FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES ‑ ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2013
11:00 A.M. ‑ 12:30 P.M.
SESSION NO. 215
ENCOURAGING LOCALLY RELEVANT CONTENT TO GROW THE INTERNET
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> DOROTHY ATWOOD: I think we should get going so that we could have, hopefully, a lot of participation by you in the room. My name is Dorothy Attwood, and I work with the Disney Company and I'm moderating this panel on the encouraging locally relevant content in promoting the development of the Internet ecosystem. We have, I hope to be a very engaging discussion and we have some real experts in the field. I thought I would try to set it up a little bit at least from the perspective that we sit and considering bringing this panel together and bringing the experts that we have both here and remotely together.
We view this as seeing the role of content in driving Internet adoption as becoming ever more important. It's a phenomenon we've seen to be true all around the world. If there is content people want on the Internet, they'll flock to it. At the same time, as customers, go to the Internet, content creators will deliver content for them digitally. Policymakers see the same phenomenon. They are asking what they can do to encourage content their citizens will find relevant.
Today, here and in other sessions this week, we'll explore those questions and examine some of the practical measures that can be taken. This discussion is part of a series of workshops that examine the entire ecosystem that contributes to users having access to relevance access.
One of our partner panels, Workshop 49, titled, IXPs: Building, Sustaining and Governing them. We'll talk about how to build an IXP which can help keep traffic itself local and improve latency, delivery speed, and affordability. I encourage you to attend that discussion, that's tomorrow, Wednesday, at 4:30 in Room 1.
Another of our partner workshops will be a roundtable discussion of how these pieces fit together with the rest of the ecosystem, including access to venture capital. That workshop is Workshop 53, that's the Internet Ecosystem Evolution, and it's also tomorrow Room 6 at 9:00 a.m.
So as we talk about content creation here today, I encourage us to take a broad view of local content; to include all kinds of content developed to local audiences that's meaningful to their lives and interests and relevant to the communities they view themselves as belonging to. User generated content is one form professional content like that produced by Disney. Cultural preservation content which we'll hear a bit about today such as museum collections and content related to government services and information all play an important role in making the Internet relevant to local users.
There are many models that can be used to make content relevant. Most people are aware of the Hollywood blockbuster movie that has worldwide appeal, but may not be aware of other significant ways to provide locally relevant content. I'm going to give you a few examples from Disney and these will be the starting block for discussing many more examples today.
First, we localize major movies. What I mean by that, for our animated films in particular, we seek to have authentic local voices produced in country by local celebrities when we release the movie. For example, in Cars 2 ‑‑ maybe these aren't movies that are directly significant to you all, but they are beloved family movies. In Cars 2, we had 12 local celebrity actors just in Germany alone. For the Polish version, we had 9 additional actors. And throughout the world as we released the film, to have the voice, the local voice play the part as opposed to just dubbing the words or having an unconnected translation, we've found this highly successful in finding local people to speak the local words and that the participation and interest in this movie is absolutely magnifying.
Second, we also direct ‑‑ we directly invest in local movie and TV production. So we, for example, in Russia, we produced a live‑action film, Book of Masters, that was made by Russian cast, Russian writers and Russian directors. In China, we've done several movies, The Secret of the Magic Board, The Trial of the Panda. They were both live‑actions films, and created for the Chinese market by Chinese talent.
What's interesting about this dynamic, when they come back to other regions of the world with large Chinese populations, including in the U.S. and are quite successful for that fora.
Disney also owns UTV, which is huge Bollywood Studio in India and we had the largest box release of all time in Bollywood called Chennai Express. That has become, because of the Indian populations around the world, become incredibly popular in the US, UK, Middle East and Australia. Disney Channel worldwide has an original programming hub that makes TV shows for global markets. So we've had success in animated series called Jungle Junction, and that's available in 30 languages in 149 countries.
We also recreate concepts that are successful in one market but completely contextualize them and reconstruct them in another market. An example is the franchise called High School Musical and we have that being created in Argentina, Brazil, China, and other regions in Africa.
We also have developed learning‑base content. An example of that is Disney has 44 early learning centers in Shanghai, China. This is English language initiative for kids two to 12 which we teach English through a combination of Disney characters and advanced digital technology on an amazing white screen where kids learn English through interactive characters.
Today we'll talk about how to create an environment to encourage participation by local companies, a startup innovator for a company like Disney that has a global reach. I'm sure we'll hear about the importance of affordability and availability of infrastructure, and certainly those factors be discussed in our sister panel today referenced before.
We'll also focus on other factors that have a major impact on creating an environment to support a strong content industry. I suspect we'll hear about the importance of an environment supportive of free expression. For example, whether we're talking creative expression or political speech, freedom for the creative to express is absolutely critical. This includes freedom of the press, protection against harassment and abuse based on the views expressed.
Of course, freedom of expression isn't an unbounded principle, but talking about how and ways to support that free expression is something I hope we get into in this panel. I think we'll also hear about the need for trust in ecosystem, that includes privacy protection for creators and users, consumer protection infrastructure, develop consumer payment platforms, intellectual property protections, and other matters. All of these are needed to ensure that creators and users benefit from the value of the content.
I'm particularly excited to hear from our partner from the brand new Institute of Technology. We'll hear from him remotely. He'll share how that University is acting as a catalyst to build the technical know‑how necessary for local participators to grow the local economy in Indonesia. We have partnered with them and we're working with them on an pretty exciting product we hope with ITV to support a development of an at‑price competition. I'll let them talk a little bit about that.
I hope today we'll leave this session with a greater understanding of the role of content, as well as some clear examples of the policy environment and practical measures that can be taken to encourage content creation.
So now I would like to start by turning it over to our panel discussion. We're going to each in turn give a few remarks and then we'll hope to engage you all in a discussion and among ourselves.
I'd like to start with Rajnesh Singh of ISOC. He'll describe some of the findings of the study but he'll look at the role of the Internet in the ecosystem. Raj.
>> RAJNESH SINGH: Yes. Good morning. And thank you for the introduction and the framing of today's agenda.
You know, as I was thinking about what we were going to be discussing on this panel and I heard what we were going to discuss, it sounded like what we do in business society. So it's great. I think half my work is done.
I won't spend too much time on talking about the paper, it's a factual paper. Perhaps some of you might have read the paper, which is a joint effort between the ISOC and UNESCO. Basically the paper, what it showed is that there's a strong correlation between the development of infrastructure and the growth of local content.
I was on a panel yesterday and one gentleman asked me, you know, how we actually measure what impact there has been on local content. What's changed? How did it change? So that's something we are currently trying to find answers to. With this current paper, how that addressed some of the issues was looking at the visible topic, the main country code, the capita, how many Wikipedia articles have been generated, per language per capita, as well as look at the number of blocks that were available by capita. And things related to natural ‑‑ as broad brand penetration, Internet bandwidth per capita, how many IP addresses available by capita, et cetera. It's an interesting study.
If I remember the countries correctly, I think it's Egypt, Korea, France, Senegal, one more ‑‑ and I apologize, I can't remember the other one. The ‑‑ what I wanted to get at, though, is that, you know, we particularly in the Asia Pacific where I reside, and I think as well in communities around the world, communities have a rich heritage. Speaking about myself, I am a third, although from my name you would think I'm Indian, but I'm third generation born outside of India. My father wasn't born there. My grandfather wasn't born there either. But what happens is when they go back for a ‑‑ spread out across the world, spanning generations, there's always a linkage back to where you came from. Growing up as a kid, I heard the stories of we used to do this, it was like that, it was like that. Even those stories were secondhand because they did not experience it. They did not live in the northern part of India, or what is today India where we came from.
So now, more so than ever, you know, you have this longing to know what your cultural roots are. Growing up, I didn't actually have access to all that information. But today, very different. The Internet has completely empowered how we're able to access content and create content. There's a lot of things that I can find on the Internet now that my father or my grandfather had no idea existed about our own culture.
So I'm slightly digressing about what I was supposed to be speaking, I wanted to mention that because when we had a discussion outside it occurred to me there's a lot of conversation around this, not just numbers and things that we throw at it.
So, you know, and most of that tradition that comes out of this community, our heritage, has been song. It's been song and dance, things like that. There was no real written, no one was looking at things a couple 100 years ago. We're also at high risk of losing a lot of that cultural heritage. And I think the Internet is a great vehicle for us to be able to digitize that and keep us informed of how things were. I think the good professor will give an example later on.
I also have an example. We had a project with the Internet Society in India which we've been involved in the last couple years the location is a very rural part of India. It takes 10 hours to get to the location using a combination of trains, cars and walking. There was no connectivity before we went in. We deployed a community wireless network using WiFi, it's a very simple technology, nothing complicated. Over the last three years we have seen the impact it has had on that local ecosystem, shall I say. There was no connectivity. There was schools in the area, today 11 of them are wired up to the Internet. They've actually established computer labs so students can learn about whatever. I mean, it's just not just learning about ICDs, but a whole bunch of things. A cyber cafe just sprung up. So there's an ecosystem evolving where the economy has also been affected.
They produce a lot of local handy crafts in that area. Prior to that, to get market access they had to send it to someone in the closest city who would then sell it to someone else, and then it would start hitting the retail chain. Now e‑commerce from within that community and they're shipping it out from the village itself. So the point I'm trying to make is the Internet really, really empowers. Sometimes we forget how powerful that is. Seeing what's happened on the ground over the last two and a half, three years in that particular locality, I have been astounded on what a difference the Internet can make.
Also the availability of local content. What those people are doing there is generating local content. It's not excel content. They're generating content which is being used locally, be it information on their cultural heritage, be it information on how they do their traditional handy crafts, weaving and so on, as well as information on the topography, tourists. There are tourists flown into the area now because they know about this location. They know it's part of the old trade routes in India. So it's amazing how just the development of a small ecosystem can have such a large impact.
I think I'll stop there and hand over to someone else. I do hope to have a conversation around this later. Thank you.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Great. Why don't we turn to Enda. I'm sorry, I'm going to butcher everybody's name because I have trouble anyway. He's a well‑recognized blogger. I'd love to hear your thoughts about development of local content.
>> ENDA NASUTION: Thank you, Dorothy, and thank you guys for coming to session. I have several points that I was thinking about when I heard about the local content, developing local content. One of it is as a content creator. Actually, creating content is not that easy. We are assuming that people generate content all the time on the Internet. But, as a matter of fact, the good quality content is not that much. It's not that many out there.
There are a lot, and there are plenty of just so‑so content that you can consume and without having to pay anything, but good content could be produced by professional company or produced by a good quality content creator, for example. And I believe when Dorothy tell me about, about all the projects, the local content projects, this attention between globally produced content locally and local relevant content as well, I think.
Some of scaling up in terms of the production and production creating as well. Local content cannot compete with the globally produced content if you don't produce locally. So my point is that there should be a bit more. We're supposed to discuss the ecosystem where we can foster and can ‑‑ finding out which one of this content creator that so far has been doing and creating content for free. But now they can also go to another higher level where they can sustain the operation, or not operation, sustain their activities, by having ‑‑ getting enough revenue so they can do it full time. Because that's actually how you differentiate between people doing it for fun and people doing it professionally. Because there you do ‑‑ you create content through time. So when your livelihood depends on what you produce, then the content gets better and better.
One of the ideas that I have is that not only creating content online now, not only ‑‑ like, not only if you writing something, or you posting of photos, or you like creating figures, but we're sharing it like two different computers, or liking on Facebook and adding comment to that content is actually another kind of content as well. And the local content gets richer when there's interaction inside of it; right? So that's one of the point. There is so many different conversation and interaction that makes social media so interesting, because not only the original content, but you can also get a lot of people respond in that.
Second, is that this would be kind of simple operation on whatever path from the people already using that gets the content, there's some kind of revenue stream. One of the idea that I think is interesting, for example, if you have Twitter following and say you accumulate about 10,000 Twitter following, then you can have separate Twitter followers that paid to get your tweets, because there is a pay you on your tweets. It might not get the 10,000 people who follow you already for free to pay, but 10 percent out of that and they pay $1 a month is already a good preference that you can get. So that kind of communication came from that platform that can benefit, beneficial to the content. I think one of the ways where local content can be relevant and without having to compete with the global content that produce content professionally. So that's one.
I think I'm going stop there as well. That's okay. I think that's it for now, maybe we can continue on with discussion. Thank you.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: I really would like to talk about the observation of attention between that, because I think from our perspective and, you know, we are a global provider of content, so I'm going to have a point of view. But from our perspective, I think one of the areas that have been so interesting in the recent years has been, I think the ability to say, if you can have both a user‑generated content, the kind of content you're describing in terms of incrementally monetizable content, it can help build, create a community that is a virtue of cycling. It starts to build more local content. There isn't a competing between the types of content. There is actually a one plus one equals three. So I'd love to explore that more fully when we get into the discussion section.
Let me turn over to our remote participant ‑‑ oh, not here?
Okay. Well, then we'll go back to our remote participant.
(Off microphone.)
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Okay. I can turn to Janis. I think you have some very interesting observations in terms of context of UNESCO's role and, more broadly, the role that UNESCO plays in this whole discussion as we lead into some of the other global events.
>> JANIS KARKLINS: Thank you, Dorothy. Thank you for opportunity to speak about the issue which from UNESCO's perspective is one of the most important questions of the modern Internet. We tried to promote the local content creation as much as we can. In order to do so, of course, we need to understand what we ‑‑ what we are talking when we are saying local content.
There are a number of definitions of local content, but we prefer to use the definition that local content is an expression of individual and collective wisdom that is associated with a community, its language, location, profession/occupation, value, history and development.
As you see, the local content is very much associated with the language. If we look back 20 years, the majority of the content on the Internet was in English. And, of course, gradually it is changing. I have here statics in front of me suggesting that in 2011, there were 43 percent of English language speaking Internet users. 37 percent, Chinese. 30 ‑‑ sorry, excuse me. I'm looking to the wrong column.
26.8 percent of total Internet users were English speakers. 24, Chinese. 7.8, Spanish. Then almost 5, Japanese. And then in more or less three to four percent, Portuguese, German, Arabic, French, Russian. Two percent, Korean. In total, these 10 top languages represent 82 percent of all Internet users and remaining 5,990 languages existing on the planet represents 17.8 percent.
So clearly we see that there is a dominance of languages, but it is not any more predominance of English language. And estimate, of course, is that Chinese will take over and will become the biggest language on the net fairly soon.
Nevertheless, the content production is an issue. We thought what would be the incentives for the government ‑‑ (Audio difficulty.)
>> JANIS KARKLINS: ‑‑ what would be incentives for the government to invest in local content production?
As we heard, there are a lot of competing interests, especially in developing world. And why would government need to invest in local content production that there are bad roads and, you know, schools are falling apart, or theaters, roofs of theaters need to be fixed and so on. We thought economic angle would be the one that talked to governments. That was the origin of the proposal to OECD and ISOC, to look at this economic aspect of local content creation and to see if there is a correlation between the volume of local content which is kept on local Internet infrastructure and the price that internet users, local internet users are paying for the access to Internet locally.
There was already mentioning of this study. What I would like to say, that the first part, or the first page of the study was based on very primitive set of data. Nevertheless, we already got very ‑‑ so the conclusion that there is a direct link and correlation between local ‑‑ volume of local content and development of Internet infrastructure. What we couldn't prove until now is that there is also a link between the access price and development of local content. I think that this is the task for the second study which is now under construction. Running phase simply because we really find difficulties in finding data, aggregate data which would be useful for this purpose.
Nevertheless, logic suggests that with a fairly credible assumptions, first that the local Internet users would first seek local content and only then international content. That was the first assumption. And the second assumption, that the local traffic always would be cheaper than international traffic. With these two assumptions logic suggest the more local content you have on local infrastructure, the cheaper it would get for the local Internet users to consume that content.
There is also other aspects which already have been mentioned here, and that is the quality aspect. Local content certainly needs to be of quality. And then that would be also incentive for the government to create that local content in order to promote its own culture, its traditions to produce content for educational purposes. And here UNESCO is also working with governments not directly linked to the project.
And I was talking about that in order to invest in a development of educational materials which then would be published under open license and could be used, I'd say on a scale of the country or the same language speaking countries and that that content should be shared and that would drive also a price ‑‑ price of production of that content in principle down.
On cultural aspect, I would like also to mention that there is a lot of potential. For instance, yesterday we heard presentation of a project from UNESCO perspective is very interesting and contributes to both promotion of cultural diversity and access to cultural diversity from one side, and the other side promotion of local content creation, and I'm referring to the project of digitization Balinese palm leaf manuscripts. Professor Ron Jenkinson is here, he will maybe speak a little bit more about it.
But I think that type of activities which actually require some investment are really needed and should be promoted. If they can be done by using economic incentives, that's better. Otherwise, that was largely based on donations or charity of organizations who really care about it.
I also, I would like immediately react to the comment which was made that local content suffers and cannot compete with global. I don't think so. I think it is a local mentality which would sort of drive humans to be more curious about local events, local happenings, rather than go straight and look for the, ‑‑ what is happening in the world.
If you ‑‑ I mean, I can speak for myself coming from a country with 2 million people speaking language which is one of those 5,990 with a reach of 1.5 million people. Everything which is in Latin, but by default, is of my interest. I really don't care if we produce one movie per year. No matter what quality it is, all Latvians watch that movie. That is the fault. That's curiosity. And then, of course, we go to Disney and then we go to others. But local by definition is very important for local people. That is why there is a, maybe they cannot compete on global scale and local content most probably will never be ‑‑ will never make many people rich unless it is in one of the 10 dominant languages in the world. But for local communities, this is very, very important element and they, they're loyal customers.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Great. I hope we talk more about that too. Clearly, it's a very interesting aspect of local content creation story.
I think I ‑‑ it's a good segueway to talk to you, Professor Jenkins, about the work you're doing and give us a deeper sense of the true preservation of some local content that otherwise wouldn't be able to be shared in the future.
>> PROFESSOR JENKINS: Thank you. The project that I've been working on with a team of Balinese scholars and artists who were here yesterday, the whole team was here yesterday, but they can't be here today because today is the beginning of one of the most important Bali holidays. So everybody is busy making all the offerings that they will display tomorrow.
But the project is preservation of the texts that are written on palm leaf manuscripts and they're written in the old Balinese language. The letters of that alphabet are called Oxara, and Oxara in Sanskrit that means that which cannot be destroyed. But, unfortunately, the palm leaf manuscripts are not as indestructible as the Oxara image in the context of the Oxara. So they deteriorate over the course of 30 to 40 years. And in the past they've been re‑transcribed by hand every 30 or 40 years. But now the people who have the skill to do that are disappearing and people that have the patience and time to do that are disappearing. So these really precious manuscripts that are central to all the performances, ceremonies and local wisdom, the architecture, the Balinese architecture, for instance, is based on the transcripts. The ceremonies that priests do every day all over Bali are rooted in those manuscripts. The dance performances that have become famous all over the world tell stories from those manuscripts. But they are deteriorating and being eaten by bugs. And the Balinese language is also being spoken less and less by children in schools. So they learn it in school in Indonesia and English are taking over.
So there's a window of time, you know, maybe in 20 or 30 years, most of those manuscripts will be gone. I've been coming here for about 35 years studying theater. Theater is my specialty. But I realized that that all the theater performances and amazing stories that are told and updated with every performance, so the ancient stories are updated with references to current events, or terrorist bombings, or political corruption, they're all woven together into these old stories of their manuscripts. They're all rooted in these texts.
So the Internet Archive Foundation from San Francisco gave an infusion of funds to team of Balinese scholars and artists to digitize and photograph digitally all these manuscripts ‑‑ well, 3,000 of the primary manuscripts that are in the government's library collection.
They worked for two years, this team, together with me to photograph them and not only to preserve them, but to put them on a website. The Internet Archive Website so they're available for free any time to anyone in Bali and anyone all over the rest of the world. People have been coming to us, priests who live in remote villages have told us, oh, they're so happy now that they can see these and study them in a way that they couldn't because they're not ‑‑ not everyone can come to the central library in Denpasar.
So the ‑‑ and performers who use these texts to tell stories in the temple ceremonies also have told us that they use that. They've also told us how important the Oxara are. One of the performers said in one of his performances ‑‑ he did a performance about preserving the manuscripts when he knew that we were doing it. He wove it into one of his performances. He said something that he had said, he quoted from the manuscript dedicated to Saraswati. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of knowledge and wisdom. In that manuscript, he talked about if the Oxara, the Balinese alphabet dies, then the Balinese culture dies. He was very emphatic about that. His audience agreed with him, applauded. When he said that, understanding that really saving the alphabet, saving the text was essential to saving the life of the culture.
And he pointed to the building that he was performing in, and said the building that you're in now, the grass root is constructed according to principles that are laid out in these manuscripts. The stories that I'm telling you are from the manuscripts. The medicine that you use, the herbal medicine that you use to cure different diseases when you don't go to the western doctors, all that local wisdom about medicine, and local medicine, herbal medicine is preserved in those manuscripts. So he's been getting great feedback like that from people that appreciate that it’s being preserved.
So I guess I'll stop now and we can talk more if you have questions.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: That's terrific. I think we have our remote participant up and running. This is a good segue way as well, you're preserving the cultural heritage, the storytelling of generations. There's also efforts under way here in Indonesia to build new generation of content creators. That's at the university context. We're lucky to be joined by remote participation Dr. R A Satiusdi (phonetic), I think I pronounced it correct, who is at the Van Nung Institute of Technology and he's going to talk a little bit about what they're doing to educate the next generation of content creators here.
>> One moment.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Welcome. Do you know if he can hear us? We just can't hear him?
I think we're ‑‑ the technology is just a half step behind all of us right now. So it's a good plan, but I'm not sure we're up and running. While they work on it, how about we ‑‑ we'll chat among ourselves here while we wait.
Before we ask each other questions, do we have any questions in the audience? Okay. Great.
>> DON HOLLANDER: Thank you very much. My name is Don Hollander from the Pacific Internet Partners and I have two questions. The first is for Janis. I just wasn't sure, but you said there was a link between access price and local content. And I wasn't sure whether you said there is a link or there probably is a link and we just haven't studied it yet. So that's ‑‑ I just didn't understand that.
And you also said that you assumed that people are far more interested in local content than distant content. And I wonder if that's really, if that's based on data or is that just a, oh, well that makes sense to me so it must be true? Because I would think if you were interested in local information, you would have that anyway and you might use new technology to find out what's happening somewhere else.
So that's my questions for Janis, if I could.
And then Professor Jenkins, I thought, great project. As its being digitized and photographed, is it also being translated into other languages at the same time?
Thank you.
>> JANIS KARKLINS: Yeah. I saw your reaction and I knew that this is coming. Indeed I said that we wanted to prove that there is a positive correlation between the volume of local content which is kept on local Internet infrastructure and the access price that local Internet users are paying for that. And we proved that there is a correlation between volume of local content and the development of local Internet infrastructure. More Internet infrastructure is developed, more local content is available.
In other words, the infrastructure development and local content development goes more or less hand in hand. But we did not have sufficient data which would prove the second one, which for UNESCO would be a good conclusion and good argument in discussion with government. We hope that this will be able to ‑‑ that this will be proved in the second phase when we will fine tune our data gathering methodology and we will find the new sources of information because this information is not obvious. Most probably it is available, but we need to get to that source where this is available.
And you did hear correctly assumptions. And assumptions are not based on scientific proof, they are based on my personal experience being Latvian. As for any representative of small nation, the local content would always go first and then the international content. That is also one way how to prove it when you take a local newspaper, you would not see in the local newspaper international news on the first page. They would come maybe on the fourth, fifth, or sixth page, and in some cases, the last one. Local content is always ‑‑ local news are always on the front page of the newspaper and it's for reason; because people are more interested in local than immediately international.
Another assumption was that the local traffic would cost less than international traffic. Again, this is very simply common sense. Provided, provided that regulation is correct. Because, of course, there might be situations when local traffic might be more expensive than international, but then that is extreme case and certainly is not sustainable and no longer valid.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Okay. He's going right now and we'll answer the second part of your question just so he can participate.
Doctor, can you hear us and speak?
>> DR. R. A. S.: I cannot hear you, but I think you can hear me.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: We can hear you.
>> DR. R. A. S.: Okay. Superb.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Please, feel free to give us your observation.
>> DR. R. A. S.: Thank you.
So I think in 2013, we have a plan to ‑‑ particularly if you read my recent paper, then ‑‑ so basically we develop a way, a way to itemize ‑‑ do something that cannot be done before. But that's something that we have ‑‑ it's important that Bob ‑‑ who already published many literatures. Many literatures for Indonesian. So in 2014, we have plan to digitize all the works into ‑‑ pending. That's because we can immobilize the potential of the community into ‑‑ the thing we wanted to do. So I think the project that you have mentioned is very, very ‑‑ a lot of work and I can see how to do it in ‑‑ with the outcome that is beyond anything, especially now.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Okay. I think it's still a little tough to hear and understand, but I think it was discussion about the digitization that was underway at the university.
With that, I'm going turn it over to you to answer the question.
>> PROFESSOR JENKINS: Thank you for that question. It's a good observation because we know that that's absolutely essential to making this manuscripts acceptable and having people referring to them over and over again. Even in Bali, only priests and scholars and advanced students can really translate all these manuscripts. So we have translated a few. My Balinese colleague and I have created ‑‑ published a few books on translation that we put on the website for free. The website, by the way, is archive.org/details/Bali. All these manuscripts are there. And there are a few books that include translations. But the next step we're working on finding support for is the translation.
Translation not only into English, but also into Indonesian so that everybody in the whole country can have access to them. But that's really an essential step to getting people to really use it more and more. There's videos there also, videos of the performances based on those manuscripts. One of the books has a shadow puppet play translated in three languages; Balinese, English, and then Indonesian. That shadow puppet play starts with one of the manuscripts that tells the story from the Ramayana about one of the monkey generals who ‑‑ one of the demons who stole the identity of a monkey general to sneak into Rana's castle. But the story tellers tell that story, the shadow puppet master tells that story when he's recounting a copyright trial, he's landmark copyright trial that was going on in Bali at the time. It was the first trial where they were applying copyright law to a visual artist whose work had been forged.
So the theme of identity theft that was in the Ramayana story was transferred to the theme of identity theft in the modern world in copyright forging. And it's a great example of how the old stories are updated and made really relevant. We translated that one as a good example. But we want to translate many, many more of the texts.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: We have another question.
>> AUDIENCE: We have two questions. You first.
>> AUDIENCE: I think part of my question ‑‑ my name is Banad, from Kenya. I have a company called ‑‑
In terms of content, what it is we tried to use customers to generate content about different places they visit. In Africa we have a lot, Internet is growing, but we have lack of content. We try searching for things. The amount of content is improving, but that kind of finding places or finding information is still not ‑‑ it's very hard to compare with other places. So we are always thinking of ways of generating more content and digitizing and putting them on there.
Part of the question I need to ask I think has been dealt with. In terms of ‑‑ in Africa we have a lot of traditions, local content that is not necessarily written. So even you can't post about resolving lots of literature. But I think we should always think of ways of turning all our literature into ‑‑ even different kinds of cultural practices, we should think of different ways of digitizing them and making them accessible. I think, in terms of, there should be incentive to grow access. I think that role is going to create more ways of providing access for such content.
I don't know, but I think if you have incentives ‑‑ you might find out new ways of accessing some content that might be lost.
Another issue was we used to ‑‑ we just got our submarine cables in 2005. There was that issue of having cheaper access leads to growth of content. And for the longest time I think a lot of, a lot of the country complained about we don't have so many cables that the access to Internet is very, is very expensive, yet there are million‑dollar companies making a lot of money by selling music, local music using the local infrastructure.
So there was content, we are paying Internet, even though the content was local. We did not need the submarine cables to go overseas. Everything was kept in the country. But we are paying rates that were 10 times higher than other places because of the so‑called lack of submarine cables.
So in terms of regulation, the regulation is very hard to catch up with ‑‑ especially without the financial interest, varied interest, it's very hard for regulation to be sensible. People try to make money. So I think we should figure out ways in which we can ‑‑ policies like that.
I don't know if that made sense.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: It makes a lot of sense. It might be a great opportunity. I'd like to bring Raj into this. Because I know ISOC has done a lot of work in Africa in creating some more rational infrastructure for the transport of rich media because it was, at least it's my understanding, the undersea cables added capacity, but there was also routing issues where the traffic had to go in various different places that caused added costs. It also created problems with respect to latency and poor quality. With some investment that has been going on with private companies and also the government, you're seeing some great improvements in the infrastructure for quality content, which has led to more creation of quality content, both user generated as well as professional. If you want to comment on that.
>> RAJNESH SINGH: Yeah. And that basic piece of infrastructure, you called is an exchange point, so IXP. So I've been involved in setting up IXP for several years now. In Africa, we have a substantial project that addresses that specific issue.
So the issue you mentioned was ‑‑ let me give you scenario. Three IXPs in a city, each of those three use a different gateway to connect to the Internet. If there is no IXP to help between themselves locally, your cost will go up. Your data has to go to somewhere else, for example, to London and come back to you through the other IXP. So that's substantial add‑on cost. Of course, in the end the user will pay for that cost. When you subscribe to Internet connection, either you pay cost in terms of dollars you pay, or you pay by having lower speed connection, or higher latency connection, or things don't load because it's too slow because it's going to another continent and coming back again.
So IXPs are part of the local ecosystem, if you like. It's something that we've been promoting very heavily across the world, not just in Africa, but Asia as well. Asia Pacific has been somewhat lucky because the IXP, the speed has been on board for quite a while. However, that doesn't mean there's no need. Same thing with Latin America and so on.
So, as we start developing the local Internet ecosystem, you know, we also start thinking about, okay, now we've got the local content, but how do we actually ensure that local content is accessed in the most efficient manner, and IXP is one part of the puzzle. Not the only part, but one part of the puzzle. Of course, international connectivity is always a requirement. You need to connect with a global Internet because that's the thing about Internet; it's a network of networks. But at the very local level, IXPs are very important. Then you must have redundant international links as well.
While you were speaking it occurred to me we are talking about generating a lot of local content. The other issue is how do you actually find the local content and where do you keep it? If you keep it in the states and you access it from Kenya, okay, maybe not the most efficient solution. How do you index it? How do I know you created local content? Where do I go to find it? So there's some other questions I think we also need to look at as we go. Thanks.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Do we have some more questions?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I'm Mr. O, I'm from Denmark, from the ‑‑ Institute, which is government agency covering all aspects of film production and ‑‑ consumption in Denmark, including Internet issues and also ‑‑ and so on.
My ‑‑ you can say that Denmark is a very small country ‑‑ we have ‑‑ inhabitants and very strong film sake and also very strong from a business sector for many years. Just to give you an example, we create, let's say, around 20, 22 Danish feature films per year. This is 10 percent of the market. But we take up to 30 percent of the market share and we've done that for the last 15 years.
Okay. And our television penetration, our two public service stations, I think they have 80 penetration. So you can say we are a local content paradise in Denmark to a very large extent. I think we can compare ourselves to other European countries in this respect.
But in 2012, we had a shock because Netflix was coming in. We had iTunes coming in and we had HBO coming in at the same time. And a lot of people, especially young people, went to these services instead of watching Danish television, instead of watching Danish films. So we had some kind of shock, well, shock in Denmark, because can we keep up our local content community in Denmark having these other services also on the Internet?
So you can say my question is to UNESCO, the representative from UNESCO, when you look at the regulatory framework for, let's say, local service providers on the Internet, like streaming service or cable TV services and compare them to overseas services, what is actually at stake here and how do you cope with this from UNESCO side?
My question to Disney, not to Disney as a company, but more like being a company from Hollywood, how do you see the role of Hollywood in the future? Do you see Hollywood as having a stronger partnership with the local industries creating also professional content?
Thank you very much.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: I'll start and I'll hand it over to Janis. Couple things: One is the idea, and I will speak more from Disney as a broader company in both Hollywood, major motion pictures, as well as in our media products and our interactive products that are online products. We have seen the growth of the alternative platforms, the digital platforms as a market opportunity, not as a market threat.
It is ‑‑ it takes some adjusting from the perspective that business models had, you know, there the delivery of professional content had been ‑‑ had been a part of a particular kind of business model that involved windowing and it involved multiple ways of maximizing the IP investment. But Disney has always been in the forefront of adopting new technology.
So every time a new platform has come out, whether it's iTunes or Netflix, we have been the first major content studio to be a participant on the platform. Because we see the ingestion of the digital medium as an enhancement to our product and new ways to create content, whether behind the scenes kind of stories, whether they're localized in by using different kinds of actors and voices, those are all new markets for us. That's how we see that.
And as I mentioned at the outset, we also see the international community and local stories as being very significant as parts of the advancement of Disney's new view. Hollywood movies will always be a major element of our production. But in finding the creative storytelling, rich traditions of storytelling, we're finding them all over the world.
The Internet is actually a really interesting medium to find talent, to find new sources of material. And so it's actually in the acute self‑interest of Hollywood to be thinking global. And we certainly view it that way. We also have the same view, the digital medium is something that has been productive for us, that's why we're involved with this conversation here today. And I'll turn it to you.
>> JANIS KARKLINS: Thank you.
I cannot answer your question. Simply I don't know. I don't think that UNESCO has the capacity in analyzing the regulatory framework of each individual country. So we're looking at trends. And I don't, I don't think that we are doing this in ‑‑ am I right?
Yeah, we're not doing it, at least in this context that you are saying. We're doing some other things when it comes to regulatory framework, specifically on freedom of expression, looking at the existing regulations in our member states are conducive to freedom of media and freedom of expression on media, that respect, but not sort of how the local regulatory framework supports cultural production of cultural goods.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Holly from UNESCO to help answer the question.
>> HOLLY: I'm working together with Janis Karklins at UNESCO. Maybe a little bit to contribute to the answer that Janis Karklins said. We have recommendation which is, relates to universal access to information and multi‑lingualism. It is not a binding document at UNESCO, this is a nominative document. Every four years member states of UNESCO, including in Denmark, should provide reports; what kind of measures they took in the last four years to facilitate multi‑lingual cyberspace and that is included in local content. This is where it comes information to us what kind of changes took place in the last four years.
If we include in that report, those changes, we know about them. If not, we do additional research. We try to identify what kind of trends. But in reality we don't look at every single individual country to look what kind of new record of changes happen.
>> AUDIENCE: Well, I think the problem I'm not trying to address is not just a Danish problem. Just to give you an example, a Danish television series is not available on the Danish version of Netflix, but it's available on the American version of Netflix because the license ‑‑ sorry, the licensing agreement with the American Netflix is much easier to achieve compared to the European course. In Europe, we have to go through all 28 European countries in European Union in order to bring it out there.
Also, there's tradition that when you sell locally in Denmark, you keep ‑‑ you make a high price. But when you sell it to the American version of Netflix, well, just take it. Now we know the Danish people and all over the world they can access our Danish content on the American Netflix and they pay for it through the Danish Netflix. So it's a mess around licensing content. If you want to keep the professional economy of Denmark in order to continuously produce high‑quality content in Denmark, this is a huge problem and it's not totally Danish.
Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Finally, your turn.
>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. I'm from ISOC Kenya. Actually, UNESCO had a very good program in Nairobi where we were translating technical computer content into local languages. It was actually very good initiative. The point I want to get is about transition. Content development of traditionally been left to experts, like bloggers, web developers, which absolutely everybody can develop content. We live to sensitize the population that they have the capacity to build content, including teachers.
For example, all the teach ‑‑ when a teacher expires or retires, sorry, all the local experience that they have from their students, that goes with them because that content doesn't get digitized, for example. Same with ‑‑ all the relevant local information is collected. It goes up like that, all the experience.
The local farmer has a lot of relevant content that he can give to the community. So if we ‑‑ the local community, they can develop content on their own, not left to expire. That collectively would be very, very good idea. Thank you.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: We have another comment.
Sure.
>> ROBERT: Yes, thank you. My name is Robert, and I'm from the Netherlands, a young entrepreneur involved in several startups, as well as lead a huge group of 500 young fellows under 20 years old that are actually involved in building stuff.
One of the great things we see over there is actually connected young person from all kinds of countries build things together. What I want to tell today is why don't you open up your vision and change it in a way like Disney does? Seeing the way you can digitalize and put local content online is just a step of servicing and opening up your doors to the world.
It's a great thing your Danish series are viewable in the U.S. and in the Netherlands, as well. It needs a change of mind set to be able to open to the world, because opening to the world actually means, yes, you have to change the way you earn money. You have to change your business, your movies, and you have to adapt to the largest one. For example, Netflix. You say, okay, producers change their mind set. It's way to expose our artists and get them out there in the world and promote them and get revenue from, for example, our shows we do.
And I don't know the clear answer for how you can change the business model for a series like that, but all I want to say is change your ‑‑ try to adapt to the change and try to open up your vision to the world and change it to strategy to open up to different models and try and adapt to it because in the end if you have great content out there locally, it's even more awesome to have it out in the world open there.
Going back to the first question, or actually the larger question; how can we help governments or help multistakeholders to change their policy or what policy should they have to have a great impact on local content as well as pushing towards this global market or opening up doors to other people? I think that is the only important thing in your policy is try to encourage people and try to actually teach people English, as well, or Chinese maybe if that happens to be biggest language on the Internet, make it easier to open up. So that's one of the ideas I wanted to share with you.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: Okay. Please.
>> CAROLINE RANKIN: Hello. My name is Caroline Rankin, from the Communications Commission in Kenya. My question is with regards to comment made by UNESCO on incentives. You mentioned something about incentives by government to local content production. Do you feel that government should be involved in the development of the production or develop the necessary framework or environment to continue to create content production?
I always want to just highlight that we are sensitive or aware of issues of local content issues in Kenya and this was highlighted in our recently launched national global strategy for which we have applied some of the strategies to possibly change that content. But I would like UNESCO's view or proposal on how we could have governance participate.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: I'm going let him answer that. What I do, because we've had several representatives from Kenya here, I would like to say from the perspective of a business looking at opportunities in new regions, Kenya is one of the great examples of the framework in place that promotes both local ‑‑ the development of locally ‑‑ of local content, as well as locally relevant content from us.
Kenya has a tradition of freedom of expression. It has solid system of intellectual property protection. It has a developing e‑platform for payment systems, all of which are ingredients to being able to build a robust, a robust content generating community. And so I just ‑‑ I applaud the fact that we heard some bad examples of regulatory policy that may not be keeping up. I just think if we look at the climate in Kenya, it's really an example of a government that's taken a commitment to developing it.
>> JANIS KARKLINS: Thank you. I think the answer to your question is both. First and foremost, government should ensure there is a proper enabling environment which stimulates local content production in all its forms. Secondly, some part of the cultural industries are subsidized by government. And if governments need to sort of decide where to allocate scarce resources, then there should be also political will of government to develop a certain amount of money to subsidize production of cultural goods locally.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm from Amman, Jordan. We're presenting at the society here. So a couple of questions, our friend the blogger here was talking about social media, about content, about different kinds of content, and then we talked about content that's generated regionally and then globally. I do agree that local content suffers. But then I would compare to a region of experience. But before that let me just ask, whose role is it to create content ‑‑ or rather quality content and how do we classify quality or just content of Internet?
From a regional experience, I mean the social transformation which has happened in our region, one would think that a quantum leap in the production and content to social networks had happened. Yes, it is true that the Arabic language has jumped to the seventh position on the list of top 10 languages on the Internet. But ‑‑ not yet. Our language on the web only constitutes to less than one percent on the Internet, and that's a bit too scary, especially given what's happened recently.
If we want to talk about content, we have not seen a region that's produced more content than the Arab world in the last couple years. If all of that hasn't been counted as content, then what is content?
So far for the Arab region to reach 50 percent marked by 2015, that's by the U.N., is quite a challenge. Wikipedia said in its report, that's 2010. That's out of 125 million articles ‑‑ 15 million articles on the Internet, only 15,000 ‑‑ only 15 out of 15 million was in Arabic. 500 articles were reported by Wikipedia to be quality articles. The rest were not verified.
So that brings me to ‑‑ that brings us to less than 0.82 percent of really quality content in Arabic on the Internet. So the same question, what makes good content? What is good content? What's the rule? Whose role is it to produce good content?
We're presenting Civil Society here and looking at UNESCO. I have a question, what is UNESCO doing in order to kind of motivate the society to produce content? For example, library is the right place to produce content. Aren't NGOs supposed to encourage people to produce content? Thank you.
>> DOROTHY ATWOOD: Enda, do you want to comment on that, because you are, in fact ‑‑
>> ENDA NASUTION: Thank you. I think one thing we can agree here today, there is a lot of valid content out there. Right? So we haven't yet begun to categorize what kind of content you are talking about. There is one ‑‑ local content that is fantasy, like Professor Jenkins trying to protect; right?
So that one, I've seen that as a noble effort to protect and preserve local content that already exists. And without protection, we will be gone forever. So that's one which I'm not sure I've seen any business model out of that. So either you need to have government try to protect it or someone like Professor Jenkins trying to protect it. But so far you put it on the Internet for free without anybody having to pay for it and there is ‑‑ there is no business coming out of that; right? So that one category is of protecting the local content.
And the other part of content is, like you mention, the good content is I think content that ‑‑ in my opinion, and this is not based on any data or anything, but just my assumption is that content that people are willing to pay or pay attention to. So it doesn't have to be in the amount of currency, but could be something that people are willing to go and put an effort to get it. Right? So there are plenty of ‑‑ in actual content, like what happened in the other world, I think categories under actual content. There is something else that is on YouTube now, for example, people still watching old videos of ‑‑ old video clip of songs from the '50s, from the '60s and it keep growing by the millions of people who watch that.
So, there is, again, there is that in another category. But what I'm interesting in, I think is also in the context of having unique people participating in this panel is that there is a new online and digital creating this new platform where nowadays people who create content can easily, if they're good, they can easily get this producing channels without having to impress on anything. They can instantly getting revenue. Compensated and they can get revenue out of that and competing with the global content producers.
And so this kind of content, local content needs to have sustainability and support to be able to keep producing the content, the local one.
So education is, of course, one of them that needs to be stronger. Infrastructure is another. Also freedom of expression. Of course, these are all the things that we ‑‑ regularly basic requirements if you want to create good content. So I think one of the things that come up from this discussion is that we should map out all of the different content, that is ‑‑ (audio difficulty.)
>> DOROTHY ATWOOD: So we running into the end of our time now. We have one more question.
I wanted to give an opportunity for anyone on the panel to mention ‑‑ I think it's ‑‑ that was a fitting conclusion for what we've been talking about because there we've talked about all the different forms of content, as well as the institution or capacity available to generate that content.
It's unfortunate that our colleague from the university wasn't able to fully participate because they are doing very interesting things at the Van Nung Institute of Technology, the University. One of the things that we've done, for example, in building ‑‑ trying to create helpful monetizing the incentives for the creation of locally developed content is building prizes and app awards which Disney is building here and with the University here and in Indonesia, and would like to do that elsewhere precisely for the kinds of things we talked about where early on it's very difficult to get local voices to have the financial support, which, you know, you're acutely aware of as a blogger, and trying to find ways to have your voices heard.
But as the business model and the costs of producing that come down, and the interest globally of that content both directions; both in terms of locally relevant content to individuals is realized, local content that is more broadly interesting to interest the global community, I think you're going to see more and more, hopefully more and more capacity being built into the Internet economy overall.
Do you have any concluding comments that you want to make?
>> ENDA NASUTION: Well, thanks, I think it's been an interesting discussion. I think it covered many different spheres of ‑‑ well, many different dimensions perhaps.
So I don't want to say too much, all I wanted to say is that technology, it’s really up to us how we use technology. The Internet has been seen and been proven to be an empowering thing that has came out the last 20 years in the public domain. It's really up to us as individuals and users what to do with it.
Apart from that, I would like to address what's quality content? How do you define this and that? So another saying my grandfather used to say to me, "One man's treasure is another man's rubbish."
Thank you.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: I want to thank you all for coming and I want to thank our panelists for engaging conversation.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
(Session ended 12:30 p.m.)
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