Cooperation Working Group Minutes RIPE 83

Tuesday, 23 November 2021, 16:00-17:00
WG co-chairs: Desiree Milosevic, Johan (Julf) Helsingius and Achilleas Kemos
Scribe: Gergana Petrova
Status: Draft

Julf welcomed attendees to the session. He asked the audience to approve the agenda for the session as well as the minutes from RIPE 82. Then he invited Desiree to talk about Co-Chair selection.

Desiree informed the attendees that they didn’t receive any nominations for the open call for co-chairs for the Cooperation Working Group, despite extending the deadline. There was support for Achilleas and Julf to continue in their positions – both on the mailing list and in the chat during the session. For the next term expiry, the co-chairs will try to create a pool of willing candidates.

Achilleas introduced the first presenter.

1. Declaration of Principles/ RIPE NCC’s Submission to the EU

Chris Buckridge, RIPE NCC

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/42-buckridge-ripe83-coopwg.pdf

Chris spoke of the Internet governance principles, such as protecting the open and distributed nature of the Internet and the usefulness of the multistakeholder approach. RIPE NCC recently responded to the EU consultation on the Declaration of Digital Principles proposing a stronger commitment to a “globally interoperable, unfragmented Internet”. Chris asked the RIPE community if we should document a set of RIPE principles to formalise our values and strengthen our arguments in governance discussions. Lastly, to get the conversation going, he presented a first draft of what these principles could look like, mostly taken from already existing RIPE policies.

Michele Neylon, Blacknight Solutions, asked if such principles can help when lobbying.

Chris explained that while we do not lobby, he believes policymakers will find it useful to have a concise document pointing to the values the RIPE community.

Alex de Joode, AMS-IX, and Peter Hessler, DENIC, asked if RIPE is only accountable to itself.

Chris answered that this statement was taken from the final report of the RIPE Accountability Task Force.

Brian Nisbet, HEAnet, asked if the RIPE Community has grown beyond IP addressing or if we should “stay in our lane” which might limit the scope of the principles.

Chris answered that this is a valuable conversation to have.

Leo Vegoda, And Polus LLC, commented that the statement of the RIPE Accountability Task Force was made on the basis that anyone can be a member of the RIPE community. Within the RIPE community we have accountability to each other, to the networks we distribute resources to and indirectly accountable to the users of those networks and to the users of the RIPE Database registration information. The reason these were not explicitly called out was because anyone interested can become a part of the RIPE community. He conceded that this could be written more explicitly.

Chris thanked the commenters and invited everyone to post their views in the Cooperation Working Group mailing list. He added that there are links in the RIPE Labs article that point to the RIPE policy or document each statement was taken from.

2. Update on NIS2 Developments

Suzanne Taylor, RIPE NCC

 This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/50-RIPE-83-Cooperation-NIS-2.pdf

Suzanne spoke of some possible unintended consequences of the NIS2 Directive – the pending update of the NIS Directive which came into force in 2018. The update wants to harmonise implementation among Member States by providing more detailed and precise definitions of essential and important entities and the respective requirements they need to fulfil. Essential entities, such as root and authoritative name servers, recursive resolvers, IXPs, TLD registries and name servers, cloud computing services, data centres, CDNs and trust providers fall under a strict supervisory regime that includes security requirements, compliance checks, incident reporting and the obligation to have an EU-based representative. Management and boards can be held personally liable, and the fines are significant. Suzanne went over RIPE NCC’s responses to the EU open consultations, which included concern about regulating non-EU root name server operators and the risk of other governments reciprocating, which could lead to a divergent Internet. RIPE NCC mentioned that the regulations proposed are too burdensome and could lead to a decrease of the number of name server operators, which will in turn reduce the resiliency of the system. Finally, we feared that the directive goes against the IANA stewardship transition and the multistakeholder approach. RIPE NCC engaged with relevant Members of the European Parliament and we recently found out that the Committee working on this file excluded root name servers from the regulation and there are signs that the European Council might do the same (both positions will be finalised voted on in December).

Michele Neylon, commented that the obligations outlined in the regulation apply to both registrars and registries.

Alexander Isavnin, Free Moscow University, asked if the RIPE NCC participates only in EU open consultations.

Suzanne answered that the RIPE NCC engages in open consultations from countries from all over our service region and that information about our contributions can be found on ripe.net.

3. IGF 2021, 6-12 December, Katowice, Poland, Hybrid Meeting Remarks

Anriette Esterhuysen, Chair of the UN Internet Governance Forum Multistakeholder Advisory Group

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/51-RIPE-83-IGF-2021.pdf

Anriette gave an update on the work of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The calls for nominations for the newly formed Leadership Panel, an advisory body, went out two weeks ago and the deadline is 29 November. There are two Best Practice Forums (BPFs): on cybersecurity agreements and norms and on gendered misinformation. There are also two new Policy Networks – one focusing on the environment and another on universal and meaningful access. Finally, there are over 22 Dynamic Coalitions on various topics such as accessibility, Internet values, IoT, security and more. Next, she told participants what to expect from the upcoming 16th IGF in Katowice on 6-10 December. This year’s event will have more than 200 sessions grouped in several tracks. Focus will be put on universal access, economic and social inclusion, emerging regulations, environmental sustainability, Internet governance ecosystems and trust and security.

Maria Hall, RIPE NCC Executive Board, asked what the background for the IGF Leadership programme was.

Anriette answered that the Secretary General of the UN proposed the establishment of new high-level body. The proposal was quite contentious and went through several open consultations. It wasn’t clear what it would do and how it would relate to the existing MAG. In the end the Secretary General decided that this high-level body will be called a Leadership Panel made up of all stakeholder groups and it will act as the interface between the IGF and the member state processes. The terms of reference are now available on the IGF website.

4. RIPE Database Requirements Task Force Recommendations

Peter Koch

This presentation is available at:
https://ripe83.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/53-RIPE83-COOP-DBTF-Koch.pdf

Peter explained that the report of the RIPE Database Requirements Task Force has been published as RIPE 767 and has been delivered to the RIPE Chair. It contains about a dozen of recommendations. In his talk Peter focused on the task force’s recommendation to include the full legal name, contact information and country code of resource holders. Secondly, the Task Force recommended that as resource holders have full responsibility over the registration of their IPv4 PA assignments, documenting them in the RIPE Database will stop being a policy requirement. Next, the task force recommended replacing personal objects with role objects. Finally, they could not reach a consensus on whether to publish the legal address of resource holders.

Desiree asked members to continue the discussion on the mailing list with regards to the presented Database Task Force recommendations relevant to the Cooperation WG and comment on a need for formulation of RIPE Community digital principles.