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Audience

The speakers expressed their gratitude multiple times to convey a deep sense of appreciation towards the recipients. Their repeated expressions of thanks reflected their sincere and profound gratitude. The speakers emphasised the importance of the recipients’ actions through the repetition of “Thank you,” showcasing the significance of their involvement. This repetition also conveyed a sense of urgency and intensity, as the speakers wanted to ensure their gratitude was properly communicated. Additionally, the repeated expressions of thanks affirmed the speakers’ gratitude and validated the positive impact the recipients had on their lives. By consistently expressing their appreciation, the speakers aimed to reinforce their gratitude and leave no doubt in the recipients’ minds about the depth of their thankfulness. In conclusion, the repeated “Thank you’s” highlighted the overwhelming appreciation of the speakers, emphasising the profound impact of the recipients. The repetitive nature of their expressions of gratitude reinforced the sincerity of their thanks, leaving no room for ambiguity.

Dilmar Villena

The Peruvian legislation on terrorism apology is facing criticism due to its failure to comply with human rights standards. One of the main concerns is that the current law does not require actual danger to be present for punishment; potential dangerous behaviour is sufficient for prosecution. This broad definition of what constitutes a threat allows for invasion of privacy and undermines the principles of proportionality and legality.

Furthermore, there is a sense of inequality in the criminalisation of the same action whether it occurs online or offline. This creates a discrepancy and can lead to unfair treatment and discrimination.

The lack of judicial reasoning in the prosecution of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) terrorism apology crimes is another significant issue. Insufficient steps are taken to verify account ownership during prosecution, and individuals can be punished even if they simply share or repost violent content without actually endorsing or supporting terrorism. Additionally, civil reparation amounts are standardised, disregarding any analysis of the harm done, further contributing to the perception of injustice.

The legislation’s broad and vague definition of terrorism apology also raises concerns about the potential suppression of freedom of speech. The public has been encouraged to report terrorism apology to a specific email address, which has the potential for misuse and may lead to the labelling of critics or government protesters as terrorists. This can stifle criticism against the government and limit free expression.

It is argued that there is a need for a careful and specific definition of terrorism, especially when it involves freedom of speech. The current situation in Peru demonstrates the potential for the suppression of speech against the government under the guise of counter-terrorism measures.

Overall, there is a concern about the possible dangers of excessive and poorly defined anti-terrorism laws. While legislation and regulation are often seen as solutions to perceived terrorist threats, they should be crafted with caution. The definition of terrorism and terrorism apology should be precise and account for the protection of freedom of speech rights. Striking a balance between counter-terrorism measures and the preservation of fundamental rights is crucial.

Camila

The analysis delves into various aspects of state protection, democracy, freedom of expression, and terrorism in Brazil. It emphasises the need to maintain a delicate balance, considering the unique circumstances of each jurisdiction. One key issue highlighted is the legal uncertainty in cybercrime cases, which arises from the wide range of potential punishments that judges can impose. This ambiguity has implications for fair and consistent application of the law in such cases.

Another significant challenge discussed is the definition and proof of terrorism, especially when examining communications. Brazil has witnessed cases resembling the Capitol invasion in the United States, with individuals being accused of attacks against the democratic state and terrorism. However, accurately determining evidence and establishing proof in such cases is a complex process. This difficulty raises questions about the effectiveness of current methods in defining and proving acts of terrorism based on communication-related evidence.

Furthermore, the analysis examines a proposed platform regulation bill that includes a duty of care provision. This bill addresses issues like content moderation, platform accountability, and transparency. It bears similarities to the Digital Services Act and aims to regulate online platform activities. However, concerns have been raised regarding the platforms’ ability to accurately identify content that constitutes terrorism. This issue raises doubts about the bill’s effectiveness in achieving its objectives and ensuring proper handling of terrorist-related content on digital platforms.

In conclusion, the analysis emphasises the importance of striking a balance between state protection, democracy, and freedom of expression while considering the unique contexts of different jurisdictions. The legal uncertainty surrounding cybercrime cases, the challenges of defining and proving terrorism based on communications, and the potential drawbacks of the proposed platform regulation bill are significant concerns. These observations shed light on the complexities involved and highlight the need for further examination and consideration to develop appropriate and comprehensive solutions.

Dilmar Villena:
expression of internet, taking into account the Peruvian case. Right now, well, like from four or five years ago, we have political unrest. And this is due to have some issues with freedom of speech on the internet. And we are going to be talking about the prosecutor of the crime of terrorism apology through ICT in Peru, in this case. I think that we need a little of historical context when we are going to be talking about this. During the 1980s, Peru experienced an internal armed conflict, primarily instigated by the terrorist group called Shining Path, but also involving the revolutionary movement known as Tupac Amaru. This group, Shining Path, initiated an armed uprisings against the Peruvian state, with the aim of overthrowing the existing legal and constitutional order at that time. Shining Path, this terrorist group, had a defined ideology, identifying themselves as Marxist, Leninist, Maoist. And their leader, Abimael Guzman, considered himself the fourth sword of Marxism, adding the Gonzalo thought to these three ideologies. But in reality, far from bringing a guerrilla movement seeking to promote a proletarian revolution, this indeed was a terrorist group. And this group committed numerous human rights violations and attacks, not only against Peruvian state, but also against unarmed civilian populations. They particularly targeted indigenous and native communities. Shining Path had a deeply racist ideology and aimed to exterminate the Andean and Amazonian indigenous people, viewing them as obstacles to Peru’s historical development. Throughout this internal conflict experienced by the Peruvian state, there were numerous human rights violations, not only done by this terrorist movement called Shining Path, but also done by the Peruvian government itself. Ayacucho was the region that suffered the most and was the most affected by this terrorist group, and also by this violence caused by the Peruvian state. Example of this includes the Lucanamarca and Soras massacres perpetrated by Shining Path, but also a Comarca massacre carried out by Peruvian state. The truth is that this period in Peruvian history led to a significant loss of life and led to a loss of thousands of lives that we haven’t seen in recent history nowadays. In order to combat these terrorist actions in Peru, our criminal code typified these type of crimes. And when we talk about terrorist offenses in Peru, it has four elements. One, it requires that anyone who incites, creates, or maintains a step of anxiety, alarm, or fear in the population. Two, engages in acts against life, body, health, personal freedom, and security, public building, roads, all of that. Three, it needs to be used firearms, material, explosive device, and any other means. And four, it needs to be capable of causing havoc or serious disruption of public peace or affect international relationships. But recently, in 2017, the crime of terrorism apology was recently put in our criminal code. And it said that if the exaltation, justification, or clarification is made for the crime of terrorism or any form or anyone that has been convicted by final judgment as author or participant of this crime, it says that the person should be punished with no less than four years or eight years in prison. But when this exaltation, justification, or clarification is done through ICTs, like we can say Facebook, Twitter, I don’t know, SMS, or anything that comes through technology, the penalty shall be no less than eight years, no more than 15 years. So we can see here that if you commit the crime of terrorist apology through ICT, your punishment will be far big than the one if you do it like a norm in a public square. In the first case, you’re going to have a penalty of no less than eight years. And in the second case, you’re going to have only a penalty of four years. So when we talk about terrorist apology and all the crimes related to freedom of speech, there are some jurisprudential and human rights criteria developed by our Inter-American Commission of Human Rights that is needed to be taken into account when we talk about terrorism apology. Indeed, in the report on human rights made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it says that for this offense to be compatible with freedom of expression in the Inter-American system, it must, at minimum, incite violence or similar actions and to have a likelihood of success. So it’s not accorded to our Inter-American Convention to punish terrorist apology just only by saying so. But you must incite violence. And also, this incitation needs to be a likelihood to succeed. And also, it establishes a set of criteria in order to apply the penalties for the offense. When the judge is applying this penalty, it needs to take into account some certain kinds of criteria. For example, the context of the situation. If it’s done through the middle of the conflict, also it needs to take into account the position of the individuals that make the expression and their labor or influence in society. It’s not the same common civil doing committing this crime or is being doing by a politician or maybe for a military chief. It’s also needed to be taken into account the harm caused or that could be caused. And it comes together with the minimum sets explained before. In order to sanction this crime, you need to incite violence and a likelihood of success. And when this happens, you have to take into account how many harm this caused. Another criteria is the utility of the information given. It’s not the same like, I don’t know, viva Presidente Gonzalo, that giving some information exactly about what did he done, what have he done, or what all the shining parts have done, and the type of communication medium used. But in the case of Peru, the Peruvian constitutional court, when have taken into its court a case related to terrorism apology, it said that the medium used must be capable of achieving publicity, spreading praise to an undetermined number of people, and also that the exaltation affects the democratic principles of plurality, tolerance, and the search of consensus. And this is very important. The Peruvian constitutional court says that it is not needed to have an actual danger. The Peruvian constitutional court interprets that in order to punish this crime, what this crime seeks is the potential dangerous behavior, rather than a specific harm or legal interest. So in the Peruvian case, there is no need to do to apologize the terrorist crime, but and be able to cause actual damage. Only it’s needed to, I don’t know, just to say to praise the terrorist person, and you will be punished by doing that. And also addresses the need to develop criminal policy in response to our reality. So there is, in the Peruvian case, we have these two differences. The Inter-American Commission says that in order for this crime to be compatible with the Inter-American Human Rights Convention, it needs to have potential and actual danger to human lives or public goods. But for the constitutional court, it is not needed, because it only punishes a general potential danger behavior, not the danger itself. So here we have our first, we can find on the Peruvian legislation that when we talk about freedom of speech, like the Peruvian parameters are not in accordance with the Inter-American parameters in this matter. And also, when we talk about freedom of speech parameters or human rights parameters in general, we have the Joint Declaration on Independence and Diversity of Media in the Digital Age of 2018, issued by the Special Reportees on Freedom of Expression. And what did it state? It said that states must refrain from enacting unnecessary or disproportionate laws that penalize or impose harsher sanctions on online expression compared to its offline equivalent. It means that when states criminalize some action, they must avoid, just because it’s done online, to have more strict penalties or higher penalties, rather than it’s done, I don’t know, in real life, we could say. So we can say here that also, Peruvian legislation is not in accordance to these human rights parameters. Because it’s like, if you do an apology of terrorism in a street or in a public square, you’ll only be sanctioned for four years. But if you do it through internet, you’re going to have eight years of penalty without taking into account any specific feature that could happen in this situation. So what do we see? That there are some issues with application of terrorism apology through ICT established in our criminal code. First, it can violate the right to equality. Why? Because if someone commits this crime in a public square, he will be punished with four years of prison. But if I do the same through internet, I don’t know, I have an Instagram account with one follower, and no one sees, I do the terrorism apology, I will be punished for eight years. So is this difference on the treatment of this crime reasonable? Why is this done? So there’s a first problem here of equality. Same actions are not treated the same, even though it isn’t taking into account how this could damage effectively. Also, the broad definition of what constitutes ICT is also a very big problem. Why? Because ICT can be committed to what we understand as ICT. It could be SMS. It could be an email. It could be WhatsApp. It could be telegram. So in order to prosecute this type of crimes, we could say that police or prosecutors will be entitled to access to private communications only because this terrorism apology is done through ICT. And at this point, we can have a reflection about if I have a private communication with a friend, and we are talking about it, and my friend supports what ShinyPath has done, as long as he supports what ShinyPath has done and he does it through WhatsApp messaging or through SMS, it will be possible to be punished through the prosecutor. So there’s also an issue, a very big problem here, related to privacy and in the communications. And also, this type of crime doesn’t take into account the diversity of platforms that we have right now on internet, because it’s not the same publishing or sharing some information on LinkedIn, or on Facebook, or on Twitter, or on Instagram, or whether we have a public account or more a private account. So this is a big problem here. Also, because it doesn’t take into account that platforms themselves have moderation systems that could lead to take down content before it spreads all around. For example, let’s say that someone committed the crime of apology through Facebook, and because it’s related to some kind of violence or terrorist group, the Facebook moderation system takes it down, takes that content down. So here, we are going to be having trouble. Prosecutors will be able to punish these type of actions, even though the content didn’t get to anybody because Facebook took it down. So this broad definition could also lead the prosecutor to punish some terrorism apology that haven’t took anyone to know what was talking about it. So this is the general legal and jurisprudential meanings we have about this crime. So how has the crime has been perceived in practice? At Diperderecho, we have done some research about how actual prosecutors and how actual judges were judging this type of crimes, terrorism apology through ICT. Here, we have a study of how the number of reports of ICT terrorism apology failed to be recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. So here, we have a study of how the number of reports of ICT terrorism apology failed to be recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. to the public prosecutor’s office. We can see that from 2019 to 2022, it doubled by a lot the count of reports of ICT terrorism fielded to the public prosecutor. And for 2023, on June, it was around 100 reports. What is also worrying about the prosecutor of this crime is, as you know, on December of past year, we have social unrest in Peru. This led to the Ministry of Interior to post this on its social media, telling people to report if they see some kind of terrorism apology through internet. They tell people to report, and they say that you could report these type of crimes to a specific email account. And this email account that people could report this terrorism apology was this, the one we can find here. And what happened? We asked for information about this email account and the number of reports that it received. 96% were dismissed. Actual cases that prosecutors have in their desk are like 2% of the cases. And why is this worrying? One will ask, why the Ministry of Interior wanted to prosecute more this crime through internet? And what happened on December of the past year, on January, most of the people that were protesting were marked by the government as terrorists. And without being actually terrorists, there were just people that were protesting, but government said that they were terrorists. And what happened is that everybody that was against the Peruvian government was marked a terrorist and were prosecuted. In this case, we have one case study. We were going to tell the person that was committed with this crime, Rodolfo. He was a student, 22 years old. What happened in this case is very important. Why? Because when we read the judge’s resolution, we can see that his Facebook account is actually accessible. Anybody could get this Facebook account. And what we could see is that this person that is being committed with this crime, he was a far-right person, a militant. So all of his posts was related to far-right or right ideology. And in his defense, he said that his account has been hacked, that he didn’t actually post the publication that has led him to have eight years of effective imprisonment. And what the prosecutor did in order to ensure that he was the one that actually had done this kind of post, he did some anthropology research and said that as long as the one that appears in the Facebook profile, the Facebook photo profile, is the same as the one that is seated here in the court, is the same, we can say that he committed the crime. That was the form that the prosecutor said that he indeed committed the crime. And after all of that, the verdict was that he received eight years of effective imprisonment and like $2,000 in civil reparations. We can see here that this was the post that was shared by this person in his account. And what we can see is he shared information about a Facebook page that is called Bandera Roja, we can say. He didn’t write the post himself, the account shared that information. That we can say that, yeah, he’s committing apology of the terrorist group and the terrorist person, Vimel Guzman. But the defense said that he didn’t post it. And we can ask why the attorney or the prosecutor didn’t judge or didn’t seek or didn’t take into trial or try to investigate who was behind this Facebook page, Bandera Roja. He didn’t do it. So even though we’re having all this information, this lack of judicial reason, we have this verdict of eight years of effective prison. Right now, we don’t know effectively if this person indeed committed the crime, but right now he’s in prison for eight years. When we talk digital apology, so how is the judicial reasoning here? There is a lack of account ownership verification in this process. The unlawful conduct that is being sanctioned here is the praising terrorist leaders and questioning and criticizing their trials. What left this person and what this post says is that that criticize the trial that come into account for Vimel Guzman. If it’s done through social media, simply posting or sharing content is an effective way to spread praise. Doesn’t matter if you indeed wrote it or you just share it. Maybe you could share it not on purpose, by mistake. It will also be prosecuted by this crime. And when we talk about civil reparation, we’ve reviewed four or five judges in this case, judicial cases. There was the same amount in all these five sentences. The amount was the same. Approximately $2,000. But there is no further analysis is conducted beyond confirming non-material harm. So why do ask for $2,000 civil reparation without analyzing if, I don’t know, the post on Facebook caused more harm through, or caused more harm rather than posting it on Instagram or posting it through X? We don’t know. In all the cases, it had $2,000 reparation without taking into account these specific matters. So at this point, we ask, are we against a persecution of dissent and infringement on freedom of expression of internet? We know because of the social unrest that happened in Peru on December or January, President Boluarte said that the people that were protesting were marked as terrorists. Also, one of the most influential congressmen said that all the people that are protesting are terrorists. So we have this problem here. If you say that everyone that is protesting against the government is called terrorist, and also anyone can report any type of criticism through the government done by social media, and you can report it to this specific email, well, what we are going to have is people no more is going to criticize the government through internet. So we can see what police indeed investigates in these cases. And it’s the problem that we have. At Diperderecho, we have fun here. Actual legislation that we have on terrorism apology doesn’t respect human rights standards. And it’s so wide open that everyone could be prosecuted by this crime. And it instigates to people that can never to not be more critical about Peruvian government no more. So that’s what I want to share with you. Here, Camila is going to have some comments about what is happening in Brazil, what we can take into account when we talk about terrorism on ICT.

Camila:
Thank you, Dilmar. Thank you for the invitation. Also, I have read your article about these issues. And it’s important to have this kind of balance of different rights when we are talking about this, because it’s complex. We have to consider the concrete case. And what we see is that we don’t have the silver bullet solution, but what is being applied is definitely not the best option. So we are trying to balance the protection of the state, the democracy, the freedom of expression. And each jurisdiction have a different way to balance it. But it’s important that you brought some inter-American parameters to do this. So we have some parameters that have to be followed, and they are not being followed. In Brazil, we also have this anti-terrorism law. It’s applied a little different, because it’s about exposing someone to a danger, to the peace, to the public safety. But in cybercrimes, we don’t have any specific amount, and you don’t have any specific sanction for cybercrimes. It’s a range. So you can be convicted for an imprisonment of 12 to 30 years. And when it is committed through cybercrime, the judge sees concretely how much is the imprisonment. This brings a challenge of legal uncertainty. So if it’s not in the law, the judge can also apply something that might be not that, not considering that much the specific case, but it has to be considered. So we have two opposite sides, too strict on that, but also too broad on that. So when we are talking about this beyond enhancing legislation, we also have to think on how we can qualify better the judges that are applying this kind of law. But to end, I would just like to talk a little about the Brazilian context, because beyond the law, we had recently some cases of, we had like a capital invasion in Brazil in January. It was 8 January, and these people are being sued also for attacks against the democratic state and also terrorism. We have a challenge on that, on how we deal with that, and how also the judges try to make the responsibilization of these people by assessing their communications. How do they prove that? And this is a challenge. This is one side. In the other side, that is also a consequence of this context, we have a platform regulation bill in Brazil. It’s similar to the DSA, which is the Digital Services Act, is related to content moderation, to responsibilization of platforms, to transparency. But we have two main dispositions that are important. The first one is duty of care, and the second one is the, how can I say, the safety measure when you have an imminent danger. The duty of care has to consider, has to make platforms diligent and mitigate illicit practices within the scope of their services, making an effort to improve, to combat the dissemination of illegal content generated by third parties. And this diligence also includes terrorism. From one side, duty of care is important for platforms. But in the other side, how to do that concretely? Do the platforms have the power to say what is terrorism and what is not? This is one challenge. And the other challenge is that they might be responsibilized, like a civil liability, when there is a specific case of imminent danger. So this is, well, it’s not a law. It’s a bill that we are contributing also in EDAC, in Digital Rights Network in Brazil, Coalizão Direitos na Rede. And it’s a challenge. How can we balance on this? Because from one side, people want to make these people liable for their action. But on the other side, we cannot be extremely surveillance. We cannot have surveillance. We have to consider the rights and how to balance it. I know that I didn’t give answers, but it’s great to hear from the Peruvian reality and also to understand in Brazil how we can compare them both. But it’s a challenge that we have to face in practice. So to be fast, that’s my contribution. Thank you for the invitation.

Dilmar Villena:
Thank you, Camila. And what we can think about is when we talk about terrorism, it’s very dangerous to have a wide definition of it because it can lead us to suppress critical point of views. And when we talk about freedom of expression, we have to be very careful about what type of speech can be suppressed or what kind of speech cannot be suppressed. So in the Peruvian case, we can see that effectively, some kind of speech and the speech against government is being suppressed right now. And what I can say is most of the times, we can think that legislation or regulation is needed because, I don’t know, there is a certain attack against one politician and these people is a terrorist, but it’s also needed a specific definition of what is terrorism. And when we talk about terrorism apology also, it’s needed to, it’s more difficult because we are not talking about actions that constitute terrorism, but kind of certain type of speech. And that’s it. Thank you very much, Camila. Thank you very much for being here. So I don’t know if we have any questions here or, or because the panel is ending right now, if we have any questions, we can talk outside and thank you very much for being here.

Audience:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Audience

The session on internet fragmentation, regulation, and governance explored several key arguments. One argument put forth was that the internet is inherently fragmented as a network of networks. This understanding recognises that the internet comprises various interconnected networks operated by individuals and companies. These individual fragments form the larger network that we know as the internet.

However, it was also acknowledged that harmful fragmentation poses a problem. Harmful fragmentation refers to instances where the fragmentation of the internet hinders its intended function. The session emphasised the need to address such harmful fragmentation to ensure the smooth operation and effectiveness of the internet.

The importance of adopting a layered policy approach was discussed during the session. A layered policy approach recognises that the internet operates on multiple layers, and different regulations may be required for each layer. This approach provides a framework to effectively govern the diverse aspects of the internet while accounting for the specificities of each layer.

The distinction between regulating on and off the internet was also highlighted. The Dutch government was cited as an example, as it has implemented a policy approach that distinguishes between regulations applicable to activities taking place on the internet and those occurring off the internet. By considering the borders and layers of the internet, policymakers can tailor regulations to ensure a balance between control and innovation.

Accountability within the public core of the internet was addressed as a challenging issue. It was noted that accountability issues related to the internet should be dealt with on an international level. The public core of the internet, due to its borderless nature, poses difficulties in terms of regulation. The session called for careful consideration and international cooperation to hold the public core of the internet accountable.

The importance of considering the public interest in formulating internet governance policies was emphasised. Policymakers were urged to make decisions that benefit society as a whole and create a better world. The session highlighted that public interest does not differentiate between different layers of the internet, and policies should reflect this holistic concern.

The session also touched upon the significance of global consensus in internet governance. It was argued that national interests should align with the interests of other nations to promote collaboration and cooperation. Finding a global consensus on matters of public interest was considered a crucial step towards harmonising internet governance frameworks.

The challenges posed by online bullying were discussed, particularly in relation to the internet’s amplification effect on the magnitude of bullying. The perplexing nature of dealing with bullying in the context of the internet was acknowledged.

The industry’s response to regulation proposals was also examined. The industry was criticised for frequently offering excuses when faced with new regulations. The need for the industry to mature and accept that it is not exempt from regulation, similar to other industries, was highlighted.

Technical knowledge was identified as essential in understanding the nuances of different technologies and their regulatory scopes. Different technologies operate at various layers of the internet and are managed by different entities. Understanding these distinctions requires deep technical knowledge.

The potential impact of internet censorship and the need to safeguard democratic values were also discussed. The session recognised that the battle for a global internet ultimately involves differing values that are not universally agreed upon. It was also noted that control mechanisms deployed to manage content in one jurisdiction can affect other jurisdictions, underscoring the need to consider the potential transboundary implications of these mechanisms.

In conclusion, the session aimed to address internet fragmentation issues and develop suitable approaches to internet governance. It recognised the natural fragmentation of the internet as a network of networks but emphasised the need to tackle harmful fragmentation. The adoption of a layered policy approach and the distinction between regulating on and off the internet were suggested as ways to effectively govern the internet. The session discussed the challenges of holding the public core of the internet accountable, the importance of considering the public interest, and the need for global consensus. The session also highlighted the complexities of dealing with bullying, the industry’s response to regulations, the significance of technical knowledge, and the potential implications of internet censorship. Ultimately, the session aimed to find solutions that respect individual rights, uphold democratic values, and maintain a cohesive global internet.

Nobuhisa NISHIGATA

In Japan, the government has implemented a layered approach to internet regulation, which is considered effective and clear in the country’s legal structure. This approach encompasses various levels of regulation to address different aspects of internet-related issues. The government is also actively involved in addressing challenges related to internet access in rural areas, aiming to secure reliable and accessible internet connections for all citizens.

However, the layered approach faces difficulties when it comes to content-related concerns, such as piracy and the distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The government acknowledges that the current framework does not effectively tackle these issues and presents challenges in combating piracy and CSAM. Constructing legislation that adequately covers these problematic areas within the boundaries of a democratic society, considering factors like the rule of law and freedom of expression, is complex.

Moreover, the emergence of the internet has given rise to new types of crimes, posing significant challenges for law enforcement agencies. The use of end-to-end encryption, as seen in platforms like Telegram, makes it harder for authorities to trace and apprehend criminals engaged in illegal activities. This highlights the need for innovative countermeasures and international cooperation to effectively combat internet-enabled crimes.

While respecting the principles of freedom and the global nature of the internet, the Japanese government recognizes the importance of balancing these ideals with the rule of law. They take a cautious approach, avoiding a complete prohibition of general internet platforms like Telegram, and instead seek to find legal solutions to combat online crimes. Additionally, the government actively engages in international affairs, understanding that its duty extends beyond domestic borders.

Cyberbullying is a significant issue globally, and Japan is no exception. Various measures are being taken, including the creation of legislation to address internet-based humiliation. By implementing these laws, the government aims to protect individuals from the harmful effects of cyberbullying and provide a safer online environment.

Regulations concerning social media networks and internet service providers are considered necessary but complex. The government is working on establishing a legal system to define the limited liability of internet service providers, acknowledging the benefits and side effects of the social network services (SNS) ecosystem. Achieving a balance between regulation and the positive aspects of SNS platforms is crucial in ensuring a safe and secure online space.

The use of social media and the internet also brings forth the issue of echo chamber effects, where individuals are exposed only to similar viewpoints and information, leading to polarization and misinformation. This phenomenon challenges the fostering of a well-informed society and highlights the importance of promoting diverse perspectives and critical thinking in online interactions.

Constructing effective laws to combat piracy and CSAM is a technically challenging task. The government recognizes this complexity and strives to find appropriate solutions without introducing direct regulations or legislation. Instead, they encourage the industry and private sector, such as internet service providers (ISPs) and telecom operators, to take a leading role in countering piracy and CSAM. By leveraging the expertise and resources of these stakeholders, more effective measures can be implemented.

There is also a strong emphasis on the role of the internet community in combating piracy and CSAM. Nishigata, an advocate for collective effort, believes that while piracy can exist even without the internet, its scale is significantly smaller in comparison. More than 90% of the internet community is considered to be “good guys” who can play an essential role in supporting the fight against illegal activities and maintaining a safe online environment.

Despite the efforts made, it is highlighted that internet regulations and legislations have struggled to keep up with the rapid advancement of technology. The development of the internet has outpaced regulatory efforts and created challenges in effectively addressing emerging issues. Therefore, continuous adaptation and collaboration among various stakeholders are needed to ensure that regulations can keep pace with technological progress.

In conclusion, the Japanese government has implemented a layered approach to internet regulation, which has been effective in certain aspects, such as securing internet connections in rural areas. However, challenges remain in areas like content-related concerns, internet-enabled crimes, and cyberbullying. Balancing the principles of freedom and the global nature of the internet with the rule of law is crucial. Regulations concerning social media networks and internet service providers are complex but necessary. Collaboration and joint efforts between the government, technicians, industry, and civil society are vital in improving the regulation and safety of the internet landscape.

Moderator

The analysis highlights several key points regarding internet regulation, internet fragmentation, and related topics. One important finding is that a layered policy approach can potentially help prevent internet fragmentation. By considering all elements of the internet, such as the network layer and apps and other services, policymakers can create a cohesive and comprehensive policy that does not lead to internet fragmentation. This approach takes into account the potential issues that may arise if internet sanctions are applied to internet infrastructure, which can cause fragmented access.

The analysis also emphasizes the importance of governments using a layered approach in policy-making, particularly when applying sanctions. If not properly targeted, government sanctions can hamper internet access. A layered approach to policy-making on sanctions can help prevent these unintended consequences and ensure uninterrupted internet connectivity.

Japan is presented as an example of a country actively working on effectively regulating the internet. The country’s Telecom Business Law has a distinct structure to deal with internet regulation issues. Japan is also focusing on ensuring internet connectivity in rural areas and isolated islands, indicating its commitment to comprehensive regulation of national and international internet infrastructure, such as submarine cables and satellite frequencies.

Another important consideration highlighted is the need for governments to strike a balance between respecting internet freedoms and protecting citizens from internet-enabled crimes and violations of rights. Issues related to privacy and the presence of child sexual abuse materials on the internet are mentioned as examples of challenges that need attention.

The analysis also discusses the challenges arising from the growth and evolution of the internet. With more actors engaging across different layers, government intervention and regulation can create unintended global effects and potentially lead to the breakdown of the internet. This highlights the complexities and potential unintended consequences associated with internet regulation.

The balance between encryption for security and privacy and addressing its misuse for criminal activities is presented as an important challenge. Encryption is recognized as a vital protocol contributing to internet security and individual privacy. However, it has also been used as a tool for illegal activities. A solution is needed that does not compromise security and privacy while addressing misuse.

Understanding and identifying the technical aspects of the internet, including its layers, are fundamental for addressing internet fragmentation. The analysis stresses the importance of recognizing the different layers of the internet to find appropriate solutions for fragmentation.

Cyberbullying emerges as a significant issue that needs to be addressed in policy-making and legislation. It is highlighted that cyberbullying is not confined to Japan and is a global issue. The use of social networking services is recognized as a factor that can facilitate cyberbullying through echo chambers and filter bubbles. The intersection of the issue of cyberbullying with the concept of freedom of speech is also noted.

The analysis emphasizes the need for cooperation among government, industry, technicians, and civil society to catch up with the pace of internet evolution. This reflects the complex nature of internet regulation and the importance of involving various stakeholders in shaping effective policies.

In conclusion, the analysis underlines the significance of a layered policy approach in preventing internet fragmentation and the challenges associated with balancing internet regulation and freedoms. It highlights the need for comprehensive and balanced regulation to address issues such as cyberbullying and encryption misuse. The analysis also indicates the importance of cooperation and understanding among various stakeholders in effectively regulating the internet.

Alissa Starzak

During the discussion, the speakers delved into the intricacies of layered policymaking in relation to Internet content. They emphasized that understanding the complex network behind Internet content is crucial for effective policymaking. Different entities were identified as being responsible for delivering content to users, including registrars, entity-based content transmitters, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and browsers. The speakers highlighted that regulatory structures play a significant role in shaping how these entities can operate and collaborate.

The negative consequences of regulating the Internet through blocking mechanisms were brought to attention. They explained that attempts to block an IP address can inadvertently lead to the blocking of millions of domains, resulting in a significant proportion of internet content becoming inaccessible. This argument highlights the potential hindrance to access that could arise from overly restrictive Internet regulations.

Additionally, the speakers underscored the importance of considering both local and global implications when developing new structures on top of the Internet. They explained that implementing new layers or structures can potentially disrupt existing functions, and that taking into account the effects on both local and global levels can help prevent such disruptions.

The discussion also touched on the need to balance practicality and functionality when developing Internet regulations. The speakers argued that claims regarding data localisation of IP addresses, as outlined in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), can be impractical considering how internet infrastructure functions. They noted that policymakers sometimes lack a full understanding of the intricacies of the internet, which emphasises the need for careful consideration of practicality and functionality when crafting regulations.

Furthermore, the speakers stressed the significance of infrastructure as the initial gateway for internet access. They stated that individuals often turn to infrastructure first to gain access due to the internet functioning as a network of interconnected networks. This supports the argument that regulations on infrastructure should be carefully thought out, considering its critical role in enabling access to the internet.

The speakers also spoke about the importance of having a deep understanding of potential unintended consequences when crafting regulations. They emphasised that regulation writing involves considering trade-offs and potential side effects, enabling policymakers to develop effective and balanced regulations.

The industry’s role in explaining technical details during the creation of regulations was highlighted as essential. By providing expertise and insights, the industry can bridge the communication gap between the engineering side and the regulatory creation side, ensuring that regulations are well-informed and technically viable.

The discussion then shifted towards the impact of legislation beyond national borders. The speakers pointed out that nations typically legislate within their own borders. However, when it comes to infrastructure, legislation can extend far beyond national boundaries, impacting other nations as well. It was emphasised that understanding this reality and making legislation accessible can aid in comprehending legislative influences beyond borders.

Furthermore, the speakers noted that if a nation legislates on matters that affect areas outside its borders, other nations may reciprocate by legislating within its borders. This observation highlights a potential consequence of legislating extraterritorially, emphasising the importance of considering such implications and fostering international cooperation in legislative matters.

In conclusion, the discussion emphasised the complex nature of layered policymaking in relation to Internet content. The importance of understanding the multifaceted network behind Internet content, considering local and global implications, and ensuring the practicality and functionality of regulations were key themes. The potential negative consequences of overly restrictive regulations and the need for cooperation between government, industry, and civil society were also highlighted. Overall, the speakers advocated for a thoughtful and collaborative approach to navigating the challenges surrounding internet regulation.

Online Moderator

In the online discussion, the seriousness of cyberbullying in Japan is highlighted by the moderator. They express concerns about the harmful consequences of internet fragmentation, specifically in terms of communication. This fragmentation can lead to cyberbullying, which is seen as a negative outcome. The moderator seeks possible policy approaches to address this pressing issue.

Another speaker in the discussion acknowledges the link between cyberbullying and internet fragmentation. They argue that cyberbullying can be seen as a manifestation of internet fragmentation in terms of communication. This perspective emphasizes the need for policy solutions to counter cyberbullying effectively. The speaker suggests that policy approaches are crucial to address this issue appropriately.

The online moderator further reinforces the importance of policy solutions. Seeking inputs from the panel, they aim to gather diverse perspectives on potential policy measures to combat cyberbullying. By involving experts and stakeholders, the hope is to develop effective strategies for addressing this problem.

The analysis of the discussion reveals that cyberbullying is a significant concern in Japan, and internet fragmentation is identified as a contributing factor. The call for policy approaches highlights the need for formal measures to tackle cyberbullying effectively. This issue is aligned with SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, emphasizing the importance of creating a safe and inclusive online environment.

Overall, the discussion draws attention to the seriousness of cyberbullying, demonstrates the link with internet fragmentation, and stresses the importance of policy solutions. By addressing this issue and implementing relevant policies, strides can be made towards a safer and more supportive online space.

Jean F. Queralt

This analysis explores various perspectives on internet fragmentation and its implications. One speaker urges caution when assuming that the internet was once unfragmented, questioning the evidence to support this notion. They challenge the assumption of a once-unfragmented internet and take a negative stance towards fragmentation.

Another viewpoint suggests examining fragmentation in terms of time and driving factors. The speaker emphasizes the need to consider how fragmentation evolves over time and mentions the role of faulty hardware or protocols. This argument takes a neutral stance.

Additionally, a proposed model for layering in the internet is presented. This model describes the layers from user interface to physical channel and highlights the role of the user interface in conveying information and user intention through the different layers. The speaker sees this model as a positive contribution to understanding internet structure and functionality.

The analysis also explores the benefits of fragmentation in organizations involved in internet governance. It suggests that organization fragmentation can serve as a barrier to nefarious actors and proposes addressing problems at different levels. This argument emphasizes the positive aspects of fragmentation and its role in resilience.

There is discussion about the confusion surrounding interoperability. The analysis outlines three models for interoperability – shared, ad hoc, and hybrid – and suggests that the current model is a mixture of the two. This argument takes a negative stance, highlighting the lack of clarity in the direction of interoperability.

Furthermore, the need for a term to describe positive internet fragmentation is highlighted. The term ‘splinternet’ has negative connotations, and alternative terms such as unified net, flow net, coherent net, cohesive net, and seamless net are proposed to capture the positive aspects of fragmentation.

The analysis also touches on the cognitive dissonance between public expectations of technology and other industries. Examples such as architects building stable structures and general users not worrying about technical aspects are used to demonstrate this discrepancy. The argument emphasizes the imbalance in expectations for the general public to understand complex technologies.

In conclusion, this comprehensive analysis provides insights into the different perspectives surrounding internet fragmentation. It emphasizes the need for caution when assuming the existence or non-existence of a once-unfragmented internet and the importance of considering time and driving factors. Additionally, it proposes a model for layering in the internet and discusses the benefits of fragmentation in internet governance organizations. The analysis raises concerns about the confusion regarding interoperability and suggests the need for a term to describe positive internet fragmentation. It concludes by highlighting the cognitive dissonance between public expectations of technology and other industries and advocates for equipping technology industry frontliners with the necessary tools.

Konstantinos

The internet faces various challenges, one of which is the fragmentation caused by a layered approach. This approach poses significant difficulties as more actors engage across different layers, making it tough to discern and comprehend these layers. Additionally, increased state intervention in response to emerging issues leads to regulations impacting internet infrastructure, further complicating matters. The prevailing sentiment regarding this issue is negative, as these challenges hamper the effective functioning of the internet.

Deciphering the specific layer of the internet involved in a problem is crucial for effective problem-solving. Lack of identification makes it difficult to determine who to engage in discussions and propose solutions. This issue holds a neutral sentiment but highlights the importance of understanding the different layers for efficient problem-solving.

Encryption, while foundational for internet security and privacy, presents a major policy challenge due to its potential for abuse. Various actors manipulate encryption for criminal acts, raising concerns about its regulation. However, engineers argue against modifying encryption due to its crucial role in privacy and security. The sentiment towards this issue is negative, as it poses complexities and conflicts in policy-making and regulation.

Internet fragmentation has gained recognition and discussion as an issue in recent times. The sentiment towards this issue is neutral, suggesting that fragmentation may have always been a characteristic of the internet. This recognition and discussion underscore the need to address fragmentation as a significant challenge faced by the internet.

Government intervention to mitigate internet-related challenges can have unintended consequences on infrastructure and evolution. In the past five years, several nations inadvertently affected internet infrastructure due to their reactions to challenges. This negative sentiment highlights the need for careful consideration and assessment of the potential consequences of government intervention in the internet realm.

Overall, the internet presents numerous complexities and challenges that require careful attention. The layered approach to fragmentation, encryption policy challenges, the need to identify and understand different layers for problem-solving, and the consequences of government intervention are noteworthy observations. These insights emphasize the importance of finding balanced and well-thought-out solutions to ensure the effective and secure functioning of the internet.

Moderator:
I am the founder of Digital Medusa and we are doing this workshop on can a layered policy approach stop internet fragmentation. And so and we are going to have a conversation and we are going to have a dialogue with you after our speakers remarks but a little bit of what is a layered approach well there are different interpretations of that but a layered by a layered approach we mean that we have these seven layers of the of the internet which the basic part of it is the network layer where the IP addresses and other critical properties of the internet that allow connectivity to happen there they are there and then they’re on top of that you have the apps and then you have other services but this was a very simplified version you can of course tackle me later on about like whether that definition was accurate but why is it important to talk about a layered approach to policy making and how can it stop internet fragmentation one of the one of the research research reports that I have done in the past was about internet and sanctions and I have used so the government and policymakers want to sanction human rights violators and and this is like a legitimate policy tool however when they do that they also can affect access to the internet if the sanction applies to internet infrastructure so I have used this kind of layered approach to in a report on internet and sanction to kind of show how the internet infrastructure can be actually affected by sanctions and how the government’s can that actually care about about the open global internet and want to avoid fragmentation can prevent that from happening by having more targeted and the layered approach to policymaking on sanctions this is one example of it I hope I’m trying to make this as tangible as I can I can see a lot of familiar faces so you know what the layered approaches you know what the OSI model is but for the policymakers in civil society in general when they make recommendations we are trying to make this session as practical as possible to kind of look at the layered approach and see if we can actually stop internet fragmentation and but also come up with policies come up with content regular regulation policies and other needed regulatory frameworks and of course recommendations of civil society how to adopt those so with us today we have and this is a this workshop is co-organized with Internet Society and today we have Nobuisa Nishigata he’s the director of computer communications division at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications MIC Japan he has a has been instrumental in convening IGF in Japan and and and there is a very long bio that I think Nobu can introduce himself a little bit more if he wants to and we have also Alisa Starzak the vice president and global head of public policy at Cloudflare with us today I’ll say can make it very tangible what’s internet infrastructure is involved when when we use the Internet and how we can come up with policies that consider that kind of division and we also have Jean Carralt I have practiced that the last name like a few times I got it right I’m sure and John is the founder and CEO of the IO foundation a nonprofit advocating for data-centric digital rights and then we have Konstantinos Komaitis as the commentator Konstantinos did not want resisted coming to the panel and sit here he wanted to be with the crowd in a bottom-up manner and he’s a non-resident fellow with the democracy tech initiative of the Atlantic Council’s digital forensics research lab he’s also a veteran of developing and analyzing Internet policy to ensure an open and global Internet before I go to the panels also I wanted to mention that Internet Society also has a Internet impact assessment tool that can be very useful in kind of like using this kind of layered approach in order to come up with policies that cannot that do not lead to Internet fragmentation but if you also like want to know why Internet fragmentation is bad my take is that in like we want the Internet to be global and interoperable and everyone on the Internet and in the world be able to access the global Internet and this and Internet fragmentation prevents that so without further ado I’m sorry I talked a lot we have Alyssa would you like to go ahead and start the conversation

Alissa Starzak :
sure I’m happy to hi this is Alyssa Starzak as I mentioned I am the the global head of public policy at Cloudflare if you haven’t heard of Cloudflare it is actually something very much in the Internet infrastructure side of the world so it’s worth explaining a bit about what we do and then we can talk a little bit about what layered policymaking might look like and why it matters so Cloudflare runs a big global network we use it to do a couple of different things most specifically we actually that what does big global network mean it means we have equipment in lots and lots of different countries where we can cache content to make Internet transmission more efficient but also protect people against cyber attacks so what that does is it allows us to look for problems in traffic cyber cyber attacks and allows us to sort of handle them for an entity online so we’re very much in the infrastructure space I think when we get into this layered idea of layered policymaking it’s worth understanding a little bit about how we see the world and what it looks like from our perspective so one of the interesting things about Cloudflare service is that we actually offer some of them for free so we have something like 20% of global websites that that use our services to help protect themselves against DDoS attacks from a practical standpoint that means we make a lot of the Internet more efficient which is terrific but when you get into the questions of layered policymaking it gets a lot more a lot more challenging so if you think about how the Internet is set up at the very top layer as was mentioned is all the content so all of the things that we all interact with online so that the websites that you interact with the platforms that you interact with those all sort of sit at the top and often when people talk about the Internet they mean that piece of content but they don’t think about the other components that actually get that content to you so think about the DNS system where people register domain names or where they so the registrars for those domain names or the registries for those for the for the TLDs the top-level domains like dot-com and dot you know that or the country-level ones there’s a whole world of that there’s a whole world of entities that that actually transmit that content which Cloudflare is a part of and then there’s the ISP side of the world as well so all of the different entities the browsers that make it accessible in your on your computer all of those play a role in getting that content to you and I think one of the challenges when we get into the layered policymaking world we really start have to think about what effect regulatory structures have on how those pieces fit together and how they don’t so I want to give you a couple of examples of what that means in practice so you know one of the things about the Internet that’s so interesting is that when it was set up it really wasn’t contemplating the world that we live in today it didn’t have privacy built in it didn’t have security built in nothing was encrypted and so people took advantage of that to do lots of often good things they screen for security threats they they potentially use it for content purposes but when you start building new structures on top of that often those things either stop working or get more challenging and so to give you an example people might block an IP address the challenge in that world of blocking an IP address so again in a country is that if you block a cloudflare IP address where we have millions of domains on us you potentially block millions of domains and so now you’ve created a world where a huge amount of content is not available and we see similar things where people are trying to do something because they think it’s going to be a way of addressing content and an effective way of addressing content but really what they’re doing is potentially cutting off components of the Internet so really trying when we get into that world of layered policymaking it’s really thinking about the effects both locally and thinking about collateral consequences but then also thinking about the broader global effects so what happens when this is done in a different country and with a different rule of law standard what happens when when it becomes the norm that that’s an acceptable thing to do those are all sort of questions that I think we need to think about an answer thank you very much

Moderator:
Alyssa so noble I believe that Japan government is the one of the major advocates for a global interoperable internet and how do you think that this layered approach can be useful or what are the challenges whether the thank you

Nobuhisa NISHIGATA:
good afternoon everybody my name is Nobu Nishigata from the Japanese government and the first of all welcome to Kyoto on behalf of the hosting ministry our ministry then thanks you coming for all then I hope you have good weather better weather tomorrow after tomorrow then you have some fun some time to find more not only the idea of things but also about the depth of the culture in Kyoto so then about the question maybe maybe start starting off by the layer thing I believe that the Japanese government is doing pretty good job in layer approach particularly once it comes to the regulation but this is only layer one two three this is our domain from our ministry voice then it may be after four five six seven then it’s more people came in comes in like just she said it’s not only the telecom things you know so one two three particularly for the domestic things and sometimes that the infrastructure connecting the us to with abroad like for example submarine cables or satellite frequency etc so then like we have very clear the structure in our law is a telecom business law in Japan we are doing pretty good job but then for the issues in infrastructure for example like it’s kind of away from this today’s topic but how we secure the internet connection in the rural areas even in Japan or like isolated island in the Japanese territory like that kind of things we can do that in a layer two or one type of regulation our policy approach we do that but on the other hand like once it comes to the content issue like maybe let me you know the since my assignment in the Japanese government includes some issue in the piracy or like a CSAM like that’s kind of content related issues then like of course we do the layer protein one two three but it doesn’t solve the problem we have to fight with that kind of the problem I mean CSAM is it’s more like a human right that we have to solve these things fight together or like a piracy it’s a only the some some people say it’s only the economic harm but it’s that the harm is big and you may see some Japanese the publishers industry in the manga like you can see the exhibition if you go there they are waiting for you to show how they fight against the piracy bad guys so I mean like she just provided the example with the shutting down the whole crowd the flare we don’t want to expect that to happen but still you know we have to do something I mean for example maybe moving other direction like of course I hope that you’ve already found that Japan is such a peaceful country in a society but still we have bad crimes going around and recently like the to some extent the internet enabled these new type of crimes I mean not a whole internet but for example one example be the telegram it’s a good tool and in the end to end encryption and that’s a good one but it’s quite hard for law enforcement to chase them up so of course we are I’m telling you that the Japanese government is smart enough not we are not gonna ban the telegram use in general in Japan but on the other hand we have to find some solution or maybe going out on the technology just only for the law enforcement but this is a I would say that the hardest part you know like it’s kind of arbitrary type of things but also from the government perspective we have some basic principle the first comes rule of law right it’s a fundamental principle in democratic society of course we respect the freedom open the global internet that these are the great values I admit and I respect to but on the other hand maybe I’m telling you you should be aware of that the government’s are not global as you guys in the internet we have the boundaries we do care about the boundaries you know so of course like the government you know we are paid by the tax so the our prime I would say subject to a customer I mean I shouldn’t say she is the customer but they are that the people within the border of course we do diplomacy we do some international affairs but the primary thing is within the border that the government is so then the other side on the other hand the reason that we have some international organization like OECD UNESCO and IGF and UN etc so we have to know we have to recognize some gaps between the internet and government and society etc then like just I had an opportunity to have some speech in the same place here then last month it’s 30th anniversary for the APNIC it’s Asia-Pacific Network Information Center and they they have it was just a 30 years anniversary is a congratulation again for them then like I just talked about the what was 30 years ago so that 30 years ago just I was an exchange student in the United States I was alone and then having the host family they are very kind and then having they helped me then I go to high school in the United States and at that time like of course like we do some communication with my family in Japan but at that time me it’s just letters and phones all right no smartphone no zoom no internet you know no emails so then the compared to that and then they go just the how beneficial the internet has been and then we couldn’t think more about the recent development of technologies but on the other hand unfortunately we see some new problems and then I would say like just very thinking for having me here then then like today be the first step to more like a get closer to have more dialogue between the internet and the government even in Japan so I would say Japan is internet environment it’s pretty good it’s free but compared to other countries sometimes but still it doesn’t mean that that we are satisfied as a government person we are not satisfied at this the situation right now so but still as I say that the Japanese government is smart enough to respect the free internet to global internet on the other hand we need your help to solve and this goes to the of course the other other part of the world so I hope that today’s gonna be the first step for the further dialogue and thank you for having me again thank you

Moderator:
thank you noble and that’s actually why we’re here to have this kind of conversation and see some for those who don’t know it’s child sex to sexual abuse imagery material and we go to John John you have some slides I’m yep

Jean F. Queralt:
when I was offered to to be in the panel I started trying to go a little bit down the rabbit hole of the the concept of fragmentation and how there’s so many definitions about it and I found that there were a number of elements that seem to not be very much investigated if you want or considered so the term bugs me a little bit because it does have some implications so think about a vase for instance if you say that the vase is broken it implies that at some point the vase was not broken so if we are going to be talking about an internet in a fragmented internet we need to make the assumption that it was not fragmented in the past and I’m not quite sure that we do have evidence to be able to sustain both claims with with perfect certainty of course we do all have a bit of an intuitive feeling that these things are going into that direction I will be just a little bit cautious about which directions we think is really going and so for instance when we think about fragmentation I feel that most of the time I never hear anyone talking about the concept of time so is that observed fragmentation happening in a short span of time is it something that maintains across time? Is it because it has been mandated by someone? Is it because there’s a faulty hardware or a protocol that stopped working for whatever reason? Those things seem to not really much be in the conversation quite often. And next slide, please. And so the approach that I like to take is the one that you see there in the slide. So that’s the layering that I like to follow, where you see on the top that there is a user ‑‑ sorry, the user should be on top, but I didn’t have space. Interacting with an application through a user interface, basically, and then you would need to be able to typically generate some kind of identification, which leads you to some data manipulation, which is then transmitted. You need to be able to identify the destination machine for that, and then you have some kind of physical channel to be able to do the transmission. Essentially, for the technical people, I would say that the UI is nothing more than an analog digital and digital to analog converter. It basically passes the information and the will of the user down the stack. I do see the need, even though there’s been a lot of conversation as to whether we need a layered approach or not, essentially because if we cannot pinpoint at which layer a certain problem is happening, it’s going to be very, very difficult to try to figure out who do you need to talk to in order to try to solve it. And so I don’t really mind if we use this kind of model or any other type of model, but there has to be a model for us to unite across, to be able to make sure that we know which stakeholders do we need to engage. And most importantly, I would say that there’s a little bit of confusion sometimes and overlap between different organizations, and it seems to me that we don’t have a clear taxonomy of mandates so that we again know who do we have to talk to, never mind the fact that some of those organizations may not be the most accessible for certain stakeholders. Next one, please. So when we also talk about interoperability, the only three models that come to mind is this shared situation where everyone is agreeing on how to communicate, let’s say a protocol, or an ad hoc one where every single piece, every device, every software requires to have ad hoc methodologies to be able to communicate with the rest of the systems, or a hybrid situation, which is pretty much what we have at the moment, kind of a combination of both of them. And so we are talking about interoperability, and sometimes I’m not 100% sure about in which direction do we want to go. Do we want to keep this hybrid model? Do we want to try to harmonize much more across systems? What do we want to do? Last one, please. Was that the last one? Oh, there was another one. It’s fine. I would also submit that when I was mentioning about the different organizations and trying to establish a very clear taxonomy of mandates, I know that it can be looked as we are dispersing the management of all of those layers. I somehow look at it from the perspective of the lack of concentration of one single organization where everything can be done is actually a virtue for resilience. So if you think about an actor who may try to have some kind of nasty attitude, let’s say, it would take them many more resources to be able to attend to all of these organizations and be able to participate in all of them so that they may be able to affect one of the layers, but possibly not the rest. So if anything wrong happens, you could try to rectify through the rest of the layers. I think there’s something to be said about resiliency based on fragmentation of organizations. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thank you a lot, John. And Konstantinos, start.

Konstantinos:
Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you. So my name is Konstantinos, or Connie, apparently, according to the transcript. And I think that one of the things that we heard, and it’s sort of coming across, is that the layer approach to internet fragmentation presents a lot of challenges, first of all, because currently the way, and especially the internet has evolved over the years, we are not really sure whether we can still use and talk about layers, right? And that is because there are more actors that are engaging, and they’re engaging across what used to be very discernible layers in the beginning of the internet. And also because more issues emerge that, of course, require state intervention, and we see regulation. So I think that starting with what Alisa was saying that, you know, and of course from Cloudflare’s point of view, their main challenge is how the regulation that is currently happening within the internet ecosystem affects infrastructure, right? And the ability to provide those services, whether it is about security, or whether it is about traffic efficiency, or whether it is, whether it allows users to be able and consume the internet in a more efficient way. And then, of course, then you have the broader global effects, right? I mean, those unintended consequences can create some sort of global effects that then spill over, and we are talking about a complete breakdown and splinter of the internet. Nob, on the other hand, coming from the government, I think that he raised the challenge that we keep hearing a lot of governments having. We understand that there is, there are some things that we should not be touching, and we do understand that those things are what make the internet what it is. But at the same time, we are facing everyday policy challenges as governments, and as part of our mandate, and the fact that we have been elected to provide answers to those challenges, we don’t know where to go. And I think the, well, Nob brought up encryption, which I think is perhaps the biggest challenge currently that policymakers are facing, especially in connection with SISM. I don’t think that we need to debate at all that everyone in this room, and in the world, hopefully, how they feel about SISM, but at the same time, because it involves, the conversation, better yet, involves issues around encryption, it makes it very difficult. Because if you hear the engineers, they will tell you there is really, do not touch encryption. It is a very, very important protocol. It is very important for the security of the internet. It is very important for privacy. It is very important for the security of people. But at the same time, the fact that encryption exists, and as a protocol, is getting abused, is being abused by various actors in order to do criminal acts. So, and I really liked, actually, Nobu, your call, effectively, to this, essentially, to this community, saying, we need your help. How can you help us find a balance, or provide at least a way forward, in what seems right now to be an impossible debate? And Jean, really, your opening really hit a really nice nerve with me, when you said, I’m not sure there was ever a time that the internet was not fragmented, right? And we really do not know. And we really do not know, because we only recently, if I can say that, we started thinking of fragmentation, and fragmentation sort of came in front of us, as an issue. But there might have been a time, even from the beginning of the internet, where fragmentation existed. And I think that depending on who you are, and where they’re coming from, they will tell you different things. The other thing, if I understood correct, and please correct me if I didn’t, is that we need to be able, and there is a challenge on that, on identifying which exact layer we’re talking about. And we need to be able to do that, because unless we are able to identify that layer, we won’t be able to know who to speak to, how to engage with that organization or body, and what actual solutions to give. And of course, you went back to the origins of the conception of the internet, which is decentralization, and the fact that decentralization hints, of course, to more resilience, and why this is important within the context of the internet. I think that the one thing that I can say is that fragmentation, for the past couple of years at least, has been the buzzword that everybody’s using, and rightly so in many, many ways, simply because it is a problem that can create serious challenges for the global, open, and interoperable internet. And especially in the past five years, we see governments stepping in to address some of those very hard challenges, and at the same time, in their effort to do so, there are unintended consequences that actually affect the infrastructure of the internet and the way the internet exists and continues to evolve. And I will stop here.

Moderator:
Thank you, Konstantin. So we want to have a dialogue, and at any time you want to ask a question, or comment, or if you need any clarification of what is this internet fragmentation, and why is it necessarily bad, it’s not a positive thing. Oh, and I can see somebody at the mic. Great. Go ahead.

Audience:
Hi, I’m Barry Lieba. I want to comment on the internet being fragmented from the beginning. The internet, by its nature, is fragmented. It is a network of networks. I have a home network that does not have open access to the rest of the internet. It’s a fragment. Companies have their own fragments of the internet. This is the way the internet was intended to work. So I like to think of what we’re talking about as harmful fragmentation, which is fragmentation that damages the way the internet was intended to work, and I think that’s a better way to approach it. The question that I got up to ask was, I know what OSI stack layering is, you know, and all that kind of stuff. What I don’t understand is what the purpose of this session is to talk about layered policy approach, and we’re now halfway through the session, and we haven’t talked about that part. So I’m looking to understand what the layered policy bit means. Are you talking about applying policy to the OSI stack layer? Are you talking about setting up a layered approach to policy? Please explain, and let’s have that conversation. Thanks.

Moderator:
Thank you. So for me, my impression is that, I tried to explain this in the beginning. For example, when governments want to regulate, not necessarily the internet, they can come up with a regulation that could affect the operation of the networks, and this could be, for example, the IP addresses of certain countries and regions, and governments don’t necessarily want that. If they want an open global internet, they don’t want to prevent access of countries to IP addresses, but the unintended consequences of that kind of policy, in this case sanctions, is that it could prevent network operators from having access to IP addresses, and IP addresses are not, which is at the infrastructure, as you know better than me, the infrastructure, and they are needed and necessary for online presence. So it’s not about accessing Zoom or accessing Facebook. It’s about accessing infrastructure that enables you to have an online presence and have access to the global internet. So I believe that the layered approach could possibly help at the moment. It could possibly help to tell the policymakers and civil society when they make recommendations that, hey, when you are coming up with these content regulation initiatives, with these sanctions initiatives, think about which part of the internet you do not want to actually affect with your policy so that it actually can be targeted and you can actually achieve that regulatory purpose. I hope that was clear, but I invite any other…

Alissa Starzak :
Can I just add one thing? I actually want to make it a little bit more concrete. I think there are two different sets of problems that are worth thinking about. One is when you have a general regulation that applies further down when people aren’t thinking about it. So to give you an example, the EU has passed GDPR, lots of very important things for privacy. One of the claims that has come out in GDPR is the idea of data localization of IP addresses. Now if you know how infrastructure works, that’s nonsense, that doesn’t work practically, but that doesn’t mean that a policymaker hasn’t thought about it because they don’t think about how the internet works. So I think there’s the general regulation applying and being conscious of that, and then I think there’s also a secondary piece which is thinking about infrastructure and actually what are you trying to regulate and how. Often what happens is that people go down to infrastructure first because you have, going back to I think Jean’s point, often that is a place where you can get access to something you might not otherwise have access to because we do have a network of networks. And so practically what you find are that people will go to an area where they have access. And so I think there are two components and I would sort of split them into two different ideas.

Online Moderator:
My name is Olaf Kollekman, I’m sort of co-organizer of this session and I’m now at the mic as an online moderator. So I’m forwarding a question from Chukio Kishida who is asking, I feel that cyberbullying is a serious problem in Japan. Cyberbullying is one of the internet fragmentation in terms of communication. What contribution do you think that can be made to address cyberbullying from a policymaking perspective? I think that’s a very hard question to answer, but I’m gonna add that a little bit. I’m gonna add some color to that question and change it a little bit for the panel. If you think of cyberbullying and you think of that layer approach, how would you, on what layer would you put that type of problem and at which layer do you think you will not be able to solve this? Is that a way you can work with that?

Moderator:
That’s great. Anybody from the panel? So I have one example of not good policy in order to regulate content. So for example, IP blocking is not proportional, cannot be done proportionately. And if we block IP addresses, it’s not just like one website, we might actually block access to a whole set of websites. And we have seen the chaos that happened in Europe when they came up with a regulation that for disinformation and IP blocking of the websites of Russia was mandated. And the network operators and ISPs had a lot of problem with doing that in a proportional way. So that’s where not to do it or also DNS blocking, I believe. And now the layered approach DNS is the application but still infrastructure and necessary for online presence. But anybody from the panel would like to add?

Nobuhisa NISHIGATA:
Thank you for the raising the issue of the cyberbullying and it is the big issue. But in my observation, usually, in the beginning, maybe it’s Japan’s particular problem. But now I see similar issues outside Japan as well. So maybe we have to think about it. It’s kind of beyond the scope of today’s narrow scope to the layered approach discussion. But however, we have to think that like echo chamber or like a filter bubble type of things that there’s some side effects using the SNS type of services. So of course, as I said, SNS also brought a lot of benefit to the society. On the other hand, there is some side effect. And then this cyberbullying issue is more closer to the, I would say, freedom of speech, those kind of things in a high level of definition. So it’s quite hard. But maybe, of course, Japan is working hard to do some legislation against the humiliation over the internet. Also, some legal systems about the limited liability for the internet service providers, those kind of things. So we are trying hard, but still, I admit that that’s an issue. Thank you.

Moderator:
We have a comment. John, do you want to go ahead and then we will have Marco.

Jean F. Queralt:
I wanted to do a follow up on your question. So when you were mentioning about maybe us talking about harmful fragmentation, I think it’s a good point that maybe we can also have a term for positive fragmentation. And so the term splinternet has been going around for some time, so it could be applied for the negative parts or the harmful one. And then I was just trying to figure it out, but English is not my primary language, so I’m possibly not the best one to come up with something such as unified net, flow net, coherent net, cohesive net, seamless net, whatever. Someone here can just raise your hand. It might be a good opportunity to actually try to pinpoint a name for something that points out to a positive fragmentation that respects the original intent of the internet.

Moderator:
Thank you. I have a comment on that, but I’m not going to let Marco wait. Go ahead, Marco.

Audience:
I’m always happy to wait, but yeah, I know you talk a lot. It’s Marco Hoogwoning, Dutch government. Let me, I’m not going to say anything about fragmentation and I’m also trying to refrain from saying whether we’re taking the right approach or the wrong approach, but I can speak from experience as a policymaker. In 2015, one of our government think tanks introduced the notion of the public core and with that, ever since, what we try to do is make a distinction on what happens when it comes to regulating the internet, we make the distinction of regulating off the internet and regulating on the internet. In my experience, so far, that is a helpful approach, we’ve also been advocating that to fellow governments and I do think it helps the discussion forward, especially in international policy where you can say like, okay, and I hear somebody say like, okay, yeah, some layers do not have borders, that’s correct, and that’s sort of what we see as the public core, is that layers that are practically borderless and are really hard to regulate from a national perspective. There is, of course, the content discussion and looking at sort of various remarks and I think that’s still where a lot of the challenge lies, is I heard somebody say, yeah, lawmakers don’t understand the internet and yeah, from where I stand, I think that’s also partially a good thing. Not everybody is an internet engineer and I used to be an engineer, I’ve stepped over to the dark side called government and, you know, keep it simple. That’s why we kind of try to keep it in that distinction of two layers, because if you delve in too many layers, it gets complex. Another thing I’d like to remark on and I think it was my Japanese colleague that sort of talked about accountability, yes. The fact that we make the distinction doesn’t mean that the public core and the people operating the public core should not be accountable. There are certain things happening on the internet where if you look at it from a neutral perspective, probably the only place to do something about it is that public core. And that’s a really hard thing to do, because that’s the discussion we need to have internationally and that’s usually discussion we need to have in a multi-stakeholder forum to find solutions for that space. Some things are relatively easy, because you know where it is, it happens on top of the layer. The point I’m trying to get to, we can divide it up into multiple layers. My advice is don’t do that, but also recognize that in the end, from a policy perspective, what we’re looking at is public interest and that public sits on layer 8 and layer 9. That public interest doesn’t differentiate between layer 3, 4, or 5. We’re trying to make the world a better place. Your challenge is find out which layer is the most appropriate to do the right thing to help us make the world a better place.

Moderator:
Which public are we talking about? Whose public interest? Is it the national public interest, are we talking about the global public interest?

Audience:
That’s a difficult one. Of course we always start with the national interest in mind, but I do hope that our national interest is other people’s national interest, and we can find consensus in the global space of what is the public interest.

Moderator:
Absolutely, and how to reconcile that is very important for the global interest. You have another… Please, go ahead. All my friends are here. Go ahead.

Audience:
We will fight to see who goes first. Colin Perkins, University of Glasgow. I guess I want to follow up a little on the previous comment. It’s clear that regulation that affects, that targets and affects layers where it wasn’t intended and is inappropriate causes problems. The discussion has considered a whole range of different technologies. We’ve had discussion of IP blocking, DNS blocking, and a whole bunch of other things. These obviously operate at different layers, they’re operated by different people. Understanding the differences requires pretty deep technical knowledge. Other ways of distinguishing those layers, distinguishing the technologies, and ways of phrasing those differences and describing those differences that are more accessible and don’t need that deep technical knowledge to perhaps help reframe the debate a little in a way which might make it easier to judge the applicability of regulation.

Moderator:
Thank you. Actually, Alyssa wants to respond to Colin, I’m sorry, bad one.

Alissa Starzak :
I think when we think about it, we actually try to think about who it affects, and so we actually describe it as effects. I think the challenge is that when we actually have those conversations, we think there needs to be a translation, so somebody who isn’t on the engineering side being able to explain what the potential unintended consequences might be is really important, and frankly, we certainly think that industry, which has some of the technical knowledge, plays an important role. I think sometimes, though, it can be really challenging to write things the right way, recognizing that there’s a gap between those two, because writing a regulation can be really hard, even when you’re trying to get at something specific, even when you understand the unintended consequences, that doesn’t mean there’s necessarily a better way to write something.

Audience:
Okay. I’m thinking about the bullying thing, because I think it’s a perfect example of where we need to look at this. Part of me says it’s entirely a layer nine thing. You crack down on bullies at the personal level, but the Internet has changed the way that works. When I was growing up, if somebody bullied me, it was that person against me, and that person might get a few of his friends to join him in bullying me, and so now maybe it was five or six people against me, and the administrators at school could deal with that. And now with the Internet, you have hundreds of thousands of people bullying me over the Internet, potentially. So that does change things, and we have to look at how that works, but at the same time, it’s still a layer nine issue. Do you stop the bully from accessing the Internet at all? I think it’s a very difficult thing to think about. So I like the idea of trying to think of that in layers, and I guess that’s the comment I wanted to make. I don’t have an answer to it, so…

Jean F. Queralt:
I wanted to make a comment. I feel sometimes there’s this kind of cognitive dissonance between the expectation when it comes to technology and the expectations we have in other industries. So unless there’s an architect in this room, nobody really knows why this building is not collapsing on our heads, and we don’t really care, because that job is done, and we just have put the trust into whoever is responsible for this to do the right thing. And so trying to explain certain technical things to the general public, yes, for those who are curious, of course, you shouldn’t be closing that door, it’s just it’s kind of assuming as well too much pressure for the general public to go up to that level of technical knowledge. If I’m using a phone, it shouldn’t be my responsibility to know, you know, the amount of ionizing radiation that I’m getting from the antenna. There’s mechanisms for that for me to not have to worry about it, just as when I go to a restaurant, I’m not checking as to whether the water is drinkable or not. So to a certain degree, the people who are involved in those industries are those that you would consider frontliners, and I would say that we need to make sure that the technology squad, being the frontliners for technology, do have the tools for that. And often enough, I don’t see that happening.

Moderator:
Thank you, John. I just wanted to add, so for the cyber, for the content regulation and conduct regulation issue that should happen, like we have been advocating for that, that that should not happen at infrastructure layer, and like the cloud services and CDNs and DNS resolvers and IP blocking, so these, and by we, I mean some of the, like the technical internet community, because that cannot be done proportionally. But on social media platforms, you might be able to take certain action and for trust and digital trust and safety and kind of like come up with like takedown mechanisms and stuff like that. The problem with doing that at the infrastructure level is that you cannot, you might actually hamper somebody, some innocent person online presence by doing that. So I just wanted to add that, and I see Andrew, right, Andrew?

Audience:
Yeah. Thank you. I’ll take that as my cue to ask a question. Andrew Camping, I’m a runner consultancy and I’m also a trustee of the Internet Watch Foundation. Just to give a couple of reflections, I would respectfully say the industry has got a lousy reputation for giving reasons why something can’t be done, starting with privacy. So each time something comes up, there’s a raft of excuses to say why not, and then when GDPR is enacted, it sort of seems to find a way of accommodating it. So I think you could replay what we’ve sort of discussed to say, okay, the industry is expecting legislators to do things in a way which allows for the efficient running of the industry, which I can see why the industry wants that, but most industries have to live with the regulations that are imposed on them. They don’t get to dictate the terms that they’re regulated, and I would respectfully say maybe with the maturity of the internet, we need to sort of face up the fact that governments are accountable to their sort of voters, not to the technical companies. So for example, to say you can’t do IP blocking because that would be more difficult for CDNs would be one approach. The other approach would be to say, if the governments decide you do need to block X, it’s up to the CDN to work around that so they can still function. So I think you just, the industry is trying to have it to dictate the terms of how, of the environment it operates in, and why should it be special compared to, say, car manufacturers. Thank you, Andrew.

Moderator:
We have a last like 10 minutes, so please be short in your remarks, and yeah, go ahead, Rafiq.

Audience:
Okay, I will be quite short, Rafiq Damark. So I want to ask a clarifying question to Nishikaga-san from MIC. So you said that MIC or Somosho is not taking or try to regulate a lot, but maybe I want to, if you can clarify more that how it’s left more to the industry, the operator, telco, internet service provider, in different area like anti-piracy, anti-piracy regarding manga in particular, or the CSAM to do, to work on countermeasure and so on. So maybe it’s kind of a light approach, but it might also raise some question about accountability, and particularly it’s not quite multi-stakeholder more, it’s more the kind of the private sector taking the lead here, and at the end also kind of presented like how Japan is maybe leading and respecting the rights and so on, but what are the safeguards for the future? So I wanted more clarification here. Thanks.

Nobuhisa NISHIGATA:
Let me quick answer you, we are not trying to introduce some regulation or legislation over the piracy or CSAM directly. It’s quite hard in the technical perspective in how you build up the law as a text, like a code. We have like a, you know, it is not just so easy, like just, you know, even our Prime Minister, he was here today, but just he says that the piracy is not good. We have to keep manga industry, then they do something, guys, right? He may want to say that, but still in the technical ways in how you construct a registration, it doesn’t work out that way. So we know that. It’s more, you know, we have to check about many things in a democratic society, for example rule of law, then freedom of expression, et cetera, et cetera. So it is not easy. And we are smart enough to do that. So then we are asking that, but somehow, I mean, you can do the piracy without the Internet, but the scale is much, much smaller than what we see in the Internet piracy thing. Then that the point that we need your help, like we have, we want to do something just only against CSAM, piracy, some bad guys. And of course we want to foster it and help them develop further from the good side. I would say more than 90, 90% in the Internet community are good guys, right?

Moderator:
Yes, exactly. And on that positive note, we can go outside. We can go to the next comment. Sorry, we have five more minutes and I promise we will be on time.

Audience:
Sure. No worries. My name is Zon Khan. I’m a member of the Internet Society Youth Standing Group. I wanted to talk quite a lot about my conceptions of Internet fragmentation, but you can hear me speak hopefully tomorrow in the Policy Network session. Just a quick question that’s directed towards, I guess, all of you. Ultimately the battle for a global Internet is a battle for global values, which we don’t have. We keep talking about, you know, democratic societies and multi-stakeholders, but not every single society is built like that. And one thing that I definitely note that everybody over here also knows but never dares to say is, well, the very same mechanisms that we use to control content and services and applications in one jurisdiction will be used in other jurisdictions as well. And that exactly is the problem that I feel needs to be discussed a little bit more, which is why we need to talk about, well, at what layer of the stack is this going to affect not only the jurisdiction where this may be legitimate, but other jurisdictions as well. And we’ve seen, and I want to end with a link that was presented in last year’s IGF, which is Protect the Stack, which talked about the role of infrastructure providers, and I can see you smiling over there, because there have been instances where infrastructure has been deployed or used as, you know, a layer to censor content or take down content, and Cloudflare has been on the other side of that. We have Kiwi Farms, we have Mastodon, and so on and so forth. So I just wanted to know your thoughts on all of that and what we should do going forward in this multi-stakeholder setting. Thank you.

Moderator:
So I want to use the last two minutes to think about where we are, what sort of processes we want to use to discuss these solutions, like layered approach and other solutions to prevent internet fragmentation. But Marco, very short.

Audience:
Very short, very final thought, I’m about to come from RFC 1925. Yes, it is always more complex than you think. But also watching this, be careful not to add multiple layers of indirection. I hear a lot of people pointing to each other, so then to tackle you on that last question, I think dialogues like this help to prevent that.

Moderator:
Final thoughts? Where can we go from here? How can we take this conversation and advance it forward? No, you don’t have anywhere.

Alissa Starzak :
You know, I actually think that last set of questions and comments, I think, is right. I think that we need to figure out how to make this conversation feel accessible. And also to understand that, yes, every nation wants to legislate within its borders. And sometimes when you start getting into the world of infrastructure, you are legislating far beyond your borders. And that is where some of the challenges come. And I think that’s, I guess, what we’re getting at, at the layered policy concept. If you are legislating to things that affect outside your borders, you should be thinking about that reality from a practical standpoint, because that means other people can legislate inside your borders as well, right? That are not accountable to you in any sort of way. And I think that’s where some of our challenges come. I will say on the bigger question, we have lots of challenges online. And I guess this is a shout-out on the optimism side. The best way to solve all of those is to think about how we work together, both from government to government, government to industry, civil society. All of those have a role to play. And I think that’s really where we want to sort of move forward.

Jean F. Queralt:
Just quickly to wrap up, as next steps, I would want to encourage that we start working on outcomes-based taxonomy, both for human rights as well as data management. That would be an interesting step to take.

Nobuhisa NISHIGATA:
Some final words, and then I’m impressed by the Dutch colleague, good for Dutch government, and then they have such a staff like him, like he knows both the policymaking plus the technology, and then to me, just to be honest with you, like I just talked about the telecom business in Japan, but it’s originally aimed at phones. Then the Internet came, and then of course we tried to catch up, update our regulation, but the Internet was much faster than our effort to do some regulation, legislation work. That’s the truth, I would say. So then we had to catch up, and of course we respect the freedom part of the Internet, so then now it’s time too that we have to catch up by other type, new type of a solution on the Internet, which is going to be brought not only by the government, but also you guys help us, and the technicians, and the industry, and the civil society, and everybody, so thank you.

Moderator:
Great. Another positive note to end this session on. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yawri Carr

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize our approach to sustainability and shape a sustainable future. By harnessing the power of AI, we can effectively address the challenges posed by climate change, protect the environment, and build resilient and sustainable communities.

AI applications have emerged as powerful tools for monitoring and protecting the environment. Through advanced data analysis and machine learning algorithms, AI can provide real-time information about environmental changes, enabling us to take proactive measures to mitigate negative impacts. For example, AI-driven systems can monitor pollution levels, deforestation rates, and wildlife habitats to inform conservation efforts and promote sustainable practices.

The predictive capabilities of AI are also instrumental in tackling climate change and natural disasters. AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data gathered from various sources to accurately predict climate patterns, identify potential hazards, and assess the risks associated with climate-related events. This information can help us develop effective disaster response strategies, plan for resilient infrastructure, and minimize the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities.

In addition, AI can optimize the use of green energy resources, making our energy systems more sustainable and efficient. Through AI-powered algorithms, renewable energy generation and distribution can be optimized, ensuring that energy resources are utilized effectively and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

Furthermore, AI can contribute to building safe and sustainable cities. By analyzing various data sources, such as traffic patterns, air quality measurements, and infrastructure performance, AI systems can help optimize urban planning and improve resource allocation. This can lead to reduced congestion, improved air quality, and a better overall quality of life in cities.

Engaging and empowering youth in leveraging AI for sustainability is crucial. Integrating informatics and AI education into school curricula and online platforms is essential to equip the younger generation with the necessary knowledge and skills to utilize AI in a responsible and sustainable manner. Initiatives like global hackathons, innovation challenges, and youth-led technology hubs can foster creativity and problem-solving abilities among young people, driving innovation for a sustainable future.

It is also important to ensure that education and innovation opportunities are accessible to regions and groups that have historically faced discrimination or limited access to resources. By promoting inclusivity, we can leverage the diverse perspectives and talents of individuals from different backgrounds to address sustainability challenges effectively.

In conclusion, AI has the potential to profoundly impact sustainability efforts. By providing tools for environmental monitoring, predicting climate change and disasters, optimizing green energy, and improving urban planning, AI can contribute to building a sustainable future. Engaging and empowering youth in leveraging AI for sustainability is crucial. Investing in education and encouraging youth-led innovation are essential steps in combating climate change and ensuring a more sustainable world for future generations.

Audience

The analysis presents several significant insights and concerns regarding environmental protection and the impact of technology on biodiversity. Firstly, Michelle and Alexia emphasized the crucial role of transparency in environmental reports. This indicates the need for accurate and accessible information regarding environmental issues, allowing for better decision-making and accountability. Furthermore, Alexia highlighted how technology can influence biodiversity, drawing attention to the potential positive or negative consequences of technological advancements.

Another key concern raised in the analysis is the impact of technology and digital disputes on environmental rights and protection. Research from Brasília University revealed that legal disputes often fail to effectively protect the environment. Moreover, there is an observed disparity in international legal disputes relating to environmental protection. This indicates the necessity for a more robust and harmonized approach to address digital disputes and ensure effective environmental protection.

The analysis also advocates for stronger protection for the environment in legal disputes related to technology and the digital sphere. Evidence suggests that there is often a disparity between environmental laws and regulations and the actual outcomes of legal disputes. As a result, it is argued that a more comprehensive and stringent framework is required to safeguard the environment.

In terms of climate change, decarbonization and carbon sequestration were highlighted as measures aimed at mitigating its effects. However, it is noted that these measures may not be fully aligned with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This raises questions about the effectiveness and adequacy of current climate change mitigation strategies.

Additionally, the extraction of natural resources was discussed in relation to human rights violations. The analysis suggests that these violations may not be fully considered when calculating carbon footprints or establishing benchmarks. This indicates a need to reassess how human rights concerns are factored into measures of environmental impact.

The environmental impact of continuous data collection was a further area of concern. It was revealed that data centres surpass the entire airline industry in terms of CO2 emissions. This prompts a reevaluation of the necessity and consequences of ongoing data collection practices.

Furthermore, the analysis raised concerns about the societal impact of data collection policies on marginalized communities. Specific mention was made of how data is being used to prevent migrants and forcibly displaced persons from seeking asylum. This raises ethical and human rights issues, highlighting the potential negative consequences of data collection policies.

Finally, the analysis concludes that the measures and policies implemented to address climate change may not be sufficient or as effective as claimed. Moreover, they may even have unforeseen negative impacts. The aggregated evidence presented, encompassing decarbonization, natural resource extraction, data collection, and human rights, supports the need for reevaluating and strengthening current approaches to safeguarding the environment and addressing climate change.

In summary, the analysis provides valuable insights into the importance of transparency in environmental reporting, the impact of technology on biodiversity, and the necessity for stronger environmental protection in legal disputes related to technology. Concerns were raised regarding the alignment of decarbonization and carbon sequestration measures with IPCC findings, the consideration of human rights violations in carbon footprinting, the environmental impact of continuous data collection, and the negative societal impacts of data collection policies on marginalized communities. It concludes by highlighting the need to reconsider existing climate change measures and policies to ensure their effectiveness and mitigate any unintended negative consequences.

Nadia Owusu

The analysis reveals several key points regarding the involvement of young people in digitalisation, decision-making, and sustainable practices. One of the main findings is that 75% of people online are young individuals aged between 15 and 21. Therefore, it is crucial for governments, private sectors, and youth organisations to recognise and treat young people as partners. This highlights the importance of multi-stakeholder consultations, where these different entities come together to discuss and collaborate on various issues. By involving young people as partners, their perspectives and ideas can be incorporated into policies and initiatives related to digital technologies, government policy, the private sector, and youth engagement.

To further ensure the inclusion of young people’s perspectives, it is recommended that young representatives be appointed to government committees and boards. This will help ensure that the decision-making process takes into account the insights and experiences of young individuals. By involving young representatives, the government can address the concerns and needs specific to this demographic, fostering a more inclusive decision-making process.

Another key finding is the importance of education and awareness regarding the Digital Footprint Initiative (DFI) and sustainable digital ecosystems. By promoting education on these topics, young people can become more informed and responsible digital citizens. This will enable them to contribute to the creation of a sustainable digital environment, in alignment with the goals of SDG 4: Quality Education and SDG 13: Climate Action.

Additionally, the analysis emphasises the need for support from government and private stakeholders in empowering young innovators to build sustainable digital technologies. By providing resources, funding, and mentorship, young innovators can develop solutions that address environmental, social, and economic challenges. This aligns with SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure and the collective goal of building a sustainable future.

Another focal point highlighted in the analysis is the importance of climate action and the development of digital skills for young people. By prioritising climate action, governments and private sectors can work towards mitigating the impact of climate change. Additionally, the emphasis on digital skills development ensures that young people are equipped with the necessary tools to navigate the digital landscape and contribute meaningfully to the economy. Both of these efforts are in line with SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG 13: Climate Action.

The analysis also identifies the need for established mechanisms for feedback evaluations to assess the effectiveness of policies. By establishing such mechanisms, governments can better understand the impact of their policies and make necessary adjustments to ensure they align with the intended objectives. This promotes accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement in policy-making, contributing to SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions.

Furthermore, the analysis suggests that young people should advocate for green tech, participate in e-waste recycling, use energy-efficient devices, limit their streaming time, and practice digital minimalism. By adopting these practices, young individuals can contribute to responsible consumption and production, in line with SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production and SDG 13: Climate Action.

It is noteworthy that Nadia Owusu, a participant in the analysis, supports the importance of youth involvement in discussions related to digitalisation and the green economy. Moreover, Nadia suggests that these discussions should be continued in other platforms such as the UNFCCC climate change conference and COP28 in Dubai. This highlights the need to engage a broader range of stakeholders and networks to address climate change and foster sustainable practices.

In conclusion, the analysis underscores the significance of involving young people as partners in decision-making processes, promoting education and awareness of sustainable practices, supporting young innovators, emphasising climate action and digital skills development, establishing feedback mechanisms, and advocating for responsible consumption and production. The insights gained from this analysis shed light on the potential of young people in driving positive change and contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Michelle Thorne

In the analysis, several key points are highlighted by different speakers. Firstly, it is underscored that a significant proportion of internet infrastructure relies on fossil fuels for power. This usage not only contributes to environmental pollution but also poses a challenge in terms of sustainability. As electricity demands for general computing and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to rise, the increase in digitisation aggravates the problem further. To address this issue, the speakers argue for a transition towards sustainable energies to power internet infrastructure, promoting SDG7: Affordable and Clean Energy and SDG9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.

Secondly, the analysis points out a lack of transparency and accountability regarding the environmental impacts of digital technologies. Specifically, there is limited reporting on scope three emissions from the digital supply chain, which encompasses the indirect emissions associated with the lifecycle of digital products and services. Additionally, it is noted that tech companies are lagging behind in publishing credible net-zero targets, indicating a lack of commitment to reducing their environmental footprint. Furthermore, some tech companies perform worse than fossil fuel companies when it comes to transparency in disclosing their environmental impacts. This lack of transparency and accountability contributes to the overall negative sentiment surrounding the environmental effects of digital technologies, linked to SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production and SDG13: Climate Action.

Another important argument put forth in the analysis is the need for democratic involvement in decisions regarding infrastructure planning and resource allocation. The absence of community participation in determining the placement and maintenance of infrastructure is highlighted, raising concerns about top-down decision-making processes that may neglect environmental considerations. There are specific instances of community backlash against non-environmentally friendly practices, suggesting that communities should have a say in shaping infrastructure plans and ensuring sustainability measures are implemented. This argument aligns with SDG9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Michelle Thorne, an advocate for digital innovation, presents a positive perspective in the analysis. She emphasises the importance of creating economic opportunities and benefits for the most impacted individuals in various areas. By promoting digital innovation, Thorne aims to foster economic growth and address the goal of reducing inequalities, aligning with SDG8: Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG10: Reduced Inequalities. Furthermore, she warns against the potential development of a “brittle monoculture” online. Rather than consolidating market power in the hands of existing companies, Thorne advocates for a diverse and open internet ecosystem that allows for equal participation and representation.

Overall, the analysis sheds light on various challenges and opportunities related to the environmental and social impacts of digital technologies. It underscores the need for a transition to sustainable energies in powering internet infrastructure, greater transparency and accountability regarding environmental impacts, democratic involvement in decision-making processes, and the promotion of a diverse and open internet ecosystem. These points highlight the importance of addressing these issues to achieve a more sustainable and equitable digital future, in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Bitange Ndemo

This comprehensive analysis focuses on various topics related to climate action and sustainable energy. One notable finding is that Kenya heavily relies on green energy sources, with 94% of its energy coming from geothermal, wind, and hydro sources. This showcases the country’s commitment to sustainable practices and serves as an example for other nations to follow.

The analysis also highlights the potential of Africa to tap into its abundant sunshine, geothermal deposits, and rivers to generate green energy. By capitalising on these natural resources, Africa can strengthen its energy independence and contribute to global efforts in combating climate change.

Moreover, government strategies are identified as a crucial factor in reducing carbon emissions and involving youth in climate action. The analysis suggests that strategies aimed at reducing carbon emissions, such as promoting online conferences and teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to a decrease in carbon emissions due to reduced travel. Additionally, involving young people in every aspect of climate action can help foster a sense of ownership and empower the next generation to play an active role in finding sustainable solutions.

Regenerative agriculture is another concept highlighted in the analysis. It is argued that certain farming practices can lead to carbon sequestration, which removes carbon from the air and helps mitigate climate change. This presents an opportunity for the agricultural sector to not only address food security but also contribute positively to climate action.

Education is identified as a key factor in creating awareness about climate change. By providing quality education, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges posed by climate change and the importance of sustainable practices. This knowledge is crucial in empowering individuals to make informed decisions and take action.

Furthermore, the analysis explores the potential of information technology in precision farming for efficient resource use and carbon sequestration. By utilising IT in the sequestration of carbon for precision farming, the agricultural sector can play a significant role in combating climate change. This approach allows for better resource management and the reduction of carbon emissions, thus contributing to a more sustainable future.

In conclusion, the analysis brings attention to various strategies and approaches to promote climate action and sustainable energy. The examples from Kenya’s green energy efforts, the potential of Africa, government strategies, regenerative agriculture, education, and the use of information technology all serve as important pathways towards a more sustainable and climate-resilient future. By adopting these practices and collaborating on a global scale, we can work towards a greener and more sustainable planet.

Alexia Gonzalez Fanfalone

The analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the role of digital technologies in achieving environmental sustainability goals. It emphasizes the importance of common measurement standards to track the environmental impacts of digital technologies. The current lack of harmonisation in metrics makes it challenging to accurately assess and compare these impacts. The argument put forth is that only what can be measured can be improved. By implementing common measurement standards, policymakers and stakeholders will have a clearer understanding of the environmental effects of digital technologies, allowing them to develop more effective strategies for mitigating these impacts.

Furthermore, the analysis highlights the significance of a whole-of-government and multi-stakeholder approach to leverage digital technologies for environmental sustainability. While some communication regulators have partial mandates on environmental sustainability, only a fifth possess a direct mandate. This indicates that greater collaboration and coordination are needed among governments and stakeholders to fully harness the potential of digital technologies in promoting environmental sustainability. By adopting a holistic approach, policymakers can ensure that digital technologies are effectively utilised to address environmental challenges.

Digital technologies also have the potential to reduce their environmental footprint. For instance, the transition to energy-efficient communication networks can significantly decrease energy consumption. Additionally, the use of AI systems to optimise energy management of networks can lead to further energy savings. These advancements in digital technologies contribute to the overall reduction of the environmental impact.

Moreover, digital technologies play a crucial role in enabling other sectors of the economy, such as through the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart agriculture. The IoT allows for more efficient resource management, enabling industries to operate in a more sustainable manner. Smart agriculture practices, powered by digital technologies, increase precision and productivity while minimising resource wastage. This demonstrates the positive impact that digital technologies can have on multiple sectors of the economy, facilitating sustainable development.

The analysis also highlights the importance of efforts towards environmental equity, transparency, and a human-centric approach. These factors are essential for inclusive growth and development. By promoting environmental equity and transparency, policymakers can ensure that the benefits and burdens of environmental sustainability are shared fairly among different communities. Furthermore, a human-centric approach to the digital transition is vital, as it ensures that the adoption of digital technologies is directed in a positive way for society and the environment.

In addition to these main points, the analysis suggests that addressing systemic effects and other planetary boundaries beyond energy and resource efficiency is crucial. Issues such as biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, biochemical flows, and air pollution need to be considered in conjunction with energy and resource efficiency to achieve comprehensive environmental sustainability.

In conclusion, the analysis advocates for harnessing digital technologies to achieve green objectives and emphasises the need for a holistic approach. By implementing common measurement standards, adopting a whole-of-government and multi-stakeholder approach, reducing environmental footprints, enabling other sectors of the economy, promoting environmental equity and transparency, and directing digital transitions in a human-centric manner, we can effectively leverage digital technologies for environmental sustainability. However, it is imperative to go beyond energy and resource efficiency and address systemic effects and other planetary boundaries in danger. By considering these factors, policymakers and stakeholders can make significant strides towards achieving a sustainable and environmentally conscious future.

Patryk Pawlak

The analysis reveals several important points regarding the future of the internet and its environmental impact. Firstly, Patryk Pawlak emphasises the urgency of creating and implementing a ‘Declaration for the Future of the Internet’, which has already garnered support from over 70 countries. The aim of this declaration is to promote an open, free, safe, secure, and interoperable internet. It also seeks to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, promote inclusive and affordable connectivity, and foster trust in the global digital ecosystem, including through privacy protection.

In addition to the declaration, Patryk highlights the need for a multi-stakeholder panel to discuss ways to minimise the environmental impact of the internet and digital technologies. Plans are underway to conduct a workshop with participants from diverse backgrounds and expertise, which serves as the initial step in this conversation. Patryk recognises that addressing this issue will require ongoing, long-term discussions and concrete actions.

Furthermore, Patryk points out the importance of coordinated policies and infrastructure planning to minimise the environmental impacts. He provides an example of inefficient policy coordination between road construction and fibre optic cable installation, resulting in unnecessary harm to the environment. This underscores the need for better coordination and planning to minimise such negative consequences.

Moreover, Patryk advocates for learning and implementing strategies and frameworks that support green digital transition while prioritising environmental considerations. He urges Alexia to share thoughts on how digital technology deployments could support this transition. Additionally, Patryk acknowledges the role of organisations like the OECD in spearheading discussions on topics related to green digital transition and environmental considerations.

The report also highlights the interconnection between connectivity, digital financial inclusion (DFI), and the green transition. Various governments have recognised the importance of connectivity and its connection to the green transition and DFI. It is emphasised that the principle of connectivity needs to be prioritised in both the DFI and the green transition.

Finally, the analysis suggests that the use of new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), can address the digital transition’s impacts on climate and the environment. Jari Kar, a researcher at Telecommunications Technical University in Munich, has worked on the use of AI systems, demonstrating the potential for these technologies to contribute to addressing climate and environmental concerns.

In conclusion, the analysis emphasises the significance of creating a ‘Declaration for the Future of the Internet’, establishing a multi-stakeholder panel to discuss environmental impact, coordinating policies and infrastructure planning, supporting green digital transition, prioritising connectivity in the green transition and digital financial inclusion, and utilising new technologies to address the environmental impact of the digital transition.

Pearse O’Donohue

The European Union (EU) Commission has identified the green transition as one of its key priorities. In a strategic foresight report in 2022, it was stated that the digital footprint is responsible for approximately 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to 5 to 9% of electricity consumption. Furthermore, the digital sector is also increasingly contributing to e-waste. However, there is hope as digital solutions have the potential to cut about 15% of total emissions by 2030.

Acknowledging the need for action, the EU has launched the European Green Digital Coalition. This coalition is led by prominent industry players such as JESI, ETNO, Digital Europe, Digital SME Alliance, and GSMA. Its main objective is to encourage all players in the ICT sector to invest in designing and deploying digital solutions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the durability and circularity of digital devices and equipment. The EU views this as a crucial step towards achieving SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).

Moreover, better integrated digitalization in environmental and climate policies is believed to yield positive results. The correct implementation of the digital transition not only supports the green transition but also receives support from it. The provision of green digital solutions in climate-critical sectors can have a significant positive impact on the environment, particularly for vulnerable geographies and societies. This aligns with SDG 13 (Climate Action) and highlights the potential for mutually beneficial development.

Data collection and credible data play a significant role in addressing climate change. The importance of data was emphasized during a session where panelists discussed the role of governments in collecting data and the need for reliable information. This underscores the need for accurate and scientifically sound data to inform effective climate action policies and decision-making.

The EU is committed to ensuring that the ICT sector moves towards carbon neutrality and contributes to other sectors in their journey to achieve climate goals. The Energy Efficiency Directive specifically targets climate-neutral data centers by 2030. This commitment aligns with SDG 9 and SDG 13, showing the EU’s determination to harness the potential of the ICT sector for positive environmental impact.

To prevent market dominance and promote fair competition, the EU is willing to enforce regulatory measures. The Digital Market Act and the Digital Services Act aim to break down monopolies or duopolies, provide opportunities for market entry, involve small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and measure the impact of their work. These initiatives align with SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).

Lastly, detailed and independent measurements for green data centers are crucial. Efforts are already underway to ensure credible measurement through collaboration between the joint research center and the industry. However, there is a need for more comprehensive models that consider gross and net power consumption, as well as water consumption. This aligns with SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy).

In conclusion, the EU Commission’s focus on the green transition and the efforts to drive sustainable digital solutions through the European Green Digital Coalition demonstrate a commitment to address the environmental impact of the digital sector. By integrating digitalization into environmental and climate policies, collecting credible data, promoting carbon neutrality within the ICT sector, and enforcing regulatory measures, the EU aims to achieve its sustainability goals and contribute to the global climate action agenda.

Sarah Walkley

The impact of digital technology on small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) is not fully understood, leading to a misjudgment of the environmental consequences of their digital habits. Although SMEs’ digital footprint is relatively small compared to other sources of emissions, it is growing intensively, raising concerns about its long-term effects.

There is a significant need for education to help businesses understand the energy implications of their digital habits and choices. Many SMEs believe that because their operations are online, they do not need to develop a sustainability strategy. However, this overlooks the significant energy usage associated with digital technologies. Businesses should carefully consider the energy usage of their hosting providers and the efficiency of their code, as these factors can have a substantial impact on energy consumption.

Leveraging existing policies and connections can play a crucial role in promoting sustainable practices among SMEs. One effective strategy is encouraging marketers to clean up stored data, which is compliant with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), reducing data storage and energy usage. Additionally, exploring the co-benefits of existing policies and how they can be leveraged to drive sustainability efforts is important.

In conclusion, SMEs need a better understanding of the environmental implications of their digital habits. Education is vital in helping them make more sustainable choices and develop strategies that consider the energy impact of their digital operations. By leveraging existing policies and connections, businesses can further promote sustainable practices. It is important to address these issues promptly to mitigate the potential negative environmental effects associated with the growing digitization of SMEs.

Patryk Pawlak:
Good afternoon, everyone. We will start soon, but if you are not too shy and would like to support the speakers by taking the seats around the table, that would also be great. I promise they don’t bite, but it will at least make them feel a bit more welcome in the room. Thank you very much for cooperating. Okay, good afternoon, everyone, again. We have to finish on time. There’s another session coming up, so let’s start. My name is Patryk Pawlak. I’m a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Europe, which is a think tank working on foreign and security policy issues, but also on the whole set of digital topics. Today’s session is the second one hosted by the European Union linked to Declaration for the Future of the Internet. On day zero, some of you may have heard we co-hosted with the United States, Japan, and Kenya a multi-stakeholder engagement. on how to translate and turn the principles of the DFI into concrete actions. For those of you who are not familiar with what the Declaration for the Future of the Internet is, it’s a document that has been endorsed by over 70 countries with the broad aim of promoting open, free, safe, secure and interoperable Internet. Some of the principles in the document include, for instance, the protecting human rights and the fundamental freedoms for all people, advancing inclusive and affordable connectivity, or promoting trust in the global digital ecosystem, including through protecting privacy. During this session, we will look for concrete recommendations towards operationalization of one of the commitments that is contained in the document, and that’s to cooperate to maximize the enabling effects of technology for combating climate change and protecting the environment, while reducing, as much as possible, the environmental footprint of the Internet and digital technologies. The workshop aims to provide a platform for discussion about the ways to minimize the environmental impact of the Internet and digital technologies, and we’re not going to solve the problem during this session. I know that there are also many other sessions happening on the topic during the IGF, but we hope as well that this is going to be the beginning of the conversation, but also a call for action and the implementation of the DFI. So we would really like to identify some concrete action points, and please feel free to join us during the discussions. Now to help us meet the overall objective of the session, we have an excellent and a truly multi-stakeholder panel in the room and online. So we will be switching between the panelists sitting next to me, but also our esteemed speakers who are already online with us. Here in the room we have Piers O’Donoghue, who is the Director for the Future Networks Directorate of the DigiConnect, the European Commission, Nadia Owusu, who is a youth advocate working on the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and climate action, and then Bitangon Demo, who currently is the ambassador of Kenya to the Kingdom of Belgium and the European Union, but also has extensive experience as an academic and the Permanent Secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communications. Joining us online are Sarah Walkley, who is a market researcher, writer, and advisor on sustainability topics, and the CEO of an organization called Purpurfully. Yari Carr, who is an artificial intelligence and internet governance researcher, currently pursuing her master’s at the Technical University in Munich. She also coordinated with the Internet, which was the National Dialogue for the Future of the Internet in Costa Rica. Also online, Michelle Thorne, who is working towards a fossil-free internet. She’s the Director of Strategy and Partnership for the Green Web Foundation, but previously worked as a co-founder, sorry, and the co-founder of the Green Screen Coalition for Digital Rights and Climate Justice. She served for 12 years at the Mozilla Foundation, most recently at their Sustainable Internet Lead. And finally, also online, Alexia Gonzalez-Fanfalone, who is an economist and telecommunication policy analyst at the OECD, working on the whole set of issues ranging from broadband infrastructure and services, including sustainability. So, even though it doesn’t necessarily look like our partner is gender-balanced, I ensure you that it is, and we have made an effort that we bring different perspectives to the conversation. Not to lose more time, let me kick off the discussion with a question to your peers. The twin transition, green and digital, is one of the European Union’s key priorities. And I was wondering if you could tell us maybe what is the main focus of the EU policies at the moment, and how do they contribute towards the implementation of the DFI, which of those elements are? are sort of critical for the conversation that we’re having today.

Pearse O’Donohue:
Thank you very much and good afternoon, everybody. Yes, indeed, not only is it a priority, but green transition is one of the two key priorities of this Commission under President van der Leyen, the other, by the way, being digital. So the green digital transition is something that we are focused on, including in my part of the European Commission, with an ambition to lead those transitions, but also to benefit, to harness the benefits from it for Europe and for society in general. We’ve worked over four years to support the transition to sustainability of the ICT sector, but also to maximise the contribution made by digital technologies, infrastructures and applications in the green transition. So those are digital solutions for our carbon targets as well. We have the strategic foresight report in 2022 that told us that digital footprint is about 3% of global, of greenhouse gas emissions, about 5 to 9% of electricity consumption and of course an ever-increasing amount of e-waste. So there can be no disputing that there is a real problem caused in the sector, which has to be part of any action that we take, including with regard to the DFI. Of course, stakeholders have been taking their responsibilities. We’re aware of stakeholders-led initiatives such as the Digital with Purpose, the Climate Neutral Data Centres Pact and the Circular Electronic Partnership, and that’s just a few of them, and I know that others are probably represented in this meeting this afternoon. Some have made some progress, but more needs to be done to drive the ICT sector to net zero, both in terms of its energy consumption, but also, of course, the efforts that it is making with regard to materials and waste. And that means that all the ICT sector players need to invest in designing and deploying digital solutions that will keep GHGs, greenhouse gases, in check, and also increase the durability and circularity of digital devices and equipment. And we feel our role as a regulator is not necessary to regulate that up front, but to make sure that those partners in industry who do engage proactively and responsibly in such activities are rewarded, or certainly at least that they are not punished and undercut, by those with a less scrupulous approach who will cut costs at the disadvantage of the environment in order simply to sell product. So that responsibility is in relation to the footprint. But also of course we have specific sectors where there are particular climate challenges or critical issues in energy, in transport, in construction, and of course in agriculture, where all of them are finding difficult to meet sustainability goals. And we know that digital solutions have the potential to cut about 15% of total emissions by 2030. And one of the things that we’re doing in the European Union, including I have a team for example working on Internet of Things in application sectors, and it is our responsibility to mainstream the work on green by design, on the digital requirements in order to ensure that any solution in those sectors is itself contributing to our objectives, but more importantly is driving for example energy efficiency in transport, in logistics, and so on. We have last year issued the digitalization of energy system action plan, which is working with our colleagues working on energy policy and energy technologies, just to set out a set of actions with regard to decarbonizing the energy network, making the energy network much more efficient by using digital technology, by incorporating things such as the electrical vehicle infrastructure so that the batteries in the vehicles become part of the energy grid, so that there is intelligent charging and reuse of the energy that is downloaded. Also, it works on grid optimization, predictive energy production, and so on. Of course, even there, we have to be realistic that not all digitalization efforts have a positive impact, and we have to see to it that we are aware of the impact and that we’re delivering positive impact by measuring the impact of ICTs and the net value that they provide in terms of our decarbonization goals. To do that, we have also launched another initiative, which is the European Green Digital Coalition. When I say launched, we sponsored it in part, but it comes from the voluntary action and now independent existence of this network of 40 companies who have committed to making their companies individually best in class with regards to digital efforts, decarbonization, and also contributing to the digitalization of energy-consuming sectors. So the European Green Digital Coalition, which is led by JESI, as well as ETNO, Digital Europe, Digital SME Alliance, and GSMA, so a lot of actors who are known in their own right in Europe are all working together on this, and we’re looking forward to having more progress as they also recruit further companies, but also that they work closely with other actors, particularly in civil society and academia. the scientific and academic community, so the stakeholders that we’re always gathering here in the IGF, in order to ensure that the science is right, that there is independent aid but also audit and verification by those communities with regards to how concrete is the contribution of industry and what are the societal requirements, what could be some of the negative consequences if we do not analyze and tailor make the efforts that we’re making. For example, it is easy to say to everybody that they must buy the latest, most energy efficient piece of consumer equipment, but that is not a proposition for many, many persons in society. There have to be other steps that have to be taken as well, so this is why the rounded view, even though as you’ve heard me say we’re putting a lot of pressure and emphasis on the role of industry, the rounded view of these efforts, particularly in the context of the DFI, needs that stakeholder involvement. All sectors of society need to play a role so that we get it right, and if we do that, then we have a formula for having the twin transition, that’s the digital and green transitions, deliver benefits to all of the aspects of sustainability, economic sustainability, but of course social sustainability as well, naturally, as environmental sustainability, and that’s something that’s underlined in our digital decade policy program, and also actually in our declaration of digital rights and principles, where once again environmental considerations need to be put to the center of our policy work. And finally, just let me come back to the point about digital transition, how it realizes its full potential, it’s not just about supporting the green transition, but how about the green transition can support digitalization targets, so for example the move to renewable energy, and how we make that digital, but then help it to actually give positive outcome for digital technologies is it’s a bit of a conundrum but it is nevertheless one which we know can give great benefits. Better integrated digitalization in the environmental and climate policies will also bear fruit and the provision of green digital solutions in climate critical sectors such as those that I’ve mentioned will actually be a way also of having a positive impact on the environment for those more vulnerable geographies and societies who otherwise have or will suffer disproportionately from global warming. Thank you. Great, thank you very much Piers. I think you’ve highlighted a lot of

Patryk Pawlak:
interesting points but I think what I really liked is this focus on grid by design that the EU is pursuing as well that exactly is part of the solution but also stressing the importance of this almost whole of society approach if you want to thinking about how on one hand technology indeed is a problem that we have to address but at the same time part of the solution that we have to discuss and I know that speakers both online and here in the room are going to talk about that. Speaking of our speakers online let me turn to two of them who are joining us and I’d like to ask both Sarah Workley and Michelle Thorne the same question. What are some of the key challenges but also opportunities in reconciling growth and digital economy and green digital transition that you see from the perspective of your organizations and which ones do you consider the priority? Following up on what Piers said about the multi-stakeholder community engagement how can this community foster open transparent and inclusive dialogue between different groups to identify good practices, but also some innovative solutions to address this problem. And maybe we could start with Sarah, please.

Sarah Walkley:
Thanks, Patrick. So yeah, I work with a number of small and medium-sized businesses, advising them. And my experience is that the impact of digital technology is really poorly understood within that group. Relative to other sources of emissions, our footprint is quite small, but it’s one of the areas where emissions are growing quite intensively due to how much data we’re storing and our use of some of these models. My background before going freelance was in print publishing, and within that area, the minute we had got rid of our print books, magazines, and so on, there was an expectation that that was job done for the organization in terms of sustainability, because we’d got rid of the physical product. And so it’s that sort of lack of the intangible nature of a lot of the digital services that means that businesses struggle to see the impact of their digital habits on the environment. And equally, because at the individual level, those impacts could be quite small. Email, collectively, is estimated to account for 0.3% of global emissions, but each individual email is a gram or two, and also those impacts, the collective impact happens upstream in the data services and the energy that that’s used. And so it’s kind of. and from a business perspective, it feels really quite remote from day-to-day operations. And so many of the SMEs I speak to say they don’t, because their employees work remotely and everything they do is online, they don’t really need to have a sustainability strategy. So my point of view, there’s a significant need for education, especially to help businesses think about the energy, who they choose as their hosting providers and looking at what energy they have, perhaps how they code their products to make them smaller and more efficiently, to use more efficient code. And I’m a great believer in looking at co-benefits. And so perhaps how we use policies in other areas to leverage what good sustainable practice. So encouraging marketers to clear up the data that they’ve stored, which is good practice from a GDPR perspective, also helps reduce the amount of data we store and the energy we’re using. And so thinking about how we can leverage some of those existing policies and connect issues in people’s mind.

Patryk Pawlak:
Great, thank you. Ezra, your thoughts, please. One, your intervention triggered one of the thoughts I had at some point, how we got used right now to including this disclaimer in the emails. Think if you really have to print this email, as something that probably might be a good practice is also think if you have to respond to this email to reduce the effort. And I’m sure a lot of people in the room would also appreciate the practical aspect of it, where if we didn’t really have to respond or see that many of them in our mailboxes. Michelle, over to you with the same question. Some of the good practices, challenges you see, but also how… cooperation between different stakeholder groups can be part of the solution. Yeah, thank you so much, Patrick, for convening this panel. It’s a pleasure to be here with you all virtually at the IGF.

Michelle Thorne:
Yeah, at the GreenWeb Foundation, one of the focuses we have is talking about how the majority of Internet infrastructure is actually powered by fossil fuels, and one of the things we need to do to focus on transitioning those infrastructures off of fossil fuels. It’s been mentioned by the earlier speakers, we see the electricity demands for general computing rising, but especially for AI, and as we talk about these twin transitions, we actually aren’t talking in a more detailed way about how those energy demands will be matched in a sustainable way as we increase that digitization, and also in these conversations to expand beyond just talking about the carbon impacts, but there’s land and water usage, noise pollution, strains on the critical raw materials. These are really holistic and multifaceted systems that we’re talking about, and so one of the, I guess, points to stress or opportunities here is how can we actually have a data-informed conversation about where and how these Internet infrastructures are built and where they’re placed and where they’re maintained. Right now, we talked about where are the civil society actors and where are the impacted communities when something like a data center is being built. We’ve seen, at least in the European context, but also in the South American context and other places, communities pushing back and saying, you’re building a data center in our community that’s, for example, running on 100% renewables, as an example from a Dutch community recently, and now that this huge data center is being built, our community has to shift to relying on fossil fuels. These kinds of conversations aren’t happening in a way that is allowing the communities to be fully empowered in the decision of how those infrastructures are being deployed and built and who’s getting prioritized in terms of resources. So there’s also a democratic, a question of democratic involvement. Where I see policymakers having a role to play is in actually helping to be, to create the data, the public evidence base, so that these data informed conversations can happen. That includes, for example, more transparency and accountability on reporting of environmental impacts, digital technologies, especially around scope three emissions. We know this has been an issue, long identified, but still lacking in follow through to really talk about the digital supply chain and to make credible reporting around that. We also really need to see a more credible net zero targets from tech companies. If we look at the companies who are majorly responsible for infrastructure and digital services, most of them don’t have interim or credible interim net zero targets. And many of them actually are performing worse than fossil fuel companies in terms of transparency. So this is a place, again, where if we’re talking about the powers of digitization and the positive impacts we want to digitization, we also need to see those net zero targets published and being committed to and followed through. And also then speaking again at a policy level, again, we’re based in the EU, so have maybe more, a stronger lens in the EU context. But recently the EU had the energy efficiency directive. And instead of holding on to wins that we had around reporting, for example, of data centers that are using electricity roughly this at the level of 300 households, there was lobbying and the threshold was changed. So that data centers that are working at the level of 15,000 households have to start reporting. So why are we having this shift when we’re saying we need actually more information on both the energy consumption of the digital sector, but then saying we actually don’t need to be reporting on data centers that still are using quite significant resources. So this is again, a part of that holistic conversation. we need to have, we need to have the information around what are those impacts, who’s being held to account and who’s at the table deciding where and how those resources are being allocated.

Patryk Pawlak:
So, go ahead. Thanks, Michelle. We might come back to some of these points. You talked a lot about accountability and transparency. I also wonder to what extent these issues, for instance, when there is such an impact on local communities becomes an issue for local, regional, national elections, for instance, maybe something we want to come back to later on. Let me bring the conversation back to the room. I’ll switch to you, Nadia, right now, if you don’t mind. I mean, youth, we know, has a particular stake in this conversation, both as a user of digital technologies, but also, frankly, the part of our societies that really have to deal with the consequences of the policy decisions that are taken today. So, both really as the target of the policies, but also the consumer of the digital technologies. From your perspective, how can the governments and the private sector or youth organisations work better together with youth organisations as well, like your own? And what are some of the actions that you would recommend your peers can take to also reduce the digital footprint on the environment?

Nadia Owusu:
All right, thanks so much, Patrick, for the opportunity. My name is Nadia Ousu, I’m from Ghana. For me, I would like to talk about governments and private sectors, especially private sectors that are more interested in, away from greenwashing, but actually participating in ensuring there’s more sustainability, how they can work with young people, especially young people from the continent, especially Africa, where we’re at the brunt and facing climate change every day. We feel that if governments, private sectors, and civil societies and youth organisations So, I think it’s important that we have a multistakeholder consultation. I think that’s a very important thing. I think it’s very important that young people, young people organizations come together and see young people, not as just a stakeholder but also as partners. They can take on our concerns and work better with us in this few approaches I’m about to mention. I think Piers mentioned multistakeholder consultation. I think that is very important, but we need more engagement for young people. I think this deal isn’t reliable for young people. It’s not true, but, at the same time, in the year of 2020, 2022, 75 per cent of people online are young people, between the ages of 15-21. If we have this much volume of young people online, we need to be part of engagement and consult tations and these have to happen at different levels, from regional levels to local levels, to international levels where each country has a different level of engagement. We need to be part of this. We need to be part of this, and, just like I mentioned, we need to appoint young representatives, advisers to government committees, to boards, to industries, and associations that can ensure that young people’s perspectives are integrated in decision-making. I also want to mention the fact that Sarah talked about education. How many people know about the DFI? How many people know the signatories? How many people know about the DFI? How many people know about the DFI? We need to have more education, we need more awareness creation, and we need to implement educational programmes that raise awareness on the importance of a free digital ecosystem which is also sustainable for young people to thrive effectively. I also want to talk about the fact that the government should support innovations for young people. Young people are creative, young people are innovative, young people, and we need to build onwards to solve this problem. We also need to look at the ways in which the government and private stakeholders can and climate action, specifically on renewable and circular economies and energies. We can also push for more digital skills development for young people, especially on the continent, by providing grants, mentorship, resources, to encourage more young people to start their own businesses to drive innovations at different levels. When we’re talking about digital technologies, it also affects climate change, and we want to push for more climate and sustainable ways young people can do this by addressing environmental concerns by involving young people in decisions and initiatives related to climate change and sustainability. I would also want to talk about the fact that collaboration is very key. We should push for more collaboration between governments, private stakeholders, and also youth-led initiatives to tackle challenges and create opportunities for young people to thrive effectively. But we cannot ask for putting young people on the table, giving young people opportunities, creation of awareness, without talking about mechanisms to monitor the progress of these things I think it’s important that we establish mechanisms for feedback evaluations to assess the effectiveness of policies that relate to young people when it comes to the DFI and also digital technologies aimed at addressing young people’s concerns. These would make positive adjustments based on feedback. We need to have proper ways of collection of data that are reflective of the needs of young people, especially when it comes to the digital economy. The last thing I would want to talk about too is sustainable long-term perspectives. We have discussions, we have conversations, we want youth perspective, we want youth insights, but how sustainable would these be for the long term? How would these policies and investments benefit future generations considering the impacts of young people’s lives and their potentials to contributions to the society? In terms of what young people can do to reduce their digital footprint, I think we mentioned a few, like the emails, having people not to print, but I think what’s more integral is for young people to know that they can. They can advocate for green tech, they can push for and encourage tech companies and policy makers to adopt eco-friendly practices and invest in renewable energy sources. They can also, you know, participate in e-waste recycling, recycling their electronics by responsibly recycling old electronics rather than throwing them away in trash. These also go a way to, you know, pollute the environment and add up to more of the greenhouse gases. They should also use energy-efficient devices. They should choose to push for more sustainable and energy-efficient laptops, smartphones and other devices. The point is about the energy-star rated products and also sustainable softwares and also push for education and awareness for their peers. But the simple things people can do on a day-to-day basis is simple, by using public Wi-Fi and rather using their own internet by turning off unused devices while charging them. They can unplug chargers. They can also participate in their digital clean-up, erasing of emails, cleaning their junk, deleting unnecessary files they have on their devices which would add up to all of these things. They can also think of limiting their streaming time because the more they stream videos and online content, the more amount of energy and bandwidth they use. So they should rather push for downloading things offline and watching them rather than streaming. They should also practice digital minimalism which is by using your online presence and reducing online presence, deleting unused accounts. People have up to three to four accounts, but if we practice more digital minimalism, we can have a reduced digital presence for people. And I would like to also mention the fact that if each and every day we take these little conscious steps to reduce our digital footprint, we get a more sustainable environment, a more sustainable future, a more sustainable environment where everybody can live cohesively and push for a more digital space. So thank you so much, Patryk.

Patryk Pawlak:
Great, thank you. You put a lot of habit-changing issues on the table that we can potentially all adopt. And I want to maybe come back, if we have time for the discussion, to both Sarah and Michel, to discuss with you to what extent you see the impact of those changed habits on the bigger picture. And you also brought to the conversation another aspect. We talked a bit about industrial policy and the regulation, what can be done. I think it’s pretty clear as well that we have to look at other policy areas, like education, for instance, or consumer policies that sort of impact those practices at the large scale. Speaking about the governments as well and how they can engage younger generations, Ambassador, you have had multiple roles. You looked at the topic as an academic, as a government representative. And now you actually have a chance to impact how the policies are made, including those of the European Union. And I wonder from your perspective, A, how do you think the governments can actually work with other stakeholder groups, how you have tried to do this as a government official in Kenya. But also, what do you see some of the key challenges? Nadia mentioned Africa, which is the continent that’s very much impacted by the climate change. To what extent this has been one of the dimensions in your thinking about how the ecosystem or the policies of the Kenyan ICT are shaped?

Bitange Ndemo:
Thank you. I think much has been said. But what I want to add is that what should government be doing and taking advantage of the position in which Africa is in at the moment. We have a lot of sunshine. And we have a lot of geothermal deposits. We have a lot of rivers which are huge to produce green energy. We need to leverage that. Kenya itself had a strategy for green energy even before we started to discuss this. So much of our energy comes from geothermal and wind, and also from hydro, where 94% actually of our energy is green. But that doesn’t stop us from changing behavior like my sister was talking about here. COVID taught us that we can do a lot online. We’ve been doing conferences. We’ve been teaching online. Less travel means we have removed a few carbons out of the space. If governments have proper strategies to take advantage of that which can be done to reduce carbon emissions, let it be done. I know, for example, we did a document for the government recently. There are places where, if we begin farming there, what happens there is carbon sequestration. I mean, new method, generative agriculture, which would remove more carbon from the air. That’s what I mean that government strategies could do more and involve young people in every aspect of it. In terms of what everybody has said, education is very key to create awareness, even though sometimes people don’t. I think… I think that will do. Thank you. Great. Thank you.

Patryk Pawlak:
I remember I met one of your colleagues from Kenya a few years ago when we had the discussion about, she works on cyber security, so we had a broader discussion about cyber. But there was one very interesting example that she has mentioned. Using the EU’s reference to human-centric approach, she said, why do we talk about human-centric approach and not life-centric approach, for instance, when we talk about the investment in the infrastructure? She gave this very interesting example of how, for instance, sequencing of policies, if it’s better coordinated and implementation of different projects, can actually have a very positive impact. And gave the example of the road that has been built that, of course, caused certain environmental damage in the communities. But then that road had to be destroyed in order to put the fiber optic cables. And she said, we basically had to do this destruction twice. And by coordinating policies, we could have avoided some of this. So I think there are some interesting lessons to be learned there. But let me move now to one of our speakers online, Alexia, who works for OECD. And Alexia, I would like to hear your thoughts on what strategies and frameworks can be also implemented to ensure that the deployment of digital technologies is supporting this objective of green digital transition, takes the environmental considerations on board. It’s a topic that is very often presented as a new one. But you and I, as we’ve discussed, it’s definitely not something that is new in the policy discussions, including at the OECD. So I would like to hear your thoughts on where you see the state of the conversations right now, and what some of the lessons, maybe, or observations that have been already made in the past could be useful for the discussions that we’re having today. Alexia, over to you.

Alexia Gonzalez Fanfalone:
Thank you very much. Patrick. Everybody hears me okay? Yes? Yes. Okay. So thank you very much. When we talk about the twin transitions, so we’re talking about what is the role of digital technologies and the enabling infrastructure to leverage the opportunities to achieve these green or environmental sustainable goals. And here’s some key questions is one in this intersection of technology, both the development and the diffusion and policy and our environment. How do we measure the impact of digital and green? And this is important because only what can be measured can be improved. And at the moment there is a lack of harmonization on this metrics. Also at the private where the ESG reporting and at the public level. And also in this road, what are the main policy considerations for a coherent whole of government and multi-stakeholder approach? We heard the importance about a multi-stakeholder approach. If we look at OECD countries and we look at communication regulators, for example, half of them have partial mandates on environment sustainability of communication networks, but only a fifth have a direct mandate, which means that really leveraging digital technologies for environment sustainability goals requires a whole of government approach and a multi-stakeholder approach. We know as well, as was mentioned by our predecessors is how digital technologies themselves have an environmental footprint all across their life cycle. And so this is also important to harness. So why is this conversation as Patrick said, not entirely new. So let’s look at the road behind to see what is the road ahead. And at the OECD, this intersection of digital and green was first explored in the work leading to the OECD recommendation of ICTs on the environment. This recommendations council recommendation of 2010, and it had several principles that we’re currently reviewing the relevance and see if we have to update it. but one of them is coordinating ICTs for climate and environment and energy policies. And here it recommends to look both at the direct effects of ICTs, the enabling effects in other sectors, and third, the systemic effects that require social change and cultural behavior change that was rightfully mentioned. So here we see that these three effects can be mapped, for example, on the scope one, scope two, scope three of the greenhouse gas protocols. Now, we also seen that we have a council recommendation on broadband connectivity that was from 2004, renewed in 2021, and it urges stakeholders to minimize the negative effects of communication networks in the environment, also promoting smart networks and devices. And I will just pause here a little bit with some nuggets of information of connectivity, which is the underlining foundational pillar of digital transformation and how it can be leveraged to achieve these green objectives. We’ve seen in recent years a boost for fiber deployment in many OECD countries, and this transition to fibers is seen by some stakeholders as also achieving environment sustainability goals as it’s more energy efficient than copper alternatives. We’ve seen also the increase of AI systems to, for example, optimize energy management of communication networks. We’ve seen talks about the standardization and the development of 6G where key values such as environmental sustainability are being embedded. But when we talk about AI and here the OECD did the first standard on AI principles in 2019, there’s a clear focus on the importance of the environmental sustainability of it. And the presentation note that you provided, Patrick, said of the positive effects of AI, we have a dedicated expert. group on AI compute and climate, looking at both negative and positive effects. And particularly when we talk about the negative effects and data center consumption on all that, the conversation requires a bit more nuance because there’s a difference between the training of AI models and the inference of these models. So precise measurement on this particular aspect requires a lot more legwork going ahead. So if I would say some key messages that might are important to remember is also the enabling effects of ICTs on other sectors of the economy. It was mentioned both by peers and others of the impact of IoT, green by design, and having this, for example, for smart agriculture, precision agriculture, for reducing congestion in cities, and for energy grid use. I have a little data point that I would like to share with you on data centers and energy. So we have the International Energy Agency, IEA. And the IEA esteems that at least half of the global reductions on CO2 emissions required for a net zero scenario by 2050 rely on clean energy technology developments that are still in their prototype phase. So there’s an importance of innovation, but there’s also an importance of technology diffusion. And when we look at digital, so there is a rising demand of digital services over the past decade. For example, since 2010 to 2020, the number of internet users doubled, and global internet traffic expanded 15-fold. But there have also been rapid advances in energy efficiencies thanks to digitalization. And we’ve seen that it would be data centers and data transmission networks during that same period have been relatively stable at 1% of global electricity use. So this really. it’s important to realize that innovation, we have to really push for that and also how digitalization can be leveraged for green objectives, but it requires technological diffusion. Now, finally, I’ll leave you with three key messages that one, common measurement standards are required and we need more data collection to track the environmental impacts of digital technologies, both the direct and the enabling effects and of course, the systemic ones

Patryk Pawlak:
that require behavioral use.

Alexia Gonzalez Fanfalone:
Secondly, we need to go beyond energy and resource efficiency to talk about systemic effects, go beyond greenhouse gas emissions because there are other several planetary boundaries that are in danger such as biodiversity, ocean acidification, biochemical flows, air pollution. And third, efforts towards environmental equity and transparency are needed for inclusive growth and development and this could be enabled notably by harnessing digital for green, but we should remember that while green transition has a clear focus and determination, the digital transition is not deterministic, it needs to be directed in a positive way for society and the environment and that’s where the human-centric approach recovers a lot of relevance.

Patryk Pawlak:
Great, thank you very much, Alexia. I think you also have touched upon an interesting point that we have discussed yesterday, not only in relation to green, but the whole DFI in general. When we talked about which of the principles of the DFI could be prioritized, the issue of connectivity seemed like one where a lot of governments actually were paying attention and there’s a very clear connection with your intervention where exactly thinking about connectivity in the context of the principle about the grid transition, but also others in the DFI, we may create this interlinkages between. different principles and potentially use them to enable each other, so that’s a great point as well. In general, listening to the discussions, I feel like I’m very happy that this is also being recorded and I’ll have a chance to re-watch it afterwards, because there is a lot of data coming from all the speakers that I did not manage to note myself, and I’m sure that people in the room and online are in a similar situation. So thank you IGF again for recording the sessions, which will give us the opportunity to review this. I’d like to go to our final speaker online, Jari Kar, who is at the Teletechnical University in Munich, but originally from Costa Rica, and who I know has done some work on new technologies, especially use of AI systems and so on, and I was wondering, Jari, if you could tell us how exactly new technologies could be used to address some of the impacts that the digital transition might have on climate and environment more broadly. So Jari, over to you for your thoughts. Hello everyone, I hope you can hear me. Thank you very much for the invitation in this session, I’m very happy to be here. Well, as a digital youth, I’m from the International Telecommunication Union, ITU.

Yawri Carr:
Today I want to share with you the transformative role that artificial intelligence can play in shaping a sustainable future and importantly, how our youth can also actively engage in this mission. Well, adding to what already Nadia mentioned. So let’s begin by exploring some remarkable AI applications that are catalyzing positive change in this fight against climate change, and that we’re also part of the AI for Good Summit from the ITU in last July. So, from AI-driven climate prediction and disaster response to optimizing green energy and revolutionizing agriculture, there are innovations reshaping our world. approach to sustainability. They offer us the tools to monitor and protect our environment in ways we could only dream some years ago. For example, there are now technologies that are being developed, for example, using AI to make cities safe, clean and sustainable, developing AI tools capable of providing information on where, when and what disaster or climate change event may occur in the future, facilitating acting before the disaster happens, something that before could not be done. And this helps mitigate or even avoid a negative environmental impact that the event will have on the area. Also taking into consideration that some regions in the world, for example, in Latin America, are very impacted because of disasters and that people are normally not well prepared or that are maybe living in a difficult or risky area, so this is also very important for that. Another platform, for example, uses machine learning algorithms based on more than 7 billion lines of weather and ground truth data and this could help preventing fires, for example, so they predict where wildfires could be emerging and they also, for example, have been detecting this in risk areas. And also the prediction of deforestation and this could be done using satellite imagery that makes possible to analyze the potential of deforestation based on information such as the distance to water resources, cities and other key factories. So these AI applications are not just technological marvels, they represent now a frontier of possibilities and they showcase how cooperation between technology and environmental stewardship can pave the way for a more sustainable and resilient future. I consider that also empowering youth with knowledge and also the population in general is very important. Adding to what Nadia said, I consider that it’s clear that education is our first line of defense as well. We must keep our youth with the knowledge and skills needed to understand hardness and further develop the technologies in a responsible way. I consider that informatics and AI education should be seamlessly integrated into school curricula, but also open education and open science, as well as online platforms that offer accessible resources for learning about AI and sustainability should be available for everyone. Workshops and awareness programs can bridge the knowledge gap, fostering a generation that not only understand the technology, but is also inspired to leverage for positive change. Along with the education, I also consider youth-led innovation could also be a very important option because knowledge is not enough in today’s society. We must also empower youth to be innovators, problem solvers, and also architects of change. Imagine the impact of global hackathons and innovation challenges that bring young minds together to tackle environmental challenges. Think about also the potential of youth-led technology hubs where ideas are transformed into tangible solutions, and also mentorship programs that are organized by experts with much more experience or that have expertise in different areas of science, that could also contribute to these youth to move forward with their innovations and also with their spirit of innovation, and also creating a fertile ground for sustainable ideas to blossom. Also, remembering. that this kind of educational innovation should also come into regions and areas that are normally historically discriminated, such as populations of African descended, indigenous, or a populations that have a difficult access to resources. So thank you very much.

Patryk Pawlak:
Great, thank you very much. We have about five minutes left. I would like to check if anybody in the room would like to intervene, make a comment on what you have heard, or maybe show your perspectives in the discussion. Oh, there are reactions. Great. So we have two reactions. If you don’t mind, online, I’m going to take these two comments from the room and then maybe go to those speakers who are interested for 30 seconds of final thoughts. We go over to you first.

Audience:
Hi, everyone. I am Denise Leal from Brazil. So it’s a Latin America perspective that I bring to the table. It was very interesting hearing all of you and what you’ve highlighted very important aspects and points on the green digital era. Michelle has spoken about transparency and the reports, and I think that this is a very important point on the theme. And I also have noted here about when Alexia told about biodiversity, it really interested me. But, and I kept thinking, we are speaking about how the technology and internet can help to keep the green era, like the environmental safe, but also I was thinking, and when we have legal disputes on digital and internet and technology and also the environment, can the environment be seen as a the right holder, and in your countries, are there legal disputes on the team, and how do they end? Because I am with a group making a research in Brasília University, and we have studied about these legal disputes, and they usually don’t end well. We have the laws and the regulations, and the reality is it’s really beautiful, the environment is protected, but when it comes to the decisions made on the legal disputes, actually, not always we can see protection for the environment, in not only in Brazil, but also international disputes, we can see that, so I wanted to hear from you, how do you see this point, and if you have, I studied it any time, that’s it, thank you.

Patryk Pawlak:
Great, thank you, great question, over to you, and then I know also Michelle online has a very targeted question for peers, so we’ll go to you, Michelle, as well, please, here.

Audience:
Thank you, my name is Bushri Badi, and I had a few questions that are all interrelated to each other, so I think various speakers spoke about decarbonization and carbon sequestration as some of the measures that we are using to mitigate climate change, and especially in the technology area, but I also then question maybe the general frameworks or the policies, especially in the European context, whether it’s the commission or the councils are advancing that really emphasize achieving carbon neutrality within a certain timeframe, not being realistic, or in cohesion with the IPCC findings, especially with how rapidly we’re seeing climate change affect different communities, and then using those measures that actually maybe hide some of the wider impacts, like when we talk about the entire life cycle approach, well, the extraction of. natural resources that are happening in different contexts with human rights violations, are those being considered in the carbon footprinting measures or the benchmarking that’s happening? It feels like there’s a lot of, let’s export some of our impacts to other areas or regions of the world in the same way that our technologies are being exported that have these negative implications. And I think the other question that I have that’s connected to this is the assumption that we have that the collection of data is needed and is actually necessary for these sustainable transitions that we’re talking about, when in fact, now data centers surpass the entire airline industry in terms of CO2 emissions. We’ve been pushing a lot for big data policies across, I mean, the European context, but around the world. And most of the data that’s collected isn’t being used, can’t actually be analyzed. And so I think that assumption needs to be challenged. Like, why are we collecting this data in the first place when it is having tangible negative environmental impacts, but also societal impacts? So for already marginalized communities, including migrants and forcibly displaced persons, that data is being used to prevent them from seeking asylum in the European context, for example, but also across the Americas and around the world. So just, I wanted to get a sense of how you’re trying to find some cohesion between some of these policies that don’t seem to actually be rooted in the evidence, and then this need to collect more evidence to do what’s already known to be the best practice in these cases, kind of like pushing the thing down the road when in reality we could be addressing these issues today. Great, thank you.

Patryk Pawlak:
I’m being told that we have to end. Michelle, if your question can be formed in 30 seconds, so that then I also give Piers 30 seconds to answer and the ambassador to react, that would be great. We have apologies to the organizers for stealing two minutes. Michelle, over to you.

Michelle Thorne:
So I’m wondering how digital innovation can be done so that it doesn’t further consolidate the market power of existing companies, but it’s creating economic… opportunity for and benefits of the most impacted people in areas, so we don’t have a brittle monoculture online but rather a diverse and open ecosystem. Great, perfect, thank you. That was less

Patryk Pawlak:
than 30 seconds, much appreciated. Ambassador, I’ll start with you for 30 seconds, final thoughts,

Bitange Ndemo:
and then I’ll go here on the table whoever would like to take the floor. I would have taken much longer to talk about the sequestration of capon. This came from the side of IT in some sections of Kenya and by use of trying to do precision farming and found that we could actually sequestrate capon and contribute heavily into this. I don’t know whether that’s sufficient or I need to continue or we can follow up. You can discuss this over coffee. There’s this very

Patryk Pawlak:
important question about does the environment have the rights, which I think we will also have to take offline unfortunately. Nadia, do you have in the direction 30 seconds? Sure, I really wanted to

Nadia Owusu:
say that I totally agree with everything the panel said, especially those online when it comes to youth involvement in this entire conversation on digitalization and green economy, so I want to say after this conversation, we have to keep it going. There are more conversations at the UNFCCC climate change conference that is at COP28 in Dubai. We can have such conversations, so I’m saying we carry these conversations away from IGF to climate change conferences where we have more stakeholders in the climate change networks. Thank you. Well, I was going to make a comment,

Pearse O’Donohue:
but I won’t. I’ll just make an observation and say I learned a lesson. Patrick, you spoke about we got a lot of data. We’ll have to review the video. One point I’ll make is that we also got a very strong theme running through about data in this session. Michel on the role of government and collecting data, but also on credible data. Nadia. particularly from a youth perspective, and Alexia all again about measurement, the measurement point about data. That’s a critical lesson for us. We are doing some work on data collection, maybe not enough, but because it comes up to my answer to the question that was put to me, I would just say that on green data centres particularly, we have done specific work while the Energy Efficiency Directive has set a target for climate-neutral data centres by 2030. We are working already with our joint research centre and industry to make sure that the measurement is credible, it has to be independent, and there have to be more detailed models. It’s not just gross power consumption, it’s gross and net water consumption, etc. But I’m going to skip the rest of what I’m going to say about that point, because I want to ask the question by Michel. I’m going to interpret your question to mean developments in digital with regard to green, because it’s an even wider question. The first blunt response is, well, of course, we’re going to aim for our target, which is to ensure that ICT moves towards carbon neutrality and contributes to other sectors. So you could even say that goal overrides market positioning or dominance. But of course, where those technical solutions or even any regulatory support for that objective, if they were to give rise to bad outcomes, particularly with regard to dominance in society as much as in the market, well, that is something which in the European Union we have increasingly showed that we are willing to do, the Digital Market Act, the Digital Services Act, in order to break down monopolies or duopolies, in order to ensure the possibility to enter markets, and also to ensure that solutions involve SMEs and that we measure the impact of our work. And we should and will do the same, and it cycles back to my point about data. The data doesn’t just apply to the technology, it applies to the solutions and the implementation of those solutions to make sure that we have a sustainable market. that we are actually achieving our targets. Thank you.

Patryk Pawlak:
Great. Thank you very much, Pierce. Thank you very much to all the speakers online and here in the room. To all of you for joining us in the afternoon during the happy hour. So I really appreciate the effort you have made. And with apologies to the organizing team for stealing some of the time in your preparations. Thank you very much, everyone, and enjoy the rest of your evening.

Kevin Luca Zandermann

Kevin Luca Zandermann has highlighted the global focus on data governance, particularly in privacy legislation. He emphasised the significance of important privacy laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is being recognised as the gold standard globally. This reflects a growing recognition of the importance of protecting individual privacy and regulating the use of personal data in our increasingly digital world.

In addition to privacy legislation, Kevin emphasised the need for institution models that can effectively manage data stewardship. He pointed out that data is a non-rivalrous resource, meaning its use by one person does not diminish its availability to others. With the vast amount of data being produced by sources such as the internet of things, wearables, and cloud platforms, it is crucial to establish mechanisms to ensure responsible and ethical data management.

Kevin also highlighted the EU Data Governance Act as a significant step towards establishing an institutional framework for data stewardship. This act allows the reuse of data held by public sector bodies, enabling the efficient and responsible use of data for various purposes. Furthermore, the act certifies data intermediaries, ensuring they meet certain standards and promoting the responsible handling of data. The act also promotes the concept of data altruism, which involves individuals voluntarily sharing their data for societal benefits. This type of data sharing can be particularly valuable in the context of diseases such as rare diseases, where the sharing of data among researchers and medical professionals is vital.

Overall, Kevin’s arguments underscore the critical need for data governance and the establishment of effective institutional frameworks to protect privacy and ensure responsible data stewardship. The analysis also highlights the growing recognition of GDPR as a global standard and the potential value of data altruism in addressing complex societal challenges. These insights contribute to the broader conversation on data governance and the ethical use of data in our interconnected world.

Audience

Enforcement capacity plays a crucial role in supporting data sharing mechanisms, frameworks, and policies. In the US, there have been significant struggles in enforcing data protection laws, particularly in relation to medical data. These challenges highlight the need for stronger emphasis on enforcement capacity in data protection and data sharing.

One of the main points raised is the inadequate enforcement of existing data protection laws in the US. This suggests that, despite having legislation in place, there is a gap in effectively implementing and enforcing these laws. This is particularly concerning when it comes to sensitive data, such as medical information, where the need for protection is high.

The importance of enforcement capacity becomes apparent when considering its implications for data sharing mechanisms, frameworks, and policies. Without a strong enforcement mechanism, it becomes difficult to ensure compliance and accountability. This can lead to vulnerabilities and risks related to data privacy and security.

The argument put forward is for a stronger emphasis on enhancing enforcement capacity in the context of data protection and data sharing. By improving enforcement capabilities, it becomes possible to strengthen the overall governance of data practices and hold organizations and individuals accountable for their actions.

The analysis also highlights the relevance of this issue within the broader context of Sustainable Development Goal 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. Effective enforcement of data protection and data sharing laws is vital for building strong institutions and promoting justice in the digital era.

In conclusion, the struggles faced in enforcing data protection laws, especially in relation to medical data, underscore the need for stronger enforcement capacity. Enhancing enforcement mechanisms can support data sharing mechanisms, frameworks, and policies, and contribute to achieving SDG 16. Ensuring the protection and privacy of data is crucial in promoting integrity, accountability, and trust in the digital landscape.

Thiago Moraes

The Ministry of Innovation in Brazil has faced criticism for creating an interoperability system that raises concerns about data protection and privacy. This is inconsistent with the Brazilian Data Protection Law, known as the LGPD. The Supreme Court is involved in ensuring that the decree aligns with data protection principles.

One major issue with the system is the creation of a vast database that encompasses citizen data from various governmental platforms. The potential dangers of such a database have been highlighted as it holds sensitive information that could be misused if it falls into the wrong hands.

In a positive development, a new decree was published in 2022 to rectify the issues arising from the previous data sharing rules. This new decree aims to make data sharing and handling more transparent. It is noteworthy that the committee responsible for drawing up this decree now includes civil society participants, making it more representative and diverse. The involvement of the Data Protection Authority has also been instrumental in ensuring that the new decree is compatible with the data protection law.

Despite concerns over data protection and privacy, the implementation of the interoperability system has brought efficiency and financial savings to the Brazilian public sector. The introduction of new interoperability services through data sharing has resulted in substantial cost savings of half a million dollars in recent years. These services ensure that information is shared only when necessary, thus minimizing unnecessary sharing of data across all agencies.

The importance of sharing knowledge about data protection and governance regulations has become evident. Before the enforcement of data protection regulations, it is crucial to raise awareness and provide education on these matters. This is particularly relevant in Brazil, where many people were previously unfamiliar with data protection and governance.

Empowering individuals about their data rights and educating data controllers about the regulations are vital for ensuring easy enforcement of the rules. When people are aware of their data rights and data controllers understand their obligations, compliance with data protection rules becomes easier, and privacy-compliant initiatives can be implemented effectively.

An important observation is that communication and knowledge sharing should be prioritized over enforcement or sanctions. Sharing knowledge has proven beneficial in guiding stakeholders in the right direction. It is also worth noting that only two sanctions have been enforced so far, with one being a warning to a public body. This highlights the importance of fostering a culture of compliance through education and communication rather than relying solely on punitive measures.

Finally, it is emphasized that the involvement of regulatory authorities in background processes is crucial for efficient governance. The role of regulators goes beyond merely enforcing sanctions; they play an essential part in sharing knowledge and information.

In conclusion, while the Ministry of Innovation’s creation of an interoperability system has raised concerns about data protection and privacy, the introduction of a new decree in 2022 aims to address these issues and improve transparency in data sharing and handling practices. The implementation of the system has brought benefits in terms of efficiency and financial savings to the public sector. Sharing knowledge about data protection and governance regulations is considered crucial, and empowering individuals and educating data controllers are necessary for effective enforcement of the rules. Communication and knowledge sharing should be prioritized over enforcement, and the involvement of regulatory authorities in background processes is crucial for efficient governance.

Alison Gillwald

The analysis focused on several key points raised by the speakers. One of the main concerns highlighted is the existence of asymmetrical power relations in data sharing, particularly in the context of the African continent. It is distressing to note that a staggering 80% of data flows outside the African continent, leaving the region at a significant disadvantage. Moreover, a large number of people in Africa still remain offline, further exacerbating the digital divide.

The speakers also emphasized the importance of extending beyond first-generation rights when it comes to data governance. Currently, most regimes heavily focus on individualized notions of privacy and compliance. However, there is a need to recognise and prioritise economic and environmental rights in order to ensure a more holistic approach to data governance.

Advocacy for the African Union Data Policy Framework and data interoperability was another central argument put forth during the analysis. The establishment of a single data market within the African Union could provide leverage in terms of international markets. This Framework extends regulatory concerns beyond the scope of first-generation rights, ensuring a more comprehensive approach to data governance in Africa.

The lack of equitable data access for African researchers and institutions was also highlighted as a significant issue. It was pointed out that big tech companies, such as Google, currently provide limited data access to European researchers, while African researchers and institutions face barriers in accessing valuable data. It is argued that this situation hinders the ability of African researchers to contribute meaningfully to relevant fields and areas of study.

Furthermore, the need for effective enforcement of data governance, particularly in the realm of broader economic regulations, was underscored. Examples were provided where a data protection and information regulator in South Africa took strong action against WhatsApp and various groups. To handle the challenges of international regulation and obtain data from large operators, it was emphasised that global cooperation is essential.

The analysis also drew attention to the limited participation of civil society in many public processes across the African continent. In many countries, it is not required for civil society to participate in public processes as per administrative law or justice. The influence of private sector entities and telecom companies in these public processes was also noted. It was argued that enforcing public participation and providing resources for researchers to access critical information can help inform these processes and ensure more balanced outcomes.

In conclusion, the analysis highlights the need for broader data governance and the participation of civil society in public processes across the African continent. It emphasises the importance of global cooperation and maintaining a balance of interests to protect data and foster innovation. The African Union Data Policy Framework and data interoperability are presented as potential solutions to address the asymmetrical power relations in data sharing. Ultimately, it is crucial to prioritise equitable data access for African researchers and institutions, while also enforcing effective data governance and considering economic regulations.

Astha Kapoor

The current data regulation is criticised for primarily focusing on individual data rights and overlooking the importance of group dynamics. The lack of consideration for existing institutions, such as cooperatives, which historically facilitated collective decision-making, is seen as a limitation in the data economy. It is argued that group rights should be codified into existing laws to address collective and community rights more effectively.

Supporting this argument, some notable facts include the exploitation of group rights in bioethics related to data banks and biobanks. The mention of data cooperatives in the data governance framework of the European Union also emphasises the significance of collective data handling. Additionally, a government report from India explored the concept of community rights in data, further highlighting the need to incorporate group dynamics into data regulation.

However, establishing new data institutions faces challenges. While models like data trusts have been proposed for pooling data rights, their implementation encounters obstacles. Therefore, the argument suggests that existing organisations, like cooperatives, can be adapted and made competent for the digital age, presenting an alternative solution to address the challenges faced by new data institutions.

In the context of law enforcement and regulatory frameworks, the implementation of laws developed at a fast pace is found to be problematic. The lack of early consultation with stakeholders hampers smooth implementation. It is argued that early consultation is essential for better implementation and stakeholder buy-in. Increased buy-in enhances the understanding of implementation opportunities for different stakeholders. For instance, the Telecom Regulatory Authority in India was developed through private sector demand and consultation, demonstrating the benefits of early stakeholder involvement.

Moreover, building institutions through prolonged consultation processes, although potentially inefficient, can be advantageous for implementation and enforcement. Such processes ensure greater understanding and buy-in from the private sector and civil society, enabling them to work together effectively.

In conclusion, the current data regulation needs to consider the importance of group dynamics and collective decision-making. Codifying group rights into existing laws can help address collective and community rights more effectively. Additionally, existing organisations like cooperatives can be adapted for the digital age to overcome challenges faced by new data institutions. Early consultation with stakeholders is crucial for better law implementation and stakeholder buy-in. Prolonged consultation processes, while potentially time-consuming, can aid in building institutions and enhancing enforcement. It is important to foster collaboration and understanding among stakeholders to achieve successful data regulation and ensure the benefits of the digital economy are distributed equitably.

Moderator

The analysis focuses on various aspects of data sharing and data rights, exploring the need for a balanced approach between innovation and privacy when opening up the value of data. The session acknowledges that data is often referred to as the new oil, carrying great potential for innovation and progress. However, it also raises concerns about privacy and ethical use.

Different approaches to data sharing are discussed, ranging from collaborative ecosystems to individual donations, and even illegitimate methods such as hacking and theft. The Open Data Map by Open Data Institute illustrates these diverse approaches, including data exchanges, research access schemes, and personal data donation. It is noted that some approaches bypass regulations to gain access to otherwise closed data.

One notable argument proposed is that data sharing should be viewed as a collaborative effort, similar to a dinner situation with friends where everyone contributes. The preparation of dinner with friends, where everyone brings a dish to share, is used as an analogy for data sharing. While everyone enjoys the benefits of data sharing, the challenges and effort required to establish it are often overlooked.

The analysis highlights the importance of a more nuanced regulatory approach towards data sharing. Currently, regulations primarily focus on individual data rights and their relationship with platforms and governments. However, there are several group decisions that occur with regard to data, and existing institutions historically enable groups to make collective decisions. In the data economy, the existence of groups in the real world is often overlooked or misunderstood. Therefore, the idea of figuring out some kind of group rights in data interaction is necessary.

It is suggested that existing laws and legislative conversations need to be rethought to emphasize group/collective rights and consent, rather than solely focusing on individual rights and consent. Efforts are being made to consider group privacy and collective instruments, particularly in the field of bioethics. Some legislative conversations, such as the European Union’s Data Governance Act (DGA) and the Indian government report, discuss the concept of data cooperatives and community rights.

The concept of data stewardship is introduced as a potential solution for managing collective data rights. Different models, such as data trusts, are examined, which can help address the pooling of data rights. However, it is acknowledged that creating these new institutions or reforming existing ones remains a challenge.

The analysis also emphasizes the need for further research on practical applications of group rights in the context of data sharing. It suggests that policy development to regulate data rights and sharing is still in the early stages and requires more investigation. The complexity of the subject necessitates additional research to inform policy decisions.

Additionally, the importance of sharing knowledge on data protection regulation and governance before enforcement is emphasized. The analysis highlights that sharing knowledge steers things in the right direction and proves to be more effective than immediately enforcing sanctions. The approach of issuing warnings before suspension or sanctions in data governance is considered to be effective.

In conclusion, the analysis delves into the intricacies of data sharing and data rights, highlighting the need for a comprehensive and balanced approach that considers both individual and group/collective rights. It discusses different approaches to data sharing, the challenges of establishing collaborative ecosystems, the importance of rethinking existing laws and legislative conversations, and the potential of data stewardship. The analysis also calls for more research on practical applications of group rights and emphasizes the effectiveness of sharing knowledge before enforcement in data governance.

Moderator:
I have been, until last week, a researcher and also coordinator of a project at the Center for European Policy Studies, in short, CEPS, which is a Brussels-based think tank. And I’m very pleased to moderate the session today on our town hall, actually, on Dare to Share, Rebuilding Trust Through Data Stewardship. I will also first thank the organizer, Kevin, who’s here also with us, and also the Tony Blair Institute for bringing us here together to discuss this very important topic. And I will also already introduce the online moderator, Taina Flor Bento-Mota, from the Data Protection Authority in Brazil. She would be also online with us. So about today’s session, this session will focus on, as you already know, exploring new ways to open up the value of data. In fact, as we all know, data is often referred to the new oil and also has become a double-edged sword, because while its abundance promises innovation and progress it also raises serious concerns about privacy control and the ethical use and reuse of data. And when I thought about the session, it came to my mind that data sharing is actually a little bit similar to a dinner situation with friends. We all love to be invited to a dinner at our friend’s place. The only thing we need to do is to find out how to get there. Maybe we can inquire what we can bring for dessert, but that’s about it, right? So really nice. But on the other hand, I assume everyone also knows how it is to invite friends over and how much effort it takes actually to prepare a dinner. You need to find a special recipe, you buy ingredients, you have to set the table, you have to do the dishes afterwards. So quite a lot of series of things that you actually need to do. And I think with data sharing, it’s quite similar. We all know about the value of open… and we think we need to improve the access and so on, but actually it’s challenging to get a functional open data ecosystem which also respects individual rights and is compatible or open to various forms of data and also to various sectors. So actually not so easy when you think about it twice. And this is also visualized in the wonderful data made by the Open Data Institute and that we’re now going to show on the slide and I will all invite you to actually check it out yourself online because it’s a wealth of knowledge that is in this data map. Let’s see if we can get it on screen. And then the link should open in just a second. Yes, and we can maybe also try to put the link in the chat later or you can also find the map online if you Google open data map, I think. Yeah, and here you can see what looks like a normal map, but if you zoom in a little bit and we can maybe zoom in in the collaborator big island that is in the center of the map, you can see that there are many descriptions, so to say, of what the collaborator island actually consists of. The collaborator island symbolizes, so to say, organizations or approaches that bring people together to collaborate around a shared component of data infrastructure. So for example, data marketplaces, data exchanges, data trusts, cooperatives, and so on. This is what we are also going to explore today. When we maybe go a little bit more up, can we zoom a little bit in? Yeah, perfect. Exactly, we see the shared biome, for example, and the small series of islands here. here at the north of the collaborator big island, which addresses approaches to research access schemes, for example, or also data philanthropies, basically models that enable people to share data and to really collaborate on them through ecosystems. And for example, when we go to the Isle of Human, to the bottom right of the map, the Isle of Human, you can also see, this is basically approaches that enable humans to share data amongst each other and that incentivizes people to open up, so to say, their data sets, for example, through personal data representatives, data lockers, individual data donation, and so on. And there are also some interesting other areas, for example, you have at the bottom left center, the private cove or the forbidden isle. So the pirate cove consists of approaches that actually are illegal, so hacking, theft, which is, however, also a form of data sharing, unfortunately. And you have also the side steppers, for example, which is a region that has legitimate means of gaining access to closed data. So that approaches that aim to provide people or organizations with ways of gaining access to data that the current data holder or steward would otherwise designate of limits. So yeah, I invite you to explore this map further. I think it’s a great piece of work and it’s also very nicely designed. So thanks again to the Open Data Institute. And with that, I think we’re already right into the topic. And so I will just maybe quickly say that this session is structured around three key policy questions. And I will introduce each of the policy questions before handing over to our distinguished panelists. We have pairs of two and then at the end of the panelists, we have 30 minutes more or less for question and answers. Okay, so the first key policy question that we would like to answer today or get an insight on is about the role of data governance stakeholders. So we would like to ask what should be the respective role of data governance stakeholders in promoting responsible data strength. For example, stimulating experimentation and innovation and data governance design, monitoring and evaluating different data governance approaches. And for that we have two distinguished speakers. Jack Hardius, who is, okay one. Okay, so sorry. So we have one speaker on site. Aastha Kapoor from the Apte Institute. And thank you so much for joining us at such an early hour. And the floor is yours.

Astha Kapoor:
Yeah. Thank you for this and thank you for the audience too for coming at this very early hour. I guess to start off with the policy question, I think that we’re trying to understand what we want to do here. And what we want to do here is to make sure that the value of data is realized at several different levels. One is between individuals or at the individual level. The second one is between individuals. So, you know, if you want to share data with like almost like a P2P transaction. The third one is within communities. So if members of a community want to share data between each other, then that should be possible. And then, you know, you sort of build up, do that. And at the moment the regulation actually looks at at individual data rights in their relationship with platforms and government. And so, as we think about the systems that need to be built both from the policy perspective but also from the institutional perspective, I think that we need to think about it more from a bottom-up mechanism and to understand how individuals interact with data when it comes to interactions with each other as well as in the groups that we occupy. So just as an example, we do a lot of work with cooperatives and what we’re trying to understand as women who occupy these cooperatives is a couple of things. The cooperative, for instance, in the context of India, will incur agricultural labor together. They make decisions on agriculture also together. They will distribute benefits from the board to all the members, and those are all collective decisions and collective governance. But when it comes to banks seeking data from members of the cooperative, they break down these institutional boundaries and they interact with the individual only because financial institutions that are defined by the individual access to finance and individual data can only deal with them at the individual level. So the bank will then aggregate all of this and say, okay, fine, you as a group can get this loan or that loan, et cetera, and invariably it doesn’t reflect the meaning of the entire group. So we’ve been trying to, and also in return what you get is products that are not meant for you, you get interest rates that are much higher than what you’d be willing to pay, or what you also get, and this is an example that we’ve seen very many times, is that women also don’t understand the data that they need to make certain kinds of decisions. So a cooperative that we work with needs to procure seeds, but they don’t understand. what the amount of seats that they need, et cetera. So they have no way of pooling demand from their members as well as a data question. So the point I’m trying to make is that there are multiple group decisions that happen with regard to data, and there are existing institutions that also have historically enabled groups to come together and decide. What we are seeing in the data economy is that it has been completely blindsided by the existence of groups in our real world. And these groups are not just offline groups like the ones that I mentioned, but whether it’s Facebook, and everyone uses that example, but whether it’s Facebook, what they also do is they put us into groups that we don’t even understand. So there are groups of women with dark hair or women with light hair, and then they put out products for us on our platforms in the same, as a group, they are not interested in individual level data. They’re also organizing us in certain kinds of groups. It’s just that we don’t know how the algorithm has defined us. So as we start to think about data rights and what policy changes are required, I think that the idea of straddling some kind of group rights is definitely necessary. There’s a lot of work that has happened on group privacy. There’s a lot of work that has happened on, particularly in bioethics around ideas of data banks and biobanks, because those are collective instruments and they need to be. But I think what we really need to think about is how do we codify this in existing laws? And you’ll see it in the GDPR, I can speak for the India context, and several other legislations are looking at individual rights and they’re looking at the idea that individuals will consent and that will be the end of that. However, there are some legislations, or at least legislative conversations that are coming up. I know that in one of the alphabet soups of the EU, I think it’s the DGA, mentions data cooperatives. In the context of India, there was an interesting government report that came out a year and a half or two years ago. non-personal data, which had a problematic definition that all data that is not personal is non-personal. But what they were trying to do is also think about community rights, and to say that communities can be both harmed and helped with the use of data, and so how do we define communities? But unfortunately, while this island has very nice segregations, the human life is quite messy, and so we don’t have clear segregations around where communities end, begin. The individuals in this room are a community of individuals in this room, but then could also, all the tech that we have here impacts us in some way. Voices are being recorded, faces are being recorded. But we also occupy multiple different communities at the same time, and so I, as an individual, might want to have a huge amount of control on the school community of my kid, which is, you know, because I’m also a guardian for her data, whereas I may not want to be as involved in other kinds of data that I need. And in this context, different models of data stewardship become interesting, because what we are trying to solve for is greater pooling of data rights, and then the next step is thinking about what those institutional mechanisms that allow for pooling of data rights are, and also allow for a change of mind. Today I want to be involved, tomorrow I don’t want to be involved. And there are some models that have been, you know, discussed over time. There’s data trust, which we’ve looked at quite extensively, and I think that, you know, setting up of new institutions is potentially hard to do. But I think the next set of questions is, how do we think about existing institutions, and, you know, I like cooperatives, that… that can be made more resilient, that can be made more able to understand what these group dynamics are and how they can be actualized in the context of the digital economy. I think policy is a little way off because I think this is a complex question and what we know from policy documents so far is that everyone goes after the easiest, least terrible thing to say. And so I think that we need to, at least in the couple of years that we have before this conversation really blows up, is actually start to see what those instantiations of these group rights are and how we can actualize them.

Moderator:
Thank you, thank you so much. That was super, super interesting and already gave us a great insight into, sorry, into the current challenges that we see that the reality poses to a system that maybe is not fit for the current developments in data and how quickly it’s produced and shared and then repurposed eventually. Okay, moving on to, you had already mentioned policy is a little bit off. So I think this fits perfectly to the next speaker who joins us online. His name is Thiago Moraes, I hope I pronounced it correctly. And he will answer to a second policy question which is, there we see you, hi. Good to see you. And then we will answer, I will ask you to address the second policy question which is how different regulators could or should approach challenges related to data sharing. And Thiago is from the Brazilian Data Protection Authority, also if I get it right. So we will be looking forward to hearing your insights. on this topic. Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me?

Thiago Moraes:
Yes. Okay, so thank you, Rosana, and I would like to first of all thank the Tony Blair Institute for this partnership on organizing this session. Data sharing is definitely a very relevant topic, more than ever, considering all the developments that we have been having with not only in terms of technological innovation, but also these new trends for regulation that are coming over from different regions. And to answer this question, which of course it’s a very complex question, it would take way more than the six, seven minutes that I have, I decided to go with a specific use case that we had in Brazil regarding data sharing in the context of GovTech. So I prepared a very small PowerPoint presentation. Maybe you could share it on the screen? Is that possible? Is it already shared? Luca, you, Kevin, you said… Yeah, okay. It’s shared, yeah. It’s shared. But I think it’s not yet shared, because we don’t see it on the screen, so I think… Should I share the one that I have with me, or the one that was sent out to the organization?

Moderator:
We have the presentation here, so we’re just trying to set it up now, Does it work? One moment, please. If that would make… easier? I can try to share from my zone screen as well. I don’t know if that makes things easier or not. I think you can definitely try at least if you have, I don’t know if you have the correct rights, but if you, ah, okay. That was great. Is it working now? Yeah, thank you so much. That looks great. Yeah, you can see the presentation.

Thiago Moraes:
So yeah, uh, well, that was the question that was asked for me to answer, right? And, uh, as I said, I cannot answer for all kinds of regulators, but I can share a little bit of, uh, the experience that we had as a data protection authority, uh, following supervising a case, uh, regarding, uh, GovTech in Brazil. Uh, so what we have, uh, and the executive branch, we have several ministries and one of those ministries is currently engaged if innovation for the public sector. So GovTech, uh, initiatives and so on, and to support this idea of creating an interoperability system that would share data between public entities, because that was the main idea of the project that they were developing. Uh, they, uh, this ministry, the ministry of, uh, innovation, public sector, uh, provide this, these rules in this decree that is mentioned here in this in 2019, right? And by the time it was published, uh, the LGPD was still not yet enforced. The LGPD is the Brazilian data protection law. Uh, but as soon as it came in force, it was very clear that there was a lot of inconsistencies, uh, with this decree regarding with the data sharing rules that was required for the Brazilian data protection law. It’s very similar to the European model of the GDPR. So, because of that, and several other issues that were related with this decree, because it’s provided, for example, for this database, which supposedly was a huge database of all citizen data collected from very different government’s platforms, and for everyone who knows a little bit of data protection history, we know that many of the data protection laws and authorities have asserted due to the fact that having all the data, of citizens’ data, with just one single entity, is very, very dangerous. So this, of course, caused a lot of tension, and some entities, private entities, required to enter into a constitutional action, proceed with a constitutional action at the Brazilian Supreme Court, and this was a case that followed from 2020 until 2022, and it’s important to say that this only came in 2020, because that was also when the Brazilian data protection law came into force, so it gave a lot of room for getting the discussion up to the Supreme Court, and the background case was a data sharing that was happening in this platform that was being created between our intelligence agency and a transportation agency, and in the next slide, I’ll make it more clear what were the details of this case, but just so you know, we had here several discussions that resulted in the, in the end, a manifestation of a court that there was… several obligations that needed to be changed in this decree because it was not fit to the purpose of specification principle of the Brazilian data protection law. It didn’t also provide for data minimization rules. It was not transparent of how this data share operations were happening. So because of all this that was missing, the court decided that a new rule should be updated so it could attend for all these requirements. And that’s also the same time there was a committee that was supposed to manage all these data governance rules, right, between this data sharing platform. And one criticism of this structure is because it was only composed by agents of the government. So this gave no room for civil society to pledge their interest. So what happened is that with this new decree, these transparent rules and also rules that were fit to the purpose specification principle and data minimization principle came into force in 2022. And also there was a restructuring of this committee. So this multi-ministerial committee, so before we only had like members from the government, they also added a layer for some civil society participants to be part of. So this committee is the one that has the role of deciding which questions regarding the integrity, the quality and consistency of all this data that was being collected, how it would work, so all the data governance mechanisms, and also which kind of data might be included in this database. So, basically, they assume the role of a data steward here, right? As I was mentioning, this concept of data stewardship is very relevant in this in this ecosystem of data sharing. And this committee was the one supposed to doing this job. And by now, we have also members from civil society that can interview. It’s still a bit uneven, I would say, how it’s the composition, but at least now there is room because the members of the civil society, they can represent voice of several civil society organizations that exist in Brazil. We even have a very strong coalition that you probably might see in other panels of IGF, because there are several members of this civil society organizations at the IGF. And because of that, they have a voice to discuss and help supervising what is happening on the decisions regarding how this data is being shared. And the Data Protection Authority, although it was not, did not have an active role in all of that because we were still growing maturity in the background. We assisted the Ministry of Innovation, Public Sector to approve this new decree that I mentioned that came with all these new rules. So we were helping them in the background to make all these rules more compatible with all that the protection law. With that, we can see, of course, there’s a lot of possibilities and opportunities that we can bring from this interoperability. That’s why it’s something that we couldn’t just prohibit. That’s why the Supreme Court decided that it was not going to. private data sharing, but making it happen in a compatible way with data protection principles and rules. And as we can see here, just this G2G APIs that exist in the context of this platform has saved half a million dollars in this last years because of the business, how data is being shared and the economy, the savings that it comes for having this interoperability services running. And at the same time, of course, it’s very important for attending to the principles of data minimization because this avoids that all the information is being shared with all the agencies. So what we have right now in Brazil is that different ministries, when they require certain information, we have this committee acting as a steward and they’re going to see if this sharing is happening following all these principles that I just mentioned and guaranteeing that only the necessary information is being shared. Of course, this is still a work in progress in the sense that there’s still need to check how the committee is doing its work. But it’s interesting to see that the case was so relevant that it reached the Supreme Court and it came with the decision quite fast for what we used in Brazil because of the relevance of these activities of data sharing for creating more efficiency to the public sector, but at the same time, of course, needing to respect all the data protection principles and fundamental rights. And that’s it for my presentation. I hope I didn’t take that long, but. And if you need me for the second round, I’ll be here.

Moderator:
Thank you so much, Tiago. That was super insightful. And yeah, it seems that you found actually an interesting new way how to handle the data that is requested by the government from citizens. And this actually brings us already to the next policy question, the third one, and which looks a bit more at institutional models, so innovation. And we heard already one, but there are many, many other ones. And the two next speakers will be explaining a bit more their research and their views on which new institutional models are best suited to support innovation around data, while also at the same time ensuring the protection of fundamental rights, such as privacy. And for that, I will invite first Kevin from the Tony Blair Institute to give us his insights. And then I’ll pass it on to Dr. Allison Gilwald, who is joining us online. But first, Kevin, the floor is yours.

Kevin Luca Zandermann:
Thank you very much, Rosanna. Can I share the presentation on Zoom? Okay. I think it says that it’s disabled. I also want to thank Thiago. I think at the Institute, we were called, your last slide, the proactive public services or in the context of the strategic state, meaning to exactly avoid this kind of waste of time for most citizens when we have to constantly fill forums. So good, lucky that Brazilian citizens are quite lucky that you guys are clearly on the right track. And as a side note, I will reach out to you. you to kind of have, OK, a more in-depth understanding of it. I’m not able to share it. Apologies to you. Thank you for your patience. OK, wonderful. OK. Can people see it? No? I’ll try again, sorry. Uh, yeah. OK. One sec. I mean, one second, sorry. Yeah, I’ll just speak. OK. So OK, I’ll speak in the meantime. So what we’ve been trying to do at the Institute is to essentially make sense of the past 10 years in the data governance space. And at the beginning, like, two elements became quite clear. And I’m sure most people, you know, both in the online audience are aware of, are, first of all, the global proliferation of data localization laws, and then the passing of very important privacy legislation, with GDPR gradually becoming the gold standard all over the world. But at the same time, we also quickly realized that that was only one part of the data governance story, and that. whilst these data localization laws were being passed throughout the globe, and whilst very important privacy legislation was being passed, a series of grassroots initiatives, such as the ones that Asta was describing, or Jack, unfortunately, couldn’t join, but a series of pioneering institutions that the Open Data Institute began theorizing were also taking place. And we’re not necessarily, especially around the early 2010, we’re not actually getting the right attention from these policymakers. But throughout the last decades, we gradually got there. There’s been a sort of process of sedimentation where these grassroots initiatives have gradually got more and more attention. And since we are in Japan, I think a very important milestone has been the Data Free Flows We Trust initiative, which was part of the Osaka G20 summit in 2019, and was then repurposed for the G7. That’s part of the Hiroshima process. So what we’ve been trying to do is to engage with, on one side, policymakers, data protection authorities, and on the other with pioneering, I would say, leading thinkers, such as Asta and Jack, that have begun this kind of work, have begun to actually theorize and formalize, experiment with the notion of data institutions. And by data institutions, we mean data stewardship in the looser sense that one can imagine. And we then try to systematize these kind of reflections in a tube map, which I think you should be able to see on the web. I don’t think it’s on the website yet. So I guess we can just use it. Can people see it like this? I think we’ll just do it like that, because otherwise we’ll waste too much time. But anyway, we’ve been trying to systematize our reflections in this tube map that you see here. So we’ve basically looked at all the data strategies throughout the globe. We’ve systematized the series of stakeholder engagements that we’ve had, and we’ve put them on the map. And the reason, you know, there’s a reason for that, and it’s that, my personal view, is that mapping, in many ways, helps visualize something like the data sphere that can be quite arcane. So we see here like five different layers or lines, depends how you want to visualize it. The technology one, the regulatory one, the data infrastructure one, the physical one, and institutional one. Now, like, this is by no means exhaustive, and it’s, again, we had to simplify it by economy of time. But what’s kind of come out very clearly is that the institutional component is the one that actually requires most of the work, like particularly in terms of conceptualizing what these data institutions can mean. I mean, like Asa was referring to, like data cooperatives, we know that, and again, sometimes we have forgotten it as policymakers. There’s a long tradition in the study of commons. One can think of, for example, Nobel Prize winner like Eleanor Rostrom that has dedicated her whole life to the study of commons, and like the management of commons, like completely sort of demystifying the myth of this so-called tragedy of the commons. And it is quite different in the data space, because in many ways, we are not dealing with finite resources. Data is a non-rivalrous, that is non-rivalrous, and that’s why the sort of earlier narratives around like equating data as oil, have been profoundly damaging because they have been obscuring, again, these grassroots initiatives. And in general, they have been obscuring a potential different model. And at the same time, I think that as part of this sedimentation process, the conversations that Asta was talking about and was referring to gradually got to the policy level. It did take quite some time. I know some of my friends in Brussels, in reference to the EU Data Governance Act that you were referring to, I remember one time we did have a debate about whether the EU had arrived there too early or too late. And I definitely think it got there too late. But I think the Data Governance Act is a very important step in terms of actually giving prominence to an alternative way of providing an institutional framework to steward data. We need to, the context that we’re dealing with now is that the way data is produced is very different. We can have far more agency. Data is now produced by internet of things. If we wear wearables, by items such as wearables, by the cloud on the edge, there is a huge part of the data ecosystem that actually doesn’t necessarily have to go through large tech companies. And we do need institutional models that empower people and give agency to people to use this data for the aims that they deem suitable or that they deem closest to their sensitivity. And I don’t want to go too much into detail about the EU Governance Act, but you see here the four main elements that I think are really important. The first one is the reuse of data held by public sector bodies, which will be. really important, especially for AI development, being essentially, again, this covers a policy vacuum because the Open Data Directive of the EU was covering, was legislating very thoroughly about essentially known personal data. But at the same time, public authorities have a lot of personal protected data, and which could not be reused. And with the Governance Act, we will see how it goes. It will actually, it will start to be applicable from this month onwards. So the panel is in quite good timing. We’ll see how that’s gonna go. And then the point two and three, actually certifying data intermediaries and data altruism, giving them the prominence that they haven’t had in the past. So, and in particular, I wanna concentrate on data altruism, which has been the result of a lot of advocacy work, particularly, like I can think of the European Association of Rare Diseases, because rare diseases are like a classic textbook example where data sharing is proportionally valuable because it’s very difficult to build a data set that is large enough for a disease, for it to actually be significant and useful for research. So they’ve been at the forefront in terms of advocacy work for the EU to actually provide a mechanism that can empower, like, for example, like people that suffer from rare disease to actually, with their consent, to being able to share the data for research purposes. So the fact that we now have this institutional framework, which, again, can be debated, we can debate like how effective it’s going to be. My, the concern that I have in particular with data altruism is that it’s so, like particularly in Europe, it’s so associated with. with contact tracing apps like during COVID. So there is an element, I think there’s a political element because obviously those apps became extremely politicized, but also I think there’s almost a psychological element because COVID in many ways has been such a psychological trauma for most people. And I do think that we are in a sort of phase of almost like denial about it where we don’t wanna talk about it. And my fear is that these emotions will affect quite a lot these actually the effectiveness of like this framework for data altruism. So I do think we need quite a political campaign to promote data altruism given the broader context. But these are just like few thoughts about like the work that we’ve been doing. Like we’re very much open to engage with again, grassroots initiatives, data protection authorities and think tanks. And I do invite the online audience to reach out because it’s very much work in progress. And thank you for your attention. And now I think we can move to Alison for the concluding remarks.

Moderator:
Yes, exactly. Thanks, first of all, to you, Kevin, for your insights and also giving us a bit the policies to say perspective of what already happens in Brussels and also elsewhere. And actually also I will invite everyone to consult the map. I think it’s on Twitter. It’s not published yet, as you said, but the tube map so to say of data is also a great way of again, visualizing the many, many ways in which data can be shared also in a privacy friendly way. Okay, with that, I’ll hand it over to Alison Gilwald. I hope I pronounced your name correctly. You will be joining us also online and you are with the Research ICT Africa. So Dr. Alison Gilwald, the floor is yours.

Alison Gillwald:
Thank you so much. I suppose my answer will cut across all those three very interesting questions and not focus only on innovation. innovation, partially because a lot of the kind of lobbying around data extractivism and getting unprotected kind of access to data has really been around this kind of commercial experimentation and innovation and the kind of dominance that certain groups have to these. I think issues of data sharing are really significantly about these asymmetrical power relations that we have between North and South, different countries and of course within countries themselves. I think we want to set up a policy framework and environment that allows for the benefits of shared data and as I said, in policy there are expounded benefits of public data and the value of public data and Tiago has spoken very interestingly about the Brazilian stewardship that’s happened around public data. But I think speaking specifically from the African context, the first thing we have to do is just acknowledge the complete lack of access to data. So a lot of the frameworks that are being used across, we’ve been sort of cutting and pasting in many other parts of the world, assume that we have large numbers of people online, the majority of people online, that there is universal access to services, to government services and data. So I think the first important thing about data sharing is acknowledging that the asymmetrical power relations that go with that. If you’re in a position to hold lots of data, you’re in a much stronger position to negotiate how that’s used or negotiate that it’s not used at all, you don’t have access to it at all, which I will come back to in a moment. just referring to both what Asta has said and Thiago, that the current regimes, which are important to ensure data protection and privacy of personal data, need to be understood also in the context of broader data governance, and that the current sort of negative regulation that we have, basically compliance regulation, quite individualized notions of only first-generation rights as Asta said, really need to be understood in terms of the development imperatives of collective or more public common good kind of rights that you might need in your data policy frameworks. And I’m referring specifically to the kind of data justice frameworks that we’ve been trying to develop within the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, but also that we carry through in the work that we’ve supported, the technical assistance we’ve provided to the African Union Data Policy Framework, which unlike GDPR or even some of the later legislation that’s coming out at the moment, but it tries to extend the regulatory concerns or the policy concerns from simply those first-generation rights, concerns primarily with privacy to second and third-generation rights. So actually ensuring economic and even third-generation environmental rights are collectively enjoyed while those first, very important privacy and first protection, first-generation rights are ensured. And this really goes to an important part of managing data within a particularly in an African context, but I think globally too. which is not only about ensuring the redress of the uneven distribution currently of harms from these data-driven technologies, but also the uneven distribution of opportunities. So basically what we’ve got are these enormously asymmetrical data flows out ahead of the continent, 80% of data flows outside the continent, and roughly proportion 20 in. And then of course, within countries, as I said, large numbers of people simply offline. So ensuring that there is an environment that can benefit Africans and citizens, and also in terms of engaging internationally, that we might have a bigger influence if we can get the kind of economies of scale and scope that you need for data. Within the African continental free trade area, there is a big area in the context of the African Union Data Policy Framework. There’s a big push for us to at least ensure flows and interoperability of data for research, for sharing, for public purposes, for finance transactions, et cetera, at least on the continent. And this would allow us some sort of leverage in terms of international flows and international markets, quite honestly. So these are sort of important considerations that I think we were speaking a little bit about how at the moment it’s a kind of governance framework and it’s quite difficult to regulate. It’s obviously very difficult to enforce, but the potential of harmonization through the African continental free trade area would provide the kind of interoperability that would allow for flows of data. And of course, specifically shared data that currently Africa has very uneven access to and could really… promote, which we do very strongly within the African continental, sorry, within the African Union Data Policy Framework, the idea of, you know, a greater interoperability, a single market, and the use of the data for development, and very strongly the idea of, of course, unleashing data for commercial value creation, but very importantly also for public value creation, but a lot of the data that does exist in Africa is, is bound in public, you know, in public entities. And, you know, firstly digitizing that, a lot of that is not digitalized in Africa, and that’s a big problem. But secondly, enabling this data to, to flow for, you know, public value creation, as well as, you know, commercial value creation is a quite important aspect of this. And so there are aspects of open data requirements, for example, within a protected environment in the, in the framework that are, that are proposed. And also the acknowledgement that we also need to access the public data that is available in, held by private companies. And in this regard, one can, you know, in terms of data sharing, we also have another project through the Action Coalition on Transparency, GNI, which is also trying to get equitable access for African researchers in the first instance to the kind of requirements that the Digital Services Act makes of big tech companies for European researchers. And I think, you know, the importance of extending these kinds of rights is critical to not perpetuating the fact that we, you know, to access resources, to access knowledge systems, African researchers and intellectuals have to, you know, work through European or Northern Hemisphere. hemisphere researchers with access to data, even the informal system set up by Google for accessing data is set up through Michigan University with a number of accredited people throughout the world, very few in Africa, two in Ghana and three or four in South Africa, to get that kind of access. So at the moment, calls for kind of just opening up data out of kind of very unregulated environments, just allowing the free flow of data, in our view, would very much perpetuate the status quo, would allow those with already dominant positions in markets, in research institutions, in various things, to gain that access, whereas others may not. So these are various mechanisms, these are various institutional arrangements, these are various regulatory interventions that we believe are necessary, not to just, you know, not to have a sort of compliant safeguards regime, but actually would ensure not only safe outcomes, but actually just outcomes. And I think that’s a really sort of important part of looking at this, that of course these alternative data stewardship models are very important because the big, you know, kind of informed consent kind of models aren’t working, but we’re not going to solve the scale of the problems with, you know, micro-solutions, you know, for different kinds of communities. We really do need, you know, strong regulation of these digital public goods and global, you know, governance and cooperation on ensuring enforcement of the, you know, big tech companies that are holding a lot of this data, ensuring that we’ve got enabling environments in our regional jurisdictions or in our countries to safeguard citizens’ opportunities, but also to create local opportunities through entrepreneurial access to public data, through the better use of public data by governments, more effectively servicing their citizens, and then enabling us to create viable data economies and data markets by having a not only, as I said, safe and secure data economy, but also having ones that are more just. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thank you so much, Alison. That was super insightful and also, I think, has taught us a lot about how open data and data access is actually quite still unequal around the world if we say, well, the EU already has a wonderful framework in place, but then if you look at Africa, there’s a completely different ecosystem and also conditions that need to be respected when people or governments think about how they can enable or increase access to data sharing. Okay, that brings us to the end of the speakers’ presentations. We have three minutes left for questions, so I will also check online if you have any questions at all from the online audience. I will also ask the online moderator to flag if there are any questions regarding Lee, and if not, I will also look around the room and see if there are any questions that people would like to ask. Yes, the microphone, please. Yeah.

Audience:
So my question is just kind of – Could you quickly also please introduce yourself? Sorry, yes. I’m Pete Furlong. I’m a colleague of Kevin at the – Tony Blair Institute, but my question is kind of, you know, there’s a lot of focus on the mechanisms and frameworks and policies that need to be in place to support like, you know, effective data sharing. But I think something that’s like maybe often missed is kind of the enforcement capacity that’s sort of needed to support that. I look to like the US as like maybe a good example of kind of a place where we’ve struggled with that. You know, we do actually have some data protection laws in the US, especially when it comes to things like medical data, how well enforced those things are is, you know, kind of maybe in question. So I think, you know, maybe just a question for the panelists in terms of how they think about, you know, the importance of enforcement and kind of what that should look like. Yeah.

Moderator:
Thank you. I don’t see at the moment any other questions from the online audience. So I would hand this back to the speakers, both in the room and also online. I don’t know if there’s anyone online that would like to quickly intervene. If not, maybe we can go first and then we can see if there’s one online.

Astha Kapoor:
I mean, this is a conversation I was having outside yesterday as well is that I think what we are realizing is that so many laws are being developed and such a breakneck speed that we haven’t really thought about implementation. And I think to your point of did it come too soon or too late, it’s likely also too late. And what we’ve been also thinking about at Aapti is that how do we build processes of consultation early on in the development of the laws so that there’s increased buy-in, so that you can, you know, understand what the implementation opportunities are for different stakeholders. We’ve learned this from GDPR that actually implementation is a real nightmare. The companies that have the big lawyers can work around it, but the ones that don’t actually have to leave the EU. So I think that what we’ve seen, and this is an example from India, is that our telecom regulatory authority was built on the back of private sector demand and incredible. amounts of consultation. And what ended up happening is that all of these values are then coded into the institution itself that has been set up for success in some ways. So because the private sector was bought in, civil society was bought in, because people understood how they needed to work together through the process of building out. And I’ve become a big votary of building institutions through these possibly inefficient and prolonged processes. But what it helps do then, and we’ve done this analysis across different regulatory authorities, is that it makes implementation and enforcement much easier because of that multi-stakeholderism from the very beginning.

Kevin Luca Zandermann:
I think, considering we have an actual regulator as part of the panel, I guess, like Tiago, you would like to answer about on enforcement?

Thiago Moraes:
Yeah, sure. Although I’m not part of the enforcement team, I know a lot about the work. And what I can tell is that, first of all, before even enforcement comes, it’s very important to have this sharing of knowledge, right? Besides the data sharing itself, sharing how data protection regulation, data governance regulations in general work. I think it’s a very important first step. And we can give our case as an example, because in Brazil before the LGBT, not many people had heard. And I would say that even today, there’s still not as many as we would like to. I’m aware about what are the data subject rights, what are the data protection principles, et cetera. So, sharing this with the regulatory, with the citizens, data subjects, etc. is very important. So, people can be empowered about their rights and the data controllers, processors are aware of what are their obligations, how they should comply to. After this happens, the work for enforcement, it gets way more easier, because after this knowledge is shared about how rules on data protection works, we have more easiness to guarantee compliance, for example, for notifications of the braids, for coming initiatives, receiving initiatives that are already privacy compliant. So, just like the example I was giving, there was a huge difference after the authority was created for this GovTech experience, because even though we are not part of the committee that I mentioned, we have worked in the background, and it’s important to explain why we are not part of the committee, because the committee are data controllers, because they are the stewards in this case, so we could not be part of that committee, right? But we were working in the background, and sharing information with them. So, instead of trying to enforce sanctions, or any kind of more traditional role of regulator, adopting this approach of sharing knowledge first was a way of making things, steering things to the right way, let’s say like that. And that’s the experience that we have been having here in our authority. Actually, so far we only had two sanctions, one was just enforced like last week. And since it was for a public body, and it was not a very grave case, it was just like, I forgot how to say, a warning. It was a warning, because it was a way of calling attention. And it’s a first step, because if what the public body was doing was not corrected, then of course we can suspend the data sharing, the activities, the data processing they were doing. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thank you for your insights, Iago. Two very, very good points already on the point of enforcement. I don’t know if anyone else would like to add anything.

Alison Gillwald:
Perhaps I could just, if I could just on the enforcement issue. I think it’s a very important question, and I was raising it as a challenge for us currently in the broader data governance environment that we’re in. I think as Iago points out, I think many of us have some of the data protection regulation enforcement, which can happen at the national level under control. What we don’t have is this broader data governance issue. So I think we certainly on the continent, for example, we have a very strong data protection and information regulator in South Africa, also responsible for access to information, which is a very nice balance to have in terms of balancing rights, who’s acted strongly against WhatsApp and various groups. So I think a strong, informed, democratically institutionalized data protection can operate effectively. I think what we’re really struggling with is the broader concept of data governance that I was speaking about before, in terms of who actually creates the, you know, who’s actually going to be doing some of the economic regulations. So there’s some obvious like competition regulation, et cetera, that happens within the competition authority and some, you know, underlying issues in various other regulators. But actually combining that in terms of, you know, creating, you know, an enabling environment for local innovation, creating an environment for access to public data, for entrepreneurs, et cetera, that I think these big economic justice issues or economic regulation issues are far more challenging. And then, of course, I think the biggest challenge is actually the international regulation and getting the big data that we all want from, you know, from the big operators. And as I said, I think the only way we can address this is through global governance and global cooperation around, you know, equitable access to that data, not the preferential decisions being made by the tech companies themselves of who gets, you know, who they share their data with. So I think that’s really the challenge for us is that global cooperation. And perhaps just to add one other thing to Asta’s point on, you know, trying to build multi-stakeholder public participatory processes for these, which I think, you know, Brazil, India, South Africa have all been quite committed to and have a history of in the telecommunications sector. Firstly, don’t translate it certainly across the African continent. There’s a little absence of civil society participation in many of the public processes. And it’s not required in terms of administrative law or justice in many of those countries. So it’s very, very absent. And I think I think Asta would agree. And I think it was implicit in what you were saying while it had opened up these institutions that were theoretically autonomous anyway and, you know, able to get multi-stakeholder participation in them. In fact, the private sector, the telecom companies have been so powerful as the tech companies have been in these public processes that it. you know, very often their interests are they are the outcomes that we see in these processes. So really trying to enforce, you know, public participation and resource, you know, researchers in order to access that information, they can inform these processes, you can have multiple views on this that are enjoyed in many of the more mature economies around these public processes would be an important part of accessing that data and sharing that data in the first place. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thank you, Alison. Yeah, that would have also been one of my questions, but unfortunately we’re already eight minutes over time. So I think that just says that we had a very good discussion and very insightful, yeah, points that we were able to exchange today. So I would like to thank everyone, especially again to the Tony Blair Institute for hosting us and to all the speakers both on site and online for joining us. As I also said, we have shared a lot of resources. Please do access them and also please do get in touch with all the speakers if you would like to discuss this topic further. And yeah, for those present, see you around at the IDF and for those online, see you the next time. Thank you so much and have a wonderful evening slash day. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. You You

Cybersecurity Experts Emphasise Trust and Collaboration at Global Dialogue Workshop

During the “C-SERTS: Global Dialogue with Cyber Incident Responders” workshop at the Internet Governance Forum, the panel, moderated by Koichiro “Sparky” Komiyama, delved into the complexities of global cybersecurity, underscoring the pivotal role of Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs). Panelists included Yusuke Yamaguchi, Serge Droz, Masae Toyama, and Kaleem Ahmed Usmani, each offering insights from their respective roles and regions.

Yusuke Yamaguchi opened the discussion by recounting the origins of the first CERT, established in 1988 in response to the Morris worm incident, which highlighted the need for coordinated efforts to address cyber threats. He described the diverse landscape of CERTs/CSIRTs, which serve various entities, from corporations to national governments, and face a multitude of responsibilities and challenges.

Serge Droz, from FIRST (Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams), emphasized the importance of collaboration and trust among incident responders, likening their role to that of firefighters who must work together irrespective of political boundaries. He noted that FIRST provides a platform for secure information exchange and collective action to secure cyberspace.

Masae Toyama discussed the role of AP CERT (Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team), focusing on the challenges of maintaining member interaction and neutrality, especially during the pandemic. She highlighted the significance of in-person meetings for trust-building and the necessity of expanding AP CERT’s membership to include eligible teams from the Asia-Pacific region that are not yet members.

Kaleem Ahmed Usmani shared the perspective of Africa CERT, concentrating on capacity building, incident coordination, and preparedness exercises. He stressed the importance of regional cooperation in threat management and the need for technical infrastructure to support information sharing and threat monitoring.

The panelists collectively acknowledged the challenges faced by CSIRTs, including political polarization, sanctions, and resource constraints. They stressed the need for international cooperation, given the borderless nature of cyber threats, and the importance of including under-resourced civil society organizations in cybersecurity efforts.

A key takeaway from the discussion was the fundamental role of trust in the effectiveness of incident response. Trust is crucial for the exchange of confidential information and for forming strong, collaborative relationships that enable teams to respond to incidents efficiently.

The session concluded with a consensus on the need for continued collaboration and support among cybersecurity teams to build resilience and handle incidents effectively. The panelists called for the cybersecurity community to join hands, share expertise, and work together to enhance global cybersecurity resilience. They also highlighted the importance of in-person meetings for fostering trust and building capacity within the cybersecurity community.

Noteworthy observations included the recognition of the unique challenges faced by different regions, such as the Asia-Pacific and Africa, and the need for tailored approaches to capacity building and threat management. The panel also touched upon the role of strategic alliances, such as NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, in cybersecurity cooperation, illustrating the multifaceted nature of international cybersecurity efforts.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this workshop, C-SERTS, global dialogue with cyber instant responders. I welcome you all very much. Thank you for coming, even 8.30, early in the morning. My name is Yusuke Yamaguchi. I’m the director of the Japan computer emergency response team, and I’m work as a director for global coordination division at JPCERT. Like many of you here, I’m enjoying my third IGF, my third in-person IGF. It’s lovely to see the, you know, lovely to see all the participants in the same big room and share the space with each other. Also, it’s fantastic to see the diversity of participants this time. I think compared to the previous one, I think maybe the charm of Kyoto or, you know, weak Japanese, we succeed to get all the people coming, flying and we had a great boost of exhibition in the hallway, bent orange boxes, all excellent, and we see the fireworks at Gala. So today for this workshop, let me begin with may I show the slides online. So what I like to do with this workshop is CERT, computer emergency response team, or CCERT, computer security, again, incident response team, is an organizational unit that provides service and support to define the constancy for preventing, detecting, handling cyber security incidents, and it used to be recognized as firefighters in internet or cyberspace. When there’s a fire, firefighter come to rescue you. In the case of cyber security incidents or cyber breaches, a CCERT come to your place to rescue you or system administrator or cyber security team. It was first established in 1988, so 35 years ago. Immediately after the mass computer virus outbreak called Morris worm, it hit, it crashed one in ten e-mail servers at But again, 1988. So immediately after this case or incident, U.S. Department of Defense convened a meeting with inviting all the stakeholders and decide to launch a new organization or team to share the remediation or mitigation with everyone else. So that’s the first CERT, computer emergency response team. A lot has happened since then. We have now many CCERTs around the globe. For example, Japan, we have more than 500 CCERTs in, for example, companies like Sony, NTT, and others. And some CCERTs work to protect employees. Some of them, they are to protect their products and services. And then others, for example, some others represent own government or country and work as a national point of contact. So CCERTs in their role also need a cooperation across the border because cyber security incidents are pretty international or global by its nature. And that means simply because the fact cyber security incidents are international or global, we need to form a regional or international collaboration scheme. Right now we have several international or regional CCERT collaboration forum, namely, for example, APCERT in Asia, AFRICCERT in Africa, TFCCERT in Europe, OICCERT, this is not regional, but sponsored by organization of Islamic countries, so it’s a culture backed up by cultural organization. And we have a few new kids on the block, for example, PAXON in Pacific Islands, and ASEAN CERT for 10 Southeast Asian ASEAN member states. However, cooperation among CCERT is facing these significant challenges. You can see various reasons or obstacles that cause CCERTs cannot share or cannot talk to their counterpart in other country, frankly, but I think we’d like to ask our distinguished partners to introduce several challenges they see, they witness regionally or internationally. So let me explain the structure of this panel. We have a short period of time, just an hour, so we are going to break this into three distinct chunks. First, we invite three panelists, two from remote, one sitting with me here, ask three panelists to introduce what first AP CERT, Africa CERT, for who they are and what are the challenges for them and others. And in the second segment, I will throw several questions to those panelists, and the last part, the third segment, is a Q&A session with you, so please prepare good questions for our panelists. Now, thank you, Saochi, Karim, for your patience. Now, without further ado, let me introduce you to our panel. First, we have Saochi online. He’s a current board member of FIRST, Forum of Incident Response Team. He’s also a former chairperson of FIRST, leading this international global organisation. He also works with, or affiliated with, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Switzerland, so he’s our first panelist. Now, second, we have Masa sitting next to me. She works for JP CERT, so we work for the same organisation, and one of her main roles is serving AP CERT, Asia Pacific Wide Sea CERT community as a secretariat. Then we have Mr Karim Usmani. He has been leading CERT Mauritius, CERT MU, a national CERT of Mauritius. In this workshop, he also represents African CERT community, Africa CERT, where he plays a critical role. He also participated last year in the sixth round of UN GGE on cyber, as one of 25 or 26 experts. So thank you all. Thank you all for joining us, even though it’s the middle of the night for Karim and Saochi and very early for Masa. So let us jump in to FIRST segment, Saochi. I first like to invite you to share with us who’s FIRST as an organisation and its community. I also like to know how it helps secure the cyberspace. So, Saochi, the floor is yours.

Serge Droz:
Thank you, Sparky, and welcome, everybody, to this session on C CERT. Sparky, you already mentioned that FIRST was started more than 30 years ago to bring instance response teams together. And that’s where we still are. It’s actually in the name. It’s a forum, the Forum of Instance Response and Security Teams. We bring together security teams so they can work together. Cyber security incidents never respect boundaries because the internet is something that doesn’t respect boundaries. So instance responders have to work together and they need a place where they can start to meet. Typically, instance responders don’t have non-disclosure agreements or contracts that kind of regulate how they should work together, how they should treat confidential information. We often treat confidential information because you don’t really want to talk publicly about things that have gone wrong. So FIRST provides the forum or a platform where these teams can work together. It started out 30 years ago with a couple, a handful of teams in the United States, and then slowly started expanding to Europe and Asia. And now FIRST really is a global organization with members from more than 100 countries. We currently have nearly 700 teams which are members, compromising more than 5,500 instance responders that need to work together on a daily basis exchanging information. A couple of years ago, this was still kind of a fairly easy thing. The internet didn’t have that importance that it has today. Also, the world was a lot less polarized. But now things are starting to get more difficult. We have more and more polarization. We have political opinions that diverge. But Sparky mentioned instance responders are like firefighters. Firefighters don’t typically argue in front of a fire who is right, who is wrong, whose house this is. Your job is to extinguish the fire. That’s our job. But this political environment makes it kind of hard to actually do this. And just one example is sanctions that often prevent us from working together. We have certain countries where we have no members because people probably run into issues with sanctions from other countries. And that is a challenge because the internet still connects to all these places. So what I feel first is a success story. And instance response is a success. I think the internet is usable. We all do e-commerce despite all the horror stories about cybercrime we hear about, the horror stories we hear about, malicious cyber operations. We all can use the internet globally in the west, in the east, in the south and in the north. But we need to make sure that we can continue doing this. And despite different political opinions and conflicts, that instance responders can continue working together. That is the big challenge first is facing today. And I think with that, I want to hand on over to Masa to tell us a little more or to Sparky to introduce Masa.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. You know, you first mentioned the global nature of CSET community first. And I was surprised to hear you have more than 700 membership right now. And still the broad membership is suffering. It has a common challenge like us in Asia, the polarization, even among engineers or firefighters work on the ground. Well, I still believe your success story will continue. But anyway, I think it’s your turn, Masa. I’d like to know, again, what is your vision for CSET and why you need a regional collaboration even though we have an organization like FIRST? And I’m also curious if there’s any change in your community for the last few years. Anyway, Masa, please. The floor is yours.

Masae Toyama:
Right. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Masa. I’m currently serving as a secretariat of AP CERT. First of all, it’s a great honor for me to be a speaker with three of you, Sparky and Celgy and Harim, who have contributed so much to the CERT communities. As I said, AP CERT is a forum of the Asia Pacific region. My job is to manage the infrastructure and to ensure AP CERT runs smoothly. So I’d be happy to speak from the viewpoint of the secretariat who takes care of administrative duties. Back in AP CERT, AP CERT was formed in February 2003, so it’s like 20 years anniversary this year. And the AP CERT has been in charge of secretariat since its establishment, and we’ve been coming so far nicely. Since AP CERT is a voluntary community of 33 teams from 24 countries and economies, from India in the west to Tonga in the west, yeah, so members CERT vary in size and maturity. National CERTs make up the majority of members CERT, but academic CERTs, financial sector CERTs and private company CERTs such as Panasonic and Group IB in Singapore are also members. Yeah, so one of the collaboration activities that I’d like to highlight in this session is we do have AP CERT cyber annual drill, so it’s the event that we get together and the check the incident response flow for each team, and we also have the AP CERT flow for each team. So for the realization of this drill, we create scenarios together and check response status of member organization. So this year we had 16th drill, and the theme of the supply chain is Africa CERT. With the total of 35, over 35 teams taking part of including OIC CERT and Africa CERT members, so we actually extend the invitation to the drill for OIC CERT and also Africa CERT. So it’s one of the form of regional collaboration and beyond the We are now expected to have more teams from the participation from other regional collaboration communities, also inside the AP CERT members. I think I should stop now to pass the floor to Karim. Thank you.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you very much. I have a very quick question. So how many members do you have from how many countries or economies? In AP CERT you mean? Yes, we have 33 teams from 24 countries and economies. I’m not sure how many economies we have in Asia, but it seems like it has a very good coverage or it has very good coverage among AP region. Thank you very much. I also think it’s very interesting AP CERT not work inside or within Asia Pacific, it also team up with the AP CERT members, so it’s a good way to know how many people are there for exercise or drill. So that is a good segue to Karim’s part. So Karim, now I’d like to give the floor to you. We’d like to know who Africa CERT is, how members of the community like Africa CERT? I also like to know how CERT Mauritius engage with even other than Africa CERT, because, for example, I see several activities at African Union on cyber security, and anything from your past experience. So over to you, Karim.

Kaleem Ahmed Usmani:
Good morning, everyone. And this is 3.35 in the morning in Mauritius. First of all, Sparky, thank you for giving us the floor. So here I’m having two hats, and first of all, of course, I’m heading the Mauritian computer emergency response team. And at the same time, as Sparky mentioned, I’m working and talking on behalf of Africa CERT. And as Martha mentioned, like any other CERTs which we are talking about, AP CERT, the same like is the regional CERT in Africa. And this particular Africa CERT has been operating for quite some time, and then the kind of activities which we are doing is not very different than what other regional CERTs are doing. And especially we are working on different things, and incident handling surely is one among them, because As Sparky mentioned, Serge has been talking about that we are the firefighters and once we are firefighters, we have to work along with the different teams in Africa and along the globe in order to coordinate those cyber incidents which we are talking about. If quickly, I come back to the question that how many teams we have, of course, we all know that Africa is very big, we are having 35 countries in Africa right now, we are having some 26 national search, the countries who have the national search in Africa and they are all members of Africa plus also other organizations, they are joining Africa search over the years and the whole idea here of Africa search is to coordinate cyber security incidents and obviously, we are focusing very much on capacity building within the continent and within that particular capacity building, we have been organizing a number of activities where first and then even Japan search has been actively supporting that and some of the activities where first has been there is the first technical symposium which has been organized for a few years and actively our first in Africa search working together. Again, Japan search has been very instrumental in providing its resources to Africa search for many years, in fact, now down the line and I think we are thankful to Spock where he has been actively supporting the cause of capacity building in Africa and he has been traveling extensively into the continent in order to provide capacity. So, technical symposium is one and through that symposium, a number of activities are happening and then lately, we also started a continental cyber drill and this continental cyber drill is an activity where a number of teams and a number of countries are participating. So, already we had two additions, so we started in 2021, 2022 and this time, we are going to organize in Maputo Mozambique from the 9th and the 10th of November where we are expecting again more than some 35 to 36 teams. So, that number is growing but again, the idea is to build capacity, build a preparedness of the teams and then this is where different activities we are doing as part of the cyber drill. So, right from the TTX to capture the flag and then the technical simulation exercises, they are all happening and then as Spock mentioned that we are opening it to the across the region so that more and more teams not only from Africa, they could join from other regions and then we can share their experiences of incident response so that we understand what kind of threat surface are there in other regions and accordingly based on to that, we are able to manage that. So, that’s something what is in there and then even if we see again a few activities which we are trying to promote apart from many other because like any other regional effort, we are also the part of the different forums. So, in different forums, if I talk about we are the part of the ITU-SD17 AFR activities, we are part of the ITU-D4 CSIRT capacity building, we are part of the GFCE partners since 2021 and we have been also involved into writing the engagement strategy for FOST in Africa since 2015. This Africa CIRT also has introduced Professor Suguru Yamaguchi’s fellowship and I think Spock is here and again, Professor, he has been supporting these activities and again, we did those started fellowship program again into Africa and we are a part of the symposium as I mentioned, we are a part of the GFCE CIRT, OIC CIRT, again we are working actively with ICANN. So, in a nutshell, more and more teams are joining Africa CIRT because more and more teams are the countries they are setting up their national CIRT. So, that’s what we have been trying so that because out of 54 countries, the number of CSIRT teams in Africa is fairly lower than other regions and I believe even FOST has been promoting and focusing up to that so that more and more teams are able to, countries in particular are able to have their national CIRT and that is something even we are promoting all the way. So, one specific activity which also I’d like to mention here is information sharing and information sharing I believe is important across the regions and that’s what we are trying to do within Africa. We have come up with our own different platforms in different countries of the teams and then these teams, they are sharing that particular information and that’s what we are promoting at. So, maybe I’ll quickly, I’ll stop here so that if there are more questions, I’ll be able to take it up later. So, in a nutshell, that’s what Africa CIRT does very much around capacity building, incident coordination and obviously preparedness exercises. Back to you, Swati. Thank you very much.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you. Thank you, Karim. It’s good to know. I still remember Africa has a little bit more than 50 countries in the giant continents and you succeed in attracting many states to be part of this community. I’d like to clarify, Karim, if for example ISPs in Mauritius or South Africa like to join Africa CIRT, can they be a member of Africa CIRT? Yes, they can. To answer your question,

Kaleem Ahmed Usmani:
I suppose yes, they can and then maybe you have been asking the support from Mauritius as in supporting Africa CIRT. Then quickly maybe in a sentence or two, we are again along with Africa CIRT and providing support for building capacity for different things and that’s what we have tried to do. We are engaging with different teams and then adding their expertise in order to conduct any activity which we are trying to do and this is helping us in a way to build capacity along with other partners, international partners, for example, FIRST and many more. So, that’s where things are happening in this fashion. Thank you.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you so much, Karim. It’s good to know since in the beginning you have a very strong tie with a global community like FIRST, although it seems like there’s a pretty regional challenges like, you know, the wider, the big continent with lots of, how do I say, the gaps in the capacity not only for cyber security but for other matters. Thank you all. Thank you all three panelists for your remarks and I also like to add two points before we go to the Q&A part. First, sorry for someone from Europe or other region other than Asia and Africa. As we have like APCIRT in Asia or Africa CIRT in Africa, so TFC CIRT and other organization are pretty active in getting CIRT team together in Europe and, of course, EU is trying to consolidate cyber security talent for their project and, again, PACSAN, an ongoing effort in Pacific Islands, again, to get the CIRT from all the island nations and also we have ASEAN CIRT, which they will be officially established soon. So, today we don’t have a representative from those regions but I like to make sure things are happening in the region. And my second point is there are also collaboration of CIRT stemmed from a strategic alliance, not from the computer security or cyber security field. For example, NATO has they have been trying to force the cyber security cooperation among NATO member states. Many of you haven’t heard this before but security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, United States is trying to follow that path, too. And I also heard Shanghai Corporation Organization, SCO, led by or moderated by China, convene a regular meeting by CIRT of member states. Finally, there’s a similar attempt by CIS. CIS is a Eurasian intergovernmental security dialogue, not alliance, including last year. But at CIS, there’s also a very active sharing and cooperation among CSIRTs of each state. So, these intergovernmental efforts can be distinct from, for example, APCIRT or FIRST because FIRST, I think most of the members are from private sectors, APCIRT as well, and I just learned from Karim that private sector can be part of Africa CIRT. So, there’s clearly a difference in the membership status and a CSIRT network of multi-stakeholder organization. So, that means either APCIRT or FIRST or Africa CIRT, private sector or civil society can play a crucial role. Anyways, with contribution from our panel, we now understand how those global or regional collaboration mechanism works. Thank you to all the panelists. So, who was calling you? Okay. So, now I’d like to ask a few questions to our panel. By the way, Saochi, Karim, we have like 30 people sitting in a room, watching carefully your fight at 3.45 in the morning. So, yeah, please stay awake for another 15 minutes. And I also encourage audience on site or online to prepare your questions as well, because in the next segment, I will ask you for any questions to the panelists. So, I first like to ask this to Saochi, since before your current position, you also worked for messaging companies in Switzerland and others, and you have quite a rich experience in dealing with international organization and civil society in Switzerland and everywhere. Is it, you know, from your own perspective or from FIRST point of view, is it important to protect the under-resourced civil society or it’s simply not the role of FIRST?

Serge Droz:
So, thanks, Sparky. This is really a very good question. It’s something that sometimes keeps me awake a little bit or makes me fall asleep slower. FIRST members are mostly from the private sector. They’re typically tech companies that are mature enough to realize that they actually need IT security. There are banks, because banks know that they’re attacked, because that’s where the money is and where the criminals go. Other parts of the membership communities are states, because states realize that this is important. But really, what we are missing is civil society. We are missing many of the organizations that protect individual users, that protect minorities, that protect groups that are under pressure. Part of this is explained through the resources these people have. Sometimes I have the impression a CSIRT is in this community or the security person in this community is just one person and their cat. And these people just don’t have the resources to apply for FIRST membership and become a member. Yet, we exactly need these people. We as a community, as a global community, we need to start thinking about how we can support this. That sounds all nice and dandy and easy, but it’s actually quite a challenge, because for very good reasons, quite often members of civil society distrust big companies, they distrust states. And that is a challenge. And again, I think we have to get the firefighter paradigm. A firefighter doesn’t really care if the house of a billionaire is on fire or a poor person. It just shouldn’t make a difference. And that’s the same way we have here. Our hope really is that civil society gets up and starts talking to us. And I do know a lot of people in the FIRST community that are more than happy to start helping and supporting these communities, appreciating that they don’t have the resources that many of us within FIRST have. So here’s a pledge also to a lot of the organizations present at the IGF, start talking to us. This is too important.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you so much, Saúl. Now, I really miss you. I miss the fact that you cannot sit with us this time. But thank you so much, Saúl. And for Karim and Masa, I have the same question for two of you. In what circumstances have you faced or have you felt a mismatch between expectations outside your community and your own capacity? I think people like myself asking Africa or Ibiza to do this, in those cases, do you think you are self-sufficient and can respond to any requests outside or you have any, you know, you identify any area you need to work on? So, I’m not sure who goes first. Maybe. Karim, can you go first? Ladies first? Okay. Ladies want you to start first.

Kaleem Ahmed Usmani:
All right. No problem. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, coming back to this question, Sparky, this is, again, interesting because and that’s what we have been talking about and that’s what we should discuss because capacity and then the deliver to your constituency or to your region is, in fact, is important. And this is, again, a very demanding and a daunting task for any region. And then the same applies to Africa. And just to put it on record here that we have been trying to, because our team size is smaller than other regions in different things, but the way of modus operandi of Africa is a little bit different because we are trying to gather teams together. And with those teams, we are trying to execute the needs of the region. So, I think that’s a little bit differently we are trying to operate. And, yes, lots of capacity building is happening along with other stakeholders in different things. Actively, Africa has been able to form different working groups at the same time. And we are trying to extract the expertise of experts within the region in order to build up the capacity around those areas. And especially if I talk about critical infrastructure, if I talk about the cyber diplomacy, if I talk about the SCADA assistance, if I talk about information sharing. So, these kind of things are happening already. And I believe that, especially on the part of the critical infrastructure security, that’s what the region is picking it up. Because if we see Africa from other regions, so their focus on building capacity around critical infrastructures have been of failing slower than other regions. And the reason is, of course, the expertise and then also in terms of their preparedness for different reasons. So I believe that that’s the focus slide for us and from there we are trying to pick it up and this is where with the different agencies we are trying to train people within the region on critical infrastructure protection and specific training programs have been started. So it’s just the beginning but of course that’s the challenge for us where more teams in more countries they could be exposed to this kind of training so that they are able to well protect their infrastructure or critical infrastructure better. So I think I’ll stop here.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you very much. To me it sounds most of the issue or challenges you have right now is not regional. It sounds we are facing the same or pretty similar challenges together at the same time. Masa?

Masae Toyama:
Okay so honestly I don’t have any big difference between the expectation from other communities and what we are doing in AP CERT. So instead I would like to mention about the challenging we had if I may. So one of the challenges that we face as AP CERT is it’s challenging to keep the members interaction going after the pandemic. So basically before the pandemic we had several times to get together for example annual general meetings and also steering committee meeting to exchange the honest view or the current status for each organization. But during the pandemic we had to end up with communication online. So right now we are so excited to restart the in-person activities and then we had steering committee meeting in September last month exactly same place here and it was the first time in four years. So yeah we’d like to resume this kind of activity again and we also would like to continue to reach out to the support those team in the region that are eligible for AP CERT membership but are not yet members. So basically the Asia-Pacific region refers to the APNIC boundaries. So there are some countries where that is not a member of AP CERT yet. For example Pacific Island, certain Pacific Islands and also Middle Asia. So yeah we’d like to talk about this topic and extend the interest for joining AP CERT. And then for us another topic is for us it’s more important than ever before not to lose a sense of balance in order to maintain neutrality. To give an example of China, mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau are all equally represented as independent teams in AP CERT. And such an organization is very unique given the current circumstances. So that’s one of the key that secretariat and also steering committee is focusing on and we try to keep neutrality as much as possible to maintain one of the great features of AP CERT. Thank you so much.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
The last part of your statement, the neutrality is pretty difficult to define or how to achieve but I get your point. As a secretariat you like to serve for your members equally. I think that’s what you like to achieve. Thank you all the panelists and now I’d like to open the floor for audience for your questions. We have two microphones so please come up in front of one of those. Who’s first? We don’t see any question online at the moment. Okay, I see. Oh, great. So please identify yourself before we have a question.

Kaleem Ahmed Usmani:
Good morning everyone. Clay from FIRST, so same organization as SEARCH. Just a kind of broad question for everyone, particularly around the regional networks. What can the regional networks do to improve cyber security more broadly that they’re not doing already? What are some kind of ambitious activities that you think organizations like AP CERT, Paxon, Africa CERT, C-CERT Americas, you know, name them all, could do to kind of spread resilience beyond just the incident response community?

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
So I guess this is a question mainly for Karim, Masa, or maybe myself. Karim, if I may go first or you’d like to pick up this question? The way you prefer, Sparky, you can go ahead and then I can… Sure, thank you. My response to the question on how regional C-CERT network can help mitigate the problem. We sometimes see regional threat or regional issues in cyberspace. I’ll give you an example. There’s a very popular Korean IPTV set box, which is quite vulnerable. And since it’s a very popular device, it can be sold and it is widely used in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, maybe Malaysia, and of course, Korea. Even to this date, we have similar type of the regionally popular products. And in those cases, for example, in AP-CERT, there’s a joint traffic monitoring project, and we see spike in certain ports of TCP traffic and can at least tell affected countries or affected C-CERTs of affected region to check to see if there is something they’d like to address. So the existence of regional threat is, to me, the major motivation to maintain the regional collaboration framework. Karim?

Kaleem Ahmed Usmani:
Thank you, Sparky. And thank you, Cleve, for this wonderful question, in fact. Because this cuts across all the regions, and as you rightly said. But again, the way I want to answer this question, there are different things, obviously, if I look at the African region. And one of the things is how do we manage threat best? And once how do we manage threat best and the way we see in Africa, so monitoring of threats is a kind of a challenge for each and every country. And the reason is that different countries, they have a different level of maturity. And some countries, they have started a little earlier. Some of the countries, they have started some five, six, seven years back. And some of the countries, they are starting now. And once they are starting now and then five years back and then earlier, they have a different level of maturity. And we being a third community, I believe, and other regions, they have done it. How can we join hands together in order for us to monitor things regionally or specific to a particular region where different teams, they could join hands together in order to manage a threat? And one example could be sort of a regional monitoring and information sharing support, which the country, they can have. And just on to that part, like SARDIC in Africa, Southern African Development Community, they have set up a SARDIC CSER task force. And this SARDIC CSER task force has been set up still in a very initial stage with a view that we can have a common goal. And then all different teams, those who have the capacity, they are able to help the countries in the case of cyber crisis. So that’s one component. But I think the second component also which we need to understand is that a technical infrastructure, which is very important. And technical infrastructure, because in terms of a number of things, technical infrastructure for information sharing, technical infrastructure for a bot detection, technical infrastructure for a honeypot setup, and then combining all these together and then monitoring somewhere from a security operation center. So this is not a new concept, but this is the kind of a concept which is required in the region so that everybody could help each other in order to manage threats better. So I think that’s what is coming to my mind, and this is where I want to stop. Thank you very much. Back to you, Sparky.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you, Karim. Thank you very much. We have another question. Please.

Audience:
Good morning, and thank you to the panel. My name is Tom. I’m from the National Institute of Cybersecurity in Taiwan, and I just am here to say that we’re here to help. We are a newly established institute, and we have a mandate to collaborate internationally. And as Toyama-san said, we’re also really excited to get back into physical interactions. And so my question for the panel is I’m looking at different models that countries are using to bring people together physically to improve cyber capability in different countries. And I saw, for example, in 2021, Lithuania established a regional cyber defense center, and they’ve been gathering together with Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, and the USA in person to help improve the cyber defense of the region. So they’re all quite advanced cyber actors. But should we, those of us that have the capability to fly places and meet in person, be conducting those kind of activities around the world? Thank you.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you very much. That’s a pretty interesting question. I’d like to begin with, I’m not sure if the Slovenian regional collaboration is done by CSETs in the region or militaries. So we see, of course, many activities by our armed force, military defense, and other forces in the region. But as far as I can recall, there’s no international permanent joint operational center which Japan is part of. But Serge, Karim, do you have any thoughts on this question?

Serge Droz:
Yes. So I think what you kind of implied is that the in-person gatherings are about kind of building up capacity, building up know-how, and stuff like this. I would wager that the real importance about these type of meetings and about the physical get-togethers is to actually form trust. Because trust is the fuel that instance response works on. If you were dealing with an incident, you’re typically dealing with something that you don’t want to have public. It’s kind of embarrassing. Your host organization got hacked. So you only want to talk to people you trust. You trust them that they don’t kind of blur this out to the rest of the world. You have to share secrets. And I think that’s the main reason why you should be doing this. And this also ties in a little bit into the previous questions about what the regional organization should do. In my view, what really distinguishes instance response from, say, a trade association or something like this is that we build communities that trust each other and that kind of share a common language. If you look at FIRST’s mission, one of the three missions we have is building or working on a global language. And this is not about French versus German or something. It’s about having the same understanding of the challenges and being able, during a crisis, to talk to each other and to work with each other. Again, if you take the firefighter equivalent, if you’re a firefighter and you’re kind of really going into a house that’s burning, you just have to trust the people outside to do the right thing. And I think that, for me, is the important thing. And that’s really what these meetings are. And I know you, Sparky, from many of the board meetings where we had a lot of discussions. And what I really take out is that if I have an issue in Japan, I actually trust you to do the right things. And I tell you a lot of things that I wouldn’t really tell many other people. So I think, for me, that is the essence of getting us together. And that’s the justification why I still should travel during times where we have climate change and we should reuse traveling.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you, Serge. We are running up the time. So, Karim, can you provide a very short answer to the question and also the final piece of advice or message for our audience? And then, Serge, go back to you just for 15 seconds of your last message. Masa, you too. Thank you. Karim.

Kaleem Ahmed Usmani:
Thank you, Sparky. I think just to answer this question, something like a confidence-building measure, which is obviously part of the cyber diplomacy, but I think it very much applies into this context. And confidence-building measure cannot happen unless and until we don’t sit together and then we talk to each other. And this is very much based on truth across building. And that’s something that has started in Africa and many other regions, and Asia, I know, and Europe, I know. Again, in Africa. So if we sit together, and that’s what we have started trying to do with SARDIC. And I think this will work. And why it will work, because we have to have the trust of the people. And once people trust you, they come back to you. And once they come back to you, definitely things get better in terms of instant resolution. So to short answer of this question, of course, we can discuss for hours. But I think confidence-building measure is important for us to be able to outreach the different teams and the communities in order to resolve incidents. That’s the answer for this question. And then I think the final thing which I wanted to say, which Sparky has asked, is I think we have to join hands together. Because we need each other as a community to build resilience around our systems and infrastructure. And alone we cannot do much. And this is where I think this forum is going to help. Because we have the expertise, we have the experts, and then I think we can all join hands together to get things better for the continent and for the region. So thank you very much. With my final words, Sparky, back to you.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you, Karim. So, Masa, 15 seconds.

Masae Toyama:
15 seconds, right. I believe that the future development of cyber security at the regional level should not only deal with emergency response when needed, but rather continue with normal collaborative activities such as tours and events in APC community, which make more sense for emergency coordination. And those who are interested in such activities, please refer to APC annual report, which is available for everyone. Thank you.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
Thank you, Masa. 15 seconds.

Serge Droz:
So, speaking for first, I mean, my big wish really is that we have strong cyber security communities all around the globe. And that these communities can work together and that they do the right thing. So we also should continue thinking about what is it CSER should be doing and what is it they shouldn’t be doing. But that’s for our next panel. Thanks.

Koichiro Sparky Komiyama:
All right. Thank you, panelists, and thank you, our audience. This is the end of the session. Thanks for everyone for joining this panel. Thank you very much, and see you next IGF. Thank you. Karim, Saoji, thank you very much. Now you can go to bed. Yes, I will. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye everyone.

Elonnai Hickok

The Global Network Initiative (GNI) is a multi-stakeholder platform that aims to promote responsible decision making in the ICT sector. It focuses on how companies respond to government mandates for content removal and access to user information. GNI advocates for strategies such as strategic litigation, petitions, investigations, rankings, and human rights impact assessments to engage with big tech.

One concerning trend highlighted by GNI is the increasing number of government mandates that impose requirements for quick content removal, local offices, proactive monitoring, data localisation, and broad company scope. GNI’s policy advocacy responds to these developments in countries like Turkey, Vietnam, and Pakistan.

GNI recognises the importance of companies adopting and adapting their policies and processes to meet the challenges of the rapidly evolving digital ecosystem. To ensure accountability, GNI assesses the implementation of its principles in the policies and processes of its member companies. The organisation uses an “improvement over time” standard to measure their progress.

Operating in different jurisdictions is complex, and GNI strives to understand the difficulties faced by companies in various contexts. It helps companies navigate these spaces while striving to protect human rights.

There is a power dynamic between civil society organisations and tech companies, where the latter often hold most of the power and information. GNI has developed a range of tools to assist civil society in engaging effectively with the tech sector. It is running an Action Coalition for Meaningful Transparency to support civil society’s advocacy efforts. Different tech companies call for a focus on different aspects, such as privacy for telecom companies and human rights-respecting community guidelines for social media companies.

To engage with tech companies effectively, civil society needs to understand the ecosystem approach and ask specific, pointed questions. It is crucial to consider the legal environment in which a company operates and engage with relevant departments, such as the legal department, trust and safety, and policy divisions.

Elonnai Hickok, Public Policy Director at GNI, highlights the restrictive provisions in regulations being introduced by countries. However, specific examples or additional information regarding these regulations were not provided.

GNI encourages Russian civil society to engage in multi-stakeholder initiatives in order to share their experiences and engage with companies. This will help foster dialogue and create a better understanding of the ground realities.

In conclusion, the GNI plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between big tech companies and civil society organisations. It promotes responsible decision making in the ICT sector, advocates for human rights, and provides tools and initiatives to assist civil society in engaging effectively with the tech sector. By coordinating their efforts and working collaboratively, civil society stakeholders can have a greater impact in shaping the digital ecosystem and protecting human rights.

Cagatay Pekyorur

META, a company, has been implementing a human rights corporate policy since March 2021. This policy is guided by United Nations (UN) principles and JNI commitments. META demonstrates its commitment to transparency and accountability by publishing annual human rights reports. These reports highlight two significant risks identified by META. The first risk is overbroad government requests on take-down, where governments ask for the removal of content that goes beyond what is necessary or justified. The second risk is overbroad or unnecessary government demands for user data, where governments request access to user data that exceeds what is proportionate or required.

To address these risks, META has developed a comprehensive process to assess government take-down requests. This process involves evaluating the legality, legitimacy, necessity, proportionality, and potential external risks associated with the request. META considers factors such as legal review, international human rights standards, and the potential risks to users’ safety and offline harm. By carefully assessing these factors, META aims to ensure that its responses to government take-down requests align with human rights principles and protect the interests of its users.

There have been concerns over amendments made to Turkish legislation, which have expanded the scope and severity of sanctions against non-compliance with government requests. Companies that fail to comply with a single take-down request or do not share user data may face significant consequences, such as blockage or throttling of their services. Previously, non-compliance resulted in monetary fines. These amendments have raised concerns about censorship, privacy, and freedom of expression.

Civil society plays a vital role in holding companies accountable and influencing public opinion against government actions that may infringe on human rights. They act as advocates for people’s rights and serve as intermediaries between government policies and users’ fundamental rights. Dialogues and collaborations between civil society, platforms, and companies are essential for understanding the regulatory framework and establishing expectations.

Rather than being in opposition, collaboration between companies and civil societies is encouraged to work together. This partnership can promote more effective engagement and address challenges collectively. Cagatay Pekyorur, representing META, expresses willingness to facilitate increased engagement between civil society and their team.

META places significant importance on managing misinformation and disinformation. They have dedicated teams working diligently to identify and address networks that spread false information. META also shares their findings with the general public to promote transparency and raise awareness about these issues.

META promptly takes action in instances of incitement of violence appearing on their platform. They emphasize the importance of freedom of opinion and expression, as well as the right to security. META supports the need to take action when such instances occur to maintain a safe and responsible online environment.

When a government’s demand is not overbroad and aligns with international human rights principles, META complies with requests for user data sharing or content removal as required by local law. This demonstrates their commitment to navigating the complex balance between legal obligations and protecting user rights.

Legislative developments, particularly in the form of cybercrime laws, can present challenges for companies like META. These laws may empower governments to censor content or force platforms to share user data. Such legislation may also target specific groups, such as LGBTQ individuals, further raising concerns about human rights violations.

Addressing challenges posed by an authoritarian regime requires collective effort. Civil society, digital platforms, and companies should collaborate instead of dictating each other’s responsibilities. This collective approach enables a more comprehensive response to protect human rights and challenge abuses of power.

In conclusion, META has implemented a human rights corporate policy guided by UN principles and JNI commitments. They have established a rigorous process to assess government take-down requests and mitigate risks. Concerns have been raised about amendments to Turkish legislation that expand sanctions for non-compliance. Civil society plays a crucial role in holding companies accountable and collaborating with platforms. META is committed to managing misinformation and taking action against incitement of violence. They comply with government demands aligned with international human rights principles. Legislative developments pose challenges, and addressing them requires collective effort.

Sarah Clarke

The analysis delves into Sarah Clarke’s discussion on the significance of advocating for digital rights in hostile environments, wherein big tech companies face pressure from authoritarian regimes. Clarke underscores recent instances in Turkey and Vietnam as examples, where popular platforms like Twitter, Meta (formerly known as Facebook), and YouTube found themselves entangled in a predicament due to government-imposed content blocking. These incidents shed light on the complex challenges faced by these tech companies as they grapple with the dilemma of either complying with restrictive orders or risking potential sanctions.

In Turkey and Vietnam, the bans on platforms and content throttling imposed by the respective governments have put companies such as Twitter, Meta, and YouTube in a difficult position. By complying with the orders, these companies risk being complicit in the suppression of freedom of expression and information. Conversely, defying the restrictive measures could result in severe penalties and sanctions imposed by the authoritarian regimes. Clarke underscores the gravity of this predicament, emphasising the arduous task faced by these tech giants in navigating such scenarios.

Furthermore, the analysis highlights Clarke’s endeavours to encourage discussion and seek solutions to address the challenges faced by digital rights advocates in restrictive regimes. As part of this effort, Clarke has organised a panel discussion involving stakeholders from different regions. The primary objective of the panel is to foster actionable strategies that can effectively tackle the issues at hand. The analysis reveals that the panel discussion includes interactive elements such as workshops and breakout sessions, which promote collaboration and enable fruitful exchanges of ideas and experiences. Through these interactions, Clarke aims to create a platform where participants can explore innovative ways of resolving the complex challenges associated with advocating for digital rights in hostile environments.

The sentiment towards the importance of digital rights advocacy in hostile environments is predominantly negative, as captured by the gravity and complexity of the situation. The analysis suggests that the challenges faced by big tech companies and the potential suppression of freedom of expression reflect the severity of the issue. However, the overall sentiment regarding Clarke’s efforts to encourage discussion and find solutions is positive. The panel discussion she has organised serves as a platform for stakeholders to come together, share knowledge, and collaborate towards addressing the challenges faced by digital rights advocates. This signifies the recognition of the need for collective action and partnerships to effectively tackle these issues.

In conclusion, Sarah Clarke’s discussion on advocating for digital rights in hostile environments sheds light on the complex challenges faced by big tech companies pressured by authoritarian regimes. The instances in Turkey and Vietnam illustrate the difficult decisions these companies must make, as compliance entails potential complicity in suppressing freedom of expression, whereas defiance may result in severe penalties. Clarke’s efforts to encourage discussion and seek solutions through the panel discussion with various stakeholders highlight the importance of collaborative efforts and actionable strategies in addressing the challenges faced by digital rights advocates. Although the sentiment towards the issue is negative due to its gravity and complexity, the sentiment regarding Clarke’s initiatives is positive, indicating the recognition of the significance of these discussions in finding solutions.

Kivilcim Ceren Buken

The analysis focuses on the relationship between online platforms and civil society, exploring the challenges related to human rights, content moderation, and business interests. One argument presented is that platforms are more responsive when requests are presented as potential business opportunities. For instance, an example is provided where Twitter hired Portuguese speakers after realizing the potential business loss during a sports event blockade in Brazil. Similarly, a change in Facebook’s attitude towards Tor when it was blocked in Iran and users accessed Facebook via Tor demonstrates this point.

Another argument highlights the negative consequences of AI-driven content moderation, particularly the removal of violent content that leads to the loss of valuable evidence. The analysis provides an example of an individual tracking bombings in Syria through YouTube videos, which are often removed due to violent content. As a solution, it is suggested to store the removed content for potential use in court cases.

Advocating from a business perspective is considered effective with online platforms, rather than solely focusing on human rights. This approach is supported by examples from Brazil and Iran, where platforms’ success in responding to business opportunities is discussed.

The analysis stresses the importance of collaboration between civil society and online platforms in addressing the various challenges faced. It acknowledges that the challenges encountered by civil society in relation to platforms are not a new phenomenon. Content moderation issues and conflicting business interests are recognized as significant challenges that need to be addressed. Therefore, it argues for civil society and platforms to work together in finding collaborative solutions.

However, it points out that platforms should not bear the burden of addressing challenges related to civil society independently. Collective action is seen as essential, emphasizing the need for collaboration and partnerships between platforms and civil society.

The analysis provides valuable insights regarding the relationship between online platforms and civil society. It showcases the importance of advocating from a business perspective to effectively engage platforms and highlights the potential loss of valuable evidence through AI-driven content moderation. The call for collaboration between civil society and platforms and the significance of collective action in addressing challenges are noteworthy observations. Overall, the analysis underscores the need for a balanced and cooperative approach to ensure the rights and interests of all stakeholders are respected in the online platform ecosystem.

Katia Mierzejewska

Civil society has long been advocating for improved human rights policies from tech companies, expressing their concerns over the years. However, there has been minimal progress on the part of tech companies, leading to frustration and weariness within civil society. This negative sentiment arises from the perceived lack of change and progress in the realm of human rights policies.

One of the main arguments put forth by civil society is that the human rights policies established by tech companies often feel like a PR tool. These policies, according to civil society, fail to effectively address the issues at hand and make a tangible impact. Consequently, civil society is calling for more action and substantive change from tech companies.

Another crucial argument highlights the need for a shift in the business models employed by tech companies. The current focus on data mining and using data for profit is seen as impeding the effectiveness of human rights policies. Civil society advocates for a shift towards business models that prioritize human rights and data protection over profit-making.

Moreover, there is growing concern about how tech platforms can address government-led propaganda and disinformation campaigns. The question arises as to how platforms can effectively react to orchestrated smear campaigns or disinformation potentially backed by governments. This observation further emphasizes the necessity for tech companies to actively address and mitigate the impact of such campaigns.

In conclusion, there is a clear consensus within civil society that tech companies need to demonstrate more significant progress and take a leading role in addressing human rights policies. The current perception is that these policies are inadequate and merely serve as a public relations tool. Additionally, a shift in business models, prioritizing human rights and data protection over data mining and profit-making, is deemed necessary. Lastly, there are concerns about how tech platforms can effectively respond to government-led propaganda and disinformation campaigns. Overall, the sentiment towards tech companies’ handling of human rights issues is negative.

Audience

In discussions surrounding tech companies like META, several key issues have arisen. One major problem is the instability of teams within these companies. In the case of META, the rapid turnover of staff can pose difficulties for civil society organisations striving to engage with them, hindering effective collaboration between tech companies and civil society.

Another significant issue is the language and context barriers in content moderation. The diverse nature of online content necessitates proper moderation to combat disinformation, hate speech, and other harmful material. However, these language and context differences often impede accurate identification and handling of such content.

The situation in Russia regarding big platforms like Meta and Google has escalated beyond previous explanations. Meta is now officially designated a terrorist organization in Russia, resulting in substantial blocks on access to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter within the country. Despite these restrictions, civil society in Russia persists, with people continuing to use platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, which are now part of Meta.

One argument suggests that social media platforms should comply with country-specific laws and regulations. This perspective emphasizes the responsibility of these platforms to abide by the rules of the countries in which they operate. Achieving transparency in negotiations between social media platforms and governments is seen as vital, as the current processes are viewed as lacking in transparency.

Additionally, there is a pressing demand for tech companies to take a more active role in addressing content moderation and transparency issues. The existing mechanisms for engaging with civil society activists are deemed inadequate, and there is a sense of disappointment among civil society regarding the lack of progress made over the years.

To advance the discussion, it is proposed that the focus should shift from repressive regimes to the power and influence of big tech companies. Exclusive framing, which overlooks non-repressive countries, risks narrowing the scope of the discussion and engagement process.

Concerns have been raised about Meta prioritizing revenue over human rights. While these concerns are valid, it is important to acknowledge Meta’s efforts in disrupting a network run by the Ugandan government, showing a level of commitment to human rights. Furthermore, Meta has expressed a willingness to collaborate with civil society organisations to improve and learn. The presence of a senior public policy person within Meta serves as evidence of this intention.

In conclusion, the discussions surrounding tech companies like META underscore several significant challenges and debates. These include team instability, language and context barriers, restrictions on platforms in certain countries, the role and responsibility of social media platforms, the need for improved engagement and transparency, the reframing of discussions around repressive regimes, and concerns about Meta’s focus on revenue over human rights. Despite these challenges, there is hope for progress as Meta demonstrates a willingness to collaborate with civil society and work towards improvement.

Suay Ergin-Boulougouris

The internet regulation landscape in Turkey has become a cause for concern as it poses a threat to freedom of speech. Laws in Turkey have been weaponised against free speech, with social media platforms being increasingly censored over the years. Online platforms have become the primary source of news, making this form of censorship particularly impactful.

Non-compliance with content takedown orders in Turkey now results in heavy penalties for companies. These penalties include fines, bandwidth throttling, and advertising bans. This strict regulatory environment puts additional pressure on companies to comply with content removal requests, which can further restrict freedom of speech.

To address this issue, it is crucial for Big Tech companies to develop contingency strategies that protect access to their platforms during sensitive periods. YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have resorted to content restriction in order to avoid being blocked during election periods. Additionally, it is important for these companies to actively engage with local NGOs and conduct human rights due diligence before taking any compliance steps.

Civil society also plays a vital role in advocating for digital rights issues and engaging with governments. Coordinating with the government can help effectively communicate the importance of human rights cases. Promoting public literacy on digital rights is another crucial aspect for civil society. Furthermore, international attention and efforts on digital rights can greatly influence platform decisions.

It is argued that authoritarian actions of governments should be subject to international accountability. The lack of rule of law, independent judiciary, and stifled civil society allow authoritarian states to act with impunity. Therefore, it is suggested that digital rights should be a provision in trade agreements to hold governments accountable.

Suay Ergin-Boulougouris believes that solutions to current challenges already exist within the calls from civil society. Addressing the concerns raised by civil society can help alleviate the dire situation. Despite the restrictive regimes, Ergin-Boulougouris contemplates the possibility of civil society and big tech working together. However, it is emphasised that big tech also needs to be held accountable, and civil society should play a role in monitoring their practices.

In conclusion, Turkey’s internet regulation landscape poses a significant threat to freedom of speech. The heavy penalties imposed on companies for non-compliance with content takedown orders further restrict freedom of expression. It is essential for Big Tech companies to develop strategies to protect access during sensitive periods and engage with local NGOs. Civil society must coordinate and advocate for digital rights issues and engage with governments. Furthermore, there is a need for international accountability for authoritarian actions of governments, with digital rights provisions being incorporated into trade agreements. By addressing these issues and working together, civil society and big tech can play a crucial role in safeguarding freedom of speech.

Trinh Huu Long

The Vietnamese government has introduced legislation to exert control over the internet, forcing foreign services to store user data locally. This move has raised concerns about internet freedom and user privacy. Big tech companies, including Facebook and Google, have largely complied with government requests, compromising the rights of internet users.

One of the main concerns is the government’s high success rate in content removal and user data requests. There is a lack of independent checks on government power, allowing for potential abuse. This raises questions about government influence and the protection of civil liberties.

Civil society organizations are working with tech companies to address these concerns and advocate for human rights. They argue that big tech companies should be proactive in upholding digital and human rights, rather than bowing to authoritarian pressure.

Transparency from tech companies regarding requests for content removal is crucial. The public should have access to information about these requests to assess government censorship and its impact on freedom of expression.

Additionally, there is a need for a fair and efficient appeals process for users affected by content removal decisions. The current process is inadequate, with appeals often being ignored.

In conclusion, big tech companies need to be more accountable and proactive in upholding human rights and protecting internet freedom. Collaborative efforts between civil society organizations and tech companies have shown positive results. However, there is still work to be done to safeguard user rights in the face of increasing government control and censorship. It is crucial for big tech companies to take action and play their part in protecting user rights.

Sarah Clarke:
Good evening, everyone, and thank you very much for coming to this very late-in-the-day event. You’re probably all struggling with jet lag and lots of digital rights topics, but we’re very grateful that you’re joining us for Article 19’s panel on the balancing act that is advocacy with big tech in restrictive regimes. My name is Sarah Clark, and I’m the director of Article 19 for Europe and Central Asia, and we’re delighted to have some really brilliant stakeholders from across the—from all—multi-stakeholders to discuss emerging and pressing issues relating to how to conduct advocacy with big tech in authoritarian and restrictive regimes. To my right, we have Chatai Pekoror, the human rights policy manager for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey for META. Online, we have Trinh Huu-Long, who is the co-founder and co-director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam. To my right is Swai Ergin, who’s the program officer for Article 19 Europe and Central Asia, and then we have Elinay Hickok, the managing director of the Global Network Initiative. As you know, the digital rights landscape is transforming into a battlefield due to the escalation of government-imposed restrictions. Authoritarian regimes are exerting immense control over online content, pushing big tech companies into a dilemma, whether to comply with restrictive orders or face potential throttling and severe sanctions. And this becomes particularly problematic in contexts where online platforms serve as the only medium for dissent. Civil societies push for big tech companies to resist. undue government pressure can lead to unintended consequences such as throttling or even total inaccessibility of these platforms jeopardizing users and communities that civil society seeks to protect. The gravity and complexity of this issue has been underlined by recent cases which this panel will explore. The pre-election context in Turkey saw big tech platforms such as Twitter, Meta and YouTube caught in a predicament as the government mandated content blocking and faced with the threat of bandwidth throttling on the eve of an election in Turkey and in Vietnam these platforms opted for content censorship and in Vietnam Facebook succumbed to the content blocking in Vietnam after being throttled. So today’s panel is going to focus on fostering actionable solutions and strategies to advocate for digital rights amidst hostile environments. And just to give you a little breakdown on how today will work, it is a workshop with an interactive element so we’re going to begin with an introduction and setting the stage so we’ll have interventions from our panelists. We are then going to have a breakout session and we’re going to move around the room a little bit so we’ll have two breakout groups to discuss what you’ve been facing yourselves in terms of advocating for digital rights in restrictive regimes and then we’ll have reporting back and some final comments from the panel. So to begin we’re going to start with Sway. So Sway, could you elaborate on how the recent changes in Turkey’s internet legislation are influencing both civil society and international tech companies and what is the importance And I think it’s very important for us to be aware of the importance of these changes globally.

Suay Ergin-Boulougouris:
Thank you. Thank you, Sara. And thank you all for joining us in this critical discussion. It’s wonderful to see everyone here today, and I look forward to a fruitful discussion. As Sara stated, our workshop today is inspired by the recent censorship on social media platforms on the eve of the elections in Turkey, which exemplifies how big tech can be cornered by censorship on social media platforms. And I’m very happy to be here today to talk about Turkey’s role in international human rights law. And far from being just another country wrestling with these issues, Turkey serves as a coach in their tale. Its legislative landscape showcases how laws can be weaponized against free speech, influencing not just Turkey, but setting an alarming precedent for other nations as well. I won’t delve into all the legal complexities. But I will focus on the issue of censorship on social media platforms. As you know, censorship on social media platforms has become more restrictive over years, and this can be seen as a response to the increasing importance of online platforms in the country, because the mainstream media become more and more under the control of pro-government groups, which is at 90% now, and online, so that online platforms have become the main source of news and an essential tool for independent media to be able to do their job. So censorship on social media platforms is an offense that carries up to three years imprisonment sentence in Turkey, and while the operating environment for platforms was already hostile before these last amendments in 2022, now the companies face heavy fines, including up to 90% bandwidth throttling and advertising bans for non-compliance with a single content takedown order. Yes, that’s right. So censorship on platforms has become an offence, and while the operating environment for platforms was already hostile before these last amendments in 2022, now the companies face heavy fines, including up to 90% bandwidth throttling and advertising bans for non-compliance with a single content takedown order. And while the operating environment for platforms was already hostile before these last amendments in 2022, now the The interests of throttling are not empty ones. It is a chilling reality that can and has impeded both free expression and access to vital information in Turkey. Twitter, for example, was throttled during the aftermath of devastating earthquakes in February, compromising rescue efforts, as people were mainly using this platform to coordinate rescue operations, as well as asking for help, and sometimes even under the rubble. Yet hours after meeting with the government, and also after a huge public backlash, restrictions were lifted. So these threats are real, immediate, and carry dire consequences. And so laws have been tightened, fines have been raised, and threats of throttling are real ones. And it’s a chilling reality that can and has become reality in Turkey. So before the 14 May elections, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook restricted access to certain content to avoid being blocked on the day of the election. This was stated both by Twitter and Meta in their public statements. And so the dilemma here is stark. Should platforms comply and censor, or risk being inaccessible on such an important day? It’s a terrible choice to have to make, and raises the question of how to counterbalance such government governmental overreach. Thanks Zoy. And what strategies do you recommend for fighting back and for how civil society can balance advocacy? So some suggestions for big tech would be they need to develop contingency plans to protect access during sensitive periods like elections. Second, as we always called on big tech to conduct human rights due diligence before taking any compliance steps as well as operating in restrictive environments. Third, big tech needs to engage actively with local NGOs and invite them for consultations. Fourth, they need to coordinate with each other. And finally, the value of transparency cannot be overstated. It can be a game-changer in settings where informal pressures and secret communications are the norm. This means full disclosure of government requests and compliance actions. For example, Twitter’s publication of government communications on the censorship ahead of the elections was a step in the right direction. And for civil society, we need to continue to advocate and coordinate on digital rights issues because pressure can really influence platform decisions. And we, civil society also, even in restrictive regimes, try to coordinate or communicate with the governments as well to communicate their asks or to make the human rights case. And what else can be done? Public literacy on digital rights, bringing international attention to these critical issues. Forums like this one offer the opportunity to align strategies and coordinate our efforts. But, even if all these strategies are implemented, can we say that access to Internet will be ensured and everyone will enjoy their right to free expression online? No, because these are band-aids to symptoms, and we can brainstorm countless solutions for the symptoms, but any progress we make will be temporary and incomplete. To genuinely solve the issue, we need to address the core issues of lack of rule of law, lack of independent judiciary, stifled civil society, and absent international accountability which allow authoritarian states to act with impunity. So for states, your diplomatic efforts must extend to digital rights, ensuring governments are held to international human rights standards. Digital rights should be provisional in trade agreements.

Sarah Clarke:
And last but not least, financial and logistical support for NGOs can go a long way in creating a robust civil society capable of fighting against repression. Thank you. Turning then to Cagatay, so Çağatay, you’re the Human Rights Policy Manager for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey for META. So in light of Suay’s insights, can you share META’s perspective and experiences in Turkey in particular during the recent election time?

Cagatay Pekyorur:
Of course, I’ll try my best. First of all, I would like to start by thanking you for inviting me to this panel, like genuinely I’m so happy to be here and contributing to this very valuable debate that you are leading. And also, so I thank you so much for like putting everything out there so bluntly. I cannot agree more, literally everything that you said, including like how international fora should react to this challenge. I want to start by explaining like how in META we are approaching. in instances when we need to try to find a balance between government requests and also human rights. So we have our human rights corporate policy since March 2021, which clearly states that as META we are bound by United Nations guiding principles and also it talks about our JNI commitments, which goes way beyond 2021, but it still underlines it. And I think that plays an important role in specific instance, because I’m sure like many people do know, but like I want to repeat it, like JNI principles are very clear. It says that like ICT companies like us, we should comply with all applicable laws. It includes local law as well, but also respect internationally recognized human rights. And if they contradict with each other, and in many cases we do see it, unfortunately, we should avoid, minimize or otherwise address the adverse impact of government demands, laws of regulations, and seek ways to honor principles of internationally recognized human rights to the greatest extent possible. I think like, even though like it’s like a one big statement, you see where it’s directing the companies. And as part of our corporate human rights policy, we started to publish human rights reports, like we just published the second one for the year 2022. It talks about the comprehensive human rights, salient risk assessment that we made in again 2022. In that one, if you like dig into it, you can see it only talks about, it only in two instances where we are faced with a government’s direct demands which may impact human rights of our users. The first one is the overbroad government requests on take-down requests. And the second one is overbroad or unnecessary government demands for user data. The first one is very obvious, like it relates to freedom of opinion and expression. The second one, it’s about like right to privacy. But when we think about the way that governments are using this data, actually it’s again related to the voice of our users. Because like they want to get user data if it’s an overbroad or unnecessary demand. In some cases to silence political opposition. So I think both are connected with the things that you mentioned for Turkey. And I want to give you like some brief information about how we are dealing when we receive these requests from governments, especially take-down requests. You may find more detailed information in our transparency center. You can click on any country. At the bottom, there is more information about like how we are approaching this globally. On that page, there are lots of like sections. There is a section called the life cycle of TDRs, which has all the information about it with all the details which I won’t be able to get in today. But very briefly, when we receive a request from a government or an institution that has powers to make this type of a request, we first review it with our community standards. If the content is against our community standards, we remove it. If not, we continue in the process. We conduct a legal review. That legal review, it’s independent. like we are doing a legal review independently. It’s not only about the procedural legality of the decision, but it also makes an assessment if it’s legal in the local law or local legislation. At this stage, we may reject the request, actually. But if we haven’t rejected, then we move to the human rights assessment that we conduct. And there, we have another legality assessment, which also considers international human rights standards. Then we check legitimacy, necessity, proportionality. These are all the things that are part of the international human rights standards when we think about freedom of opinion and expression. But we also need to consider external risks. And I think that’s the most important part in this debate. Because when we talk about external risks, it may include several things, including our salient human rights risks, but also risk of blocking, throttling of methods, technologies, penalties that we may face, regulatory actions, criminal proceedings that we may face, our employees’ security and safety, and also offline harm that may risk to our users. So we need to take all these things into consideration before making a decision if we are going to comply or not. And as Soye explained, like Turkish legislation, it’s there since 2007. And it has been amended several times. With each amendment, both the scope of the legislation expanded, but also the sanctions became more and more severe. And at this stage where we are, if companies don’t comply with one takedown request, we may may face 90 per cent blocking, throttling, just even like for one piece of content. The similar sanction goes for not sharing user data. In the previous version, it was just a monetary fine for the same non-compliance action. So these changes in the legislation, as you may imagine, affecting the way how we are calculating the external risks as well. That’s a brief introduction that I can make, but I can be more specific about the Turkish issue if you want me to. Yes, we would love that.

Sarah Clarke:
And we’d also love to know what you think are the opportunities for civil society to influence measures, policies in authoritarian regimes.

Cagatay Pekyorur:
That’s a very good question. I think like I’m looking to this, I’m going to call it an ecosystem. Maybe it’s the wrong wording, I’m sorry. But like in the most basic structure that we are in, there is the government, there is civil society, and in authoritarian regimes, most of the times citizens have only social media to express their political opinions. In some, obviously, it’s not just social media in many countries, but like in most of the most authoritarian regimes, it is. And in that structure, actually, in my opinion, companies are almost in an intermediary position between the government’s policies and our users’ fundamental rights. Like that’s what we are trying to intermediate, like trying to find a way in between there. And of course, in that structure, what civil society is doing is you are the protectors of these people’s rights. I think there are many things that you can do in this one. The most obvious one, I think, like I’m really… going to state the obvious, you can work towards making us more accountable. But also, I think there are many other ways. The second one I can mention is, you can work towards creating a more strong public opinion against these actions of the government, to delegitimize it. I think the governments also do think about this, if their actions are legitimate in their country, so they are also taking this into consideration. And the third thing that I can suggest, as you mentioned, having open dialogue with platforms, explaining what you are expecting from us, what are your red lines for us to understand. Because as we both mentioned, the regulatory framework is getting stricter, and we may not be able to do the same as we were, because of the sanctions increasing external risk. But it’s still so valuable for us to understand what is the most important thing for civil society. My last suggestion is, in this structure that I mentioned, I think we don’t have to be face-to-face all the time, I think we can also be side-to-side, so I think there’s a room for a lot more collaboration in many different areas around this, of course. Follow-up, one final question there is, could you share an instance where MESA has had to comply with or resist a government’s request in Turkey, and what are the factors that you considered? Of course, I think I will explain twice examples, like… One day before the election, we received a take-down request from the Turkish authorities. And we complied with it. And we actually made a live transparency reporting on our action. And in that one, we explained a number of the content that we are complying to Joe Block, and also mentioned who posted it. And also, we provided a brief explanation on what the content was about. It was about corruption allegations about the government. And the reason that we end up in this situation, reasoning that I can share with you, we also mentioned it in our transparency reporting. In the law, if we don’t comply within four hours, they may throttle us, as I mentioned, 90%. But this is the risk on the paper. This is not how we evaluate the risk. We actually try to evaluate the real risk, if it’s really going to happen or not. And the background story here, for Turkish elections, we were engaging with civil society for a long time. And because of what happened during the earthquake time, the throttling of Twitter, and amendments to the internet law, there were concerns around throttling during the election period. And we were also hearing from civil society that our products are most valuable on the election day, specifically, for the civil society who are working on election integrity-related issues. So we understood that it was a top priority. This content, even though it’s related to democratic institutions, it was not directly. related to civil society’s efforts on election integrity. And it was one day before the election, as I mentioned. So we thought, what is more important there? And like, we concluded that the risk is real, of throttling risk, because it happened very recently. And we also thought like, the civil society will need us next day. But because the topic had an importance for democratic institutions, as I mentioned, we did choose the way of doing a live transparency reporting, rather than waiting for our biannual reporting.

Sarah Clarke:
Fascinating, and I remember those days really well. And I remember the feeling the day before the election in Turkey, that if we had a contested election result on a throttled web, just how difficult that would have been. So I think we all remember how fraught that time was. We’re now going to turn to Trinh Huu Long, who’s the co-founder and co-director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam. And Trinh is joining us online. So. Thank you, may I ask, can you hear me clearly? Yes, we can hear you. Welcome. That’s great. Welcome, and we’re delighted you can join us. And also a big welcome to everyone who’s listening and watching online. So in Vietnam, you have a different set of challenges to Turkey when it comes to internet freedom. So Long, I wonder, could you shed light on the current stage of digital rights in Vietnam and how they compare to the broader Southeast Asian context?

Trinh Huu Long:
Yeah, thank you very much for having me. I have a presentation. May I share my screen or? Yeah, I think so. Great. I’m finding my screen. Please bear with me. Super. Yeah, we can see it now. Thank you very much for having me. I regret I’m not able to be there with everyone. But talking about big tech and human rights in Vietnam, I have been following this issue for a long time. If you read Freedom House, Freedom on the Net report, I’m the author of the Vietnam chapter. This is a little bit of my background. And talking about Vietnam and the Internet, I would like to show you these two books. The one on the left is called The Generation F. And by F, the authors mean Facebook. And on the right, it is a book called From Facebook Down to the Streets. So these two books have been published in 2011 and 2016 to talk about an entirely new social movement in Vietnam initiated on Facebook. And for at least five years, from 2011 to 2016, Facebook and also Google played a very central role in social mobilization. organization in Vietnam, and they were the very good allies and partners and friends of activists and dissidents and the social movements in Vietnam. But then 10 years later, up until 2023, this happened. So Facebook is now having a list of Vietnamese communist officials immune to criticism on their platform, meaning that we cannot criticize a lot of Vietnamese communist party members on Facebook. And this was revealed just a few months earlier by the Washington Post. So why, how does it come from being a friend to the movement to be in such a very problematic platform for all of us in Vietnam? So to understand the internet freedom, we need to put it in the political context that Vietnam is an authoritarian country. It is a closed society with one party ruling the country for 70 years, over 70 years already. And on all kinds of press freedom and freedom index and freedom on the next index, Vietnam is ranked somewhere in the bottom. And in terms of internet freedom, we are not free, only 22 out of 100. And on press freedom, I can say that the most recent RSF report ranked Vietnam just above two countries, which are North Korea and China. So the way the authoritarian regime works is to control the flow of information, right? The internet broke that control a long time ago, and that was why we were able. to have a lot of protest movements and social movements and election campaigns over the past more than 10 years. And this worries the government. Also, Vietnam is a big digital economy that a lot of big tech companies are trying to get in and trying to make a benefit. So we have a billion markets and it’s the fastest growing market in Southeast Asia. A very big market like that is dominated by foreign services, Facebook, Google, Netflix, with some very rare exception of domestic services such as Zillow. And then we have, since the internet has been such a threat, the government have introduced a lot of pieces of legislation to control the internet. So we are not different from the global trends that governments have been trying to make, have been following two strategies, criminalization and data localization, using the concepts of internet sovereignty and data sovereignty. So the Vietnamese government have been putting a lot of people in prison using the penal code. And then we want to shed light on the cybersecurity law in 2018, which for the first time in the history of Vietnam, that forced foreign services to store user data locally. And foreign services have to open local office of branches in Vietnam. And then The government has been aggressively introducing a lot of laws and regulations to enforce the cybersecurity law. The tendency here is that the laws are all vague and broadly defined, right? So the government can interpret the law and regulations any way they want. And even the fact that there is absolutely no independent oversight in Vietnam, there’s no independent court, no national assembly, the Congress is not independent from the government to really keep the government accountable. The law and regulations can be interpreted in any way. And then another tendency is that the law has been mainly targeting foreign services such as Facebook and Google. The reason is that these services have been dominating the market of Vietnam, right? So they have the biggest influence. Domestic services have been very weak, so they have not been able to have a big market share. Also, domestic companies are absolutely under control of the government. So the main targets of these laws and regulations are Facebook and Google, right? We have, since 2016 or 2017, something happened that the government put a lot of effort in forcing Facebook and Google to comply with their request, and for a request for content removal and user data. And Facebook and Google have been… complying with most of the government requests, with the rates up to 95%, and the government considered this a very successful strategy to force foreign companies to obey with local law. And you can see that among 95% of requests from Vietnam approved by Google, it’s about government criticism. Not only so, Netflix has been removing some, not a lot, but some dramas and movies from their platform under the pressure of the government. So the government, how did they do that? They target advertisers in Vietnam. So they go after the Vietnamese companies who advertise on Facebook and Google, forcing these companies to review their advertisements on Facebook and Google. And under this pressure, of course, Facebook and Google are losing revenue, and they have to do something to get back their customers in Vietnam. And also, the government go after the hardware manufacturers, for example, Samsung or LG, forcing them to remove the YouTube and Netflix buttons from the remote control. And dramatically, Facebook agreed to cancel posts from Vietnam after being mostly blocked in Vietnam for four months back in 2020. This was dramatic. And since then, we have seen a lot more political content on Facebook being removed or blocked. And as I said, they have a list of Vietnamese government officials, a moon from criticism. And then Facebook and Google, they are having servers in Vietnam, but mostly public server. And they have complied with some of the Vietnamese government’s request for user data. These companies have great tolerance of Vietnamese Internet trolls, mostly run by governments, such as the army, the police, and the propaganda departments of Vietnam. And we have seen these three forces manipulating the Internet environment in Vietnam in a massive scale. And they have been very successful in redirecting online conversations from sensitive issues over the past few years. But we have some good, some successful cases of advocacy. So let me show you two cases when we are successful advocates for some meaningful changes. So back in 2018, we had the new cybersecurity law. And back then, we petitioned Facebook, asking them if they store users’ data in Vietnam, or if they would comply with the content removal request from the Vietnamese government. And then this happened about a year later, that Facebook and other tech companies actively lobbied the Vietnamese government to remove the data localization requirements from the cybersecurity law. And guess what? Last year, the government issued a decree, effectively removed the hard requirements. for storing data locally, meaning that foreign services are not required to store data locally anymore. But if they don’t comply with the government’s request on data content removal and user data, they will be ordered to store data locally. So this came from a hard requirement to a soft requirement now. Case number two, it was a very successful advocacy and investigation by a group of friends of mine, activist Mai Khoi, and she’s a singer as well, and a group of other advocates. So they investigated a government-funded cyberchute on Facebook called E47, and this group targeting dissidents. And when the investigation got published on the Intercept in December 2020, Facebook quickly took action and removed these accounts from their platform. So these are two very successful cases, and we think that we can find common ground, common interests with technology companies, foreign technology companies, to make the Internet fairer and better. To be honest, I think that big tech companies, they don’t need more lectures or advice, that they have to be more friendly with all kind of human rights standards. They all know these values. They all know the cost of upholding the human rights values in the face of authoritarian regimes around the world. They all know that they can make a lot more money if they comply with these authoritarian and expressive laws and regulations. They know everything. So I think it’s time for them to take actions. It has been a long time that end users and civil societies sacrificing their digital rights. And Facebook and Google and other technology companies have been benefiting from that. It’s time to change. And if these companies are serious about upholding human rights, they must do something different. They cannot just remain the same and keep asking civil society organizations to have a dialogue with them. What’s the point of having a dialogue without taking any meaningful action eventually? So these are my recommendations for technology companies. And I look forward to more questions and discussions from the room. Thank you very much for your time.

Sarah Clarke:
Thank you, Long. That was a fascinating presentation. Sorry, checking the sound. There we are. Thank you, Long. That was, I think, particularly interesting to see just how many similarities there are between what’s happening in reality in Vietnam and in Turkey. And a lot of your solutions and recommendations really mirror Sway’s earlier in terms of what we’re asking from the tech companies. So I’m going to ask you to stay with us as we continue on. And we’re going to go now to Elinay Hickok, who’s the managing director of the Global Network Initiative, of which Article 19 is a member. And we’re delighted to be working with you. So Elinay, as the managing director of GNI, you have a bird’s eye view. of the global digital rights landscape. Are there common patterns or challenges that you’re observing across countries when it comes to advocacy with big tech?

Elonnai Hickok:
So I think first to start, I would pick up a little bit on what the previous speaker was saying. And, oh, can you hear me? There we go. And say, you know, first there are multiple strategies for engaging with big tech. And we’ve heard some of them on the panel today. There’s strategic litigation, there are petitions, there are investigations, there are rankings, there are organizations that help companies do human rights impact assessments in specific contexts. And maybe just to start out with a little bit of an explanation of GNI, we are a multi-stakeholder platform working towards responsible decision making in the ICT sector with a focus on how companies are responding to government mandates for removal of content and access to user information. Core to the work that we do is an accountability mechanism. We bring together platforms, companies, civil society, academics, and investors. And all members have to commit to the GNI principles with respect to freedom of expression and privacy. And our company members go through an assessment process that looks at how they are implementing those principles in their policies, in their processes. And so this can take many different forms. An assessor comes in and they do an assessment report that looks at these policies, processes, as well as case studies. So how are they actually implementing them in practice? And then this assessment report. is discussed by our multi-stakeholder board, and the measurement that is used is an improvement over time. And I think that improvement over time standard is really important because we’re in a really rapidly evolving digital ecosystem. And so at GNI, we are looking at how companies are adapting and adopting their processes and policies to meet the challenges. Many of what we’ve heard today. And I think in addition to this accountability mechanism, which is not perfect, but it is a multi-stakeholder accountability mechanism that we do try to implement. We also do work around policy, so consensus-based policy advocacy, where we are responding to developments like in Turkey, like in Vietnam, like in Pakistan, and it’s not just authoritarian regimes where we see concerning trends coming out, but also in democratic contexts, we see a number of concerning trends, such as requirements for tight timeframes for removal of content, requiring that there are local offices, so personnel are on the ground, proactive monitoring requirements, data localization, a broad scope of companies being brought under the ambit of different mandates and licensing regimes. And so all of these we respond to through our policy advocacy, and then we also do a lot of learning, trying to understand really the difficulties that go into operating in these contexts. It’s not simple, it’s not a black and white, yes, you can push back immediately. I think there’s a lot of gray areas, and so we have conversations about how companies can navigate these spaces to protect human rights. while they’re operating in these jurisdictions.

Sarah Clarke:
Thanks, Elonnai. And have you seen any unique approaches to overcoming the challenges that previous panelists have discussed? And do you have any insights on how advocates in different regions can learn from each other?

Elonnai Hickok:
I mean, so like I said, I think there are a number of different approaches that different civil society organizations are taking. From my perspective, I think there is a need to coordinate amongst civil society organizations to make sure that our asks to companies are not so fragmented. Our asks to governments are not so fragmented that they’re not impactful, while still maintaining our unique position in the ecosystem. I think there is also a need for capacity building of civil society organizations to engage with tech companies. There is a very clear power dynamic between civil society and tech companies. Often, it is the tech companies that have the information. Obviously, they’re implementing, and they’re working in these markets. And so I think for civil society to navigate that and actually be impactful, there’s a lot of capacity building that needs to happen. GNI has worked to develop different tools to help civil society engage with the tech sector. For example, we collaborated with BSR to develop a tool called Mapping Human Rights Due Diligence Across the Stack. And there, it’s taking an understanding of really, for a rights-respecting ecosystem, we need to be looking at human rights due diligence considerations across companies in the tech stack, asking the right questions, but also understanding the role that different companies play. So a social media company, when you look at freedom of expression, you might be asking questions. questions about their community guidelines. Are they in line with international human rights standards? But if you’re looking at a telecom company, you’re gonna be really focusing on how their policies and processes are in place to respond to government requests for access to user data or network shutdowns. If it’s a cloud service provider, it’s a very different question. So I think it’s really important to take an ecosystem approach to our understanding of advocacy efforts and the specific questions that we’re asking of companies. And then we’ve also developed a tool with GPD that tries to just provide basic guidance to civil societies to engage with tech companies starting from understanding the company. There’s a lot of different arms within a company that might be important to engage with, like the legal department, like trust and safety, like policy, sometimes policy is known as the PR, you know, the PR arm of a company. So how do you get past that? Then, you know, do you understand the legal environment that the company is operating in so you can understand what restraints they might be working with and then tailor your ask to that? And then are you trying to come with a very specific constructive ask? And then I would say just another thing that we try to do is we are collaborating with BrainBox to run something called the Action Coalition for Meaningful Transparency, which is trying to help coordinate the space around transparency. It brings together companies, civil society, academics, and just maps and coordinates the space. And so I think there’s a lot of different ways to help coordinate civil society input and advocacy with companies, but also on these regulations. that are coming out with restrictive provisions.

Sarah Clarke:
We’re going to just move to a slightly interactive part of the event, which was one of the asks from the organisers. I know you are all at the end of a long day, so we’re going to just have a quick trial of we’re going to just break into two groups. We’re going to start with some Q&As first. Does anyone have questions in the audience before we break out to the panel? I know we have a couple of questions online. Yes. Could we get a mic? Yes. Thanks very much. Yeah, come on up. Thank you.

Audience:
Hi, everyone. Oh, yeah. It’s on. Hi. Thank you so much for your presentations. My question is about META specifically. So I think one of the main difficulties that civil society organisations have engaging with big tech companies is the people working there and how long they’re present in the space. We have worked with through so many different layoffs inside of META, where different groups and different specific people working with different human rights delegations, they work, they’re not there anymore. And we saw that a lot with the recent Brazilian election in 2022, Brazil went through elections. There was a team working on disinformation. And by the time that the 8th of January attacks happened, they weren’t there anymore. It was a different group of people. My question is also about context at a certain extent. We’ve had multiple occasions as well, where people working into a certain issue. and looking at specific problems, especially around content moderation, they weren’t fluent in the language that they’re working in and they lacked certain types of context as well. So as civil society organizations, as civil society members as well, how can we best engage, how can we best prove our value and add value as well and just engage in a better online ecosystem with big techs when there are those barriers and those barriers seem to not be a priority inside of the organizations as well. Thank you.

Sarah Clarke:
Thanks Chata, that one’s directly for you. Just before Chata answers, is there any any other questions? There’s one online, so we’ll start with that one and then we’ll go to you Alexander and we can, we’ll take another one online. Okay, for

Cagatay Pekyorur:
the first question that you raised, I think the only thing that I can say, I can share my email address after this with you and like I will be happy to try to find the right person that you can engage with. I understand that the person that you were engaging with is not with us anymore after layoffs, but I’m sure like we can find people that can be, that can continue the process that was there. And about the content moderation question and like how actually you can engage in the most efficient way, I would recommend you to check our Trusted Partner Program if you have heard of it or if you haven’t, are you smiling? I’m not. You are part of the Trusted Partner Program, then clearly you are in the most efficient area to be effective in that. But again like if there are specific issues, like maybe we can discuss after this panel and I may try to support, like in some cases there might be some needs of like additional training. or like having a direct conversation with the team that is responsible for the program to increase the engagement between civil society and us. And like, I would be happy to facilitate that.

Sarah Clarke:
Thanks, Chate.

Audience:
Good evening, Alexander Savnin from Civil Society Russian Federation. So maybe we are not so in Asian part, but situation with big platforms like Meta and Google went in Russia far further than you explained. Meta is now a terrorist organization and Facebook completely blocked, Instagram completely blocked, Twitter completely blocked or something like. So, but civil society still exists in Russian Federation. There’s still people leaving, people still using Facebook and even Facebook, sorry, WhatsApp, even being a part of terrorist in Russian Meta shows signs of cooperation with government and something like. So my question may be more broad, what we have to do if we fell in much problematic situations that was explained in Turkish and Vietnamese example. Maybe not only to Meta, but for policy person.

Sarah Clarke:
Yeah. Sorry, was the question what civil society should do in. Russian civil society, which is already blocked. And well, maybe ask the stakeholders other than government.

Elonnai Hickok:
I mean, I think it would be important, for example, to engage in multi-stakeholder initiatives where you can share your experience and then engage with companies to talk about what is happening. on the ground, I think, for example, we have a working group on armed conflict and responsible company decision making in armed conflict times. And there we try to discuss how can companies navigate operating in times of crises, in conflict zones, and bringing that perspective that Russian civil society might have, I think, would be very valuable. So that might be one approach.

Sarah Clarke:
Thanks, Eleni. And a question now for Long online. So Long, in the context of, from a Global South perspective, which is increasingly moving towards the securitization of internet regulation and in the face of overbroad and vague legislation, and such as that in Vietnam, what does the policy of platform compliance look like? And what would you, so this is also for you, Chata, what considerations are taken into account in cases such as takedown orders? I think you’ve talked about that in the context of Turkey, but maybe Long, if you’re still there.

Trinh Huu Long:
Yes, thank you for the question. I think that’s all the experts have laid out all kind of recommendations and policies, recommendations for big tech company. I’m not in a good position to repeat these, all of these good recommendations. I just have one request for big tech companies in terms of content removal. Please be more transparent in terms of what kind of requests you are receiving from authoritarian governments and publicize these. requests so the public can see. Google has done a little bit by publicizing some requests from the Vietnamese governments, and we know clearly that these requests are to take down criticism against the governments, and using all kinds of vague and broadly defined laws and regulations. But then just a few, the Vietnamese government have sent tens of thousands of requests to Facebook and Google only. So we need to know what it is, and users need a fair platform, a fair procedure to make an appeal. For now, platforms are playing safe. They don’t want to be seen as committing any illegal acts in Vietnam. So they have all kinds of robots and AI playing very safe, and if they suspect anything, they will take down immediately until users make an appeal. But an appealing process takes a long time, right? And many appealing appeal requests are ignored by platforms. So we just think that being more transparent is the answer to solve a lot of things. And I want to see all kinds of government requests from Vietnam. And of course, there are legitimate reasons to not publicize some of them, all right? But most of them should be publicized. That’s my take. Thank you.

Sarah Clarke:
We have another question in the room, if you’d like to come to the mic. And if you could say who your question’s for, that would be really helpful.

Audience:
Thank you very much. My name is Vadim, and I’m also from the Russian Federation Civil Society, you won’t believe it. And this is just, well, not really a question, but a small clarification. to what Alexander said. Well, if we go one year back talking about this situation with the Meta, Facebook, and Instagram in Russia, we should recall when it started. It started from the point when Meta allowed hate speech against Russians on its platforms in Russia. And that was the reason for the actions of the government. And, well, it is understandable because no one wants if any other person calls those users of the platform to, well, kill other people. So, the question of Alexander was what should civil society do? It’s not a question to the civil society, it’s a question to the platforms. What should platforms do? The platforms should follow the rules, the regulations, and the laws of the country where they operate. Thank you.

Sarah Clarke:
Thank you. We have another question online, another one for you, Chata, I’m afraid. And this time it’s about what do you do where one state weaponizes the internet against other states and where you have digital interference and incitement to violence and disinformation campaigns from abroad. So, what can be done in situations like that to avoid internet fragmentation?

Cagatay Pekyorur:
Okay. I will try to give my best answer, but I’ll be frank. I’m taking these questions a little bit out of the scope of this panel because in my view, here we are focused on authoritarian governments, how we are managing their requests. But the question is. I think it’s very important for us to be aware of the fact that there is a lot of organizations talking about, like, how we are managing misinformation, disinformation, and it doesn’t sound like they are talking from the perspective that when they are done by the authoritarian governments. But I did focus on, like, I mentioned, like, our Salem human rights risk, and I did focus on two rights there, freedom of opinion and expression, and also right to the freedom of expression, and also, like, the right to expression, and also, like, the right to freedom of expression, and also, like, liberty and security of person, which relates to these issues that’s mentioned there. Incitement of violence is something that we do care deeply and take action immediately in many different cases, for example. And we are doing it from the perspective of, like, we don’t want to be a victim of disinformation, but we do want to be a victim of disinformation, and we do want to be able to protect people’s life and security. And when it comes to these disinformation operations that may come from abroad, actually, when we talk about the authoritarian regime’s context, we also do see this type of disinformation coordinated efforts from the country, not only from the government, but also from the local sources. And we do publish reports on this one. Again, this one, actually, our report. And you can see many instances in several countries, governments are behind in some of these networks. And regardless of the source, like, if it’s local or coming from outside of the country, we share the details of our findings with the general public, and we have teams specifically working on finding these networks, and then, like, share our findings with the general public to create some transparency on this, and obviously, when they find the network, they take an action. Let me see if I missed part of the question. When it comes to collaborating with competent authorities, I think when I was saying overbroad demands of the governments, I also was trying to imply if the demand is not overbroad, we are complying to it. When it’s proportionate, when it’s within the lines of international human rights principles, we do comply and provide the user data or take down the content, jail block the content. So in the cases like when there is a crime that might be involved, if the local law is requiring us to share the user data and if also the request is aligned with international principles, of human rights, we do actually provide. So I think we do it. Thank you. Thanks Cagatay.

Sarah Clarke:
So we’re going to have a little bit of time at the end for questions, but we’re going to have a quick breakout group if you still have a little bit of energy left. So we’re just going to divide the room in half. So if people on this side could come up with our colleague Kivuljam here. We’ve just got two questions and people on this side will go down to the back with my colleague Joanna who’s at the back. So the questions are… We’re just coming up now. So what we really want to hear about is what are the most pressing challenges that you’ve encountered or observed when advocating for digital rights in your country? region? And how can we fight back? So what international platforms or mechanisms can be leveraged to expose and challenge internet restrictions? So we’re just going to put these questions up here, but it’s really, we want to hear from you guys what you’re experiencing in your countries in relation to challenges that you’ve encountered when dealing with digital rights and in your advocacy. And the second is how can tech companies best fight back? So how can you leverage together with tech companies? So if anyone who’s interested to participate can just come up here on this side with Kiviljim and on that side at the back with with Joanna. So the first question is really what sort of challenges are you facing in advocating on digital rights when it comes to your work with tech companies? And then we’re talking about strategies to fight back. So anyone on this side of the room, if you want to come up to the front, we’ve got a little group here with Kiviljim and anyone on this side can go at the back with my colleague Joanna. So Kiviljim, just one minute, yeah great. Okay, so we’re just going to have a little feedback and then any final questions. So Joana and Kivljim and online. Great. Super. Okay. Is she ready now? Okay. Okay, guys, so we’re going to have our first feedback from our colleague, Joana. Thank you. Yeah, it works. Okay, guys, just if we just quieten down. We’re thrilled you’re all very engaged, but just let’s have a little bit of… So in our discussion, it turned out that even if we are from different regions, we have similar challenges as civil society. So what was mentioned was, for example, that… Okay, guys, we really do need some quiet. So we’re just going to listen to Joana.

Audience:
One example was that negotiations between social media platforms and governments are mostly hidden. So there is no transparency and we don’t know what they are talking about. And what we need is that… that no such hidden meetings with governments should take place. That it all needs to be transparent and civil society needs to be informed about the results of such discussions. Another thing is that it happens that country level people at social media platforms, those who talk to civil society, those who have contacts often in a very repressive environment with civil society, with activists, they are often the same people who then engage with the government and it leads to concerns from some of the activists about speaking freely with these representatives of social media platforms and big tech companies more broadly because sometimes it happens that they seem to be even close to people from the government. And there are issues with engagement with civil society that are still the same for many years so when companies talk to civil society it’s rather ad hoc, it’s one-sided and it’s extractive and there is no transparency what these tech companies do with the information they receive and it can be really risky especially when we are talking about repressive regimes. We also talked about trusted… partner issues, and that there’s been a report published about talking to, as a result of talking to 24 trusted partners that shared their frustrations with that process, especially on response times or even no responses at all. So the conclusion of our discussion was that these systems, this mechanism of engagement with civil society that are in place right now, they don’t work the way we would like them to be, and there is no collective process to make sure they are designed properly. And then the next question, we discussed that there was one idea that the discussion on repressive regimes perhaps should be framed a bit differently, like that we are discussing the power of big tech companies, because if we frame it as just limited to repressive regimes, then we risk countries that are not repressive, that they will be out of the discussion and they will not engage on this discussion. And in general, we need more active engagement from tech companies to resolve the issues on issues such as content moderation and lack of transparency, because there is also the feeling of civil society being a bit tired of lack of progress over the years, that there is a feeling that we keep having similar meetings, similar discussions, but there is little progress. on the side of tech companies. Thank you.

Sarah Clarke:
Thank you so much, Joanna. We’re just going to go online now to Kasia. Yes, hello. Hello there. Good evening. Hello from Europe. Hello, can you see me? Yes. Can you hear me? We can hear you and see you.

Katia Mierzejewska:
Perfect. Okay, great. Just like a short introduction, I’m Kasia Mierzejewska. I’m part of the team of Europe and Central Asia article 19 and helping today with online moderation. And we also had a very similar discussion online with participants who are joining remotely. So I can only refer to and make a nice segue to what Joanna already said, because during our conversation, it was pronounced repeatedly that civil society, there is a big responsibility and a big gravity of the whole discussion on civil society, whereas civil society has been advocating and creating and showing their main points of advocacy a lot. So that’s now, there should be tech companies who really genuinely engage and address what civil society has been saying this whole time, because there was also mentioned that sometimes it feels like human rights policies established by tech companies feel like a PR tool and big tech should really do something, take the reins in this discussion and lead it, because the civil society have been saying enough. And as Joanna said before, as a conclusion from one of the discussions on site, there has been this sense of weariness and sense of frustration, like how many more times civil society should have been repeating itself. their cause that have been out there very transparently put and the message is very very direct and this is this has been conveyed for over years whereas the progress on the on the side of of the companies of the private sector hasn’t has been little has been little for over this over this last years and just like one more thing maybe two more things that I would add is the approach approach on the on the business model so like when business model is heavily based and focused on data mining and using data for the for the profit for the beneficiaries also when it comes to the advertisement that’s that’s actually is keeps impeding the human human rights policies that has been has been in place and has been established to be to be efficient so there is there is a need to maybe go maybe start to look in the other way and start going away from this approach and think about a different business model that would ensure that the core human rights needs and values and protection of data is being one of the one of the priorities in for for the tech for the tech companies and there is also one one more thing just just a second oh yeah there was also one one more point mentioned which also formulates sort of a question to to the representative of meta here the platforms could use its coordinators in a harmful smear campaign or or disinformation and how to react in such situations how taking down the posting because what what has been mentioned also online is that there is one thing about content moderation and shutting down content from the individuals, just individuals, internet users, but what should be and what are the policies in place and mechanism to ensure that orchestrated and led by the government propaganda and spreading this information is being addressed as well. And we’re asking here for any thoughts or feedback from the platforms. So that’s to summarize our discussion online. Thank you.

Sarah Clarke:
Thank you, Katia. And thanks to everyone who participated online and for those really cogent points. And we’ll have Chato maybe respond on some of those. And then just finally, Kivilcim is just going to report back. Kivilcimis our program assistant at Article 19 on this group here. Oh, hello. So in our group, the conversation was very, very interesting,

Kivilcim Ceren Buken:
actually. So the first point that came up was that the participants in our group have observed that platforms seem to respond much better when requests are shown to them as a business opportunity. For example, there was an example about Brazil. There was a time when Twitter was blocked in Brazil, and there was a big sports event happening. Because Twitter was blocked during this big sports event, Twitter actually lost a lot of money. And that is when they realized that they need to hire some Portuguese speakers. And that was the first time that they hired Portuguese speakers, is what one of our participants said. Another example was that we had a participant who works for Tor. They said Facebook used to hate Tor, because their business model is based on watching what people… do on their platforms, but then when Iran blocked Facebook and people were using Tor to access Facebook, Facebook started thinking better of Tor, so what was being said was our participants have found that instead of saying human rights and do this for human rights, we could actually say this is good for your business, you could make money out of this. That is a way that they found that works well with the platforms. It’s a bit sad that I said what everyone said, no self-censorship. The second issue that came up was there was a participant in the group who used to work on reporting where bombings happened in Syria. So what they did, they would look at the videos on YouTube because people, when there are bombings in Syria, people record those bombings and then they put them on YouTube and then that is really good evidence to know where there was a bombing, who did it, what happened. So what happens is the AI just removes these videos because it’s violence, but that is actually really good evidence that is being lost forever. So what our participants said was, well of course they can remove it because it’s bad for their users, they should remove it, but can they keep it somewhere at least for a court case for when it’s needed. So these were the two big issues that came up with our group.

Sarah Clarke:
Thanks Kivilcim. So I wonder if panelists would like to respond to any of the points that were raised. I know we’re well over time, but chat, hi, hello, no. Yeah.

Kivilcim Ceren Buken:
instead of like responding to them one by one, I actually want to share some general reflections on them. None of the things that like we did here in these comments are new to me. And I think, and that’s my personal view, the challenge that we try to discuss here, it is slightly different than the general challenges that civil society may see in relation to platforms. On content moderation, on like business interests, like how to better engage with civil society, definitely part of what we are trying to solve. But I think for specifically this one, civil society and platforms should think together rather than saying like, this is something that you need to deal, this is something, no, you have to deal by yourself.

Cagatay Pekyorur:
Because I don’t think that none of us have enough power to show in kind of a meaningful change when we are faced with an authoritarian regime. And the problem is not that small. We do see lots of big wave of actually legislative developments, which will help these governments to censor content or which will force platforms to share user data. They are most of the times come with the form of cybercrime legislations, sometimes targeting specific groups, LGBTQ groups, like we do see lots of legislations on that, sometimes more general. And I think if we are concerned about human rights risks that may arise from these legislations, I think we… should specifically focus on that topic, and specifically focus on how we can resolve it together.

Suay Ergin-Boulougouris:
OK. Not as a response to your contribution, but I actually wanted to echo what Katya said, or report it back from the online group. And because I was, as we came up with this workshop idea after the censorship during the elections in Turkey, I was thinking as I was preparing for the workshop, but what is the solution? And we don’t need to actually reinvent the wheel. All the, as it has been discussed in the groups as well, I think the calls that the civil society have been making for a while now, if these were addressed, I think at least we wouldn’t be dealing with such big challenges, maybe. I’m not sure, because I still think the core of the issue is the lack of rule of law, and so on. But I agree, especially I agree with you that in restrictive regimes, civil society and big tech may work together, but it is still, because you are basically caught between a rock and hard place, like in Turkey, for example. But it would not impede, I think. I think civil society’s obligation to also continue monitoring and keeping you also accountable for, not you, but the big tech practices in these countries.

Sarah Clarke:
Thanks Suay. Elonnai, any final remarks from you?

Elonnai Hickok:
I mean, just very quickly after listening to the discussions from the breakout rooms, I would just come back to the point that I made earlier about the importance of coordination and finding ways. I don’t know if it’s around coordinating on topic, on approach, on region, on the asks, on the best practices, but how can we as civil society start to be more coordinated? And I think it’s important not just to be effective with our asks for companies and for regulators, but also just to stay on top of this space because it’s evolving incredibly rapidly and I don’t think it works for us to be working in silos and trying to respond in an ad hoc manner.

Sarah Clarke:
Thank you, Elonnai. And Long, I know that we’ve been told that our time is absolutely up. Oh, Kojo, would you? Very brief. We’re going to be cut off.

Audience:
Sorry. I’ll try and keep it super brief. Hi. Evening, everyone. My name is Kojo Bwachi. I’m the Vice President of Public Policy for Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey with META. I’m slightly surprised and a little bit disappointed by some of what I’ve heard, not because it might be deemed inaccurate, because I’m disappointed if one thing I heard, your contact with us has suffered after layoffs, like you don’t have any people to speak to when you turn around. Another thing is that we… Sorry? How are you surprised by that? You weren’t there. I didn’t say surprised. I said disappointed. I think if you if you lay off 21,000 people there’s going to be issues so it’s not a surprise but I am disappointed. I’m also slightly disappointed by the consistent talk about meta prioritizing money over everything else which I think I’ve heard not only in this room but in a number of other rooms. Part of my disappointment stems from the fact that it’s not a characteristic or action of a company that I recognize and I’ve worked here for seven years and that’s not to dispute that what you guys have said. I just wanted to ask if anyone knows a country in my region, Amit, that is blocked at the moment where the internet is blocked and I say this because I know no one from that country is in this room at this point in time. Does anyone know? No. In Uganda the internet or at least meta remains blocked because we divulged the fact that we disrupted the network run by the Ugandan, at least the digital office within the Ugandan government. That’s a country where we’ve made telling investments not only in the provision of services but also the establishment of backbone open access infrastructure as well. It’s in a country that remains, was and remains extremely important to us. So where as we’ve all things where we may have had some failings I would like to think we want to work with you to correct those but I do want to say that at least in my region I have responsibility for and I hope much of the world where meta works that these ideas that revenue is a priority over all the human rights that we try to protect I’d like to kind of push back on slightly and also say that it’s hard to push back on in this room so I’m open to a conversation with anybody after this meeting or in continuation. I also think that the fact that we have 20 people here including our most senior public policy person Nick Clegg is some evidence of our willingness to engage and be beaten about a little bit, but just to learn from you guys as well. And this idea of continuing to work for us to improve and get better and to work with civil society is something that we hold very, very dear. So don’t wanna take too much time. I know I should be short, but open to a conversation to learn and hopefully improve and do better if we need to. So thanks so much.

Sarah Clarke:
Thanks Kuju. Long, I don’t know if you’re still there, but if you have any final remarks before we finish, I know we’re.

Trinh Huu Long:
Yeah, thank you. I am very grateful. So I think that civil society organizations from Vietnam, I am confident we will keep working and collaborating with the tech companies and other partners to address all the fundamental issues we have talked about. And we will keep fighting common ground, common interest between civil society and private sector and work something out. But also we have done everything we could. We have said everything we have. And it’s time for big tech companies to really do something about it. And it is your turn now. We have sacrificed too much over the past 10, 15 years. Thank you.

Sarah Clarke:
Thank you very much, Long. So just to quickly conclude, thanks to you, the audience for staying so long and for engaging so passionately and brilliantly in the discussion. And a huge thanks to our panelists, to Chia Tai, to Sui, to Long and to Eleni, to Kasia and to our colleagues online and to the wonderful tech and support for going almost half an hour over. We really appreciate it. appreciate it. Have a great rest of your IGF and please come and talk to us about all the things we’ve started talking about today.

Patrick Penninckx

The Council of Europe is actively examining the impact of new technological developments, such as AI and immersive realities, on human rights, the rule of law, and democracy. They recognize the importance of ensuring that these advancements uphold these fundamental values. To achieve this, the Council is partnering with IEEE to study the metaverse and its potential impact on human rights.

Guiding the development of the metaverse, the Council of Europe emphasizes the need for clear benchmarks that uphold human rights principles. They also highlight the importance of transparency, accountability, and the protection of digital rights within this emerging technology. Additionally, they stress the significance of involving multiple stakeholders, including the technical community, civil society, businesses, and academics, in decision-making processes regarding the metaverse.

Regarding immersive realities, concerns arise about the ethical decision-making process within private businesses. The Council of Europe acknowledges the risks posed by allowing private businesses to solely determine the development of immersive technologies, and calls for a more inclusive approach involving various stakeholders.

The Council also addresses the implications of immersive realities on privacy, with the collection of new forms of data like biometric and psychographic information. They highlight the potential for issues such as misinformation, disinformation, and freedom of expression. They also emphasize the need for inclusive access to immersive realities, particularly in light of the digital divide exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In terms of governance principles, the Council of Europe has worked on data protection, cybercrime, and artificial intelligence. They are currently identifying ethical principles and existing legislation relevant to the metaverse, as well as addressing any gaps that need to be filled. They also express concerns about the influence of technology on human thought processes and freedom of conscience, stressing the need for careful consideration of these aspects.

In conclusion, the Council of Europe’s work on the impact of new technological developments on human rights, the rule of law, and democracy reflects their commitment to ensuring that these advancements align with fundamental values. Their partnership with IEEE to study the metaverse is a significant step in this direction. The Council emphasizes transparency, accountability, digital rights protection, and multi-stakeholder involvement. They are actively addressing privacy concerns, combating misinformation, and promoting inclusive access to immersive technologies, all while upholding human rights and societal values.

Audience

During the discussion, the speakers expressed concerns about the potential access to comprehensive biometric details in the virtual realms. Users’ immersion into these realms could enable the collection of biometric data such as eye tracking, brain activity, and heart rate. Nina Jane Patel specifically raised concerns about this potential breach of privacy and advocated for the need for regulation and governance on such intimate data in the metaverse. There is a perceived risk of individuals’ biometric data being misused in this virtual environment, highlighting the importance of safeguarding privacy and ensuring data protection.

Another concern raised during the discussion was the impact of immersive technologies on privacy, freedom of conscience, and psychophysical integrity. The speaker from Poland had different considerations regarding privacy and freedom of conscience in the face of these technologies. It was acknowledged that there are technical challenges involved in maintaining the psychophysical integrity of individuals and protecting their freedom of conscience within immersive environments. The speaker’s suggestion was to focus on developing technical solutions to handle these issues.

Content moderation in the metaverse was also a topic of concern. The Clinical Executive Director of the UCLA Institute for Technology Law and Policy highlighted the lack of effective tools for moderating content at scale in these new technologies. The current standards that exist for traditional social media platforms cannot be effectively followed in the metaverse. This raises questions about maintaining safety and regulating content in this evolving virtual space.

Furthermore, it was noted that the impacts of the metaverse will vary based on socioeconomic and geographical disparities. Steve Fosley from UNICEF pointed out that the cost of metaverse technology, such as VR headsets, could be prohibitive for some individuals. Not everyone will have the same quality of access to these technologies, and some may interact with artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse in less immersive and sophisticated ways. This highlights the potential for increased inequalities based on access and resources.

Overall, the discussion highlighted concerns about the access and misuse of biometric data, the need for governance and regulation in the metaverse, the impact of immersive technologies on privacy and freedom of conscience, the lack of effective content moderation tools, and the potential for disparities in the metaverse based on socioeconomic and geographical factors. The analysis provides valuable insights into the challenges and considerations surrounding the development and implementation of these emerging technologies.

Irene Kitsara

The increasing use of virtual realms has opened up new possibilities for accessing biometric data, including eye tracking, brain activity, and heart rate. This wealth of information has necessitated a rethink of privacy in response to this emerging technology. Experts have recognized the need to address the potential implications and consequences of such data collection.

One suggested solution is the introduction of “neural rights.” In fact, Chile has already incorporated neural rights into its constitution, demonstrating a growing recognition of the need to protect individuals’ rights and data in the context of advancing virtual realms.

Not only do individuals directly involved in virtual experiences require protection, but the concept of bystander privacy is also a concern. Bystander privacy refers to the privacy of those who may be indirectly captured or impacted by data collection, such as other individuals in the same room as a virtual reality user. Addressing this issue is crucial to ensure the protection and respect of personal privacy in all aspects of virtual realm usage.

When it comes to data governance, experts are divided on the best approach. Some propose self-regulation principles, where individuals, organizations, and industries voluntarily adhere to established guidelines and standards. Others suggest the reinterpretation of existing laws to adapt to the challenges posed by virtual realms. Lastly, the introduction of new laws is also considered a potential avenue for regulating biometric data and ensuring ethical practices.

In conclusion, the growing immersion into virtual realms and the accessibility of biometric data have raised important discussions regarding privacy and data governance. The concept of neural rights has emerged as a potential solution, and bystander privacy is also of significant concern. The best path for data governance remains a topic of debate, with options ranging from self-regulation to the introduction of new legislation.

Adam Ingle

The metaverse and immersive technology have the potential to revolutionise connections among children. Research conducted with UNICEF suggests that social connection plays a vital role in child well-being online, and the metaverse has the capability to enhance this through its connectivity and personalisation features. Avatars and identity in the metaverse enable children to establish unique connections and interact with others in ways that were previously unimaginable. This incredible connectivity has the power to bridge distance and cultural barriers, fostering a global community of children.

Furthermore, the metaverse and digital platforms like Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite provide children with an avenue to express and enhance their creativity. These platforms allow children to build imaginative worlds and engage with various forms of artistic expression. Improved technology, interconnectivity, and layered services within the metaverse amplify the creative potential for children, allowing them to develop their creative skills and explore their unique talents.

In addition to fostering social connections and creativity, the metaverse empowers children by enabling them to build their online identity. A strong sense of identity is fundamental to a child’s personal development, and the metaverse provides a digital space for children to shape and express their identity. By creating and managing their online presence, children can gain a sense of confidence, autonomy, and empowerment.

However, it is important to implement the metaverse in a responsible and considered manner, particularly when it comes to children. The potential risks and harms associated with the metaverse necessitate the establishment of high safety standards and responsible design. A collective approach by all stakeholders is essential to address the interconnected and interoperable nature of the metaverse. By ensuring robust safety measures and responsible design, a kid-friendly ecosystem can be created within the metaverse, safeguarding the well-being and protection of children.

Regulation and legislation are key aspects of addressing the challenges and issues in the metaverse. The development of regulatory frameworks and the resolution of existing problems from Web 2.0 platforms are crucial to ensuring a safe and secure metaverse environment. By learning from the experiences and responses to Web 2.0, it is possible to establish effective measures that protect children’s rights and well-being in the metaverse.

Furthermore, it is important to observe and evaluate the evolution of current Web 2.0 regulations and cultural responses. This ongoing assessment will provide valuable insights and guidance in handling the challenges and implications of the metaverse. By learning from the past, we can adapt and develop appropriate strategies and policies to shape a responsible and inclusive metaverse for future generations.

Lego, a prominent advocate for child safety, is committed to creating kid-friendly environments in and beyond the metaverse. Lego emphasises the importance of high safety standards and aims to establish a truly immersive ecosystem that prioritises children’s well-being and protection. Their dedication acts as an example and encourages others to join in implementing stringent safety measures and creating a child-friendly metaverse.

In conclusion, the metaverse and immersive technology have the potential to revolutionise connections among children, foster creativity, and empower them. However, responsible and considered implementation is crucial to mitigate potential risks and ensure the well-being of children. Regulation, safety standards, and observing the evolution of Web 2.0 regulations are vital aspects in handling the challenges of the metaverse. By establishing a collaborative and proactive approach, a safe and inclusive environment can be created, where children can explore, learn, and connect in the metaverse.

Melodena Stephens

The Metaverse, with a potential market size of up to 13 trillion USD, is undergoing rapid adoption in various sectors. Governments, educational institutions, and retail businesses are among those embracing this concept. Cities and countries are implementing digital twin strategies, while industries like manufacturing are creating digital twins for their operations. Education and healthcare sectors are also driving the adoption of Metaverse technologies. However, concerns about employment, behavioural addiction, environmental impact, cultural representation, and the need for effective governance have been raised. Collaboration, transparency, and careful consideration of social and ethical implications are crucial in harnessing the full potential of the Metaverse while mitigating risks.

Hugh

The concept of the metaverse, which was first introduced by Neal Stephenson in a sci-fi novel three decades ago, refers to a digital universe that could exist either alongside or as an extension of our current reality. It has garnered significant interest in the field of digital technology and is seen as the next phase of digital transformation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in the development of the metaverse, along with other technologies such as extended senses and actions (XR or spatial computing), persistent virtual worlds (persistent computing), and digital finance and economy (consensus computing). These core technologies, combined with supporting technologies like computation, storage, communications, networking, data, knowledge, and intelligence, are necessary components for creating the metaverse.

The metaverse is believed to have the potential to become the next version of the internet, redefining production and life in the process. It is seen as the natural progression from the current “intelligentization” phase, which is characterized by the rise of AI.

Hugh, in particular, holds the view that the metaverse is the next major advancement in digital transformation. He predicts that it will have a profound impact on various aspects of society, revolutionizing production methods and reshaping daily life.

Overall, the metaverse, with its integration of AI and technological advancements, presents exciting possibilities for the future. It is poised to bring about a new era in digital transformation that will have wide-reaching effects. As discussions around the metaverse continue, it will be interesting to see how these ideas evolve and shape the digital landscape in the coming years.

Clara Neppel

This analysis explores various topics related to virtual reality, immersive realities, digital twins, partnerships, and ethics. Clara Neppel, a prominent figure in this field, emphasizes the importance of architecting virtual reality in a way that encourages happiness and well-being. She believes that a multidisciplinary approach is necessary, involving not only technologists but also individuals with different perspectives such as ethics and social sciences.

Immersive realities, as highlighted in the analysis, contribute to safer flights through extensive pilot training. By allowing pilots to undergo training in immersive simulated environments, they can effectively manage challenging situations and improve their skills.

The analysis also discusses the role of generative AI in revolutionising design, particularly in the automotive industry. Immersive realities are used for testing designs, enabling designers to envision and evaluate various possibilities before implementing them in the physical world.

Digital twins, virtual replicas of cities or ourselves, play a crucial role in achieving goals related to climate and sustainable cities. By creating accurate digital representations, cities can better understand and address environmental challenges. Digital twins also offer opportunities to improve inclusive health and education by providing insights and personalised approaches to healthcare and learning.

Partnerships are highlighted as essential in achieving common goals. Collaboration among various stakeholders, including government bodies, NGOs, and private sector entities, is crucial for addressing complex challenges and advancing sustainable development.

Virtual reality is shown as a tool to help citizens understand the full impact of measures related to climate change. By creating simulated experiences, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of the consequences of their actions and make more informed decisions.

However, the analysis also points out that immersive realities and the metaverse introduce ethical challenges and issues. Concerns such as privacy, data protection, safety, and security need to be carefully addressed to ensure the responsible and ethical use of these technologies.

The governance of virtual spaces, including the metaverse, is highlighted as an area that requires a new system. Discussions are already underway regarding who should control the code and the resulting services. The concept of co-creation of infrastructure and its implications for ownership are also discussed.

The analysis raises concerns about the potential privacy issues that may arise with the omnipresence of technology in the future. It emphasizes the need to carefully navigate the balance between technological advancements and individual privacy rights.

Safety and interoperability of regulations are identified as major concerns in the deployment of AI solutions in various sectors. Poorly designed AI systems can have real impacts on individuals, particularly in the field of healthcare. Therefore, ensuring safety becomes paramount in discussions surrounding AI deployment.

The analysis emphasizes the need for interoperability of regulations through the establishment of global standards. These standards operationalise regulations and move from mere guiding principles to practical implementation.

A combined top-down and bottom-up approach is identified as crucial in developing a comprehensive framework. This approach involves considering the perspectives of both regulatory bodies and grassroots initiatives. The work of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) on ethically aligned design initiatives is cited as an example of a bottom-up approach.

Content moderation, both in terms of public and private control, is highlighted as a major point of discussion. Clara Neppel believes that this topic lies at the heart of discussions within the International Governance Forum.

Additionally, the importance of anonymity in exercising citizen rights is stressed. Anonymity provides individuals with the freedom to express themselves without fear of repercussions and plays a vital role in maintaining a balanced and inclusive society.

In conclusion, this analysis showcases the wide array of topics surrounding virtual reality, immersive realities, digital twins, partnerships, and ethics. It highlights the need for comprehensive approaches and collaborations to tackle the challenges and harness the potential of these technologies in a responsible and beneficial manner.

Irene Kitsara:
Thank you. . Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the open forum number 20 of the IGF 2023 on benefits and challenges of immersive technology. We have a number of speakers today. I will start with on-site panelists in alphabetical order. So we have with us Adam Ingle, global lead in digital policy from the Lego Group. We have Clara Neppel, senior director of European business operations at IEEE. And we have Patrick Pennix, head of the information society department from the Council of Europe, and the Council of Europe operating officer from then, the NRA, close to the network step. In remote participation, we have a professor, Melodyna Stephens, professor of innovation and technology governance from the Mohammed bin Rashid school of Government We have from IEEE ASA president. Welcome. I have the pleasure to be the moderator of this session. This is a very important report on the impact on the metaverse and its impact on human rights, the rule of law and democracy. And I will be your moderator today. So let me start by asking Patrick and Clara why the Council of Europe is organizing this session today and working on

Patrick Penninckx:
issues related to emerging technologies and also what is the role of IEEE in this. I think it is very important for the Council of Europe and the Council of Europe as a collective to always work at the edge of the developments of technology. Already in the 80s, we worked on the data protection convention. Later on, 20 years ago, we developed the cybercrime convention. So we are always trying to ensure that the new technological developments are compatible with the values of the old technology and the new technology, which is encompassed through artificial intelligence and the immersive realities. We also need to see to which extent this coincides and this reinforces or poses a certain number of challenges to the development of human rights. So I will have to start again, I guess. I will have to start again, I guess. I will have to start again, I guess. I will have to start again, I guess. What I was trying to say is that the Council of Europe has always been at the edge when it comes to the development of new technologies. When we try to look at the development of everything, automated processing of individual data already 40 years ago, or the cybercrime convention more than 20 years ago, for us it was always very important to look at the development of the new technologies and the impact of those emerging technologies and this way the immersive realities have on human rights, rule of law and democracy. to work in partnership with IEEE on looking into the metaverse and how the metaverse would impact those human rights. And that’s why we decided to organize this workshop here.

Clara Neppel:
Thank you. And thank you for having us here. So my name is Clara Neppl, and I’m the senior director of IEEE in Europe. We are based in Austria and Vienna. And on my flight here, I actually saw a documentary from a famous Austrian architect, Karl Schwantzer, who said that man creates buildings, and buildings create man. And actually, it’s the responsibility of an architect to create these buildings which make people happy. And now we are at a time when we create a completely new virtual reality, and we are the architects. And I think that we cannot do it alone as technologists. I think that we need to create an immersive reality which makes people happy, which cares for well-being, and of course, also human rights and the society. And we need to bring also in this report, that’s what we try to do, to bring different perspectives. So from a technological side, from the ethical side, social side. And yes, this is basically this bidirectional dialogue that we need to continue also for this sense. Thank you.

Irene Kitsara:
Thank you, Patrick and Clara. So we are hearing the terms metaverse, immersive realities, and also in other sessions, we have also related terms such as virtual worlds. And I think it would be good for our discussion to talk a little bit about these terms, and maybe as well as the technologies that are enabling making such realities an option and making it possible for us to experience. So with that, I would like to turn to you to provide us with his perspective on this.

Hugh:
Thank you, Irene. So as we all know, metaverse, this term was coined by Neal Stephenson in his sci-fi fiction novel back in 30 years ago. But during the past decades, this concept itself has been extended quite a bit. So let me share with you our definition of metaverse. We are trying to provide the most inclusive definition for metaverse. So in terms of metaverse, we could agree that this is talking about a digital universe. So from the experience perspective, we can say there are three types of metaverses. It could be either a digital and a different universe, or it could be a digital counterpart of our current universe, or it could be a digital extension of our current universe, which means these three different types of digital universes are corresponding to virtual reality, augmented reality, and the digital twin. So from that perspective, metaverse refers to a kind of experience in which the outside world is perceived as a universe. But from another angle, the functional view of the internet… Well, how about now? Let me say again. Could you hear me? Hello? Now we can hear you, thank you. Okay, sorry. So we know metaverse from another perspective. We call that a functional view. Metaverse could be referred to the next version of… …be the next stage of digital transformation. So with that being said, let’s take a look at the metaverse technology landscape. We can say that, of course, supporting technology is like computation. storage, communications, networking, data, and knowledge, and intelligence are all necessary for enabling metaverse. But there are also core technologies for metaverse, namely extended senses and actions. You can call that XR, or you can call that spatial computing. And the second category is persistent virtual worlds. We call that persistent computing, which is about how to create virtual maps, virtual scenes, virtual objects, and the virtual characters collectively constituting virtual worlds. And lastly, digital finance and economy, you can also call that a consensus computing, which is about digital assets, may or may not be built upon decentralization and the blockchain. So from this technology roadmap, or landscape, you can say that AI is actually an integral part of the metaverse technology landscape. So with that being said, we can say that metaverse is the next biggest thing. Why? Because if we look at the history of the digitalization, or digital transformation, we are actually between two stages. The current stage, which is already exploding, is we call that intelligentization, which is about the rise of AI, using AI everywhere. But the next phase by AI and its upcoming is the metaverse. So we are currently between these two stages. And I could also add that, as always, many of us will agree that AI is transforming production, transforming forces of production and the relations of production, but the metaverse will redefine production and redefine life. So that’s why we say metaverse is the next biggest thing. So I’ll stop here. Irene?

Irene Kitsara:
Thank you very much, Hugh. And you touched upon some of the fact, you know, that we have different areas of application of the metaverse. And I would like to now turn to Melodina and ask her about some application areas, and then move to Clara, Benefit and Adam and talk about some of the benefits. that can arise from the use of immersive experience and ways that the metaverse can also promote, for example, the human rights, the role of law and democracy. Melodina, would you like to start?

Melodena Stephens:
Thank you. So when Facebook changed its name to Meta in October 2021, the market speculated that the total size of Metaverse is 13 trillion US dollars. Over time, that number got revised and went downwards, but I do not think it is a wrong estimate at all. For the first reason is Metaverse is also hardware. So you see this doubling of computing power every 18 months. You also see a lot of the geopolitical tension is pushing the adoption of Metaverse. You can see this in the 5G wars and in the proxy wars currently going on. You also see private sectors, tremendous interest. In fact, the applied research from private sector is greater than government investment. And you see this in things like, for example, Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard for about 69 billion US dollars. We also see governments are huge adopters, and I’m gonna go through that very briefly, but we see a standards war coming out and it’s being played by the private sector currently. You see Pokemon Go, which was an augmented reality game, got 50 million customers in 19 days. So that’s huge adoption curve. You see also a price war happening right now with Meta’s Oculus glasses priced at 500 versus Apple’s glasses priced at 3,500 all in time for Christmas. So gaming continues to drive the Metaverse right now. There’s more than 160 virtual worlds. Fortnite, for example, has half a billion customers and generates something like 6 billion US dollars. A lot of this income is also micro-purchasing. We can’t ignore other players which have huge numbers. For example, Meta with 3.88 billion users. Microsoft with most of the Fortune 500, and keep in mind, Microsoft has a Microsoft Mesh and now has Activision, that’s 92 million monthly users and Minecraft, significant number of children. Apple has 1.5 billion users entering into the payment circle and Google has 4.3 billion tens and 1.26. And we see Nvidia, which was typically a hardware provider now entering into this space. So the crossovers are very interesting and that’s why I think it’s very hard to determine market. Now, industry applications are, for example, in digital twins. We have countries adopting, well, cities, for example, in countries. UK has a digital twin strategy, for example. South Korea has one, but we also see cities adopting it. We see manufacturing, there are factories that are adopting and creating digital twins, Siemens, BMW, so definitely Germany. We see it in utility sector, Sydney Water. We see it in AdNoc, which is petroleum, oil and gas. We see 900 cities with smart cities. So with the internet of all things, I think this is also pushing the adoption of the metaverse. We have 125 billion connected devices in 2023. We see government, which historically. has contributed 40% to GDP approximately, maybe at the higher end, but also entering. So for example, tourism. During the pandemic, Dubai was present as World Expo. They had 24 physical visitors coming to the site. It was COVID after all, but 125 virtual visitors. And this becomes part of their legacy. We see KSA with Neom and Finland in Minecraft, actually, with the 3D version of Helsinki as a city. We see education as a huge adopter. Typically, it’s being pushed by engineering and health, and that’s also where a lot of the research is happening right now. There was the first surgery, but it was more to access digital records, and some work is happening on customer care. A lot on re-skilling. For example, Accenture bought 60,000 Oculus Quest headsets in 2021 for their employees, and they created the nth floor for training and for networking. We also see retail heavily getting involved in the metaverse. Typically, right now, it’s more experiences. Brands are testing it out. We’ve got luxury brands like Gucci, Burberry, fashion brands like H&M Forever 21. I mean, you name it, they are there, but they’re experimenting right now. There is no doubt we will reach 13 trillion. I think it’s a function of standards or maybe who will win the standards war, and also what is the situation with regulations. I’ll stop there right now, Irene.

Irene Kitsara:
Thank you, Melodina. Patrick?

Patrick Penninckx:
Well, well, if, is it on? Is it on? Yes, it is on. Okay, well, there are, the question that Vince Cerf just asked in the opening session of the high-level opening remarks was what is the internet we want and what is the internet we deserve? So these are two different questions, and the same goes for the metaverse. What is the metaverse we want, and which one do we deserve? I think if we want to create a metaverse that is respectful of human rights, that will enhance freedom of expression, that will be inclusive, that will be accessible, that will be fostering global connections, we need to put those milepoles and benchmarks in place, and that’s why we cannot just let digital development happen. We have to be able to steer that digital development. I wouldn’t say that we need to steer innovation. I think that is for companies to do. But we need to put those benchmarks right that make sure that there are within the metaverse also innovative educational opportunities, that there is a democratic participation, that there is a digital rights protection. We very often at the level of the Council of Europe say, what is the protection of rights that we need to do offline? We also need to do that online. If the metaverse is the next step up with the Internet of Things, with connected realities, with 5G, with quantum computing and how that interrelates all together and certain industries are very far ahead. You didn’t say that earlier on, but for example, testing of in the metaverse, how it feels to be underwater, for example. These are innovations that we need to be able to not grasp, but at least to be able to say what usage do we want it to give in the future. I could imagine that not only it gives you the feeling of jumping off a cliff into the ocean, which would be the fantastic use of the metaverse, I guess, but if we are able to use the metaverse in order to do waterboarding, this may be a completely different reality. So we need transparency, we need accountability, we need digital rights protection, and I think the experience already shows that we need to be able to give a certain guidance on that. We’re trying to do that in the technologies that are being developed. Right now we’re developing a regulation on artificial intelligence, which is a framework convention that is to be dealing with this. We hope to finalize that by mid-next year, but also in our future work plans. The metaverse is part of it and the fact that we can work together with IEEE on those kind of things seems to me essential because as we said before, it’s in this multi-stakeholder context that we need to be able to discuss that from all angles, whether that be from the technical community, from the engineers point of view, from the business point of view, but also from an ethical point of view, from civil society point of view, academic point of view, and be able to govern all of that. So I think the benefits are there and we can work towards the promotion of human rights and rule of law and democratic participation, but it’s not going to go evidently. We’ve seen that with the development of the Internet. The Internet has given us a number of opportunities. We want it to be open and transparent and flexible and worldwide, but we’re increasingly getting a more fragmented world and we also know that if we let things happen, if we want a metaverse, not want a metaverse, but if we get a metaverse we deserve, we may not be getting the metaverse we want. And I think that’s important from a human rights perspective to look at it.

Clara Neppel:
Clarence and Adam, on the benefits. Yeah, thank you. Well, I think we already heard quite a lot on the benefits. I was also thinking, again on my flight to Japan, that probably already immersive realities contributed this flight and your flight as well to be more safe because the pilot was probably trained by hours and hours in immersive realities to master a situation which we hopefully never encounter, so not very often and so this is already an immersive reality. reality which helps us. And we’re seeing now, we hear generative AI. Generative AI is going to revolutionize also design. We are going to have the car industry, which is already testing out different design options in different immersive realities. And I think that we are moving now, we heard from these digital twins of cities, and I think somebody asked to try to map it to SDG, so I will just try to do some. The obvious one of course would be the SDG 9, industry innovation and infrastructure. But if we go to the digital twins of cities and even of the planet, of course we are also touching about the SDG 13 on climate and also of sustainable cities. And we are moving to the digital twins of ourselves and I think that this is where our collaboration with the Council of Europe is going to be essential, because there we are entering a realm that we certainly cannot handle alone when it comes to human right, democracy and rule of law. And so digital twins of ourselves, what does it mean? It means of course inclusive health, health care, SDG 3, education was already mentioned, SDG 4. But what is very close to my heart is really SDG 17 and that is partnership. It’s partnership for these common goals. And I think that this is going to be now really a game-changer. Now if we’re thinking about climate change, we see quite a lot of measures which are very, very difficult to implement, because citizens don’t understand the full impact of it and there’s a lot of fear. What does it mean if a solar panel is very close to my field or if I have a wind turbine somewhere nearby? What does it mean if my city is going to implement new measures in terms of traffic control? And this is something that we can try out in the virtual reality. And we can really enhance the democratic participation that Patrick talked about. Thank you.

Adam Ingle:
Thank you. So I think the benefits have been well canvassed. But I’m from the LEGO group, so I’ll focus my comments on what it might mean for children. And really, it has tremendous potential to amplify the things that kids care about. So we’ve undertaken research alongside UNICEF to try and understand what is child well-being online, and what components and elements and building blocks actually make children feel like they’re in a positive space. One of them is social connection. I think the metaverse and the immersivity of it and the interoperability between different layers of the internet and different services can really connect children in a way that is unprecedented. You’re not just a username. You’re an avatar. You have a sense of identity that’s carried across experiences that’s built up through a history online. And that conveys a unique sense of yourself to your peers and other kids. So you can connect in a way that you haven’t been able before and that’s really what kids value. You can create in a way that you can’t do offline, even with LEGO bricks. You are able to really build these worlds around you. You’ve seen the power of Minecraft, Roblox, what’s happening in Fortnite. These are all early metaverses. As the technology improves, not just the graphics, but the interconnectivity, the layers of services, the creative potential is huge. And children learn through creation. That’s what we’ve really found. So they can do that in an even better way. You also can empower kids. They have this sense of identity. They’re online. They’re engaging. They’re building. own lives there and they really value this kind of sense of empowerment. Often you know they can find some interactions quite patronizing but you know they have a right of access to the benefits of technology and the metaverse is an avenue for that. So they can learn, create, connect, do all these things. Now I know we’re getting to the downsides later but I do want to say there’s a massive caveat to all that is you know these things need to be done in a responsible way particularly with children. So social connection you know it’s we’ve seen the harms that come through an unconsidered approach to those types of things. So the benefits are tremendous but it needs to be done right. Hopefully that’s a good segue.

Irene Kitsara:
Absolutely thank you for that and I think we have the spoiler alert in the title of the of the session about the challenges and I think this is part of what a lot of sessions in the IGF are addressing around concerns that come with emerging technologies and applications. So I would like to address this question to to all our panelists about what are the some of the challenges that could arise from immersive realities and what is the potential impact they could have on the human rights, the rule of law and democracy, remembering the organizer of the event. And let us maybe just give a bit of a background on what we have covered in the upcoming report. So we have looked into on one side the enabling environment that the immersive realities and the metaverse can create for exercising human rights and the rule of law and democracy. But other issues we have looked into were related to privacy and data protection, safety and security, protection of children and other vulnerable populations, access and accessibility issues, inclusion and non-discrimination, freedom of expression and censorship, labor environment and of course issues related to the rule of law such as territoriality, enforcement, access to justice and democracy. But before we all despair maybe let’s start by some of these issues and I will start by Clara and then we can move to Patrick, Melodina and Adam.

Clara Neppel:
Thank you. So I already mentioned that we have already very practical examples of virtual reality. So we have autonomous cars being tried out in different scenarios. But even there there are certain ethical questions. A cow on the street might have a completely different value in India than in Europe. And now if we have these digital twins or avatars or digital humans of course we are entering a completely new territory. These digital humans interacting now in a seamless interconnected space, there is, who is going to control that space? So until now these immersive realities have been, and also the rules of engagements, have been designed by private actors. Now if we have something like a public space, who is going to decide who is going to enter that space? What is acceptable behavior? And when somebody should be excluded? So here again we are also discussing about an inclusive, as much as inclusive space as possible. We already see a shift of paradigm from the moderation of control that we know from AI and social media, to the moderation of behavior and moderation of space. What does it mean to be aggressed in a virtual space? And again, if we are discussing about virtual spaces, what is a public infrastructure? To what extent can people co-create actually that infrastructure? And what does it mean then to ownership? We already see our children in Minecraft creating magnificent cities and so on. What does it mean if this is then incorporated in a private virtual space? Whose ownership is it? And again, who is dictating the rules? In the digital space we have in open source the governance of, you know, who is actually controlling what code is getting into it. We had some time ago something like a benevolent dictator. Somebody who is dictating which code should be part of that service. So are we going to have something like this in a digital space? Hopefully not. Hopefully we will have a democratic participation. And especially when it comes to such a technology which will very much influence our worldviews, because we are basically going to have a completely different perception of, let’s say, a certain environment. if we are immersed in this, who is going to, again, control how this is going to look like? What does it mean, our perception of history, of perception of reality as such? And I think we already heard about privacy. I think we are entering here into a completely new space. We are going to have this technology which is present, omnipresent. And we have to get away, let’s say, from the technologies that we hear now of the headsets. We have to think about technologies which are upcoming. Last week at a Paris fashion show, something called a human AI was presented, which was just a very small pin which is there all the time and registering basically everything, recording everything. It’s kind of a digital assistant, a Star Trek-like assistant. Question is, what would it mean to this conference if we had such a technology which is every time recording everything which is happening, recording who is talking to what, to whom, and what possibly feelings he has? So you can imagine the type of information asymmetry that we are going to have, and also the power of those who can also predict certain alliances, certain power games in the future. So you can see we have certain new aspects to existing ethical challenges, like privacy, bias, accountability. And we have also some completely new challenges. We had Tom Hanks also last week telling that there is a digital Tom Hanks around who is publicizing some dental care. He has nothing to do with this. We have more and more of these digital twins who are going to be copied, not only our physical features, but also our characteristics, the way we are talking and the way we are feeling. So how much can we actually control these digital selves or these digital feelings? Are we going to need to have an authentication not only of content, but also of these digital humans? And last but not least, I want to conclude with safety. I think that safety is also going to play a completely different role that we are discussing now in terms of AI. Maybe some of you have heard this advertisement that the metaverse is virtual, but its impact is real. And I think that’s very true. Of course, you will have a very real impact when it comes, for instance, to healthcare. But if it is not designed well, then it has a real impact on the patient. And other things which make this need of designing it the right way a very important one.

Patrick Penninckx:
Now, the human rights activists, but also organizations that stand for human rights, are very often seen as a little bit alarmist and do not see sufficiently the positive sides. But it’s also for a human rights organization to be able to point that out. Let’s say the evangelists, if I may call them that way, of the future developments, including the immersive realities, will point at the advantages. They also do serious efforts. I’m now not speaking for that business community, but it’s not as if that business community goes about developing things in a completely unethical way. They put quite a number of resources into place. Metaverse, unfortunately, or meta was unfortunately not able to… to participate in this panel discussion, but I know they do a lot of effort in order to be able to ensure that the ethical principles, human rights principles, legal principles are also being respected. I will, Adam will certainly say something more about it afterwards as well, because that’s their prime concern. Well, not their prime concern, their prime concern remains doing business, obviously. But the question is not so much how much ethical principles are being put forward by private business. It’s also to which extent this new universe is going to be regulated by private business or to which extent has a democratic society with the principles that it endorses and tries to promote. To which extent does that have an impact on the development of this new immersive reality? None of us here are immersive natives. I’m an analog native. Some of us may be digital natives. I’m not looking at anyone in particular, but none of us are immersive natives. We will have to be able to look into a completely new reality of which we do not necessarily yet see the contours. And in order to be able to see those contours, let us not be naive. I’m old enough to have looked at the start of the internet and the positive feelings about democratic governance and participation and improvement of, let’s say, grassroots democracy. But we also see that that was maybe a little bit naive and that we also see that there are a number of things that we need to ensure that especially when our societies are instead of growing more democratic, are getting more defensive of human rights, we’re regressing, we’re backsliding. So let us see what that means. If some of the information and data that have been collected, even until now, fall into the wrong hands, I think we are very badly off. Now, the metaverse of… also in the immersive realities, allows for new forms of crime, allows for new questions or has to be put new questions with regards to the jurisdiction. Where, who is going to be judge and party? Can we be judge and party? Should we not divide that? Should we not have the ones that are deciding on how the developments are taking place be separated from those who take a number of decisions with regards to the jurisdiction about it? Now, we’ve spoken about privacy, Clara mentioned it before. We’re getting into a new dimension of privacy because in order to create an immersive reality, we also need to ensure that new forms of data collection, including biometric, psychography are recorded. These are very intimate, more even, I would say, than our health data, which are sensitive data. How are they going to be governed? I think even if, who was it? Tom Hanks? No. Was it Tom Hanks? Complaints about deep fakes, I think in the future, we will be dealing with something which is far more immersive than that. I think we’re moving towards, in order to be able to represent yourself through an avatar, it basically means that you have to have a complete picture of yourself, including of your expressions, et cetera, et cetera, to make it more realistic. Will we in 30, no, in 2034, will the IGF take place in an immersive world, Irina? So these are the kind of things that we need to. ask, and what are the consequences of that for privacy and digital security? How do we identify ourselves? Not only Tom Hanks, but also everyone in our room here. What about anonymity? Can we still be anonymous? We’re outraged about video surveillance, and some countries and some cities are excelling in that, but what about anonymity? What about private life? At least for the European Convention on Human Life, privacy is one of the pillars, Article 8. What about freedom of expression? What about the counterpart of disinformation and misinformation? We see, especially now with the ongoing war, how misinformation and disinformation are being used in a 30s, 1930-like manner, but in a much more efficient manner, to be able to stifle freedom of expression, but also to control all forms of population. That immersive reality can only be an extra layer of that, and I think we need to not be naive in terms of thinking that everyone is nice. Not everyone is nice. At the IGF, of course, everyone is nice, but there are other people out there which may be not so nice, and that have different intentions on how your private information will be used. Let’s also think about inclusivity. The speeches earlier today were all about how can we make the next 2.6 billion people connect to the Internet. But how are we going to connect the next 8 billion people to the metaverse? Who is going to be included? What are the elements of inclusion? I see the potential for educational purposes and so on and so forth, but in order to be able to benefit from those educational goals, we have to be able to ensure that people can also participate. So, inclusivity, accessibility. How are we dealing with the digital divide, not only worldwide, but also within our societies? And that is something that has also been shown during the COVID crisis, how the digital divide in our countries has been extremely difficult to overcome. So, governance and accountability. It’s good to be accountable to yourself, but you can also get away with certain things. I try to be accountable, but I’m not always so accountable. Don’t tell anyone, but that’s the reality. If you’re judge and party, you cannot be totally objective. So, we need to, in this multi-stakeholder approach, come to common sense. I think this IGF also points at it. That is that we need to be able to, on the basis of a number of common principles, common values, how do we want to see the next step, not only in internet governance and artificial intelligence, but how do we also measure that in terms of the immersive realities and how are we going to position ourselves to that? Are we going to be naive in hoping that the next generation will be simple and will be defensive or not?

Irene Kitsara:
Thank you. Let’s now move to Melodina. And being aware of time, I’m asking all the speakers onward to be conscious of that so that we leave time for the Q&A. Melodina?

Melodena Stephens:
Yes, thank you. So, I would like to very briefly talk about the Universal Human Rights Article 23, which says everyone has the right to work, the free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and protection against unemployment. The metaverse is data hungry, so it basically consumes your data, just like Clara and Patrick have mentioned. And the worry is it will remove jobs. For the first time, the World Economic Forum, in their 2023 report, has actually said AI technologies, like metaverse, will be a net job loss, not a net job increase. And that means we will not be prepared, because now skills don’t matter, your experience doesn’t matter, all saved on the metaverse and this the cost of not preparing people to have jobs or to keep jobs will be something like 11.5 trillion for training but even more if you look at things like pensions or social security the bigger worry is the jobs that are being formed are often low-paying jobs so the human being is coming to the bottom of the supply chain right and we see this already because some of the jobs are things like tagging content or content moderation i’ll give you an example for example roblox has a very active community and they have 4.25 million developers and if you want to earn on roblox and convert their money that is the roblox to actual u.s dollars you have to make a minimum amount of money and after 4.25 million developers only 11 000 qualified this has a direct impact on health and that’s another universal right right and the impact is well-being especially the uncertainty whether i get to keep my job i think is important so this also raises questions on ip uh assuming my experiences and my skill sets are because of the amount of years i spend and are uniquely mine do i have ip on this we also see another important thing coming in which is perhaps behavioral addiction to technologies like this i mentioned right at the beginning a lot of the metaverse has been built from gaming so we try to gamify behavior and we know for children as an example that many are not just children adults also can get addicted to games so this has been declared a psychiatric disorder in 2019 by who but the worry is as we start putting it into our daily life in shopping in work and in education at what point will the so-called magic circle the circle between reality and imagination disappear and this is something we aren’t actually putting enough research into i would also like to very briefly bring in environment clara mentioned that but the metaverse is something that requires huge amounts of data and computing power hence it has a significant carbon footprint right just take the semiconductor chip which is embedded in most of our technology if you’ve got a mobile phone or a laptop the average ship when you take all of its components travels 50 000 kilometers right and it’s embedded in 169 industries so we’re looking at environmental costs uh in carbon in terms of water because chips are not recycled we see that the e-waste is growing exponentially and less than 17 percent is recycled so this will get into your groundwater and something like mercury we see that in fish across the ocean so it’s not contained uh we also i just want to briefly mention one more thing but culture representation becomes extremely important in the metaverse and i think this will be something nations will have to consider whether it’s stereotypes that are being represented on the metaverse or how do you actually do that so with that adam over to you

Adam Ingle:
thanks um i’ll keep it brief because a lot of the challenges have been discussed um i think one thing that has come out though and always comes out in these discussions is how so many of the issues aren’t unique there exists today and we’re still grappling with the solutions today and now regulation and legislation is forming a response to these issues so i think we’ll actually have to wait and see how the issues in web 2.0 and the regulatory response and the cultural response to these issues plays out to see whether you know we’ll actually start in earnest with the metaverse from a better playing field um but when it comes to kids and the challenges they they face you know i think from our mind um from our mind we want to create a really kid-friendly ecosystem one with high safety standards responsible design um you know limited um ways for harmful contact conduct contract um and in order to do that to create a truly immersive ecosystem we need others to join us and also share our standards because you know we can create all these great lego experiences but a metaverse is interconnected that it’s interoperable so everyone needs to lift their game if we’re going to have a collective approach to address a lot of the harms that that children are going to be facing

Irene Kitsara:
again adam thank you for leading to the to the last question and again because of time i would ask the rest of you to cover we are at the igf so naturally the last question is around governance of the of the metaverse and could you share some key concepts um you know the issues we have been hearing and the considerations and challenges are very much i think known issues from ongoing or previous discussions related to ai generative ai social platforms and gaming how can we address some of these challenges that we heard and what could be some of the considerations and elements we should bear in mind while considering governance of immersive realities. Patrick, would you like to start? Or Melodina, Melodina, would you like to start?

Melodena Stephens:
Sure, so when we look at the governance right now, I just wanna quote something from ITU in 2003, an IGF committed to the WSIS principles, which says, commitment to build people-centric, inclusive and development-oriented information society. I sometimes worry whether we put technology before people. So we see that there’s a lot at the national level in terms of policies, OECD reports 800 AI policies, most of them are in North Africa and Europe. And we also see a lot of data regulations, 62 countries with 144 data regulations, but most of it is fragmentary. So the metaverse will be global and it really requires collaboration across governments. The few governments that have put policies on the metaverse, most of them recommend self-governance. And I think this is because of the adoption curve. So you see South Korea came out with ethical principles, the Agile Nations, which is a coalition group, it’s an IGO with UK, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Singapore, Japan, and UAE, is coming out with a report in this week. And again, it talks about self-governance. China for the first time has actually said, you could file trademarks of NFTs and virtual goods. And this is a big shift that’s coming in. And Australia has a white paper on standards. But again, self-governance, because the time to collaborate and put together an overarching policy will take too long and we need private sector to work with that. Now there are standards coming out. So if we look at something like the metaverse standards, which is an association with 2,400 members, most of it private sector. Now, one of the challenges I would like to bring is open source. So the metaverse builds on top of open source and there’s a proprietary layer. And this really creates a problem. So take, for example, a database of faces. So Megapixel had a data set of 4.7 million faces scrapped from Flickr. Today you can do it from Instagram or from YouTube. And 80% of that was from these places. And it’s used in 900 research papers. So we see this open source does have some challenges that I’d like to highlight. Another one is Apache software. There’s something called the log4j and this is responsible for the 404 error that you see. And they found out there was a problem in its code that created a vulnerability. And what’s interesting is it’s embedded everywhere in Amazon, in Apple, in Minecraft, and all Java systems. And that’s 3 billion devices. So we can just see that this problem will exist. And it’s not really how much foresight you have in that, but how quickly and how transparently we can work together. If we penalize private sector for being transparent, they will hide it and it will make the vulnerability worse. So that’s something we need to find. We find out also that there isn’t much way forward. For example, Barbados wanted to put an embassy online. In the 1961 Vienna Convention, it talks about only physical embassies, but these are countries with limited resources. And if they need to be represented around the world, virtual embassies work. But again, this is a negotiated thing where there isn’t much information on that. I just want to highlight one more thing. Most governments who are being represented on the metaverse are being represented on top of private sector. So they’re using something like Decentraland or the SANS and working with that. I think this raises also interesting questions, at which point I’d like to stop now and hand over.

Irene Kitsara:
Thank you, Melodina. Patrick?

Patrick Penninckx:
Yeah, when you speak about governance, I think there’s a number of governance principles which are already enshrined in what we’ve done on data protection, what we’ve done on cybercrime, what we’re now trying to do also on artificial intelligence within the Council of Europe, questions related to responsibility, to transparency, to explainability, to revocability, to the right to contest. All of those elements need to be looked at. And obviously, what we did when we started to work on the new Convention on Artificial Intelligence, the first thing we did was some kind of a feasibility study that is look at what are all the ethical principles that are already out there and which are applicable, what is the legislation that is out there and that would be applicable to the metaverse, and then look at where are the gaps, and if we have identified the gaps, then look at how, which are the elements that could constitute the elements of a future governance within this. I think I’ll leave it at that.

Clara Neppel:
Thank you, Patrick. Thank you. Well, I think that what we hear now more and more from the private sector as well is that there’s a need for the interoperability of regulation, actually, for regulatory requirements, and one way to achieve this could be, is actually through global standards. And I think that it is important to say that standards are there, of course, to move from principles to practice to actually operationalize regulation, so this would be the top-down approach, and this is important, but we also see a bottom-up approach. So in IEEE, we’ve been working since 2015 on ethically aligned design initiatives, which resulted in a set of standards from value-based design, which can be used also for the metaverse, to defining more closely what is transparency, what does it mean to have age-appropriate design. I think, Adam, you’re a part of that. And so I think that we need to bring together this top-down and bottom-up principles in order to create that framework which works for everyone. Yeah, I think I will just let it here because we want to have some questions as well. Thank you.

Irene Kitsara:
Yes, and I would like now to turn to you and to the audience and see if you have any questions to our panelists. And then I hear we also have an online question. Maybe we can start with that. And you can think in the meantime.

Audience:
Does this work? Can you? Yes. So I will just read the question in the chat from Nina Jane Patel. With increasing immersion of users into this virtual realms, there is potential access to a plethora of biometric data, from eye tracking, to brain activity, to heart rate. How do you envision the governance and regulation of such intimate data in the metaverse? Furthermore, what steps do you believe need to be taken to ensure that individuals’ biometric data remain private and protected from the misuse? Thank you.

Irene Kitsara:
So I can address what we have identified in the report. Maybe that will give an overview of some of the issues that have been identified by the experts. So indeed, we will be looking into much more invasive practical supervision and censoring. And the idea is we will be looking, so our experts have been looking into the idea of rethinking privacy, rethinking what this means. There are different defenders of the introduction of the so-called neural rights. There is in Chile, this has been also covered in their constitution. On the other side, there are some thoughts. There are issues around bystander privacy, not just your own that you can potentially consent to, but also, for example, the people who may be in the same room with you and they don’t know that they are being also recorded with you. So there is a plethora, indeed, of questions. And there are different views around the governance of that, whether there may be also some self-regulation, self-governance principles that could help with that, or whether we should be looking at reinterpretation of existing hard law or introduction of a new one. Do we have any questions? Please, the gentleman.

Audience:
Good morning. Thank you that I could participate in your panel town hall. It’s very interesting, especially if you talk about immersive, but what now, life, technology, or maybe existence. And from that perspective, we in Poland, because I came from Poland, has a different consideration than now. The biggest tension is not on the freedom of expression, not even of personal data and privacy, but much more, and maybe it’s only one of the future tension, freedom of conscience, not from the religious point of view, but from the psychophysical integrity of person. And from that perspective, I would like to ask you if we can suggest something how to deal with this. Also, not only it is one of the part of fundamental rights, of course, but from the technical point of view, it’s, of course, challenging. I understand this. I thought that it was worth to put the question on the table. Thank you.

Patrick Penninckx:
I remember chanting in one of the demonstrations in Belgium in the 1980s that the thoughts are free. I don’t know if the thoughts will still be free, and that’s freedom of conscience indeed. Of course, I don’t know to which extent. Once we are starting to look into interaction between machine and man, and if we see that technology already enhances or has the capacity to influence our behavior, to which extent will it influence our thought processes? I think our thought processes are already being influenced by the messages that we get very directly, otherwise how could you explain that whole forms of the entire populations can be influenced in a certain manner? When I looked at the Edelman Trust Barometer, I saw that in authoritarian regimes, the trust in public service media is the highest. This seems to be contradictory, but it also is quite revealing on how a regime, and whether that be a private or a public entity, can actually influence the way people maybe not think, but at least… act according to what is expected from them. So freedom of thought is definitely, and freedom of religion, because also in the European Convention of Human Rights, this is enshrined, are definitely things which are at stake and that would need to be looked at. Thank you.

Clara Neppel:
If there are no other questions, Robert, it’s my personal view. I think that we are discussing now much more about the moderation, that practically we are discussing about content moderation and if this should be private or public. And probably in order to have a certain balance, we need to have this multi-stakeholder moderation at some point. And this is, I think, that we are here at the International Governance Forum, this should be at the heart of discussions, I think, because this is also what Patrick mentioned before, democratic process cannot happen if you are not, if you cannot control, if you don’t have anonymity, first of all, I think that’s important. If you don’t have anonymity, you cannot actually exercise your rights as a citizen, I think, as well. But that’s my private.

Irene Kitsara:
Just a short, just shortly to that, we are identifying the report of this mental privacy, mental autonomy and the practically reinterpretation of notions that we knew like freedom of expression and what they mean nowadays with these technologies which have the potential of even changing our, not just our perception of reality, but even changing our thought process and even our, you know, the facts. Thank you.

Audience:
Oh, hi, my name is Michael Kernikos, I’m the Executive Director of the UCLA Institute for Technology Law and Policy. I wanted to pick up on what you said about content moderation, because as far as I understand it, the tools to moderate content effectively at scale do not exist for these technologies. So it’s fine right now as long as adoption rates are where they are, but if these things take off rapidly. there’s no actual way to follow the standards that already exist for traditional social media platforms. So is that something that you’re looking into, or this is a legal challenge and a policy challenge as well as a technical challenge? Okay, thank you very much. I’m Steve Fosley from UNICEF. We also did a short report on the metaverse and children and some of the rights. So hopefully that was useful. My question is around, and sorry, maybe this is too big a question for this time, but I’m from South Africa originally. Your thoughts on how the metaverse will play out over time? Because not everybody can afford the $500 or $3,500 headset, and not everybody will. So if these technologies are going to actually scale globally, and that’s also a question, but I think they will, but they’re going to look very different for users in South Africa, in Johannesburg or Cape Town, to perhaps kids, and obviously I’m looking at children in New York, some children in New York. And perhaps we’ve seen some signals of this, of beginning to talk to cloned characters, and you might be talking to them on WhatsApp, it doesn’t have to be in an immersive environment, but it’s beginning to normalize talking to AI, basically. And you’re not always sure if that’s a person or not. So any thoughts on how this might play out? And if there isn’t time now, I’ll be here for the next few days, so I’d love to have a coffee and pick your brains. Thank you.

Irene Kitsara:
Who would like to?

Melodena Stephens:
I need a little microphone. Yes. But I answered. Was it Adam who was going to go ahead? Please. Oh, so I was going to just say one thing, that when we look at the metaverse, generally the standards often come from maybe the IT sector, right? Or the technology sector. But we’re seeing now health coming into that. So it’s really important we don’t approach this in silos, ministries across have to work together. That means health has to sit with social. If you see an impact on people and communities and society, but you also have to sit and work with technology. And that’s missing right now. So, for example, content is being developed for schools. And I don’t know if there’s a psychologist, sociologist involved. I think in Adam’s company, they do. But in many cases, this is not necessarily true. On the case of inclusiveness, these technologies. will get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. So I see that actually happening because these technologies are only viable at scale. That’s the only way they will work. But then there’s this danger that they will be affordable and embedded and you cannot get rid of it. Think of chat GPT, everyone’s using it. And now we’re trying to figure out how can we use it more? Or what can we do to regulate it? So we’re right now at that wonderful time. We’ve got a 10 year window to have these conversations and come up with the safeguards. And that’s why I think these dialogues are so critical. Thank you.

Irene Kitsara:
Thank you, Melodina. And I think we need to stop here but talking about partnerships, I would like to share with you that the result of the digital partnership that between IEEE and the Council of Europe and stay tuned to the upcoming report on the metaverse and its impact on human rights, the rule of law and democracy, which is expected to be released in early 2024. Thank you very much. And thanks to our panelists and the organizer and our host of course. Thank you.

Fernanda Kalianny Martins Sousa

The political climate in Brazil is currently frustrating for civil society organisations, as it hampers their social participation in discussions related to internet governance. While Brazil has been known for its experiments in participatory governance, the new Lula government seems to be lacking the same level of participation as before. This negative sentiment is driving the argument that the political climate is hindering civil society organisations from fully engaging in discussions.

One aspect of internet regulation being discussed in Brazil is Bill 2630, a proposed law aimed at regulating online platforms. Although this law has been the subject of discussion for the past three years, its approval remains uncertain. While some argue that it is a good law with a few problems, there is still uncertainty surrounding its fate. Civil society organisations have been actively working on this law, with the intention of combating the previous government’s approach to internet governance.

Another point of concern is the complexity of the political landscape in relation to platform regulation in Brazil. Political factors and a lack of government consultation with civil society have made the process more intricate. The argument is that the government needs to consider the input of civil society organisations to address these concerns effectively.

Efforts to bring civil society together in Brazil to discuss online regulation have been ongoing for several years. Internet Lab, along with over 50 organisations across the country, has played a significant role in these discussions. Federal Deputy Orlando Silva has also been instrumental in bringing these discussions to parliament. The sentiment around these efforts is neutral, indicating that there is progress in bringing civil society together for these discussions.

The failure of self-regulation in the internet sector is a cause of concern. Even ten years after the approval of Marcos Civil, self-regulation is seen as ineffective. This negative sentiment highlights the importance of learning from past mistakes and ensuring that any form of regulation, including state regulation, is flexible and able to evolve as needed.

Connecting international, national, and local levels in the regulation of internet governance is both challenging and necessary. Internet Lab has been actively working towards this goal. By working in conjunction with different fields in Brazil and the global South, they have been able to push legal boundaries and regulations combating issues such as disinformation.

In Brazil, the need to address political gender-based violence and hate speech against women online is recognised. Efforts have been made to enforce and utilise a law against political gender-based violence. There are also ongoing efforts to approve points related to a law against hate speech online against women in the election mini-reform. The sentiment here is positive, indicating that taking action against these issues is seen as necessary and commendable.

In conclusion, the current political climate in Brazil is creating challenges for civil society organisations in their engagement in discussions related to internet governance. The uncertain fate of Bill 2630, the complexity surrounding platform regulation, and the issues of self-regulation in the internet sector are significant concerns. However, there are ongoing efforts to bring civil society together, connect different levels of governance, and address specific issues like political gender-based violence and hate speech.

Internet Bolivia Foundation

The analysis highlights the effectiveness of working at the municipal and local levels for digital governance. One notable advantage is that municipalities have a better understanding of local needs, enabling them to tailor policies more accurately to meet the specific requirements of their communities. Furthermore, the absence of excessive bureaucracy allows them to handle policies more swiftly and efficiently.

Another benefit of local regulations is their potential as pilot initiatives for other municipalities. When a municipality successfully implements digital regulations, it serves as a model and encourages other jurisdictions to adopt similar policies. This ripple effect is particularly evident in the case of Coroico, where the implementation of regulations led numerous other municipalities to express their interest in adopting comparable policies.

The analysis also underscores the importance of continuous engagement with communities for effective digital governance. Hosting workshops and maintaining a regular presence in communities helps to spread digital literacy and build support for digital policies. It has been found that people are more likely to support and participate when they have a better understanding of the issues at hand. For example, in Villa Montes, the local population expressed eagerness to learn more about digital rights and requested workshops on the subject.

Notably, the Internet Bolivia Foundation advocates for the presence of key champions in specific issues and encourages the involvement of municipalities or local communities in particular topics. These champions can play a vital role in enacting beneficial regulations and driving digital governance initiatives at the community level.

In conclusion, working at the municipal and local levels proves to be highly effective for digital governance. The analysis demonstrates the numerous advantages of this approach, such as a better understanding of local needs, quicker policy implementation, and the potential for pilot initiatives. Continuous engagement with communities, including hosting workshops and involving key champions, fosters digital literacy and enhances support for digital policies. The Internet Bolivia Foundation recognises the power of community-level work and actively advocates for its implementation.

Nick Benequista

The analysis delves into various aspects of policy intervention and awareness, focusing on the positive sentiment towards Liza Garcia’s comprehensive approach. Nick Benequista praises Liza for actively participating in the drafting and implementation of laws, policy shaping, and raising public awareness on digital laws. Liza’s well-rounded involvement impresses Nick, demonstrating her dedication to effective policy intervention.

Furthermore, Nick expresses interest in the influence of civil society on legislative agenda setting. He questions whether civil society can exert influence in determining which legislation gets passed or regulated. This showcases Nick’s curiosity about the extent of civil society’s involvement and impact on policy matters, particularly in the legislative process.

The analysis also highlights the proactive approach of Internet Lab in engaging with policy processes. It mentions that Internet Lab has been actively addressing internet governance issues for the last nine years and has collaborated with a coalition of over 50 organizations in Brazil. This underscores the organization’s commitment and effectiveness in tackling internet governance concerns.

Additionally, the importance of having allies in parliament for effective policy engagement is emphasised. The analysis highlights the crucial role of Federal Deputy Orlando Silva in platform regulation discussions. This highlights the significance of building alliances and having supportive individuals within the legislative sphere to advance effective policy-making.

The analysis reinforces the importance of serving the public interest in governance. It underlines the necessity of public accountability as a crucial aspect of policy-making. Policymakers are expected to prioritize the public’s well-being and uphold the principles of transparency and accountability.

However, the analysis also raises concerns about imperfect accountability mechanisms. Nick expresses apprehension that policymakers may be influenced by narrow interests, including personal interests, which can hinder their ability to effectively serve the public interest. This draws attention to the need for robust accountability mechanisms to ensure policymakers remain focused on the public’s welfare.

In conclusion, this analysis provides valuable insights into various aspects of policy intervention and engagement. It underscores the importance of comprehensive involvement, the role of civil society, the proactive approach of organizations like Internet Lab, the significance of alliances in parliament, and the necessity of serving the public interest. It acknowledges concerns regarding imperfect accountability but emphasizes the need for effective mechanisms to ensure policymakers act in the best interest of the public. These findings offer valuable perspectives for policymakers and stakeholders striving for inclusive and effective policy-making.

Audience

The analysis explores various topics concerning governance and SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. One key point raised is the difficulty in translating discussions between the national and local levels. This poses a challenge as issues can be lost or significantly altered during the translation process. It emphasizes the importance of improved coordination between local and national governance to facilitate effective communication and policy implementation. The analysis advocates for advocacy efforts to enhance coordination between these governance levels.

Another important topic discussed is Paradigm Initiative’s unsuccessful attempt to enact digital rights enabling legislation in Nigeria. Despite receiving support from certain parliamentarians, the bill did not receive the necessary assent from the President. This setback underscores the need for effective lobbying strategies and consensus-building among political parties. The analysis highlights that political parties may have differing views on digital rights, making it difficult to gain consensus and legislative support. Engaging with Members of Parliament on this issue can also be challenging due to party influences. Developing strategies that navigate these complexities is crucial to promote the enactment of digital rights enabling legislation.

Additionally, the analysis mentions the efforts in Uganda to establish a parliamentary forum on internet governance. This initiative aims to raise awareness and educate Members of Parliament on internet governance issues. The Uganda Media Sector Working Group is actively involved in creating awareness of relevant laws. Plans are underway to establish the parliamentary forum as a platform for important discussions and knowledge sharing among parliamentarians. This proactive approach demonstrates a commitment to addressing internet governance issues and promoting a deeper understanding among policymakers.

Overall, the analysis sheds light on the challenges and opportunities in governance, particularly within the context of SDG 16. It emphasizes the need for improved coordination between local and national governance, effective lobbying strategies for digital rights legislation, and initiatives that educate and raise awareness among policymakers. These insights contribute to the broader discussion on achieving peace, justice, and strong institutions as outlined in SDG 16.

Sarah Opendi

Upon analysis of the provided data, several main points emerge regarding the role and responsibilities of parliamentarians in relation to the digital space, technology, and internet governance.

Firstly, it is argued that civil society should equip members of parliament with necessary information and skills in the digital space and technology. This would enable parliamentarians to better represent the public’s interests in this increasingly important area. Furthermore, the central role of parliamentarians in connecting the public and the executive, thereby representing the public’s interests, is highlighted as essential.

Another key point is the need to create awareness among parliament members about technical matters related to the internet and internet governance. The evidence suggests that currently, only a few parliament members possess an appropriate understanding of these issues. It is proposed that by increasing awareness and knowledge in this area, parliamentarians can effectively address digital literacy issues, advocate for affordable internet access, and ensure the incorporation of ICT in the education curriculum.

Additionally, the analysis reveals that in Uganda, parliamentarians should serve as links to lower local governments on internet governance matters. It is noted that there is currently a missing ICT committee at the local government level to oversee internet issues. The implementation of a top-down approach, engaging policymakers, is advocated by Sarah Opendi, reflecting her belief in the importance of connecting parliamentarians with grassroots communities.

Furthermore, it is brought to attention that artificial intelligence (AI) remains largely misunderstood by parliament members. Increased awareness and equipping parliamentarians with key information on AI is advocated as a means to address this knowledge gap.

In terms of advocacy and collaboration, Sarah Opendi supports the idea of a parliamentary forum on internet governance, which would serve to handle advocacy issues and foster collaboration with civil society organisations. This forum aims to strengthen the involvement of parliamentarians in internet governance matters and enhance partnerships for the goals of peace, justice, and strong institutions.

Noteworthy observations include the suggestion that identifying champions for bills is crucial to ensure their successful passage into law. In Uganda, laws can be passed even if the president does not assent to them, provided that parliament insists on returning the bill to the president. It is also highlighted that engaging local populations through effective means such as radio talks and community meetings organised through local governments is key to advocating for bills.

In conclusion, the analysis sheds light on the importance of civil society’s role in equipping parliamentarians with digital knowledge, as well as parliamentarians’ central role in representing the public’s interests and connecting with the executive. It underscores the need for increased awareness and technical knowledge on internet governance among parliament members. Furthermore, it highlights the necessity of advocating for affordable internet access, addressing digital literacy, and incorporating ICT in the education curriculum. The creation of a parliamentary network on internet governance, the identification of champions for bills, and engagement with local populations are proposed as effective strategies to enhance the role of parliamentarians in policy-making and governance processes.

Liza Garcia

Liza Garcia is a prominent human rights advocate who leads an organization dedicated to monitoring and documenting cases of rights violations, with a particular focus on online gender-based violence. Since 2012, Garcia and her team have been diligently collecting evidence of instances of this form of violence. They also actively monitor developments in areas such as SIM card registration and the national ID system.

Garcia strongly believes in actively participating in the process of drafting and implementing laws. She emphasizes the need to ensure the proper implementation of laws and regulations by advocating for her organization’s voice to be heard in policy consultations. By engaging policymakers and parliamentarians, Garcia provides them with evidence of rights violations to support her cause.

An important aspect of Garcia’s work is educating citizens about their rights and the potential impact of new laws. To achieve this, she conducts workshops in communities to increase awareness and empower individuals to protect their rights. By fostering a deeper understanding of the law and its implications, Garcia aims to empower individuals to take action and advocate for their rights.

In the realm of policymaking, Garcia focuses specifically on gender and ICT, as well as privacy and data protection. She aims to address gender disparities in the digital space and advocate for the privacy and data protection rights of individuals. By collaborating with partner organizations and consulting with relevant stakeholders, Garcia works towards building an agenda that reflects the needs and concerns of these communities.

One notable aspect of Garcia’s work is her opposition to the SIM Card Registration Act. She actively campaigned against this legislation, creating a briefing paper that was distributed to legislators and other concerned groups. Thanks to her efforts, the law was successfully vetoed during the previous administration. However, Garcia expresses disappointment that the law eventually passed under a subsequent administration, highlighting the challenges faced in maintaining progress.

Garcia also recognizes the importance of community engagement and collaboration with local governments. She emphasizes that local governments have the ability to pass policies that might be challenging to implement at the national level. By fostering these partnerships, she believes that effective change can be achieved more readily.

Effectively disseminating information is another key area of focus for Garcia. She acknowledges the pivotal role that social media plays in providing information about digital rights issues. Garcia emphasizes the need for individuals to be engaged on whichever platforms they use to stay informed and take action. Additionally, she notes that visual and easily understandable content can be more effective in conveying information, especially as people may be less inclined to read lengthy research papers. By utilizing visual communication, Garcia aims to engage a wider audience and prompt action.

Lastly, Garcia acknowledges the importance of media engagement in raising awareness and expanding the reach of the issues she advocates for. By engaging with the media, she can increase public visibility and generate support for her cause.

In conclusion, Liza Garcia is a dedicated advocate for human rights and an influential figure in the fight against rights violations, particularly online gender-based violence. Through her organization’s efforts to monitor and document cases, Garcia collects evidence to support her cause. She actively engages in the policy-making process, educates citizens about their rights, and focuses on gender and ICT, privacy, and data protection in policymaking. Despite facing challenges in maintaining progress and opposing unfavorable legislation, Garcia remains committed to community engagement, effective information dissemination, and media engagement to further her cause.

Liza Garcia:
chance to intervene and that is with the drafting of the implementing rules and regulations once it’s already a law and implemented then there is the monitoring of the law for its proper implementation of course there are also aside from the laws being passed there are also policies emanating from other government agencies for example in the case of the Philippines with the they were coming up with the national cybersecurity plan so government would always have this consultation with different stakeholders and since since it’s also part of the the issue is also something that we look into then we make sure that we are invited and that our voice is heard when it comes to certain especially in looking at certain provisions in in this plans yeah what else we we as a civil society organization we’ve been monitoring actually and documenting cases of the rights especially the violations for instance since 2012 we’ve been documenting cases of online gender-based violence in the country currently we are also monitoring development in the SIM card registration, which you mentioned, which was just passed. There’s also the national ID system. We’re looking at how our rights are affected by the passage of these laws. And since we’ve been monitoring them, we have cases, then we have evidence also when we go to, when we have dialogues, engagements with parliamentarians or, you know, policymakers, then we have some evidence in our hands that, hey, you know, this is happening, can we do something about this? So those are some of the things that we do. But at the same time, it’s not just with legislators, with policymakers that we engage with. We also make sure that citizens also know their rights, that they are aware of the even digital laws that are being passed and how it would impact them. So we also, from time to time, we go to communities and have dialogues with them, conduct workshops. So they know what the laws are and how this may, or how these are affecting them as well.

Nick Benequista:
That’s terrific. I mean, it sounds like you’re really taking advantage of every entry point that exists within the rules and regulations for participation in the policy process, as well as, you know, gathering the evidence and holding the discussions to keep an eye on how those policies are being implemented, the consequences of those policies. That sounds like a really holistic approach. You hadn’t mentioned the agenda setting aspects of policymaking, and just one quick follow-up. In terms of who is deciding what pieces of legislation, what issues get legislated and regulated, do you get any experience on getting civil society to build the agenda, the legislative agenda itself?

Liza Garcia:
In our case, our focus is really more on gender and ICT and then privacy and data protection. So we mostly intervene in cases like that. But of course, when it comes to, yeah, so we intervene in cases of that. And we have also, we also consult with our other partners. They may not be focused on digital rights per se, but, you know, they are working on specific issues that may be impacted by this law. So we work with them as well. We consult with them and we come up with an agenda. For instance, when we were looking at the SIM card registration act, it’s been there since, I don’t know, 2014, I think. And then by, and we were looking at it already by 2018, I think we came up with a. briefing paper, my colleagues from the privacy program earlier, so we came up with a briefing paper already and it was published, it was distributed to even legislators, to some other groups and yeah, and yet every Congress, there’s always someone who proposes that bill, it’s always there. And I remember in the previous administration, it was about to be passed, both houses of Congress already approved the bill. So it was just for the signature of the president. But what we did in civil society is we had a discussion among ourselves, are we okay with this bill? So what do we do? So we came up with a statement. So I think there were three of us, they came up with, they were doing an online campaign, one group was doing an online campaign. We came up with a statement and we asked other organizations, partner organizations, if they agree with the bill. And if not, there’s this statement, maybe you can sign on it. And at the last minute, we even submitted a letter to the president to veto the SIM card registration act. Fortunately, during that time, it was vetoed by the president. We were also surprised by that small win. However, of course, things change during the next administration, it was the first piece of legislation that was passed into law by this current administration.

Nick Benequista:
Thanks very much, Lisa. That’s great, though, you know, I’m sure you don’t win every battle, but you gain strength every time you engage in some parliamentary debate, I’m sure the networks grow stronger and stronger. So like, that sounds like a terrific approach that you guys are taking. Fernanda, from Internet Lab. So Brazil is known for its experiments and participatory governance, participatory budgeting, in the context of internet governance, platform regulation. Curious to know if you’re seeing the same level of innovation in terms of participatory, multi stakeholder policymaking. So how are parliamentarians in your country engaging in these issues? And are diverse perspectives in particular, finding their way into the debates?

Fernanda Kalianny Martins Sousa:
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Nick, for the invitation and for the question. It’s really Pleasure to be here discussing this theme with you. Related to Brazil, to be honest, although Brazil to be known for social participation in discussions and related to internet governance, when we started this new Lula government, I think it is a little frustrated for civil society organization. Because in comparison with Marcos Civil da Internets in 2014, when we had really participation of academia, civil society organizations, and legislative and executive members, now the context is so different. Because we had a far-right government in the last four years. And when Lula assumed the new presidential, we had the pressure of society. We have the pressure of federal state. We have the pressure of chamber of deputies. And with this context, with the sense of an emergence, it’s not the same process. So we have the bill 2630 discussed in the last three years. And now with the new federal government, we are trying to approve this law. This law is fruit of the civil society organization’s work in the last three years combating the Bolsonaro government. So it is a good law with some problems. But we don’t have the sure that this law will be approved. So it is. interesting to think how, in Brazil, the discussion related to platform regulation can also side. So, the importance of this discussion now becomes a kind of bargaining ship with the Congress. So, when far-right congressmen decide to vote, I think related to abortion, for example, or a bill that will attack indigenous people, the president of the deputy chamber said, no, if you put this in votation, we will vote 26th. So, it is a movement so complex because we had, in the beginning of the year, the attempt to occupation of Brazil, and after that, some attacks against public schools in Brazil, and all this discussion is related to also side not more the experts of digital rights, as in the case of Marcos Civil da Internet. So, in this context, I think it’s important to say that we don’t have a government consulting civil society as occurred in the past, and I think it is an important thing to pressure the government. And when we leave this process to left government, we have people from civil society organization with the government, to the government, and it’s complex because we know these people, we know that they have good intentions, and at the same time, we know the complexity of the political conjecture. So, it is a really difficult moment, but a moment if we can hope. So, it is hard, but not too hard as in the last four years. Great, thanks. Thanks a lot for three years.

Nick Benequista:
That’s that’s yeah, that’s a lot of work, it sounds like. I mean, can you just there’s one quick follow on question. The three years that you put into bringing civil society together. Can you just say a few words about the scope and scale of that effort? Does it do you have to travel around the country? Is it a matter of, you know, meetings in the capital or a few other cities? How do you how do you do the work of getting these diverse views together on this issue on the twenty six thirty bill?

Fernanda Kalianny Martins Sousa:
Sure. So at Internet Lab, we are working with some things related to Internet governance since the last nine years. So when this discussion started, we are working together with the Kuala Lumpur region. It is the coalition that have more than 50 organizations in Brazil, in all country. And there we have this movement to try, understand and follow all movements in different aspects of the Congress. And the discussion is step by step of these laws of these bills discuss it. And in the case of platforms of regulation, I think it’s important to highlight the role of the federal deputy, Orlando Silva. He’s a congressman in a left party. And in these in in his role in this discussion, it was so important to have a parliamentar that involved it. with the discussion. And it’s not common, you know. We have now the discussion related to intelligence, artificial intelligence regulation in Brazil. And we realized that it’s not easy to parliamentaries understand what is happening, what is the impact of this kinds of regulation. And because of that, I think on main problem in this discussion, it is, okay, the government is part of the emergence, but we can’t think just in the emergence. We need to think in the future and the flexibility of this law, this kind of law need to have. So I think that the point is, 10 years after Marcos Civil Approval, we know that self-regulation has not working. And I don’t know, in five years, we might be saying that state’s regulation was not sufficient. So the challenge for me is how we can learn with what’s happened in the last 10 years and not repeat the wrongs that we committed in this process. That’s terrific, Fernanda. And I mean, it highlights an important point of,

Nick Benequista:
you know, I think engagement for most civil society organizations with parliaments and policy processes tends to start out being quite reactionary. And it sounds like over, you know, the last decade, you are beginning to develop the networks and the capacities to think proactively about that agenda, which is, yeah, fortunate. I mean, I think that’s probably a privileged position relative to others. You also mentioned an important point, which is a great segue to this introduction. You mentioned the importance of having an ally in parliament. uh, you know, at the beginning of the discussions around, uh, the misinformation law. Um, and we are in fact joined, uh, fortunately by the Honorable Sarah Opendy, uh, to my left here, who is an executive committee member of the African Parliamentary Network on Internet Governance, APNIC. So, um, she is, uh, the, you know, executive committee member on a network that is precisely trying to build a network of parliamentarians who can champion these discussions and the development of policy, uh, across the African continent. Uh, she is a Ugandan state minister for mineral development, uh, a chairperson, uh, at the Uganda Women Parliamentary Association. And prior to all this, uh, the Honorable Opendy was the state minister for health, uh, for which she received a global, uh, leadership award. So, um, I’m so glad you could join us, um, because it is, uh, allies, uh, in parliaments willing to work with civil society, uh, are, uh, too rare indeed. Um, so a question for you, uh, Honorable, uh, Opendy. Um, you know, we have seen national policy makers exerting growing influence over the internet and digital governance. Um, you know, policy makers, of course, uh, do represent the public and are held accountable through electoral, uh, means, but, uh, those forms of accountability are still imperfect, uh, in many, in, uh, all countries around the world. And it’s especially imperfect on an issue such as this, which doesn’t have a ton of, of public engagement. And so there, there is a risk, I think, you know, that policy makers, uh, may not be serving the public interest in terms of their engagement on these issues. They might be serving other, other interests, narrow interests, including personal interests. And, um, so what, what’s your advice and thoughts on how to ensure that policy makers in this area are serving the public interest through their work?

Sarah Opendi:
Yeah, thank you very much. And thank you for that introduction. I bring you all greetings from Uganda, the Palo of Africa. And, uh, you for inviting me to this panel. I came in when my colleague was speaking about the civil society and how it’s important for them to engage with members of parliament. We must agree that as parliament we play a central role between the public, we are between the public and the executive. And our role as members of parliament is certainly to make laws, legislative function, but also the function of representation. And in as much as possible we must be able to speak and represent the views of the public. But the subject that we are discussing, this digital space, technology, is something that we all know that it’s important. However, not much emphasis has been made in even creating awareness among members of parliament on technical matters. So it’s very important since we have the civil society, the NGOs, to first and foremost as much as possible give the members of parliament, arm them with the relevant information, the relevant skills, so that they can be able then to represent the public interests better. You have said we are serving personal interests or narrow interests. Yes, true, because even amongst us as members of parliament there is a bit of lack of information. Other than us talking about misinformation and disinformation, when it comes to the technical details about internet and internet governance as a whole, we have very few. people who can speak up on that matter. So this is why we came up with the African Parliamentary Network on Internet Governance, so that we can bring together like-minded people to champion the issues of internet governance at the country level. Actually, as we speak now, in my country, although we have the ICT, the Internet Communications Technology Committee within parliament, their role is mainly to oversee, you know, oversight over the government programs and government policies, but that’s not all. We need to engage in advocacy. We need to see the challenges that the population is facing. We need to ensure that internet is affordable. We need to ensure that even as we speak now in my country, only about 29% of the people have access to internet. So we need to ensure that when we are even appropriating funds, we appropriate adequate funds so that the entire country can be covered. We have areas where we don’t have electricity as we speak now, even if, and we have areas where the telecom companies have not been able to invest in. So not the entire country is covered. There are areas you go to and you’re off internet. So these are some of the things that legislators must do. Appropriate funds, first of all, recognize the importance of this digital economy and know that it has a multiple economic benefit to the entire population if they are all connected. So we also must ensure that as part of the education curriculum, this whole technology, ICT, is taught to the children because that is also another challenge. We have a population that are a bit illiterate. We have people. with smartphones and they can’t use them. So there is a lot of work that still needs to be done in terms of digital literacy. And of course, engagement of the civil society, engagement of the government are all important. Other than just legislation, there’s a lot that we have to do as members of parliament. Thank you very much.

Nick Benequista:
Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m so glad you’ve been able to join us. And I have some follow-on questions. I’m going to come back to you for sure. I just want to turn to Camilo for a moment. Camilo joins us from Bolivia, from Internet Bolivia. As I said, he’s an Open Internet for Democracy fellow. And I think Camilo has a really interesting perspective to add. We’ve been talking primarily about legislation and policy at the national level, but Camilo has taken a different approach. He’s been working at the municipal level. And you don’t often think of internet governance and digital governance at the municipal level, but you have a strong view on this. So can you explain why the municipality is a good place to engage in Bolivia? And I think it’s on data privacy in particular, the issue that you’re working on. So if you could say a few words about your approach. Thanks.

Internet Bolivia Foundation:
Hi, thank you. Thank you, Nick. Thank you everyone for coming. Yes, actually, I’ve been working with Internet Bolivia Foundation. And I think that Bolivia Internet Foundation is working really well in municipality level and local levels. Because as you know, there’s no actually a regulation for protection and processing of personal data in Bolivia. But it doesn’t mean that we have to be unprotected. We shouldn’t be policies about that in local levels, right? We have like a really good news. I think we have, for instance, in Coroico, like it’s a small municipality in Bolivia. Recently, they have a policy about digitalization and data management, for example. And that makes me think that how you can really work in local levels, right? And then I decide to focus why and I think I have some reasonable reasons. I think that working in the municipality level, in local levels, have a very direct and deeply understanding what are the local needs, for example, in the communities. Because they are really close to the people, they can work with them. And in these terms, after the pandemics and after everything we throw the last years, I think that the digital access, the data protection, the internet usage, the data violence, the gender approach, having a very important things, right? And in the local levels, you can also work with them. Another thing is like maybe in some local regulations, they can be more faster and more effective. Because sometimes in the local, from a national perspective, for example, there is a lot more bureaucracy, you have to like many steps to do it. But sometimes in local levels, you can do like more effective and faster approach. And they are less bureaucratics. And in that sense, like the local policy can be even better than the national level, right? And sometimes I think that would be really easy for a local level to ensure really nice. policies in that sense. Also, I think that I have another reason that is about innovation and digital. In this topic, at least, I think that it provides to be like a pilot, I don’t know. Because, for example, as I mentioned in Coroico, they recently have this digitalization and data management regulation. And after it happened, many other municipalities wants the same. They contact Internet Bolivia, and they want to know what is this about, what they have it. So is it possible to have it at a local level? We don’t have to wait for the national level. So I think that’s a really nice entry point, because now they are interested, and they realize they can actually do some policy in digital rights from local perspective. And it’s possible, right? And also, I think I was thinking about how these local digital rights regulations can empower, actually, some local leaders also. Because sometimes, the local leaders are young, usually. Because the national policymakers usually are not that young as the local policymakers. So these local policymakers, if they are young and they are engaged in these digital topics, actually, they are very empowering about these topics. So I think that’s very interesting. And taking, again, the example of Coroico, I think that she’s like the major is like a woman. I see 30 years old, so she’s really young, and she’s really into these digital topics. And I think it was a really nice way to empowering her to know about this topic and to talk about that and to be like a really nice policy now. And also, I think that it’s really, I think the most important thing can be like the community involvement. Because I used to criticize a lot some local governments, because sometimes the local representatives in the national policymaking assemblies, for instance, they usually don’t live in the communities anymore. They just decide to move to the big cities and make local policies for them, but from big cities. And they don’t live in their local cities anymore. For example, if I am a policymaker in La Paz, for example, from a small town, but they decide to move to the big city in La Paz, but they are not more engaged in their local municipalities. And I think that doesn’t work. That’s why they don’t really do good policies in that term. But when you work in a municipality living from local perspective, that people is living there, they are with them every day, they can realize what they can do. And in that terms, I think that’s very interesting to work from a municipality entry level point. That’s great, Camilo. And I’m gonna go back to the Honorable Ms. Appendi in a moment to react to some of what you’ve said, but a quick follow-on question for you. It seems to me that you’ve probably learned a lot about what makes people care about digital policy issues. With so many pressing issues in a local community, what convinces people that data privacy of all things is something important? Yeah, I think it’s a nice because when we were working with Internet Bolivia in these local communities, we usually like to do some workshops and everything. And I think that is very important because if the people from the communities know about what we are gonna do, I think that is a really nice entry point to make them like this kind of policies about digital governance. Because sometimes people from small communities, they thought this is a really huge and big issue. But sometimes when you teach them and when they are engaged and we do workshops and we try to show them how it should improve, I think they are more engaged. And I usually like, for example, some communities we are working for, and I used to travel also around inside Bolivia since I work for Internet Bolivia. For example, in Villa Montes, there is a really nice community and you can work with them. These topics, just as soon as we arrived to Villa Montes, they know we are like Internet Bolivia Foundation and they just approached you and like, we want some workshops, we want to know something about digital rights. And they are really into this. So it’s really nice actually, because we are not imposing, they are asking to us to do it. to engage in these topics. And after just working with the communities, then the policy makers come, the government come and say, oh, what should we do? Because people is interested. And I think that is really interesting. And also, and I think it’s very important also that we have, for example, in Internet Bolivia, we have like a nice organization partner. And she works in Coroico, for example, or in Villa Montes, like all the time. And they are present there. I think that’s very important to not to be an NGO that just come there for a two or three focus group, for example. And then the policy makers know, and the people from the community know that this is just some guy or some organization that comes for like one week, two, three days just to do some observation work. Now they realize what we need. And I think that’s not a good entry point. But if you work continuously every week, or basically you live in the community, or you just work in different other topics, they usually engage with the topics we want. And that happened, I think, in Coroico, because in Coroico, I realized that people is really eager to these topics about digital violence, for example, because we’re constantly traveling there. And we also help them with another kind of topics like youth empowerment, for example. And it’s really interesting. And also now in Villa Montes and in Coroico in Bolivia, there are these small communities, but they are also working for regulation for youth, for example. But they are putting in these youth policies like the digital perspective, because they are young and we are living in a digital era. So now it’s like the digital perspective is gonna be in this regulation policy. So it doesn’t have to be also like digital regulation. It can be like the young regulation, youth empowerment regulation, but with a digital perspective.

Nick Benequista:
Great, thanks a lot, Camilo. I said one last question for you, Honorable Appendi, and then I’m gonna open up the floor for your questions. So those of us who are sitting behind, please come join the table. It’s a workshop, so we do at least where we can see you in case you have a question. And there’s plenty of chairs over here. So we’ve heard from the other panelists, different approaches to engaging with policymakers in the Philippines, taking advantage of the kind of formal structures of participation that the. Assembly there offers for participation, this municipal-level engagement that Camilo was describing, and in the case of Brazil, really building a strong network of civil society organizations in conjunction with allies in the Parliament and in the government over the course of many years to actually proactively put forward ideas for policy. I think a lot of the folks here are probably asking themselves, what is the best strategy? And I mean, I know it’s contextual, and it will vary, but what advice do you have for folks on how to think about how to start engaging with policymakers, bottom up, start here in this space and bring more parliamentarians, build the networks? I mean, there’s many options, but what do you think works? In my view, the way we are structured in my country, in Uganda, is that we have a national

Sarah Opendi:
parliament, members of parliament are elected from the grassroots, but also at local government we have elected leaders at the district level and the sub-county level, but also aware that connectivity is still low and access to internet a little limited. As I said, only 29% of the population currently have full access to internet. The best way is to engage members of parliament. It should be a top-bottom approach. And why I’m saying that is because when you move to the local government level, while at the national level we have the ICT committee that does oversight over issues of internet, when you get down to the local government level, that kind of committee is missing and therefore it is the members of Parliament who should be the link to the lower local governments and that’s why I’m opting for the top bottom approach but also as I did indicate awareness creation among members of Parliament is key but also arming the members of Parliament with the key information is also very important we are now talking here about issues of artificial intelligence about other than a few members of Parliament reading about it I’m not sure that we are even one third that know the details about the challenges and the benefits of artificial intelligence so it’s important for the civil site organizations aware that they are also grassroots best and they pick views from the grassroots it’s important that they pick this information whatever information they have and all those other technical information and bring it to the members of Parliament and then we can be able to champion this but also the other thing is to ensure that at the parliamentary level actually as we speak now I am trying to create a parliamentary network on internet governance a forum a parliamentary forum on internet governance so that we can have this away from the ICT committee we need to have members of Parliament who can be champions on issues of internet governance so this to me is the way to go because then when you have this forum which is not the official parliamentary forum then we can be able to handle issues of advocacy and deal freely with the civil society organization so that is to me the way to go thank you very much that’s great that that forum a

Nick Benequista:
little bit separated from the kind of official policy-making bodies gives more freedom to engage it’s away from the usual committees because their work is

Sarah Opendi:
structured in a certain way that’s a terrific piece of advice great I’d like

Nick Benequista:
to open up the floor you questions also experiences if you have of some lessons learned down at the end. Is there a, oh, Herman, is there a microphone in front of you there? I think the camera, they probably prefer that you grab a microphone and be at the table. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

Audience:
This is Herman Lopez from the board of the Judges Standing Group of the Internet Society. Thank you very much for your explanations. It’s really good to see different perspectives from the global South on how to coordinate between a more local level and a more national level. But I wanted to ask the panelist speakers, maybe what like practical advice should we take when we do that coordination? I particularly work in many advocacy issues with the Colombian Congress, but it’s usually very difficult to translate those discussions that are happening in the capital city, in Bogotá, to other places. So I would like to know in your own experience how you’re able to better do that, because sometimes what happen is that issues get lost in translation when they’re coming from the local level to the national level. Sometimes issues end up changing a lot, but also the other way around, when the government from the national level is trying to do things in the local level, it also changes. So what can we do to kind of preserve the message and preserve the idea that was originally intended? So thank you very much.

Nick Benequista:
Great, I’ll take another couple of questions. Yeah, go ahead, Tobe-Kile, and then Claire.

Audience:
Thank you so much for the reflections there. I will come in and just share an experience from our end. My name is Tobe-Kile Matimbe and I work for Paradigm Initiative. We work across Africa promoting digital rights and digital inclusion. And a few years back, what we did as Paradigm Initiative is we came up with a draft digital rights bill, which we introduced within the Nigerian parliament. And we were able to collaborate with some parliamentarians who were able to help us push forward that digital rights bill. But unfortunately, after it had sailed through, you know, with Parliament, it then was not assented to by the President. So I’m just curious in terms of how we can collaborate in terms of effective, not, I don’t want to use the word lobbying, but effective, you know, pushing for laws to be enacted and how that process works. I will also just possibly direct this question to the Honourable Minister, Honourable Member of Parliament from Uganda in terms of what the recommendation would be with regards to how we can effectively see the enactment of digital rights enabling legislation in view of that. And also in other jurisdictions that we work in, we’ve noted that as well. We have a challenge where we might engage with members of Parliament, but then what happens is that when a political party has a certain view on something, no matter how much you engage with a member of Parliament, the outcome of that possible engagement and collaboration with a member of Parliament might be futile because at the end of the day, even if you sort of like in principle agree on what needs to happen with regards to policy, the pushback comes from the political parties that members of Parliament come from. So what would be the way forward in that respect? Great, thanks. Claire, go ahead and introduce yourself first. Thank you. My name is Claire Mohindo from Uganda, and it’s good to hear from the Honourable Minister from Motherland. Supplementary to what she mentioned about parliamentary forums, and I’m really glad she’s mentioned that they are planning to set up a parliamentary forum because from experience on advocacy and different issues, parliamentary forums have been very key in educating members of Parliament on key issues, especially, but also to help build a of champions on key issues. So it’s a good thing to hear that they’re planning to come up with a parliamentary forum on internet governance. I’m curious to know how far that has gone, at what stage have you reached in terms of setting up that forum. Also to pick on lessons from my engagement with the Uganda Media Sector Working Group, which is a coalition of stakeholders from the media industry, academia, government, the media council, and the ministry of ICT. What we’ve been doing is to organize sessions where we educate people on different laws that have been passed, even those that we don’t agree with, but to create awareness, create messages, and break down things to help people understand them. So it would be nice to know how far the parliamentary forum setting up process has gone so that we can see how to collaborate and see how to work with the members of parliament. Thanks. I’m going to go

Nick Benequista:
back to the panelists now, because otherwise we’re going to run out of time. So there’s Herman’s question about the mismatch between the local and the national level. From Nigeria, what happens, how do you do effective lobbying? It’s a bit of a swing and a miss there. And what happens when it gets politicized, when you end up with real strong political opposition from one side to your proposal? And Claire, how is this parliamentary committee, sorry, this parliamentary forum, I should say, developing? So I know many missed, yeah, do you want to start with the responses

Sarah Opendi:
there? And then you guys as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Maybe I’ll begin with the parliamentary forum. We’ve written to the speaker and we’re still waiting for a response because certainly the speaker must agree to either being a patron or not. So That’s where we are. Otherwise we have membership drawn from different political parties. So we’ll certainly let you know once we are done with that. And of course, this has all arisen because of the various engagements or meetings that I have attended. And I’m busy out here while in country within parliament. There is not much work that is being done. So it is actually something that I have championed as myself aware that it’s quite important to have that advocacy. And of course, moving to my sister, she was talking about the challenges of the politics around some of these bills that come in parliament in relation to internet or the digital bills. But I want to just tell you that once you have champions, irrespective of which political party they belong to, they will stick to what they believe is right and what should be done. And that’s why it’s important during this whole process when you have a bill before parliament, you need to identify champions. And if a bill has moved through the processes and the president has not assented, when you have people in parliament convinced that that bill is important, they will still stick to that. In my country, we’ve had bills that have gone to the president and the president has not assented to them and returned them. And the law says when the president returns and parliament returns it to the president and the president returns it again and parliament returns for the second time, it becomes law. For as long as we do not change our position. So the most important thing first is to convince members of parliament. that the provisions in that bill are correct. And once, but also the population, because it’s the population that puts pressure also on members of parliament. So when they hear all these voices from the population, urging their members of parliament to stick to certain provisions or to stick to this law and they want that law, definitely the members of parliament will act. So do not just engage the members of parliament. As civil society also engage the population so that the voices can come from down and put pressure on members of parliament. And then they’ll be able to move irrespective of the president’s position, irrespective of the political party’s position, the members will stick to that bill that they believe is the correct one and has majority support from the population. So that is just my advice. Do not lose hope. If the bill was returned, engage members of parliament, go and engage the population, put pressure on their members of parliament. I think the other was from the gentleman who was asking how we can move from the national to the local level. One of the ways is once you have members of parliament armed with the necessary information and you have the members of parliament, like the forum I’m talking about, then you can engage the population through radios. We have radio talk shows, for example, as the Uganda Women’s Parliamentary Association, we have certain bills that we are working on like the marriage bill in my country, it’s over 100 years, 1905. So what we do is to go out, you may not reach every community, but when you get to the different radio stations in different regions, you reach out to a wider audience, sensitize them so that they can understand, but also they can call in and you get the views from them. The other is to engage, for example, we have local governments in my country. my country, at the district level and at the subcounty level. You can engage those local government leaders, equip them with the relevant information, so that they can also reach down and speak to the population. So those are some of the things that can be done. Thank you very much. Thanks very much.

Nick Benequista:
So we’re running short on time. I just wanted to give you guys each a couple of minutes to respond to the three questions. Lisa, do you want to start? We’re not going to be, I think, unfortunately, time won’t allow for another question, but stick around. I’m sure there’ll be an opportunity for us to chat informally, too. Yeah, okay.

Liza Garcia:
That disconnect between the community and at the national level, as I mentioned earlier, it’s not just engagement with legislators that we do. Engagement with the community is also important, and that’s one of the things that we do. We have whole discussions with groups within the community, and also, I agree actually with the honorable opinion that engagement with the local government works, because in our case, for instance, if there are certain laws that are difficult to pass, it would take years, years, even decades for some laws to be passed. But if you engage with the local government, they can pass policies. For instance, this policy on anti-discrimination, some cities have passed this, and yeah, it did not have to pass through national legislation. There’s also the role of social media. Of course, we need to engage individuals wherever, in whichever platform they are, so it’s important to engage them in that area, provide them with information about digital rights issues. And then we also do some, we do partnerships with different groups. For instance, in the case of, we’re doing some campaign on this information for people to understand what it is all about, so we partnered actually with artists, with comic artists. They came up with a series of comics explaining what this information is all about, and then why it’s bad for you, et cetera, and not just that, we published it on social media. we also hold exhibits in different areas for people to understand what it is all about. Because sometimes, you know, people, it’s difficult if you just give them, if you have these long researches that you have, people won’t read that. So the visual thing, and if it’s short, then that’s something that they would read. And also engagement with the media. If you want to hype your issue, then go to the media. So there’s also a wider reach to the public.

Nick Benequista:
Great. Camilo? Okay. I know we don’t have so much time.

Internet Bolivia Foundation:
So I would just like to say that I truly believe in the community level working. And I would like just to highlight what the Honorable Minister says. I think we should have key champions in some issues. But also, I think we should have municipality or local communities champions in some special topics. And that can be a really nice way to work and show other local communities how some nice regulations could be done.

Fernanda Kalianny Martins Sousa:
Final word to Fernanda. Oh, gosh. Really good questions. I think one of the challenges that we have is to connect international, national, and local levels. So at Internet Lab in the last year, because of the elections, we had the opportunity to have part of articulation room against disinformation. And I think it was really important because in this articulation, we don’t have only digital rights organizations, but also different ONGs related to human rights in general in the country. And considering the size of Brazil, we know that it’s not enough that people in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro are talking about digital rights. in the process to approve laws and regulate platforms. So when we work together with CSOs of different fields in the country and different fields in the global South, I think we have the opportunity to pushing for laws, but not only pushing to pressure the big techs, pressure the different companies that are affecting our way of life. So one example to finalize is the law that we have in Brazil against political gender-based violence. And we are using all the structures that the state give us. And so, for example, we have a min-reform each year, not each year. After the election, we have a min-reform and election min-reform. And we are trying to approve in this min-reform some points related to this law that is connected also to hate speech online against women. So we are trying all the time occupy the structures that exist and create new structures. And I think it’s not possible if we don’t work together with different stakeholders. So thank you, Nick. Thank you guys.

Nick Benequista:
Look, thanks very much to our panelists today. I have to say, this is my first IGF and I’m a little biased, but I feel like this panel has given me a little bit of hope. There’s a lot of really amazing work. It’s really substantive. It’s very specific. There’s real results here. And for my colleagues at CIPE, SEMA, NDI, obviously you can be in touch directly with the panelists up here, but is there some way to kind of stay in touch with this conversation about parliamentary engagement? How should people, what should they be looking out for, I suppose? Any final recommendations from our colleagues on how to stay in touch? Hello? This is Daniel O’Malley from the Center for International Media. assistance. And yeah, I think this is a really great panel. I learned a lot listening. And I think if people are interested in this type of engagement with parliamentarians and policymakers at the national, international and local level, just reach out to me or come talk to Anna, because this is a topic that we’re quite interested in, because we think that it is an opportunity to promote digital rights in this broader context where we know that internet freedom is slipping. And so we need to work on all levers of government and to, as Fernando was saying, use the mechanisms we have and create new mechanisms. So yeah, I would say just reach out to us and stay in touch. And thank you everyone for showing up at 8.30 in the morning. Indeed. And to those online, thanks for joining as well. We had a pretty good number of participants. So look, round of applause for our panelists and for yourselves. Thanks very much, everybody.

Online Moderator

Young producers in certain areas of the global South have successfully accessed the copyright framework, enabling them to develop professional content and enhance the value of intellectual property within their companies. This has allowed them to fund employee payment and content development. These young producers have mastered the necessary knowledge to support their activities in professional content production.

Local content creation in minority languages contributes significantly to cultural and linguistic diversity. Companies in Uganda, for example, create content in local languages that reflect people’s lives, ensuring representation and preventing the marginalisation or disappearance of these languages. It highlights the importance of using local languages for content creation to maintain cultural and linguistic diversity.

However, there is a significant disparity between broadband pricing and the spending power of local people. This issue arises when locals exhaust their data bundles before finishing a series, indicating a problem with supply and demand adequacy. Additionally, the quality and reliability of the signal pose challenges to accessing affordable and reliable broadband services. These factors limit digital access and create inequalities in internet access.

To address these challenges, it is necessary to continue deploying reliable infrastructure with a range of pricing options. This ensures digital inclusion and equitable access to affordable and reliable broadband services. Expanding the infrastructure and offering different pricing options reduce the digital divide.

Content creators face the struggle of finding a sustainable model to continue their mission of educating and engaging people on various social issues. If creators fail to find buyers in the streaming environment, they may experience market failure, leading to potential loss of valuable content.

The entry of large American streamers into some markets has triggered competition, providing content creators with more opportunities for funding. Increased competition expands the market and offers content creators additional avenues for financial support. This positive development empowers creators to seek funding from a wider range of sources, leading to more diverse and varied content.

Believing in the potential of sustainable audiovisual production businesses at the SME level, it is acknowledged that local content creators can address different market segments based on the local cultural and socioeconomic factors. This indicates the viability of building sustainable businesses in the audiovisual production industry, even at the SME level. By catering to specific local markets, content creators can create career tracks that align with the unique needs and interests of their target audience.

In conclusion, accessing the copyright framework and developing professional content allows young producers to build the value of intellectual property within their companies. Local content creation in minority languages contributes to cultural and linguistic diversity. The mismatch between broadband pricing and the spending power of local people hinders digital inclusion. Continued efforts are required to deploy reliable infrastructure with affordable pricing options. Content creators strive to find sustainable models to continue their impactful work, and the presence of large American streamers triggers competition, expanding funding opportunities. Building sustainable audiovisual production businesses at the SME level is seen as a promising avenue, offering the potential to address different market segments and create career tracks based on local cultural and socioeconomic factors.

LANTERI Paolo

The analysis of the arguments regarding copyright law and its impact on various industries reveals several key points. Firstly, copyright has adapted to technological advancements, allowing users unprecedented access to a wide range of content. Users now have the ability to access numerous fields of content, including music, sports events, user-generated content (UGC), and news. While not everything is perfect, copyright has successfully evolved to keep pace with technology.

Secondly, the content creator industry is in better shape than it was a decade ago. However, there are differences between sectors such as music, press, video games, and others. Despite these variations, the overall situation is more positive compared to ten years ago. The industry has experienced growth and improvement, suggesting that copyright protection has played a role in supporting the industry’s development.

Thirdly, copyright laws have evolved and become more flexible in recent years. Many countries, including the US, Australia, UK, South Africa, and Nigeria, have made significant changes to their copyright norms. These changes reflect a recognition of the need to update copyright legislation to accommodate technological advancements and address the challenges posed by the digital landscape.

Furthermore, copyright has proven its ability to serve diverse initiatives such as open access, open-source licensing, and user-generated content. This was seen as a challenge a decade ago, but it has now been demonstrated that copyright is flexible enough to support these initiatives. Platforms like TikTok, Meta, and Vista now enable legal user-generated content, despite disagreements over monetisation.

Another notable finding is that streaming, which was initially thought to destroy the music industry, now constitutes a significant part of the music market. In 2013, streaming was seen as a threat, but currently, 63% of the music market is digital. This highlights the transformative impact of streaming and its role in reshaping the music industry.

The analysis also suggests that the North-South debate in terms of content creation and cultural production is outdated. Countries in the Global South, including Brazil, Cuba, Indonesia, South Korea, and various African countries, are creating and exporting meaningful cultural and creative content. This challenges the traditional power dynamics of content production, showcasing the growth and diversity of creative industries in these regions.

Technology has played a crucial role in enabling access to local content, education, news, and serving the language diaspora. People can now easily access top-notch content produced in their home countries, facilitated by advancements in technology and content accessibility.

It is highlighted that maintaining copyright protection is critical to incentivise investment in professionally created content. Without copyright, the investments made in producing high-budget films, video games, and paying journalist salaries would be undermined.

Copyright laws are also shown to play a significant role in safeguarding the sports and gaming industry. As the industry has grown rapidly in the past decade, copyright laws have provided crucial control and protection for sports events, ensuring that the industry remains financially viable and sustainable.

Notably, there is a blurring demarcation between producer and distributor, with platforms like Netflix producing and distributing their own content. This blurring of roles raises important questions about the relationship between creators, distributors, and consumers in the digital era.

The analysis also reveals the importance of engineers in operationalising business deals and implementing technological advancements. Engineers are crucial in managing complex tasks such as revenue sharing and user identification, which are essential for the success of digital enterprises.

Additionally, the analysis highlights the need to protect youth creators and their works from being exploited without their consent or attribution. Copyright laws provide this protection, although effective enforcement relies on the use of appropriate technologies.

The analysis further demonstrates that user-generated content and derivative works are often covered and regulated by platforms’ terms of use. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Meta have practices in place to address copyright concerns and ensure compliance with copyright laws.

Another insightful finding is that translation of literature requires permission from the author, as translation becomes a derivative work that can be commercially exploited. While some see translation as a financial opportunity, others emphasise its role in spreading knowledge and cultural exchange.

Regarding the issue of subscription fee stagnation versus increased content, it is highlighted that the current model may not be sustainable. Digital media services have been offering more content while keeping subscription fees similar for over a decade. This raises questions about the long-term viability of this business model.

In conclusion, the analysis demonstrates that copyright law has evolved and adapted to technological advancements. It has facilitated access to a wide range of content and has contributed to the growth and development of various industries. However, there are still challenges and areas for improvement. The findings highlight the need to continue updating copyright legislation, protecting the rights of creators, incentivising investment in professionally created content, and ensuring a fair and sustainable digital environment for all stakeholders.

Geoff Huston

In the last decade, the Internet has undergone a significant transformation due to the evolution of mobile phones and their convenience. Mobile telephony has surpassed traditional telephony, leading to a transformation of the Internet. With the introduction of mobile Internet devices, such as the iPhone, the Internet has evolved from a library to a thriving entertainment business.

This transformation has resulted in a booming global market of internet users, with billions of people now connected to the Internet. The network infrastructure has been rebuilt using content distribution techniques, ensuring that content is readily available to users, making access to content more convenient than ever before.

However, despite these advancements, the Internet has not evolved into the egalitarian platform initially envisioned for content creation. Instead of empowering individuals to become content publishers, the Internet has given rise to powerful intermediaries, such as Google and Akamai, who aggregate, license, and distribute content. These intermediaries dominate the industry by delivering uniform content to a global market.

The digital content industry is highly unpredictable and constantly reinvents itself every five years. Rapid technological advancements render business plans quickly outdated. This fluid environment poses both challenges and opportunities for businesses in this industry.

It is important to note that the Internet was built as a market response rather than a universal service. Unlike the telephone system, which prioritized universal service, the development of the Internet was driven by market demand. This approach has resulted in a focus on targeting higher-income consumers who are perceived as more lucrative for the tech industry.

However, there is hope for a more universal access to the Internet in the future. Advancements in technology have made it cheaper and more accessible, potentially enabling broader internet access. Initiatives such as Starlink, which aims to provide high-speed connectivity to remote areas, are bridging the digital divide.

Other projects, like Project Kuiper, are also using space spectrum to provide internet coverage. These projects, combined with technological innovations, have the potential to improve internet coverage in rural and remote areas.

The digital industry offers the ability to customize and diversify products and services within a larger ecosystem. Unlike traditional industries like the auto and telephone industries, which scaled through uniformity, the digital industry allows for personalized offerings to individual markets.

In conclusion, the evolution of mobile phones and their convenience have transformed the Internet and expanded its user base. However, challenges remain in terms of content distribution and ensuring equal access for all. Technological advancements, initiatives like Starlink, and ongoing projects offer hope for bridging the digital divide and making the Internet more accessible to everyone. Additionally, the digital industry opens up opportunities for customization and diversity, creating a dynamic and fast-paced landscape.

Stella Anne Ming Hui Teoh

Device sharing has become a significant barrier to network access in Malaysia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many households have been forced to share just one device due to limited resources, resulting in connectivity issues. Usage prioritisation within households further exacerbates the problem, as it determines who gets access to the device. This unfortunate circumstance has had a negative impact on individuals’ ability to stay connected and engaged during these challenging times. The situation has hindered SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).

In relation to copyright concerns, there is worry about the lack of recognition and credit for content created by young individuals and shared online. Original content created by youth often becomes part of larger programs through algorithms, but the creators may not receive appropriate credit for their work. These issues raise concerns about intellectual property rights and the fair treatment of young content creators, undermining SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).

While Japan’s influence on Southeast Asia’s copyright and intellectual property laws is neutral, it is important to acknowledge the impact Japan has had in shaping these laws, particularly in relation to SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an online presence has offered significant opportunities for connection. However, there is growing concern regarding unethical practices such as the translation and monetisation of someone else’s intellectual content by digital natives. Some individuals take advantage of the online space by appropriating intellectual work without official approval. This unethical translation and monetisation of others’ content raises discussions about plagiarism, improper crediting, and fairness in the digital world. These issues hinder SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions).

In conclusion, device sharing poses a major hurdle to network access in Malaysia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns about copyright and credit for content created by young individuals have emerged. Japan’s influence on Southeast Asia’s copyright and intellectual property laws remains neutral but noteworthy. Additionally, unethical translation and monetisation of intellectual content by digital natives is a growing concern. Efforts are needed to address these issues, ensuring fair access to network resources, protecting intellectual property rights, and promoting ethical practices in the digital sphere.

Moderator

Over the past decade, the growth and success of internet video have been remarkable. Streaming services have become easily accessible, and live streaming has become possible, allowing people to share moments in real-time across great distances. This advancement in technology has made streaming video over the internet a common practice that can be done by anyone without needing permission or specialized equipment.

The management of IP rights has also witnessed significant progress over the past decade. Initially, there were concerns about how IP rights would be managed in the digital age. However, efficient and effective collaboration among stakeholders has led to improved IP rights management. Stakeholders, who initially had conflicts, have come together to ensure the proper management of IP rights, leading to a positive outcome.

Copyright laws have successfully evolved with the internet and have adapted well to the digital revolution. Many believed that copyright would not withstand the digital revolution, but it has proved its strength. Users now have unprecedented access to a wide range of content, and legislative reforms have taken place globally to adapt copyright to the digital landscape. Copyright laws have succeeded in incentivizing the creation of content and ensuring access to it. The copyright system has not only withstood the digital revolution but has also contributed to the growth of user-generated content, open access, and streaming.

The shift in content creation over the past decade has been drastic. Content is no longer a monolith, and everyone now has the ability to create content. The tools to create content have multiplied exponentially, including AI tools and augmented reality. This shift has resulted in a diverse range of content being produced and made available on the internet.

The relationship between the internet and copyright has been collaborative. Despite initial concerns and challenges, the internet and copyright have managed to coexist and maintain a healthy relationship. Both have found ways to adapt and work together, ensuring the protection of intellectual property while allowing for the free flow and accessibility of content.

Efforts to improve the internet for efficient content creation and consumption have been ongoing. Users now demand more interactive content, particularly video, which has led to the need for more efficient networks. The work on making the internet more efficient has been a priority in the past decade.

However, challenges still remain. The digital divide continues to exist, with developing nations lacking the necessary infrastructure for widespread and quality internet access. Internet connectivity is a critical aspect of content creation, and without robust infrastructure, the global South struggles to effectively create and upload content to the internet.

The industry has seen rapid transformation due to technological advances. The sports and gaming industries, in particular, have gained a wider global audience. The video games industry, in particular, has experienced significant growth, with revenue projections of over 200 billion US dollars this year. The success of these industries is closely tied to intellectual property rights, and their business models have shifted from hardware-based to online, global, interactive gaming.

Throughout the discussions, there was an emphasis on the role of first responders and engineers. Their contributions to the industry were highly appreciated, and there were calls to give them more recognition and appreciation. Moreover, there were discussions about the need for more resilient networks in the Global South to support content creation and ensure equal access to the internet.

In conclusion, over the past decade, there have been significant advancements in internet video, IP rights management, and copyright laws. The shift in content creation has been remarkable, with the internet and copyright successfully coexisting and adapting to changes in the digital landscape. Efforts to improve the efficiency of the internet for content creation and consumption have been ongoing. However, challenges such as the digital divide and the need for better copyright protection remain. The industry has been transformed by technological advances, and the sports and gaming industries have gained a wider global audience. The contributions of first responders and engineers were highly appreciated, and there were calls for more resilient networks in the Global South. Overall, the discussions highlighted the progress made in various aspects of the industry and the importance of continued collaboration and innovation.

Konstantinos Komaitis

The relationship between the internet and copyright has proven to be healthy and adaptable, despite occasional disputes. Both entities have managed to coexist and adapt in the evolving environment. Despite initial concerns that the internet would harm copyright, it has been demonstrated that they can work together.

Content creation has become more accessible to everyone, thanks to technological advancements. Tools such as AI and augmented reality have opened up new possibilities for creators. User-generated content and influencer content are now integral parts of the copyright regime, which was once exclusive. This expansion of content creation has led to a more diverse and inclusive network.

Connectivity availability is a crucial factor in content creation. In order to create content, individuals need access to the internet. The increasing availability of smartphones has made it easier for more people to create content due to improved internet access. However, there is still a significant digital divide that needs to be addressed, particularly in the Global South. In order to foster more content creation in these regions, resilient networks and improved connectivity are necessary.

Industries and policymakers should take into account user demand and adapt accordingly. The evolution of technology and policy in the internet industry is largely driven by the demands and preferences of users. It is essential to listen to these demands and innovate accordingly to meet the needs of users. This user-centric approach contributes to the overall development and success of the internet industry.

The market will ultimately determine the survival of streaming services. Competition in the streaming industry is fierce, and the content offered plays a significant role in determining the success or failure of such services. Subscription service prices are also factors that influence the market. Some services may thrive and attract a large user base, while others may struggle to survive or even collapse quickly. The capacity to support the content being sold is another critical factor in the long-term sustainability of streaming services.

In conclusion, the relationship between the internet and copyright is dynamic. Despite occasional tensions, both entities have managed to coexist and adapt together. Technological advancements have made content creation more accessible, but connectivity still remains a challenge, particularly in the Global South. Taking into account user demand is crucial for industries and policymakers to stay relevant and meet the needs of users. Ultimately, the market will determine the survival of streaming services, with content and engineering playing a significant role in their success.

Glenn Deen

The internet has made significant advancements in handling video content over the past decade. Initially, there were only a few streaming services and video was primarily for thousands of viewers, not millions. However, as the demand for video content increased, more data was required. Today, video over the internet is commonplace and does not require special permissions or setups. Additionally, live streaming capabilities have allowed people to broadcast their experiences in real-time, opening up a new frontier in video over the internet.

While video on demand has made progress, live video over the internet still has room for growth. Examples of live broadcasting include sporting events or personal moments like a child’s soccer game. This indicates that there are opportunities for further development in this area.

The evolution of the internet has positively impacted the content creation and distribution industries. It has become a platform for next-generation streaming, with the quality of video evolving from standard definition to high definition and now 4K. Improvements in codecs and network transports have increased efficiency and reduced latency, providing a better user experience.

Efforts have been made to bridge the North-South divide in internet infrastructure, but more improvement is needed. The internet has been re-engineered to scale inclusively and allow diverse interactions for content creators.

The continuous evolution of internet technologies presents exciting opportunities and challenges. While investments in these technologies have resolved previously feared problems, new challenges such as latency have emerged. However, innovation in IP networks and frameworks has allowed businesses to thrive and adapt.

The user base of the internet has expanded, shifting from primarily computer scientists to a wider spectrum of creators, viewers, and market participants. This evolution has changed who the internet is designed for and has led to market frameworks that encourage exchange and payment for content.

The internet has made content creation more accessible and affordable. New tools, such as smartphone applications, have allowed for cinematic-quality video capture and processing, eliminating the need for expensive professional equipment.

Glenn Deen, one of the trustees managing the copyrights on all technical standards produced by the ITF, highlights pre-enabled translation permissions for ITF standards. This supports the translation and free access to informational resources, aligning with the goals of quality education and reduced inequalities.

Overall, the internet has successfully scaled to handle video content and has positively impacted various industries. While live video broadcasting still has room to grow, the evolution of internet technologies presents both opportunities and challenges. The user base has expanded, and market frameworks have emerged for content exchange and payment. Additionally, the internet has made content creation more accessible and innovations have facilitated the translation and free access to informational resources.

Audience

The discussions centred around different aspects of internet and technology, emphasising the importance of considering users’ needs and desires when improving these areas. One major concern highlighted was the lack of access to high-quality connectivity, especially in underserved areas. It was noted that approximately 2.6 billion people are still without internet access and meaningful connectivity, which highlights the existence of a digital divide that needs to be addressed.

Mobile technologies, particularly smartphones, were identified as crucial devices for rural communities to access digital content and resources. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, while there is limited access to computers, almost everyone uses smartphones. As a result, smartphone-friendly content, such as adjustable-font textbooks and lightweight videos, has been developed specifically for these communities, enabling them to access valuable information and educational materials.

The significance of localised content in the Kyrgyz language was also emphasised as an important factor in enhancing content accessibility and user-friendliness. Local stars were mentioned for voicing translated science materials, making them more user-friendly than the original versions. Prioritising the Kyrgyz language in content creation is essential for tailoring resources to the needs of the local community.

Copyright restrictions were identified as a major obstacle to digitising and sharing educational resources, particularly in Kyrgyzstan. While the Ministry of Education owns paid books, it does not hold the copyright, which belongs to the authors. Consequently, these copyright restrictions prevented the digitisation of existing textbooks for digital distribution, hindering the widespread dissemination of educational materials.

However, the utilisation of Creative Commons materials was recognised as a helpful solution in the absence of the ability to share copyrighted content. Due to copyright restrictions, finding copyright-free Creative Commons materials that could be translated into the Kyrgyz language was easier. These materials were sourced from globally available resources such as GSMA’s toolkit and Microsoft’s materials, enabling the creation of accessible and valuable content.

The impact of technology on content creation and consumption was deemed an important issue. The shift from the traditional library model of the internet to an entertainment model was discussed, highlighting the rapid technological advancements that consistently reshape the landscape every three to five years. The role of user-generated content and open-source platforms in shaping the market positively was also emphasised. However, concerns were raised about the cannibalisation of editorial intermediaries by platform intermediaries, prompting further examination of these dynamics.

One participant in the discussions questioned whether there is a failure in democracy rather than the market in relation to platform intermediaries. The critical role of platform intermediaries was stressed, along with speculation that these platforms may be contributing to the creation of social monads, potentially impacting societal dynamics.

The discussions also raised questions from the audience. One question addressed copyright rules on Instagram when uploading personal audio tracks to reels, indicating a concern about copyright infringement on social media platforms. Another question raised the issue of educating youth about copyright best practices, highlighting the need for efforts to raise awareness and promote responsible behaviours regarding intellectual property rights.

In conclusion, the discussions provided valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities related to internet and technology. Addressing the needs and desires of users, particularly in underserved areas, is crucial for improvement. The importance of mobile technologies and localised content in enhancing accessibility and user-friendliness was emphasised. Copyright restrictions posed obstacles to digitising and sharing educational resources, necessitating alternative solutions such as Creative Commons materials. The impact of technology on content creation and consumption, including concerns about platform intermediaries, democracy, content quality, and economic sustainability, called for further examination. Overall, the discussions shed light on the complexities and multifaceted nature of internet and technology-related issues.

Moderator:
Yep. Okay. All right. No. All right. We’ll just get started and we’ll have people join as they can, realizing we’re dealing with a global interest. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our panel this morning. This is a discussion we had 10 years ago in IGF in Bali in 2013. I’m really excited to have it today, because there’s so much that has happened, and a lot of it we didn’t predict, but yet the Internet was happy to take on all the new excitement of the next 10 years that we had from 2013 to 2023, and we’re going to discuss how we’re going to manage it going forward. So the key questions we’re going to discuss today are where were we 10 years ago, where are we now, and where are we headed, and how is the forward planning that brought us into the healthy, vibrant ecosystem that we are currently enjoying going to bring us forward on this? So today on my panel, I have next to me Glenn Dean, who is a distinguished engineer at Comcast NBC Universal, Paolo Lanteri, who is at the World Intellectual Property Organization, and I’ve got Konstantinos, who is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Society and was a senior director at the Internet Society, and Jeff Houston is on… You can correct that if you need to. Jeff Houston is with the chief scientist at APNIC, who should be online joining us, and then eventually we’re going to come over to Stella over here, who is studying governance and policy and is with netmission.asia. So thank you all for joining us this morning. Let’s start off… Glenn, we’re going to start with you. So what have we learned in the past 10 years, and what do you think are the dominant issues that really helped the Internet and the network infrastructure grow in that 10 years?

Glenn Deen:
Thanks, Shane. Gee, that’s an interesting question. You know, 10 years ago when we did the Bali panel, it was really early days in terms of Internet video. We had… Some streaming services were popping up. We had sort of the initial foray into scaling the Internet to handle content with millions of viewers instead of thousands of viewers, and I think that looking back, we met those challenges pretty effectively. You know, despite dressing up today trying to blend in with the adults here at the IGF, I am an Internet engineer, and from an engineering perspective, we had a lot of challenges back then. Video takes a lot of data. Video is a lot of data, and as you add more video, you have even more data on the network, and as you add more video, you add more watchers, and that’s even more data on the network, and we’ve scaled the networks very effectively in the last 10 years to the point where we don’t really ask the question, can I do video over the Internet anymore? We don’t ask the question, can we do video easily between us? I can now walk down the street here in Kyoto, and I can live stream back to my family in Los Angeles. That’s remarkable that I can do that over the Internet, and I don’t have to ask anybody’s permission, and I don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops, or I don’t need a crew to do it. I just use my phone, and that’s quite remarkable, so I think that looking back from where we were at 10 years ago to where we’re at today, it’s a success story from an engineering standpoint. That’s my area. That’s who I can talk to. We’ve succeeded. We’re not done. There’s new stuff ahead. One of the big changes that we’re going to be talking about, and I’ll talk about this a little bit later, is we’ve done a very great job at video on demand, which is typically prerecorded movies and television shows from a professional standpoint, and the next frontier is live stuff, live sporting events, live broadcasting your child’s soccer game to your grandparents who are at home in maybe another state or another country, and bringing live to the experience of streaming and video on the Internet, but we’ll talk about more of that in a few minutes, I think.

Moderator:
Great. Paolo, you have been working in this space for quite some time, and there was a lot of concern about how IP rights were going to get managed back then. It just seems like you have done a very efficient, effective job of getting the collaboration of a lot of people who didn’t want to get along 10 years ago. Talk about your success.

LANTERI Paolo:
Thanks. Thanks a lot. Good morning, everyone. I rarely start my intervention with an apology, but given the context, I must do that. On top of being an international civil servant, I’m a lawyer, an IP lawyer, so I try to keep myself understandable, and I’m heavily jet lagged, and it’s 8.35 in Japan. You do that to handicap the lawyers. So the situation 10 years ago was a completely different one. We were very cautious, and the best we could get out of that discussion was that copyright was still relevant for promoting content, but needed to adapt. Put it in other words, it was evolve or perish, basically. And among many people at the IGF, secretly or sometimes openly, I think the majority were sort of hoping towards, lagging towards the second option, like they were thinking that copyright was going to not resist to the technological evolution, or in any case could not stand through the evolution of the Internet. I think 10 years later, we can all agree at least on two points. We’re not saying everything is perfect, but copyright didn’t perish, still here, and users had as an unprecedented access to the widest variety of content in all sorts of fields, meaning even on like live music and sports events, UGC, news, fake or quality news, news, anything, anything. So basically we can, that’s already an answer, copyright didn’t stand in the way of the healthy development of distributional content. I’m not saying everything is perfect, but there are still many challenges, but copyright succeeded to deliver, continue delivering the mission of incentivizing creation of content, and therefore access to it, and went through this natural selection process, almost Darwinian memories, I think matured from many lessons learned, but also stronger and reinforced, because the content creator industry is in much better shape compared to 10 years ago. Here I must make a disclaimer that not industries are the same, so it’s not the same talking to the music industry than the press industry, or like publishing, or video games, of course, and among those sectors there are different players, so again, it’s not the same talking to music producer or assessment musician. How did we do that? Of course there was a development, an evolution that was much needed, it happened, it was revolutionary, and covered several aspects. One, from a norm-setting perspective, we had unprecedented changes in the norms, in legislation, nothing similar happened in the past. Copyright reforms were at the table of legislators all over the world for the, and still are, was a headache of legislator. Countless directives at European level, music modernization acting in the US, Australia, UK discussing one, South Africa, Nigeria just implemented one, Uruguay yesterday, countless everywhere, so the system had to evolve and is evolving, but the most extraordinary changes I think are in the way copyright is exercised and licensed, and so stakeholders made, sat down at the table and found a way to make things that were unworkable finally workable. I won’t dig into details now, but I’m happy to do it later, there are three, many success stories, three very well related to what was discussed ten years ago. One is open access, open source, open licensing and all that, I think it’s almost a settled issue, back then we were saying copyright is not fit for purpose, because there are so many open crowd initiatives going on, and IP is not serving those purposes. That was not the case, is not the case, because actually it’s flexible enough to make it happen, plus limitations and exceptions. I want, I mean, happy to develop on that. User generated content, literally there was one of the outcomes of 2014 IGF was UGC, user generated content is a non-resolvable issue, it’s showcasing how copyright and reality are completely displaced and mismatched. Why? Because for any one of us taking a video and synchronising a song or modifying a picture found on the internet entails a number of copyright exclusive rights, so you need to ask the permission to do that, individually, back then it was individual, you want a piece of music on your video, you need to go and knock on the door of the producer to get that. Similar, you get a picture online, you need to ask the permission to do that. So we’re saying it’s not going to work, and rights holders say yeah, but you cannot do that. Ten years from now, we have TikTok, we have Meta, we have Vista, we have countless UGC services that are legal and we can discuss, people are unhappy about how much money they’re getting, but that’s another issue. So copyright showed it can be adapted, that’s a business bargaining power discussion. The other great success story is streaming, but it would give me, I mean I would need at least half an hour to end, but streaming in 2013 was like wow, it’s going to destroy the music industry, this cannot happen, and now the music industry is built up on, I mean over, I think it’s 63% of the music market is digital these days, and of course not everyone is equally happy, but things are working well from everyone, users and stakeholders. So I think those are the success stories and we can discuss more about the details of those changes and what’s next.

Moderator:
Thank you. We’ll probably come back to several of those issues. Constantino, you were on a panel yesterday that was talking about fragmentation, and I thought about it, and this came up as well, that some people’s fragmentation is actually just a distributed network, it depends on where you sit and where you’re thinking about this, and so in the ten years that we have been discussing this since 2013, how are the distribution networks faring on this, and are we getting into more challenges with governments because of what we just heard about with all this new content, or are the networks not affected by the fact that we just have lots of content and it’s making it where people want it to go?

Konstantinos Komaitis:
Hi everyone, and thanks for having me here. Just a small correction, I am no longer with the Internet Society, so just to make sure that this is on the record. So one of the things, I think that over the past ten years there have been a lot of lessons learned. I remember when I started ten years ago at the Internet Society, funny enough, I was hired to do copyright, and I was hearing that, you know, there were some strong voices that were claiming that we need to kill the Internet because it’s going to kill copyright, and of course this didn’t happen, and of course both copyright and Paolo is absolutely right, both copyright and the Internet are just it, and they found a way to collaborate, right? They found a way to coexist in a system that, and in an environment better yet, that is evolving so fast, and it’s changing so fast. And I was having a conversation with Glenn this morning, and we were talking about, oh, perhaps we, you know, could we have predicted the TikToks or the user-generated content that exploded, or the streaming services, and if we had predicted that, what we would have done. And we both concluded that it’s actually really good that we didn’t predict, because it demonstrates both the flexibility of copyright, as Paolo said, but also the ability of the Internet, you know, to bring us new challenges all the time, and adapt to those challenges. I think that what we’re seeing currently, and what is really fascinating for me, is that the way content is created has exploded, right? There is really not, content creation is no longer a monolith. In the old days, you had very specific actors that were creating content, and they were very much responsible for the distribution of this content, but right now, literally everyone is creating content, and the tools that allow you to create content have multiplied exponentially. So, AI tools, augmented reality, you have influencers that are creating content that are claiming copyright, you have all these different services that allow you to be part of this copyright regime that was so very much exclusive in the beginning, or before the Internet, and the early days of the Internet. Now, I think that networks had to adjust to that reality, and they had to figure out how to cope with exactly what Glenn said in the beginning. Video. Because that is where we are right now in terms of the Internet from a user perspective. Users want to stream. Users want to watch video. Users, I mean, you know, they want to have access to content that is as interactive as possible, right? And I think that this is going to accelerate as the new tools are coming in, so there is a very, very valid question, and I am very, you know, Glenn and I met ten years ago, practically, and ten years ago, he was telling me that I am working in order to make networks better and more efficient, so I saw him this morning, and I said, oh, what are you working these days? Literally, he said what I was working ten years ago. In the beginning, I was like, hmm, but then, you know, you realise that this is exactly what we need to be working on, right? How to create, how to make the Internet more efficient for users to create and consume video. Sorry, content, because not everybody wants to create content, but there is a lot of consumption, so we are at a place, I think, we are at a very interesting place where I have to admit, and I never thought that I would say that, we are seeing, you know, if copyright and the Internet were in a relationship, were in, you know, in the beginning, and they were not really getting along, right now, they’re sort of, you know, they have figured it out, they have their tensions, they have their marital problems, but they’re not divorced, which, for me, is a really, really healthy place to be in many different ways.

Moderator:
So we have a healthy relationship that is continuing to blossom. We were going to go to Geoff, did you need to get in there? Are you having an intervention already?

Glenn Deen:
Do I need to update my job description as marriage counselor?

Moderator:
Yes, perhaps. Perhaps, all right. That was a great action. Do we have Geoff online? Yes, yes, you do. Okay, fabulous. All right. Thank you for joining us today, Geoff. Sorry we’re not having you here in person. So you joined the gentleman here, but you are also, how are we doing technically? Have we done, has it survived as well as it feels like to the common user? It seems like the technical aspects of the Internet have just flourished, and you guys have been doing an amazing job on the back end, making sure all this content gets delivered to where it wants to go.

Geoff Huston:
Over the last 10 years, oddly enough, I think we’ve rebuilt the Internet completely. It’s not what it was 10 years ago, and it’s certainly not what it was 20 years ago. The transformative technology, oddly enough, was the evolution of mobile phones. Mobile telephony, after a very torrid start, took over telephony. The sheer convenience of having it in your pocket all the time transformed that industry. And when that industry then turned, and the initial sort of offering of the iPhone, but then everybody has a mobile Internet device, it completely transformed the Internet. Because all of a sudden, this wasn’t the library anymore. We weren’t curating data. These weren’t institutions of knowledge. We’d become an entertainment business. And our population… wasn’t just a few million. All of a sudden, we were looking at a global market of billions, billions. Now, that massive expansion, the mobile industry certainly coped in giving everyone cheap internet devices. And the content industry was under extraordinary pressure. I suppose the prize motivated the money available to create entertainment across that platform. Now, a long time ago, 15 years, the network was used to get users to the services they wanted to find. It was like a road system. Where are you going? Let me take you there. But you can’t scale that, it’s too hard. And so under the enormous pressure of volume, of scale and money, we rebuilt the internet completely. And it’s just as well Moore’s law came and helped us. These days, computing is just prolific. Supercomputers on your wrist is just what we wear. Storage is just abundant like crazy. Terabytes of information on your phone, this is insane. And of course, what we’re also finding is carriage is now cheap. We talk about moving terabits per second of information on fiber optic cables as if it was commonplace, and it is. That combination has changed the network. Instead of going to find your content, content comes to your door. Content is right beside you. We’ve rebuilt the network using content distribution techniques to actually make sure that the content is there just in case you need it across all the major markets of the internet. We’ve transformed a just-in-case, sorry, a just-in-time, oh, pop, pop, pop, let me get the packet for you into a just-in-case model where within a few small miles or kilometers, there is literally petabytes of content. Oddly enough, it’s not learned volumes of written data. It’s video. It’s all the other things we do. And then we’ve leveraged that infrastructure to actually provide real-time services such as this video conversation where we’re actually talking not directly over the internet, but from data center to data center. So we’re now living in an entirely different internet. The role of the internet service provider is now local. The larger move the data around the planet, oddly enough, is now being privatized. And in essence, that’s no longer a public carriage function, but an attribute of the large-scale content data networks. And the role of how to publish content has changed enormously. The citizen publisher is now a customer of Azure, Akamai, or any of the other commercial service providers. So it’s changed where the money is. It’s changed where the content and focus of engineering is. And it’s actually changed the engineering and architecture of the internet. Why? Because as long as we can build it like this, it’s cheaper, it’s faster, and it meets the demands of literally billions of people every hour of the day. So yes, the last 10 years has been a wild ride. Thank you.

Moderator:
That’s very helpful. One of the issues 10 years ago was the challenge between North and South. So is part of this equalization and the rebuilding of the internet, and this is just an open question for you all, was that there was still this feeling of, there was a division of where they were spending money on infrastructure. It’s still a bit of a challenge, but I think, and the point of mobile is a great one, that the mobile carriers and the ability to use the network, I think we’ve done some work on that, but are we still struggling with a North-South divide, or have we done a better job of making sure that everybody who wants to put content up on the internet or watch content on the internet now has the ability to do that with some level of device in their hand or in their presence? That’s an open question for any of you. No? I mean, it was a question 10 years ago. I’m thinking, have we done better? I gotta say, no one’s asked that question in years. So maybe that’s a measure that actually it’s not,

Glenn Deen:
nothing’s ever solved, but it’s no longer the hot button that all of us are talking about. As Jeff said, we’ve re-engineered the internet. Part of that has been to make it scale, and part of it is evolving it so that the way the content creators can interact with it and use it has evolved, and it’s not, I mean, is it ever perfect? It will never be perfect, and that’s good, because I like keeping a job doing this work, but we’ve had great progress.

Geoff Huston:
Should I relate an experience? Yep. Coming from India, one of the most dramatic rollouts in the last 10 years has been connecting up hundreds of millions of people across the entire Indian subcontinent. It’s an engineering feat. It’s truly a wonder of the last 10 years, but one of their major targets and major roles was to integrate content provision, those boxes that sort of deliver the streaming data, whatever, deliver that inside their network. So this wasn’t a subcontinent pulling data from the rest of the world on demand. Largely, it was trying to contain this problem into feed the data once and then deliver the data to users many times, and the entire rollout actually had as much emphasis on integration of content and service into those networks as it did in actually building the network infrastructure that connected the users. So we’re now seeing the network and content coupled more closely in terms of the service model we deliver, and that for the internet is a dramatic change in the way we do architecture, the way we do infrastructure, and oddly enough, the way we pay for it as well. So big changes, yes.

Moderator:
Great. Konstantinos?

Konstantinos Komaitis:
So I think that the north-south conversation about content is really the conversation that we have been having about digital divides, right? Because in order to create content, you need to have connectivity. It’s as simple as that. I think that with, of course, the emergence of smartphones and the fact that everybody has really gone mobile, we are seeing more content creation and certainly going back, you don’t need to ask permission to upload anything on the internet as long as you have this access to the internet. And that’s why it is always important to go back to these very fundamental values of the internet and try to remember that the internet’s architecture overall is based on some very basic principles, and we always need to reflect on how the things that we’re doing, whether it’s technological things, whether they’re policy things, also reflect those values as much as we can. Glenn mentioned permissionless innovation. He didn’t use those words, but you know, he said, I can upload something without permission. And I know that this is a term that 10 years ago was, whoa, no one can really talk about it because everybody was misinterpreting it. But right now, we’re at a place where we see the value of that principle and of that value. So it is very important to remember that I do not have data. I suspect that there is more content created in the north, in the global north, and the global south consumes more content than it creates. So there is a lot of work that needs to be done to create those networks, right, that are resilient enough and are able to support content creation in those countries. So there is some sort of a chain reaction happening. So we cannot really talk about how the global south is sort of creating content if we don’t have first a conversation about how it is connected and how meaningful this connectivity is, to use a term that the UN loves.

Moderator:
But that seems to be, and I have a Brazilian brother-in-law, and he’s always introducing me to things that are highly entertaining that I, like the Capybara song is my favorite thing right now. So, but it’s, you know, that is actually just my use of, like my network to learn about things that are going on. It isn’t a technical feasibility challenge of, you know, the haves and the have-nots that I think that we had 10 years ago. But I think you mentioned several things in your opening statement about, you know, well, and your point about you can put anything up, but the question is should we keep all these things up and realize this is a technical, not so much a content-driven conversation. But thoughts on, you know, what do we do with the fact that everybody can put everything up all the time, yet you’ve found a way to kind of manage through the challenges that 10 years ago were just hard no, take it down. And now, because so many people are creators, they want to be in on this as well. They don’t want to be taken down. They want their content up as the rest of the world does.

LANTERI Paolo:
So let me also make, add something about North-South debate and availability of content. I think in terms of creativity and cultural products, the North-South debate is way, is a bit old. In terms of content creation, we have countries that are not considered as North, like Brazil, Cuba, like many countries in Asia that made a revolution out of their creative economy, like Indonesia, South Korea, and African. So countless example of countries that cannot be considered North that are actually overflowing the world with their content. The best example is if you look at the charts all over the world about music streaming, who is heading, leading, Latino music. And you cannot, and that’s a fact and was enabled also by the technology. In terms of, if you go to a completely different sector, publishing, education, news a day, those remains local content, high in demand, needed. And the technology is enabling all that. Beyond, and I think there is Bertrand in the room, so he may tell something. The technology is also enabling things that were unthinkable 10 years ago, like serving the language diaspora. I mean, and you get people, I mean, Italian diaspora in the US, or like African diaspora everywhere, they get to access the super compelling, top-notch content produced in their home countries. And this is another extremely good story to tell. And there was some fear that it was going to lead to sort of affect the cultural diversity, the fact that the channels were sort of handled by a handful of people coming from the north. In certain instances, it may be the case, but there is a recent study about music charts all over the world. And in countries where there are not English speakers, like Korea, Japan, Italy, Sweden, and the top chart are all national artists. So how did we, I don’t think, copyright was only part of that solution. If you get rid of copyright, that would have never happened. Because those, and I go back to the first question, it depends which content we are talking about. Copyright applies both to my small cousin birthday video uploaded on YouTube, your pictures walking around Kyoto, copyright is applicable. But it also need to function when you put hundreds of millions of dollar in producing a blockbuster video games, a movie, or you have to pay the salaries of journalists that are informing the world about what’s happening. So copyright work well in be flexible whenever we’re talking about UGC, not necessarily commercial created content that allow you to do many things. But at the same time, did well in continuing to incentivize and rewarding the investment behind professionally created content. That was a huge challenge 10 years ago. And there were like the many saying needs to change because it’s not working for UGC. In fact, we are showing that it can work for both scenarios.

Moderator:
Jeff, I’m just checking in. Any extra additional comments on this conversation?

Geoff Huston:
Yes, so like part of this issue is we didn’t build the content network we had today in the way we had envisaged it. We had thought basically 20, 25 years ago of the citizen publisher. My website is as big as your website, even if your name is Rupert Murdoch or someone else. We were all able to create and publish our content as equals. That unfortunately never happened. What happened instead, oddly enough, is as we transformed the internet with content and service, we empowered the intermediaries. We empowered the middle ages, the folk who aggregate and license this content and deliver it through content distribution networks. It is no surprise that Google has the size it does. It is no surprise that Akamai is a major player. These intermediaries are actually astonishingly powerful. And what they deliver, oddly enough, is a uniform product to a global market. And so while folks demand for content may reflect a rich cultural diversity and may honor various forms of copyright, and that’s true, underneath it all, we’ve actually built a relatively weird distortion where a small number of these content intermediaries are astonishingly powerful and astonishingly large, and they effectively dominate this entire industry. My own website, if I hadn’t put it into a content distribution network, would be in a lost, forlorn, and very dusty corner of the internet. I couldn’t get the market, the attention, the eyeballs, whatever, that we seem to want from this. And so in unleashing this enormous amount of content, we’ve also empowered a relatively small collection of intermediaries to actually assume a very dominant role of control in running and operating these content distribution systems. So winners and losers inside all of this. I think the underlying lesson is the way things pan out never works according to anybody’s plan. What actually happens is technology produces surprising solutions. And the amount of, I suppose, money and the ability of markets to respond has actually meant we’ve leapt very quickly on solutions that work and then transform the industry every time. Moore’s law changes the dynamics of computing and storage every two years. The industry reinvents itself every five. There’s no constancy inside this industry. Any business plan that’s five years old is not a business plan anymore. It’s a historical archive. That’s not going to stop anytime soon. So yes, this is a very live area and demands an extraordinary amount of business agility and risk to play in this game.

Moderator:
Thanks. You brought up both sports and gaming, which we haven’t gotten into, which it seems to me have gotten to be a much broader worldwide audience than we might’ve had 10 years ago. Is that correct?

LANTERI Paolo:
Absolutely. I think those are areas where we see a constant growth in terms of demand and offer and where there is also a busy activity of policy makers in order to make sure that people investing their money in getting the people to watch games and play video games around the world are safe. And it’s very much linked to what was just mentioned about the power of intermediaries. And here it was never, I thought at some point someone was going to say that copyright is the reason why everything’s centralized. In fact, it’s not. It’s one of the few areas of law that is standing in the middle. And that is called intern service providers liability or responsibility rules, safe harbors, that are still keeping busy countries all over the world. In this forum, those policies have been seen as the ultimate evil, but in fact are the only way you can actually give control to the producer of the content instead of the distributor of the content. And we also saw another trend that in many instances there is no more demarcation between producer and distributor. Netflix. they do them themself. So it’s partially true. So video games, huge, wonderful stories to tell. In those 10 years, their business models shifted completely from console, hardware-based business to mostly online, global, interactive gaming. All covered, but it’s an IP-intensive industry. Video games is IP, not only copyright, of course, but video games. Growing fast, over 2 billion, 200 billion US dollar projected for this year. Meaning that, depending how you count it, it’s larger than audiovisual and or music sometimes put together. And it’s a wonderful story. No one is complaining about it, and IP was behind it. Sports, it’s a big, big, complex debate. We had the WTO ruling on that. It’s part of copyright in the sense that it’s related to copyright. It’s not creative content as such, but there are rights according to broadcasters or people that are organizing events to control who is getting access to it. And it has more money involved than the traditional copyright industries.

Moderator:
Going to almost zero latency in many places, people should always talk about Korea, right? It was like the reason why gaming was so big there, because it really felt like it was just, you were 100% interactive at the moment. And so more places able to come to as close to zero latency as possible, I imagine, has really helped that entire environment as well. And yeah, absolutely.

LANTERI Paolo:
Technology enabled all that, and that’s what I forgot to mention, but all these huge and fantastic deals that can be carefully crafted in meetings room with lawyers and business people, at the end of the day, nowadays, they count nothing unless you have engineers make it happen. And not only in terms of users, but even in making sure the revenues are shared and people are identified, you need technology. And that is, of course, from both sides. We are nothing without engineers.

Moderator:
We didn’t talk about the COVID effect of the fact that all the transit changed in its location, but yet didn’t seem to cause any real problem on that. So first responders, engineers, we should give you guys more beer in places and say thank you.

Glenn Deen:
Gosh, that’s a lot of interesting stuff. I’d like to bring all these thoughts from Paolo and Jeff together here and talk about today and the unique things that are going on now that weren’t 10 years ago. So in some ways, we’ve said I can describe myself as a marriage counselor. I like to say that I do IP so that you can do IP. I do IP networks, you do IP frameworks. But we both work in the world of IP. And that’s kind of remarkable if you think about it. When I started doing this job about 10 years ago, and I came to my very first IGF, I started participating actively at the ITF. A lot of people said, well, you’re from a movie studio. Why are you, what are you doing here? I mean, why? 10 years later, that’s not even a question. You know, I was here at the IGF downstairs, Sony, I think it’s their online entertainment, their games division is downstairs with a booth at the IGF, showing a technical solution for how they delivered game updates during COVID and how they completely reengineered how they did that. So that when people were home and wanted to play games, they could get the games and they could get the updates they needed. It was, it was wonderful. You know, nobody, nobody even questions you anymore why a content guy is at the IGF or a content guy is at the ITF. And I think that’s the business really positive aspect of this progression we’ve seen. You know, we brought the IP frameworks and we brought the IP networking together. That brought, enabled a platform for the business people that pay the bills, that pay for me to do my work and everybody else to do their stuff, to get comfortable with the internet as the platform for their next generation, right? Streaming. And that has caused an evolution that we only could have dreamt of, you know, back in the day. And what I mean by that specifically, you know, we went from, if you look back to 2012, most video on the internet was either standard def or lower quality. It was 320 by 280, it was really terrible quality video. We went from standard def to HD, now 4k, is common on the internet. Each of those little jumps is easy to say, it’s four times the amount of data. SD to HD is four times the amount of data. SD to 4k, 16 times the amount of data. NHK has a even a higher resolution service that they have. And what’s enabled that is that the business of content creation, content distribution, came to the party and said this is important. They invested the funds, they invested the engineers in advancing those fields so that our codecs are much more efficient than they were in the past. Our network transports have much lower latency. Ten years ago we never talked about latency, it was just a thing we lived with. Now at the places like the ITF, it’s one of the things we talk about the most. It’s, you know, there’s L4S over the ITF, which is an initiative for, you know, lower latency. And it’s, you know, if people say, well, you know, what do you do your marriage counseling business today, what’s your number one thing? Latency is the thing I’m working on big time because live sports and sports brings people together. It isn’t just watching live sports, it’s sitting in the stadium and be able to chat with your friends on your phone while you’re watching the game. The friends may be at home watching on TV. I literally had the experience of being in the stands and a friend texted me and said, just say hi on camera. And he was sitting at home and we were waving to each other. That’s cool. I mean, I couldn’t even imagine doing that ten years ago. But I, you know, I’m gonna come off as, you know, sort of like, isn’t this all wonderful? I think it is really wonderful. You know, we’ve had an investment that made problems that we were afraid of go away. And it’s opened new things that were interesting challenges like the latency problem to work on. That’s really fascinating. And we continue to evolve. I find that very exciting because it means that, you know, we’re not done. We’re continuing to find interesting things to work on. But at the end of the day, IP networks and IP frameworks, we work together in harmony. Not always, not always perfectly, but we work together to enable the business guys to go off and do their thing. Now, we sometimes say we don’t like what they’ve done. I myself will never appear in a TikTok video, but, you know.

Moderator:
Constantino, you have a comment on this topic?

Konstantinos Komaitis:
Yeah, just very quickly, as both Paolo and Glenn were talking, I was thinking that effectively all of us that, you know, we’re speaking in at the ITFs or working at the ITFs or, you know, working at WIPO and thinking of these things. Ultimately, it’s all about the user, right? Everyone is working for the user. And I think that what is interesting in the past 10 years is that the user really took us to the direction that they wanted. And they, very much indirectly and silently in many ways, they said we need those things in order to be able to participate and continue participating in the Internet. We need better networks, because we want that these networks to be able to stream video if I walk downtown Tokyo. We need better policy frameworks, because I am saying that, you know, the licensing regime in copyright has created problems because when I’m traveling, I cannot take the content with me, having access to that content. So we’re seeing also this change in the way those policy frameworks think about those things. So for me, it’s really interesting that we always need to go back. And one of the things that I have realized in doing this and thinking about the Internet is that ultimately it always comes down to the user. So it is very, very important in those conversations to not forget the users and what they want and not to underestimate where they can take us. Because we are here where we are with all these new technologies and these exciting things happening, whether it’s streaming, whether it is whatever, because of the users.

Audience:
Jim, did you have? Yeah, thanks Shane. So we actually have a comment and question from Kat Townsend from the Measurement Lab. 2.6 billion or not, I’m sorry, 2.6 billion people are not online and more do not have meaningful connectivity. Access is still very much an essential concern. We work on measuring the quality of connectivity at interconnection points and using those to support increases in services and infrastructure development in underserved areas. How might we do this better even without reporting from service providers?

Moderator:
Who would like to go first? Jeff, thoughts? Do you want to jump in on this?

Geoff Huston:
Yes, I have some modest thoughts here. Part of this is the beauty of markets is also a weakness. In transforming this industry from one that was orchestrated from the middle out, which is where the telephone system was, the telephone company defined what the service was, how it was provided, and oddly enough, one of the defining instruments of that whole regime was universality of service and access. That goes back over 120 years. Everybody had universal service. It was actually echoed then in electricity rollouts 10 years later. The internet was never built like that. It was built as a market response. It was actually unleashing that sort of stolid, quite conservative view from telephony into one that chased where users spent money. Now, the problem, as we all find with this, is that the richer the user, the more determined to the chase for their money. Rich markets are extensively served with extraordinary amounts of technology. The hope is, amongst much of this industry, that as the technology improves, it gets cheaper and gets more accessible to those areas with lower versions of per capita GDP and similar metrics. Ultimately, wiring out high-speed networks in remote and impoverished areas demands a level of capital intensity which is challenging for any investor. Interestingly, solutions are appearing which are unorthodox, and I’ve certainly been tracking where Starlink is going with its service. All of a sudden, over every part of the sea and land on this planet, we can drop in excess of 50 to 60 megabits per second anywhere, anywhere, at not eye-watering price, at prices which currently are affordable in a Western context, and if the pace of technology keeps on going, would be affordable universally, because once connectivity is an abundant good, not a restricted and scarce good, everything changes. We fall into a trap of assuming the world we have today is constant. The silicon folk think an entirely different view. Everything doubles in two to three years. Stuff gets cheaper, stuff gets smaller, and stuff gets faster, and so the situation we find today will certainly change over the next few years, and I suspect that one of the enabling technologies will be space-based to get over some of these issues with the extraordinary amount of capital intensity required to wire up those parts of rural and remote that the existing technology models won’t surface. I applaud an initiative in Mongolia, which certainly has a large amount of extremely remote and sparsely populated areas, and actually doing a service based around Starlink to provide modern, extremely high-speed connectivity to astonishingly isolated and remote communities who don’t have extensive power. This is all battery power, and it works. So certainly I am optimistic about being able to drop the threshold into more challenging markets, and certainly I see the technology shifts are essential to do that, because the existing models won’t carry us into those spaces. But, you know, it’s an evolving picture. So I’m optimistic.

Moderator:
That’s very helpful. I think Project Kuiper, I think they launched two satellites this past week, and I know they’re planning on a huge constellation. So is this just a case of we’re expecting to see more coverage, and we will eventually see a lowering of the price point now that we’ve proven that if you’re in Mongolia, you can probably go almost anywhere, but not necessarily pulling wire, but using the spectrum that we have in space?

Geoff Huston:
There are five massive projects that are certainly on the drawing boards and in various stages of sophistication. So yes, Project Kuiper, the existing Voo 3B, there is a Chinese project that’s on the drawing boards, and of course Starlink. The launch costs are coming down. Because the launch costs are coming down, we’re contemplating an entirely different future now in this area, particularly of rural and remote, and for countries like even Australia and New Zealand, which are plagued by large amounts of sparsely inhabited areas, these kinds of technologies make astonishing difference to a picture of a national community drawn together through a digital sort of medium. So yes, I am less concerned at this point that the situation we have with the remaining $2.6 billion, I don’t think it’s intractable. I do believe over the coming few years, technology solutions will actually apply to their part of the world as much as our part, the developed part of the world.

Moderator:
I always wonder if there’s going to be somebody, 10 years ago it was Belize, who would say, come to Belize, we’re not connected. So you’d like want to vacation someplace where you’re like, don’t talk to me for five days. I’m going to come over here to Stella. So you are studying a lot of this, and one of the things that you mentioned when we were talking in the very beginning is that it’s interesting being here in Japan, because in Southeast Asia and the area that you are from in the world, looks to Japan for a lot of the copyright laws and IP laws that you’re currently studying. So talk about that. And also, you’re a digital native. You really grew up with this. So a lot of this might seem like a bunch of wire talk, because it’s always been there to you.

Stella Anne Ming Hui Teoh:
Thank you for the question. Actually, I just want to hop back to a little bit on the topic of the global South-North and South divide. So actually, one of the issues that we saw during the COVID pandemic was that, yes, there may be importance and prioritization in network access, but one of the key barriers was the cost of devices. So a lot of households in Malaysia, for example, bottom 40 of the population, you would see that one household would be sharing one device, and it’s a matter of prioritization of who gets to use that device and who ultimately gets that access, which relates to what we’re talking about for the youth when it comes to more of the privileged side of perhaps those who have their own devices. So one of the issues or one of the worries that we have regarding content and open access content and fair use of content is that a lot of youths may start out as content creators related to maybe fan-related content, so fan-created art, fan-created videos, et cetera. And so I would like to ask the panel later about their thoughts on how that may see, I mean, the future of that. Right, yes. And then on the topic of IP, one of the things that we also see is that as youth creators, sometimes some of the things that we create and share online gets fed into the algorithms, and then ultimately that’s an issue that we worry that later on, as youth, our work or the work of those who are involved in that community ultimately will be used to feed into a larger program, and then we won’t get the credit, and then we ultimately just have to fade away and choose a different kind of thing that we want to do. So yes, if there are any thoughts on, yeah, the youth role and their youth presence, especially in terms of fan-created art and fan-related content.

LANTERI Paolo:
I’m extremely surprised to hear these comments. It’s for the first time youth components of the IGF is actually claiming for better copyright protection to make sure their work is not going to be used to train machines, right, or get lost and attribution of your work is granted. Well, on paper, everything should work. It’s settled. You have rights in all the countries of the world, not all 181 countries of the world, so practically all countries of the world, that would assure that you have the right of being recognized, attributed as the author of a work, and you cannot waive it. When you can renounce to exercise it, you cannot transfer it to your employer. That’s the moral right. Then the real answer is how do you make sure I mean, the question, how do you make sure this actually happen? Again, we have to turn to technologists. But there are watermarking technologies. There is a protection also of rights management information enshrined in copyright laws that are there exactly to serve the purpose you are mentioning. Anything else would be way too technical, but the law is already there, and also the technology. There is a huge debate, and it’s not about youth. It’s about all sorts of professional content creators. They don’t want to see their content used to train machines that would eventually put forward output that compete with them. Think about if you were a professional composer, or if you are a journalist. But that’s not specific to youth, and this IGF is devoting, I guess, 80% of its meeting time to that debate. The first question, I think it’s the fine art, is part of the UGC debate. It’s oftentimes derivative work. So if it’s done in the context of platforms like TikTok or Instagram or Meta, Facebook, those practices are often covered and regulated by the terms of use, taking into account copyright. So in certain frameworks, this is solved by terms of use and licensing practices, and that’s something that didn’t happen in the past. Outside of those platforms, if you create something based on someone else’s creation with a commercial purpose, I have bad news. You need to go and get the permission. But there are clearinghouses. There are places like collective management organizations where you go to one place, and you get the right to do that.

Moderator:
So my understanding of that to be it’s having tool sets that are built into maybe the platform that you choose to put your information on. So you don’t have to do it from start. It’s like the old days where you think, Jeff, you’re mentioning your blog and having to make sure that it gets in the right place. And so when you’re doing this, having those tools will help you protect your work from the beginning.

LANTERI Paolo:
So very, very practically, I don’t know whether I’m not using TikTok, but if you do something on TikTok, and you pick a soundtrack, it’s identified. And part of the money that TikTok is generating through advertisement or their business model would go through a collective management organization to the owner of that song you are using in your video. So that you can do that without infringing copyright. But that’s within the TikTok framework. If you take that video, and you put it, and you broadcast it on TV, no, you can’t do it. You should get the, so it’s extremely complex. But frankly, there are meaningful progresses in this space. If you ask rights holders, they would say the money received by those platforms are too low. It’s not enough. But that’s a business discussion supported by some principle established in the norms.

Moderator:
Did you have a second question you want to add?

Stella Anne Ming Hui Teoh:
Actually, yes. It’s kind of related, but I’m not sure if it was already covered. But on the topic of the language barrier as well, so I do know that, for example, we have a strong online presence, as you said, digital natives. So during COVID, there was an opportunity for a lot of us to connect if we had the opportunity to connect online. And what we saw was that, for example, there are certain, perhaps, books or comics, et cetera, that are not available in the native language. And what happens is you get people who offer to translate for that particular piece of work, but it’s not an official translation. And then they monetize that. So I think that’s an issue in which it’s odd to see a youth creator who also wants to have their IP protected, but they’re also actively engaging in that kind of activity in which they’re essentially taking someone else’s and translating as well. So the issue, any thoughts on that issue?

LANTERI Paolo:
So it can be a new market. The first question I have for you, are we talking about human translations? Are we talking about someone offering to take a text and put it into Deepol or ChatGPT, translate it? Actually, both. Well, it’s pretty different. Anyway, from a legal perspective, if you take a book and you want to translate it into a language that is not offered yet, of that version of that book, you can’t do it. You have to ask the permission. You have to ask the permission. Oftentimes, if it doesn’t exist, it depends on the specific market, because that would be literature. How would you go about translating a movie? That would be dubbing. It’s a completely different story. How would you do that for music? So it’s literature. There are practices about doing that, but translation of literature is still managed individually. If it’s done by a human, then that translation is a derivative work, is protected, and you can make money out of it. So go on, do it. That’s how you expand and spread knowledge around the world. There is need for that, but it cannot be done without getting the permission.

Moderator:
All right, we’ve done our first hour. Good job, everybody. I am going to open this to questions, and I appreciate that we have people here in the room. Thank you for joining us up here at the large dais. Do you have something online as well, Jim? No? Okay. Petra, how are you this morning? Do you want to join into this conversation? Okay, thanks.

Online Moderator:
Thank you very much, Shane. Fascinating discussion, a wealth of perspectives. I would say, as somebody who works for the professional audiovisual sector, the first thing is I would agree with what I’ve heard about the false prophecies of 10 years ago whereby copyright was going to break the internet. It’s refreshing to hear that there’s a degree, a fair degree of consensus that it hasn’t. In fact, in terms of our observation of the milieu of professional audiovisual production, one of the hopeful stories in terms of capacity building in the last decade has been the eagerness and success with which young producers in certain areas of the global South have accessed the copyright framework, mastered the knowledge that they needed in order to support their activities of professional content production and try to build IP values within their companies which I remind people here is essential in order to have basic access to the capital that you require to pay your employees, to develop the next piece of content. We have a very complex product cycle. In audiovisual, it takes months, years, sometimes to develop a project to the point where it can go into production. This accessing of the copyright framework has proven a boon to content that ultimately ends up on internet services and it’s been, I think, conclusively proven that the two systems are meant for each other. The thing I would say without meaning to rain on anyone’s parade, the very upbeat story we heard from Jeff in particular, which is indeed very positive, is not always borne out by circumstances on the ground. I participate in a network called the Policy Network on Meaningful Access. We have a session tomorrow afternoon, I think 3.15. I will be hearing in particular from two women who run a company in Kampala in Uganda, a production company. They’ve been trying to run a sustainable audiovisual production company in this neck of the woods for a while. It’s proven quite complex. One of the reasons why we’ve seen in certain parts of Africa, countries jumping a technological paradigm and where you would have had a more complex value chain for audiovisual output in the past, you now basically are relying on internet services to pre-buy or buy your content in order to access your public and satisfy consumer demand. These people play a crucial role because they’re making local content in local languages. Luganda may be spoken by 25 million people plus in terms of its non-participation in globalisation, in economic globalisation. It still makes it a minority language. Therefore, if it’s not spoken, if it’s not used to reflect people’s lives back at them, it’s going to disappear or become marginalised. So the work they do on the ground is essential in the participation it constitutes to maintaining linguistic diversity and cultural diversity. The trouble they have very often is that the content they make is vulnerable to market failure and if they cannot find a buyer in the streaming environment, then they are left with a very problematic situation. One of the things they observe on the ground also is that the broadband mobile services that consumers and citizens have access to, the pricing points are not always adequate to the spending power of local people. That if you need to spend seven Gs of your AG bundle you’ve pre-purchased and that you’ve run out of Gs by the time you reach episode two of a series, there’s some things not quite working through the adequation between supply and demand in this area. So, and also the quality reliability of the signal is often problematic. So back to perhaps what Constantinos was saying, it really is important to continue the work of deploying a reliable infrastructure with a variety of pricing points that reflect also the local purchasing power and to enable again the making of content that is culturally relevant. These people have made recently a film about a neurodivergent kid growing up in a traditional village in Uganda and subject to the prejudices of his milieu and they regard their mission as being one of educating and engaging people on women issues, on educational issues and so on and so forth. If they don’t have a sustainable model to do it then something is not quite working.

Moderator:
So, stay with the microphone there because you brought up a very interesting point on just the economics and the challenges. In the very beginning of the internet there was just this hope that we were democratizing and people would be able to find each other anywhere very easily and part of our challenge now is the societal bubbles that we live in that we get our own, the algorithm kind of repeats what we want to see over and over again. So in the case of like, I might want to watch this Ugandan content, I didn’t know it existed until now. How do they break through that barrier? It isn’t just a network issue, it’s also a just finding out that it’s there and getting it out into the wild.

Online Moderator:
Well, I mean, first of all, there is good news. I can’t remember who, I think Jeff made the point which I think is a contention point that there’s a tendency of concentration in the marketplace for services. I sort of beg to differ, it’s not that intense that there isn’t competition arising. In fact, the rollout of the large American streamers in some of these markets has often triggered a kind of dynamic response with local services arising to kind of balance the equation. So they’re finding these two ladies and we’ll talk about it tomorrow, that their situation compared to five years ago has improved. They have more markets they can go to to try and sort of persuade someone to put money up front so that they can make the content in the first place. But it remains quite at its first stage of development and I think we need to see more competition in the type of service. There’s two things that’s really important here. One is we talk a lot about UGC and we respect UGC and our forms of licensing for UGC as we’ve heard, it’s a very important part of the creative ecosystem. But damn it, it’s also a career for people. It’s a professional career and why not? Why could you not build sustainable audiovisual production businesses at an SME level in the tier where you can be nimble, you can address different market segments and you can make a living and pay your employees. And so that is a very important notion to the people on the ground who are actually trying to create career tracks for this type and based on the delivery of this type of content, based on living there and having their fingers on the cultural pulse and socioeconomic pulse.

Glenn Deen:
Thank you. So Bertrand, I really like your point about the market. The point you made about the markets, I really, it made me think. To Constantino’s point that we’ve always said we build the internet for users and that’s something we, it’s a truism. But it made me reflect that one of the things that is also true is that who that user that we build that internet for has evolved and changed. When I started doing my career many years ago, that user at the other end was probably another computer scientist like myself. Now it’s everybody. It’s creators and it’s the market. It’s the people participating in the markets. These markets are built around these frameworks that we’ve created and enabled through the technology. But the users are much more sophisticated, very diverse entity now, right? It’s the viewer, it’s the creator, it’s the creators that are also viewers. But it’s these markets at the end of the day that are enabling the next generation, the next evolution of where we’re going. It’s, you know, because the market enables people to exchange and it enables them to get paid for it. And that brings us back to the IP frameworks that, you know, the IP networks enable the IP frameworks to enable the markets for all of us to participate in. And I used to go around saying everybody’s a creator. And I think I’m going to go back to saying it because I think it’s still true. Everybody is a creator. But the difference may be that I’m starting to get paid for it.

Geoff Huston:
But there’s a fundamental point here, Glenn, that I think is a shift of thinking in this digital world. The auto industry scaled up by making one car, one colour, one artefact. They scaled by uniformity. The telephone system scaled to reach an astonishing number of people with one product, one concept. And so scale and uniformity went hand in hand. And I think we’ve grown into thinking that markets the size of billions is product the size of one. But what we’re actually finding, and you can see it, I think, best in advertising networks, oddly enough, digital advertising, we are able to scale at billions yet customise to a market of one. And if you think about how I can use a distributor like Netflix for my Ugandan language video, there is a conversation that works for both producer and distributor. Now, what we’re finding in this digital world is the power of this platform actually allows astonishingly fine-grained customisation of individual markets inside this larger ecosystem. So you can have any colour you want. We don’t care. We can produce the artefact at affordable price across a highly diverse market of billions and actually create sustaining businesses and supplying that system across the entire world. It is a different way of thinking. And I’m personally quite optimistic about this. It’s no longer one car, one size, one thing. It is actually a market where we can do highly diverse, highly customisable inside one framework. And that’s why we’re exploring right now. And I think we’ll explore over the next five or so years. And oddly enough, things like copyright really help because all of a sudden these authors and producers can say, I’m a market of one with my copyright. And the distributor goes, sure, I can accommodate that within the frameworks we have that service billions of people. And this is kind of where we’re heading with this technology. It is amazing stuff, I believe.

Moderator:
Thanks for that. Anyone else on the panel want to comment on that and then we’ll go to another question. Hi. Microphone.

LANTERI Paolo:
About the market discussion, I think there is a point that was never raised. I only mentioned that there are different stakeholders in the value chain and with different position. There are no first role artists here in the room and on the panel. So I need to anyway highlight the fact that we’re talking about extremely positive situation. And I think the focus of our debate was the larger, I mean, IP system versus development of the internet. What is the. impact on content production and access. So the picture is extremely positive. However, in all this debate, if you talk to musicians or if you talk to artists, sometimes they don’t feel well treated and they don’t get the money they think they deserve or they’re used to get from traditional media, from digital exploitation. This is a fact, it’s debated, it’s discussed, there are people negotiating that. I think it’s mostly a matter of bargaining power, discussion, according to deals. The trend is positive, but there is discussion over there. One question we ask those that are involved with policy and not with business deals is, if not mistaken, I haven’t checked, but I think 13 years ago the subscription fee of certain streaming services was exactly the same as of today. No? Not mistaken? I don’t, I want to quote things specifically, but my sense is that the price stabilization, a little bit up, yeah, just come on. How much? Very similar, certainly not at the pace of inflation. But on the other hand, the content you get is certainly increased, so you have double. So is it sustainable in terms of, like, we have more product, more content, users get to do, more stakeholders, same price or almost same price, how far we can go? That model. We leave it to, that’s my, it’s a question, I don’t have the answer. Just very quickly, I think this is a competition issue, right?

Konstantinos Komaitis:
I mean, the market will sort it out. We, and we are seeing already some services survive and some services just die the quick death in the case of Quibi, for instance, right? So I think that this is, we’re gonna go through a phase and where I feel that we are already into the phase of a hype where everyone wants to do streaming because it’s the new golden thing, and then some players will survive and some players will don’t, and content will play the predominant role in order to determine which ones will survive or not, as well as the engineering behind it, and whether you are able to support what you tell me, what you’re selling me, and you want me to buy.

Moderator:
Did you want to comment on just how much content’s being done? We were talking about this the other day. It’s just amazing.

Glenn Deen:
Sure, I don’t have numbers to, you know, concept to, but conceptually, we’re in a golden age of content creation. There is more content being created, both professionally and non-professionally, than ever in the history of mankind. It’s, I don’t know if this is sustainable. I’m not an economist. I’m an engineer, but wow. I mean, you’re gonna look back in years to come and say there was this explosion in the 2020s of content everywhere like we’ve never seen before. When I was a kid growing up, you know, you maybe got a new TV show here and there, and you’re kind of very excited in the fall when the new shows would come out, and now I’m in this 24-7 cycle, 365 year, where I’m always finding new content constantly. It’s amazing.

Konstantinos Komaitis:
But don’t you think that this is also because the creation of content has become much cheaper because of the internet?

Glenn Deen:
Absolutely. You know, somebody else pointed out to me the other day that there’s a new tool that came out for your phone that you can now do cinematic quality video capture and processing. I think it has an AI component on the back end that it’s literally like a cinematic quality camera. And if you think about that, you know, 10 years ago we would have been talking about the RED camera professionally, which was like, you know, a very expensive, very unique tool. And now we people have it in their hand and their phone, and it’s a downloadable app. I think it may even be free. Like, wow.

Audience:
Thanks so much, Shannon. My name is Talan Sultanov from Internet Society Kyrgyz chapter, and I wanted to follow up actually on your question on Global South and contribute to this debate on copyright. So our work was mostly related to connecting the remote communities of Kyrgyzstan to the Internet, and once we did that, we quickly realized there wasn’t much content for the local communities because everything was in Russian or in English, and people wanted content in Kyrgyz language. And we thought it would be easy. We will digitize, for example, educational materials that Ministry of Education has, books, and we couldn’t because they were all copyright protected. So we asked the Ministry of Education, can you give us the copyright? They said it belongs to the authors, so the Ministry pays to have these books, but doesn’t want to have the copyright because then the responsibility of the quality of the book goes to the Ministry, and they want to have… No, if there is a mistake, it was the mistake by the author, it’s not us, the Ministry of Education. But for us, it was a challenge. We couldn’t digitize these textbooks, and it was actually for us easier to find copyright-free Creative Commons materials from the global experience and then translate it into Kyrgyz language rather than digitizing the textbooks that were produced locally. So I think having Creative Commons materials was a really kind of lifesaver for us. Thank you. Has that market changed since you first started on that? Have you found that there’s more in the Creative Commons than when you first were trying to use copyrighted work? Now we’re finding a lot of useful materials globally. For example, we’ve adopted GSMA’s mobile internet toolkit into Kyrgyz language, Microsoft’s materials. They were all, of course, by commercial companies, but openly available. Also, we wanted to bring scientific experiments to schools, rural schools. We thought we would produce them by ourselves, but it was very expensive. So we found biology, astronomy, physics, experiments, videos, five-minute, three-minute videos online, Creative Commons, and we translated them into Kyrgyz language using voices of real local stars. So in the end, these videos were even more kind of user-friendly than the original, because the originals were voiced by scientists, and this time these were voiced by actors. And I just wanted to end, through our work for us, we developed several kind of principles that we’ve been applying now. One was local language first, so anything we do, we now do in Kyrgyz language. Then mobile first, because rural communities have very few computers, but everybody uses smartphones, and this means, for example, if we do textbooks, they can’t be just PDF, they have to be kind of, you have to be able to kind of make the font smaller, larger, and they cannot be very heavy. So for example, during COVID, Ministry of Education scanned all the books that they have, but they were so heavy, and the kids, when they download one book, all their money was gone, so they couldn’t use it. Same for video, and we found ways to make them very light, without losing the quality.

Glenn Deen:
I just want to jump in here and say, so one of my other hats is, I’m one of the ITF trustees, and one of the ITF trustees, what we actually do is, we manage the IP rights, the copyrights on all the technical standards the ITF produces. I just want to chime in and say, when you get to the ITF standards, one of the things we have pre-baked into the authorized uses, is you can translate them to any language you like. It’s already enabled, and already permission, already granted. So when you get to the ITF RFCs, you’re good to go. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thank you for the question. We have a question down here, and can you mind just identifying yourself? Sorry, I didn’t get to ask the other gentleman to do that. It’s fine. Just push the button up. There you go. It works, yes.

Audience:
Thank you very much. My name is Peter Bruch. I’m the chairman of the World Summit Awards, and we have started in 2003 with a business process to give a global, or to start a global mechanism of looking at high-quality content. And in the first year, we had 136 countries participating in 2003, and then today it’s 182 countries, and we have a United Nations system, so that from each country, so Thailand, if he’s working from Kyrgyzstan, he has one in the eight categories of the Tunis action plan, and the same as from the US, or from Australia, or from anywhere else. But I’m struck, I’m actually struck in awe by the quality of your conversation here, and I have not been privy and part of it before, and what I want to address here very much is the technologically fueled enthusiasm of Geoff Huston regarding different ways of thinking, and how the technology is actually turning, I mean, the table, I mean, upside down every three or five years. Obviously what we have is, when we look at quality of content, we have a promise, and Geoff, you related it to the library model of the internet, you know, shifting it then to the entertainment model, and you referred then also to the mobile revolution. What the business process started off is actually looking at this transformation through the internet into a knowledge society. So it was the idea of the computerization, you know, of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I guess. What we see here is that the market is actually very successful, and many of you have really, I mean, stressed how, from copyright, you know, I think Paolo, you did your three things regarding how the last 10 years have really, I mean, shown in terms of user-generated content, in terms of open source, and so on, how this has actually really helped us shape the market in a positive way. But I would think that we have not a market failure, but a democracy failure, and the issue here is very much that the platform intermediaries, which Geoff is also talking about, and who have such a critical role, they have cannibalized the editorial intermediaries. And that is something which we have to really, I mean, start thinking about in terms of what you were talking about also, Shannon, regarding the democracy issue. So we are basically creating, you know, I mean, not just one product for one taste on a scale of billions, but we are creating also social monads, which are not relating to each other in a participatory way, but they are paralleling each other in their existence, and then they are fueled by, and I don’t want to go into all the details of the analysis here, but it is, from my question is, what is it actually in terms of the positive thinking and what the technology can deliver, and what the economics can sustain in terms of quality content regarding what I would think is something like the editorial value-add, and that would relate then to something like the Enlightenment idea of the public sphere, but I don’t want to go into that either. So thank you very much for listening to this.

Moderator:
I appreciate your comments. I’m just gonna check back in over here. Luke, did you want to add anything? You’ve been very patient through all this whole conversation. You’ve got a microphone right next to you right there.

Audience:
I just do have one question, I mean, coming from a youth perspective and about copyright. So on Instagram, there actually is a function to add a sort of audio that you do have to a reel, so when content creators, I’m just curious that, let’s say you have a song, and you record the song, but you upload it as your own audio, so what is the process then, and what happens, and how do we educate the youth to better maybe follow the best practices that are already in place, but the youth may not know about these practices? Great, I think we know who that goes to.

LANTERI Paolo:
We can do copyright clinics at the IGF. I think it would be extremely useful, and we should suggest that. Luke, you’re talking about your originally created music uploaded on Instagram? Yeah, well, I think it’s something that is, I must say, I don’t know the details of the terms of use, but it must be something very similar to what happens on YouTube whenever you upload your video. Through that process, you are basically, there is a disclaimer, you have to assert you have the rights over that piece of music you are uploading. That’s the first thing. If you have the right, you are signing up a non-exclusive licensing agreement through which basically you allow Instagram to make it available, and unless you have a specific content idea, or you are a professional author, you are an artist, you oftentimes don’t get any good economic deals out of it. So it’s a good start to make yourself known, to outreach the audience, but what we see is that professional artists normally get a specific deal in order to get some of the revenues generated through advertisement whenever your music is played. So read carefully the terms of use, and if you are planning to be a professional artist, then read even more carefully and ask someone to help you. But it’s basically, it’s a copyright licensing, and once you upload that, you can also go somewhere else and do it if it’s your song. But first step, you need to make sure it’s your creation.

Moderator:
All right, we are at time. Thank you all for being part of this very good discussion. It looks like we survived the last 10 years. I’m hoping that we can do this again in another 10 and see where we have come in. So I just want to appreciate everyone’s time this morning. Thank you, Jeff, for coming in remotely, and thank you for all of you who are participating here in the audience and those that helped us coordinate all this. So have a good day at the IGF. Thank you.