Agenda

Securing the national Internet infrastructure’s resilience and continuity has recently become in the center of the technical expert community’s attention. The ongoing discussions center on an individual jurisdiction’s ability to ensure continuity of the network operation if adversely affected from outside. The panelists will suggest basic scenarios in this regard and debate what the internet community could do to beef up the critical infrastructure’s resilience with account of international practices in this regard.

Nowadays, so many critical matters of the Internet, including public policies and regulatory framework of broadband rollout and use, relations between OTT and Telcos, net neutrality, privacy and consumer rights protection, trade and investment, taxation, you name it, require various stakeholders to promote a coordinated approach with a full account of a huge number of economic, political and social factors. It is intermediaries capable of promoting constructive dialogue between the stakeholders, including governments and international organizations in first place that will play a pivotal role in the process. The panelists will discuss which mechanisms are there to build and advance such a global dialogue.

A plethora of international organizations and governments have developed numerous sets of Internet Governance fundamentals, typically suggesting a round figure of ten of them. Whilst their wording they use can appear similar, in reality, the same terminology oftentimes bear contrasting senses and connotations. Whether they could indeed find a “universal formula” to balance those different principles and exercise a proper governance of the Web and whether such a fomula could stand a reality check will become the central issue of the panel.

Emerged as a unique global and trans-border phenomenon, since its very onset, the Internet has challenged the role of traditional institutions as stable, valued and recurring structures and mechanisms of social order by engendering new substance and forms of engagement and interaction between different actors building the Web.
However, there is no consensus between them which institutions should be tasked to shape the Internet’s further development, which ones are to be developed to ensure a seamless advancement of the global Net, and who should take lead in shaping such institutions.
The panelists will discuss hardly converging concepts and examine ways to foster a universal institutional environment conducive to the Internet’s expansion.