DC-CIV Evolving Regulation and its impact on Core Internet Values | IGF 2023

Sébastien Bachollet

The internet, a network of networks, is a global medium that operates on open protocols such as TCP, IP, and BGP. It is free from centralized control and promotes open and interoperable communication worldwide. This highlights the positive aspect of the internet, emphasizing its ability to connect people and facilitate the exchange of information.

However, financial challenges are impacting internet freedom. As the world economy struggles to recover, what was previously offered for free on the internet may no longer make financial sense for companies providing services. This negative aspect raises concerns about potential limitations and restrictions that may arise due to economic constraints.

In response to these challenges, governments are actively involved in drafting and implementing regulations concerning internet governance. Notable examples include the UK’s online safety bills, the Australian Online Safety Act, the European Digital Services Act, Digital Market Act, and the US Kids Online Safety Act. This neutral argument suggests that governments are taking steps to ensure the safety, security, and responsible use of the internet.

Amidst these discussions, defenders of the core values of the internet emphasize the importance of preserving certain principles. The Dynamic Coalition on Co-Internet Value promotes permissionless innovation, which allows for the unrestricted development and deployment of new technologies and services. This is seen as a positive stance that supports the notion of an open and innovative internet.

Overall, the analysis illustrates the complex nature of the internet and its evolving landscape. While the internet offers open and interoperable communication, financial challenges pose a threat to internet freedom. Governments are actively intervening through regulatory measures, and defenders of internet values highlight the importance of preserving the core principles that have contributed to its success. The promotion of permissionless innovation adds another layer to the discussion, highlighting the need for ongoing innovation and development in the digital realm.

Audience

The provided summary examines various arguments and viewpoints concerning the security, reliability, and anonymity of the internet. It highlights the increasing dependence on the internet and the rising number of security breaches, emphasising the need to enhance its security and reliability.

On the other hand, the summary acknowledges the struggle with the need for identification on the internet. While identification is necessary for certain purposes, the concept of anonymity is also seen as significant. It argues that anonymity should be considered a fundamental value of the internet and advocates for the development of a standard that can combine both security and anonymity.

Furthermore, the summary supports the creation of a trusted service that promotes secure anonymity on the internet. The benefits of such a service are not explicitly stated; however, it can be inferred that it would provide a secure platform for users to maintain their privacy online.

The summary also brings attention to the concept of communications metadata security, suggesting that it may be a more accurate term than anonymity. It explains that the term “anonymity” can be misleading and proposes that the focus should be on protecting the security of communications metadata.

In addition, the summary mentions the use of Tor for accessing services like Facebook, highlighting the advantages it offers. It allows users to have control over the level of communication metadata they reveal, ensuring their privacy and security online.

Furthermore, it discusses the network layer of the internet, emphasising that identification is not automatically performed at this level. This suggests that users have the ability to choose whether or not to disclose their identity.

The summary concludes by suggesting that it might be beneficial, both in a societal and platform context, to have the option of identifying oneself at a different layer of the internet. This implies that users should have the flexibility to choose when and how they reveal their identity online.

Overall, the extended summary provides a comprehensive overview of the arguments and viewpoints regarding internet security, reliability, and anonymity. It touches on the perspectives of enhanced security, the need for anonymity, the concept of communications metadata security, and the importance of user control over identification.

Lee Rainie

The analysis highlights the issue of internet fragmentation and its impact on various aspects of society. One significant finding is that a staggering 2.6 billion people currently lack access to and use of the internet. This statistic emphasizes the importance of addressing the digital divide and ensuring equal access to the internet for all individuals.

The impact of the internet is further explored through four major revolutions: home broadband, mobile connectivity, social media, and artificial intelligence. Home broadband revolutionised the internet by making it an essential utility in people’s lives. Mobile connectivity then increased the speed of information access and communication. Social media expanded social networks, connecting people globally. Lastly, the emergence of artificial intelligence brought both promising possibilities and fears.

However, it is important to acknowledge that these internet revolutions have also led to social, cultural, and legal fragmentation. Different experiences have emerged across various segments of society, including differences based on class, gender, age, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, awareness, optimism, and individual behaviours. These disparities highlight the need to address inequalities and ensure that the benefits of the internet are accessible to everyone.

Another significant finding suggests that individuals often perceive themselves as managing the internet better than society as a whole. This perception may stem from personal proficiency or satisfaction with their own internet usage. However, this self-perception does not necessarily align with the overall societal impact of the internet, which may still face challenges and inequalities.

In terms of technology policy, the analysis reveals a growing trend towards partisanship. Previously, there may have been a consensus on issues like anonymity, but that consensus seems to be diminishing. Signs of polarization are evident in the dynamics of populist mainstream parties in Europe. This partisan shift in tech policy raises concerns about the ability to reach effective and inclusive regulations and policies.

The analysis concludes by suggesting that the current dynamic in tech policy is fluid and unsettled. Discussions surrounding technology and its regulation suggest an environment where things are constantly evolving and difficult to settle. This observation underscores the complexity and challenges in shaping a cohesive and inclusive tech policy framework.

Overall, the analysis highlights the need to address internet fragmentation, overcome inequalities caused by the different experiences of internet revolutions, and find ways to address partisan tensions in tech policy. By tackling these challenges, policymakers and society can work towards a more equal, inclusive, and beneficial internet ecosystem for all.

Alejandro Pisanty

Regulation proposals in the context of the internet have raised concerns regarding their potential infringement on the core values of the internet. It is believed that these regulations may have a negative impact on the technical principles with which the internet was built. This concern stems from the assumption that such core internet values are primarily rooted in these technical principles. The sentiment towards these regulation proposals is generally negative, highlighting the need to carefully consider their potential consequences.

One of the main concerns regarding regulation proposals is the potential reduction in the universality of the internet’s reach. There is a risk that these regulations may limit the accessibility and availability of the internet, thereby undermining its global reach. Additionally, it is argued that these regulations may also lead to a reduction in interoperability, making it more difficult for different systems and platforms to effectively communicate with one another.

In order to enhance security, there is a suggestion that additional devices might be necessary for stronger authentication or identification. This highlights the need for ongoing technological advancements to address the evolving challenges of cybersecurity and digital identity verification.

However, it is crucial to implement regulations carefully in order to strike a balance between enforcement and the preservation of core internet values. The focus should be on finding a middle ground that allows for the regulation of the internet while ensuring that the underlying principles that shaped its development are not compromised. This approach is considered constructive, as it acknowledges the importance of regulations while also emphasizing the need to safeguard the fundamental values that the internet was built upon.

The topic of trust establishment in the internet also arises, with questions raised about the magnitude of architectural changes that may be required. There are concerns about the scalability of trust systems and whether they can effectively meet the demands of a growing global network. Alejandro Pisanty specifically highlights Estonia’s trust system as a brilliant example but potentially limited in its scalability. This insight offers valuable considerations for future developments in trust establishment within the internet infrastructure.

Furthermore, discussions around internet governance touch upon the significance of privacy and online identity. It is argued that individuals should have the choice to identify themselves online without being compelled to disclose personal identification data. This highlights the importance of striking a balance between privacy protection and the necessary security measures in place.

The case of AFRINIC, a regional internet registry, brings attention to the challenges faced by private entities registered in certain jurisdictions. AFRINIC’s position as a private entity registered in Mauritius has resulted in numerous court cases, sparking discussions about according technical organizations governing the internet the status of internet government organizations. This observation raises important questions about the governance structure and legal frameworks surrounding the internet.

In conclusion, regulation proposals for the internet have generated concerns about potential infringements on the core values and principles of the internet. Discussions revolve around the need to carefully implement regulations to preserve the internet’s universality, interoperability, and core values. The importance of stronger authentication and identification is highlighted, but considerations must be made for the impact on privacy and choice. Trust establishment also comes under scrutiny, with reflections on scalability and architectural changes. The legal status of technical organizations governing the internet is explored, emphasizing the need for effective governance structures in addressing the complexities of the digital age.

Iria Puyosa

The analysis considers various perspectives in the debate on content moderation in encrypted apps and the transnational flow of data. It raises concerns about ill-designed regulation that could potentially disrupt the internet. The argument is that rushed regulation may have unintended consequences and negative effects. This highlights the need for careful planning and comprehensive consideration.

Another important point raised is the focus on harmful content within encrypted message apps. While much of the public conversation revolves around managing harmful content in these apps, research shows that the majority of content in messaging apps is actually useful and positive. This challenges the notion that harmful content is pervasive and questions the urgency of regulation.

Furthermore, the analysis presents an argument against breaking encryption solely for content moderation purposes. It suggests that there are alternative ways to address harmful content without compromising encryption. Breaking encryption in messaging apps could have broader implications and potentially undermine encryption on the internet as a whole. This negative sentiment emphasizes the importance of considering long-term effects on digital security and privacy.

The analysis also emphasizes the significance of considering the transnational flow of data in policy making. Regulations implemented in one country can significantly impact other countries. The extraterritorial nature of data flow is often overlooked in policy discussions. This neutral sentiment highlights the need for a global approach and collaborative efforts to ensure coherent and harmonized regulations that do not have unintended negative consequences on cross-border data flow.

Additionally, the analysis highlights the importance of respecting human rights, the rule of law, and internet integrity. It suggests that solutions should be found that align with these principles. Balancing concerns while maintaining the core principles of the internet is crucial.

The analysis recognizes the need for technical expertise in policy discussions. It emphasizes the importance of individuals with the knowledge and skills to solve problems and implement effective solutions. This observation underscores the intersection of technology and policy and the value of diverse expertise in shaping regulations.

To prevent unintended consequences, the analysis stresses the necessity of input from civil society and a thorough understanding of human rights before implementing regulations. Involving a broad range of voices and perspectives can help avoid exacerbating existing problems or creating new ones.

In conclusion, the analysis highlights the complexities and various perspectives within the content moderation debate in encrypted apps and the transnational flow of data. It underscores the need for well-designed and thoroughly considered regulations that do not compromise internet integrity or undermine encryption. Respecting human rights, the rule of law, and involving technical expertise and civil society in policy discussions are also crucial. A balanced approach is needed to address concerns while upholding the principles and integrity of the internet.

Nii Quaynor

The African Network Information Centre (afriNIC) has faced significant challenges in Mauritius due to local legislation. These challenges have affected afriNIC’s ability to develop effective policies and have caused issues with Resource Registry (RR) transfer policies. This legislative impact has had a negative effect on afriNIC.

Despite these challenges, afriNIC’s multi-stakeholder approach within the Policy Development Process (PDP) has remained resilient. Draft proposals aimed at hijacking resources have failed to reach consensus, demonstrating the effectiveness of the multi-stakeholder approach in preventing such attempts. Although participation in the PDP has been hindered, leading to the recall of a co-chair, the multi-stakeholder approach has overall been positive for afriNIC.

One argument put forth is that internet identifiers should be managed as public goods, rather than treated as property. Transfer policies in other regions have considered resources as property, but not necessarily for the end user. It is argued that managing internet identifiers as public goods is crucial for their equitable distribution and accessibility.

afriNIC has also faced challenges regarding non-compliance from a member. This member, who had received significant resources but refused to comply with afriNIC’s requirements, had their resources recalled as a consequence. This non-compliance has created further difficulties for afriNIC.

Another concern is the need for stronger protections and governance for afriNIC. Despite plans to become a decentralized organization, this transition remains incomplete. Additionally, afriNIC’s attempts to seek diplomatic protection have not been successful. These factors highlight the need for improved security measures and governance within afriNIC.

Commercial disputes between non-profit organizations and members have also arisen as a challenge. It has been observed that disputes can occur, raising questions about the effectiveness of the current legal system in resolving such issues.

Furthermore, disapproval has been expressed towards a member who refuses to be disciplined and has abused the legal system by generating multiple court cases. This member has violated rules and even attempted to bribe individuals, undermining the integrity of afriNIC and placing further strain on the legal system.

Lastly, concerns have been raised about business misuse and the potential hijacking of numbers by organizations lacking proper infrastructure. Some organizations have been found to be misusing resources and generating numerous court cases without the necessary business infrastructure. This raises ethical concerns and questions about the proper allocation of resources.

In conclusion, afriNIC has faced various challenges, including legislative barriers, non-compliance from members, commercial disputes, and concerns over business misuse and number hijacking. Despite these challenges, afriNIC’s multi-stakeholder approach has shown resilience in the Policy Development Process. However, there is a need for stronger protections, improved governance, and a more efficient legal system to effectively address these issues.

Vint Cerf

The analysis covers a wide range of topics related to internet security, privacy, anonymity, accountability, and the role of technology in filtering harmful internet behaviour.

One area of discussion is the side effects of internet security measures. While governments have enacted laws to protect internet users, there is concern that these laws can be used to inhibit freedom of speech. It is argued that internet security measures have unexpected consequences and may not always achieve the desired outcomes.

The importance of strong authentication is emphasised as a means of preventing unauthorised actions and impersonation. Strong authentication, such as end-to-end cryptography, is seen as a way to protect user information and maintain confidentiality.

Anonymity on the internet is also addressed, with some arguing that it can lead to harmful behaviour. Anonymity is believed to shield individuals engaging in bad behaviour and decrease the consequences for their actions, thereby encouraging harmful actions. However, others argue that mechanisms allowing for identity discovery should be tolerated, as accountability can help prevent harmful actions. The tension between anonymity and accountability is a significant consideration in this debate.

The limitations of technology, such as machine learning, in filtering harmful internet behaviour are highlighted. It is argued that technology fails to effectively filter harmful behaviour and that incorrect filtering can infringe upon individuals’ rights.

Certain situations, such as whistleblowing, are seen as necessitating anonymity. Whistleblowers rely on anonymity to protect their identity and ensure their safety, especially when exposing sensitive information.

The need for architectural changes to internet identity is also discussed. The current identifier provided by the internet, the IP address, is seen as insufficient for maintaining security and privacy. Estonia’s implementation of strong authentication for its entire population is cited as an example of the potential for significant changes to internet identity.

The importance of accountability over absolute anonymity is emphasised, acknowledging the potential risks associated with identifying individuals by biological metrics. Privacy concerns are balanced against the need for accountability to prevent harmful actions.

Vint Cerf, a prominent figure in the field, argues that absolute anonymity may no longer be a core value that serves the interests of internet users. He also supports the inclusion of a multi-stakeholder perspective in policy formulation, believing it should be a normal practice for governments. The multi-stakeholder model of organisations like the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is praised for ensuring robust policy-making regulations and engagement with governments.

The value of cryptography in data protection is highlighted, with examples of Google’s encryption practices and user-controlled data keys. However, arguments against the idea that data about citizens should be kept within national borders are presented. Keeping data within physical borders is seen as compromising reliability due to the lack of redundancy, while transborder data flows combined with encryption are seen as offering safe data storage options.

The layering mechanism for communications metadata security is appreciated, drawing parallels with other elements of internet design such as the domain name system. The concept of user-choice in revealing identity is viewed positively and considered an important aspect of internet security.

The power of internet exchange points for connectivity is acknowledged, facilitating efficient connections between networks. However, concerns are raised about government-operated exchange points leading to unwanted surveillance if all traffic is required to go through them. It is suggested that cryptography could help secure encrypted traffic running through exchange points.

Furthermore, the challenges of maintaining exchange points and data centres in space are noted, due to the difficulties in accessing these locations and carrying out necessary maintenance.

Lastly, the critical importance of the internet in everyday life is recognised, with global surveys indicating a widespread unwillingness to give it up. The positive impact of the internet on various aspects of society is acknowledged.

In conclusion, the analysis explores complex and diverse perspectives on internet security and related issues. It highlights the need for a balance between security, privacy, anonymity, and accountability. The role of technology in filtering harmful behaviour is examined, and the importance of strong authentication and architectural changes to internet identity is emphasised. The multi-stakeholder approach in policy-making, the value of cryptography in data protection, and the challenges and benefits of internet exchange points and space-based infrastructure are also discussed. Overall, the analysis sheds light on the multifaceted nature of internet security and the ongoing discussions surrounding its various dimensions.

Deborah Allen Rogers

The extended summary discusses the effective e-governance models developed by Finland and Estonia. According to Deborah Allen Rogers, who works with the digital fluency lab Find Out Why, these solutions often go unnoticed. She suggests that promoting learning from and collaborating with Finland and Estonia on their e-governance models is important, as they have been implementing them for about 20 years and have answers to many challenges faced by Europe and the United States in e-governance.

The summary also highlights the crucial role of cryptography in protecting human rights, personal rights, and privacy. It is considered a safe and scalable method for safeguarding information.

Furthermore, the significance of scale in technology is emphasized. Deborah Allen Rogers points out that smaller societies can serve as test samples, and scaling their functional aspects has been successful. The CEO of XRoad, based in Finland, shares insights about their more conservative cultural context in scaling technology compared to Estonia. The summary also mentions that scale changes the concept of what can be done at the push of a button.

It is worth noting that Deborah Allen Rogers has previous experience with drastic transitions, having been a clothing designer during the shift of global manufacturing to China and during the AIDS pandemic, as well as being in New York during the 9/11 attacks. This experience adds credibility to her perspectives.

The functionality of societies is discussed, with Deborah pointing out the difference between highly governed and functional societies, like the Netherlands, and dysfunctional ones. The summary implies that dysfunctional societies may struggle in handling societal aspects effectively.

Finally, the summary emphasizes that the functionality of a society is more important than its size. This notion aligns with the SDGs of reducing inequalities and promoting sustainable cities and communities.

Overall, the extended summary provides a comprehensive overview of the main points, arguments, and evidence discussed in the original text. It also includes Deborah Allen Rogers’ insights and experiences, adding depth to the analysis.

Shiva

Internet exchange points (IXPs) are critical infrastructure that facilitate the exchange of internet traffic between different networks. However, there are concerns about the potential impact of IXPs operating on a commercial business model on internet neutrality. Some IXPs operate as for-profit entities, and this could potentially lead to favouritism or discriminatory practices, impacting the principle of net neutrality.

The argument against commercial IXPs is rooted in the belief that when financial interests are prioritized, the impartial exchange of internet traffic may be compromised. This sentiment is reflected in the negative sentiment associated with this argument. The supporting facts suggest that some IXPs do indeed operate on a commercial basis, which raises concerns about the potential erosion of internet neutrality.

Another concern related to IXPs is government regulation. There is a fear that governments could use their regulatory powers to manipulate or control the internet through IXPs. This negative sentiment draws attention to the potential misuse of IXPs as tools for political censorship or surveillance. The related sustainable development goal of SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions highlights the importance of preserving a free and open internet.

On a more neutral note, there are ongoing discussions and considerations for the design of interplanetary internet exchange points. Given the increasing interest in space exploration and the possibility of future interplanetary communication networks, the concept of interplanetary IXPs is being explored. However, limited information is provided regarding this topic, suggesting that more research and development is required.

In conclusion, concerns about the impact of commercial IXPs on internet neutrality and the potential for government control highlight the need for careful regulation and oversight in the management of IXPs. The concept of interplanetary IXPs adds an intriguing dimension to the discussion, emphasizing the evolving nature of internet infrastructure as technology and human exploration progress.

Joseph

The use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) is a topic that sparks controversy. VPNs have the ability to bypass internet restrictions, granting users the ability to access sensitive data that may be otherwise blocked. This feature has both positive and negative implications. On one hand, it allows individuals to browse the internet freely, evade censorship and access information that may be crucial in certain circumstances. However, this freedom can also be easily misused, leading to fraudulent activities and infringement on sensitive data.

The argument against the use of VPNs centres around the potential for misuse and harm. Those raising concerns argue that VPNs provide a cloak of anonymity that can enable cybercriminals to carry out illegal activities, such as hacking, fraud and identity theft. By masking their IP addresses and encrypting their online activities, these criminals can disguise their tracks, making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to trace and apprehend them. This creates a significant challenge for cybersecurity and poses a threat to the security of individuals and organisations.

However, it is important to note that VPNs have legitimate applications as well. Many individuals and organisations, such as journalists, activists and businesses, rely on VPNs to protect their sensitive information and maintain privacy. For these users, VPNs provide a layer of security by encrypting their data, making it difficult for hackers or prying eyes to intercept and exploit it. In this context, VPNs are seen as valuable tools for safeguarding data and ensuring the protection of individual content on the internet.

The need for protective measures for individual content on the internet is a relevant concern in today’s digital age. As more and more information is stored and shared online, the risk of cyber threats and data breaches increases. This issue is closely linked to topics of internet security, cyber safety and data protection. With the rise of cybercrimes and the increasing value of personal data, it is crucial to find a balance between protecting privacy and ensuring the safety of individuals and society as a whole.

In conclusion, the use of VPNs is a contentious matter. While VPNs can provide internet users with greater freedom and privacy, their potential misuse raises legitimate concerns. The debate surrounding VPNs highlights the importance of balancing individual privacy rights with the need for cybersecurity measures. Solutions that address these concerns while preserving internet accessibility and protecting sensitive data are crucial for tackling this complex issue.

Jane R. Coffin

This extended summary provides a more detailed overview of the main points, arguments, evidence, and conclusions present in the provided text. It also includes noteworthy observations and insights gained from the analysis.

1. Importance of funding small networks in the United States: – The text highlights the importance of funding small networks, specifically in rural and underserved areas. – It recognises the lack of connectivity in certain areas in the US and the need for creative and innovative funding solutions. – The argument is strongly in favour of funding small networks to bridge the digital divide and reduce inequalities in access to the internet.

2. Open connectivity and fewer regulations: – There is a call for open connectivity and the need to reduce regulations to foster innovation. – The text mentions the importance of keeping internet exchange points open with fewer regulations. – The argument is positive and emphasises the benefits of promoting open connectivity for industry, innovation, and infrastructure development.

3. Concerns about the erosion of core internet values: – The text raises concerns about the erosion of openness, interoperability, global connection, and permissionless innovation. – Certain countries and international organisations are observed attempting to regulate internet exchange points. – The argument expresses a negative sentiment towards the potential threat posed to the core values of the internet.

4. Advocacy for community networks and competition in connectivity: – The importance of community networks for building networks that serve the community, with the community, and by the community is emphasised. – The text highlights regulations that prohibit community networks and stresses the need for more network diversification and competition in connectivity. – The argument is in favour of community networks and advocates for their importance in reducing inequalities in access to the internet.

5. Need for inclusive, multi-stakeholder policymaking and regulation: – The text argues for inclusive and multi-stakeholder inclusion in policymaking and regulation. – It suggests that neglecting smaller networks, internet exchange points, and other stakeholders may lead to forced centralisation. – The sentiment is negative towards the exclusion of certain groups and emphasises the importance of diverse perspectives in regulatory decision-making processes.

6. Observations on unintended consequences in policymaking: – The text suggests that excluding civil society, the technical community, and academia from policymaking may lead to unintended consequences and forced centralisation. – The negative sentiment arises from the potential negative impact of excluding certain stakeholders from decision-making processes.

7. The role of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the multi-stakeholder model: – The text highlights the obligation of the IGF and the uniqueness of the multi-stakeholder model in working with governments for better policy formation. – The argument is positive, emphasising the need for collaboration between the IGF, governments, and other stakeholders to improve policymaking and regulation.

8. Possibility of exchange points in space with Low Earth Orbiting Satellites (LEOs): – Relevant research funded by the Internet Society Foundation explores the possibility of exchange points in space using LEOs. – The argument remains neutral, presenting this as an area of exploration for future developments in internet infrastructure.

9. Issues surrounding control over traffic in LEO constellation networks: – The complex nature of control over traffic in LEO constellation networks is acknowledged. – Complications arise in negotiating cross-border connectivity issues with transmissions between countries. – The argument takes a negative stance towards a potential concentration of control in the hands of a single entity or company.

10. Acknowledgement of different types of internet exchange points: – The text acknowledges that some countries require traffic monitoring at exchange points. – It recognises the existence and role of both neutral, bottom-up internet exchange points and government-managed ones. – The sentiment is neutral, neither positive nor negative.

11. Support for encryption and potential relevance of cryptocurrencies: – The importance of encryption in protecting the privacy of internet traffic is acknowledged. – While the support for encryption is positive, there is no significant interest expressed in cryptocurrencies at present. – The sentiment is positive, emphasising the importance of privacy and security in internet communications.

12. Overall sentiment towards the future of the internet: – The analysis reveals a positive sentiment towards keeping the internet open, secure, and globally connected. – The text recognises the need for collaboration, open connectivity, and innovative funding solutions to bridge the digital divide and reduce inequalities. – There is a strong emphasis on the core values of the internet and the importance of multi-stakeholder involvement in policymaking and regulation.

In conclusion, the text highlights the importance of funding small networks, the need for open connectivity, and concerns about the erosion of core internet values. It advocates for community networks, competition in connectivity, and inclusive policymaking to avoid forced centralisation. The role of the Internet Governance Forum and the multi-stakeholder model is recognised, and potential developments in internet infrastructure, such as exchange points in space, are explored. Encryption and privacy also receive positive support. Overall, the sentiment emphasises the need to keep the internet open, secure, and globally connected.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond

The Dynamic Coalition, led by Olivier Crepin-Leblond, extends an invitation to individuals to join their year-round discussions. Notably, there is no requirement for a membership fee, making it inclusive and accessible to a wide range of participants.

The work of the Dynamic Coalition holds significance, as they will be creating a report based on their sessions. This report will be taken into account in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) messages for the Kyoto meeting, emphasizing the recognition of the Coalition’s efforts and their valuable contributions.

The initiatives of the Dynamic Coalition align with two Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 9, focusing on industry, innovation, and infrastructure, and SDG 17, emphasizing partnerships for goal achievement. This demonstrates the Coalition’s commitment to contributing to the global sustainable development agenda.

Overall, the Dynamic Coalition, under the leadership of Olivier Crepin-Leblond, provides an open platform for discussions and collaboration. Their dedication to producing a report that influences internet governance decisions highlights the importance of their work. Furthermore, by aligning their efforts with key SDGs, the Coalition showcases its commitment to contributing to global sustainable development goals.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll start in one minute, please. Thank you. OK, let’s go. My name is Sebastien Bachelet. I am in charge of taking care of this meeting, but I will not be the main speaker. Of course, you are joining the dynamic coalition on co-internet values on the topic of evolving regulation and its impact on co-internet values. So co-internet value, which comprise the technical architectural values by which the internet is built and evolves and derives universal values that emerge from the way the internet works. So internet, it’s a global medium open to all, regardless of geography or nationality. It’s interoperable because it’s a network of networks. It doesn’t rely on a single application. It relies on open protocols such as TCP, IP, and BGP. It’s free of any centralized control except for the needed coordination of unique identifiers. It’s end-to-end, so traffic from one end of the network to the other end of the network goes in the grid. It’s user-centric, and users have control over what they send and receive, and it’s robust and reliable. So dynamic coalition on co-internet value held sessions at every previous IGF. And every year, there seems to be another challenge, one of the most basic co-internet value. It’s unique weakness. In 2023, the world economy has not recovered from the challenge of previous years. What was free on the internet might no longer make sense financially for companies offering the service and might end up behind a paywall. What was free movement of information in the past might not be seen by government as a good thing today. What was free connectivity might not be financially sustainable any longer. What was free might be blocked tomorrow for many reasons. On the one hand, there are calls for commercial operators such as telecom providers asking for a fair share of internet profits, which is gaining grounds with some lawmakers. In addition to this commercial pressure, where the free mode of operation might no longer be the preferred mode of operation, recent years have seen a lot more regulation affecting the internet. Whether it is the UK’s online safety bills, the Australian Online Safety Act, the European Digital Services Act, and Digital Market Act, or the US Kids Online Safety Act, regulation is being drafted and ruled out by many governments. Very often for good reason and good objective, but it’s something we will see during this discussion. So not only is there a strong movement worldwide to implement some major structural change to the ways internet and internet services work, there is also a commercial interest from some to change the internet business model altogether. A few years ago, the Dynamic Coalition on Co-Internet Value promoted permissionless innovation. These days, for many governments, this translates to the World Wild West. Is this a fair assessment of the internet that we have been defending? Are the core values that gave internet its freedom at risk? Regulation, it’s now firmly back on the agenda. This session of the Dynamic Coalition Co-Internet Values will, again, bring world-class experts to discuss the internet we want, each bringing their unique experience to the table. I will briefly talk about our speaker. We are here on my right, Lee Rainey. I will leave them to present themselves. It will be shorter. Jane Coffin is with us.Nii Quaynor and Iria Pusosa are online. And Vint Cerf is with us. I would like to thank them very much. And give the floor, if you agree, to Lee to start the discussion. Lee, the floor is yours.

Lee Rainie:
Thank you, Sebastian. It’s wonderful to be here. I’m honored to be here. And really, my philosophy has been whenever you’re in the same room with Vint Cerf, you have to start by saying thank you. And I come to you from 24 years of doing research with the Pew Research Center about the social and political and economic impacts of the internet. I thought I was going to retire from Pew Research this past spring. And I flunked retirement. So I got a wonderful gig to continue on with a portion of the work at Elon University, which is in North Carolina in the United States. We’ve done a lot of work with them related to that. And I get the title professor in front of my name now. So my mother is smiling at me in heaven. And my children laugh at me a little bit less now. I wanted to start by saying the overlying topic here is fragmentation. So the first thing maybe to note in the sense of fragmentation is that there are 2.6 billion people who don’t have the internet and don’t use it. And so there is an enormous fragmentation at the heart of the social, political, cultural experience of the internet. So just noting that is an important scene-setter for this conversation. Over the course of my work at Pew, though, it was easy to spot four different revolutions that were occurring on our watch. And watch then the reckoning that came from those revolutions. There was a dynamic that has tightened up. There’s usually great enthusiasm at moment zero. And then the enthusiasm sometimes faded as the reality of things came out. So I want to also make sure that you understand I’m going to be talking about four social, cultural, and legal changes. These don’t really affect how people think about the underlying principles of the internet. They love it. You poll on the ideas of free, open, secure, interoperable. And you get unprecedentedly positive survey ratings about the principles that underlie what the master here built. What happens, though, is that once those principles collide with culture and law and people’s own personalities, there are ways in which their enthusiasms begin to fade or their qualms begin to rise. So go through the four revolutions relatively quickly. The first one we saw in the late 1990s, beginning in the late 1990s, was the rise of home broadband, which made people enthusiastic users of internet protocols because the internet became a utility in their life. It was not a play thing anymore. When you dialed up those modems, that was kind of a fun sound to hear. But when it became always on and on higher speed, people began to embrace it in the rhythms of their life. It changed the volume of information that was coming into their life. And you could see the incipient ways that they became enthusiastic about being content creators themselves. So it was democratizing. It was doing end runs around gatekeepers. There were ways in which new kinds of communities could be built that were built around affinity and affiliation rather than localities and the physical proximity that people had to each other. And people just loved the idea that they could tell their stories without being shut down or without having to cajole a gatekeeper to allow them to tell their stories. And yet, right in those early days, there were early signs that people, while they liked that for themselves, they didn’t like that necessarily for others who had different ideas. The medical community at first was one of the initial communities to sound alarms around mis- and disinformation. They were worried, from a gatekeeper sense, that people were doing end runs around their providers and getting second opinions and diagnosing themselves and things. But there was also concern that more and more misinformation and just bad information was getting out into the world. Dangerous actors early on began to figure out how to exploit these new tools for themselves. Concern about the content that was appropriate, particularly for children, to be exposed to. I came out of the world of journalism, too. So it was easy to see the warning signs of what the internet was going to be doing to mainstream journalism in the culture. So that was part of the backlash. Love at first, democratizing, but also concerns about some of the early ways in which it was playing through the culture. Second revolution was the mobile connectivity revolution, which changed the velocity of information into people’s lives. All of a sudden, their phones became another body part and another lobe in their brain. And they loved that. They loved the always-on, always-available connectivity that they had with others. They liked being able to be reached by others. They liked the fact that the nature of their social networks was changing, even before social media really sort of came to prominence. They could see more people in their lives and interact with more people. And they enjoyed that. But they, again, sort of early enough in that whole arrival of that second revolution on mobile connectivity, they began to worry about the distractions that it was bringing into people’s lives, the way it was disrupting their attention flows, the way that they were always available to others. They liked it in some sense. They certainly liked it when they could do outreach to others. But they didn’t like necessarily being always available to others. And it imposed new obligations on their lives. So again, there’s this sort of push-me-pull-you, yin and yang dimension to the rise of this second revolution. Third revolution is social media, particularly when combined with the mobile connectivity revolution. It just put everything on accelerants, the relationships in their social networks, the size and scope of their social networks, their exposure to new information and people and ideas, the fact that they could share the adventures of their lives, and even the little things in their lives, very quickly with the push of a button. And they could like and affirm things that others were doing. That was incredibly exciting to people and changed the way that they reacted to media. They lived their lives in a variety of ways. But then, relatively soon, too, began the first backlash wave about, well, what’s this doing, particularly to younger children, and especially to girls, when their messaging that was coming into the world was not necessarily affirming or was showing them parts of life that they struggled to think that they would ever have access to and things like that. The business model of the companies themselves began to raise questions about, well, how much do they really know about me? And how much am I being targeted and manipulated or steered or things like that? Obviously, there were concerns about harassment and hate speech and threats and all kinds of things like that. And information warriors themselves taking actions in this. The fourth and final revolution that I’ve been privileged to watch and is unfolding in front of our very eyes and is the central topic of this idea is the artificial intelligence revolution. And clearly, people have very discriminating ideas about it. There are ways in which they think AI is doing wonders in their life. And they anticipate even more wonders in the future, their productivity and things like that. But they’re also worried about their jobs. And they’re worried about bias and discrimination. They’re worried about their own autonomy and a way to act. And they’re worried about ethical applications. I heard a number here. I hope someone will fact check me on this if I’m wrong. There are at least 1,300 documented protocols of ethical AI that are now being circulated, God knows how many more, in more private channels. But it’s a sense that there’s a palpable fear that these tools might turn bad or they might be pulled in bad directions. So those are the four revolutions and the backlash. So each of them sort of have affected people’s lives. But I also wanted to talk for a minute about other ways that I call them fragmented souls are affected by these new environments. And again, a play through the social, cultural, and legal fragmentations that we’re seeing. Everything that we’ve studied about those four revolutions shows that different groups have different experiences of the revolutions. And the obvious ones that Pew measured every time something new happened was there are differences by class, differences by gender, differences by age, differences by race and ethnicity, and sometimes pretty significant differences by religious affiliation or non-religious affiliation. There are also differences by sort of psychographics, the way people are affected their relationship to these new tools. First of all, especially when it comes to AI, their awareness is an enormous determinant of how they think about it. The less people know, the more scared they are. And you can see how public education and other just sort of familiarization processes might ease things over time, but that’s a big determinant now. But there are differences among those who are optimists and pessimists, those who trust and don’t trust as their starting point with other individuals, extroverts and introverts, and a whole lot of other psychographics. Finally, just to make things confusing from a fragmentation sense, and anybody that’s trying to deal with this has to deal with the reality that different people act different ways in these environments. At one moment, the context is open and affirming, and I want these things in my life, and I would like them available to me. At another moment, I don’t want any access to me. I don’t want my data being gathered. I don’t want to be offered this transactional kind of thing. So there are ways in which you can’t even predict at the individual level at times whether people are going to like it or not like it, which makes lawmaking hard, which makes rollouts of new products and applications hard, and things like that. And the final one is the sort of big one, which is there’s an optimism gap that’s at the center of people’s thinking about the fragmentation we face. They think, each individual thinks, I’m doing OK in this environment. They like all of these revolutions for what they bring to their lives. But they also think everybody else is messed up by them. I’m OK. You’re not. So they think they’re doing fine, but the society is not doing well, and they have a split mind thinking about how to reconcile that in policy, in culture, in norms, and in technology. Thank you, Sebastian.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you very much, Lee. I will give the floor to Jane now, please.

Jane R. Coffin:
Hello. For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Jane Coffin. I’ve been rambling around the internet community and connectivity communities for about 25 years. I’ve been in government, industry, non-profits, and startups. My last startup was one that I didn’t start it up, but it was one of the key people. But it was one of the key people working on the startup to help fund small networks, believe it or not, in the United States, because there are a lot of networks that are not being deployed in the rural, remote, urban, unconnected, un- and underserved areas. And it was specifically to take a look at how to fund those networks with creative, innovative funding, a.k.a. bringing what people call blended finance and impact investment back to the United States, where it probably should stay for a while, because there’s a lack of connectivity and things have to change. And the regulations need to be loosened up a little bit in order for that to happen. During the 25 years that I’ve been running around, I’ve done a lot of work in what people call the Global South, but the Global South often doesn’t call itself that. The common denominator is working in those places that are less connected and potentially had fewer regulations and policies. So helping to bring some policy and regulatory sense in some areas and or building regulators, to help bring in more open connectivity, which was always my goal. I was at the Internet Society for 10 years and spent a lot of time working on internet exchange points and community networks, which I’m going to focus on as some of the core internet valued entity things that we need, related to something called invariance. And the Internet Society put out a paper called Internet Invariance. And I want to read the Wikipedia, if I can find it again. Definition for you of invariant, which is a constant. It’s something that’s not changing. And so if some of the key internet invariants are openness, interoperability, globally and something that I think Vint coined as permissionless innovation. I’ll call it innovation without permission. Those are critical things for building your internet community and building networks in anywhere. But what we’re seeing is some erosion of those key things about the openness, the interoperability, the globally connected part, which is if any endpoint of a network can connect to another endpoint from that global interconnection, this is super important. Internet exchange points are a sign of some of these invariants because they bring networks together in a very neutral fashion to exchange traffic without a lot of rules. The rules are, of course, based in protocols that come out of the Internet Engineering Task Force and some other organizations like the IEEE. If you’re doing wireless, sort of Wi-Fi connectivity at the IX. But those internet exchange points that we helped develop over time gave people a neutral grounding place to exchange traffic. They were often not regulated, and it’s been quite something to work over the last 15 to 10 years to make sure that they weren’t regulated and to keep them open. We’ve seen some erosion of that in different countries, and I’m not gonna name the countries or where some of this is coming from, even in international organizations where they wanted to standardize the stack of equipment in IXPs, which could have created more challenges and hardened the architecture to a degree that there was less innovation when you’re building the internet exchange points. The other connectivity medium that we were working with so closely, and I’ve been working with in the last couple years as well on a different level on financing them, are the community networks. You can call them municipal networks, open networks, structurally separated networks where there’s more networks riding over a network that somebody else runs, the baseline network. But with community networks, you have permissionless innovation to just bring in what you’d like from the community out. And if we see more regulation that prohibits community networks, I’ve been in international meetings where people said I was trying to stand up a terrorist network. Or, and I thought, wow, okay, that’s a whole new spin on what I’m trying to do. But, and it wasn’t me, and I should say, the expression we used to use was for the community, with the community, by the community. These are organic networks that are built out in places that have little last mile connectivity to no last mile connectivity, or no competitive last mile and middle mile connectivity. So I would posit that when we keep seeing spectrum locked in, when we keep hearing people say, no, you can’t have a different type of network that isn’t an incumbent network, or designed a certain way, there’s, they’re locking out innovation, but they’re also locking out competition, and they’re locking people out of connectivity at a cheaper price. So if we’re talking about some of the core internet values of openness, interoperability, globally connected, and innovation without permission, internet exchange points, community networks, and working with brilliant technical people in a very innovative way, which is not in a university setting at times. I’ve worked with a lot of people in the network operator groups, which I think a lot of people don’t know what those are, the NOGs, the network operator groups around the world are some of the best places where you see technical expertise transferred to other people at what I call the local, local level, where you, if you’re talking about sustainability and building more internet infrastructure, it’s not just people jetting in to say, you do this this way, it’s more of a, how do you work with local people to train local people for local connectivity? So I’m gonna stop there and just also say that, I think Lee had mentioned it, but there are some things that we’re seeing with the DSA and with fair share, which by the way, I saw so much erosion of this fair share issue 20 years ago. People were calling the internet bypass because it was bypassing the traditional telco networks. So for years and years in certain fora, people were locking out the internet. They didn’t want IP-based networks in their countries because it was going around the toll booth of the old telco networks. Now I’m not anti-telco, full disclosure, I did work for a telco years ago, but there’s room for everyone in this equation, and I’m gonna turn it over back to you, Sebastian.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you very much, Jane. Very well articulated, I think it will be useful for the follow-up of this meeting. Now we have two person online. I would like to be sure that, Nii, who will be the next speaker, and Iria, who are available online. And Nii, please take the floor.

Nii Quaynor:
Yes, I’m available.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Go ahead. Thank you, Nhi.

Nii Quaynor:
Thanks very much for inviting me to share some views on the topic. I tend to think internet means fragments, so perhaps the fragmentation is elsewhere. I’ll be speaking to how AfriNIC, Africa’s regional internet registry, was affected by local legislation in Mauritius, and what impact this could have on regional internet registries. There’s sufficient background information at the afriNIC.net website on legal cases, but take a look also at the assisted review. I intend to present that though the legislative context is a factor, there were real other challenges, including RR transfer policies, policy development process attacks, cyber bullying, legal denial of service attacks on the org, and also on individuals who dare speak. Misinformation was peddled, even there was cyber squat of the RR, and so on, community poisoning, and naturally that generated some internal governance challenges surrounding the resources. However, the core, the afriNIC core function of administering resources to operators and end users, according to community developed policies, has so far held up very well. The good news is that the multi-stakeholder approach we practice in our PDP has been resilient, and several draft proposals to hijack resources did not reach consensus. Attempts to gain the participation in the PDP were also thwarted, and a co-chair was recalled for the first time. A brief history will put this in context. Proposal to establish was made in 97, meetings in 98 in Kotonu and AFNO 2000 endorsed the proposal, and afriNIC itself was established around 2004 going to five. It received endorsements and support of several governments and inter-governmental organizations, many African countries, African Union, ICT ministers, OIF, Francophonie, E-Africa Commission, UNECA, UNICEF Task Force, and many others supported. So the need to have it established was unquestioned. The original idea was to establish as an incorporated association, not for gain in South Africa, but eventually consensus was to develop a decentralized organization with headquarters in Mauritius and other operations in South Africa, Egypt, and Ghana. afriNIC was blessed with generous financial resources from the government of South Africa and was actually incubated in CSR in Victoria. And we proceeded to build a headquarters according to the consensus with additional support from the government of Mauritius. And in Mauritius, we ended up establishing as a private company with membership bylaws. For a decade, the shared objective was clear and was to build the foundations of internet in Africa. We lost this shared objective as we went along and interests, personal interests or self-interest began. And this began with the, when afriNIC received the last slash eight of IPv4 in 2011 as per global soft landing policy. The pressures on the common objective started at this time and transfer policies adopted by other regions questioned service versus property. These policies considered the V4 resources as property to LIRs, but not to the end user on whose behalf LIR justified the resources. Given that people are voluntarily adopted to use the identifiers, we have responsibilities to manage them as public goods, not property. There were discussions on changing scope of our function. Some say are a mere bookkeeper versus a registration service agreement to be complied. The need basis policy was questioned out of reaching use of IPs became an issue. Meanwhile, of course, board got involved in our case in resource allocation, which was a no-no. There was misappropriation of legacy V4 by founding staff, which has been addressed and most resources recalled. The consensus we had had weakened and the board got divided resulting in community disagreements. We’ve had three CEOs, 2004, 15 and 19 and none since 2022. In 2021, afriNIC initiated a resource members assisted review according to the RSA. The membership application has compliance requirements where members shall do specific things as well as consequences if member is not compliant. In the review, some members accepted some had forged documents. One member who had received more than slash nine in four locations in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 refused to comply saying afriNIC is a bookkeeper, has no rights. But the member signed the RSA, the member in question also has no ASN and no V6. afriNIC followed the RSA and applied the consequences by recalling resources. The member did not seek arbitration, denied afriNIC rights to assess his compliance and started litigations. A commercial dispute therefore had erupted between the member and afriNIC. There were 28 cases with member initiating 26 and afriNIC only two. 18 of cases were completed with 12 set aside, four withdrawn by a member and two null and void or by agreement. There were 11 injunctions, three state of executions, four claims and one contempt. The claims were to amend our register to make the person like a director, whereas he’s not been elected, demanding $1.8 billion, demanding afriNIC on use V4 resources, garnishing the company’s assets, claiming defamation and so on. The cases seem frivolous and designed to overwhelm attention, financial resources and stress governance. This member bullied community members with defamation suits in their countries if they dared mention a name on mailing lists. However, the substantive case on violations of the RSA by a member has not yet been heard. One of other consequent cases damaged board quorum and could not appoint lawyers for court cases to defend afriNIC nor her CEO. A recent court order has appointed an official receiver to hold elections to restore governance at afriNIC. In summary, someone saw a loophole and decided to harass company, attack the weak part of the RRA system. This started with review of compliance. Then we saw abuse of legislation in cumulative attacks in a capital market economy. Member created number of confusion offering alternate RRA based on brokerage and lots of social media misinformation. On the other hand, afriNIC is well positioned in the substance, even injunction on transfer policy has completed as not granted. The multi-stakeholder in the PDP was strong enough to resist abuse of open participation. We have had support from all RRAs, ICANN, ISOC, governments, members and community at large. We just had AIS 2023 organized by AFNOG and afriNIC and hosted by ZADNA in Johannesburg, South Africa. We are organizing community for what to do in the future and we’re privileged to receive video message from VINCEF and Ambassador Amandeep Gill, UN Secretary General Envoy on Technology. During the opening ceremony, the Deputy Minister of Ministry of Communication and Digital Technology, Philippe Mapoulani did not miss words when he called the heist a neocolonial conquest. The V4, V6 and ASN resources are for internet development in Africa. And would be difficult to change the purpose. AfriNIC did not complete the decentralized organization it planned. It could also not get diplomatic protections it had sought. Ironically, afriNIC went to Mauritius for business stability, for a technology company, but now going through litigation that comes from capital market. We should not take internet for granted and protect it for all. Thank you.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you very much, Ni. Very interesting, useful and I am sure that a lot of people in this room and around the world support you and the people who try to solve the case of afriNIC because we all need afriNIC. And now I will give the floor to, I guess it’s Iria. Can you show us, show on the screen and take the floor, please? We, you need to open your mic because you are muted for the moment as I can see, yeah. Yes. Go ahead, thank you.

Iria Puyosa:
Sorry about that. Thank you, thank you, Sebastian. I kind of go back to what Li was saying at the beginning. We had a kind of wave of panics, of backlash, as he said, and now we are facing all those. So we are fighting, we are in a moment where we are listening, we are hearing a lot of voices saying, we need to regulate, we need to regulate fast because something, something seems so serious harm upon us on the internet. I’m kind of concerned about these reactions and this demand for quick response because most of the time these regulations don’t over, under pressure, are kind of ill-designed and they may break the internet. And that was, this is what we are concerned at the moment. I believe that we need to do more research on the issues before us, define precisely what the problems are and how the problems we are trying to solve and not something so big is impossible to understand and assess the trade-offs between different policies and the way in which they are suitable technical implementations for those policies. While we try to add, to regulate too fast, maybe we lost that. In the research I conducted recently in the FRL lab, we were focusing on knowing the internet as a whole, but in messaging apps. While we were trying to add in response to demands on regulating this ad, particularly trying to introduce content moderation in encrypted and messaged apps. That was kind of the call we were listening here in the United States. People were concerned about disinformation and foreign influence operations. People were concerned about notification of terrorists, violent extremists, species that may drive atrocities and child sexual abuse material. Most of the claims had the idea of, this is happening because these messages are encrypted. And so, police discontent and so those hands. And this was, it’s pretty much the, say a generalization, a simplification of the public conversation, but it’s what we’re hearing. So in our research we’re finding, well, it’s not the case. Most of the content we see is in messaged apps or have been posted and they’re also, so it’s useful, helpful for individuals, communities and society. But this thinking about harms is what dominates the public conversation. I will take also, get to the pressure we are seeing over the UK online safety bill and the US keeps online safety ad in which most of the pressure is, we need to find a way to moderate content in encrypted apps because everything running there is negative for the society, it’s harmful for the society. What the part of the war we were doing here at the different lab was trying to. to show how the content there was a variation of content with different purpose and most of them was positive, but also how different ways to deal with this harmful content that exists, we doesn’t need to break encryption, we doesn’t need to establish, impose content moderations would be undermining encryption. So that is the focus of that recent research we’re doing here. In part, our conclusion is one of the issues who sometimes get out of the conversation is one of the issues who sometimes get out of the conversation is how these policies for the flow of data, use of internet-based applications, don’t consider this is a transnational flow of data, this is an extraterritorial Scott or affected platform operations. So maybe one intended regulation in one country would be affected profoundly negatively in other countries in which rural love is known as a norm. So the world we are trying to do is try to find ways for addressing the problems existing in the platform with how breaking the fundamentals of the use, in this case, breaking the encryption. We were focusing a message in advance as we know, see, we go after encryption is not needed in messaged ads sooner rather than later. Some people are going to say encryption is not needed in the internet. We need to get rid of that because there are other harmful contents running in the internet. So this is pretty much what we are looking at at this moment. This is what we see. I see it’s a burial for the internet as a whole while we let this conversation escalate trying to undermine, in this case, encryption. In other case, it could be another value, another core principle of the integrity of the internet as a space for communications. Due to this shared concern we had in this legal, it’s the pressure for a quicker regulation, no well-defined regulation, no well-intended regulation is part of what we are trying to get into the conversation at the moment, trying to find solutions to ensure the respect of human rights, the rule of law, within the principles of necessity and proportionality without attacking the aspects where we consider core for the functioning of internet-based communications and internet integrity.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you very much, Mirja. And now, last but not least, Vint Cerf, please.

Vint Cerf:
First of all, thank you for, okay, well, first of all, thank you for inviting me to join you in this session. I think all the preamble just tells you that many of the times when we try to fashion rules to make the system function in a way that’s safe and secure, we often end up with unexpected side effects. And some of them you’ve just heard from me, for example. I think what’s happened over the course of the last decade or so is that the openness of the internet, which was relatively safe, was a consequence of the people who were using it. In the very early part, the people who used it were the people who were building it. And for the most part, they didn’t have any interest in destroying it or abusing it. They just wanted to make it work. But as time has gone on and as it has become commercially available, then more and more of the world’s population have access to this. And their motivations are not exactly the same as what the original engineering teams had in mind. They’re interested in using the internet for their own purposes. There’s nothing necessarily, apparently wrong with that. I mean, business wants to use the internet in order to improve business, to grow their businesses. But there are people who are on the internet who would like to exploit their ability to amplify their voices, to amplify their messages, to deliver malware, to deliver phishing attacks, or service attacks, whatever else is motivating them. And governments have, over the past decade or so, recognized that these hazards are beginning to arise out of whatever motivations. And so they try to enact laws that will protect people using the internet. And that’s also an understandable motivation. I must admit to you that there are some countries that are more interested in protecting the regime than they are in protecting the citizens. Interestingly enough, and the difficulty is that the same mechanisms that might be used to protect the citizens are also useful for inhibiting legitimate freedom of speech or other kinds of activities that many of us would consider reasonable. And so we now have a conundrum, which is that in our interest in protecting the safety and security and privacy in the internet, we may interfere with our ability to hold parties accountable for the bad behaviors that they exhibit on the network. And that is threading the needle in some sense. Perhaps those of us who live in democracies will have to recognize that the authoritarian governments will in fact use the tools that we would argue are needed to imbue citizens with rights, to inhibit those rights. And I’m not sure that we have the freedom to inhibit that or to prevent that from happening. What that means is that the internet will not be the same everywhere that we look. You see this happening where internets get shut down from time to time because the regime believes that it either is necessary to protect the regime, or they may even believe that it’s necessary to protect citizens from harmful misinformation and disinformation. This leads to a zeal in the legislative corridors to pass laws intended to protect people’s interests. And let me just set aside the laws that are passed to protect the interests of the regimes and just focus on the more democratic environments. What can happen, however, is that the intent of those laws may be laudable, no pun intended, but they may also have side effects. So one possible example is that if the law requires a 24-hour response to the removal of harmful content, first of all, it may turn out to be literally impossible to cite one statistic that you’re all familiar with, the YouTube application at Google receives somewhere between 400 and 500 hours of video per minute uploaded into the system. I have no idea how many hours of video are exported per minute by users who are trying to download content. It’s not possible for that content to be vetted manually. We don’t have enough people to do that. And so we rely on technical means, machine learning mechanisms, which we all know are imperfect. And so not only will they not work 100% of the time, but they won’t catch 100% of the problems. And they may catch things that aren’t problems but look like problems because the algorithms don’t know the difference. Asking a company the size of Google to do something is one thing, but asking a small and medium-sized enterprise to carry out the same kind of filtering may inhibit that small enterprise from ever existing, let alone growing. So we have these undesirable side effects of well-intended laws that may prevent us from building the internet that we all would like to have. We also, someone mentioned earlier, I guess it was Jane, that there were laws that were passed, in the US anyway, telcos that didn’t want competition from community networks were able to get laws passed in the States to inhibit the building of community networks on the grounds that if a municipality wanted to build a network, it was the government interfering with freedom, competing with private enterprise that ignored the fact that a typical arrangement would be that the community would actually have a contract with a private entity to go build the municipal network and operate it, but that was sort of ignored, and then zeal to argue the other case. So I’m actually quite worried that these are not simple problems to solve, and that at the Internet Governance Forum, where we’ve spent years literally contemplating some of these problems, that we have a kind of responsibility to try to help the legislators and the regulators come to reasonable conclusions about protecting human interests, while at the same time, recognizing that there are responsibilities associated with the use of the Internet. In a previous session, it occurred to me to remind people about the social contract, and Rousseau’s observation that along with safety and security, which people are looking for in their social environment, that they have obligations not to abuse their freedoms. My freedom to punch somebody in the nose kind of stops about one centimeter away from Sebastian’s nose, and my freedom existed up to that point, but as soon as I complete the action now, I have now violated his rights. So we have still some work to do, and I think especially in the IGF context, we have an obligation to help the legislators and the regulators to find a way forward that preserves as much of the utility and value of the Internet as possible, while at the same time, protecting people from harm. One particular thing which we valued over time, I think, is anonymous use of the Internet. You shouldn’t have to be known to just do a Google search, for example. However, if you are going to use the Internet for harmful purposes, eventually, I think we would generally agree we would want those parties to be identified. Well, this gets to the notion of accountability. Many of the laws that are being passed are attempts by the legislators to articulate how to hold parties accountable for their behavior, whether that’s a private sector entity or an individual or a whole country. In order to hold parties accountable, you have to be able to identify them. So now we have a tension between privacy and the ability to reveal a party in the event that we believe that party is misbehaving. There is currently, as many of you know, an attempt to draft a cybercrime treaty, and there is a considerable amount of debate deciding on what’s a cybercrime. In some cases, you could argue that every crime that already exists can also use a computer to execute the crime. Therefore, all crimes must be cybercrimes. That’s not a good syllogism, and some of us are arguing that we should be more cautious about the treaty being focused specifically on things that you could not do without the use of a computer in the network. That’s still in debate, so we haven’t completed that yet. So my bottom line on all of this is that in our attempt to make the internet a safe and secure environment, we are going to have to accept that some of the principles that we enjoyed in the early days of the internet may no longer be fully attainable. And in particular, I would argue that accountability forces us into making parties identifiable at need. And I will offer just one very weak analogy, which some of you heard before, I suspect. When you get a license plate on the car, it’s usually just a random collection of letters and numbers, and it looks like gobbledygook to us. But there are parties who have the authority to look that license plate up and identify the owner of the car, which, by the way, may not be the driver of the car, and that’s also an important observation. But this piercing of the veil of anonymity or pseudonymity may turn out to be essential to introducing accountability into the system. Some of you have also heard my argument that agency is another element of all this. We need to provide agency to individuals, corporations, and even countries to protect their interests, which might mean, for example, the use of end-to-end cryptography in order to maintain confidentiality. And arguments are often made that end-to-end cryptography is harmful because it means it’s harder for law enforcement to detect that there is misbehavior on the network. And I sort of draw the line there in arguing that end-to-end cryptography for the protection of confidentiality is extremely important. The idea that you have a backdoor into the cryptographic system almost certainly guarantees eventually that information will be released, and then no one will have any confidentiality at all. Last point, people who are focused on the anonymous use of the internet may sometimes forget that strong authentication of your identity might turn out to be helpful to you, and that you should be adopting mechanisms that make it hard for other people to pretend to be you, because if it’s too easy for them to do that, they may, in fact, take actions on your behalf that you didn’t authorize. And so strong authentication might, I hope, become a norm in the system where it’s needed in order to make sure that you protect yourself against other people taking actions that you didn’t authorize. So, Mr. Chairman, I’ll stop there, but I hope this feeds a little bit of the thinking for the debate which should follow.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you very much, Vint, Sebastien Bachelier speaking. Just, I would like to pick up one of your points. It’s when you remind us that IGF could be useful, and the exchange we have here and in the other room are not just to talk, but also, it’s to talk but to exchange between various stakeholder, and that’s an important point here also today. Now I would like to open the floor for question. You have a mic in the middle of the room. Just queue there and talk, give comments or question, and if there is the same online, please do it.

Alejandro Pisanty:
Sebastien Alejandro Pisanti here, moderator online. There’s Deborah Allen Rogers hand up as well.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Okay, Deborah, go ahead, please, thank you.

Alejandro Pisanty:
Oh, Deborah, you can ask your question.

Sébastien Bachollet:
If you can open your mic, and eventually your camera too will be great, like that we can see you for the moment your microphone is closed, as I can see.

Vint Cerf:
How many engineers does it take to turn on a microphone?

Alejandro Pisanty:
Maybe only one, but the system may be so unresponsive.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Okay, maybe, okay, maybe, Alessandro, you may be willing to start and we will try to solve the problem with Deborah, please. Thank you.

Alejandro Pisanty:
Thank you, I’ll make a very brief comment right now. The work of a dynamic coalition on core internet values is concerned with the way different things and this year it’s regulations mostly may impinge on these core values, assuming of course that they are mostly the technical principles with which the internet was built. And What we see from some of the regulation proposals is that they may actually do away or damage seriously things like the universality of reach of the internet. They may be achieved by reducing interoperability. I’m very concerned, for example, this does not mean not to do it, but find a way to do it with what Fint has said, for example, for stronger authentication or for stronger identification. We may find ourselves needing to add devices to the system or some governments or banks or such entities may decide that you need to have an extra device, maybe also on their network to do this authentication that open standards like PKI will not work. So that’s the kind of concern that we have to look into, to extract a list of these things for now, and see how they can be made to work or research over the next months. These are key points that we’re looking at, but I’ll leave the floor to other participants. Deborah says it’s not allowing her to open and I’m already trying to unmute.

Deborah Allen Rogers:
Hello, hello.

Alejandro Pisanty:
There you are.

Deborah Allen Rogers:
I’m here, but I would like to be on camera, but you all see my face in the picture. So I just want to say hello to everyone and thank you very much. I will lower my hand also. And what I wanted to say was a couple of things. I’m from New York City. I live in The Hague. My name is Deborah Allen Rogers, as you see, and I have a digital fluency lab here called Find Out Why. So I wanted to direct my question. Oh, here we go. It looks like I can start my video. Okay. Hello, everyone. Okay. So hello from The Hague. I wanted to direct my question at Jane and also at Vint. Anyone else who might want to join in, but in particular, the two of you. One is the father of the internet, and secondly, as a woman who just gave us a lot of really good intel about NOGs, for example. Do either of you or do anyone on the panel spend time working directly with Finland and Estonia on e-governance? I do some work with them and they’ve developed these models and they’ve been putting them in place for a good 20 years for e-governance and have answers to many of the questions I see that we struggle with here in Europe and that we struggle with in the United States. And the last point I’ll make is because they stay sort of under the radar screen, oftentimes their designs are sort of overlooked, I’ve noticed, in all the work that I do with various European internet forums, et cetera. So I was in D.C. this summer and we talked a lot about it at the Trans-Atlantic Partnership meetings, but I did want to raise it in this venue as well about e-governance in Estonia and in Finland, and Exroit in particular. Thank you for taking my question.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you, Deborah. Questions in the room? We can start with a few questions and then – but it’s up to you. If you want, we can start, Deborah, if you want to take the floor and give some answer and then I will ask Vint also and the other participants. The question does relate to the same thing. Then go ahead.

Audience:
Do you hear me? If I have the microphone, okay. So Martin Bottemann, and indeed the big thing I’m struggling with is that this internet needs to be more and more secure, more and more reliable. We should be able to rely on it and we are working on that. Now one of the elements is indeed identification and would you consider, for instance, anonymity as a core internet value or is that something different? How can we get to a kind of standard where you combine security with anonymity via a kind of trusted service or something? Is that something where we can go? And I think it very much complements to Alejandro’s concern and what the lady just said, identity as used in these governments.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you. Vint, go ahead.

Vint Cerf:
I actually would like to respond to that specifically. For a long time, I had the view that anonymity was a right that we should have and that you should be able to use the internet without identifying yourself. What we discovered, at least what I believe we’ve discovered, is that anonymity creates opportunity for really severe and bad behavior. If people think that there are no consequences for their harmful behaviors on the net, then they will continue to execute those bad behaviors. And so absolute anonymity is, in my view, not necessarily, should not be a core value. I’m surprised at my change in position, but having seen too much bad behavior that’s shielded by anonymity, I now believe that accountability is more important. That doesn’t mean that you have to identify yourself to use all of the internet’s features. That’s not what I’m arguing. But I am saying that we should tolerate mechanisms that allow for discovery. And while I say that, I absolutely understand that viewing this through the lens of the democratic society versus an authoritarian one, you get very different answers from the standpoint of an authoritarian government. The ability to identify parties is harmful to that party’s interests. And yet, if we don’t allow for that kind of discovery, then all of our interests are harmed by the bad behaviors that are not accountable and therefore difficult to inhibit. You could say, well, can’t we inhibit the bad behaviors just by using technology? Can’t we use machine learning to filter all the bad stuff out? And the answer is, as far as we can tell, that doesn’t work. Either it doesn’t work because it fails to filter, or it filters the wrong thing and therefore people’s rights are harmed because of that. And so this is going to be a relatively imperfect outcome, but I am persuaded at the moment that protecting people’s interests and protecting people from harm is really important. We can say, though, that there are certain actions where we recognize that anonymity is important because if you’re identifiable, then there could be really harmful side effects. Whistleblowing being a good example of that. But I would argue with you that even in the whistleblowing case, the most traditional means of handling that are that a trusted party receives the blown whistle and may in fact need to know who is blowing the whistle, but is obligated to keep that party’s identity anonymous. And that’s one of the ways in which you thread the needle between anonymity and identifiability and accountability. So I’d be very interested, of course, if people have arguments against this proposition that pure anonymity should not be an absolute core value anymore.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you.

Alejandro Pisanty:
Can I pick up on that, Sebastian, for a second?

Sébastien Bachollet:
Go ahead. Yeah, OK. Go ahead.

Alejandro Pisanty:
Very briefly. And to further the point that was made by Deborah as well, how big an architectural change would this be? We have assumed for many years that the only identifier that the internet gives you, that’s proper from the internet, is the IP address. And everything else comes from the edge. So how big of an architectural change would that be? And then, of course, how scalable would that be? The case of Estonia, I think, is very brilliant, but has a limitation of scale in the way you can establish trust within a small society or going further out. Sorry. I don’t want to extend this question. Thank you.

Vint Cerf:
Could I respond on the Estonian side? Because the one thing which impresses me about Estonia is that 100% of the population is registered for strong authentication, 100%. They can do that in part because it’s a million and a half people. When you get to 300 million or 600 million or 1.4 billion, it gets harder. Estonia has introduced the Aadhaar system, which is attempting to strongly authenticate parties for their benefit. But everyone sitting in the room and those online can also recognize the potential risk factors of being able to identify people by biological metrics and things like that. You can see how that can be abused as well. So this is a peculiar tension that I think is not 100% resolvable. But as I say, I believe that accountability may turn out to be far more important than absolute anonymity.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you. Jane. And then I will go to Ghana IGF Remote Hub and then back to Debra. Jane, please.

Jane R. Coffin:
I’ll be very brief. Debra, we’ve worked with a variety of governments around the world to work with a variety of governments around the world. But if there are some really great practices that we can glean from you, that would be exciting. I wanted to pick up really quickly on a point that Vint made about the IGF having an obligation. And I think, Vint, one of the points I want to extrapolate from that is to help find a way forward with governments to have inclusive, multi-stakeholder inclusion in policymaking and regulation. We start to exclude civil society, the technical community, academia. It’s very much not going to lead to a better regulatory and policy regime and environment. And if we don’t, the law of unintended consequences may prevail here where we may force centralization a bit more. Some governments may force centralization in their lawmaking if they aren’t including some of the smaller networks, the other instances like internet exchange points and others in the conversation and lock out multi-stakeholder inclusion. So I just wanted to put that out there before we ended.

Vint Cerf:
So, Jane, since this is also supposed to be entertainment for you, so now we’ll have this little debate back and forth. You’re not saying, I hope, or are you trying to argue that the point I’m making, that absolute anonymity may no longer be a core value in the interests of the people who use the internet? Your argument about governments and multi-stakeholder policymaking I don’t understand is an argument against my proposition. It is an argument for the utility of multi-stakeholder perspective in the formulation of policy. And I hope that what I’ve been saying is not unintentionally misinterpreted as against multi-stakeholderism. I’m a complete fan of that, believe that it should be a part of every government’s normal practices. So I see these as two very distinct things. That’s also a correct interpretation of what you were saying. Okay.

Jane R. Coffin:
I think you’re helping us point out that the obligation of the IGF, and it’s the uniqueness of the multi-stakeholder model in the IGF, to work with governments to make sure that whether it’s a discussion on anonymity or interoperability and more networks being interconnected openly is that that’s more robust policymaking regulation comes through that multi-stakeholder discussion.

Vint Cerf:
So, in fact, there’s a simultaneous obligation, I think, of members of the IGF who care about these things to engage with governments. We need to help the governments appreciate why the IGF is so important to them as they try to formulate policy lead.

Lee Rainie:
The striking thing for so many years about tech policy stuff was that it was pre-partisan, both here and in Europe in particular. The dynamic we’re talking about now, though, has hints and allegations of being swept into partisan polarization. I don’t think there’s the kind of consensus now that there might have been five or six years ago in the parties about whether anonymity shouldn’t be a core value. You see signs of it in the populist mainstream party dynamics of Europe as well. So, this is all, again, to the theme of the day, this is all organic and moving and fluid and it’s hard to settle things in that environment.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Okay. Let’s go back to the participants and, Gana, please. I hope that we can hear you. I know that we can see you, at least in my computer, but go ahead, please, Gana. And then, Deborah. And then, I will go to the room and then to the next speakers online. Thank you.

Joseph:
Thank you very much. My name is Commuter Joseph, speaking from Pentecost University, Ghana. Whilst we look at the core values of the Internet, I want to ask this question that with the VPN, virtual private networks, people use these networks to bypass restrictions on the Internet to fraud and infringe on sensitive data of others. I want to ask, what can be done to protect individual content on the Internet whilst we look at, I mean, what can the government do or what can we do to help protect the content of individuals on the Internet? Thank you very much.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you, Gana. Yeah, go ahead, Vint.

Vint Cerf:
So, I think that I’ve reached the conclusion that cryptography is our friend in all of this. For example, there are many places that will insist that information about their citizens must be kept in the geophysical boundary of the country in the belief, or at least they make the argument that somehow that makes it safer. In some cases, the motivation behind that is to demand access to the information from the parties who hold the information within the geopolitical boundary of that government. We hear the term data sovereignty, for example, to argue that data about citizens shouldn’t leave the country. I will make the argument that when you insist on that, you actually lose reliability. At Google, for example, we replicate data across our data centers and we also encrypt it so that no matter where it goes, when it’s addressed, it’s encrypted. When it’s transmitted, it’s encrypted. We even have a situation or a provision for the possibility that the users hold the keys to the data and so we don’t, no matter where we put it, it is under the control of the users. My argument here would be that transborder data flows and encryption allow you to place data anywhere on the internet and protect it as long as you manage your keys properly. That is a huge challenge because key management is a non-trivial exercise. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I did not push public key crypto into the internet for a while because while it was being developed, the people who were doing the development were graduate students. They’re not the first category of people that I would rely on for high quality key management. It’s not that they’re stupid or something. It’s just that they get distracted by silly things like PhD dissertations and final exams. So today, we have an obligation to help people manage keys and cryptography to protect their interests and to help them strongly authenticate themselves. So I’m of the view that that’s the correct way to handle data protection and not to argue that its physical location is the ideal protection mechanism, but rather cryptography.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you. Deborah, please. Maybe I need to do something. Wait a second. Yeah. I guess.

Deborah Allen Rogers:
There we go. Here I am. Okay. Thank you so much for that. That’s a quotable quote, excellent. Cryptography is our friend for sure. And to add to the question that was just asked about how do we protect human rights or personal rights or personal privacy, cryptography is our friend and thinking about all the different ways in which it can be scaled. This is what I wanted to say about the point you made about a million point seven users or something like that in Estonia. And the cultural sort of, I think the cultural context of that and the idea that now that we’re on this online, offline, no line world, scale is such a reference. It’s such a, it’s changing this concept of what we can do with scale at the push of a button. And so I speak also to the CEO of XRoad who is based in Finland and he talks about a different cultural reference in Finland, one that’s a lot more conservative than the one that was in Estonia 20 years building their brand new internet system. and e-governance for their banking and their voting and etc. So I just want to make this point. I was a clothing designer in the 80s and 90s when the entire world, existing through a pandemic called AIDS, moving into global manufacturing, all going to China. This is not, and I’m in New York at 9-11 of course, this is not the first time I’ve been through these sorts of drastic transitions. As you know, Vint, I mean I hear George Carlin’s voice somewhere in the background of your voice as well, talking about, and for anyone listening please look up George Carlin, you’ll see why. So thank you about the cryptography as our friend commented and please can, if you all want to speak about or at least think about this, rethinking about this idea of scale and smaller societies that are doing things. Because test samples are small and it’s scaling a functional test sample is what works. And so we have to think about these societies. I’m living in a very highly governed, functional society here in the Netherlands now for three years. It’s different than living in other cultures that are not highly functional at this moment. I say that in reference to something that you mentioned, Lee. So I don’t want to actually go on record as mentioning which society, but non-functional and functional looks very different and I think the functionality is the point, not the size of the scale model. Okay, thank you for listening.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you Deborah. We have 12 minutes to go. We have one question in the room and one speaker online and Alessandro Pisanti will read some comments online too. Therefore, let’s go to the room speaker, please.

Audience:
Roger Dingledine to our project. So this word anonymity is one that I think about a lot. I actually find the word anonymity to be confusing when people are thinking about it. I usually use the word communications metadata security or a securing communications metadata. That doesn’t trip very well off the tongue, does it? Fair enough, but the reason why I mentioned this is thinking about one of the ways that we’ve managed to thread the needle to manage both of these is looking at it from different layers. So if you tell people Tor is an anonymity tool, then they say, oh well I guess I can’t use Facebook. But it makes perfect sense to log into Facebook over Tor. You’re getting to choose what of your communications metadata you want to reveal. So by default, when you’re reaching them, you don’t automatically blurt out your identity. You then get to choose what you tell them. And Facebook doesn’t care where you are, they care who you are. And what they mean by that is Facebook level, Facebook application layer of who you are. So you log into Facebook and from there at the platform level, there’s a completely separate question about anonymity versus accountability. Do you need your real name? And so on. But the separating those means that at the network layer, you don’t automatically identify yourself. Yet, as you say, it might be beneficial in a societal way or a platform way or a community way to choose to identify yourself at a different layer. So that layering mechanism is one. I don’t want to say that it solves everything, but I think it helps us get closer to the answer. Of course, we don’t want anonymity for everybody all the time, no matter what. But we want to give people the choice of who they tell about them.

Vint Cerf:
I think that’s a really good point and I appreciate the layering argument, which makes good sense to me. You’ll notice that other elements of the internet design, especially the domain name system, has introduced mechanisms like DOH and DOT and so on in order to protect information at certain layers in the architecture while revealing it at others. And your point about choice is very well taken.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you, Vin, and tyank you for your question. Shiva, please, and then Alessandro. I will give you the floor. Okay, go ahead, Shiva.

Shiva:
Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Jane was talking about the internet exchange points and the neutrality, the intended neutrality. As far as I know, some of the internet exchange points have a commercial business model. And how far are they away from the intended neutrality? And also, if an internet exchange point can theoretically be non-neutral, can they also become tools in the hands of governments, good and bad governments, to indirectly regulate the internet or to control the internet in a certain way? And the positive question on internet exchange point is, is there any design to think of an internet exchange point for interplanetary networks, probably with a peculiar bridge to give a one-way connectivity to the global internet? Thank you.

Jane R. Coffin:
So, Shiva, that’s a, I’m going to start with your last point about internet exchange points and interplanetary, and I can feel Vint, too, right next to me. Because I think, are you still the chair of the interplanetary working group or the… No, I’m not. I’m not the chairman. I’m a member of the board, but I participate with them, yes. So, you should check out a session on Thursday that Joanna Kulisa will be running with respect to, I think that’s data governance, but in any event, there’s a paper that Joanna Kulisa and Berna Gur have written, and it was funded by the Internet Society Foundation. I’m not, you know, this isn’t an advertisement for this foundation, even though I worked at ISOC before. But the paper they put together, and another paper put together by the Internet Society by Dan York, who also will be on the panel on Thursday, talked about the potential for exchange points in space with LEOs, Low Earth Orbiting Satellites. Sorry, I should be clearer. It could be a very interesting thing, and I, and then the question is, who can participate? You know, who’s running the network as far as the LEO constellation itself? Is there neutrality if it’s only one entity, company, that can control all the traffic exchange, or is it only their traffic? It’s very complicated right now with cross-border connectivity to potential. If you have a transmission going down into one country that beams up to another satellite that’s going to beam down into another country, the whole concept of negotiating cross-border connectivity issues is complicated wildly. But I’ll stop there for a minute. Shiva then turned to Vint on the interplanetary.

Vint Cerf:
Well, let me, just setting aside the spatial notion for a moment. Internet exchange points on the ground are really powerful tools because they allow for connectivity, efficient kinds of connectivity among networks. But here’s a scary thought. Suppose that you’re in a regime where the government runs the exchange points, and it is required that all traffic between networks go through government-operated exchange points, which might lead to surveillance of the kind that you didn’t want. That takes us back to cryptography being your friend, and once again you can imagine regimes that don’t want, you know, encrypted traffic to be running through the exchange points. With regard to putting exchange points or data centers in space, one of the observations I would make is that those typically require maintenance, and so we may have some difficulty getting people up there to do maintenance. I’m sure everybody in this room does understand and appreciate that the Internet doesn’t run itself. There are millions of people who, as a daily job, help keep the Internet functioning. Otherwise it would break pretty quickly, and I wish that were not the case. I wish that our designs have been even more robust, but to be quite frank, they require a lot of attention. And Shiva, to

Jane R. Coffin:
quickly just answer your question, I was referring to the the IXs that are the neutral bottom-up, you know, not managed by governments, but to Vince’s point, there are exchanges where traffic is monitored. That’s just required by the countries, and so that’s something that does happen, and I’m with Vince on the encryption, the crypto side. Not cryptocurrency, but encryption. I don’t really care about cryptocurrencies right now. I probably should in the future, but as far as the commercial IXs, that’s a different instantiation of exchange point, and they serve a certain purpose, but they they’re not the bottom-up neutral exchanges that I was meant to be more clear about.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Okay, thank you very much. Now I give the floor to Alessandro. He will give us the last feedback online, and then I will give one minute to each of the five speakers to conclude, because we will be late in any case. Go ahead, Alessandro, please. Thank you.

Alejandro Pisanty:
Thank you, Sebastian. I’m not going to speak for myself right now. I’m going to read two comments. One comes from Iria on the chat. She says, choosing to identify is different from being forced to reveal your personal identification data in order to access the Internet or an app, and I side totally with that statement. And the other one comes from the Abuja IGF remote hub in Abuja, Nigeria, I think. Nhi mentioned that AFRINIC is registered as a private entity in Mauritius. Hasn’t this status contributed to the barrage of court cases the regional RIR now faces? While a good number of technical organizations are registered as non-profits, shouldn’t regional and global technical organizations that govern the Internet be accorded Internet governmental organization status? Those are the two points from online.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you very much. We need to run to another meeting. Therefore, may I suggest that if Nhi is still online, I want to take one minute for the microphone.

Nii Quaynor:
The answer to the question of the nature of a registration private company by laws, I think the answer is no, because it has really no bearing. A commercial dispute can occur between non-profit and members, so I don’t see that as the right thing. This is a case of some member who is violating rules and is refusing to be disciplined, and is beginning to abuse the legal system by generating a barrage of court cases, at the same time trying to break into people’s account by offering them money, and so on. So it’s just a bad case that needs to be dealt with as such, because it tried to invade the policy process, it failed, it tried to force a co-chair, and the co-chair got recalled. If you look at all these things, one organization, why generate 20-something cases in a year? If you really are doing proper business, why would you have so many IPv4 addresses, and no network number, no ASN, no v6? So it’s obvious what the game is. It’s about the interest of hijacking numbers out somewhere else to use, and that one, I don’t think Africa or the world would want to see that.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Yeah. Thank you, Nii. We have less than one minute per person. Iria, please, two words of conclusion. Sorry for that.

Iria Puyosa:
Yeah. Basically, I think our consensus should be we need technical expertise in every discussion about policy. So we need to have people who know how to solve the problems, implement the solutions, and we also need the input from civil society, understanding the human rights before moving up to regulation. Otherwise, we may end with bigger problems, or a different set of problems than the ones we are trying to solve. Thank you. Nii, please.

Vint Cerf:
Just to set the right tone for the ending of this, when we’ve asked in global surveys, given all the problems that you are now talking about, we’re asking questions about in our surveys, how hard would it be and how willing would you be to give up the Internet? And there’s almost universal, under no circumstances would I give it up. So we’ve done a pretty good job by the consumer behavior and consumer sentiment.

Jane R. Coffin:
Thank you. Jane. Don’t discount your voice in helping keep the Internet open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy. Make sure the multi-stakeholder model and the IGF continue. Thank you very much.

Sébastien Bachollet:
And I want to give the last word to Olivier Crepin-Leblond. If I am here, it’s because he’s not here, it would have been much better than me to run this meeting. But Olivier, go ahead.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:
The host has unmuted me. Thank you very much, Sebastien. Thank you to everyone who has participated as a panelist and also as a participant in this discussion. The Dynamic Coalition has discussions throughout the year. The work is ongoing. If you’re interested in joining the Dynamic Coalition, you can go onto the Internet Governance Forum website, go into intersessional work where the Dynamic Coalitions are all listed, click on the one on co-internet values, and you can join the mailing list. There’s no membership fee or anything like that, but we do take our work very seriously. It’s extremely important. We will make a report out of this, of today’s session, and of course, it will be taken into account in the IGF messages for Kyoto. So thanks very much, and thanks, of course, to all those people that have helped with organizing this session.

Sébastien Bachollet:
Thank you very much, Olivier, Alessandro, and all the speakers. The meeting is closed now. Bye-bye. Bye, and thanks, everybody. I’m going to ambush you now. I couldn’t come up with a good way to say this on the mic, but I was really curious. I think Sue’s work as well, and Jane, which she was mentioning as well, in terms of, like, your generational model, your fourth generation model, and Jane, you were talking about the work that you were doing out in rural areas, but one of the things that we talk about in terms of the value of the interoperability, and then another challenge that has come up over the past, like, three years, at least in the U.S. and Canadian, that we get everything… … … … … … … … … … … … …