Introduction
Developments in 2009 The first part of 2009 saw the Washington Belt trying to figure out the implications and future directions of President Obama’s Internet-related policy. Obama’s appointments to key Internet-related positions did not bring any major surprises. They followed his support for an open Internet. His team also pushed for the implementation of the principle of network neutrality in accordance with promises made during his election campaign. The highlight of 2009 was the conclusion of the Affirmation of Commitments between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce, which was to make ICANN a more independent organisation. While this move solved one problem in Internet governance – the US supervisory role of ICANN – it opened many new issues, such as the international position of ICANN, and the supervision of ICANN’s activities. The Affirmation of Commitments provided guidelines, but left many issues to be addressed in the forthcoming years. In November 2009, the fourth IGF was held in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. The main theme was the IGF’s future in view of the 2010 review of its mandate. In their submissions, stakeholders took a wide range of views on the future of the IGF. While most of them supported its continuation, there were major differences of opinion as to how the future IGF should be organised. China and many developing countries argued for the stronger anchoring of the IGF in the UN system, which would imply a more prominent role for governments. The USA, most developing countries, the business sector, and civil society argued for the preservation of the current IGF model. Developments in 2010 The main development in 2010 was the impact of fast-growing social media on the Internet governance debate, including the protectoin of privacy of users of social media platforms such as Facebook. In 2010, the main development in Internet geo-politics was US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s speech on freedom of expression on the Internet, in particular in relation to China.9 Google and Chinese authorities conflicted over the restricted access to Google-search in China. The conflict led to the closing of Google’s search operations in China. There were two important developments in the ICANN world. First was the introduction of the first non-ASCII domain names for Arabic and Chinese. By solving the problem of domain names in other languages, ICANN reduced the risk of the disintegration of the Internet DNS. Second was ICANN’s approval of the .xxx domain (adult materials). With this decision ICANN 11