Shaping the Development of the Internet

Nominet held its annual UK Internet Policy Forum on 22 March 2012 to discuss a range of issues on the theme of Shaping the development of the Internet.

The forum was chaired by Sarah Montague of the Today programme and featured a range of speakers, panel discussions and workshops which generated thought-provoking debate from stakeholders which will contribute to policy dialogue within .uk and globally.

Summary of the day

A summary of the discussions and presentations have now been published from the latest UK Internet Policy Forum held by Nominet, which took place on Thursday 22 March.

The report, produced by Nate Vaagen from the London School of Economics, highlights the range of challenging issues that were discussed such as the need to strike a balance between the opposing forces of online identity and privacy, and the ever evolving response to Internet security.

Lord Allan, Director of Policy EMEA from Facebook opened the day with a look at the increasing desire for some national governments to control the internet.  Meanwhile, the speed of change in the digital space and greater focus on security were the starting points of a wide ranging keynote from Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. In the afternoon keynote, The Hon Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries highlighted the rapid growth of the internet and its value to the economy.

The day also saw lively workshops to help develop UK-IGF messages that will feed into the Internet Governance Forum 2012.  Reports from the workshops are available below:

• Workshop 1: Identity Governance on the Internet – What are the essentials?
• Workshop 2: Content creation in a changing world: How do we build the right environment?
• Workshop 3: Cyber security: defining acceptable behaviour on the Internet

The afternoon focused on the role of regulation and self-regulation in shaping the development of the Internet, especially in the context of an expanding domain name space and the changing attitudes of internet users and actors, including a presentation of research  findings 'Regulation by Contract' by the Oxford Internet Institute. Finally there was an interactive session examining the features that stakeholders feel are necessary to maintain the .uk space as relevant, competitive, and trusted.

You can view the programme from the day here.

Presentations and slides from the day are available to view here.

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Take a look at how you can get involved in .uk policy and the UK-IGF.