ICF 2023: Digital Commons for Digital Sovereignty | IGF 2023 Day 0 Event #82

Audience

The discussions centred around the need for a broader understanding of digital public infrastructure in relation to digital sovereignty, rights, and the role of the state in promoting community-based solutions. It was argued that digital public infrastructure should go beyond digital IDs, payment methods, and content-based sharing platforms. The Brazilian Central Bank’s launch of the PIX initiative and the French Central Bank’s development of their own digital infrastructure were cited as supporting facts.

The importance of physical infrastructure such as data centres and satellites in promoting digital security and sovereignty was highlighted. However, concerns were raised that state-led digital sovereignty could go against the concept of commons. The positive example of Brazil’s Homeless Movement was mentioned, illustrating the role of community-based solutions in promoting sovereignty.

Interoperability among infrastructure built from different countries was also a key topic of discussion. It was pointed out that existing systems like UPI and PICS do not communicate with each other, emphasising the need for interoperability.

The discussions further touched upon the importance of sustainable funding models for digital public goods. The Tor Project was mentioned as an example of a digital public good, highlighting the need for sustainable funding to ensure their continual development and availability.

Promoting self-determination before digital commons was emphasised as a crucial step. A case study of poor people’s data exploitation in India was cited as evidence, underscoring the potential for exploitation in the absence of self-determination.

The development of open standards technology to support freedom of thought and the rule of law in the digital era was advocated. The speaker’s involvement with W3C for creating open standards technology and the establishment of verifiable claims and credentials were cited as supporting evidence.

The discussions also focused on the necessity of building infrastructure that supports human rights. The speaker emphasised that individual AI agents should serve individuals rather than being used for profit. It was argued that public institutions should differentiate between good and bad people and not treat everyone as a natural resource.

One noteworthy observation was the need for creating alternative social media platforms to support the needs of refugees and other vulnerable populations. The speaker mentioned their ongoing development of a foundational framework to support digital presence for such populations. It was emphasised that these alternatives are vital for ensuring peaceful decisions and effecting change.

Lastly, the distinction between large language models and logical programming in properly encoding language was explored. While no specific evidence or arguments were provided, this topic indicates the importance of understanding the implications of different approaches to language encoding.

In conclusion, the discussions revolved around the need for a broader understanding of digital public infrastructure, the role of the state in promoting community-based solutions, interoperability among infrastructure from different countries, the importance of sustainable funding models for digital public goods, self-determination before digital commons, and the creation of alternative social media platforms to support vulnerable populations. The discussions also touched upon the importance of open standards technology, building infrastructure that supports human rights, and the distinction between large language models and logical programming in language encoding.

Anita Gurumurthy

In this analysis, the speakers delve into a comprehensive discussion of the digital commons and its management, emphasising its significance in promoting self-determination and reducing inequalities. They highlight the central role of commoning and communitizing in effectively managing digital commons. Notably, the purposeful and prudent use of commons is regarded just as important as the act of commoning itself. By recognising sovereignty as self-determination, the concept of the commons becomes intrinsically interconnected.

The speakers go on to assert that digital policy should not only focus on creating the commons but also enable the practice of commoning. They argue that openness alone does not necessarily lead to commoning and stress the importance of addressing disembedded imaginaries that hinder the recognition of public goods and the rule of law in digital environments. It is proposed that digital policy should facilitate an environment that fosters commoning and encourages the responsible use of commons.

Moreover, the embodied nature of commons is highlighted as a crucial aspect. They argue against regarding commons as dematerialised or abstract ideas and emphasise that commons should be understood as particularised and embodied concepts. The impact of commons on individuals’ abilities and means to choose their life course is acknowledged, and it is reiterated that accountability to human beings is an integral part of commoning and self-determination.

The analysis also emphasises the importance of state support for digital resources, such as data banks or local seed banks. The creation of standards and protocols, considered as public goods, is deemed necessary and is identified as the duty of the state. The provision of these public goods is crucial for the effective functioning of the digital commons.

One significant observation made is that capitalist systems have been exploiting and poaching the commons, leading to adverse consequences for the digital economy. The governance of non-commons, represented by capitalist systems, is identified as the real challenge. It is essential to address the encroachment of capitalist systems and protect the commons to maintain a healthy digital ecosystem.

In addition, the analysis highlights the importance of platform regulation to ensure fair markets. It is noted that Uber, as an example, has threatened to exit the European Union if the Digital Services Act (DSA) comes into force. Therefore, governments of the Global South are urged to support platform regulation to safeguard fair markets and protect the interests of the community.

Lastly, the analysis proposes the establishment of state-supported alternative Over-the-Top (OTT) platforms. It cites the example of the state of Kerala in South India, which is in the process of setting up an alternative OTT platform. This move indicates a growing recognition of the need to create alternatives to existing digital platforms and promote fairness, justice, and strong institutions in the digital space.

Overall, this analysis provides valuable insights into the management and implications of the digital commons. It stresses the importance of commoning and communitizing, the need for supportive digital policies, and the challenges posed by capitalist systems. It further highlights the significance of state support, platform regulation, and the establishment of alternative platforms to ensure the integrity and fairness of the digital ecosystem.

Franziska (Ziski) Putz

The analysis highlights several important points made by different speakers. Firstly, the resilience of Wikipedia as a digital commons model is emphasised. It is noted that Wikipedia is supported by over 300,000 volunteers globally and is read around 6,000 times per second across 300 languages. Furthermore, it is highlighted that Wikipedia does not engage in data theft, content sales, or the practice of putting content behind paywalls. This showcases its commitment to providing free and accessible knowledge for all.

The use of AI tools by Wikipedia volunteers is also discussed in relation to supporting human rights and the public interest. It is stated that these tools are used to scale activities such as detecting vandalism or translating content. Importantly, the AI tools built by the Wikimedia Foundation are open-source and transparent, and are developed in consultation with users. This ensures that the technology is aligned with the values of inclusivity, openness, and fairness.

Another argument put forth is that AI tools and large language models should acknowledge and attribute human contributions. Evidence is provided to support this claim, stating that large language models trained on the output of other large language models tend to become worse. Therefore, the inclusion of clear and consistent attribution helps AI tools recognize and honour the role of human contributions, ultimately improving their performance.

The need for proactive policy and regulatory discussions to promote a positive vision of the internet is highlighted as a significant point. It is suggested that current discussions often focus on commercial interests and harmful content online, while neglecting the importance of championing a positive vision for the internet. This lack of action in shaping the internet’s future direction is seen as concerning.

However, it is also acknowledged that Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation face challenges in terms of biases, limitations, and access. While Wikipedia operates under an open access model, it is noted that this does not guarantee equal access for all individuals. Factors such as language, internet access, and time can limit people’s ability to contribute and access its resources. Additionally, the existence of biases and issues related to harassment are recognised as areas needing improvement.

Lastly, the analysis also highlights the desire for more shared resources and collaboration. This includes access to talking points used by others in similar spaces and more case studies and stories from different contexts and countries. This emphasises the importance of coordination and collaboration for more effective conversations and outcomes.

Overall, the speakers in the analysis raise important points about the resilience of Wikipedia as a digital commons model, the positive role of AI tools, the need for proactive policy discussions, the challenges faced by Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, and the importance of collaboration. These viewpoints provide valuable insights into the complexities and potential of online knowledge sharing and collaborative work.

Lea Gimpel

Lea Gimpel, a strong advocate for digital public goods (DPGs), emphasises their significance in achieving sustainable development goals. DPGs are categorized into five groups: open source software, open AI models, open standards, open content, and open data. The Digital Public Goods Alliance, endorsed by the United Nations, plays a key role in promoting and supporting the use of DPGs.

Gimpel highlights the alliance’s efforts in advocating for DPGs and maintaining DPG standards and a registry. The DPG standard consists of nine indicators used to assess whether a product can be considered a DPG. The DPG registry provides a platform for product developers to apply for the DPG label, and it already lists over 150 products.

Furthermore, Gimpel emphasizes the need for open source digital public infrastructure to grant countries control over their IT architecture. This infrastructure consists of four fundamental components: payment systems, digital identity, civil registries, and data exchange. By establishing digital public infrastructure, countries can exercise sovereignty over their own infrastructure.

Gimpel also advocates for a democratic approach to AI development and usage, emphasizing responsible openness. From the perspective of the Digital Public Goods Alliance, not all AI systems should be fully released into the public domain. Safeguards need to be in place to ensure responsible usage. To achieve this, Gimpel suggests breaking down AI systems into their components (data, models, and code) and determining which elements should be open, closed, or in-between.

In addition, Gimpel supports the definition of digital public infrastructure (DPI) as infrastructure that performs society-wide functions. This aligns with the guidance provided by the World Bank and GovStack initiatives, which serve as references. Gimpel encourages the adaptation of open source technologies and their open and public sharing, aiming to reduce bilateral agreements and foster partnerships.

The importance of interoperability and standardization in technology development are other points emphasized by Gimpel. These elements are crucial for the adoption and common use of technologies, and the Digital Public Goods Alliance is committed to promoting open standards.

Gimpel’s perspective also centers on people, advocating for digital policies and regulations that empower individuals and governments to take control of their own destiny. Open source technologies are seen as a means to achieve this goal, particularly for governments and public services. Gimpel believes in the inclusivity of people’s perspectives in digital governance and encourages their prominent inclusion.

In conclusion, Lea Gimpel’s viewpoints highlight the significance of digital public goods (DPGs) in achieving sustainable development goals. The Digital Public Goods Alliance plays a crucial role in promoting and supporting the use of DPGs, maintaining DPG standards and a registry. Gimpel emphasizes the need for open source digital public infrastructure, responsible openness in AI development and usage, adaptability of open source technologies, interoperability, and standardization, and people-centered approaches in digital governance. Gimpel’s arguments contribute to the discourse on the importance of DPGs in fostering efficiency, reducing fragmentation, and empowering individuals and nations in the digital ecosystem.

Renata Mielli

Achieving digital sovereignty involves countries shifting from being consumers to becoming creators of technology. This can be achieved through the development of native technology solutions and the promotion of national tech and digital services. Strengthening national industries, universities, research centers, and technology infrastructure is critical for countries to attain digital sovereignty. By doing so, countries can reduce their dependence on others and assume leadership positions in digital development.

Linguistic and cultural diversity also play a crucial role in the pursuit of digital sovereignty. Efforts should be made to process large language models in national languages, which will strengthen a country’s position in artificial intelligence (AI) models. The Lusophone Internet Governance Forum is an example of how Portuguese-speaking countries have come together to promote multilingualism, recognising linguistic diversity as a strategic topic in the discussion of digital sovereignty.

The introduction of national digital initiatives, such as the PIX payment system in Brazil, serves as an example of achieving digital sovereignty. PIX, developed in Brazil, has become the most popular payment method in the country. Its implementation has led to tax-free transactions, especially benefiting small and personal businesses. Additionally, the introduction of PIX has reduced data concentration in the hands of big international financial companies. However, it is worth noting that while PIX has been successful, it does not fulfil the criteria for a public technology as it lacks an open-source approach.

Effective public policies are necessary to democratise commercial authorisation and further strengthen digital sovereignty. These policies should aim to empower businesses and individuals by providing equal opportunities for commercial ventures. Democratising commercial authorisation will contribute to a more inclusive and diverse digital economy.

The importance of digital sovereignty for nations lies in having policies on data centres and initiatives to ensure sovereignty over data. Discussions surrounding the challenge of formulating a policy on data centres underscore the significance of digital sovereignty. By asserting control over data and ensuring its protection, countries can safeguard their national interests and maintain their autonomy in the digital world.

Furthermore, convincing governments to invest in digital commons and sovereignty is of utmost importance. While it may be easier and initially cheaper to rely on existing services, investing in digital commons and sovereignty enables countries to have greater control over their digital infrastructure and safeguard against potential vulnerabilities and threats. By investing in their own digital capabilities, countries can foster innovation, economic growth, and strengthen their overall resilience.

In conclusion, achieving digital sovereignty requires countries to transition from being consumers to creators of technology. This entails developing native technology solutions, promoting national tech and digital services, and strengthening national industries and infrastructure. Linguistic and cultural diversity are crucial elements in the pursuit of digital sovereignty, as they enable countries to assert their position in AI models and promote multilingualism. National digital initiatives, such as the PIX payment system in Brazil, provide examples of how digital sovereignty can be achieved, while effective public policies democratise commercial authorisation and empower businesses. The importance of digital sovereignty lies in having policies on data centres and initiatives that ensure sovereignty over data. Governments must be convinced to invest in digital commons and sovereignty to secure their national interests and foster resilience in the digital age.

Carlos Baca

The analysis emphasises the critical role of capacity building, community networks, tailored training programmes, and inclusive policy-making in addressing the needs of communities within the realm of digital technologies. Capacity building is essential in helping communities effectively utilise digital technologies. It involves providing training and guidance on installation, operation, and maintenance, enabling communities to rethink, analyse, and reflect on their challenges, and explore how digital technologies can be utilised to address their needs and aspirations. By empowering communities with the necessary skills and knowledge, capacity building equips them to leverage digital technologies for their benefit.

Community networks play a crucial role in strengthening local economies and identities. These networks are closely tied to the structure and organisation of a community, allowing them to integrate with their traditional ways of living. Community networks not only provide connectivity but also assist in the development of local content, reinforcing the identity and cultural heritage of the community. By enabling communities to develop and control their own content, community networks foster a sense of ownership and empowerment, contributing to the growth and vitality of local economies.

Tailored training programmes are crucial for effective capacity building. In order to be truly effective, training programmes need to be customised and contextualised to the specific needs and challenges of the communities. A “one size fits all” approach is ineffective as it fails to address the unique requirements of each community. Therefore, public policies must support the design and implementation of tailored training programmes that take into account the cultural, social, and economic contexts in which communities operate. With the necessary time and resources devoted to programme development and implementation, tailored training programmes can effectively equip communities with the skills needed to leverage digital technologies for their growth and development.

Inclusive policy-making is imperative to address the connectivity issues faced by communities. Policies that are co-designed by people who have experienced the challenges of being without connectivity are more likely to accurately reflect the needs of the communities. By involving communities and individuals in the decision-making process, policies can better address the specific challenges and opportunities faced by these communities. Public policies should be linked directly to the needs of the communities, ensuring that the voices of those affected by connectivity issues are heard and considered.

In conclusion, the analysis underscores the significance of capacity building, community networks, tailored training programmes, and inclusive policy-making in empowering communities to effectively harness the potential of digital technologies. By focusing on these key areas, communities can overcome connectivity challenges and leverage digital technologies to enhance their quality of life, economic opportunities, and cultural identity. It is essential for policymakers to recognise the importance of these factors and work towards creating an environment that supports community-driven initiatives and inclusive practices.

Luca Belli

The concept of digital commons goes beyond being just a type of resource; it is a mode of governance that links the resource with the community. It emphasizes the importance of understanding, developing, and regulating technology to achieve digital sovereignty. Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning research emphasizes the significance of having a governance system and defined rules in the functioning of the commons system.

In order to counter the influence of resource-rich corporations or states, the commons movement relies on the assistance and understanding of states. This requires states to facilitate and protect commons initiatives, which in turn strengthens the movement.

The current state of internet governance is seen as a concern, with arguments suggesting that it needs to change. The Internet should be established as a commons, prioritizing human rights, inclusivity, self-determination, and giving more control to people, communities, and content creators. This movement towards a more inclusive and transformative approach is supported by the Global Digital Compact, which emphasizes human rights, digital inclusion, and access. Efforts to implement gender balance in internet governance are also seen as important.

Digital sovereignty is highlighted by Luca Belli as a crucial aspect. This involves the need for autonomy from large tech corporations, and examples of such sovereignty can be seen in local initiatives such as Brazil’s payment system, PIX, and India’s UPI. Belli acknowledges the role of states in fostering digital sovereignty and the importance of understanding, developing, and regulating technology to achieve strategic autonomy.

Digital public infrastructure and digital commons are seen as potential tools to reclaim digital sovereignty. These concepts overlap in many ways, but digital public infrastructures are usually fostered by the government or public entities, while digital commons are about resources and communities that self-govern specific digital resources.

There is concern about the concentration of the cloud computing market in a few corporations such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, which control 70% of the market. Addressing this issue is seen as necessary to ensure fair competition and reduce inequalities.

Policies in the digital realm should be co-designed by communities without connectivity to ensure their effective implementation. Community networks are considered a viable third option beyond state and market systems. They not only provide connectivity but also foster digital sovereignty.

The idea of digital sovereignty is viewed as empowering communities, individuals, and states, beyond government control. It is seen as essential for protecting human rights and promoting competition, which are both crucial to democracy.

To raise awareness about the benefits of community networks, it is important to repeatedly educate governments. Some governments, such as India and Brazil, have already shown understanding and successfully implemented community network initiatives.

In conclusion, the concept of digital commons goes beyond just a resource; it involves a mode of governance that intersects the resource with the community. Digital sovereignty and strategic autonomy from large tech corporations are essential, and states play a crucial role in fostering these. Policies and infrastructures should prioritize human rights, inclusivity, and self-determination. The concentration of power in the cloud computing market, the importance of co-designing policies with communities, and the potential of community networks as a third option are also highlighted. Overall, the pursuit of digital sovereignty aims to empower communities, individuals, and states and protect human rights and competition.

Anriette Esterhuysen

The analysis provides insights into the various viewpoints on internet governance and digital commons discussed by different speakers. One speaker argues that it is crucial to identify the flaws in existing internet governance systems. They highlight the failure of the Global Digital Compact in bringing about substantive changes and assert that the current multi-stakeholder processes are merely labels without transformative measures. Their sentiment is negative towards the current state of internet governance.

Another speaker proposes an alternative approach by advocating for governing the internet as a commons. They argue that this approach would make governance more inclusive and transformative. Emphasising the importance of people’s control and self-determination, they call for a paradigm shift in understanding and governing the internet. Their sentiment is positive towards the idea of internet governance as a commons.

The recognition of the effort and labour of builders of digital public goods is highlighted by another speaker. They stress the need to acknowledge and directly benefit these individuals who contribute to the development of the digital commons. This observation has a neutral sentiment.

A human-centric approach in digital sovereignty is advocated by another speaker. They assert that internet governance is not about state sovereignty but rather about self-determination. They argue for giving more control to people, communities, and content creators, emphasising that it should be about community control rather than state control. Their sentiment is positive towards the concept of self-determination in internet governance.

The risks associated with state and corporate capture of digital commons are discussed by another speaker. They acknowledge the importance of mobilising the public sector and the role of the state in protecting the commons. However, they also express concerns about the potential capture of the commons by both corporate and state entities. Their sentiment is concerned about the risks of capture.

The concept of digital public infrastructure is seen as a useful approach for collaboration between different stakeholders. The opportunity to define common definitions and the need for regulation and interoperability are emphasised. This viewpoint has a positive sentiment towards the benefits of digital public infrastructure.

Support is expressed for the African Union Commission’s high-level framework on data policy. The framework is seen as enabling data sovereignty without data localisation, while also not restricting trade or harming freedom of expression. The sentiment towards this framework is positive.

The example of MOSIP, an Indian open-source digital identity system, is highlighted as a positive case. The need for frameworks and principles to ensure its successful implementation is mentioned. The sentiment is positive towards the potential of MOSIP.

Interoperability is considered a crucial component in internet governance, with the acknowledgement that it requires political will. This viewpoint emphasises the importance of collaboration and political support for interoperability. The sentiment is positive towards interoperability.

The need for a change in the regulatory paradigm in internet governance is highlighted. Currently, the regulatory paradigm is shaped by big companies, and there is a call for regulations that enable diversity and create more open markets for smaller players. The sentiment towards the current regulatory paradigm is negative, emphasising the need for change.

The DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) discussion is viewed as an opportunity to rethink approaches to internet governance. However, no specific arguments or evidence are provided to support this viewpoint. The sentiment towards the DPI discussion is positive.

The Digital Commons Forum is deemed to require a different approach as it tends to cover an overly broad range of topics. It is suggested that efforts put into alternative processes or approaches may yield more impactful results. The sentiment towards the Digital Commons Forum is neutral with a recognition of the need for improvement.

Advocacy for developing alternative approaches and processes in internet and digital governance is expressed. This viewpoint affirms the continuous development of internet governance and digital governance and highlights the interest in alternative processes and approaches. The sentiment is positive towards exploring alternative approaches.

In conclusion, the analysis highlights various perspectives on internet governance and digital commons. While some argue for identifying flaws, others propose governing the internet as a commons for inclusivity and empowerment. Recognition of the effort and labour of builders of digital public goods is emphasised, along with the need for a human-centric approach in digital sovereignty. The risks of state and corporate capture are brought up, and the concept of digital public infrastructure is seen as valuable. Support is expressed for the African Union Commission’s data policy framework, and the example of MOSIP is considered useful. Interoperability and a change in the regulatory paradigm are deemed necessary. The DPI discussion and the Digital Commons Forum are seen as opportunities for rethinking approaches. Advocacy for developing alternative processes and approaches in internet governance is also highlighted.

Luca Belli:
All right, so thank you very much, everyone, for coming here. And welcome to this day zero of the IGF Kyoto 2023. My name is Luca Belli. I’m a professor at FGV Law School, and together with Henriette Esterhusen, I will co-moderate this session on digital commons for digital sovereignty. We have a very good selection of speakers today. We will start with Renata Miele, who is the coordinator of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, the CGI.br, and works at the Ministry of Science and Technology of Brazil. Unfortunately, Renata Avila could not join us because she was our remote speaker and she had a last-minute problem. We will have then Lea Gimpel, that is AI and country policy lead at the Digital Public Goods Alliance in Germany. Then we will have Anita Gurumurthy , that is the executive director of IT4Change India. And then we will have Franziska Putz, that is senior advocacy manager at Wikimedia. And then last, but of course not least, Carlos Baca from SITSAC, is the general coordinator of SITSAC Mexico. All right. Before we start, this fifth edition of the Internet Commons Forum, that is a play on the Internet Governance Forum, is the Internet Commons Forum, because some years ago we felt that there was a lot of interesting discussions at the IGF, but very few discussions on digital commons, and so we started to have this revolutionary Day Zero event on Internet Commons, that we are something we are bringing on since 2018, if I’m not mistaken, yes. And during these five years, together with Henriette and other friends from APC, we have tried to feed this discussion about digital commons, Internet commons, and their relation with several topics every year. The topic of this year is digital sovereignty, and I would like to just spend a couple of minutes now to introduce the debate so that people understand what we are speaking about when we speak about digital commons, and what we want to speak about when we speak about digital sovereignty. On the digital commons part, it’s very important to understand that we are not only speaking about a type of resource, we are speaking about a type of management, a type of governance, actually. It’s a governance that links the resource with the community. So it’s a way of management, if you want, a way of management also of digital resources. It’s something that is alternative to the traditional way of managing states and markets, but it’s complementary. A very good example, we will see a lot of examples, but a very good example on which I worked a lot over the past years is community networks, that are local networks built by unconnected community to create their own connectivity, and so to manage connectivity, local services, local content, according to the need of the community, so for the community. It’s a very good example of how even digital resources can be built and managed by local communities, and this actually brings us to a very core pillar of what we can see as digital sovereignty, which is not digital sovereignty in terms of authoritarian control, censorship, or social control, it’s digital sovereignty, it’s another issue on which I’ve been working a lot over the past years, especially in the context of the BRICS group of countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, where it is evident that social control is only one part of digital sovereignty. There is another important pillar, which is what I call good digital sovereignty, which is about understanding the technology, developing the technology, and regulating the technology. None of this is controversial, none of this is controlling people, it’s understanding how the technology works, to be able to develop it, not only being a consumer, but also a producer of technology, it’s very much a question of self-determination, as we were speaking with Henriette a lot, and being able to regulate it. If you’re a state, you can regulate it, if you’re a local community that develops its own community network, you define norms, and actually, I want to stress this point, because if we read the literature on commons, Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize discussing and doing research on commons, and the key consideration of Elinor Ostrom was precisely that this management system is very performing, works very well, as long as you have a governance. You have rules, including rules that define how to deal when people try to abuse the commons or disrespect the common governance framework. So today we have a lot of good case studies to understand how this plays out, not only with the community networks, but also with Wikipedia, with a lot of different types of initiatives, and also how states are starting to understand this, which is very important, because the commons by themselves may be very fragile, a commons movement alone may not be able to create a counter-narrative to very large and well-resourced corporations or states, and so it’s very good that states try to understand this alternative system to try to foster it and protect it. Having said that, I now give the floor to Anriette for her initial introduction, and then we will start with the first speaker, Renata.

Anriette Esterhuysen:
And thanks for everyone for being here. As Luca says, we’ve been working with this concept for the last few years, and I think that what we are really trying to do is to identify what it is that is broken in Internet governance. Vint Cerf always says, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And I always say to him, but actually, Vint, it is broken, and I think that that’s the challenge that we’re dealing with in Internet governance. We have models that try to increase more transparency, we’re trying to create paradigms that are not shaped by control, we’re trying to prevent abuse of power by governments, abuse of power by corporations, but we’re actually failing. And then when we have something like the Global Digital Compact, that really just illustrates how you might put fantastic new principles, emphasize human rights, emphasize digital inclusion or access, but you’re placing those principles on top of a fundamental approach to Internet governance, which is flawed. And I think that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to find something that can really change how we think about what the Internet is, what its essential character and nature is, to establish it as a commons, and based on that, then explore what are the different legal, economic, and governance implications of governing the Internet as a commons. And so every year, we explore different aspects of that, but personally, I really believe fundamentally that if we don’t grapple with this, and if we can’t shift the paradigm at this level, we will always be working with multi-stakeholder processes as a label, but not in fact as a transformative approach to making governance more inclusive. And I think just finally, I think the really important emphasis here is this is not about sovereignty of states. It might be with regard to some aspects of governing the Internet as a commons, but it’s also about self-determination. It’s about giving people more control. It’s about giving communities and content creators more control. So it is in fact really striving towards a fundamental shift in how we think about the Internet and how we hopefully will one day govern it.

Luca Belli:
Excellent. And so we start to see that there is a lot of various dimensions that interact and intersect, and we are very happy to have a very different range of stakeholders represented here today, and also to have a very good feminine representation of stakeholders, which is always something we have to strive to do and to implement, not only paying lip services to gender balance, but also doing it with concrete deeds. And we are also very happy to have Renata Mielli who is now working for the Brazilian government and she has been working a lot on these kind of issues from a civil society perspective for many years, and it’s very interesting to also understand which kind of thinking is evolving in the new Brazilian administration. that as you may already know is very different from the previous one and to many extents in a very positive way and so let’s see what is the current thinking at the Brazilian government and at the CGI that also Renata representing in her double hat?

Renata Mielli:
Okay thank you. Thanks Luca for inviting me to participate in this section. I think it’s very important to us to talk about sovereignty internet and I would like to thanks to be here with Lia, Anita, Francisca, Carlos, Ariete to to talk about this. Well we are living in a world where the internet, digital technologies, artificial intelligence and the development of critical infrastructure are central to economic growth in our countries. In this digital era there is a particular element that binds all these economic chains together and makes them functional, data. Without a substantial amount of data none of these technologies make sense and I think if we talk about sovereignty, digital sovereignty, we have to talk about data. Countries that have the capacity to produce these technologies and data and who create effective regulatory frameworks to harness this digital ecosystem for the public good will be able to assume leadership positions in the world and reduce their dependence on others. However in recent years these goals have seemed distant for many countries in the global south due to deepening technological asymmetries. These disparities are not only concentrated in a few countries but but also in a handful of companies leading to the increasing privatization of digital development. Of course we are talking about the big techs that are ubiquitous and that are concentrating privatization all of our lives and economics and everything. In this scenario what can we do? What kind of policies can we develop to enable our countries to achieve digital sovereignty? We need to become technological creators like Luca said, rather than technological consumers. We must understand how technology can be used to benefit our societies with the perspective that it can empower countries but they can empower also people and reduce inequalities if they are designed with these goals in mind. An example is developing socially referenced applications to address real issues in communities. This is an important challenge that is related to development and encouragement of the use of existing services such as passenger transportation and traffic engineering. Understanding the strategic importance of having our own solutions for these services which can free us from dependence on applications like Uber and Wazer is crucial. This is because the use of these platforms collects essential data for the development of public services and public policies which are currently controlled by international private companies. In Brazil for example we have some cities that are developing their own applications for transportation and this is very important to start something on a more global scale in Brazil. Having creative solutions for these types of services helps develop the digital economy chain and can bring more empowerment to the services providers associated with them. They can develop fair economic arrangements such as cooperative models for example. To achieve this we must strengthen our national industries, universities and research centers but also reinforce the whole of the state. A strong state that promotes the digital economic chain is essential. We need the public policies that bolster tech infrastructure in both the public and private sectors. A robust science and technology policy, clear goals for industrial innovation and a reduction of dependence. Incentivize the national technology usage, promote the use of national technology and digital services while regulating the activities of big tech platforms and data usage. Prioritize cybersecurity, develop strong cybersecurity policies including data protection standards, privacy regulations and policies for data flow. On the other hand we need to address the challenges related to connectivity and meaningful access for all people. Achieving digital sovereignty is the landscape will be a complex journey but by implementing these strategies and policies we can work towards a future where our countries have a greater control over their digital destinies. Another strategic topic for the discussion of digital sovereignty is linguistic and cultural diversity. The Internet Steering Committee in Brazil recently hosted the first Lusophone Internet Governance Forum, bringing together Portuguese-speaking countries to discuss the challenges of promoting multilingualism on the Internet. This aspect becomes even more relevant at a time when artificial intelligence emerges as a new stage in the development of the digital economy. This is because generative AI models need to be fed with a large volume of data and most of it is available in English. This is not only a language issue but also pertains to the topic covered as language is related to a country’s culture and identity. We need to tackle the challenge of seeking investments for processing large language models in Portuguese and in the other languages to achieve a strong position in AI models. This is a matter of course of digital sovereignty. And to finish my presentation I would like to bring an example of a digital initiative we have recently in Brazil that for me design what we are trying to say about using our own solution for the digital Internet. I’m going to talk about PIX, a payment system introduced in 2020 and a payment system that was developed in Brazil and has since become the most popular payment method. It is user-friendly and most importantly transactions are tax-free. The introduction of the services has had a significant impact on commerce, particularly for small and personal businesses as it has made the transactions more cost-effective. Additionally it has reduced the data concentration in the hands of major international financial companies such as Visa and MasterCard. Nowadays we have around 70% of Brazilian people connected on the Internet and this is the same number of people that usually use the PIX to do transactions on the Internet because you only have to have a bank account and a cell phone and a connection to do some transaction with PIX and this is something important to democratize the access of payment on the Internet. This is only an example of something we developed in Brazil and it’s an example of a tax sovereignty but there are other ones we can talk about later and I think this is some principle, some points to So, I think it’s time to start the discussion about how important it is to our countries be more activity and be more creativity and produce their own technology solutions. Thank you very much, Luca, for the space.

Luca Belli:
Thank you very much for this. Indeed, yes, it’s something that there are a couple of points that I wanted to stress about what Renata was mentioning because they are key to understand the direction that we should take also for this conversation. First of all, the fact that it is interesting to understand and to discuss digital commons and both digital commons and digital community as a sort of counter narrative to the kind of very concentrated digital ecosystem that we all know we are witnessing now and over the past decade especially. Digital commons are particularly interesting because they are antithetical to the logic of value accumulation and even sort of dependency creation, structural dependency creation that large corporations try to build on their ecosystems. And the second point that what Renata was mentioning which is also something that we have been discussing a lot is precisely the fact that also exists some elements that may be driven by local communities like community networks and, by the way, I think we will speak a lot about this with Carlos and we will have an entire session on community networks and digital sovereignty where we present this booklet on digital sovereignty and community networks on Thursday. But it’s also something that the state has a role to play in and the fact that the state can also foster some example of digital sovereignty like the PICS in Brazil. You have in India you have UPI which is a similar online payment system which is a public digital infrastructure that allows to be independent or at least strategically autonomous from large tech corporations. And no one here has anything against large tech corporations but the fact that one is totally dependent from anyone is never something that one would advise to a friend. So it’s always good to think about strategical autonomy and to start to understand this conception of good digital sovereignty in terms of understanding the technology, being able to develop it and regulate it is essential to be strategically autonomous. Now, speaking about digital public goods, I think that no one better than the next speaker about speaking about the digital public goods alliances can tell us.

Anriette Esterhuysen:
Sorry. Just before Lea starts, I just want to welcome the online participants. There are not many of them. I don’t know who they are. Maybe they are on a boat in the Pacific somewhere because if they’re anywhere else, they have no business being awake. But we do have around 15, maybe 12 minors, the tech team. So welcome. And please use the chat. I’m monitoring the chat. And thanks for being with us.

Luca Belli:
Fantastic. Thank you very much. And welcome also to the online participants, not only all the participants here, of course, but also the online participants. So now we have Lea Gimpel from the AI and country policy lead at the digital public goods alliance.

Lea Gimpel:
Thank you so much, Luca, and thank you to this distinguished panel for being part of this discussion. I think it’s really timely that PIX was already mentioned because digital public infrastructure is definitely something that has a huge overlap with digital public goods, but perhaps I start by telling you a bit more about the concept of digital public goods, what the digital public goods alliance is, and then move on to digital public infrastructure to use all the buzzwords here. The digital public goods alliance is a multi-stakeholder alliance that is endorsed by the United Nations to help the discoverability investment in and use of digital public goods, especially for low and middle income countries, to help attain the sustainable development goals. So what are digital public goods? Basically, in 2019, Antonio Guterres urged everyone, so stakeholders from the private sector, from the public sector, as well as civil society and everyone else, to promote open source software, open content, open data, open standards, and open AI models to help reduce the fragmentation in the digital ecosystem and ensure more efficiency. And that is essentially also the definition that we use for digital public goods, and what they all have in common is that they are open source, they do no harm, and they are focused on reaching the sustainable development goals. And we have these five categories of products, so just to repeat, open source software, open AI models, open standards, open content, and open data. And as a digital public goods alliance, we basically do two things. First of all, we advocate for this kind of concept and help especially low and middle-income countries to use digital public goods for their public service delivery. And secondly, we also maintain the DPG standard and the DPG registry. So the DPG standard is basically a set of nine indicators that we use to assess if any given product can be considered a digital public good. We have a submission platform on our website where you, as a product developer, can apply for the DPG label, so to say, and it’s basically like an insurance for donors, for government, and others, that these products are vetted, that they are open source according to several standards, and that they help attain the SDGs. And currently we have more than 150 products on the digital public goods registry on our website, which you can actually go through and also basically map to the sustainable development goals. So if you are interested, for instance, in education and making sure that no one is left behind there, you can go to the registry and find all the DPGs, so all the open source software and other components, such as also open educational resources, and see which ones are registered to exactly fit this purpose. And in the second part, I would like to shed a bit of light on the evolving topics in the DPG ecosystem, and one was already mentioned, that is digital public infrastructure. So Renata mentioned PICS. From a DPG perspective, that is, strictly speaking, not a digital public good at the moment, but we hope that it’s going to be in the future, because it’s not open source, but it’s basically a means to help give countries sovereignty over their own infrastructure. And that is also what DPGs are made for, so that you as a country, as an implementer, can use DPGs yourself, adapt them, extend them if you want, and also choose a vendor that you would like to work with in order to implement these. And if you are not happy with that vendor, you can go to another vendor and build your infrastructure. And at the same time, as a country, of course, you also have the possibility to develop your own vendor ecosystem, to create jobs, for instance, to help implement products that you either developed in your own country, or that you adopt as a country, such as a huge DPG, such as DHIS2, which is a management information platform. But coming back to digital public infrastructure, from our definition, that’s basically a set of four really basic components of a country’s IT architecture, so to say. It’s a payment system, such as PICS, it’s digital identity, it’s civil registries, and it’s data exchange. And as a digital public goods alliance, we work with a number of products that actually fulfill also this prospect, this purpose of being open source in order to be adoptable by everyone. So products such as Mossip, for instance, Mojaloop, and XRoad are examples of these kind of tools that you can use to build your own digital public infrastructure. And what all of these have in common is that they are not a tiny, you know, open source project, but that they actually have multiple country implementations already under their belt, so a lot of experience of what is working in a specific country and what is not. And one of the main purposes of the digital public goods alliance is as well to help exchange country experiences. So basically help other countries to adopt these kind of products and develop, you know, their own control over their digital destiny, as Renata said it so nicely. And as a second part, I just want to quickly also elaborate on open source AI and AI systems as digital public goods, because obviously given the current dynamics, that’s a huge topic for us as a DPG as well, because we also figured that probably the DPG standard needs to evolve in a way that AI systems fit better, and also given, of course, the dynamics around large language models and generative AI. And here I think one of the main challenges is the, yeah, current power imbalances and concentration of powers that we see in the current ecosystem. And as a digital public goods alliance, we of course would like to contribute to democratizing AI in several ways. I mean there’s first of course the use of AI, there’s the democratizing of the development of artificial intelligence so that it’s not just happening in the global north in very specific contexts, and then also the benefits, democratizing the benefits and governance of artificial intelligence systems. And as a DPGA, we basically explore currently in a community of practice that is co-hosted with UNICEF, the overlap between responsible openness, because obviously not every AI system is fit for being released in the public domain completely, but we need to have safeguards around this as well. And in our community of practice, what we developed is an approach that you can say is a created or gradient approach to the openness of AI systems, which means that we basically break down an AI system and its main components being data, being models, and being the code, so the inference and training code for AI systems, and then look at all of these components independently and define which of these should be open or closed or in between in order for a product to be considered a DPG, because obviously it’s not a black and white debate, but there’s a gray shade in between being completely open and being closed or proprietary. And since data was mentioned, just to give you a little sneak peek, so to say, for the data component, we are actually allowing the most leeway because it’s also the most contested layer of an AI system when it comes to openness. So what we basically define as a way to be aspirational openness, so for instance to have synthetic data sets that are modeled on the original data set or to have a hosted access to the AI training data, which will help in the combination with the models that is mostly open, including model weights, architecture, and such, and the code that needs to be open source to ensure that the benefits of open source, being transparent, being usable, being extensible, is still part or can be realized by these AI DPGs. That’s an approach that we are currently discussing, so if you have any opinion on that, happy to elaborate either in the session or later on afterwards. And in a nutshell, the work that the DPGA does really has country experience, country digital sovereignty at its heart because we believe that countries need to have control over their own digital infrastructure in order to deliver digital services at scale and cater to their populations. Thanks.

Luca Belli:
Thank you, thank you very much, Lea. And actually it’s very interesting, I think the work of the alliance is very interesting because it aims at mapping what exists and creating a sort of repository of what exists, so that is something already very beneficial because there are not many organizations that do so around the world, or though many people are interested in this, you don’t know where to look at to understand what exists already. And then the other point that you stressed that I really like, and I think it’s very interesting for the conversation of today and the other conversations we will have along this week, it’s the connection between digital sovereignty and AI, actually another piece of very directed advertisement. We will present another book on AI sovereignty, transparency and accountability on the second, on day two, and a part of it is precisely dedicated to how digital sovereignty can be baked into the conception of AI sovereignty and the kind of layered approach that you need to have, because if we only look at regulation of AI as risk it’s important, but you run the risk to only look at the tree and not the forest. You have to look at all the layers from that data to compute, and we will speak about everything on on day two at 5.30 if you’re interested, plus there will be free copies of the books. But after this very direct advertisement, I think now it’s time to open for some comments and reactions, because we already have some very interesting comments from the online attendance. So if you have any comments, now we can have five to ten minutes, maybe ten minutes to have some initial reactions

Anriette Esterhuysen:
from the audience and also from the participants online. So I have a comment here from Timothy Holborn from Australia. I forgot the Australians are awake, like a typical South African, I overlooked the Australians. And he is raising the very important point about the supply chains and the ecosystems of creating digital public goods, and he’s saying that there needs to be recognition of the effort, the labor of people who build the commons, and how they can benefit from those directly. He says digital sovereignty at a rule of law level is quite important, but also human-centric. Systems need to support info orgs or personal selfhood systems, where personal agents can make use of permissive commons, commons artifacts that may be about a relationship between two people. In other words, he’s actually adding to the complexity of this ecosystem. And then he says he wonders how policy now seeks to support personal ontology management. I wonder if you’re an academic, Timothy. And I think for me, just the question that this brings up as well, which I hope the other speakers can also address, is how do you recognize the role of the public sector, of the state, without creating a new paradigm of top-down control? So how do you mobilize the public sector and the role of the state to protect the commons without it actually taking over and capturing the commons? Corporate capture and state capture, how do we avoid that? Any other comments from the room? You can go and stand at the mic.

Luca Belli:
So we have two comments here, three. Just line up behind the mics. And you can line there at four. Okay, let’s take this four, and then we will proceed with the next segment. Yes, and if I can ask you to introduce yourself, so that for the transcripts also we

Audience:
know who you are, and then we can proceed. Yes, definitely. I am Alexandre Costa Barboza. I’m a fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute, and also a coordinator of the Brazilian Homeless Workers’ Movement Technology Sector. I’m really glad to see this table, Professor Luca Belli, Renata, Anita, other colleagues. I’d like just to share with the other audience here that we’ve launched recently a booklet on digital sovereignty led by social movements, which I think is completely related to thinking of this so-called new commons, this local community-based governance of commons pool resources. So I think Professor Luca Belli, I actually have a dream. One day we will see community networks or even social movements being on main sessions of Internet Governance Forum, not to showcase successful digital inclusion initiatives, but actually to draw concrete lessons for global digital governance. But my question is related to digital public goods and digital public infrastructure actually, because PIX, for instance, was an initiative that came out of the Brazilian Central Bank from its own laboratory for promoting this kind of technology. But I remember like in France, the French Central Bank, they are developing their own digital infrastructure, like a repository, an inventory for carbon emissions to support ESG and so on, but this is not considered as public digital infrastructure. So I’d like to hear a bit more how you come up with digital ID, payment methods, text or content-based sharing platforms as the digital public infrastructure per se, because I don’t think that’s enough. I’d like to hear a bit more on that. Thank you very much. We can take all the comments and then have maybe some quick replies and then go on. Okay, thank you. My name is José Renato, I’m also from Brazil. I am an advisor at the Laboratory of Public Policy and Internet, LAPIN, an NGO there. It has actually a great, huge connection with what Alexandre said, because one of the main things that I missed in the presentations was, okay, we’re talking about digital identity, having more control over data and et cetera, and technological development as a whole, but we have an issue also with physical infrastructure, if I may call it that way, like I’m talking about data centers, I’m talking about satellites, we have a huge issue in Amazon. for instance, due to that. So I would like to know a bit more of your view in these issues and maybe also a glimpse of what’s the state role in promoting these initiatives. And just to add upon that, also how do you see the role of the state in fomenting community-based solutions for sovereignty? I think that the homeless movement in Brazil is a great example of that, but yeah, maybe hearing some comments on these two topics. Thank you very much. Hi, my name is Aastha Kapoor. I’m the co-founder of AAPTI Institute. Hello to the friends on the panel. I guess a quick question, well, two questions. One is, I think that, and Leah, this may be for you, is that when we think about digital public infrastructure, so much of it is being built out of India, for instance, and we’ve all learned the lessons from that. But how do we think about interoperability? Because at the moment, UPI and PICS don’t talk to each other. So the idea of those, and you know, India is on trying to export or build digital public infrastructure over different parts of the world. And then how do we really think about those solidarities? And then moving from solidarities is also the idea of commons. We have so many bottom-up mechanisms, but they are happening in isolated boundaries of the nation-state because, again, there is no way for these movements, this data, to talk to one another. So the tussle between the state fund sovereignty sort of goes antithetical to some of the infrastructure that’s being built and also the notion of commons. Hi, everyone. My name is Al. I work for the Tor Project, which might be a good example of an existing digital public good and a piece of infrastructure that’s been around for almost two decades now. And I’m curious what people think about how we fund the existence of digital public goods once they are in the world. And if we’re really thinking about the antithesis of value hoarding and big tech and, you know, digital products that make money, essentially, how do we make sure that these things continue to exist once they are in the world and used by millions of people? I see a lot of amazing projects fighting over scraps, essentially, in this funding landscape, and I think it’s complicated. There are some cool things that are happening, but I’d love to hear more about what the panel thinks about how we keep these things alive once they exist and what kind of money we make that happen with. Thanks. Hi, everyone. My name is Shilpa. I’m a PhD candidate at University of Melbourne. My question actually comes from my research during my stay at Australia. I realized that, you know, the principle of self-determination, as we all understand, you know, one of the principles that international law and international legal system exist on, it’s actually very differently interpreted based on which jurisdiction you go. And I was surprised that, you know, Australia doesn’t have one. And because of which, the indigenous people over there cannot protect their right, even if they want to, including their data. And I thought that that’s the kind of a problem that exists in many countries, including India. Because I was, I came to know that, you know, there was this one particular company that was collecting data of, like, poor people, telling them that, you know, oh, you are getting, like, you know, it’s your data, you’re getting participated, but then how are they going to control that data? My question is that, you know, when we talk about digital commons, we are, if we continue with this practice, I think, I think it will soon become a tool of exploitation. So I think that the concept, I mean, before we move on to discussing the digital commons, we need to first talk about self-determination, because these people need to be able to control. Otherwise, it’s just this digital gap, the gap, and the whole, this era, there’ll be a new era of colonization, I believe. Thank you.

Luca Belli:
All right, we have a lot of very interesting comments. My suggestion that we have maybe a quick round of replies from anyone from the panel, and then we proceed with the next segment of panelists, that actually many of them will plug into the comments that have been shared. One more

Anriette Esterhuysen:
question, one more question. Okay, one more question. Timothy, can you unmute yourself and speak?

Audience:
Are you able to hear me? We hear you clearly. Wonderful. Look, I’ve been working for a very long period of time through the W3C to create open standards technology to support freedom of thought and rule of law. So as we migrate away from these environments where we had a vault of all of our important papers, the sorts of things that we need to walk into a court of law and say, Your Honor, peacefully, I would like to resolve this dispute. This is what verifiable claims and credentials and the things that you call identity were produced to create. But the underlying infrastructure to make sure that people can store all this information and operate their own artificial intelligent agents, so that the microphones and sensors aren’t going outside of your house, but certainly have a role with your door locks and your lights and your life and your children and everything else. So how, whilst there may be different ideologies, much like the United Nations agreements speak about the freedom of religion, some people may well want to be defined by their wallets. But other people want to be defined by what they do. And so to do that, we need to create a lot of infrastructure, commons infrastructure. And commons may be the common relationship between two people, which is based upon agreements between those two people, even when the relationship between two people or more than two people change. So how are we building the infrastructure to support our human rights? At least as an option through these different models, where the artificial intelligent agent that is your prosthetic extension of self in society has a meaningful relationship with you as a human being, not someone else who wants to make use of you as a natural resource for profit and or mitigating any risks that may occur, if indeed our public institutions do not want to make a distinction between good people and bad ones. So there’s a different sort of structure to what is able to be made possible. I might also note that large language models are quite different to logical programming in relation to things like properly encoding language and languages and building what is called in psychology personal ontology. And so I just wanted to highlight that. I also wanted to highlight that the volume of work is significant. And I’m currently working through the idea of producing through the 110 chapters or so in Internet Society, some basic foundational framework to be able to support things like digital presence, because I think we needed an alternative to Facebook, to support the needs of refugees, to support the needs of people whose future is unknown unless we can get the knowledge, in the evidentiary sense, to a court of law where peaceful decisions are able to be made. I hope that helps.

Anriette Esterhuysen:
Thanks, Timothy. And if anyone’s online or want to log in, Timothy has posted some very useful links in the Zoom chat. Anybody want to respond to Renata?

Lea Gimpel:
Let me maybe start with the basics of the definition of DPI that I put forward. So our main guiding point here is infrastructure that has society-wide functions. And that’s why we land at these four. But obviously, there are other important parts of a country’s digital stacks that need to be in place in order to run it safe and securely. But we believe by focusing on these four components, we actually enable an informed discussion and really help guide also resources into building out these basic components. I think, I mean, this is still an evolving definition. Others have broader definitions, but we are here with the World Bank on the DPI definition. I think what another useful approach to think of for DPI is the building blocks approach. And that is something, for instance, that the GovStack initiative is developing. So basically, defining the core building blocks for specific services and pieces of a country’s stacks that you need for digital governance initiatives. And for instance, GovStacks has a lot of building blocks, around 30, I think, currently with these specifications. Some of them would fall into our definition of digital public infrastructure. structures are relating to digital ID, for instance, or data exchange, others are smaller components that you, for instance, need to deliver on a sectoral use case, and that’s the main definition or the differentiation, so to say, society-wide functions versus sectoral use cases. Obviously, for sectors, you also have foundational pieces of infrastructure that need to be in place. And in terms of the question of interoperability and, you know, having products that speak to each other, I mean, as a DPGA, we are committed to open source, so what we want to see is that technology is not only developed by countries themselves, but that in an ideal scenario, it’s also shared openly, and experience is shared, and that these components are built based on operability standards, open standards, et cetera, to help that these different components can speak to each other and be adopted, and so basically, what we want to see less of are these bilateral agreements that some countries currently do in order to share their technologies towards sharing their technology, really, in the public domain as a commons, and then help others to adopt it.

Luca Belli:
I’ll just respond quickly. You go first, Renata.

Renata Mielli:
I always forgot. Just a word. I completely agree with Alexandre when he said we have to have more social movement speaking for themselves in this kind of panel, and I agree, too, when he says the PIX is not a digital common, a public technology, because it’s not open source, and there is a lot of things, but it’s a public policy that effectively democratizes the commercial authorization and has an important goal to the sovereignty in our country, and in Brazil, I just want to underline this. We have lived through the last six years under governments that did not have any agenda of sovereignty, and much less in the digital term, so we have to start from the beginning, and there are a lot to do, and we are talking about, in this moment, about how can we face the challenge to have a policy to data centers in our country. We are discussing this in this moment in the Ministry of Science and Technology. How can we discuss initiatives to have our sovereignty of our data, and this is not simple, and this is something we have to achieve in the long term. It’s not a policy that we have the results in the short term, but we have this compromise to face this challenge and see what can we do about this.

Anriette Esterhuysen:
Just quickly on the question about interoperability, I think, well, firstly, I think digital public infrastructure is actually a very useful new concept that is existing or emerging in our internet governance space, and I think it’s a good opportunity to look at collaboration between different stakeholders, between communities, civil society organizations, businesses, and government actually working together to define common definitions, but also principles on which to regulate where there’s a need for regulation and to be interoperable. I must say in Africa, we have a new data policy framework, the African Union Commission member states adopted a very high-level framework on data policy, which actually enables data sovereignty without data localization in a way that would restrict trade or harm freedom of expression. I think the example of MOSIP, the Indian Open Source Digital Identity System, is also a very good example, but you need frameworks and you need principles and you need collaboration, so I think this interoperability also has a political and a political will component that we cannot, and a component of collaboration, and just finally on regulation for more community-based ownership, I think currently our whole regulatory paradigm and internet governance is shaped by big companies and trying to create some kind of level playing field in the European Digital Services, Digital Markets Act, in that sense is a good response, but we also need regulation that enables diversity and that creates more open markets that are more open to community initiative, to smaller players, so I think we, well finally, I just do think we can use this DPI discussion as a way of trying to rethink some of the ruts that we have fallen into with our approaches to internet governance. Just a quick comment before we give the floor to Anita, just to help the participants also to have a little bit more clarity, because we are speaking

Luca Belli:
about a lot of different things now, and just to put again the discussion into at least three main pillars that are emerging here, the digital commons that are really about resources and communities that self-govern a specific resource that can be a digital resource, the digital public goods or digital public infrastructures that have a lot of points of overlap with the digital commons, but usually see a role of the government, of a public entity, fostering, thinking about them, and even promoting them like the PICs, if you want, they both overlap and actually the government has a role in protecting the digital commons, and digital commons can help enormously the development of digital public infrastructures, and both represent two very good examples of how you can reclaim digital sovereignty, meaning not being dependent from the ecosystems and the digital structures that large tech corporations, that usually are very few and very concentrated, develop, and through which they technically regulate the digital development of the world. The comment that was made about AI and compute is a very good one, and that is a very good point that we analyze here, the fact that there are basically three large corporations that provide cloud computing for AI to the entire world, well we can name them because there is nothing, it’s not shaming, it’s just naming AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, then there is a little bit of emerging Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, but otherwise you have basically 70% of the market concentrated in three cloud providers that define cloud computing for AI in the world, so that is something that needs to be tackled, I’m very happy to hear that, and actually I think that one of the best things that the Brazilian government did was also to reopen the program to promote the development of semiconductors in Brazil, it was something that the previous government wanted to sell, and it was the only production of semiconductors in Latin America, it was really not strategic to sell it, but anyway, we will speak about all this maybe today and for sure on Tuesday, now let’s give the floor to Anita, because a lot of what we say about digital public infrastructures and digital public goods comes from Indian evolutions over

Anita Gurumurthy:
the past 10 years, so please Anita, the floor is yours. Thank you so much, I just wanted to say we have a little over 20 minutes left, and there are three speakers. We started with 15 minutes of delay because the previous panel started with 15 minutes late, so we have like 35. Okay, so do we have to hand over the room to someone else? I’m not very sure. Also just to say that a small caveat is I think I’m not an expert on India, my location is certainly Indian, and I try my best to speak to those experiences, but I thought I would do what we’ve been working on for a while, which is the connections between the digital commons and digital sovereignty, and to conceptually put out some thoughts. Of course, as Luka, you mentioned Ostrom’s work and the whole idea of the natural commons and the management of the natural commons is not a new phenomenon. However, the management of the natural commons has had to deal with systems for different things, maybe lakes or maybe mountains, grasslands, they’ve all been localized, so when you actually look at the digital, you’re talking about a certain idea of scale and therefore finding the contextual integrity of the commons for that. that scale. And we have, I think, historically for 20 years, going beyond the internet commons, had rules, had systems. We’ve had systems with the content commons, we’ve had protocols, we have the open software movements, and now, of course, data and the layers of digital intelligence that are getting built on top of these commons, for which systems don’t exist, common systems don’t exist. And these pertain very much to textual data, which is language, and other forms of data, including IoT data, which we see in LLM models, but not only. Also foundational AI counts on all of these social knowledge commons. Of course, as you said, the governance of the commons is key, and access and use conditionalities become vital. And this is not only because we have to have rules for how to access, who will access, who will use, but also to avert the pollution of the commons, which is a very, very important thing. So what is sovereignty? Sovereignty as self-determination connects the idea of the commons with two things. One, with the process of commoning. So the commons are only as important as commoning. There’s no point in having a pristine lake out there, which is not of use to humankind. So the idea of the commons with commoning, which is the act of creating, preserving, and nurturing the commons for the purpose of using the resource prudently. And the second is sovereignty connects as self-determination, as one of our friends pointed out, connects also to the whole process of communitizing. Communitizing, as is quite evident, you cannot have a community that creates a resource and cares for it, but is divorced from uses of the resource and benefits that arise from the resource, which is exactly how it is with the regime of data, with the de facto regime of data. We seem to create and create and create, and no one seems to care for it, and someone else seems to benefit from it. So commoning and communitizing are, therefore, processes very, very central to the commons, and I think that enabling a collaborative regime of access, use, benefit sharing, and governance that is about relevant models of democracy, appropriate for the resource under consideration. So commoning and communitization of a resource will pertain to the nature of the resource and cannot be some generic set of principles that are going to be homogeneously applied. Digital policy needs to address not just the creation of the commons, the digital commons, but also the enablement of commoning so that some people don’t capture access. The option value of data and the quest for infinite aftermarkets has led to a data hoarding with deeply adverse consequences for the digital economy. I think suffice it to say that all of us understand what it means. And in order to make sure that communitization and commoning are not divorced or decoupled, policy needs to ensure harm prevention and redistributive justice. I think this is indeed the role of the state. It’s a very tricky role because the commons has always been, certainly through crony capitalism, been very conveniently exploited by the state for certain purposes. So the challenges that face us essentially link to one of openness. That does not necessarily lead to commoning. And second challenge that we are confronted with is the highly disembedded imaginaries of communities that do not recognize the role of public goods and the rule of law in ensuring the connection between public goods and the commons. So we get into endless hair-splitting about is this commons, is this public goods, is this DPIs, et cetera. I think it is important to recognize that it’s not possible for, for instance, low-income neighborhoods that manage their own slum communities in India, in a place like Dharavi in Bombay, where it’s not possible for them to have their own water supply, have their own internal systems because the commons of their housing has to be managed in relation to the public goods that are provisioned by the government. So public goods in relation to the commons are not just a kind of privilege, but they are part of the duty of the state to provide, which is why the example of PICS or of UPI in India become very, very vital. So I think these relationships between self-determination, sovereignty, commons, and public goods have to always be kept in mind because it’s a process of fine-tuning, calibrating how these relationships will actually work. We have, in the realm of data, innumerable principles. We have the fair data principles, findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. These have been critiqued for some kinds of limitations. For instance, that they do facilitate greater data sharing, but do not pay adequate attention to the power differentials and equity in data sharing and reuse. We also have the criticism that the fair use principles, like let’s actually have federated systems. I’ll give you your privacy, but I will take your data. That’s the larger model. Such approaches enable private sector actors to engage in free riding. So then, there has been, in the realm of academia and practice, the whole idea of the care principles. And these are originally developed from indigenous data resources, connecting back to the Nagoya principles of the Convention of Biological Diversity. And these, of course, connect to data ecosystems and their collective benefits, collective control of data systems, and reuse principles that actually inherit in collective benefit. Well, the care principles are very important because they do push for communitization. They do push for self-determination and communitization. But there’s one more vital connection between commons, community, and sovereignty, and that is not only linked to sovereignty as territory or sovereignty as knowledge, but sovereignty also as embodiment, and this comes from feminist thinking. And here, I think that we really need to understand that the resource governance questions around data or AI cannot really look at the commons as some kind of dematerialized, abstract idea, but as an idea that’s extremely particularized and embodied. And that, I think, is a very, very vital connection. It’s not very easy because you’re dealing with a resource, you’re dealing with principles of territory, you’re dealing with principles of knowledge, and you’re dealing with principles of embodiment. So again, there’s a lot of complexity in the management of the commons of data. I’d just like to wrap up with a couple of comments. One is that sovereignty is implicated not only in the terms in which human bodies are dematerialized into a resource for digital capitalism, but equally when they get rematerialized into a large language model or rematerialized in the form of a basic AI model, we really have to look at how this has material impacts on our ability and means to choose our life course, which is called the equality of autonomy. And that’s why self-determination is not only about management of the resource, but self-determination is also about the accountability to the human beings who are part of the commoning. So this is really important, and I think this cannot be forgotten. Finally, to address my issue around openness and its limits, and also the whole question of what is to be done to govern the systems of commons, and what are the institutional systems of governance in the digital commons, a few points. I think that digital resources like a data bank or a local seed bank with informational databases where there is a certain pooling of seeds that farmers do, et cetera. You might have a biodiversity register to accompany that, all of this. These really require some kind of state support. I think you really need to also endorse these. You need to support these. And you also need to create standards and protocols, which are public goods. And finally, I think that the provisioning of the public goods, as I said, is really the duty of the state in the digital era. It cannot be wished away. And I think the elephant in the room is really not just the governance of the commons, but the governance of the non-commons, which basically means governance of the capitalist systems, regulation of the capitalist systems that poach the commons. Thank you.

Luca Belli:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Anita, really for this fantastic overview of also how all this dimension interact and intersect from the individual to the community, to the state. And also something that we analyzed in other work, it’s about the fact that when there is no individual community or state sovereignty, there is a corporate digital sovereignty, which is because there is, you know, as the Romans already said thousands of years ago, we’ll be society’s EBUs. When there is society, there is regulation. And if you don’t have individuals asserting their sovereignty, you don’t have community doing it, if you don’t have the state doing it, there will be someone else, some private ordering acting. And so that is also very much something that we have to keep in mind. Something that actually is very good to create a connection between. what you were saying, the individuals and the community create value that then is hoovered by corporations. It, I think, comes from the next speaker, from Ziske, from Wikipedia, because also we have seen a lot of the latest generative AI being built by basically hoovering Wikipedia at large. So please, Ziski, the

Franziska (Ziski) Putz:
floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me join this panel. I’m Ziski. I’m part of the global advocacy team from the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. I really love that I’m following the speaker because there’s very thought-provoking concepts, and there’s this saying within the Wikimedia community that Wikipedia is a thing that shouldn’t work in theory, no matter what wonderful theories we have about the commons and how they should operate, and it only works in practice. So I’m going to start with a little audience Q&A to make sure that everybody is still awake and alive as we near the end of this session. Could you please raise your hand if you have visited Wikipedia, read an article on Wikipedia before? This is what I like to see. This is what I hope to see. Now keep your hands up if you have edited Wikipedia before. All right. I’m assuming, I was assuming this was going to be a biased sample, but this still makes me really happy that in this room we have a lot of hands raised. Thank you. And now everybody again raise your hands if you already knew that it is possible to edit Wikipedia. Absolutely beautiful. So like I said, this is a very biased sample in this room, but I still like to ask because one of the greatest challenges that my team, and I have two wonderful colleagues sitting right here, if maybe you want to wave your hand so people can follow you after. Yes, so reluctant. One of the biggest challenges that we find is that most people actually aren’t familiar with how Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects work. And when I say people, I also mean government officials, legislators, very influential policymakers. And I think that’s because we’re relics of the early internet days. And by we, I mean Wikimedia projects, including but not limited to Wikipedia, but also really any project that’s dedicated to the idea of both free access to knowledge, and maybe more importantly to this idea of communal ownership and creation of information resources and technology, otherwise known as the digital commons in this room. And that lack of awareness is maybe understandable because we’re 20 plus years into those early web 2.0 days, and the internet looks really different right now, and as do the conversations about how to regulate it, how to shape it, and who gets to participate in these processes. The world heavily relies on one dominant type of online service, as we’ve heard a lot from this panel, and that is for-profit and advertisement driven. And in my experience, when I start talking to people that I work at Wikipedia, maybe we’re in a shared Uber together or something, even though they’re my age, they probably had teachers telling them not to use Wikipedia in the classroom. They still can’t believe it when I tell them that it is an online space that they can be part of creating. And the problem is it seems absent, as I said, in many of our policy and governance discussions as well. Instead, these discussions reflect an anxiety about how to deal with commercial interests, as well as the ability of bad actors to amplify harmful content online. And those are important topics that we definitely need to come up to solutions for, but there’s really a lack of proactive action that’s being taken to promote a positive vision of the Internet. Instead, I think we’re really focused on what we want to prevent, but we could also be talking about what we want to create together. And if Luca has been plugging all of his books, I will do the same to plug a workshop that we’re running on Wednesday to talk about proactive visions of the Internet. So please come find us if you want to participate. But this kind of anxiety that’s dominating these conversations is also very much part of the conversations taking place around emerging technologies like AI. Most AI governance discussions are focused on making sure that this field isn’t also captured by commercial interests, again as we’ve heard on the panel, and that it doesn’t amplify racist biases and existing inequalities. And again, that’s a good thing. But I think that Wikipedia and other players in the free knowledge movement, such as those that support the Commons, are uniquely positioned at this time to raise the values of participation and also to share concrete learnings in these conversations about the governance of emerging technologies and what that might look like from a more bottom-up perspective. So let’s take Wikipedia and AI as a case study. Just top of my head, Luca definitely didn’t ask me to do that. So we know that Wikimedia is not known for producing any kind of revolutionary game-changing technology. If you’ve read a Wikipedia article, you probably have noticed that we’re largely using the same software as back in 2002. But that’s also kind of the point. We’re still here, we’re still providing a public good, we’re not stealing your data as part of that, we’re not selling your data, and we’re not asking you for money or putting our content behind paywalls. And there’s more than 300,000 volunteers around the world, just to give you a sense of the scale, who are working on creating this public interest infrastructure, which is being read around 6,000 times a second and exists across 300 languages. So I think it’s fair to say that our model, even if our software is really old, our model is resilient. And we have been committed to creating freely accessible information through processes that are participatory, transparent, and also open to everyone. And this commitment is what shapes how we think about emerging technologies like AI. These are tools that must have people’s interests and participation at their core. So technologies like AI are going to support human rights and inevitably the public interest when they support the work that humans do on our platforms, instead of replacing that work. Wikipedia volunteers have long used AI tools and bots to help scale their own activities, and those are really important things like detecting vandalism or translating content. When these tools are built by the foundation, then we do so in consultation with the very people using it. We want to know if editors are trying to combat a disinformation challenge that they’re seeing across a particular language project or a particular topic, then we want to know exactly what those challenges are and how we’re going to end up helping them. They are obviously our strongest partners in considering the context-specific effects of AI, like on these small language communities as an example. So any AI tool that we develop is also going to be open source and transparent, so that others can use those tools and improve them. So whether you’re editing an article about the Digital Commons or trains, whatever floats your boat, or you’re working on AI, our model is always going to be the same. Volunteers work together to create the tools that will serve their needs through processes of discussion, debate, and consensus. But don’t get me wrong, our model is absolutely not perfect. At a time when Wikipedia plays an essential role in training almost every large language model, we need to be transparent and also proactive about the biases and limitations of the open access infrastructure and processes. So as Luca alluded to, almost every large language model out there right now was trained on Wikipedia data, and it is almost always the largest source of training data in their data sets. But as most people I’m sure in this room know, open access does not mean equal access. Our projects reflect broader structures of power and privilege and patterns of exclusion as a result, and these are going to impact the type of knowledge that’s hosted on our projects. So some examples to think through. Participation is going to be limited first, but to those who have time, who speak the right languages that are hosted online, and who also have a stable internet connection, which we heard can also come down to physical infrastructure challenges or barriers. Also your government’s policies might influence your ability to write freely about a certain topic. And even if you can contribute, there may be harassment or bullying once you enter our projects. Our own human rights impact assessment found that underrepresented communities experience the majority of harassment online, which disproportionately affects women and racial and ethnic minorities. And on top of all that, you have the very fun problem of what counts as a reliable source. So here we’re dealing with existing knowledge gaps whose knowledge has been documented in the right way, with the right licensing, and published in the right journals or newspapers to count as credible. But we take on our responsibility as a steward for one of the world’s largest online platforms by working closely with our volunteer community to address those challenges. So we work to foster a welcoming culture and engage newcomers to our projects. Maybe this is this process of commenting that we heard about. This includes things like a recently ratified universal code of conduct, and also technical features that make it easier to start editing perhaps ancient software. We also conduct human rights due diligence, as I referenced, to understand the impacts that our projects have. And we work to identify and fill knowledge gaps through a variety of forms. So we’re urging those who build large language models to do the same. Generative AI tools need to keep humans in the loop. For their own interests, it’s even been shown that large language models trained on the output of other large language models become measurably worse. So they always need knowledge that’s been produced by actual humans. Clear and consistent attribution is one of the ways that these tools should include recognition and reciprocity for the human contributions that they are built on. And we also ask that creators of large language models embrace increased transparency in the sources of their training data, how that data is weighed, and the resulting outputs to help us understand and assess the information from their products. So if there’s something that we know from our 20 plus years, it’s that people are essential to the longevity and integrity of the information ecosystem. AI should aid people in sharing and participating in knowledge, not replace them. Thanks.

Anriette Esterhuysen:
Thanks, Ziski. And we are over time, but we started a little bit late. There’s not another session in this room. So if people are able to stay for another 10 minutes, please do. Back up. And then we’ll hopefully have some time for discussion as well.

Carlos Baca:
Hello, hello, everyone. I want to take my time so I can be as short as possible. I want to highlight one of the processes that, in our experience, is the most or one of the most important thing to actually, like you said, the communalization of the digital common goods. So we need to understand that it is a process always. It is not like a place in which we will be there sometime, but like a process in which we learn every time, every time we are learning. And we make mistakes, and we learn again. And capacity building is one of these processes in which communities can rethink, can analyze, can reflect about their own challenges and how the technologies can be used for their needs, for their dreams, et cetera. And as some people here know, I always talk about the experience we have in doing things and trying to learn from the communities. So we will have another session in the afternoon about community networks. So people who are interested in this topic, we can have more conversation on it. We will have also a different panelist. But I will try to focus on this aspect of the community networks. So all the learnings that I am sharing now is from two different training programs. One of it is a training program for coordinators of ICT networks in indigenous and rural communities in Latin America. We have been developing with the ITU since 2019. It’s a blended program. It have five online courses and then boot camp, 10-day boot camp that we will be developing this year in Guatemala. And you have not only training in how to install or develop a network, but also in indigenous communities and community communication. We have a lot of training in broadcasting, for example. And the other experience that we accompany with other organizations in different parts of the world are the National Schools of Community Networks that have been taking place since 2020 in five countries, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, and yes, it is the five. And we have the support from the FCDO from the UK. And we have been coordinating it in a joint effort between APC and Rizomatic. So what we learn in this process? Well, these learnings are very close or very linked with the community networks itself and the goals of the community networks. So what capacity building is important because people learn how to install, operate, maintain, and manage their own network. So it can be more sustainable over time, these projects, because the people can repair, can do the things that in other ways they can’t do. Other thing that it is very important is this critical thinking about technologies. We say always that we have the right to be connected. Some communities also want to think how to take care of this connection. They don’t want to have access, free access for everything. They want to think and to reflect about it. And it can develop a process in which the selection of the technologies are more linked with the real needs of the communities. Other thing is that the network, the community networks are sustained, very, very related or very linked with the organizational structure of the community. So if the community, for example, have a traditional way, a political way of living, they introduce the network in this way of living, like the water or other kind of goods. The local economy is estranged through different process, through the incorporation of the technologies. It also happened that the community start thinking on how to develop their own content and to strengthen their own identity through these processes in which they include the technologies. And finally, this knowledge, when we develop these programs, are socialized in the community. So the community start to think that it is possible to have another way of connecting and to have access. But it is important one thing. And we have developed a lot of mistakes if we think that there is only one way to develop capacity building. No, the capacity building that community needs to be very linked with the ways of learning and the needs of the communities. So we need to design the capacity building for the communities itself, not for all the communities. So we depart, for example, from the technological experience of everyone. If we want to teach electricity for a person in the communities, almost all have changed. I forgot in English the name of the folk. Well, they have some experience dealing with electricity issues. So they go always beyond technical training. They always link this technical with other things in their territory. For example, they think like the computer, like a human body. One of the communities say, ah, we can understand the community, the parts, like a human body. Or we can understand an intranet, a closed network, like a lake, like our lake, or no? So there is always a link between the communities and that. And most important, they break in paradigms about who can manage and who can deploy and who can coordinate the projects through this. They can access to the technologies. And finally, what is the kind of public policies do we need? It’s easier, but it’s complex at the same time, no? We need to take in mind that this thing that the training programs, the development of this kind of capacity building needs to be particularized and contextualized. It takes time, no? So one program needs to have the time to design what the program wants to develop. And then we can implement the training. So I think this is, for me, I want to make an invitation for you. We have this learning repository. This is a community learning repository. You will find a lot of materials linked with community networks. You all can also, and please do, share your own materials in this space. And see you in the other session in the evening. So thank you very much.

Anriette Esterhuysen:
Thanks, Barca. Yes, there’s a session at 11 o’clock on the lake. learning done through community networks. Can we take two questions, if there are any more questions, before you go? I don’t see anyone, is there a question? No? Well, I would like to, I mean, we always do this with this Digital Commons Forum, we kind of go all over the place. And look at next year, we’re gonna do it differently, okay. I think what I do want the panel to respond to, maybe Luca, you can do as well, I don’t really want us to do closing remarks, but I think maybe if you can come up with something, we’re in this moment at the moment, in this particular space, the IGF space, the UN space, we’ve got the global digital compact hovering, we’ve got WSIS plus 20, and then there’s also this work that we are all doing, which in a sense exists in different spaces, but which is making a difference. And there’s also the elephant in the room that Anita talked about. What do you think that this community and these processes that we are involved in at the moment in terms of digital governance, internet governance, what would you like to see emerge? You know, what can we do differently, or do better, in this WSIS plus 20 GDC moment that we are in? Or if your response is, let’s put our efforts elsewhere and build alternative processes or invest in alternative approaches, then please say that. So just a really quick bite-sized comment from all of you, starting with you, Lea.

Lea Gimpel:
Hello, hello. And then you will have- Here we go, yes. Yeah, thanks so much. So maybe a key takeaway related to your question is that we really need to center around people. So I really like the idea of building regulation, building digital policies around the common hearing task as well, not only regarding open source technologies for governments and public services, but really empowering people to do this and to take on their own destiny, so to say. So I still believe in these processes, but I think that we need to include these perspectives more prominently of the people.

Anriette Esterhuysen:
Thanks, Lea. Siski.

Franziska (Ziski) Putz:
On a very tactical, practical level, I would really like more shared resources. Like, I wanna know what talking points you guys are using when you’re showing up in these kinds of spaces so that the next time we’re having conversations, we can make sure that we’re pushing similar points. And I also wanna have access to more case studies and stories that everybody’s experiencing in their contexts and countries where they’re working. I think that would be a really useful way to lift up each other’s work.

Anriette Esterhuysen:
Yeah, we need a knowledge commons around the internet as a commons.

Renata Mielli:
I think we have to convince our government that it’s, ah, okay. Hello? I think we have to convince our government that investing in digital commons and in digital sovereignty is important because the main perception is that it’s more easy and it’s more cheaper to buy services that are already there and don’t develop our own. So it’s a convincing process. This is very important for us to initiate this space. I don’t know. Thank you very much.

Luca Belli:
Anita.

Anita Gurumurthy:
Thank you. I think these are times when we have to get real. I think when Uber is threatening the European Union and saying we’ll exit, the DSA comes into force, bye. So I think we really need to govern in a way that the commons can be legitimized. So I think the governments of the Global South should simply make a very big leap in being able to say platform regulation, markets shall be fair, and back one or two digital commons experiments. In my country, in the south of India, the state of Kerala is setting up an alternative OTT platform.

Carlos Baca:
Yes, very quick. I think we need to have more policies that are co-designed by people. People who are involved in the communities that have the challenge to live without connectivity, for example, need to be in this conversation in different ways. It’s not always to sit here in an IGF, but we can learn a lot from them. And also to try to design public policies that are very linked with the needs of the communities because if not, we will have these big programs in which the communities are not really the targets of these processes.

Luca Belli:
Okay, the final word to sum up. I think that looking at the past five years of Internet Commons Forum, I think what we have been successful in is to create an interest on the topic that previously was totally absent from IGF discussions. And that, I think, is the main challenge we still have because I’ve experienced this working a lot with community networks or even a lot with digital sovereignty over the past years. You have these initial preconceptions due to how most people that are in power or everywhere in the world have studied over the past years. So we think, for instance, that the only way to manage or to have effective governance is state and markets. We don’t, people usually don’t even think that there might be a third option that is viable. And I think what we have been good at over the past years is to give a lot of examples that a third option that is viable exists. Although, of course, we cannot, again, think that community networks will defeat Google, right? This would be ridiculous. But the fact that governments understand that they may be a very good alternative options to foster digital sovereignty and that government themselves understand digital sovereignty not only as authoritarian regimes controlling socially people, but to have communities, individuals, states understand how technology works, developing it and being able to effectively regulating it, even to protect human rights of the individuals and to protect competition, which are essential to democracy, right? So the fact that we managed to send this message to governments is already, could be a great success. I’m very sad that today we didn’t have one of the speakers I’ve invited, Henri Verdier from the French, is the French digital ambassador, because they have written a very good paper on how digital commons could be good for digital sovereignty and it’s good to see that there are governments that are already understanding this. My dream, to use an expression, not only of Alexander, but also Martin Luther King, is that more government will understand this. I think that now they are starting to understand it because they see there are very good examples of good digital sovereignties from the global South, like India, like the peaks in Brazil, that now actually are copied by the global North because the understanding that is a very good way of being strategically autonomous. And so I think that we are, we have to keep on repeating the message. As any parents know, it’s good to repeat the message so that the children understand it and then they can implement it in their life. And so maybe sometimes we should think as the government, as our children, that we have somehow to educate with good examples. And in this perspective, I think we have been pretty much successful over the past years, but of course there is a lot of room for improvement. Henriette, do you want to have a final word?

Anriette Esterhuysen:
I just want to say maybe this is what we should be looking at with the WSIS plus 20 outcomes. And Anita’s, you know, your idea, but governments investing in this, collaborating with other stakeholder groups, I think that’s very concrete, deliverable, and I think we can strive to find a way, well, I would hope to find a way in which the UN system can play a role in facilitating that kind of collaboration in the space. So thanks very much, everyone. Apologies for going over time. And we wish you all a very good IGF. Thanks to the online participants, and to the interpreters, and to our tech team.