CGI.br

Type:	Non-Profit
Industry:	Internet
Founded:	1995
Country:	Brazil
Employees:	51-200
Website:	http://www.cgi.br
Key People
Hartmut Richard Glaser, CEO Rubens Kuhl, Product Marketing Manager

The Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil (CGI.br) or the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee is a multi-stakeholder organization responsible for promoting the technological development of Internet services and to disseminate information regarding the latest innovations and available services in Brazil. It is responsible for the management and operation of Brazil's country code top-level domain name (ccTLD), .br. Nic.br serves as the executive arm of the Committee. It is responsible for coordinating the allocation of Autonomous System Numbers (ASN), IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, as well as the registration and maintenance of .br domain names. Registro.br provides back-end registry solutions.

Background

Brazil's Ministry of Communication (MC) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT) initiated the creation of the Internet Steering Committee, citing that such an organization would effectively promote public participation in decisions regarding the implementation, management and use of the Internet. It would also serve as a coordinating and integrating body to all members of the Internet Industry in Brazil.

CGI.br was established by Inter-ministerial Ordinance 147 on May 31, 1995; the members of the committee were appointed by Inter-ministerial Ordinance 183 on July 3 of the same year. The ordinances were later amended on September 3, 2003, by Presidential Decree 4,829, establishing the mission and procedural requirements for the Steering Committee.

The Committee has three working groups covering network engineering, computer security, and the training of human resources to provide technical, administrative and operational input to assist CGI.br in decisions and recommendations.

Membership

The committee is composed of 21 members, coming as representatives from government ministries and agencies, businesses, civil society, and the scientific community. The distribution of members is currently 12 from the private sector and 9 from the public sector.

Services and Activities

In 2005, CGI.br created Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto BR (NIC.br), or the Brazilian Network Information Center, a non-profit organization under the committee to help in the implementation of specific areas of services such as:

1. Registro.br- Since its establishment, NIC.br has been responsible for the administration and registration of the .br ccTLD. It also offers engineering and web hosting for the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Register (LACNIC). There are approximately 1.6 million domain names already registered under the .br TLD as of 2009.
2. CERT.br- is the Brazilian Computer Emergency Response Team, which is responsible for ensuring internet security. It provides support to network administrators and internet users in the country, is responsible for identifying new threats and malicious activities, and provides information and alerts to the Brazilian network. It also helps in establishing new Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) in Brazil.
3. CEPTRO.br- Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas em Tecnologia de Redes e Operações, or the Centre of Study and Research for Network and Operational Technologies, is responsible in the development and innovation of the internet's technical quality, with the goal of widening internet access in Brazil.
4. CETIC.br- Centro de Estudos sobre as Tecnologias da Informação e da Comunicação, or the Center of Studies on Information and Communication Technologies, is responsible for observing indicators and statistics about the availability and usage of the Internet. It collects data significant for monitoring the social and economic impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) in Brazil, especially in comparison with other countries.
5. W3C- NIC.br set up the first W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) office in South America. W3C's objective is to achieve the full potential of the internet by establishing standards and guidelines to ensure its continued development.

.br

.br is the country code top-level domain name (ccTLD) assigned to Brazil under the ISO-3166 standard.

.br & .бг Controversy

There has been ongoing debate over the multiple rejected applications by Bulgaria to ICANN to include its .бг in the IDN ccTLD Fast track process. ICANN staff has noted that .бг is confusingly similar to .br to latin users, and it has been countered that sites using full the full cyrillic alphabet, such as компания.бг, would rarely come into confusion with latin domains. ICANN has rejected the application on at least two occasions, in 2009 and 2010, and has also denied requests to provide further information on its reasoning and process in 2011. In July, 2012, after ICANN had rejected other IDN ccTLDs, notably involving the Greek version of .eu (.ελ), the GAC wrote to ICANN that it must explain its prior reasoning and reconsider its ruling on these apparently confusing IDN ccTLDs. The GAC believes that the organization is being "too conservative" in its rulings.

After .бг had been rejected for the second time in 2010, the Brazilian GAC member had praised the decision, saying "Brazil would like to express its support to the recent board’s decision about avoiding graphic similitude between new country codes and current country codes in Latin. This is particularly important inasmuch as any graphic confusion might facilitate phishing practices and all the problems related to it."

CGI.br and ICANN

As the official ccTLD Manager and operator of .br, CGI.br formalized its relationship with ICANN through the Accountability Framework program signed by both parties, as well as the exchange of correspondences between the two organizations citing their cooperation and commitment for the development and benefit of both the local and global Internet community.

In September, 2011, ICANN CEO, Rod Beckstrom, travelled to Brazil to deliver the keynote address at the Futurecom Information Technology Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In the speech he praised Brazil as one of the few countries that has adopted a multi-stakeholder model to manage its national Internet infrastructure. He also acknowledged the organization's important work with IPv6 deployment. Mr. Beckstrom also discussed the new gTLD program, and stressed the fact that applying for a new extension also meant being ready to run a registry.

New gTLDs

NIC.br has applied for the new gTLDs, .bom and .final. "Bom" translates as "good" while "final" is equivalent to the same word in English, as in "end".