INFOCOM 2005 held round table “Who Governs Russian Internet and How? Legal Regulation of the Internet”. The event was organized by Regional Public Center of Internet Technologies, Department of Legal Regulation of the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation, Institute of the Information Society, and co-organized by Networks and Communication systems magazine.

The event was attended by representatives of public authorities, local officials, business, civil society, research and education community, mass media, political and community leaders, and leading Russian experts in the sphere Internet.

The issue of Internet governance is widely expected to dominate discussions at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The transformation of the Internet from an academic research network into a mainstream communications platform and a key strategic resource in today’s emerging Information Society has prompted a wide range of divergent views regarding the mechanisms for future Internet governance.

The growing importance of the Internet as a source of information and knowledge, along with the advent of a host of new ICT-related issues such as spam, online intellectual property protection, cybercrime, network security and secure frameworks for e-commerce, has led some countries to propose a new management structure that would be independent of the oversight of any single government. Efforts to build global consensus on this complex issue had earlier led to the establishment of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), which was set up to examine and make proposals for action on the governance of the Internet by the Summit’s second phase. The final report of the WGIG, released on 18 July, will serve as the catalyst for ongoing debate on this issue at the Tunis phase of WSIS to be held in November 2005.

The event participants contributed to developing a clear definition of the problems of Internet governance and producing Russia’s consolidated point on the issue. The discussion covered both technological and more complex aspects like the use of Internet in different spheres of activity, content, data transmission security and information protection, multilingualism (both cultural and concerning domain names), rights of minority groups, etc.

The discussion was focused on legal aspects of Internet regulation for harmonizing Russian and international legislation.

The conference was held on 28 September 2005 in the exhibition centre Crocus Expo, Moscow.

Information support was provided by Networks and Communication Systems and Information Society journals.

For more information about the event please refer to http://ccc.ru/infocom2005/stol.html (in Russian).