Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

ICANN opened its first 2011 meeting at Westin Hotel on 335 Powell Street, San Francisco. The meeting in Spring attracted more than 1000 participants from around the world. I spent a very busy week. Many people saw me running from one meeting room to another, which proved both the hectic schedule and my hard-working.

I spent most of the time at At-Large Meeting series of course. I chaired the APRALO Monthly Meeting on March 15 (17:00pm local time) and invited the Chair, Associate Chair and a group of Members of NomCom to do an outreach to the AP Community. I led the all the policy discussions on IDNs, IANA Review, Geographic Regions and new gTLDs and allocated the works to pertinent working groups or RALO members. However, actually all these works bounced back to me. On the at-large or apac mailing list, everyone can see that I myself drafted almost all the policy statements (recently on At-Large Response to GAC-Board Scorecard Consultation on trademark measures), responded to questionnaire (recently on NTIA Questions on IANA) and edited and organized the regional responses (recently on geographic review). With respect to planning of APRALO showcase, although a talkative VC blurred his allocated program agenda item on outreach and jumped to this item, I managed to invite the Chair of NARALO Organization Committee to give a briefing. His talk was very helpful to focus the work on organization, sponsorship and outreach. I’ve circulated the messages to apac list but only one person who is not affiliated with any member ALS volunteered. Pathetic! How long can I take pains to make the whole organization operate, despite all the free-riders? I had been looked forward to being replaced by March 2011, but all the people wanted to use me for longer time. The election must be completed in May and I will step down as the Chair of APRALO on or before June 1, 2011.  That is FOR SURE.

I attended the Joint RALO meeting and pointed out that those inactive and non-participative ALSes should either be de-certified or withdraw from the RALO. It is ridiculous that an entity that had applied for to be certified as an ALS and committed to the RALO disappeared or refused to participate anymore. It is pointless to argue for loss of interests. If so, the uninterested ALS should leave at-large system voluntarily.

Among the policy meeting, the ALAC-GAC Joint Session was interesting. Most of the time was on the Scorecard consultation. I made a point that was supported by most at-large representatives from Europe, Latin America and Africa. I pointed out not all the governments in the diversified GAC had the same level of demand for trademark protection in new gTLDs and as a result they may not share the same views, but the people outside hardly heard from the those government that don’t seek overwhelming trademark protection. The response from the Chair of GAC was that IPR issues may have been traded off for negotiation on other issues. Well said, it has always been true among other international law and policy setting.

At other policy sessions, I made the comments, suggestions or asked questions on IANA Review, Government Objection against community-based new gTLD strings, IDN ccTLDs, ICANN bylaw review (WT-A), geographical area review (triple dilemma in AP: a cross-regional Small Island Chapter, a subregional or independent regional West Asia or Arab and a want-to-join-Europe Central Asia), interpretation policy and UDRP review, etc. What a busy week!

On Wednesday March 16, I took Caltrain to go to Stanford Law School. The trip was so smooth that I found the Law School Building effortlessly. At the Caltrain station, I got on the Stanford Shuttle and correctly got off at the Student Union near the Law School. The meetings with Stanford Law Professors were interesting and productive. The campus is indeed beautiful and magnificent. Hopefully those imported palm trees could survive the chilling weather Palo Alto.

2010年网络使命征文大赛－法律、社会与公益－获奖者揭晓

Winners of  IIPL-NetMission Essay Competition on Law, Society & Public Good

Institute for the Internet Policy & Law proudly announced the winners of the founding yearly essay competition for the students of master-degree and above. The competition aims to promote students’ participation in charity programs via Internet technologies, enhance social responsibility and stimulate public services.

The Competition attracts more than 20 participants from a number of universities in Beijing. The papers submitted covers electronic commerce, intellectual property, free flow of information, management of critical Internet resource and Internet for Development. The Expert Evaluation Committee is very impressed by the students’ knowledge, enthusiasm and strong wish for public good. We sincerely appreciate evaluation experts for their kind contribution of their precious time and energy. Despite all the difficulties we encountered, we are confident in the success of the competition. At Awarding Ceremony, a group of experts on e-commerce, domain names, jurisprudence and Internet policy made very insightful comments on the selected winning papers.

All the winners were awarded the Bilingual Certificates and the prizes kindly donated by CNNIC.

Two winners were later invited by Asia Pacific Network Group (APNG) Camp to present on Beijing-Hong Kong NetMission Join Forum on February 23, 2011. APNG Camp was concurrent to APRICOT 2011, which is the largest Internet conference series in AP Region. Prof. Xue gave a presentation on the NetMission Essay Competition and Youth’s Mission on the Internet. The Director Jiyi Li, Department of Youth Affairs, Liaison Officer of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong SAR and Director Florence Hui, Department of Civil Affairs, Government of Hong Kong SAR were present at the Joint Forum.

Winners/ 获奖论文

一等奖 1^st Class Winners：

唐慧俊 对外经济贸易大学博士研究生《论电子商务中消费者知情权的法律保护》

Huijun Tang, Ph.D. Candidate of University of International Business and Economics

刘磊 北京师范大学博士研究生《互联网环境下著作权保护博弈对最不发达国家教育资源利用的影响》

Lei Lu, Ph.D. Candidate of Beijing Normal University

二等奖 2^nd Class Winners：

刘娟 对外经济贸易大学博士研究生《不同所有制企业基于互联网的商务运营绩效分析》

Juan Liu, Ph.D. Candidate of University of International Business and Economics

伍梦璇 北京师范大学法学硕士研究生《让所有人看见互联网－著作权的社会责任》

Mengxuan Wu, LLM Student of Beijing Normal University

姚志伟 北京师范大学法律硕士研究生《互联网上外国影视作品的著作权保护》

Zhiwei Yao, J.M. Student of Beijing Normal University

三等奖 3^rd Class Winners:

吴冬梅 北京师范大学法律硕士研究生《“错案”之外——由“王鹏诽谤案”引发的一点思考》

Dongmei Wu, J.M. Student of Beijing Normal University

赵璐 北京师范大学法律硕士研究生《P2P软件提供者的版权侵权责任研究》

Lu Zhao, J.M. Student of Beijing Normal University

耿珊珊 北京师范大学法律硕士研究生《论网络环境下商业秘密的保护》

Shanshan Geng, J.M. Student of Beijing Normal University

Warm Congratulations to All the Winners! Thanks to CNNIC for kindly donating the prizes for winners!

Thanks to all the participants!

UNCITRAL Colloquium on Electronic Commerce took place on 14-16 February 2011 at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The Colloquim was organized in line with the official request of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) at its forty-third session (2010) to identify a roadmap for future work by the Commission in the area of electronic commerce, with particular regard to legal issues relating to electronic transferable records, identity management and the use of mobile devices in electronic commerce, as well as to discussing recent developments in the area of cross-border electronic single window facilities (see Official Records of the General Assembly, Sixty-fifth Session, Supplement No. 17 (A/65/17), para. 250).

Prof. Hong Xue gave a presentation at the Single Window Session on February 16, 2011.  Prof. Xue presented on the challenges and opportunity of development of Cross-Border Single Window in Asia Pacific Region, referring to the drafting work of a Regional Agreement on Electronic Exchange of Data and Documents initiated by UNESCAP from 2010 and responding to the other panelists’ views on complexity of cross-border legal issues, such as risk of National Single Window service be subject to foreign jurisdiction and ratification of UN Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts. The presentation attracted huge interests from both the panel and the audience.

Immediately after 1.3 billion Chinese came back to work from the celebration of Lunar New Year–the Year of Rabbit, a few news reports attract the people’s eyeballs.

It’s reported that Chinese has published more papers on technological journals than people from any other country. But the “world record” has an ironical footnote that more than 100 countries rank higher than China regarding paper citation rates. Widespread of copying, plagiarism and other so-called academic corruption explains the large output of rubbish publications.

A more sensational news is that a 2nd-Class National Invention Prize awarded to a research team in Xi’an Jiaotong University was revoked officially because the “invention” contained a large percentage of fabricated or false information. The belated revocation owes great thanks to a group of professors from that University who persistently complained against the corrupt activities in seeking the National Invention Prize.

Two grass-root migrant workers suddenly became pop-stars after a video of their singing a song emotionally got considerable hits on the Internet.  The pains in the song touches ordinary people who work hard for the same goal. They even sang the same song at the Chinese New Year Eve Gala Show, which was viewed by almost 10 billion Chinese. However, the song’s author, Mr. Wang, stood out recently to prohibit the two from singing the same song for commercial performances. The purely legitimate copyright claim angered two new stars’ fans. The anger and hatred against copyright suddenly erupted on the Internet. The Copyright Owner was pictured as mean, jealousy and selfish, although many others urged two new stars to perform their original songs, rather than relying the others’ works.

Professor Jianrong Yu, from Chinese Academy of Social Science, launched a campaign to save “children beggars” via micro-blog system.

It’s reported that more than 200,000 children were missing in China every year. The number is astonishing. Most missing children were kidnapped and sold to gangsters who use children to beg for money on the streets. There has been a considerable large black market of children trafficking operating many years. The children beggars, as young as 3 or 4 years old, are in miserable condition, frequently being beaten, starved and abused.

Prof. Yu’s campaign is let the people to photograph the children beggars on the streets and post the photos on micro-blog so that the parents of the missing children could find the clue of their babies. Prof. Yu’s call was warmly responded by more than 55,000 micro-blog posts with 800 photos of children. It’s reported that several children were indeed saved by the information revealed on the micro-blog.

However, the civil society campaign could make mistakes. For example, the parents from Shanxi discovered a boy beggar in a photo taken in Zhuhai looking extremely similar to their baby and reported to police. The local police immediately arrested the man who led the said children beggar and declared a success of micro-blog salvation. Sadly, it was too early to celebrate for the family reunion.  The boy was not the son of Shanxi parents.

There are other concerns over the campaign. All the children’s photos are published online. Does it violate the children’s privacy and minor’s legal protection? Would the photos be utilized for illegal purposes, such as commercial ads or extortion by organized crimes? Who is responsible for protecting the children’s personal information?

Fortunately, the campaign has noted these issues. Prof. Yu said a database of missing children will be set up and people’s submissions will not be publicly accessible anyway. Then it arises other issues, such as transparency of information and sustainability of the operation.

Some Congressmen have urged the police to take more effective actions against children kidnapping and trafficking and improve the social welfare system to help poor children, particularly in migrant workers’ families.