaller more practical oriented workshops, round tables and case presentations as well as students project. Evening events with “Snacks & Wine” are for interactive communication among faculty and fellows. Students will get a “Certificate” for the successful participation in the Summer School.

Apart from representatives from the governments of European countries and European Union, a line of distinguished international academic faculties, Prof. Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, Wiiliam Drake, Avri Doria, Hong Xue, Milton Mueller and Wolfgang Benedek gave the lectures on a variety of theoretical issues on Internet governance. Their research reflects remarkable academic quality and international vision. There were also a series of presentations from 5 ccTLD managers, RIPE, UNESCO, geo-TLD applicant and others. Technical community is supportive for the Summer School. Fellows were self-stimulating and highly interested in studying.

An International Association of Summer Schools on Internet Governance was initially launched by representatives from Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America.

The Nominating Committee (Nom Com) is an independent committee tasked with selecting a majority of the members of the Board of Directors and other key positions within ICANN’s structure. ICANN is an internationally organized, public benefit, non-profit corporation dedicated to: preserving the operational security and stability of the Internet; promoting competition; achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and supporting the development of policies appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

Individuals selected by Nom Com will have a unique opportunity to work with accomplished colleagues from around the globe, address the Internet’s intriguing technical coordination problems and policy development challenges with diverse functional, cultural, and geographic dimensions, and gain valuable insights and experience from working across boundaries of knowledge, responsibility and perspective.

Those selected will gain the satisfaction of making a valuable public service contribution towards the continued function and evolution of an essential global resource. Considering the broad public interest, those selected will work to achieve the goals towards which ICANN is dedicated in order to facilitate the Internet’s critically important societal functions.

Prof. Xue, Chair of APRALO gave a presentation at APTLD Colombo Meeting in July 2010. This is the second briefing given by Prof. Xue to the Asia-Pacific ccTLD community. Although she was at the Nomination meeting at the suburb of Brussels, she managed to call in the APTLD meeting despite the difficulties of time zones and connections. APTLD staff went out for lunch and let Prof. Xue waited quite a while online. Eventually the connection was resumed and she gave the brilliant presentation, without being able to get the souvenir for all the presenters. In 2009, she managed to give a presentation on behalf of APRALO to APTLD via remote call-in, when she was in Connecticut for a conference.

(Drafted by APRALO Statement; Hong Xue, Chinese Domain Name Users Alliance

Posted at https://st.icann.org/alac-docs/index.cgi?statement_on_icm_application_for_the_xxx_stld)

The following Statement was drafted by Hong Xue and unanimously supported and endorsed as an APRALO Statement at the meeting of 27/04/2010.

APRALO agrees with the statement made by ALAC The .XXX is primarily an issue of procedural justice. ICANN has to follow truthfully the procedures set up by itself. We support ICANN to be a transparent, neutral and effective coordinator of the Internet domain name system, rather than interfering with the issues that are not really in its mandate. However, we do not have an interest in supporting any specific TLD, which we believe is out of the mission of the At-Large community.