Vint Cerf - Open and universal Internet as an ecosystem for greater prosperity (Chennai)

Vint Cerf talk 'Open and universal Internet as an ecosystem for greater prosperity' at GRT Convention Centre, T. Nagar, Chennai on Friday 25 January 2013.

Presented by he Internet Society's India Chennai chapter (ISOC CHENNAI), along with TiE Chennai, and NASSCOM.

Program:

Welcome Address. Lakshmi Narayanan, CEO, Cognizant Technology Solutions &
President, TiE.

Opening Remarks by Sivasubramanian Muthusamy - President ISOC India Chennai

Introduction of the Speaker by R Ramaraj, founder, Sify Limited, former member of the ICANN Board

Vint Cerf - Open and universal Internet as an ecosystem for greater prosperity

Vote of Thanks by Srinivasan Viswanathan, Executive Director, TiE Chennai

[harp music]

[Lakshmi Narayanan] Good evening, everyone.

It's my pleasant duty this evening to welcome all of you

to this event.

This is an event that is jointly conducted by

TiE Chennai, NASSCOM, and the Internet Society.

I see many TiE members, governing council members,

participants, etc. Welcome to all of you.

This is one of those very important events.

We've been having a few of those recently in TiE.

The last time we were here was to listen to Kanwal Rekhi),

the original entrepreneur - the founder of the TiE network.

He spent an evening with charter members of TiE. That was in association with

the Madras Management Association.

Today we ae happt to collaborate with NASSCOM, the Internet Society.

Sivasubramanian from the Internet Society is here.

Ramaraj is here, the Past President, and he has just come here

after successfully completing TiEcon, the annual conference of

TiE Chennai, in Dedember.

Let me welcome all of you, and a special welcome to Dr. Vinton Grey Cerf,

who has been here -- many other people -- I was at a meeting

at the adjoining hotel. There are about three or four people

who immediately recognized him. So I asked them:..

Wow, you know about Dr, Cerf? He is saying:

We've been attending the IEEE event yesterday, we were with him today in another meeting, and i'm sure they are going to come and listen to him again this evening.

So they are all fascinated by your lectures. Thank you for being here. Let me conclude by welcoming once again.

I leave it back to (inaudible)

[MC] Thank you Lakshmi. May I now invite Mr. Sivasubramanian, President of Internet Society India, Chennai Chapter.

[Sivasubramanian Muthusumy] Good evening. Internet Society India Chennai Chapter is one of the 90 chapters

of the Internet Society, and at the Internet Society, we have chapters, and over 55,000 members.

And, the Internet Society is home to organisational,

i mean, the Internet Society is home to the Internet technical community,

also to the Internet Engineering Task Force, Internet Architecture Board,

and most of the standards for Internet is developed through these bodies, by open process.

And the Internet Society works very closely with ICANN and W3C.

And at the Internet Society Chennai chapter, we contribute to the Internet Governance policy making process

and take part in international forums related to Internet policy and technical development.

We have -- from the Internet Society, we have always wanted to have a program with the TIE, for a very long time,

and it has happened with the visit of Dr. Cerf.

And the topic chosen is with the purpose of asking Dr. Cerf to tell us how to build a Google, or a Facebook from India.

And to tell us that we don't need anybody's permission to do that.

We don't need licences to do that. That is what the Internet ecosystem is all about.

And also to ask you to take part in the policy process to provide inputs to governments to join the Internet Society,

to make sure that this environment of permissionless innovation is preserved, for us to prosper.

And I am enormously grateful to Dr. Cerf, for setting aside this time to take part in this meeting,

and he has been very kind,and we are also thankful to TiE.

Though it is a joint meeting, most of the work has been done by TiE.

As also the sponsorships, everything, literally everything was done by TIE. Thank you very much.

[MC] Thank you, Siva.

It is pleasure now to invite Ramaraj, Past President of TiE Chennai, also an advisor to the Internet Society, to introduce Dr. Vint Cerf.

[R. Ramaraj] Vint Cerf is known as one of the Fathers of the Internet.

He is currently the Internet evangelist, and rightly so, because not only did he create the Internet,

but since then, he has been travelling around the world to ensure there is a benevolent environment

in which the Internet can grow and flourish.

And so that is really what Vint has been doing all these years,

44 years now, since the Internet was invented by Vint and a few of his fellow scientists at UCLA.

At the 44th year, Internet is something that we take for granted.

It is ubiquitous, it is there, so much so that some countries are saying

that access to the Internet should be a fundamental right, and actually have made it so.

Our ministry of IT is considering that, in new buildings, as part of the completion certificate,

along with other utilities of electricity, water, etc.

access to the Internet is going to be one of the things that'll be mandated in new buildings.

So it's becoming more and more core to what is happening in our lives.

I just thought i'll touch upon a few issues and cross-roads I think we are at.

The first is, there are about 2 billion Internet users, about 140 million or so are from India.

Many of them access this using the mobile.

But there are another 4-5 billion who need to get included.

So one of the initiatives, that Vint did, many years ago, whicj is bearing fruit, is the starting of what is called

Internationalised Domain Names, or IDNs.

We have .IN in India. That is now available, or will be available shortly, in eight local scripts.

That is in Hindi, Tamil, Hazdot, Parat, Parat-tum, in Tamil, etc. in eight native local scripts, it's going to be available.

As a starting point to bring people, non-English speaking people onto the net,.

Similarly, it's gone into Arabia, China, Russia in local languages.

It's something that VInt started, and it is a starting point for how to get more people onto the Internet.

The second big initiative that was started which is now again starting to bear fruit, is IPv6.

IPv6, Vint is the honourary chairman of the IPv6 Forum, and IPv6 is something that is going to make the Internet of things a reality.

We are starting to see it already in the mobile phones, but we are seeing it in almost everything - cars, trucks

- and IPv6, those numbers are now available, compared to IPv4, almost limitless, in relative terms.

So, it is again something where we are going to see a serious impact in the way we think and use the Internet going forward.

A third area that is starting to impact is Internet Governance.

Vint helped start an orgnisation called ICANN

which is a not for profit organisation out of California.

It's the -- an organisation that focuses on Internet resources, names and numbers.

Names like .com, .org, .in, etc. -- .barrat

and IP addresses.

That's one, or a couple of those resources.

This was started, and I happened -- had the good fortune of being on the board at ICANN when Vint was the chairman.

And there, ICANN was started, keeping the fact that it's a multistakeholder model,

all of us can be part of Internet governance in the ICANN model.

It's got civil society, it's got technology people, it's got lawyyers - copyright lawyers, trademark lawyers,

it's got governments.

So it was multi-stakeholder, light-touch governance. But with the Internet becoming more and more influential

with events like the Arab Spring, there is a move to see how the Internet governance can be more tightly influenced by the government.

And I think part of what we are talking here, of an Open Internet, is how can we all participate in making sure that

this light-touch, multi-stakeholder model carries on.

So that's something, and it so happened that ICANN, and with a few influencers like Vint, spoke to Kapil Sibal,

and some of our Ministry of IT folks, who had a position saying

it is good for the Internet to have government set, globally.

And luckily they changed that, and have now taken the stance, that it should be multi-stakeholder driven,

and they said that at the IGF, where they said it should be multi-stakeholder model,.

this is the way inclusion will happen, this is the way innovation will happen,

and that's something that came out, luckily for us, that India has had the foresight to participate in that.

I think the last one I wanted to touch upon is Internet regulation.

Internet regulation is again coming up where people want to stat controlling content and behaviour.

We've had a stark example of two girls who said something on Facebook, and were arrested.

If they had written to the Editor of the TImes of India, instead of going onto Facebook,

offline media, would the police have arrested them, or would somebody have sued them?

So, the due process of law, for offline is getting accelerated, exaggerated, in the online world.

And therefore, how can we bring some sanity - it's a work in progress -

people don't know how to respond to something that creates this level of impact.

And so how can we all participate in making sure?

So, January 18th last year, there was a bill that was going to be passed in the United States

that would have in some way brought a degree of censorship to the Internet.

More than 10 million rallied around and got their both online, offline support, to say this is rubbish, itshould not happen.

And it was actually called "The Dark" --.many websites went dark.

And it has now been stated as Freedom Day for the Internet, so January 18th, just a few days ago,

was celebrated as the Freedom Day for the Internet.,

because the government of the United States said we will now rethink that bill,

and therefore that kind of censorship is not happening.

How can we participate, and ICANN, and other bodies, and ISOC,

which Shiva was talking about, are bodies in which we can all participate,

and actually influence, because multi-stakeholder model means Internet users,

to technical standards, to policy, government, all of that.

And we can actually participate.

And if you actually go to the ICANN.org site, that's one place where you could participate,

or ISOC.-- Siva is here, you could talk to him.

Let me come to introducing the speaker, which is really my task,

but I thought I would bring it in context of why we are so excited by the presence of Vint,

who not only helped invent this fantastic tool that we use,

but has also worked very hard to evangelise the Internet,

and see that there is a safe harbour for us all to use it.

Many pages of awards, so I won't go into all of them

I'll just highlight a few, Vint.

In 1997, President Clinton awarded the US National Medal for Technology.

in 2004, the Alan M. Turing award was given to Vint, which is considered to be the Nobel Prize of Computer Science.

It's a very unique prize that was given.

President Bush gave the Presidential Model of Freedom.

it's equal unto a Bharat Ratna, it's the highest civilian award that can be given, that was given.

There was the Japan Prize. Extraordinarily prestigious recognition from Japan.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame have inducted Vint for all the innovation that he has done.

The Stanford Engineering School calls him a hero, in that engineering school.

He was Chairman and founder of, helped found ICANN, founding President of ISOC.

On January 16th, President Obama invited Vint to join the board of Directors of the National Science Foundation.

This is a governing body for all science and technology in the United States,

including engineering and science education.

So these are just a few samples of the kind of awards and recognition that VInt has had.

There's one other aspect to Vint that I enjoyed, as on the board, outside of the Internet, he loves fine wine.

And one of the benefits we all had was great wine when Vint was around.

So Vint, thank you for that, and we all look forward to hearing to you, the stage is yours. Vint.

[Applause]

[Vint Cerf] Well, first of all, I really appreciate an opportunbity to speak with you,

particularly considering that many of you are part of the entrepreneurial business community,

and if there is any place that Internet can be leveraged,

it is in your hands.

I did want to mention a couple of -- Ramaraj, you covered a good deal of material

that I would have covered in my talk,

so I appreciate that. [laughter]

It saves me the trouble, and I will be able to emphasize other things.

With regard to anniversaries, though, I would like to mention a couple of them.

The Internet Society was started in 1992, on January 1st,

so it had it's 20th anniversary last year,

and we celebrated that in Geneva with a big party.

This year on January 1st, the Internet itself was actually turned on - it was 30 years ago.

It's not quite -- I'l come back to you with the 44 number in just a moment.

But, on January 1st 1983, we turned the Internet on,

and it's never been shut down since that time.