Opening Ceremony Monday, 26 October 2009 ICANN Meeting Seoul, Korea >>KEVIN WILSON: Hello, honored attendees. I am Kevin Wilson. My Korean name is Won Chee Hoon, which was given to me 30 years ago by my Peace Corps teacher. Now, I am the CFO of ICANN, and I am standing here honored, for two reasons. First, participating as a member of the ICANN community. Second, I have come back to my Korea which is my second home. 30 years ago, I came as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I studied Korean language and culture in Choon Cheon. In Jeom Cheon, near MoonKyeong Seje gates, I worked in a health center. Although I came to Korea to be of service, I think I was the one who benefited most from the great Korean people I was able to meet. Some of you know that the United States Peace Corps program was initiated by President John Kennedy to help the people of the world connect more effectively. His most famous quote was, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." ICANN is here to do our part for the benefit of the Internet. We, too, want the people of the world to connect more effectively. I'd like to offer a variation of the quote: "Let's not ask how ICANN can help you, but how we can participate best in ICANN." Thank you for welcoming ICANN to your magnificent capital city, Seoul, of this great country, "[speaking in Korean]". Then, ladies and gentleman, from now please join me in welcoming ICANN's chairman of the Board, Peter Dengate Thrush. [Applause] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 36th ICANN international public meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to ICANN's 36th international public meeting. And thank you, Kevin, for that wonderful welcome. What an exciting time for our organization. What an exciting time for the global community that makes up ICANN. Two monumental changes are going to be talked about at this meeting: Our affirmation of commitments and our final plan for implementing internationalized domain names for ccTLDs. And it seems so fitting that we are here in this city of more than 10 million people when we take this major step in ICANN's program. And I think back to when Seoul captured the attention of the world with the 1988 Summer Olympics, and at that time, so much of the world thought mistakenly "hermit kingdom" when they thought about Korea. They didn't know the real story of this nation. An economic miracle was already well underway. South Korea had the world's second fastest growing economy from 1960 to 1990. Somehow this went unnoticed by much of the world until Seoul welcomed the world in 1988 with the same legendary Korean hospitality that we will be enjoying this week. Korea may be a small country geographically, but its global economic impact is huge. South Korea is the world's largest ship builder. Seven of the world's top 10 ship builders are based in Korea. It's one of the world's top five automobile manufacturing nations, and there's a good chance that you are connecting with your friends using a Korean-made mobile telephone and there's a good chance that you're using a Korean- made monitor with your computer. This nation is the leading manufacturer of LCD and LED TVs and monitors. So Korea is a global economic power. And the electronic ideas -- devices and ideas of this nation impact the lives of millions, if not billions, of people every day. Which leads me to why it's so important, what we're going to talk about over the next few days. But before I do, what about those dancers? Fantastic! Thank you very much! Their grace, their attractiveness, their power, and their rhythm, what a powerful synonym for Korea. And the work that ICANN does touches billions of lives each and every day. The Internet brings people together. Friends connect. Ideas are shared. Solutions are proposed. And contracts are completed. And the ICANN community will be celebrating the completion of what one might call "our contract with the world." The affirmation of commitments isn't a contract with a single government or a single company or an individual. It's a contract with everyone who has made the last 11 years such a success for ICANN, and it's a contract with all the billions of users yet to connect. Perhaps "promise" is a better way of expressing it. ICANN has promised to do a collection of things. These are our commitments. Many of them are things we have always done, and so promising to continue to do them is entirely expected. So what have we promised? Well, we have promised to ensure that decisions made relating to the global technical coordination of the DNS are made in the public interest and are accountable and transparent. We've also promised to preserve the security, stability, and resilience of the DNS. We've promised to promote competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice in the DNS marketplace. And we have committed to facilitating international participation in DNS technical coordination, to maintain a single interoperable Internet. Now, these, of course, are part of the DNA of ICANN. The origins go right back to the white paper in 1998. Other promises we have made relate to the way we will do this. As a private-sector-led, not-for-profit organization, accountable to all of our stakeholders -- and again, we have lived this as our mantra since we began our journey, but what is historic is how we are going to be measured on the performance of these commitments. It is you, the Internet community, that will be the judge of our performance. How we perform against these promises, how we live up to these commitments, and how appropriate it is that the people, entities, and institutions who are affected most by ICANN's performance will be responsible for reviewing that performance. The timetable for these reviews is tough, make no mistake, but I'm confident our community is up to the challenge. Now, let's be clear: The goal is not to conduct a set of reviews. The goal is to make an ICANN that meets and continues to live up to its promises. The review sets out the areas of attention. And let's recall that old business adage: What gets reported on gets done. So this responsibility is now reposed in the community and that, of course, is a great and fitting tribute to the multistakeholder model and the ability of a wide range of people to guide the development of what is human history's greatest shared communication resource, the Internet. You, that community, have proved your worth, and we're going to see more of the fruits of your community efforts at the end of this meeting when the board makes a decision on the fast track of internationalized domain names for country code top-level domains and that decision and that process is especially exciting for me. As many of you know, my history with ICANN is tied closely to the country code community, so it's exciting for me to see the next major step in the increasing globalization of the Internet being driven by the ccTLD community. Even more specially, the push for internationalized domain names and much of the early technological developments needed to make it work were pioneered in this very region. The efforts of a collaboration of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China, itself a model of Internet cooperation transcending political, trade, and other barriers, were instrumental in the early days in driving this project, and this morning I'd like to recognize Korea and dot kr, particularly, for the major role they have played in getting us to this point. My old friend, Young Eum Lee, from dot kr cochaired the former Internationalized Domain Names working group that started us on the path to the fast track process. My old mentor, Kilnam Chon, the original holder of the delegation of dot kr, was an early leader of the Asia-Pacific country code managers and in other technical fora. Now, Korea has already said that it wants to be part of the fast track so it can establish a national TLD in Hangul characters, and what Korea aims to do, many other countries want to do, because they have the same vision that ICANN does: Making it possible to use the Internet in their own languages from the start of the address to the end. So this is truly an exciting time to be a part of the ICANN community, and in typical ICANN fashion, we'll celebrate with a lot of discussions and a lot of hard work. Let me just mention three aspects of that work ahead this week. We've obviously just published the third version of the draft applicant guidebook for new gTLDs. Immediately, one of our commitments, one of our promises becomes relevant, because we have committed that prior to implementing, we will adequately address competition, consumer protection, security, stability and resiliency, malicious abuse processes, sovereignty concerns, and rights protection. These are the issues that have emerged as the result of the introduction discussions. And so we are working through those issues this week, taking further advantage of the huge efforts the IRT -- let me thank that group again -- the huge efforts that the IRT put into proposing a solution for that last issue of rights protection. We will also be discussing the report the board commissioned into investigating the impact of simultaneously adding DNSSEC, new TLDs, and IPv6 to the root. Now, the root scaling work so far has identified that implementing DNSSEC in the root will lead to a sudden increase in the load on the root servers because each DNS inquiry will involve more data returned from the root servers. And so there are now calls emerging from the technical community to implement this change first: Wait for the system to stabilize and then measure the impact before adding many new TLDs to the root. The board is waiting for final input from RSSAC and SSAC on the work that has to be done, but it seems agreed that there is a great deal of room in the system for adaptation, particularly over time, and the issue is not so much to watch for or try and create hard limits on capacity. It's the possibility of too much change too fast. So it's important for us to look for the signs of danger in the system and have procedures in place to do something effective when we detect those signs. And finally, let me mention an innovation in our bottom-up policy development. We are trialing a new format in relation to the vertical integration argument in relation to new gTLDs, so we have two prominent groups of protagonists on opposite sides of this particular debate, and we've agreed on a debate-style format in which each team will make an opening statement and then alternately present on a series of agreed points of difference with a closing statement by each. There will be questions and answers from the floor, and at the end possibly even a straw poll for the audience to indicate who it thinks has put the best case. So I hope to see you there as we trial these new ways of getting to the bottom of policy development processes and making sure that the board gets the best advice about the community reaction. So I hope to see you there at 3:00 in the Crystal A for that one. And there's much more. As you all know, because you are all here to develop your own crucial interlocking paths of the ICANN model, you members of the global Internet community are charting the course for this extraordinary shared global resources. And I really do want to thank you for being part of that. And so now, on behalf of the board, I want to officially welcome you to ICANN's 36th international public meeting and wish you all luck as you help us chart the future. And now, it gives me great pleasure for the first time in a meeting like this to call on the CEO and president, Rod Beckstrom. Rod. [Applause] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you very much. That you for the warm welcome that you, the community, the staff, and the board have given to me personally in taking on this very exciting new role that I'm honored to serve in. And of course it is very heartwarming to me and gave me some pause and comfort because a lot of you might remember warning me in Sydney before I took the job, and the question that many of you asked me was, "Rod, do you know what you're getting into?" [Laughter] And of course no one could have any idea of the cliff they're jumping off -- into in joining ICANN, but I'm thrilled to be here. But let's think about, you know, why did people make that remark? You know, why did people say, "Do you know what you're getting into?" Because I've been thinking about that for the last three months. You know, what could it be? And I think what it is, is the miracle that all of you have created. This multistakeholder model that you are and that you represent as you fill this room today, as you fill the working teams, push the policies forward, not only as ICANN and the multistakeholder community and ICANN has done, but also our partners, ISOC, IETF, the IGF and so many others have helped to create this incredible Internet that has unleashed such creativity on this planet and connections like we've never seen before. But, that massive system which now involves trillions of dollars of the global economy -- many trillions -- and no one has a precise number because the Internet is now touching so much of the economy. How can you separate it out from so much of what goes on? But all of that comes together here in these fora of these stakeholder groups that we talked about within ICANN, and our partners, to set the future direction of the Internet. And those tectonic pressures are absolutely massive. Economic pressures of the different parties. Political pressures. Governmental pressures. The civil society. All of which is healthy and needs to come together. And when we bring together enough tectonic pressure on the stones in the earth, what do we create? What gets created from that pressure? Can anyone help me? What's that? What do we like to wear on our fingers? >> Diamonds. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Diamonds. Diamonds are what are created by that incredible pressure and that's what this body and others have been able to create over time, and it's absolutely phenomenal. So I'm honored to be here and to work with all of you. And as Peter said, now is a very exciting time because of the work that you have done for so many years. Seven years of work alone in the ICANN community, not even counting all the IETF and other work to create international domain names, to make the promise of "One World, One Internet, with Everyone Connected" come true, because it hasn't been possible for all parties to use their native languages and their native scripts on the Internet, and that is now becoming possible because of the great work that you've done and that hopefully the board will be approving on this Friday as an affirmation of the work you've done. And let us remember that it was only three to five years ago that many people thought this would never be done, that this would not be accomplishable. There were too many problems. There was too much confusion with the fonts and the scripts and all of the malicious issues that could happen. But you, the community and the policy groups and staff and board, have worked through them, which is absolutely incredible. Now, for those of you that were in Sydney, you may also remember that I talked about when you look at a community like this, a decentralized system, on the one hand you can hear a lot of noise. And there is a lot of noise, right? Because there's the gnashing and thrashing of debate, dialogue, differences in opinions, difference in assumptions, difference in perceptions. You can see that noise and we can hear cacophony. But what comes out of that process and that pressure can also be a symphony. And that's what we're also going to talk about today: The music that we create by working together. And we started off this morning with a beautiful music of the Korean drummers, a beautiful traditional art form done by the beautiful women drummers and dancers this morning. Absolutely incredible! But now let's go across the world, because we're global in this community, and go to Europe some 350 years ago. There was a man named Pachelbel, and he wrote a piece of music which is now called Pachelbel's Canon. It's a very beautiful song, and some of you may have heard it when you were coming in the room this morning as we were playing Pachelbel's music. Well, something really interesting happened because that music was picked up by a young man in Taiwan, here in Asia, and this young man's name was Jerry C. And Jerry C. is an amazing electric guitarist, and he took Pachelbel's Canon and he arranged it to electric guitar and he created something truly beautiful. And I'd like to take a moment to share that with you now. This is a YouTube clip. Thanks to your work on the DNS to get the DNS working - - okay? -- there's a lot of traffic out there and we now have YouTube. Let's listen for a moment to Jerry C. [Music] Jerry C. wasn't selfish. Jerry C. didn't write the arrangement and say, "How can I copyright this and just own it for myself?" What Jerry C. did was he gave it to the world. In the spirit of the Internet and in the spirit of open-source communities, he published his arrangement. And then he invited other artists to come and perform this music as well. And soon, hundreds of top guitarists, electric guitarists, from all over the world were posting their YouTube clips of Pachelbel's Canon. Artists from Canada, Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, Africa, Latin America, Mexico, Argentina, all over the world, in an incredible outpouring of talent that came forward. And then something really interesting happened, and now we'll move to that. This guy showed up. [Music] But there was very -- something very special about his performance and something very special about his video, and that is, he was anonymous. No one knew who he was, and yet within days of his video appearing, everyone said, "He's the master. He is the master of the electric guitar and of Pachelbel's Canon." But he was anonymous and people were wondering, "Who could this be? Who could this incredible talent be that's hiding behind the bill of that beige cap, and where in the world is he here, sitting in this room videoing himself?" And by the way, if you went onto YouTube right now, you'll see that this stunning video has been downloaded -- guess how many times. 68 million! Welcome Jay/Funtwo! [Music] [Applause] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you, Jay. That was fantastic! Thank you so much. So this -- this is what your work produces. That came from one email I received a year ago with someone saying, "Listen to this YouTube clip. You're not going to believe it." And it was a few months later that they found out who Jay was, that he was from Korea. And, when we decided the event was here in Korea, we said, "We've got to get this guy. This guy is incredible." Let me tell you something else amazing. Not only was that the most beautiful Vivaldi piece I've heard at the end, this is the first time Jay has ever performed to an audience. [Applause] So, as I said, some people see a cacophony; I see a symphony. Thanks for the amazing work that you do. Thank you. [Applause] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Wow! [Laughter] Thank you, Rod, for a stunning and original opening. What a vitality Rod is bringing to the job. Thank you, Rod. Fantastic. [Applause] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Rod, you can only top that if you get Jay to come along to the ICANN music night on Wednesday. I think you'll find -- excellent. So, everybody, we've got music night on Wednesday. Come along, and bring your own instruments and see how you get along. Let me just welcome some very special guests in the audience receiving some media attention in the front row. I would like to welcome officially Mr. See Joong Choi, who is the chairman of the Korea Communications Commission; Mr. Heung Kil Ko, Senator and Chairman of the Culture, Sports, and Tourism, Broadcasting and Communications Committee of the National Assembly; and Ms. Hee Jung Kim, president of KISA. Let me just introduce to speak to you, please, Mr. See Joong Choi, who is the chairman of the Korea Communications Commission. The commission itself was formed on the 26th February, 2008, a new embarcation after consolidating the former Ministry of Information and Communication and the Korean Broadcasting Commission. The KCC embraces the core functions of the former Korean Broadcasting Commission and Ministry, serving as an integrated organization responsible for both policy making and regulation. It gives me great pleasure to introduce this morning the chairman of the Korean Communications Commission, See Joong Choi. [Applause] >>SEE JOONG CHOI: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is See Joong Choi. I'm the chairman of the Korean Communications Commission. Thank you for introducing me, Honorable Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush of ICANN board of directors; CEO and president, Rod Beckstrom of ICANN. And, distinguished guests from home and abroad, I'd like to welcome you all to ICANN's 36th international meeting. I'd like to congratulate the successful opening, and more than 110 countries are participating in the ICANN meeting. I'd like to extend welcome to all of you. During the past 10 years, ICANN meeting made great contributions in developing the I.P. address, top-level domain name systems, et cetera. It is a great privilege for me to see the opening of the ICANN meeting held in Seoul, Korea. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, this year we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the birth of Internet. Internet is extremely important asset. It totally changed our lives. And more than 1.6 billion populations are utilizing the Internet as a medium to share information and to communicate. It is deeply rooted in our daily lives as a part of our culture. Any residents living in global village can get access to Internet, can talk to each other, and can communicate. And this was possible thanks to all of you sitting here today. I.P. address is extremely important asset because, through network, we can deliver information. We can exchange information. And this was feasible because of ICANN community, the staff members, and everyone sitting here today. However, although we have made great contributions, I.P. address is faced with various challenges and difficulties currently. I.P. address should not become an exclusive possession of a nation, but it should be a common resource for the residents of the global village. In light of that, introductions of IDNS and its policy will definitely pave a new way toward the future. Still, there are some remaining issues to be resolved. For example, in introducing IDN, the users of Internet should be allowed to use not only English but other languages as well. And we need to minimize extra costs. In addition to that, we should not give a preferential treatment to a certain country, but we should allow everyone living in this earth to enjoy the Internet access and to use IDNS. I sincerely hope that ICANN meeting in Seoul can be a forum where the participants can enjoy the opportunity of exchanging their ideas and find ways to further develop the I.P. address. Ladies and gentlemen, Korea is known as a leading country in terms of the Internet and I.T. infrastructure. Korea is equipped with superb level of I.T. infrastructure and competent human resources. It is receiving a lot of attention from around the world. And convergence service, giga net network are also provided here in Korea. And IPv6 transformation is currently being implemented here in Korea. As a test of that, we are making a lot of contributions. Such effort and experience will be presented during the ICANN meeting. And I sincerely hope that we can play a certain role so that the I.P. address can be further developed. Last, but not least, I heard that this is the first meeting ever since this new president of ICANN took office. I sincerely hope that all of you can gather wisdom and ideas so that we can pave the new way for the future of ICANN. While you stay in Korea, please make sure that you can enjoy the scenery of Korea as well as 5,000 years of Korean history. Korea is known as one of the countries that achieved the fastest economic growth and is known as a country that revived from the financial crisis. And please enjoy your stay in Korea. I'd like to extend my special appreciation to ICANN, the organizing committee, and also Korea Internet and Security Agency of Korea. I wish a great success and health and happiness. Thank you. [Applause] >>ROD BECKSTROM: And I would now like to introduce another Korean dignitary. President Kim of KISA, the Korean Information and Security Agency. She's had an incredibly successful career, has been a professor, Dean of one of the technical schools, the university here, as well as dean emeritus and has been honored with countless awards. And we also thank President Kim and all of KISA for being the host of ICANN 36. Please join me in welcoming President Kim. >>HEE JUNG KIM: Welcome, welcome, welcome. Nice to meet you. I am the president of KISA, Hee Jung Kim. Now I speak in my Korean language, okay? Honorable Chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush of ICANN Board of Directors, President Rod Beckstrom of ICANN, welcome, everyone, to the country of figure skater, Kim Na-Young; the country of the master Korean guitarist, Jeong-Hyun Lim. And also distinguished experts of the Internet from home and abroad, I'm very pleased to meet you all. Honorable chair, See Joong Choi of Korean Communications Commission, thank you for joining us despite your busy schedule. I'd like to welcome you all, and I'd like to congratulate the opening of ICANN meeting, which will be held until the 30th of this month. I sincerely hope that ICANN meeting in Seoul can be a forum where you can exchange your views as much as possible and strengthen your collaboration. ICANN and Commerce Department of U.S. contract was revised, I heard. The previous one was expired. In managing the I.P. address, I sincerely believe and expect that the autonomy of the I.P. address management can be strengthened in light of that Korea Internet and Security Agency of Korea will definitely make greater role and contributions in developing the ICANN's role. And my view is that we will make sure that we will do as much as possible. As the local host of ICANN meeting, I will do whatever I can to strengthen the cooperation and make further contribution for the ICANN. And please ask us whatever needs you have. Through ICANN meeting held in Seoul, I sincerely hope that we can make a breakthrough in implementing the gTLD and IDNS. Korea has a language called Hangul, which is a unique language. And for us Koreans, introduction of IDNS is extremely important. And we welcome wholeheartedly the introductions of IDNS. Today and tomorrow please attend a meeting, and make sure that you join us at the gala dinner. Because the Korea Internet and Security Agency of Korea, as local host, will be hosting the gala dinner at the garden of the National Museum of Korea. So don't study too hard, but make sure that you have fun as well. Because gala dinner will be an extremely memorable moment for you. Last, but not least, I'd like to express my gratitude to ICANN and the organizing committee, staff members, and as well as Korea Communications Commission for your hard work and efforts. Thank you for organizing the meeting. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, from home and abroad, thank you for joining us despite your busy schedule. And also I'd like to congratulate the opening of the ICANN. Let us all make effort so we can open a new era of the Internet. [Applause] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you so much, Mrs. Kim. And all of us here are very aware of the incredible lead that South Korea has taken as an exemplary nation in delivering broadband and Internet services to all the citizens at a rate that many countries, including the one I come from, can certainly learn from. And so we're very pleased to have that as well as to have the participation of your government leadership as well as your outstanding artists and performers from the community. And I also just want to mention, to make it perfectly clear, that Wednesday night, in the spirit of the creativity and the symphonies that you're creating, will be an open band and an open mic. And Funtwo will be there. Funtwo, also known as Jay, will be there playing. You can play along or sing along or bring your instrument. We heard some of our members such as Robert Gaetano -- Roberto, where are you? Roberto, raise your hand. He's brought his tenor sax, mouthpiece, and reed all the way from Vienna for us just so he can perform for us. Give him a hand. [Applause] We hope that will be a good example for the rest of you. In a moment we'll be moving on to my president's report and beginning to discuss some of the progress that's been made in various areas and the aggressive agenda and program that you and we have put together here for the past week. And so I'm going to get started with one or two of those slides. And then I'm going to interrupt the presentation of the progress you've really made when another one of our dignitaries will join us quite shortly. So now I'm going to move quickly into the beginning of the president's report. This is reporting on the progress of ICANN, the community, the board, and the shareholders over the past three months since we met in Sydney. But I am very aware, as the new CEO, that what we're citing here are your accomplishments, the accomplishments of all the parties in the room. So let's take a look at that. What we're going to be covering is -- of course, we'll discuss briefly the affirmation, the progress made there, the IDN, ccTLDs, our new gTLD introduction that many parties have been working very hard on. We'll give you a very brief financial update. We'll talk about some of the progress made on enhancing security, DNSsec from the domain name system security, IANA names and numbers, contractual compliances, and policy development. And, as I mentioned, I think the theme for this event and all of our events is the one world we live in with the one Internet that this group works very hard to keep unified and not forked around the world. So one world, one Internet with everyone connected. And one part of that is the affirmation of commitments. And, before I get into that, let me take a moment. And we'll take a pause to recognize another one of the dignitaries who has joined us. And I would, therefore, like to introduce Mr. Heung Kil Ko, who is a national Senator in the Republic of Korea. And he's chairman of the Culture, Sports, Tourism, Broadcasting and Communications Committee of the National Assembly. He's been a leader in journalism, press, and media in Korea for many years and has helped to advance this nation and is highly decorated in all of those fields. And we are very honored to have Senator Ko with us here today. So, Senator Ko, if you could please join us. [Applause] >>HEUNG KIL KO: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I'm very sorry to deliver my speech in Korean. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Heung Kil Ko, the Senator and chairman of the Culture, Sports, Tourism Broadcasting and Communications Committee. First of all, I'd like to extend my congratulations to the opening of the 36th ICANN international meeting. At the same time I'd like to thank all the participants who have a keen interest in the Internet, especially I.P. address. Korea introduced the website in 1993. And in 1994 we also launched a commercial Internet service. And after that we also introduced Internet newspaper, broadcasting, as well as the shopping mall, cybertrading, as well as online game. The fast growth in the I.T. infrastructure, including Internet, contributed to making Korea as a leader in the knowledge and information society. Currently, the number of the subscribers in the ADSL, the high-speed Internet, amounts to 16 million. And 77.6% of the people are using Internet. Now Internet is affecting politics, economy, society, as well as culture. And it actually affects all parts of our life. I know that the Internet is also becoming the co-infrastructure for the future world. The Korean government designated 2009 as a starting year for the media industry innovation for the future growth and is exerting a lot of effort for converging all the elements in the media industry, especially the -- we'll introduce the deeper level Internet service, which is more than 10 times faster than the current speed in order to facilitate better service in the future. We also extend our investment to the FTTH. In the future I believe that I.P. address, as well as domain name and Internet address resources should be efficiently and stably managed and importance is getting more intensified. And, at the same time, we also list the attack team and phishing as well as hacking, which actually hamper the information security in the Internet. And I believe that the government, as well as the other public, should exert to combine effort in resolving all these issues. I believe that ICANN public meeting invites more than thousands of people from 111 countries composed of the government officials and the private industries and technicians as well as academians and the Internet users. I believe that this meeting holds a great significance, as we discussed a couple of topics here. I hope that this meeting could provide a stronger tie between Korea and the ICANN. And all the I.P. address management policies that will be discussed here throughout this meeting could serve as a foundation to lead and develop the future. At the same time, I hope that the public attention toward the I.P. address could be intensified. Ladies and gentlemen and distinguished guests, the Korea has a very beautiful four seasons, but especially October has very beautiful colored leaves. And we also have a very clear and high sky in autumn is another beautiful and exciting scenery. I hope that you enjoy all these beautiful sceneries while you stay in Korea. I would like to conclude my speech by expressing my thanks to Kim Hee Jung, president of KISA, as well as other related staff. I hope that the meeting you have today will be very informative and a fruitful one. Thank you for your attention. [Applause] >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you very much, Mr. Ko, President Kim, Mr. Choi. We're so honored to have you in your presence. Since we met in Sydney some three months ago, something else has come to fruition that many of you have worked on for many, many years and that is the Affirmation of Commitments. It signals a milepost in the development of ICANN in the development and maturity of the organization and the community. And so I thought I would make some brief remarks about that. In particular, the broader context of the Affirmation of Commitments and since the first two sites in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, California, were first connected on October 1st, 1969, 40 years and 24 days ago by Steve Crocker, Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf. Steve, where are you? Raise your hand. Let's give Steve a hand. [Applause] When Steve, Bob and Vint were working 40 years ago, they were working on behalf of the United States Department of Defense on a research project to create a new resilient network, and they came up and worked with a crazy idea called a packet-switched network, which was very revolutionary at that time. And ever since then, the Internet has moved or what was then ARPANET became the Internet and it was created through this U.S. research project, but the Internet, of course, has become a global phenomenon. And if you look over time at the various agreements and developments that have happened, whether it was the creation of the DNS, whether it was the creation of the IETF as a governing body for standards or a developments body for standards and effort that has created the Internet, we see an arc. And the arc is from the Internet having been a creation in one country to becoming a truly global strategic asset that it is today. And the Affirmation of Commitment represents another step in that process from the policy standpoint, specifically ICANN's roles with names, numbers and other unique identifiers. And so it's part of that ongoing process. What does it represent? It represents that you and we, the community of ICANN, and the other Internet system partners have reached a level of maturity that we no longer need to report on whether we're multistakeholder or not, which was fundamentally what the previous JPA agreement focused on, was how well were the stakeholders being engaged and involved. And reports were made by ICANN staff to the Department of Commerce. Under the new Affirmation of Commitments agreement, members of the community with the review team, chosen by two leaders, will actually review the performance of ICANN and report not to the U.S. government but to the world. So it represents, like IDNs, another very important step in globalization. The Department of Commerce also makes commitments of the United States government. They are committing to this private sector model. They believe in this. They are seeing it work, here and with our other partners. They're also committed to support international domain names. They also committed to actively participate in the GAC. They also shared some of their concerns about the introduction of new gTLDs with the request that those issues be addressed before the introduction. ICANN on its behalf committed to do everything for the benefit of the public interest. And it raises the bar for us, okay? So we have more independence to work together as a stakeholder community to drive the affairs, but we have to raise a higher standard in terms of making sure that our decisions are done in the public interest, that they're done transparently and accountable. And there is a review structure set up with three different kinds of reviews. Those reports, as we mentioned, go to the global public for public comment. The three reviews are: First, accountability and transparency, to see how we are performing in terms of how accountable we are to the end users of the Internet and to the public that benefits from the work that we do, those next 100 million and the next billion users coming online to the Internet. There is a separate reporting cycle on security, stability and resiliency, and that runs on a slightly different cycle but will also be done every three years. Accountability and transparency, the first review, has to be completed by next December, which puts quite a tight time frame on us and the community to figure out how to quickly organize a team -- review team and support its activities so it can successfully be completed by next December. The third area is consumer choice and consumer welfare, public benefit, also relates to new gTLDs as part of that offering of additional consumer choice. And then as well the WHOIS requirements for the data listing of who has registered domain names around the world. And that's a very significant review process that will take place as well. So we've got a lot of work to do. The first meeting, there will be a consultation meeting right in this room here, okay? Crystal B is the back of the room. I'm standing in Crystal A. The back of the room is Crystal B because we will divide this room later today. 3:30 there will be an Affirmation of Commitments consultation with the community where we would like to get your thoughts and ideas on how we best move forward, particularly with the first review that has got to be done very swiftly. There will also be a public forum on Thursday morning in this larger room from 8:00 to noon. It will be part of that conversation. Global engagement. Progress has been made on numerous fronts. New accountability frameworks have been signed, new exchanges of letters have been signed, increased GAC participation with new members coming in, international forums and also regional meetings on ICANN. So let's step through each of those briefly. These are the additional exchanges of letters and accountability frameworks that have been signed just in the last three months further clarifying the important role of the ccTLD operators around the world and their relationship with ICANN. Ukraine, Portugal, Vanuatu and Uruguay have all signed exchanges of letters with ICANN in this period. Accountability frameworks have been signed by Paraguay, Mexico and Haiti so we are making progress and, of course, there's more to go. There's multiple international forums and regional events that many of you have been taking part in and making happen. The next really large one will be the Internet Governance Forum meeting in Sharm El- Sheikh, Egypt. For those of you that like to dive on coral reef, also happens to be a world-class location. Very important meeting as the world comes together to discuss where do we go with the future of Internet Governance. Very important for as many of us as possible to participate and share our views because not all believe that the multistakeholder model is the way to go. ITU telecom meeting will also be happening later in 2009. Actually, I'm sorry, just took place. And with recent upcoming meetings, a listing of those, Canto 25, the APNIC meeting, regional ccTLD meetings, the ACORN, MENOGs, CTU roadshow, et cetera, many different meetings around the world keeping this multistakeholder effort going. There will be a meeting, 1:00 on Thursday in this large room, 1:00 p.m. Thursday right after lunch, please come and join. IDN ccTLD fast track or the IDNs for country codes. Again, this is something to be really excited about because it culminates years of your work and activity. The final plan was posted online. It will be presented to the ICANN board of directors this Friday here in Seoul for approval. If that approval is forthcoming, then it is anticipated that the first date applications will be accepted is the 16th of November. There will be a working group meeting this afternoon at 1330 in Crystal A, this part of the room that I'm standing in right here. There have been three explanatory memoranda that have also been published separate from the final plan. One on recommendations for the relationship with ICANN, a second on the revised IDN tables, a third one on financial contributions for development and deployment of the IDNs. To celebrate this great accomplishment that many have made possible, those who have been involved in developing the IDNs are invited to a reception here tonight at 6:30 p.m., 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. in this room tonight, an IDN celebration. New gTLDs, a tougher project, right? The IDNs have enjoyed extremely high levels of popularity and support for the ccTLDs. The new gTLDs, we still have multiple stakeholder processes and board- level processes taking place. Malicious conduct, there's been significant advances in the last three months. And if you look at the draft applicant guidebook, there is eight new elements just in malicious conduct alone and processes. There's a proposal for a possible trademark clearinghouse that was suggested by the IRT review team that the board asked to look at this. That has been submitted to the GNSO for a swift review, and that letter can be found online. Obviously a very important process. There's also been a submission to the GNSO for a swift review of the uniform rapid suspension process which gives rights holders a quicker way to protect their interests potentially. That has been submitted to the GNSO, and the board will be looking for timely feedback. I think there was two months or so given on that. Economic studies. This has been a major topic of interest in the community and by different stakeholders. And as someone who personally has a passion for economics and has enjoyed doing some work in that field, we have decided that we will do further economic studies. The bar has been risen with the Affirmation of Commitments because we have to ensure that our activities support the public interest. Now, how are we going to do that? Well, the first thing is there have been quite a number of economic studies already. One of the things we need to do is look at the various requests that have come for different economic studies and match the research and work that has been done to do a gap analysis to figure out what questions have not yet been answered adequately. So that will be the first phase of a study, and that will then come up with other candidates for subsequent studies that we will be doing. One of those studies will relate to the following issue, which is how can we determine what the public benefit is of new gTLDs? I mean, wouldn't it depend on what the new gTLDs are? Because I think you would agree that there are some new gTLDs that might not be very controversial. They might be owned by a right holder that has pretty clear rights, to use that name, and are doing it to serve their customers. There's others that may provide great services, and there may be others that some parties find objectionable or might have a questionable value. So a way to think about this problem is there's a new -- as a portfolio of gTLDs that will be coming out. We can't answer the broader question of: Will all those new gTLDs have public benefit or not? We have to look at them a string at a time, right? Because each string is different. The portfolio will impact -- is impacted by its members. So what we are trying to think of is what are the ways that a process could be established. Could there be mechanisms for establishing consumer harm of specific strings? And, clearly, some of the other processes in the DAG are oriented towards blocking things such as morality and public order issues that some people would argue harms the public. But there is also potentially a way that economic analysis could be used to allow parties to put forth claims of consumer harm on specific strings. And so there might be processes that would be possible to create the right incentive structure to create better new gTLDs as opposed to less good ones. Anyway, that's speculative at this point in time. It is something that we will be asking economists to begin looking at because we think it could help us answer this important question of the public benefit of new gTLDs. Registrar/registry separation and competition. Industry competition is an important issue. Huge economics at stake for many parties in the room here today. The dialogue is progressing, and there's further public consultation taking place, and there's different proposals on the table. And we as a community need to move towards a consensus position on this or towards a resolution if consensus is not readily available. Root scaling area. As we know, progress has also been made. There is one outside consulting report that has been completed and submitted to the RSSAC and the SSAC for their feedback and commentary. So those are some of the items that are still out there for new gTLDs. Some of the specific accomplishments in terms of deliverables in the process is the draft applicant guidebook Version 3 was posted. There is over 50 changes in that document. It has been open for public comment and analysis, and the comments will close on November 22nd, a little bit less than one month from today. There's also been -- >> (Speaker off microphone). >>ROD BECKSTROM: I'm sorry? >> (Speaker off microphone). >>ROD BECKSTROM: In English only, okay. There's also been five explanatory memoranda that have been published: Trademark protection and mechanisms, mitigation and malicious conduct, enhanced security measures, registrant protections and registry obligations. So those are five separate memorandum from the DAG for the draft applicant guidebook. So the window is open. You have comments on the gTLD process and the draft applicant guidebook. Please submit them online because the window is open, and it will be until November 22nd. There's going to be four different working sessions here primarily focused on new gTLDs. First, this morning following this session right in this room, Crystal A/B will be a new gTLD program overview given by Kurt Pritz and Doug Brent on our team. There will also be a registry/registrar separation discussion in Crystal A, this half of the room, 3:00 this afternoon. There will be a trademark discussion 12:30 tomorrow in the back of this room, what will be Crystal B. There will be a discussion on the root scaling study findings in Crystal A, this part of the room, Wednesday at 1:30. New gTLD timing. So what's the timing? Well, this is a multistakeholder community. So what's the answer? The answer is the timing is it will be finished when we've adequately addressed the important issues that are on the table. And, hopefully, we can work together to do that swiftly. Ultimately, the timing decision will be made by the board and will be supported from an execution standpoint by the staff. Financial update. A lot of you are concerned about the portfolio performance given the economic challenges the global stock market's faced. And we're happy to report that the reserve fund is in the black. It's now in the black. There's been $44 million put into the reserve fund historically, and the value is now above $44 million. The portfolio diversification is on track with what has been planned in the financial investment plan approved by the board: Fixed income at 70%, equities at 30%, with U.S. close to 70% and international exposure at close to 30%. The economic growth and slow-down has obviously impacted all of our activities and certainly the portfolio, but we're glad that it's in the black. There's also a new enhanced reporting that's coming out. You have been asking -- many of you have been asking, Well, exactly where are the dollars going? How are they being spent? So there is a new enhanced reporting that shows on a functional basis, effectively like the cost-allocation basis, of the different projects and programs within ICANN and how the money -- the funding is going to whether it is a new gTLD project or IANA or security measures or running the "L" root zone, et cetera. This is new additional reporting that we intend to support on a go-forward basis to provide information to all the stakeholders that are involved. There's been a lot of activity, as many of you know and as you have been doing, on the security front. First, the new gTLDs and the new IDN ccTLDs add more data, new entries into the root. That raises questions that have to be considered and analyzed, and there has been a lot of healthy discussion there. The discussions around the botnet threats such as Conficker continues and the work of the ccTLDs around the world to help secure global networks as well as we can and to react and to prevent the spread and clean such botnets out of the systems. A lot of work on DNS abuse and mitigation as well as the implementation of a security, stability and resiliency plan. Four sessions this week on these topics: Malicious conduct today, this afternoon, 4:30, Crystal A, right here. Root scaling study, Wednesday, Crystal A, 1:30 p.m. DNS abuse forum will be held here in Crystal A/B Thursday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. ICANN's security, stability and resiliency activities will be presented in the Sapphire room on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. DNSSEC, domain name system security, an important project that many parties have been working on for many years. The U.S. government, VeriSign and the ICANN are working on the root signing effort as we meet. That continues with further discussions here and working groups here and around the world. DNSSEC signing best practices are being developed. And ICANN, VeriSign, the NTIA and the Internet architecture board and the regional Internet registries are working to sign the infrastructure zones in ARPA. There is a DNS workshop Wednesday at 9:00 a.m., Sapphire 4. IANA and the IANA function. First, there has been an additional 4/8s block distributed and allocated. There have been service improvements. Work on the e-IANA function continues and other automation projects. Some of the key business issues are the business excellence program that's starting in 2010. The ITAR is gaining increased use and active participation in the root scaling study. There will be an IANA business excellence meeting in the Sapphire 4 room Thursday, 1:00 p.m. Contractual compliance. Obviously, many consumer groups, consumers around the world and others are concerned about the quality of the domain name industry and how things are being handled. That's a top concern for all of us. The registrations in escrow have increased dramatically over the past year and half. There is now 98.9% of registration data escrowed globally. And we'll keep pushing to move towards -- converge towards that 100% mark. This is not only reported registration, but there's also an audit process in place to ensure that data is there over time. And there is a Web link at the bottom of the page. 87% of the world's registrants have executed the new registrant agreements, the RAAs -- registrar agreements, excuse me. Contractual compliance. You know, the world, the industry has asked us to crack down on inappropriate practices by registrars. In the last 5 1/2 years, 28 registrars have been terminated or not renewed. Half of those have been in the preceding year. So half of all the work in the last six years was done in just the last year, so the compliance efforts have increased. We also committed to increase further investment in that area in this year's budget, and we're executing on that. There is a WHOIS data workshop, Crystal A, Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. Right here 3:00 p.m. Wednesday. There is a WHOIS data accuracy study in Sapphire 4 Wednesday, one hour after that, 4:00 p.m., Sapphire 4. You have been making tremendous efforts in moving the policy projects forward in the ccNSO, GNSO, ASO, ALAC and SSAC as well providing support and advice. We can't -- if we went over all the work the GNSO is doing, it would probably take a week because it is a phenomenal workload that you have on your plate and you have been moving forward. First is, this is the first annual meeting with the new GNSO Council structure in place. That's the culmination of years of work on GNSO restructuring. There's wide-ranging improvement efforts advancing across the GNSO. We're exploring more trademark input for the draft applicant guidebook, the two items we mentioned earlier. We're addressing a record number of issues to improve the gTLD space. And when I say "we," that's the GNSO and what you're doing. Reviewing the trademark clearinghouse and URS for board review. The ccNSO has put a lot of work into the internationalized domain names, introduction of the fast-track program to make sure that that's structured properly and is successful. Also, continued work on international domain names policies for the ccTLDs that will follow on the fast-track program. There's also other work going on on ccTLD issues on an ongoing basis. The ASO and the regional Internet registries have worked on a new policy for handling the IPv4 space from the RIRs to IANA. And, secondly, they've decided to revise the date for introducing the new autonomous system numbers or the so-called ASNs that are used in the border gateway protocol, the BGP, pushing that back about a year because they feel that time is needed to ensure successful introduction. Very important effort underway. Also, from the At-Large Advisory Committee, a lot of progress. The ICANN global participation is growing. It was up 10% in 2009. 118 different user groups around the world. There have been policy advisories on new gTLDs as well as IDN fast track coming out of ALAC we're very appreciative of. And at-large improvements initiative is underway. And we feel overall ALAC's an important part of improving institutional confidence in ICANN in the post-JPA -- or I should say in the new affirmation environment. SSAC. Again, tremendous amount of work. Very difficult to summarize how much work's going on. Work on orphan DNS records, when names get deleted out of the registry's databases but not all the other data is gone and sometimes that data can be used for malicious purposes by nefarious characters. Redirection at the top level of the DNS is a topic they're working at -- working on. DNSSEC, of course, they're a key driver. Other registrant protections, root scaling study, and then also the outcomes from the SSAC review process. So, overall, I think it's fair to say that you, the multistakeholder community driving the Internet forward, have made remarkable progress since we met in Sydney. And for that, I'm enormously appreciative. And we will -- I'm now going to thank all of you for coming and joining as we wrap up our program this morning and move into the rest of our day. Thank you very much. [Applause] And a quick note in response to Sébastien who pointed out that the DAG should be in other languages. I think staff at ICANN are seeking to please. The applicant guidebook will be posted online in Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish and Russian on Wednesday of this week. Thank you very much. [Applause] >> Ladies and gentlemen, there will be a short coffee break and then we'll resume back in the ballroom with our next program, new gTLD program. Thank you.