Internet Society – Bulgaria

File:Isoc bulgaria logo.jpg

ISOC-Bulgaria Logo

Internet Society - Bulgaria is a non-governmental organization (NGO), founded on December 4, 1995 in Sofia by a group of Bulgarian Internet professionals.

History

ISOC-Bulgaria was founded in 1995. It became known worldwide in 1999, when it sued the government of Ivan Kostov against the proposed licensing of the Internet Service Providers in Bulgaria.

In 2001, through ISOC-Bulgaria's influence, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) remained outside of the monopoly of the national telecom, which allowed a great variety of new Internet services to start in Bulgaria.

ISOC-Bulgaria is a non-governmental organization for public profit, and represents users.

Activities

ISOC-Bulgaria is currently involved in a number of projects, related to usage and promotion of free and open source software, among them:

• FOSS - the Free and Open Source Software Project for SEEurope,
• tOSSad - towards Open Source Software adoption and dissemination, or
• FLOSS world - Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Worldwide impact study.

In 2005–2006 ISOC-Bulgaria launched the Bulgarian version of Creative Commons.

ISOC Bulgaria was a key player during the WSIS (2002–2005).

Before that, in 1999 and in 2001 through its influence, Bulgaria became the first country to legally accept full freedom of access to the Internet by changing its Telecommunications Law, which leaves the domain name system and the IP Address allocation outside of the control of the government.

ISOC Bulgaria has been actively involved in the Global Internet Policy Initiative (GIPI), headed by George Sadowsky, and has contributed to formation of governmental IT-policy in a number of countries, not only in Bulgaria.

Members

Among hundreds of its members are the current Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, the former President Peter Stoyanov, former prime ministers Sergey Stanishev and Ivan Kostov, many politiicans, IT-experts, journalists, and many others.

Board

ISOC-Bulgaria board consists of:

• Veni Markovski - chairman and CEO
• Dimitar Ganchev - secretary
• Albena Arnaudova - member

More information

ISOC-Bulgaria is an official chapter of the international Internet Society, based in Reston, Virginia and Geneva, Switzerland. More information can be found at ISOC-Bulgaria's web site isoc.bg.