Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

It was my first contact with a real Internet Cafe in this city. I remember I used kind of public computer access service 10 years ago at my home town. 3 Y for an hour or so. A young boy by the door charged the customers. All I did was to pay in cash. Today I learned I was so outdated after the reform of regulation. When I went to the underground site, I saw a large room with hundreds of computers and a number of users. At the front desk, a man with suspicious accent replied to my query of prices impatiently. After being told that 1 Y for 20 minutes, I presented Y10 as deposit. The man then asked me to provide my ID card, the most important personal document, to him. He got my ID, scanned or stored the information, and asked me to stand in front of a camera to take a snapshot. The whole process was like to screen a new prisoner. Finally I got a small receipt, with my ID number as account number. I manged to login a vacant computer  by inputting my ID number. After 10 minutes’ usage, I turned off the computer and presented the receipt to the counter man to get my deposit back. He retained my receipt, on which my ID number was printed.

I took a long breathe after eventually getting back to the ground. I was not only impressed by strict identity monitoring process but  shocked by the danger of privacy intrusion and ID theft. The service provider is required by the authority to check, verify and store large amount of customers’ personal information. Are they obliged to keep confident of the information obtained? How can customers know that they will not abuse by forging, selling, leaking the information?

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.