Nominet held its first annual .uk Policy Forum on the 17 May 2011 to discuss a range of issues connected to the broad themes of protection and trust.

We were delighted with the number of delegates in attendance who came from many different backgrounds including business, academia, government, parliament, charity, law enforcement, regulators and civil society.

The speakers and panel debates produced engaging discussions focusing on people’s freedoms on the internet, their protection, and who or what is responsible for this and the best way forward for regulation of the Internet. We believe the self-regulation model continues to be the most effective way for the Internet industry in the UK to operate.

We are committed to working with all our stakeholders to ensure this successful model can continue.

Summary of the day

We are very grateful to the Oxford Internet Institute for producing a summary of the discussions from the day for us. The author has also made many interesting recommendations as to some of the work which Nominet might consider undertaking together with stakeholders going forward. Some of these activities are areas in which Nominet is already actively engaged as a key stakeholder and contributor, such as ICANN, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the UK-IGF and the Internet Watch Foundation.

We note that some of the issues raised in the recommendations may be more effectively directed towards these types of multi-jurisdictional and cross-sectoral fora. Some of the OII’s other recommendations are, for the moment, outside of the direct sphere of influence of the .uk Policy Process. However, we will be considering them carefully and discussing them with the .uk Policy Process Stakeholder Committee, to establish which elements have a direct impact on and therefore need to be considered when examining .uk policy.

The summary produced by Tom Nicholls, Oxford Internet Institute is available to view here (PDF).
 
We would welcome your thoughts on the OII summary and feedback from our stakeholders on .uk policy.  Please let us know by emailing policy@nominet.org.uk. Suggestions for themes or topics for next year’s Policy Forum would also be very welcome.

At the present time, we are working with stakeholders on developing a policy to deal with domain names involved in criminal activity and will shortly be starting discussions on developing a domain expiry policy.

You can find information on these policy issues here.  

Further information about the day, presentations and the agenda are available to view here.