ICANN Brussels Welcome Ceremony Monday, 21 June 2010 >> Ladies and gentlemen, if you would be kind enough to take your seats, we'll be starting our program momentarily. Thank you. >> Ladies and gentlemen, if you would be kind enough to take your seats, we're going to begin this morning's program in just a moment. Thank you. Please make sure -- please make sure all rings are turned off on your cell phones. We'd appreciate it very much. Thank you. >> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome president and CEO, ICANN, Rod Beckstrom. [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you very much. Welcome to ICANN's 38th meeting. Welcome to our distinguished guests. And welcome to the heart of Europe. Thanks to our hosts for their tireless work to ensure the success of this meeting. The warm welcome we have received is in keeping with Belgium's long tradition of gracious hospitality and exceptional cuisine. And what a fabulous conference center. It's less than a year old, and a fascinating mix of old and new. Outside, the structure reflects Brussels' historic architecture and rich traditions. It blends immaculately with its environs. Inside, the new interior is a visual expression, a vision of Europe's vision for its future, modern, sleek, dynamic, yet, through its powerful evocation of Magritte's legacy, respect full of a country and a continent's celebrated history. We are honored to welcome the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, the first person to hold this eminent position. He has accepted a major challenge, to guide a new phase in the history of the European Union that began with the Lisbon treaty. We also welcome the vice president of the your pian parliament, Silvana Koch-Mehrin, and by video, vice president of the European Commission in charge of the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes. Last, but certainly not least, our local host, MARC VAN WESEMAEL, CEO of EURid. The European Union's economic recovery began with an important acknowledgment: Half the productivity growth of the last 15 years was driven by information/communication technologies. As a result, the European Commission launched an ambitious Digital Agenda to generate economic growth and spread the benefits of the Digital Agenda to all areas of society. It has seven priorities. First, a digital single market; increased interoperability; greater Internet trust and security; much faster Internet access; more investment in research and development; enhanced digital literacy, skills, and inclusion; and the application of information and communication technologies to social challenges like climate change and aging population. The Internet is central to this plan. With interoperability, security, and inclusiveness as a central feature of its development. This is an extremely important statement for ICANN, which has these values in its core mission. Europe is a key player in Internet governance, with a significant presence in ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, where EU member states and the European Commission have always played a prominent role. Ambassador Janis Karklins, from Latvia, has chaired the GAC for the past three years. The European Commission has provided the GAC secretariat in the past, and the EU has been among the most committed participants in the World Summit on information society and the Internet governance process. Europe has been a consistent leader and innovator in the domain name space, the first international country code top-level domain or ccTLD was dot UK, created in 1985. Today, Europe has six of the top ccTLD registries in the world. Some examples: Dot DE in Germany, operated by DENIC, led by CEO Sabine Dolderer, has 9.5 million registered names. Dot UK, operated by Nominet, led by CEO Lesley Cowley for the United Kingdom, has 8.5 million names. Dot RU in Russia, led by CEO Andrei Kolesnikov, has 2.8 million names. The Netherlands, led by CEO Roelof Meijer, and operated by SIDN, has 3.9 million names. Dot EU, again, run by MARC VAN WESEMAEL, for the European Union, operated by EURid, has 3.5 million and is among the fastest-growing domain names in the European. Tens of millions of names are registered in the European top-level domains, many by businesses and citizens in generic top-level domains. With the new gTLD program, applicants will be able to apply for top-level generic domains that will provide non-English choices and competition for dot com, dot edu, dot net, and others. The Catalan domain, puntCAT or dot cat, for instance, is the first generic top-level domain that directly addresses a linguistic community's distinct culture. Dot SE in Sweden, led by CEO Danny Aerts, was the first DNSSEC-signed ccTLD zone in the world, helping to lead the way in domain name registry security. Europe has also been a leader in I.P. addressing. Under manager director Axel Pawlik's leadership -- very strong leadership, I would add -- RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry that handles Europe and the Middle East, has been an innovator in the address space. As the first regional Internet registry, RIPE NCC pioneered many of the tools, processes, and procedures and techniques used by the global Internet addressing community today. It promoted the introduction and support of TCP/IP networking in Europe, hence its name, Reseaux IP Européens. Ripe also worked closely with Jon Postel, the original operator of IANA, and cofounder of ICANN, to decentralize the distribution of Internet Protocol addresses. Surrealist Rene Magritte had a unique idea of art and life. There's a new museum here in Brussels holding the world's largest collection of his works. Magritte famously painted a picture of a pipe and wrote on it, "This is not a pipe." There's a lesson there. Challenge assumptions. Question what you see. Many people think that ICANN -- they regularly label it as U.S.- controlled, inward-looking, and highly technical organization. But ICANN today, in the wake of the Affirmation of Commitments, is a multinational institution working for the common good, a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. And it is a multi-stakeholder work in progress, overseen by the world, for the world, reflecting its diverse international staff, board of directors, and leadership of supporting organizations, as well as the increasingly global nature of its work. Our relationship with the United States government echoes this. Our close cooperation continues, but within a broader international context. We meet here today in an atmosphere of rapidly improving international relations as ICANN further integrates into the global community. The successful launch of internationalized domain names is a triumph for Internet users, especially for those in the countries involved, and for the entire ICANN community. Since our very successful 37th meeting in Nairobi -- and wasn't Kenya a wonderful experience? [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: -- I've had the pleasure since then of attending a series of highly successful IDN launches, visiting Egypt, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates to celebrate their achievements which have greatly enhanced critical relationships in the growing network of nations constructively engaging with ICANN. For many millions of Internet users, the introduction of IDNs means they will be able to access the Internet entirely in their primary language. In our visits, we witnessed people's pride not just in this achievement, but in the association of their domain name with their country's identity, culture, and national heritage. In Egypt, in Russia, in the UAE, we felt this rich mix of pride and tradition. Since the launch of the IDN fast-track process in November, ICANN has received 31 different requests, covering 19 languages. Four have been delegated, and more will be soon. There are more IDN delegation requests scheduled for board consideration later this week. IDNs are an important step forward in the internationalization of the Internet, and of ICANN. The next important step is to make these names broadly available for a range of community, consumer, and business interests around the world through the new generic top-level domain program. The fourth version of the new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook was posted for public comment in May. This is a credit to the outstanding collaboration achieved by you, the ICANN community, working in so many groups whose expertise have brought to closure several contentious and complex issues. Work continues in the GNSO on vertical integration. And I understand that it's -- that one of the issues that has recently come up is compliance. If you create the policy, we will build the model for compliance. We are confident, we are committed. We will do our best. So please carry forth with your important work in that effort. The new draft also includes trademark protection mechanisms, new rules for protecting geographic names, new measures to mitigate malicious conduct, and a registry transition process model to protect registrants, including provisions for the emergency transition in the case of registry failure. Much has been made in the media of ICANN's consideration of the application for a XXX top-level domain, which the board will address this week. This follows a nonbinding decision by the Independent Review Panel that the board should reconsider its earlier decision. Although this issue predates my arrival at ICANN, I have been struck by the transparent fashion in which ICANN is dealing with this controversial issue. Most people learned about the independent panel's decision when ICANN publicized it swiftly and subsequently requested public comment. Throughout the process, we have sought opinions from all sides. The Community Accountability and Transparency Review team constituted under the authority of the Affirmation of Commitments has already met near ICANN's offices in Los Angeles. It's been meeting again here in Brussels. And ICANN staff is supporting their effort. ICANN's staff, board, and community have built an impressive record of accountability and transparency and are building on those achievements. In 2007, an independent 68-page report created by the One World Trust concluded that overall, ICANN is a very transparent organization. It shares a large quantity of information through its Web site, probably more than any other global organization. It would have been easy to sit back and say, "Good enough" after praise like that. But we didn't. We constantly renew our commitment to openness, and we act on it, every day, every month, every year. Even the pursuit of this commitment is done in utter transparency. We have an open, public assessment of further areas where we could improve. For example, we're creating a comprehensive and searchable online database of all ICANN board resolutions going all the way back to our founding in 1998. Doing this in a Wiki that allows transparent reporting on which resolutions were implemented and how, with links to supporting documentation and resources. That will be launched this week and presented to you, the community. We recognize the right of the review team to publish their views, but we also recognize the sizable challenge they face as a group that includes interested industry stakeholders and contracted parties in attempting to produce an objective and independent report that the board and community will find useful. We look forward to the publication of their framework and the objective basis for their work so the community will have the opportunity to review it. The quest for greater transparency and accountability is an ongoing process. The challenge for ICANN is that no matter how good we are, we will never be good enough. We are certain the review team will finds areas where they believe further improvements can be made. And we welcome it. But we stand on our long record of pushing the edge to make ICANN as transparent and accountable as it is possible to be. We welcome constructive help and call on the community to join us in embracing this commitment. Which needs to be reciprocal to be authentic. Transparency, debate, and discussion are hallmarks of our community, and a healthy indication that our multistakeholder model works. ICANN's multistakeholder model does work. And how do we know? Because thanks to you and others around the world, the Internet works. That's how we know the multistakeholder model works. Europe's support for the multistakeholder model in the next few months will be more important than ever. There are those who do not believe in this model or who seek to divert it for their own benefit at the expense of other stakeholders. Others want to see all private sector and civil society stakeholders eliminated and to allow only governments to make the decisions, limiting the involvement of many parties that facilitate technological innovation and support and drive this important network. The multistakeholder model is at the heart of our accountability to everyone who cares about the future of the Internet. It is responsive. It is transparent. And it hears all voices. The future of that model is once again being debated in international bodies like the United Nations and the International Telecommunications Union. We must face the fact that governments control these institutions. Given the serious proposals for an alternative to our bottom-up, multistakeholder model, we must redouble our efforts to support it if we are to protect the global public interest we are committed to. All our stakeholders must step up to the plate and defend our common interest. We will, of course, work closely with the Governmental Advisory Committee. But we need the active involvement of all stakeholders -- and that means you -- to counter the misinformation and ensure that governments understand what is at stake when these issues are debated at the United Nations General Assembly later this year. Acknowledging the tremendous dedication, voluntary efforts, and contributions of you, the community, we also seek to engage more people to gain an even broader view. This starts with continuing and transparent dialogue, respecting the model that ensures that anyone with an interest in the Internet has an opportunity to be heard. The EU's vice president for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, recently warned against complacency on Internet security. She specifically cited the reliability of the domain name system as something that cannot be taken for granted. So let me be very clear. ICANN is not complacent. ICANN's mission is to ensure a secure, stable, and unified global Internet. We must be an active catalyst for its defense. That means acknowledging that the DNS has weaknesses. No man-made system is invulnerable. It doesn't mean the system is weak. In fact, it is highly decentralized and in many ways, remarkably strong. But like every important facet of the Internet, it is under attack by miscreants with malicious intent. Our assumption must be that security can always be improved. How could we ever do enough? The Internet and the DNS are central now to global communications, industry, communities, and the world economy. They are a vital public resource. And I think we can agree that we must do our utmost to protect them. We have an obligation to proactively identify and thoroughly analyze weaknesses candidly and then to aggressively address them. And this is an obligation we take seriously. That's how progress is made. ICANN consults widely within the community on cybersecurity issues that relate to the domain name system. We have moved ahead vigorously on a number of key security initiatives, including the DNSSEC root signing now taking place that so many of you have worked so hard on for so many years. Community dialogue on the strategic security, stability, and resiliency initiatives, included amongst them is the DNS CERT initiative, are well under way. Progress will be reviewed with the board, and we will seek community input. We recently hired Whit Diffie, a well-known pioneer in the development of encryption and cybersecurity, to bring his exceptional expertise to bear on ICANN's technical security efforts. We have asked the ccNSO to survey their membership to provide factual, objective data on vulnerabilities. My comments in Nairobi demonstrated my strong personal commitment to ensuring the security, stability, and unity of the global Internet. And following that meeting, a very important and valid dialogue has begun. You may disagree with what I said, and openness to different viewpoints is what makes this community so strong. And some have asked why I said what I did. The answer is very simple. I said it because I believe it. And more than 20 years of experience in risk management have taught me that in addressing highly complex systems, it's better to assume that the risks are greater than lesser in doing your planning and security work. Since Nairobi, several security incidents have occurred, including DNS anomalies in south and North America and global address routing anomalies were reported that affected up to 10% of global addresses. Meanwhile, reports around the world indicate that cyber attacks are on the rise. It is a growing global phenomenon affecting many industries, and no one has played a credible argument that the DNS is immune from this threat. But, of course, ICANN, and even its community, cannot resolve these issues alone, nor does it seek to. We need to work with the entire family of related organizations, large and small, formal and informal, to draw on the wealth of expertise around us. In recent weeks, I have reached out to those with the most immediate interest to reemphasize our desire to work together to confront these challenges. While we may differ in our interpretation of the existing evidence, we can all agree that DNS security must be a core strategic and operational priority for all of us. The entire Internet ecosystem must be engaged on this issue. Specific data on the number of known attacks, performance degradation or outages, and the level of investment in cybersecurity and related issues would deepen our understanding of the risks and enhance our ability to counteract them, providing a factual starting point for constructive discussion. That requires effective international cooperation, not just talking, but listening and acting and sharing. And it starts with acknowledging that this is everyone's challenge. The community's and the world's. We rely on the Internet more and more in our daily lives and our work at home. And the DNS is essential for a single, interoperable, and reliable Internet. No one wants to experience in real life the repercussions of a major DNS outage. We have an opportunity to take strong preventative measures now so that we may try to avoid a major disruption in our daily lives. We won't agree on everything. More important than any individual action is that we commit to addressing these vulnerabilities in a mutually respectful and constructive fashion. In that spirit of open dialogue and collaboration, later today, we will hold a panel on the vulnerability of the domain name system and how to effectively better pursue risk management and what other improvements can be made. I ask you to urge -- urgently to take part. Let's hear what some of the world's leading experts have to say. In conclusion, the Internet is a transformative technology that empowers people around the world, spurs innovation, facilitates trade and commerce, and enables the free and unfettered flow of information to all who are connected for the benefit of the global public interest. As a guardian of this public interest in the Internet, ICANN is like no other organization. It has specific DNS coordination responsibilities. And this is a very real community, but with a vital and unique global mission that fits into a broader ecosystem. By continuing to strengthen that community and our bottom-up, multistakeholder model, by bringing in diverse and even contradictory voices, we are driving toward even greater innovation and openness and laying the path for the Internet of tomorrow, the greatest potential unifying force for modern mankind. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: And now for a word from our chairman of the board of the directors of ICANN, Mr. Peter Dengate Thrush. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to ICANN. Thank you, Rod. Let me begin by saying what a pleasure and an honor it is to welcome you all here to Brussels. Welcome to the 38th annual international meeting of ICANN. I extend that welcome to all of you today joining us in the room, but also to all of those joining us online. One of our missions is to increase our capacity for participants to join us remotely, and we have seen dramatic increases in that work. For ICANN, being in Brussels is like being home. Our office opened here in 2003, one of the early steps that we have been taking in the internationalization of ICANN itself. And it's become our second home as we work to reach out to the entire world from our headquarters in Marina del Rey. The Brussels office has been our base for connecting with Europe, the Middle East, and with Africa. And it was those connections that have helped us get so far in the intervening years. It's been particularly helpful in our efforts to get internationalized domain names in the root. And that effort is something that we are going to celebrate among all the businesses and in discussions and debate that we are going to be having over the next five days. Just last month, that effort took a giant leap forward with the launch of IDNs for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As of May the 5th, an historic day in the Internet, extensions in Arabic characters became part of the single global Internet. Arabic became the first non-Latin script to be used as a ccTLD, a Country Code Top Level Domain. Arabic was the first but by no means is it the last. The Russian Federation launched the first Cyrillic TLD a week later. And we are on the verge of seeing extensions in Sinhala, Tamil, and Chinese. The global Internet is truly going international. So what better place to talk about internationalism than in one of the world's great capitals, Brussels. So what better place to talk. And it's a home for us not just because of our office here. It's because of the shared spirit that we have with another organization that calls Brussels home or more currently one of its homes, and, of course, that's the European Union. Both organizations started small but had big ideas behind them. I wonder how many people here know exactly how the European Union started I'm not sure a few of you, especially those of you who come from outside of Europe, will be surprised to learn it started with two simple commodities, coal and steel. In a provision put Ford by the French foreign minister of the time, a common market was created for those goods of coal and steel. There was a much bigger idea behind that common market, using those building blocks of industry. It was creating a common interest between the nations of Europe. It was a common interest that would make war between the parties not only unthinkable, but materially impossible. And it started with six countries, West Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy. Today, 27 nations are bound together politically and economically. It's become the largest economic trading block on earth, an economy with a GDP of 14.5 trillion dollars. It brings together more than 492 million people, and today, the European community works to build consensus on issues like monetary policy, marine conservation and common commercial policy. There is lots of discussion, lots of disagreement, but, of course, so much has been accomplished, free trade, the Euro, the right to work in member countries. So it's come a long way from simply steel and coal. And, of course, much younger and much less formal is ICANN. We, too, have the passionate disagreements, the passionate agreements, and, of course, the accomplishments. We started with a set of strict technical tasks, coordination of the assignment of the Internet's technical parameters, coordination of the I.P. address space, coordination of the DNS, and oversight of the root server system. Those tasks continue today. And we do that as we continue to operate in the broader founding spirit of ICANN, to make the Internet truly international. And so we're doing that. I'm not saying the work is done, but we've made great strides in making it happen. As I mentioned earlier, the first IDNs, internationalized domain names, alive and in the root, connecting new people in a new way. So the ICANN model has grown up over the past dozen years, creating a unique global entity, controlled by no country, directed by no organization, and governed by no corporation. It's directed by you, the people here in this room, and the many people who volunteer and work with us outside of this room. Together, this community forms ICANN's discussions and shapes ICANN's decisions. It's the kind of discussion process that will keep us moving forward. It will help us to continue to connect new people in new places in new ways. It will help us continue reaching out and adding to the 1.8 billion people connected to the Internet today. The building blocks of European unity were steel and coal, building blocks that brought connections never imagined in 1950. And over the coming weeks ICANN will keep working with our building blocks, names and numbers, to build connections that also were never imagined when we began. A whole world connected to itself, people everywhere connected to each other, through one single interoperable global Internet. I wish you good luck in your work in the week ahead. We need your input. We value your work. And we thank you for the generous spirit in which you come together to do that. I expect significant progress in the week ahead on a huge range of exciting topics, to mention just a very few. Progress with resolving the XXX top-level domain application. Vertical integration. Community analysis and response to the Draft Applicant Guidebook in our new gTLD program. Progress on a crucial issue for the country code Supporting Organization, the work on delegation and redelegation. We expect to see the election of an interim chair in the Governmental Advisory Committee. And many, many more. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Thank you for your work. Welcome to Brussels. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I now have the great pleasure of introducing Dr. Silvana Koch-Mehrin. Dr. KOCH is the vice president of the European Parliament and a truly extraordinary individual. I have pages here of C.V. Let me select a few of the more memorable features in introducing Silvana. She is a woman politician of extraordinary talent and accomplishment. She hosts a TV program. She is a journalist and a blogger, and a mother of three. She is a lecturer at the University of Oldenburg, a lecturer at the United Business Institute of Brussels. She was year 2000 Woman of the Year as appointed by the magazine Freundin, and she has come to talk to us today about Internet affairs in Europe, including the EC's view and discussions about Internet governance. Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President of the European Federation, Dr. Silvana Koch-Mehrin. [ Applause ] >>V.P. SILVANA KOCH-MEHRIN: Mr. President, chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy to be here. I'm absolutely flattered by that introduction. I think in Britain you say when you receive so nice sentences that actually your mother would have been -- your father would have been proud and your mother would have believed every single sentence. [ Laughter ] >>V.P. SILVANA KOCH-MEHRIN: So ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy to be here, especially welcome you to Brussels as the capital of the European institutions, because in Brussels, we have got all these things happening that's determined the politics of the EU. And I am honored to represent the European Parliament to you. The European Parliament is quite similar to ICANN, and Peter just gave a few introductory remarks about what the EU was originally about, and I can tell you today it's an enormous legislation machinery, but it's also the motor of peace in Europe, and more and more countries would like to join the EU. And from these six countries a few years ago, we are now with 27 countries. And it's quite fascinating to work in that environment. So before I start to talk about Internet and the European Parliament's role with regards to reform of ICANN, let me just, in a few sentences, give you a draft picture of what the European Parliament does. Well, first of all, we are the representatives of almost 500 million citizens. That's more than the U.S. and Russia together. And in that parliament, we have quite a number of parliamentarians, there are more than 700, and we represent these 27 countries, and we are there for more than 150 different political parties. Now, if you look at your national parliaments, 150 parties, that seems incredibly complicated, and that's why we then formed political groups, and we have less than ten political groups in which those more than 150 parties get together. And we also work in 22 different languages, which makes it quite a challenge, because for every legislation that we discuss, every document is translated in all 22 languages. And why is this? Why can't we all work in English? Well, it's because we're the representation of the people, and I would like my grandmother to be able to follow what I am doing in the European Parliament, and she only speaks German so I think it's important in that matter that citizens are able to follow the work of their representatives. And that's why we have this very multilingual approach to politics. And basically we can say that we are absolutely underestimated in what we do. I don't say that to complain, but actually the way it is, that 80% of the legislation which is in place in the member states originates from Brussels. So you can say without exaggerating that all what we do in Europe is comprised in Brussels and then played in the national member states, and not the other way around as you might sometimes think when you look at media and where it's as a big focus on the national capitals. So just this as a small outline of what we in the European Parliament do, what this is all about. And we obviously deal with a big variety of different policy areas. It's from educational matters to social affairs, but also Internet plays a more and more important role. And you will later on hear a video message of the European Commission, the Vice President of the EU Commission, who is in charge of the digital agenda, and it is quite important that Europe took that step that we have this kind of cross-portfolio activity that everything which has the prefix "digital" was brought together so that we have one policy approach to that. And in the European Parliament it works similar. We have various communities. We have abbreviations like you have in ICANN which nobody else outside that little spaceship understands. We call them ITRE, or IMCO or ENVI or something like that . And we deal with the issues that are important to you. And because they are important to you, they are important for us, because when in early 1970 the TCP/IP protocol was developed, who would have thought at the time that this would really revolutionize the world of communication and its governance. And just a few years later, over in the 1980s, nearly a million people were individually active in the Internet. And then just a few more years after that, it was already more than a billion people online. And by 2015, if you look at the figures that the U.N. gives as a perspective, half of humankind will be connected, or more than 3 billion people. These are impressive figures, and it just shows the success story of Internet. But if you look at these figures from the other side, you can also see that a lot of people are still not online, and this is what we, in the parliament, are very concerned about, what is called the digital divide, that you have got some people who are just able to move ahead faster and who are able to communicate with everybody else online at any time and anywhere, using data, text, images, voice, and video. And the other half of humankind is kind of left out of that process. This is something that matters a lot to politicians because we represent all the people. So when we now with the Internet can look at a infrastructure which is, in a way, the materialization of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in 1948. And I quote where it says that individual right to freedom of expression includes the right, now comes the quote, "to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas from any media and regardless of frontiers." So we can really see that the Internet offers that; that this kind of what was thought about in 1948 is now coming into reality for a lot of people, coming for a lot of them already there. But it's something that obviously also matters to politics, because Internet is influencing all the aspects, all areas of our lives. It affects the way we live, we work, we learn, we shop, we research, we socialize, we entertain. All this is a very complex matter, and that's why, while the private approach to that remains the dominant one, and should, politics also has to play a role because if something goes wrong in these areas, most of the citizens would not call up the ombudsman of ICANN or somebody present in this room, but they would call up their local mayor or government in the capital and say, listen, there is something wrong with the Internet. I feel all my data is given away to people who shouldn't have access to data. So that's why it becomes a matter for politics to deal with that. So consequently, on the one hand bridging the digital divide is one of the great challenges of our time for politics as well as for you, but also there is a need to develop policies, to build infrastructures and educate people so everybody can enjoy their right to communicate in the information age via access to the Internet. So all these new challenges can mean new problems, but also can mean new chances. And we have to look at very, very different areas. We have to look about how we can manage critical Internet resources. I mean, there is a need for developing resources so these are not the constraints that users are confronted with. We have to fight cybercrime. We have to promote the multilingualism, and also promote the protection of human rights in the Internet. And privacy, intellectual property, obviously, are matters for legislation in cyberspace, and we also have to introduce the new applications for e-government or e-health and we also currently are working and bringing together the European internal market, barrier free for e-commerce. So there is a lot of various completely different policy areas interconnected. And if I just give you a few more quotes. Quotes are always, I find, quite nice to listen to because there are always people around who are much smarter than yourself. Than myself, at least. So Bill Gates said that the Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow. And having said that, when you listen then to Eric Schmidt as the chairman of Google, by saying the Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, and the largest experiment in anarchy that we ever had. Well, as a politician who believes in democracy, anarchy is not something that I'm really looking forward to, because I think it's important that as a community, you have a set of rules on which you can relay and in which you can work together so that you know that there is mutual respect and respect that has -- that can be also enforced because there are these rules to work with. And because the Internet is a production of partnership, I think it's important that the management then reflects that modality of cooperation, and the multistakeholderism that's been mentioned I think is a very, very crucial point here. We can see that from the European perspective, it's absolutely important that you make sure that people from all the different countries, all the different backgrounds are involved in the legislation process. If you want to bring together people from totally different backgrounds, it's not possible that a small group who exclusively represents one part of society moves ahead and says, "That's the way we go ahead. This is the way we do this." Then you lose the majority of the people. So I think it's absolutely crucial that ICANN also has this multistakeholder approach and keeps it because I think that will reflect society in a much better way. So we can't stand, as policymakers, aside while the Internet, so to say, moves ahead. And we have just passed last week in our plenary session of the European Parliament a resolution on Internet governance. Now, this might surprise you that we in the European Parliament are dealing with these things, but as I said, the Internet is so ubiquitous, it's dealing with all areas of life. And so the way the Internet is managed of course then matters to policymakers. And as you are in a reform process, something that we as Europeans are very much used to. We are constantly reforming ourselves and how we work together in the European Union, so this was the moment where we as the European Parliament said we will look closely at what you do and also give our advice and our wishes to this reform process, because we think it's important that we cooperate in that area. So we gave certain, well, specific attention to the questions of Internet governance, including the protection and the guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms, access to and the use of the Internet and its vulnerability to cyber attack. We deal with this in different committees. You have your different workshops. Everybody has his or her own passion. It's the same in the European Parliament. We have people in the legal affairs committee. They are mostly concerned, mainly concerned about privacy issues, about intellectual property rights. We have got people in the internal market or industry committee. They would like to see as little barriers as possible in order to really get business opportunities for everything coming from -- with the words digital in the business activities. So we have got totally different approaches. In the environment committee, they might be more concerned about what do you do with old hardware, what do we do with all the chips, how do we recycle, maybe, certain precious metals. Totally different approaches, and brought together in a resolution that we dealt with and voted on in the last week. And just to highlight two or three points of that resolution so that you know what we dealt with is that we think that the private sector should continue to play its leading role. There should be no shift to government or public administration. It should be on the private sector, because there you find the necessary investment, the expertise, and also the entrepreneurial spirit and initiative. And we also would like to see that the principles of transparency, multilateralism, democracy and the protection of fundamental rights finds its way -- well, has its way and continues to be present in ICANN and also come to the EU standards, because we focus very much on these issues and we think that this is one of the most important aspects that we have to deal with in that regard. We also would like to see an open, interoperable, technologically neutral and end-to-end nature of the Internet infrastructure, and we would like to have the external public accountability of private sector entities managing global Internet resources on a day-to-day basis. And elsewhere, as well, we would like to see the protection of the integrity of the global Internet and freedom of communication. So we would like to avoid having any regional measures, such as revocation of IP addresses or domain names in third countries. Having briefly highlighted this, I think it's quite obvious that if you would like to cooperate with the European Parliament, and we would certainly like to do that in a more intense way because I think we have a lot in common, a lot to share, the introduction and the reviewing of your existing dispute mechanisms, we can give you some input on that because reviewing dispute mechanisms is something we have to do every day. You have an ombudsman. So do we. We can exchange a lot of the experiences that have been made there. We also think it would be important when it comes to finances that there should be a more diversified funding structure for ICANN because it gives you greater independence, something that we are thriving for in the Europe, in the institutions all the time as well. And also, we would like to see that on the ICANN top management level, there is vast representation of the range of interests and regions so that it's really also there reflected that there is this national multistakeholder approach. Ladies and gentlemen, let me finish by just saying that in many ways, ICANN and the European Parliament have a lot of things in common. We have got these impossible abbreviations. We call each other by first name, something that I found remarkable when I came in that you register by first name. We don't do the registration process in parliament by first name but then when you sit in your meetings we all just call each other by our first names. So my dear colleague Alexander who is there who has a very long surname. I am very happy to skip that and say just be able to say the first name to him. And also maybe what we have as a motto in the EU could also reflect what the motto could be of ICANN and of the global Internet community, and that is we are united for the better. And I think it's a beautiful sentiment and gives you the mission for what you do and I wish you a lot of intellectually challenging discussions in the next few days. Good luck, lots of success, and I thank you for your attention. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much, Silvana and thank you for permission to call you Silvana. As someone who sometimes struggles under a slightly complex surname, I appreciate it. Thank you very much, very instructive for us to hear the voice of the E.C. leadership on these topics. ICANN, of course, is particularly dependent on the support of governments for our multistakeholder model. Let me just, as you did, take respectful issue with the description or the use of the word "anarchy." We prefer to see that, of course, as the Internet providing an extraordinary amount of freedom to individuals. We love the open standards on which it's based. We all enjoy -- we bask, in fact, in the vitality that comes with it. And our mission is not to end any of that, but to ensure that all of that occurs in a framework of cooperation and interoperability. Thank you also for your reference to your recent Internet governance resolution. We're very grateful for your advice. And thank you for your good wishes. And your attention as a parliament to these crucial issues, for the world, is much appreciated. Thank you also for singling out one of the crucial issues that underpins ICANN's success. And that is the private sector leadership role in that multistakeholder model. So in many ways, from what we hear from you this morning, it's very clear that your and our core principles are aligned. And I thank you for the suggestion of working together on these things. And I'm sure that we will in the coming months explore ways of working more closely with the European parliament. So thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me again in thanking Silvana. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I have the great pleasure now of introducing Neelie Kroes, who is a vice president of the European Commission, and particularly responsible, as Silvana has suggested, for the European Digital Agenda. Neelie is joining us electronically. She's from the Netherlands, where she began her business life working in her family's transport business. She went on to study economics at Erasmus University, where she taught for six years as an assistant professor. Politics attracted her, and she became a member of the Rotterdam Municipal Council. And then in 1971, she was elected as a member of the Dutch Parliament, where she served from 1982 to 1989 as minister for transport, public works, and telecommunications in the Netherlands. She has been president of Nyenrode University from '91 to 2000, and she serves on many corporate boards, including that of Lucent Technologies, Volvo, and P&O Nedlloyd. Prior to serving as the European commissioner for competition, which she did from 2004 to 2009, she has also had extensive volunteer work and charity, including with the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and World Cancer Research Fund. So, ladies and gentlemen, joining us electronically, Commissioner Neelie Kroes. [ Applause ] >>V.P. NEELIE KROES: Good morning, everybody. I know many of you have been working hard over the weekend already. But it's not too late to offer you a warm welcome to Brussels. You are the heart of the Internet community. And you have come a long way in just a few years from the days when Jon Postel was running the IANA functions out of his office to today's event, gathering hundreds of key stakeholders. When any one-person operation grows into a bigger community, it is important to keep asking if the accompanying organizations and their working methods are on the right track. Some communities develop into closed or exclusive circles over the years. And I'm glad that this is not the case here. You will even meet this week as an event open to the public. And I trust that by opening a dialogue with the wider public, whether you are a private- or public-sector stakeholder, will you find new and better ways to reinforce your structures and decision-making processes. The same applies for the Internet Governance Forum. This multistakeholder approach has proved successful. It must continue and evolve to serve the purposes of the Tunis agenda. Indeed, we must ensure that technical changes add to the Internet value as a common public good rather than accidentally detract from it. And from the perspective of public authorities such as my own, it is our duty to advise ICANN about where the public interest lies. But when free speech and human rights on the Internet are at stake, it is not just public authorities that have a role to play. Take, for instance, the global network initiative and the position taken by Hilary Clinton in promoting information freedom vis-à-vis Internet companies. I very much welcome those initiatives, which are finding an echo in Europe, too. For this is a collective duty for all Internet stakeholders, be they public or private, we need rules that make the decisions accountable, transparent, and efficient and that guarantee a mutual respect for the common good. Nowadays, how could any organization with global responsibilities not be accountable to all of us? And in this respect, just like the E.U. welcomed the openings made in the Affirmation of Commitments last year, I am hopeful that the expiry of the IANA contract next year will be turned into an opportunity for more international cooperation serving the global public interests. But don't misunderstand me. The Internet's day-to-day functioning works well. And I'm the first to say if it isn't broken, don't fix it. We all have an interest that this wonderful platform for innovation, entrepreneurship, and free expression works perfectly well at a technical level. It is a great adventure that must continue to flourish. Yet, does it mean all is well in the cyber world? Take the issue of security and resilience. We need to fight against spam, identity theft, phishing, and other evolving types of crime on the Internet. Both the public and private sectors have a joint obligation to act. And that approach has to go hand in hand with ensuring the Internet itself is not vulnerable to any large-scale failure, whether as a result of an accident or a deliberate attack. Another issue that will be debated this week is the expansion of the number of generic top-level domains. Such additions are probably irreversible. So those steps need to be taken carefully, taking into consideration more than just immediate commercial interests. Managing this expansion and avoiding chaos will be a big challenge. And in a sense, it will be a test of ICANN's governance. And I recall that the Governmental Advisory Committee had already provided advice on public-policy principles to the ICANN board as early as 2007. The IDN is another of those important subjects, for it is essential that the Internet reflects the diversity of our languages. And you are certainly familiar with the success of Europe's dot EU domain name. And I trust that Cyrillic and Greek script versions of dot EU will soon be introduced at the top level as well to complete the IDN. And there are many other issues worth mentioning, but I won't take any more of your time. I hope to see some of you in person at the gala event on Wednesday. For now, you have my best wishes for your discussions this week, and you can count on the positive contribution of the E.U. in that endeavor. [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Vice President Neelie Kroes. And now it's my honor to introduce MARC VAN WESEMAEL, the EURid general manager. My sincere thanks to Marc and his team for the great work you have done in preparing for this wonderful venue and for what I'm sure will be an extremely successful meeting. Marc has an MBA from Lessius Management School, in collaboration with Northwestern University, and a degree in electronic engineering from the University of Ghent. Marc has a long history in the management of ccTLDs, having served as the managing director of dot BE in Belgium for over ten years prior to becoming the general manager of dot EU in 2003. Please join me in thanking and welcoming MARC VAN WESEMAEL. [ Applause ] >>MARC VAN WESEMAEL: Thank you, Mr. President, for this kind introduction. It's indeed a great honor for EURid to be your host of the 38th ICANN meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, dear participants, if you can dream and not make dreams your master, this quote from -- by Rudyard Kipling must have been at the source of what, in the meantime, has become the European Union when its foundations were laid in 1957 with the Treaty of Rome. As Mr. Dengate Thrush so well described, it started with six countries, and today, the European Union consists of 27 members, speaking 23 official languages. Almost 50 years later, another major step was taken with the introduction of a unique identification, dot EU, the European online identity. This was made possible in the framework of the E-Europe initiative that led to the introduction of the dot EU extension in April 2006. Since then, the European citizens -- every European citizen, public body, organization, or company within -- with a European presence can register a dot EU domain name. Today, more than 3.2 million dot EU domain names are registered. Innovation and quality, as well as our passionate endeavor for a safe environment, have been the driving forces of our evolution. We are proud to see that some of the procedures we introduced during the sunrise phase have further been developed by others and have now become best practices in the TLD community. As one of the younger, more recent TLDs, EURid is honored to welcome you all to the 38th ICANN meeting in our wonderful city in the heart of Europe. ICANN meetings are a unique opportunity for meeting people with different professional, political, and cultural backgrounds. As in the motto of the European Union, we are all united in diversity, as was also mentioned by Vice President Koch-Mehrin, this multistakeholder and multicultural aspect that makes an ICANN meeting that very special experience. We are proud to be part of this community. The Internet is our generation's infrastructure, like roads, railroads, airlines, electricity, and telephone service for previous generations. As increasingly more services are moving to an online platform, it has become the foundation of our economy and democracy. School children get their homework and tasks more and more via Internet, to name just one example. It's therefore important to make and keep the Internet accessible for everybody. Being an important player in realizing this enormous challenge is exciting. But such authority also comes with huge responsibilities. We are here this week to discuss and decide on the future of the Internet, maybe bringing it just a few small steps forward, but nevertheless, steps that may affect the future of many people. Decisions on topics such as new gTLDs, the use of non-Latin scripts, and on security aspects will have impacts on millions of people. EURid is ready to take up its responsibility as well and play its role. At the end of last year, for instance, we introduced IDNs, making it possible to register domain names with characters used in the 23 official languages of the European Union. Last week, we deployed DNSSEC, following the latest NSEC3 standards, without compromising our service of dynamic updates. The dot EU zone has been signed, and some early adopter registrars have started signing some of their zones. We are now looking forward to the 15th of July to put our keys in the root for completing the deployment. But security doesn't stop with DNSSEC. EURid has been working closely together with registrars and law enforcement bodies to contribute to the fight against different kinds of cybercrime. We are looking forward to the discussions on these topics that will take place this week in different working groups and to learn from the experience of our colleagues. The Internet is expanding rapidly and continues to grow in number of users. This brings new challenges as well as -- as we all experience each day. Robustness, security, and performance are all factors that need our continued attention. They will require considerable investments, but also collaboration between the many stakeholders. There are many unknown paths that never have been walked before. Cooperation between different parties will be needed to cope with all the challenges that we will encounter. But remember, as a wise man said, obstacles is what you see when you don't focus on your objectives. And the objective is clear: An open, stable, and safe Internet, available and accessible for all. Transparency and accountability should be our guides on this path. In closing, I would like to thank all those people who have worked almost literally day and night to make this meeting a success. Thanks to ICANN for the flexible and pleasant way of cooperating on this project. Thanks to the EURid staff and especially Giovanni Seppia, who has been the man behind the scenes, squaring the circle, or was it circling the square? Thanks, Giovanni, for dealing with all kinds of suppliers and explaining over and over again that the word "immediate" only has one meaning and not 20 different ones. As hosts of this meeting, we are happy to see so many people joining us here in Brussels. This meeting has already set a landmark as one of the best-attended meetings in the history of ICANN, and if not the best-attended, it will definitely stay in the collective memory as the meeting with the heaviest meeting bags ever. [ Laughter ] >>MARC VAN WESEMAEL: However, it is my sincere hope that it will also be remembered for its positive and forward-moving decisions taken later this week. The world needs progress, and to move forward, we need decisions. There will be the unavoidable roadblocks and the occasional setbacks. But as a great European said, "Success is moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you a lot of enthusiasm, a fruitful meeting, and a pleasant stay in Brussels. Thank you. [ Applause ] (Horn blowing). >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you very much, Marc. Thank you very much. And now we will -- one of our honored guests is under way. So we are going to get started with the president's report, which I will start, and then our chief operating officer, Doug Brent, will continue. If I can please have the slides. And here they are. And a cue. So first I'd like to introduce some very talented new staff members that we feel extremely fortunate to have here at ICANN. First is Elise Gerich, who is the new vice president for IANA. Elise, can you please raise your hand or stand up. Stand up if you're in the room. And let's give her a hand. [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: She is the author of multiple RFCs, she's worked at Juniper Networks, she's worked on many different IETF working groups and projects for many years and is an extremely talented and skilled manager as well as technical leader and contributor that we appreciate. And we're, of course, also extremely honored to have with us now Dr. Whit Diffie, our vice president for information security and cryptography, received his Ph.D. from MIT University, and, most significantly, together with Mr. Hellman, invented the Diffie Hellman key for public encryption, which is foundational for what we're doing on the Internet today, with different digital certificates and the move towards DNSSEC. Truly a thought leader in this area. He previously served for 20 years at Sun Microsystems on the advanced research team until the role of chief information security officer. Whit, if are you with us in the room now, please stand up. [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: All right. Here we go. [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Also pleased to say that what came to us through a fortunate chance encounter in Palo Alto near our new offices. So there's a benefit to income Silicon Valley, where tremendous amounts of talent in this industry are present, such as -- such as Whit. And also Elise, who's from the Silicon Valley area. I want to very briefly talk about the Affirmation of Commitments and some steps in transparency and accountability. I referred earlier in my presentation, opening presentation, to the 2007 One World report, which called ICANN a "very transparent organization," and that this is an organization that has analyzed many other organizations on the same objective criteria. It's part of what they do. I've made a very direct and personal commitment as the CEO: I've taken one of the vice presidents of ICANN with nine years of experience in ICANN history, policy, and working in the community processes, Denise Michel, who's present with us, and made her advisor to the CEO on accountability and transparency, so that directly in my office, we're focused on this commitment. We're working on ongoing improvements across the board. We had internal dialogue, presentations, and debates on what the Affirmation of Commitments meant in each working group in the company. Each member of our staff had to present, explain, defend one paragraph in the affirmation and explain how it applied to their work, their group's work, and how they saw it potentially applying to other areas in ICANN. So that was the bottom-up side of what we did within the staff organization. We're also working on an inventory. Part of total quality management or any continuous improvement process is getting your baseline. And, obviously, when it comes to accountability, one of the most important questions is, what has been done to fulfill previous board resolutions? How has the organization executed? Or how many of those have been funded? How many of those have made it into the strategic plan? And into the operating plan? How many of them did not make it? So what Denise is leading is an effort in which we've already now put all resolutions -- I believe it's over 1,000 -- well over 1,000 board resolutions dating back to our founding in 1998, into a Wiki, and the first step that we've done is to present those from 2009 with links and resolution statuses on most of those, and open for public comment. So you can go in, and if you can think of additional materials or information that relates to a board resolution, you can post that in the comment space on the Wiki. Or you can submit your own idea on how that resolution was fulfilled. Or maybe you have questions about other aspects of it. But that will be a part of that. This will serve as a baseline. We're -- First, we're building that historic database and developing the historical follow-ups on the resolutions and information while at the same time we'll turn it into a living process in the organization. And it's already starting to change some of our processes in how we draft resolutions, for example, recognizing that we need to think about funding strategic planing and other considerations, for example, that implementation should be thought of as these resolutions are developed and crafted. And we think there's a lot more that we can learn on that. And we need your help to expand and improve the information in that Wiki. We've also developed a whole staff training module on the affirmation. So those are some of the early steps. As you know, there's review teams coming up soon on preserving DNSSEC security, stability, and resiliency. And the chairman of the GAC and I will be the coselectors for that review team. There will also be a review team on WHOIS policy. And if you're interested, please apply by the 15th of July. Please apply by that date. There will also be a fourth review on promoting competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice, but that will not be done until after the new gTLD program is launched. So at this point, I'd like to hand it over to my outstanding colleague who I am going to miss greatly and who I have learned so much from and who's brought such incredible management leadership to advancing the operations of this organization in so many ways, Doug Brent. [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Actually, we have a diversion. We have another very special guest that I am extremely honored to introduce, Mr. Herman Van Rompuy, who is the president of the European Council. He has a bachelor of philosophy and a master in applied economics. His career history includes advisor to the cabinet minister of finance. He was director of the center for political, economic, and social studies, and a lecturer at both Handelshogeschool -- I'm doing my best here -- Antwerpen and Vlaamse Economische Hogeschool Brussels. Mr. Van Rompuy started his political career in 1973 as the national vice president of the Christian People Party Youth Council. He has held a number of positions since that time, including minister of state, speaker of the House of Representatives, prime minister. And he is the first-ever president of the European Council since December 2009. Join me in recognizing president Herman Van Rompuy. [ Applause ] >>PRESIDENT VAN ROMPUY: Ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy to be able to address you in this first meeting of ICANN to take place in Brussels, not only the capital of Europe, but also my hometown. You have a very interesting agenda in front of you, and I hope you will be able to take forward the recent very positive developments in the way ICANN approaches its tasks and its responsibilities. First of all, I should like to congratulate you on your work on internationalized domain names and on getting the first non-Latin domain names online. It is an important signal to the non-Western world that the Arabic language can now be used in an entire Internet address name. The benefits of modern technology and communication definitely deserve to be globalized. On this happy note, I should like to address a few issues of importance to the European Union, and I'm sure to all of you. You know that the European Union has taken an active interest in issues related to the management of the Internet since an early stage. The E.U. was involved in the setting up of ICANN in '98 and has followed the related matters closely since then. During the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 and 2005, the European Union was very active in reaching the compromise result enshrined in the Tunis agenda and commitment. The Internet has today developed into a global public resource. It is of critical importance to our economies and societies all over the world. It is constantly developing further, and therefore questions on how this resource is to be managed and safeguarded have become ever more important. It is the shared responsibility of all stakeholders to ensure that the overall framework of Internet governance will continue to evolve in line with the agreed principles. Obviously, governments are amongst the stakeholders who share this responsibility. So are the governments of the 27 member states of the European Union. And I suppose you are aware that these 27 governments are represented in the council of the European Union at ministerial level and in the European Council, which I chair, at the level of heads of state and heads of government. Accountability and transparency are fundamental principles for any governance structure. That's why our Council of Ministers welcomed the so-called Affirmation of Commitments between ICANN and the United States Department of Commerce from September last year as a major step in the right direction. That's also why we welcome the clear commitments by ICANN to improve its transparency and global accountability, and to act in the public interest for the benefit of all global Internet users with the full involvement of all stakeholders. This should also increase the role of governments and for the Governmental Advisory Committee, which advises ICANN on these matters of public interest. I know that four areas of public interest have been defined, and I'm happy to note that the work on the first one, on the accountability and transparency of ICANN, is making progress and will be discussed in your meetings in the days to come. More generally, the European Union has underlined that the further increase in the internationalization of Internet governance as a whole remains a fundamental public-policy objective. We have a vision of an open, robust, reliable, global, and accessible Internet, and it is a vision we strive to implement. Obviously, the Domain Name System plays a key role in this regard. It remains our priority to advance the internationalization of its coordination. I would like to take as an example the dot EU domain name that was launched in 2002. At the beginning of June this year, it had over 3.2 million registrations. It is Europe's fourth largest country code top-level domain name and it ranks as ninth worldwide. Dot EU has helped, for instance, schools and other organizations to create contacts with partners in other European countries. It also made it easier for small and medium enterprises to extend their market reach. And one shouldn't forget its meaning for individuals wishing to group experiences and discussions under the European banner. This success shows, I think, that there is real interest out there for individuals and enterprises to show that they are part of the European Union. It is a significant development. Especially in times which are politically not always so easy for the European Union. It is an important thing to remember, if the Union is less popular, at least dot EU can be popular and trendy. I said earlier that all stakeholders have a responsibility in ensuring that the overall framework of Internet governance will continue to evolve in line with the principles agreed at the World Summit on the Information Society. In this context, I would like to underline the importance of Internet Governance Forum. This is a unique platform for dialogue on Internet governance at the global level. And its meetings until now have demonstrated the value of the nonbinding multistakeholder approach. The European Union strongly supports the continuation of this forum and its full, open, inclusive, and bottom-up character. Let me conclude with a few comments on a more general issue related to Internet governance. Security. I think it is of vital importance to our societies. We must find ways and means to effectively fight and mitigate security threats and cybercrime. Trust in the Internet and the networks is fundamental for it to function successfully. It is essential that the users, be they individual citizens or enterprises, can trust that their information is safe when fed on the Internet or that the Internet will not attack them when they use it. Identity theft and online fraud are more and more usual. Attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. What is worrisome is that these attacks are not only motivated by financial purposes, but also politically. We must enhance our resilience against these threats, learn how to anticipate and deal with disruptions. These are not just national problems, nor are they only European problems. The European Union is addressing the issue to the extent possible. But these are global problems and need to be addressed also globally. Ultimately, the interconnectedness of our world is at stake. I'm sure that you are well aware of these issues and challenges. More could be said about it, but as Robert Greenleaf from AT&T once said, many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much. Therefore, I shall finish here and wish you all a successful meeting and very fruitful discussions. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you very much, Mr. President, for that outstanding presentation. And again, now our chief operating officer, Doug Brent, will continue the president's report. Thank you. >>DOUG BRENT: Good morning, everyone. Let me be the last to welcome you to Brussels and thank our host EURid for putting together such an impressive venue and meeting site with a great start here today. I think one of the main virtues I have in doing these presentations is brevity, and so we will give you a whirlwind tour of I think the sort of daunting, exciting and impressive slate of work outlined this week to be done this week by our supporting organizations and advisory committees. We have talked about internationalized domain names. Big accomplishment here, and clearly the fact that domain names have been delegated and there are 31 requests active right now being worked on is a major achievement. There's much work that remains to be done in terms of variants, in terms of protocol adherence and guidelines. Some of that work is going to be discussed, and that will be Wednesday, this Wednesday, and we would encourage everyone who has an interest in that area to attend. I heard from several people that their physique is being improved by lifting the new Draft Applicant Guidebook up and down. In fact, a new Draft Applicant Guidebook has been published. That will be a major topic of discussion for this week. I think it's really an example, particularly the comment analyses are an example of how ICANN has improved in terms of its ability to deal with public comment and reflect that into the documents that we prepare. Two particularly worthy of note, one which have is a new gTLD budget. We have talked about this for a couple of years. This will be the first opportunity for the community to review that, comment on it, and we're actively looking forward to your comments. Lastly, just beyond the document publication deadline, but we knew an area of interest for ICANN attendees, was an economic study of new gTLDs. This is a phase 1 report. It will not be considered for any final consideration at this meeting. Undoubtedly will be discussed by some but will go through a full public comment process before action is taken. I think a key success in this new gTLD process is how much -- you know, certainly from a staff point of view, we take pride in the quality of work that's been done in that area, but even more important is the vast amount of community support work that's gone into this. Couldn't even fit it on one slide. In terms of the trademark areas, there's the Implementation Recommendation Team, IRT, STI. Malicious conduct has taken a lot of activity lately with the zone file access group, HSTLD. I guess we are inside the spaceship here, as the minister said earlier, so I can use all these acronyms. Registry agreements, some very good work recently in terms of the registry agreements for new gTLDs held by the community, and in other areas on this IDN names working team and a joint working group on applications support. So this is a very hard piece of work but I think it is good to reflect occasionally, to take a look back at how the community has made progress in helping solve the key areas remaining on new gTLDs. Hmmm. ICANN has made great progress in some important security and stability initiatives and have published this work. Most important, related to Rod's speech earlier, is work that's been done at a second annual DNS security/stability symposium in Kyoto in terms of defining DNS metrics for DNS health. It's hard to know how we can assess how well we are doing unless we can understand the nature of what a successful system is. So this is an important piece of work. We have held a first training session, ccTLD training session, in Haiti, working collaboratively with more work to come with ISOC. And that will all be discussed this Thursday, 8:00 in the morning for the early risers. DNSSEC in the root zone has been a topic mentioned by many today, and we have several sessions related to that. First is the important vulnerability and risk assessment that we'll take right after this meeting finishes. I think another very interesting session that I would encourage people to participate in is the DNS forum on abuse. And finally, what I would call the marathon session of this ICANN meeting, I believe it's a six-hour session, on DNSSEC itself, and SSAC will be leading that. As noted on this slide, I think from the implementation point of view, this has been a successful collaboration between ICANN and NTIA, but obviously it's much broader than that. The DNSSEC community has been going on for years. And really importantly, it's the TLD operators as was mentioned by EURid today that themselves implement DNSSEC, and then to follow on the software vendors and others who implement it. But we do feel that this has been a very good partnership in getting the root zone signed. I actually had the privilege last week of being at the first ceremony to generate the key signing key for the root zone, and I have to tell you it was a lot of people with gray hair, some Internet veterans. And it was still a little bit of an emotional moment when, going through this process for generating that first key signing key, and really feeling like it was really the beginning of something that had taken a long time to go but really will add substantial security to the Internet, and one of those moments you felt like you were there when it happened. In terms of the IANA, just want to importantly note two things, one of which is that as we say every time we meet, the IPv4 pool is running out. This has been an area, there's a lot of RIR presence at the meeting this week. The Regional Internet Registries have raised a lot of awareness about IPv4 run-out and IPv6 transition. And I must say that just at an informal level, I finally have start to hear some encouraging things about IPv6 transition, but much work remains to be done. Finally, on the IANA business excellence process, ICANN takes the stewardship of the IANA function seriously. We are really excited to have Elise joining us because we think she will continue the excellent work there. And particularly important is that we make that work transparent, how we do our work well, and that's the nature of this business excellence program. Contractual compliance has always been a focus at ICANN. It will always be a focus. We always need to do better, and, as Rod said, with the appropriate rules and policies implemented by the community. It's our job to implement those. I must say I was at the International Trademark Association a few weeks ago, and we are getting some positive feedback from the trademark attorneys, who are often the toughest critics in this area on ICANN compliance work. Much remains to be done. There is some important study that will be discussed this week on WHOIS accuracy. In my opinion, it's the first credible report on where WHOIS accuracy stands, and I think, like many, I believe that with data we can help make better decisions. And there is some policy work on this as well. Several of our speakers have talked about Internet governance. There will be an Internet Governance Forum meeting held, and that's this Thursday as well. And as several have noted, ICANN certainly strongly believes in an independent, strong multistakeholder discussion forum at IGF. Now, I wonder, are there any fellows in this room, any ICANN fellows in this room today? If you are, please stand. I can't see if anyone is standing or not. Yeah, we have a few back there. Okay. I would like to give a hand to our ICANN fellows. [ Applause ] >>DOUG BRENT: This is really a special milestone for ICANN. It's the tenth class of fellows. It was started in 2007 in San Juan, a very hot San Juan. And it really has been a way to build capacity and attract people who are new to ICANN. 1,032 applicants for 185 opportunities. We have 25 people here, and many of those participants have become ongoing, active members of the ICANN community, which was the goal. ccTLD policy issues, there's a lot of work on the plate for the ccNSO right now. Key is this IDN long-term policy work. Just to acknowledge that the ccNSO continues to grow. Seven new members this year, at 107 with the newest being Somalia. gTLD policies, it's a full plate. I was sitting at dinner with Chuck Gomes last night and said how is this prioritization work going, and we don't know yet. There's just a very great deal of work to do on the GNSO plate. There is a big WHOIS discussion on Thursday the 24th looking at internationalization of registration data and other WHOIS issues. And then a promoting consumer trust session as well. As noted on the slide, the GNSO improvements area are really quite active, and that remains a topic for discussion at this meeting. And finally, major discussions on vertical integration, and this afternoon I think a very interesting session on Registrar Accreditation Agreement which has brought in parties from all sides to discuss this very important issue. So it's a very active and full plate, and for people who are new to ICANN I really encourage you to go to those sessions today and through the week. Last topic is the fiscal year '11 budget. ICANN's fiscal year will begin July 1st. There will be a session on this, I don't think it made it on this slide, Thursday morning. Would welcome your participation and questions. The fiscal year '11 budget will be about $59 million in expenses for ICANN, and we have an 88-page budget document posted online. The goal for this budget work at ICANN really is to make it ever more a community activity, and so one of the things that will actively be discussed at this meeting is ways to get community involvement even earlier. Today we have about a seven-month process, but try to find ways to get the community involved in inputting and helping set that agenda financially even earlier. That will be a topic for this discussion on Thursday. And just as people can see from looking at ICANN's financials now we are a financially strong organization, with robust processes and a lot of that is overseen by the board. So that is the sort of tour de force of what will be happening this week. As I said, I think it's an exciting, daunting, and impressive agenda for the SOs and ACs. And I think with that, I will say one more time welcome to Brussels. And at 11:00 -- 11:15, our next session will begin. And I will just say welcome to ICANN 38. I hope we all have a great week. Thank you. [ Applause ]