IGF 2010
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
16 SEPTEMBER 10
1130
WORKSHOP 56
TRANSNATIONAL (OR TRANSBORDER)ENFORCEMENT
OF A NEW INFORMATION ORDER, ISSUES OF
RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY
********
Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
********
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Friends, we are waiting for one panelist to join us, so we will start in a couple of minutes. Thank you.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Okay. We are going to start. Thank you all for coming. I know it's a lot of confusion going on out there with a lot of workshops. Thank you once again to choose to come here and be with us today.
This is a workshop titled yes. Our remote moderator has come. And we have started without him actually. Okay. You're working on it.
It's called, transborder or transnational enforcement of a new information order, issues of rights and democracy.
It's being organised by the Civil Society Internet governance caucus, IT for change, and IT for change consumers.
I'll give you a brief background of what we're trying to get you engaged with here today. Before that I'll introduce my panelists to you today. Mr. Wilhelm Demida is from the ministry of justice. Thank you very much. Ministry of justice of Brazil. Some of you may know that Brazil is working on a framework for developing its internet policies. It's hugely well developed, very interesting multistakeholder model whose point of departure is civil rights framework and not the typical security or business interest, what happens in many other case places. So he will share with us what they are doing in Brazil. And we will see what we can learn from Brazil in this regard
Next to him is Max Senges from Google. So some of you must know Google. And can max was and is with many civil society groups. He is a part of internet rights and principles. He was the first chair of internet right and principle dynamic coalition. He continues to be associated with it. And that role has been very instrumental on doing a lot of thinking, writing, academic papers on internet rights. And we will try to find from him how they can be applied to shape a new global governance order.
Jeremy Malcolm is a coordinator of can you raise your hand, Jeremy? Jeremy Malcolm is the coordinator of Internet Governance Forum. He also represents consumers international here. He has done his Ph.D. on around multistakeholder involvement and has been a very key participant and contributor of new ideas about what multistakeholderism could mean to global governance. And I'll come back later to the issues which he may probably address today. To my left is Giacomo Mazzone representing the European Broadcasting Union which is a union of broadcasters. He does internet related work, EBU has been a very close association with civil society work in human rights areas and in many other progressive frameworks which we have always tried to develop.
We would like to find out what is the perspective of public service media on what we call, as the new information order. Mr. Milton Mueller was supposed to be with us. I'm not sure whether he forgot to come here or he didn't write in his diary or whatever. He may join us later. And we do really hope to also hear from him.
I'm Parminder Jeet Singh from IT for Change, we work on ICDs and social change. We are very interested in global advocacy around the internet. It is shaping our societies. The way it gets shaped has a lot of implications for the groups with which we work.
A small point on, many of you have curiosity of what does information order mean. What we're trying to discuss here and why did we call this thing as a new information order, this is Internet Governance Forum. And we talk about internet governance. And you haven't this instant the feeling that it's not really a technical thing, so it's much more. And the next thing we start thinking about knowledge and information is being reconstituted around the globe, the new information and knowledge orders. And probably what we are talking of here is governance of this information and knowledge systems which are becoming global.
But once you look beyond and you find that Google has been surpassed by Facebook as the most popular Web site, then you think it's not merely systems we are talking about. It's new social structures we are talking about. Social structures are changing globally. They are getting amalgamated. They're taking new forms. And what we are talking about, the beast which we are trying to deal with is not just the technology. It's not even the information order systems. It's new form of social structures which are emerging.
All of us know, behind these big changes, there is internet. And we can and we need to look at all of those things together. So just to, we tentatively named it as a new information order. So when we say "new information order," we mean all the global changes that are taking place. And the question in front of us today is, what is the way to govern this new social order that is emerging, whether there is a need to govern it at all, what type of politics should take shape around this new thing that is coming up and what is the implications of rights and democracy in the new government system of the new information order which we may all talk about.
So I would like you to suggest, how do you see at one level this changing social phenomenon, the new technology, the new information and knowledge systems, and new social structures which are emerging because of the internet.
Two, how do you think it can be best governed in public interest? And three, try to think of the possible governance mechanism in terms of right and democracy. And then the rest of it is completely an open house as far as we stay within these parameters of the discussion which we want to have.
My plan was to open with Milton, because he has written a book on states and networks, a new transnational internet governance order. But since he is not here, I would ask Mr. Wilhelm to talk about the practical experience, very tangible before we go to concepts, about how they have looked at this new information order, if I can say going beyond just internet governance and how they have decided to make governance, regime around it, how they included human rights and Democratic elements into it. And at the end of it, we'd also like to hear from him, what kind of suggestions he can give to develop an order on the basis of the work that we have been doing in Brazil.
>> Thank you, Parminder. Good morning. Let me tell you a little about some recent developments in Brazil which might be of interest for this discussion. We just had a year long process for discussion of human rights. I will first tell you what we did, why we did it, and how we did it. And at the conclusion, I will present some remarks from this process which may be useful for the international context of internet governance.
In Brazil, we do have an internet steering committee, the IBR, which manages critical resources and proposes recommendations for internet use and development. It's a multistakeholder entity with representatives from government, academia, private sector, and NGO's. And the steering committee has approved the green brochure, you might have received this. You might have seen this on the last days. And it proposes directives for internet governance in Brazil. This document really served as the inspiration for our project.
Despite the fact that we have a steering committee and directives for use, there are several projects under discussion in the Brazilian Congress. Most of them do not recognize the internet nature, structure, or principles. More than that, there were projects which had some strong and maybe invasive data retention provisions. And Brazilian framework for data protection is soon to be fully developed. So there was a serious risk on privacy rights. And for human rights concerning the internet. And this has led some organisations in Brazil to request government to propose illegal framework for internet in Brazil which would have a civil rights based approach.
People ask to be treated as citizens, not as potential criminals during their use of the internet. Upon that request, the Brazilian ministry of justice with the collaboration with the ministry of culture and the centre for foundation, which is a quite academic player in internet governance field in Brazil, we started the process to build jointly with all interested parties a civil rights oriented framework for the internet.
This initiative was based on the assumption that a project which dealt with individual liberties and obligations should be discussed openly and in a Democratic manner. Also we consider that maybe the best way to include people in a discussion concerning internet was the use of internet tools.
This way we set up a Web site for the discussion of what has been called a civil rights internet framework. In order to facilitate and foster online participation, the project was built on a Brazilian social network which is focused on the discussion of digital culture issues. And it is sponsored by the Brazilian minister of culture.
At first we presented a white paper for discussion in which we requested feedback on what should be regulated, how and why; which structure the discussion remained access. The first was user's rights. The second is the duties and liabilities of service providers. And the third was guidelines for public policies.
Its single topic in this white paper was fully open for no moderated comments and contributions. We used a blog and Twitter in the development of the project. And this project left to the drafting of a law. In the second page, after we built this law, we published also in the same format. So every single article or paragraph was open for comments or even for the suggestion of new words, new wording.
All data and reports were made open and publicly available. And so activists used open data and provided good inputs and analysis using data mining and visualization tools which helped in the development of the project. So we would try to use openness as a procedure, not only as a goal.
Overall, we had more than 2000 comments and suggestions. And they have been thoroughly read and analyzed. And they led in the first phase for the drafting of the law, and in the second phase for the correction and improvement of the bill of law. Such draft bill of law which has approximately 30 articles expressly recognizes several user's rights such as the right to access, privacy, data protection and others. It has safe harbor provisions concerning liability for third party content. It has the requirement of court orders for the provision of personal data. And it brings several directives for governments.
Several issues concerning internet governance in general such as intellectual property, management of critical internet resources, spam, and others, have not been directly addressed. The bill intends to set up a series of principles rather than being overregulatory. The goal was to foster and promote the internet, helping the Brazilian legal system and Brazilian legal authorities to understand and respect the internet's nature and values instead of drafting a bill to tame the internet.
The current version of the bill of law is now under final discussion in the Brazilian government and shall be sent to the Brazilian Congress before the end of this year.
From this very enriching experience, we have learned some lessons which certainly apply to the internet governance process in an international level as well. They might be, some of them might be a little obvious, but they fully apply to our experience.
The first remark is, openness is good and transparency is even better. We followed closely all the contributions and participations, but we did not moderate participation at all. All received opinions have been published, even though who initially didn't want to, even those which we have received from companies by e mail. In each and every case would insist, and we got the authorization to expressly public on the Web site every position we received.
Also content was made fully open. And we had several benefits from that, such as legitimacy, third party data analysis, clearer and stronger arguments, and many other benefits.
A second remark is, it is collaborative, you shouldn't try to do it all on your own. So engage your partners. We had several partners within the Brazilian government and Brazilian society. The Brazilian diplomatic corps have a role in developing information about experiences. The Brazilian ministry of culture helped with our Web site, our academic collaborators from the foundation helped to manage the discussions. Brazilian internet steering committee, Brazilian telecommunications agency and several other governmental authorities provided great input.
More than that, we didn't take the time to make the awareness events, but we participated and we tried to be part in all that we have been all that have been organised by civil society.
A third remark, promoting diversity, is fundamental. It's important to try to engage not only the social aspects but also groups which do not have an interest in the matter. This is not easy but it should be a permanent goal. It's also important to engage representatives from different sides of the debate. In our case, we had contributions from the motion picture association and from the Pirate Party, from Brazilian Bar Association and from our federal body. And from telecom companies and pro consumer, protection agencies and many other groups.
A fourth remark, and I think we feel this also in a forum like this, is that citizens participate more freely than institutions. As long as individuals, they talk for themselves. In institutions, they talk on behalf of groups. So it's easier to engage in discussions with individuals. And they still have some problem with respect to engaging in online discussions. They prefer to present a consolidated position rather than interacting and it is something we still have a lot to work on.
A fifth remark is that online tools are necessary for online democracy. The internet allows the engagement of new stakeholders. And regular internet users, they are already used to some forms of participation. And so this forum, could and should be used for popular participation. And it's important to state that there's no prior or correct formula for that. The most liquid solution may change from case to case. The use of technology tools is useful not only to foster the debate but also to structure and analyze its results.
A sixth and last remark is that we should always start from the principles. It's easy to get things done when you have a clear vision of your goals and where you're coming from. Basically legal work principles, which may work as a common ground, and further develop regulation and may be a good approach.
Well, I hope these remarks may be useful to our discussions here and to internet internet governance discussions in general either on a more global or regional level. Thank you for the opportunity for letting me take part in this debate. I'll keep my participation in the debate. Thank you.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Thank you very much. It was an excellent starting point for all of us to start a very, I hope, an engaging discussion.
What we have here, and I want your attention to the fact that Brazil has managed to start the process of internet policy making which came from the civil society side and not from the government. It has been completely participative. It has opened up departments of the government itself. And it is taking human rights as its point of departure and not security, censor ship, State controls or business interests, what typically has happened in many other countries.
And they're so close to finalizing this first set of principles that as Mr. Wilhelm has said, it has already been taken to the it is almost time to take it to the Congress.
What I think we'd like to discuss, what Brazil did do, can we do together globally. I know there are different circumstances. The globe doesn't have a government as Brazil has. But let's try to see from what we have seen happen in Brazil whether we can learn something from this model.
And now I would ask Milton Mueller to intervene. I like the last point which Mr. Wilhelm made, start from some principles. It's much easier to start from some principles and go to specifics. Milton at tomorrow time did advocate convention frameworks for developing some kind of global principles, I understand. His new book talks about some transnational networks. The book's name is, state networks I'm sorry. I forgot the second part, which Milton will certainly remind us about.
So what is it and I know Milton likes to talk to very practical kind of conditions. What is it that we can do really today to move to a possible set of principles and internet governance rules which are needed internationally and what do you suggest we do next, Milton?
>> MILTON: Thank you, Parminder. Can everybody hear me okay? All right. Thank you for inviting me to this. I apologize for being late. I simply entered it into my calendar wrong. The name of the book he mentioned is "Networks and states, the global politics of internet governance."
And it's my attempt to systematically think through the global governance issues that have been posed by the internet and to also do a detailed historical analysis of the politics that have been evolving.
I think the underlying premise of my thinking about this now is that I want to know whether we can think radically about the migration of almost all major communication information policy issues away from the territorial nation state and into a global governance regime. And I'm trying to push that idea as far as I can. By the way, how much time do I have here, 15, 10
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: You would be able to come back a couple of times.
>> MILTON: So I think we know two things about internet governance. One of them is that our concepts of democracy and rights are rooted in a historical artifact, the nation state. And for some of the developed countries, this institutional forum is very old. It's been around for centuries. And for other countries, typically developing country, this institutional forum is fairly new and, in some cases, the democracy part isn't even there yet.
So if we're going to take communication and information policy out of that institutional development process and put it into a fully globalized new forum, then we do indeed have to build new institutions. We have to think carefully, not just about bringing stakeholders together for discussions but about what rights and what authority these institutions will have on a global basis.
And that is why I've always thought that ICANN and the debate over critical internet resources is so important, not because domain names and IP addresses are the most interesting policy issues in the world but that this is the first area to be institutionally very globalized.
And so when you look at the debates over ICANN and internet names and IP addresses, you are seeing the spearhead, the avant garde of the debates over the migration of this authority to a globalized institution. You're looking at some very interesting debates. ICANN tried to have global elections for its board members. We quickly abandoned that for various reasons, which we should discuss.
And there are good things and bad things to say about this regime. You know, the fact that it is private sector based has some strong points and some weak points. The fact that it sort of kept governments out has some bad things and some good things about it. The fact that governments are coming back in shows you all of the political tensions that happen when governments try to reassert their power in a globalized context.
So for example, the governmental advisory committee within ICANN is really a form of very unaccountable and change exercises of State power. The GAC feels that it is very weak, so it is always asserting it should be more influential in ICANN. To the rest us, the GAC is sort of able to threaten ICANN and intimidate it and ways that are unaccountable and can come up with positions that don't have to go back to the national legislature for ratification and are outside of the process of treaty formation.
I have the luxury as an academic of saying this is very interesting. As an activist, I have the enormous frustration of trying to deal with it. So let me hasten on here. The book explores in detail the concept of network governance and the degree to which network governance and peer production concepts coming out of the free software world provide alternative models of global governance. That's in a nutshell what I try to do theoretically. Let me give you one simple example of peer production of internet governance. And that is the spam black list. The spam black list is basically a peer generated list of sources of spam. It is unregulated in a formal legal sense, unregulated by governments. A bunch of techies, ones who hate spam, go around and identify it using e mail lists and so on, using volunteer labour. And they generate these lists of the sources of spam. There are many of these lists. Some of them are more strict than others. And then the internet service providers can choose to select one of these lists as a basis for blocking and filtering spam.
And then you have interesting questions about people who get on to one of these lists through no fault of their own and then they try to get off of it. So you have some interesting procedural issues. Some of these lists and some of these procedures are more transparent than others. But in general, peer production process should be fairly transparent because the information is nonproprietary and common.
So again, I don't have time to go into detail here, but I analyzed the pros and cons of this form of governance and suggested it as some kind of an alternative in certain cases.
I say there are four main drivers. One of them is critical internet resources, which I've already discussed. Another one is intellectual property, in particularly the global war on peer to peer file sharing, which I imagine you're pretty familiar with. I don't need to discuss it in great detail. But this is an exercise of global government which is very new and interesting in the sense that it's more rooted in nation states in that the intellectual property interests are using traditional legal mechanisms. But it is a globalized campaign, both by the resisters of intellectual property and the protecters of intellectual property.
And indeed, as these traditional legal mechanisms have failed fundamentally to stop peer to peer file sharing, we have seen a greater push to use the network itself as the policing device such as mechanisms like deep packet inspection and the three strikes and you're out mechanisms for enforcing intellectual property. So that's the second driver of global internet governance.
The third one, of course, is cyber security. There you see all kinds of new governance forums. I talked about the spam black list. We could call about Certs, that's c e r t s. We could talk about phishing and rapid take down mechanisms. You now see a reassertion of the traditional nation state and the militarization of this discussion.
Finally, there is content regulation, that is, censor ship. And again, you see the use of peer production forums. The internet Watch Foundation is discussed in detail in the book as a mechanism for peer reporting of illegal content which is examined by the Internet Watch Foundation and a black list is created or a take down process is created. No time to go into detail there.
So finally, I tried to redefine the political spectrum of the global politics. I know Perminder will love this chapter.
[ LAUGHTER ]
So I create two axis, two dimensional space. On the vertical axis, you can imagine networking versus hierarchy. Do you believe that should be hierarchy power or there should be loose affiliated forms of networking as a basis for governance. So imagine that as the vertical axis. On the horizontal axis, what is your institutional venue, is it national or transnational in scope. So on the upper right hand quadrant, you have pretty much where we are now, which is what I call network nationalism. On the lower right where you have strong national institutional venues and strong hierarchy, you have what I call in a very neutral way the cyber reactionaries. And that is the countries that really want to assert territorial sovereignty over the internet.
And then on the lower left where you have lots of hierarchy but a transnational scope, you have what I call global government atty. This is where many private sector, large multinational business interests are headed, although some civil society groups want to go there, too. But that's something to discuss. And then in the upper left, you have what I call denationalized liberalism, heavy reliance on looser network forms of governance and a transnational scope.
So that's an overview of the kind of issues I'd like to discuss here. Thank you very much.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Thank you, Milton. I have a couple of questions, but I would at this stage like to take about two or three questions from other participants for them to get engaged in this discussion right away. Would anybody like to pose questions to the two speakers who have spoken until now?
>> Audience: My name is Hendrik Johanssen. I'm a researcher. It's a question more or less to Milton. I guess this is more or less a question that public international law then has to decide, as far as we talk about cyberspace, there should not be any more sovereign states because otherwise, I don't see I don't only see this yes or no. And my question is just, I guess it's your approach that you want to have cyberspace being, no more sovereign states.
But then how do we get, build up all these policing enforcement things that are in our national sovereign states, get built into cyberspace because otherwise it will be an anarchy. So it's just a question, what ideas you have on that one.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I'll take one more question after that but allow two speakers, both speakers to answer this question rather than just Milton. I probably refer, Wilhelm, you answer the question first and then Milton. What happens to, how do the typical issues that are at present dealt by governments, security, etcetera, get dealt in a completely denationalized kind of environment which Milton may be would have spoken about which Milton has spoken about. And I probably am putting it into a shorter thing.
Guillarmo, would you like to answer that question?
>> Actually, that's the whole question. We still have some difficulties in harmonized national different interests on a global scale I think. Starting by principles is a good way. Dialogue is necessary in order to establish minimum consensus, standards on where are we heading to. And based on that, things might harmonize little by little.
>> Milton: That's indeed the great dilemma. I'm not going to answer that in a few minutes here. But let's take one particular area of governance, content regulation, and I'll tell you how I would like to handle that.
So for example, the peer production of censorship through institutions like the Internet Watch Foundation, what I liked about this originally was that they were finding out where child pornography was in the UK jurisdiction. They were reporting and they were using globalized reporting facilities. You could report something to them whether you were in the U.S. or Pakistan.
(Lost audio connection)
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I really think that's the way to go rather than that kind of blocking which gets done today. And also when you say that every country should restrict the jurisdiction within their own limits, and before I was going to mention as you mentioned, U.S. And U.S. is probably the country with which we should start that, how to just stay within your borders. I will allow you to make a very short comment and we'll go to the next question.
>> Audience: My comment is you just introduced again a national police, which to me on the public international law then requires that we still have sovereign states. And then I think we're mixing it up.
I think that the solution is that we probably still have several reasons to have these sovereign states but on the other hand, we should have an international principle that says that what is done legally in the cyber's own country cannot cause such a person to be charged in a foreign country or countries except for cases in extreme harm defined by the International Society, not a single group of states. And that is foreseeable and reasonable for the individual. Then I think we have at least something to build on.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I'll take one more question, the gentleman over there.
>> Audience. I have a question for Mr. Milton about the point he made on national boundaries. I want to pose a real life situation for this group and see if we can resolve this.
There is a bunch of writing that is going on which is interreligion, user generated content puts this on the Net. The government has about 10 minutes to decide whether to take this off or not. Otherwise, if the broadcast continues, there will be 50 more lives lost because of the riots that will follow from watching these riots which are always leading to religion.
In this very serious situation and in public interest, what is a national government supposed to do where they have about 15 minutes to make a decision because this stuff is already generated and being broadcast and it's live. So what happens in this situation? We don't have the luxury of these discussions. We don't have the luxury of policy dialogue. We don't even have the luxury of making phone calls to each other to find out. In a specific situation like that, what do national governments do? And I'd also want to pose the question about the cartoon controversy out of Europe which had lives lost in because of the riots that occurred in Asian countries because the Muslims took offense to what happened in Europe. That wasn't domestic anymore even though the cartoons appeared in a domestic newspaper.
Could you explain how this thing works in that arena?
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Milton, I think this question, the first part of it goes to the core of the problem. It has to be resolved one way or the other. And I would like you to briefly answer, but as I said, we would like to talk later on this kind of notice and take down regime, how it can be globalized. We may have a longer discussion. So just briefly answer the gentleman, please.
>> MILTON: But I need to know more about the context. Are you saying that there are videos of I understand the cartoon of Mohammed issue because I followed that. But I don't know the other one. You're saying that the videos are causing riots?
My response to that would that be the police responsibility is to be on the street preventing riots, not to be censoring the internet.
>> Audience: Developing countries simply don't have that kind of police.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I think this question probably wasn't answered in the full context. Is it a police job or government job. We are together considering it a government job. There is a video leading which is leading to the death of many people. This is a fact that happens. Everybody in a developing country
>> Audience: I haven't invented it. This happens every week. This is real.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: So to say that the police job is to be on the street, probably other government agencies, in general we're talking about a State function here. The State function is to be on the street and not to do anything about the video, that's what you are saying, Milton? Yes.
Jonathan, you may ask your original question, but if have you to make amends on this particular point as well, that would be welcome.
>> Jonathan Charles from the BBC. I'll ask this really in a personal capacity. Obviously as national broadcasters, we are very interested in the idea of what happens to our material when it appears unlaw fully on the internet and the difficulty of then getting redress for that on a cross border issue.
To give you an example, the BBC has just purchased and is just starting to broadcast the new series, an American series called "Madmen," very popular television series, for the first time with this new season, Season 4, we are broadcasting it within days of its broadcast in the United States. The reason was to try to make sure that piracy didn't undercut our market because our experience was that "Madmen" was appearing on the internet before we had a chance to broadcast it. That still hasn't worked. The whole of season 4 of madmen is available unlaw fully on a site on the internet. That undercuts the revenue of the) audio connection lost.)
We're far too narrow in our thinking, that we still think in this old fashioned way of nation states. And that's not really very good when you consider either the global world we live in or the global internet. But at the moment, the only redress we can try to have is on a national level. And it is problematic. And I can't see that any time soon that there is going to be a global take down mechanism available that really works. We can't exactly identify where these sites are or what's behind them.
>> So what do you propose?
>> I don't know. That really is the problem
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: We are going to, everybody who has spoken, they'll propose something. We'll move on now to the next set of speakers. We have Max Senges from Google. Google runs the global knowledge system kind of. I mean, they have in their motto to organise the global knowledge system. They do it remarkably well, I think. I think Google to be a prodigy, a genius who now they are struggling with model questions. They have done exceedingly well. They did organise our knowledge for us. Before I go for a meeting, I check out the person on Google and if he or she doesn't exist on Google, then, well, that changes things.
Now there is a private company whose motto was to do no evil. And they took up what was almost a public function, to organise the global knowledge. They did it remarkably well. Google is still one of the most loved companies. We would like to talk to them about, how do they see taking up certain public governance functions in trying to do what they have done. I know they have cultural experts for each country to see what is okay, what is not okay. They're doing a lot of difficult work. So I'd like to hear from Max, how does Google see its job, its mission, its business of organizing global knowledge and what are the global governance questions around it.
What do they think the way is to go forward in this regard. Max?
>> MAX SENGES: Thanks, Parminder. First of all, let me clarify that I think there's a big distinction between knowledge and information. And our mission is, in fact, to organise the world's information and make it universally useful. Knowledge is in our heads. Information is what we organise on the internet
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I thought useful information is knowledge, so if you are organizing information to make it useful, that's almost knowledge. That's a small point.
>> MAX SENGES: You don't want to get into that discussion with a philosopher.
[ LAUGHTER ]
Great. Let me start out by raising a couple of points in terms of the transnational and transborder aspects that obviously impose an enormous challenge for us to operate because, like all the other internet services that got started out of a garage, two people published something and all of a sudden, you reach the whole world. You know, when people take offense or when it's causing problems, it's not just in your jurisdiction but actually in all jurisdictions in the world. And of course, that brings us to all kinds of problems. Let me maybe highlight some of them in the context of the right to freedom of expression.
In some countries, even in Europe and the you had, you already have quite a distinction. Me coming from Germany, I can tell that you in our transparency tool where we do show how many requests come from the different countries, you would be quite surprised that Germany and Brazil and India actually feature relatively high. That's not necessarily because we have a very bad situation in terms of freedom of expression but because there is a legal system that is very well defined. When somebody takes an offense, they've tried to file a complaint. That gets registered in the system. So quite interesting situation, and I would say, in many cases, it gives you some leverage to, you know, try to do the right thing as you would say in some countries, freedom of expression or the lack thereof is used to request information about users, etcetera. And there we can, of course, is the case, are companies registered and run in the United States and the service comes out of the United States. So that's the legislation that applies.
Of course, it's a space where some negotiation is possible. And I think that is not always to the bad of the users which we are obviously trying to serve.
However, when you see the case, for example, of Turkey where YouTube has been blocked now for about two years, it is actually possible to use the international governance system that exists to try to bring forward the case that it is infringement or a trade barrier put forward because the service is not available in that country.
However, the global nature of the internet definitely requests global solutions. I'll come to that in a minute. Let me just point out one second aspect that I think the transborder aspect is very related to, and that is social media and the production from the individuals from all over the world. So I was in a session on social networking and privacy yesterday. And the colleague from Facebook had a lot of very difficult questions. I think he rightly assessed in his opening remarks that all the data protection, all the privacy regulation and laws that we have were thought to apply to a company or a state, originally a state, then maybe expanded to companies dealing with personal data or the data of people in doing good or bad things with it.
In Facebook, it is actually you and me dealing with each other on a platform, tagging each other on photos, doing things that maybe you don't want to have happen in terms of privacy. So there is a real change that again, I would think we need to come up with new paradigms. Basically, what you want to do is you want to start with a rights and principles that the Brazilians are doing that the internet rights and principles coalition are trying to work out and that google is very engaged in trying to promote through the global network initiative which I'll mention a couple of points in a minute.
But just to set the scene, it's really a conversation on Facebook is more like a conversation in the pub. If you happen to be in the same room and somebody starts to speak, I don't know, hates speech, defamation, whatever, it's up to the other individuals in the room to step in and there needs to be a gradual approach. So not only on a legal basis but a user responsible basis. For example, when you consider that YouTube is 24 hours uploaded every minute, how do you govern that or do you want YouTube to watch and say, this is okay, this is not okay.
I think it is a situation, you want to have users flag videos and distribute the governance among users. I guess the civil society stakeholder would be most appropriate in most cases.
So just a couple of points on the thoughts on the new information order, as you call it, or network governance. As Milton points out, I'm quite sure that most of you have taken notice and know about a project, a joint project by the Bergman centre, the EFF, Stanford Centre of Internet and Society called "Chilling effects."
Obviously they're not doing the notice and take down notice, but I think this is the kind of setup where different players come together and really recognize and try to promote transparency of good practices in that area. And I think if you're asking for proposals, I think that's the kind of stuff that we want to push forward. Actually Google is submitting information to "Chilling effects" on a standard process basis. Yes, I think that will be a very good idea.
In general, when we're talking about how to organise the space, I'm totally on the same page, our Brazilian colleagues, human rights are the most fundamental basis for this kind of arrangements. And this is why Google, Microsoft, Yahoo. And some smaller companies have joined together with colleagues from civil society, next to me is another participant from Human Rights First. I think this is really the way forward on a global network initiative, actually does develop in several phases. I think we're just seeing the beginning of something that will from its functional point much view become a very interesting tool for engaging and discussing on a multistakeholder level.
On a more, I guess, theoretic note, next to the networking theory, seeing the network as a complex adaptive system is a very useful concept and model to think about internet governance because it really represents this procedure, the process of taking government and the individual stakeholders. Again, the user responsibility might be one of the most difficult but most essential parts to stress in that kind of environment because we're talking about a a lot about rights. Since it was formulated in a very nice way, that all rights come with responsibilities, and that is a much more difficult thing to talk about in these kind of setups.
You asked for constructive contributions. Let me share with you some of the essential principles for broadband policy that we at Google are working on. There are four of them, no blocking or degrading of lawful internet traffic. So except for spam and DOS attacks and similar, the traffic should be forwarded and transmitted, no anticompetitive behavior, so no favorization of your own content, for example, or similar arrangements.
Transparency of relevant information, so if there is traffic management going on, it has to be made clear how it is happening, under what conditions. I would add from my personal capacity, it would be great to have that in realtime, if you do a Skype call, they tell if you there is a problem here or there, we can't do video anymore. We downgrade you to a voice call, things like that. That would be very helpful.
And last but not least, the governments have a role to play as sort of a last resort. I would not think that governments which tend to be a little bit slow in their responses and an internet realtime developments as the question from before also rightly pointed out is really important. To have organisations, self government solutions but have the government as an oversight and enforcement role and lags resort. Thank you.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Are you saying. I think Google, if I am right, suggested that they would be more comfortable if they had some global norms of what kind of content needs to be removed. There is a global system of notice and take down and a set of procedure, and if they're globally agreed, it's good for Google
>> MAX SENGES: That is true. There is an excellent article in the "New York Times" where the processes for organizing the content and takedown from YouTube is described in detail featuring long statements by Cynthia Wong, one of our legal colleagues. Obviously, that needs the right forum to be developed. And that hasn't really emerged yet, I think, or at least we haven't taken it up here at the IGF. The process hasn't started, but we are interested
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Thank you. Maybe we could take it up. We have one area, like notice and take down and other sort of network management principles which you talked about. And I think these two areas which probably would be early areas on which global consensus could be sought and we would be making progress.
I move to my next speaker here, Giacomo Mazzone, from the European Broadcasting Union, bringing a media perspective to the internet and how they are grappling with these changes.
They came up with the idea that information should be a public interest commodity. And all the commercially available or even voluntary contributed information may not be enough to serve the public interest. And there has to be public effort put in to create the content which serves wider public interest.
Now, they are faced with a new phase where the internet is a commercial, places where people can contribute information. There's a lot of commercial information. And in this context, what happened to the public service media. In the plenary, the rapporteur, Frank, talked about how they have entered the forum of public media. The name has changed. Max was saying it's a pub situation. The gentleman did not think that a YouTube is a pub situation because it has public ramifications. It's publicly available. So it's neither a pub situation, and some people would like to say that facebook interactions are semiprivate.
So probably we are talking in this complex space of social media. One part is more public, which can be considered as public media. Another is social networking which just uses this public space but is more or less a pub kind of interaction.
Now we are talking about the public media space in social networking. How do broadcasters see the new rule. They wouldn't have enough money to, not compete but be monkey qualities of internet content which is available. I know they already see that part of the rule is now to encourage communities to create their own content. But within a framework which ensures certain parameters of public interest, and how do they propose to go forward on that. Giacomo, you can answer that question, but you can make your presentation, whatever you wanted to say.
>> GIACOMO MAZZONE: I don't have a presentation, but just a number of reflections I wanted to share with you. I think that the main point for all of us is that the position of the public service broadcasting is that we believe strongly that society is not only the sum of the individual needs, but there is a sphere for social interest that needs to be protected separately from the individuals.
I don't want to destroy the system.
So we work in this specific space. In the space where there is a social interest and social relevance that is different from the individual sum of the interests. The example that Max was making a few seconds ago was frightening me in the sense that when we talk of net neutrality, for instance, not all the videos are the same. Not all the videos that are on the network at the same time have the same value.
For instance, when there is a message of public interest, when there is the news coming out, there is a problem that this needs to be excessive and prior by the audience because there is a common interest. And there we come to the role of the public service broadcasters that we have a specific mission. The mission has been given to us by the contractible services with the different governmental states where we operate. We have a framework, very strong in the European space of legislation, for instance. And we are moving from what was the public service, broadcasting to the public service media. It means we integrate more and more according to the the position of the internet within our work. In this activity of migration as Milton was saying, really migration in this around the Serengeti in order to arrive at a new balance, then we have a lot of problems in ensuring the same protection of rights, human rights. We are obliged to stay within our field of public broadcast.
Just to give you an example, we have a mandate in Europe of reach 99 percent, in some countries 99.9 percent of countries with our signal because our signal is a signal that is to be used for emergencies, for any kind of information, is the signal around which you build the national community. How this could be insured in an internet world is something that needs to be discussed. In Europe, we have moss could you it could exist. It is a question to be discussed.
We have the mandate, of course, it could be fulfilled in a different way according to different countries, to provide an accurate, reliable and fair information. This is something that is in our agreements. We are paid by the license fee or by the text pair. How they could be made in the future is the internet. For instance, the business model is not there yet, how to protect some specific interests.
>> Can you speak for the minority, please, to provide, to protect the children. There it is challenging for us. We would be in the social concern conservatives. I don't know where you would put him in the middle there. In the sense that we don't want, through this long travel of migration, to lose the focus. There was some common ground, but to apply the data becomes the main way to
>> Many other things to mention, but I don't want to spoil your day because there is a problem. We are not against the peer to peer. I want to be sure. Our mission is that the content that we produce is mainly national content are available, are made available to the largest possible part of the population in all possible platform, in all possible ways.
But then there is a problem of remuneration and respect of the copyright owner and of the owners and creators. If we don't remunerate them, we will have a problem. There is a problem involving diversification sources. The fact that the Washington Post in the worst shock they gave us is closed, his offices in New York and Chicago. It's threatening. Who will pay for professional source, reliable sources on the field.
The gentleman before was mentioning the problem, how you could affect and create troubles worldwide talking about religious conflict. And then the problem is that professional mediation, the journalist is a professional mediator that needs to be concerned about the effect of the information that he's given, is concerned about the liability of information that is given, and so on.
If we jump out of this work of interpretation and professional mediation, then I will face the consequences. And so on. But I think that we have a long list of topics on which we would discuss later.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I think you ended in a very important note, Giacomo, about the system. That system which is diffuse and unknown could actually have much worse consequences on the public interest than a more public and transparent system in which the payments are being made. There's a huge amount of content today, but obviously the cost of it is being taken up by somebody, somebody who maybe he maybe something that is more transparent than what a public body do you want to say something?
>> Audience: Just a short question. In Europe, we have a very protective situation, but because we believe that the providing and contents reliable and good quality, it's based on our cultural, is part of the European model. The problem is that the date you rely on advertising resources, this advertising are shrinking. That's why most are closing down his office.
So there is a need to make available money from all people in order to guarantee this, a right that the market cannot fulfill as it was in the past.
>> Milton, a very short remark.
>> MILTON: I wonder, when you talk about the broadcasting model and the new environment, the question I raise is, who is the relevant public. Why are you linking that public to a nation state forum unless there are other possible definitions of the public, it is reimagine the nature of the public sphere and come up with ways of eating model.
>> Milton, I would love to discuss the new global public with you. We may have time to exchange at least one item on that issue. I'll go to my last speaker, Jeremy Malcolm. Giocomo spoke about having some copyright from the public, because those kind of revenue: And I understand Jeremy will speak about what kind of information regimes exist now and what are the means of participation to them and what can be done to make them more.
>> Before I go on, can I ask a question to maximum following his presentation. Max, I was interested in one of the global policies, that seems to be quite a big loophole because I'm an Australia citizen. I am living in Malaysia. Although I am not supposed to talk about specific countries at the IGF, I am going to do it anyway. It is illegal to host an us a trail there's an award winning documentary video that is illegal to host in Australia.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Very good.
>> Audience: First of all, this is not an approved, official policy. This is policy principles that we're working on. It's like all the efforts in this area. I think we think it's a good idea. To answer your question, I would say that this is exactly the difficulty that I raised in the very beginning, that Google is an person in this case apply to American law in the first, many complexities that get involved when you incorporate agreement. The service and language, etcetera, etcetera. I think we have to take it in a separate discussion
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I think we will talk, we are already talking about what kind.
>> My comments are going to be based around a paper that has actually been published to date in a research paper series by the American University, Washington College of Law. If you want the URL, come to me. It's called public representation in global IP policies and institutions. I did have some slides prepared. However, if I was going to give my slide presentation, then the starting point would have been government.
>>> Between populations and governments represent and their activities in global institutions that the further apart, the further removed from the citizens, the governments are, the less accountable they are for the decisions they make. The way of addressing that is to add an additional accountable through civil society, through representation of civil society in those governance institutions. And we don't really have a standard for public participation in global governance except in a couple of narrow contexts. The internet governments context, which you'll global management of the internet should be transparent, Democratic and with the full involvement of all the organisations in their respective roles. With the making of public policy limited to governments.
That is limited. We do know they have transparency and Democratic principles enshrined in the Tunis agenda. That's a guideline for the government to follow. And certainly in the environmental regime, we have the Aris convention which follows on from the Rio declaration, which actually goes a little bit further than the WISIS documents. It requires the right to access environmental information, the right to public participation and decision making and access to justice that is independent review of any decision that doesn't follow those principles of right to public participation and so on.
So similar to the WISIS documents, we have transparency. We have the right to public participation. It's phrased slightly differently. And the phrasing in the ARIS convention is better because it talks about you have to access during the preparation of normative instruments at a time when your participation can be taken into account by a decision maker.
So it's quite specific. We don't have that in the IG regime. And we don't have anything about access to justice. Instead of access to justice, what we've got is a directive for the IGF to monitor the implementation of the WIS principles but other government institutions. We don't have any resource for the public role for the IGF. It's not a role that the IGF is actually doing, but it's there in the mandate anyway. For the internet governance regime, we do have some principles that should set out basic standards for transparency and public participation in the governance of those regimes.
We don't have anything more broadly that applies across the board to other institutions. The one that is of interest to me in this paper is IP, intellectual property, which touches on internet government. It doesn't touch on IP. That is broader than internet governance. There is no set of principles that how the public should be able to participate; and with policy making.
So what I've tried to do in the paper is look at some examples of existing institutions in the IP regime and try to pick out some principles or standards of transparency in public participation in that regime, and then apply those to the negotiation of the anticounterfeiting trade agreement to see whether ACTA comes up to scratch. Predictably, it doesn't.
The institutions that I've looked at includes soft lore institutions as well as hard lore institutions. We looking at the hard lore institutions, we have WIPO and the WTO. And they actually are pretty strong in terms of their transparency. Most of the public documents are released. WIPO does allow civil society participants to give their input. Unfortunately, it's only after the government has spoken. So it's not really interactive like it is at the IGF. It's really, the government speaks itself, then the OEC has tried, it hasn't been transparent, but for its locking activities, there is a different approach. It recently grated a permanent individual ripped for several society. So that's a different thing. Rather than having observers, it's got a comment meant then going to the extreme.
We're all more there's actually very little authority at the institution. There's a sliding scale where you have hard lore institutions such as the WTO having relatively It was completely open to all stakeholders. You can say that at the very least, they should be access to the negotiating documents because the WIPO and the WTO at least provide that. There should be some norm. In WIPO, you can speak. What we have to be more worried about is after the you can download a copy of my paper.
>> PARMINDER: Thank you, Jeremy. I think the kind of issues go to what we are talking about today
We could possibly be thinking, let's say we need or we can move towards two issues. One is a global standards and just. The next is a second of network rue. That is a good set to start with. And then what common, to move from there to kind of get that principle any kind of comment
I apologize, there is no woman on the panel. We tried. I'm happy that I already have one.
>> Thank you. I'll stand out for the woman in the room. My name is Gianna. I'm a researcher in public law in Poland. I have, I have two questions. The first is, the discussion, I believe that the idea has already been partially mentioned. The key answer is to get the money. This is what has been mentioned, maybe not a real ground.
I have two questions. One question is directed. You're just representing an individual. I'm on to the users, right, with flagging. This is a popular option here. Many people are mentioning flagging. There last been an argument that has been raised already. This is, what about cyber sweat shops where people are paid to flag some content by the government, by lobbyists, etcetera, etcetera, so just distributing this power only among the user, this may not give the full Democratic intent that of the idea.
I'm all for total liberty on the internet. And I believe that the concept of quitting filtering is good. However, I was going to sort of alter the situation that has been proposed here. What happens, not if the internet is reflecting the violence in the real world but what if it is initiating the violence in the real world. Just a simple situation, where people set up a date on the internet. And they
(Audio connection lost)
>> You're right about the issue of what we mean by public. The difficulty is, for example, in the BBC's case, it is funded by a license fee. Members, everybody who owns a television set in the United Kingdom pays 144 pounds a year for the right to watch BBC and indeed all television programmes. And that gives the BBC the income of some $3 billion pounds a year. On top of this, the BBC supplements it by selling some of its programmes involved and commercial activities which bring in another billion pounds selling formats overseas.
So you're talking about 4 billion pounds of income. Are you saying to the British people, you need to be generous? Have you funded this wonderful broadcasting machine and you should give it as a gift to the world. If you're talking about a wider public, in effect, that might be what you're saying. That would be a very hard sell. They have to feel their investment is protected but also the BBC has to feel that
I think that there is a drive within commercial, BBC's public service outcome to look at other sources of income that. Is certainly the case. That is still hard. Sometimes within a short while, sometimes within minutes of your output being broadcast, it is available and pirated on the internet. That really undercuts attempts to charge for revenue. You could set up an internet site and say that your material is available that way. The difficulty is how do you do that, if people can search on the internet and find that material for free because it's been pirated. The answer to that question is very hard. There is no simple solution. Once it is broadcast and paid for, that is all yours. It undercuts the commercial revenues that add to the British public's efforts.
I accept there are solutions to be explored. I think the difficulty is that piracy undercuts those efforts.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Thank you, Jonathan. I think Milton was not expecting the British public to subsidize would love to hear what is this nature of new global public and what kind of interest it would only be based on to provide there are some funds to create some content.
>> Maybe I should just add to that, it does follow on from what Parminder was saying, the BBC makes about a 1 million, every year. What do you do about some, that's mainly
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: So does Milton have any ideas about a globe? I'm very interested in hearing about it.
>> We talk about it this way. In the 16th or 17th century versus an entire it is a television set text.
>> Yes, that's right. It would go into a gigantic global kit. You can see that this, the alignment of the nation, the political unit of governance with the it is going to break down with the media. The public broadcasters just have to get used. Maybe TV's will go away. I don't know. Do you pay a TV tax if you're which is available online in the it is better than a run of the we have to rethink what we mean by public interest.
Let me just put myself on the line, too. I'm an academic. I get subsidies
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: What's the difference between is it coming to you by, in the United States
>> They may give them money, the government is still giving money for some once you move from the
>> I'm afraid, Milton, that your insistence at the nation state is irrelevant that national law is no longer applicable. It is just plain nihilism. And the problem is to find ways to that are raised by internet. The rule of law let me maybe bind these together. Some questions are dealt with more than other instruments. Institutions that take responsibility I would say that the example of flagging YouTube videos, it started off as a good idea and then in the process of doing it, we realized that, for example, antievolutionists and have so we just recently started. It's more curators. It is easier than implementing it. Whatever Google product we're talking about, to get this right brings we're working on it
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: We have time for any more comments. Any questions to the panelists? The public that's you're talking about that's pirating, the British public.
>>> Is it actually possible to reconcile them? Are we trying to build a concept model, I just want you to tell me again just for me what do you think is, how to recognize the competing interests.
>> It's such a theoretical question. I think it deserves an answer that is on this topic. The approach which is where the different interest groups are. I want there to be local police forces to catch pickpockets. I'm saying that the internet as a the identity of identifying yourself as primarily, you know, an Italian or
I'm sure we will discover those areas of hard institutionalization such as ICANN where we need to create new environments of transnational scope
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I know that is at stake. I think what I'm not aware of Milton's solution. You can settle it has any meaning at all.
>> Okay. Got one.
>> There are two points that both are this is the most diverse environment.
>>> I don't see any problem recognizing myself in a the EU project
>>> There is some way to protect individuals. This is the effort that we need to do. It's difficult, I know. But I don't believe that I even though we take a the moment, instead of being I think that the reason that there is a need for something like that. And we will be wrapping up in five minutes.
>> I have a very small question. If you can give more information about this.
>>> Probably we can take it offline after that.
>>> I describe
>>> The specific sites that are shared as an informational
>>> We can talk.
>> I want the
>> A lot of things we can move forward.
>>> From our experience, we got, starting from human rights and building collaboratively, making things together. And then we can get things done.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: There is an international context that you would recommend?
>> That's why we are here. We're trying to find out which context would be better. IGF stands as an important place for discussion for that. Maybe we should take it a step further
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Thank you. Jeremy, what would be your one idea how to move forward from here?
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: I'm not deluded enough to think that this could actually happen, but the IGF could act on its mandate to promote and assist the fulfillment the WSIS process principles by making a statement against the way that it is being negotiated without any public participation or oversight.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Max?
>> MAX SENGES: I'm going to put it together in a very simple sentence: Let's do it. And I think we're already on the case. Everybody here does play a role one way or another. That's why we're here. For the companies, the private sector representatives in the way, come join. We are on the case. It's just a matter of time.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Before I move on to this and take comments from the participants, I make it more clear, let me suggest, would it be possible or practical or good and probably all of them that IGF, next IGF decides that there would be some working groups which would direct one on notice and takedown procedures internationally. The situations are perhaps taken up by the corporation. You have a clear set of two things going forward. What would you say to this, Milton and then Giacomo.
>> MILTON: I don't think the world is ready for a globalized notice and takedown procedure. I would rather see it start with a simpler on what is called the Democratic deficit, called by Jeremy. I would like to see the creation of some kind of Democratic accountability for ICANN. And it would make sense as a global institutional process.
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I agree. I don't think it affects real people outside IGF. Unless you get them excited, then it doesn't become a global issue. Is there anything else that you can get the global energy forces glowing saying, let's do this.
>> You can send we can send Parminder on a global tour.
>> One of the problems has been in this kind of thing, which I'm proposing is that we are too afraid of what my happen. It has to be a trade off finally. I'm even ready, there is some kind of procedure which has the 20 person things which are left to the government, but we make a lot of progress on 80 percent and that most of the things are done well, we would have made progress but if you keep on being frayed if we get governments sitting around a little bit. I think we won't move any step further.
>> I think it's a good idea. I don't think the time is right. This requires actually some research. And the internet intermediaries debate is going on. And I think maybe if you're talking about two years from now, I might support the idea, but I'd want to see some proposals, you know, in terms of what you mean by that. I wouldn't just want to have an open discussion of, you know, let's globalize notice and takedown. If both of us can, can we introduce it to
>> MILTON: We could have the Parminder and Milton show.
>> GIACOMO MAZZONE: First I have to say that we in Europe are not so afraid of the State as we are in the U.S. We can manage a better life with the State. But a part of that, there is a cultural perspective difference. I think that the most important thing is that the IGF is an exchange of best practices, is a place where we understand better the other problems and then we can modify our perception, our perspective, trying to integrate the problem of the others.
Of course, there is a point where it needs to be reinforced in something different.
What the IGF could do and, in my opinion, has to do as was said last year at the final remarks is to identify best practice, to tackle common problem, and to put on the ground all possible solutions and, and then hand over to somebody else
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Can you suggest who that somebody else might be?
>> GIACOMO MAZZONE: It's not a unique body. If it's cyber security, it could be, I don't know, an international treaty, if it's protection of minors. We don't have a unique sensibility, a unique priority position of the problems
>> PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Thank you very much. I think people are in a hurry to leave. Thank you very much for all of you for coming. Thanks to Milton, Max, Guillarmo, Jeremy, Giacomo, and Jonathan who joined. Thank you, everybody. Let's give a final round of applause for everybody here.
[ APPLAUSE ]
(End of meeting)