Brussels, 17/11/2009 (Agence Europe) - The fourth annual United Nations Global Internet Governance Forum opened on Sunday 15 November 2009 in Sharm El Sheikh (Egypt) to enable governments, the private sector and civil society to discuss important issues relating to internet governance. This year's forum has the theme “Creating Opportunities for All”. The forum will discuss how the internet is managed, barriers to access, protection of children from sex crimes and paedophiles active online, how to tackle cybercrime, the sale of counterfeit medicines and protecting privacy. A delegation from the European Parliament's industry, research and energy committee comprising Catherine Trautmann(S&D, France), Lambert Van Nistelrooij (EPP, the Netherlands), Teresa Riera Madurell (S&D, Spain) and Maria Badia i Cutchet (S&D, Spain) attended the forum to argue the European Union's case. EU Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding also attended. In a speech, she explained how important the forum was as a “a unique multi-stakeholder dialogue platform for the global internet community… for open and non-binding multi-party discussions” and called for the forum to continue until 2015. Initially, it was planned that the forum would only be held five times in all. She highlighted two issues of great concern to her - international domain names and protecting children in cyberspace, while adding that the web had to remain a “free and open” space. Reding reminded the United States of its promise to make the governance of the internet more independent and more international (see EUROPE 9989).
In connection with the forum, the European Commission welcomed the decision by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the body that manages the internet's core directory) that a fast-track process has been launched to open up country code top level domains (like ".eu" of europa.eu) to non Latin characters. This means that Europeans, especially in Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus, will be able to see domain names in their own alphabets. Commissioner Reding explained that the European Commission has been calling for this for years and that the EU had led the way last year by changing its rules to allow any EU internet user to use the letters of their own alphabet (including Cyrillic) for the first level '.eu' domain names as from 10 December 2009 (see EUROPE 9932). (I.L./transl.fl)