One week after Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine government representative sent a letter to ICANN president and CEO asking to address an urgent need to introduce strict sanctions against the Russian Federation in the field of DNS regulation. The requests include revoking the domains of “.ru”, “.рф” and “.su”, revoking for SSL certificates for the abovementioned domains as well as shutting down DNS root servers situated in the Russian. The representative also requested RIPE NCC to withdraw the right to use all IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by all Russian members, and to block the DNS root servers that it is operating.
RIPE NCC and ICANN have both rejected Ukraine’s requests. The Executive Board of the RIPE NCC believes that the means to communicate should not be affected by domestic political disputes, international conflicts or war. ICANN CEO further indicated the organizations’ support to Ukrainian. These developments have prompted urgent discussions on the existing critical Internet resources global governance principles and appropriate internet sanction possibilities.
Some may doubts if ICANN or RIPE NCC, which are legally binding by California (US) and Amsterdam (Netherland) laws, will have to follow their respective authorities’ command to implement sanctions. Some are arguing that, blocking Russia from accessing Internet may not be helpful for achieving Ukraine’s goal to mitigate the harms of false information spreading and cyber-attacks. What will be the consequences if Internet governance institutions heeded the sanction request?
The panel invite experts with rich internet policy making experiences to talk about how the Internet governance institutions respond to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, explore the possible changes of global Internet governance principles, and identify key factors Internet community in Taiwan may pay attention in the future.
Time: 2022/4/22 02:00-04:00PM
Venue: IEAT International Conference Center Meeting 8F Room 2 (No. 350, Songjiang Road, Zhongshan District, Taipei City)
Moderator: Kuo Wei Wu, Chair of TWIG
Panelists:
Tsung Han Wu, Assistant Research Fellow, Institute for National Defense and Security Research Xin-Xiong,Shen, Senior Technical Specialist, National Communications Commission Ken-Ying Tseng, Partner, LEE AND LI, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW Kenny Huang, CEO of TWNIC