Ethics and corporate responsibility – WS 04 2011
30 May 2011 | 15:00-16:30
Programme overview 2011
Claims for greater regulation of the Internet on the part of Governments have been met with the claims that interference by governments will hinder the Internet’s growth. Regulation and ethics must join forces to give the digital universe a framework of rules. What is the Role of Corporate Social Responsibility? How far are corporations willing to commit? Effective Corporate Responsibility cannot be achieved in a traditional format (stakeholders, clients, employees, board). How can users, Governments and other interest groups be involved in the process? (Multistakeholderism) Can we trust corporations that offer services all over the world but maintain their office in a specific country to respect our rights and defend our liberties?
People
Key Participants
- Marco Pancini, Google
- Christoph Steck, Telefonica
- Michael Rotert, EuroISPA
- Patrik Fältström, Cisco
- Matthias Fiechter, European Youth Forum
Co-moderators
- Rolf Weber, University of Zurich
- Ana Olmos Sanz, IGF Spain
Session report
Corporate responsibility
Concern was raised as to whether corporations can be trusted and whether they can be expected to be able to defend users’ rights such as equal access to the Internet. It was stressed that there is a gap between the wealthy with opportunities and those who have neither.
It is noteworthy that corporate responsibility has resulted in positive developments to society such as green programs, customer agreements and regulations. That said, a good marketing strategy does not contribute adequately to the development of free Internet. The need for a sustainable dialogue between stakeholders was emphasised.
Data privacy and the “right to be forgotten” were highlighted. It was pointed out that services like Facebook, Gmail, etc., are not only about consumption but about trust. In essence, there was consensus that everyone has a right to privacy, yet there is also demand for businesses to provide more tools to secure privacy and personal data. Public trust in business to process personal data needs to be built; there was a call for better tools to be provided to protect personal data and offer the “right to be forgotten” on the Internet.
Personalisation on the Internet was discussed. Providing a service that takes into account the user’s personal interests is acceptable, but they should also make users aware that user consent can result in many more clauses and conditions than realised at first glance. Search engines prioritise information (thereby making choices) which can limit the possibilities to obtain truthful and reliable information.
The hope was expressed that this workshop created a dialogue that enabled corporates and users to have their opinions heard in a context that exceeds the dialogue between service providers and consumers. Finding solutions and designs for a better Internet is something everybody wants. More transparency and involvement was called for. It was stressed that with freedom comes responsibilities and power.
Transcript
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
>> Okay. Let’s get started. This is the workshop on ethics and corporate responsibility, and let’s thank Christoph Steck, Patrik Faltstrom, and Marco Pancini, and we are waiting for some more representatives from the corporate world. I hope they will be arriving soon.
First of all, I wanted to let you know that we have been working on this, okay. We have been talking to the youth and talking to the corporate – to the corporations and we have established some starting points, some general agreements on which to base the debate here today. So – so these agreements are multistakeholderism is key in these issues, technical community, government, and – and private sector have a role to play, have a responsibility. And they each have the capability to address different aspects of these issues.
Another thing we have agreed on is that citizens have claimed the need for the right to be forgotten. Certain data may be made to disappear from the Internet. Citizens look for different ways to exercise these rights using data protection loads or other alternative ways. This, however, and this is very important, should not interfere with freedom of expression and the right to spread truthful information.
Increasingly effective search engines turn old information into permanent tools for individuals. Also, regarding the digital contents, the industry of digital content is a driving force for innovation, and social and economic development and has an important role in the advancement of information society. As a market, the industry is enduring a deep transformation and facing millions of uncertainties regarding change. Internet is a boost for economic values and new companies and entrepreneurs that are more open and more creative.
So using this as a starting point, please Rolf can we move on to the corporate social responsibility? Oh, yeah, sorry. Sorry. Yes. So the new social – the new studies group, right, they have been holding workshops throughout these days an they have been working a lot. And so first of all, let’s hear the young. Let’s here the youth. Let’s hear what they have to say. Let’s hear their claims and their great messages on this topic.
>> Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Trin and I’m one of the organizers of the new media summer school. So basically what we did, we had a preevent, a youth event here in Belgrade for three days. We aimed to discuss all the relevant topics regarding Internet covenants. The event brought together basically 30 young people from different youth organizations and also unorganized young people from all the – the European region, meaning from the Member States but also from the neighboring countries.
Basically, we went through all the most important topics throughout those three days, although it was a short period, and what we liked to point out at the moment is that we see media and digital literacy as one of the key points that need to be tackled by all the stakeholders in the few following years because at the moment, there is a situation of young people and others being illiterate in online tools. It’s one of the reasons that all the abuse situation and privacy abuse and so on are happening.
So in that sense, what we would like to stress, that all the multistakeholders need to be involved in the education of processes, and we also would like to stress one thing that we as youth would like to be involved. As we are one of the main groups of users at the moment, then we believe that we should be involved in the process, and another point is that we would like to use both, formal and nonformal education tools for this matter.
Regarding the privacy is we have basically a creed that everyone has the right for privacy. And at the moment, the privacy regulation and all the bad situations that have been causing trouble and discussion in the world are also connected to the illiterate people. So we hope that by educating young people and others and so, one, in the future, we will have more – less problems with privacy abuse, but also we will need corporate to develop more tools how to secure the privacy and also an effort that personal data won’t be abused by the corporate dealing with all kinds of services.
Another point that we want to stress out is assuring equal opportunities as access. This is one of the key issues when we talk in the European context and the world context is unequal. Not everyone has equal access to the Internet. Either it’s connecting that there’s no facilities for this, there is no money for this and by that we have the situation that we are creating more kind of clash between so-called wealthier people and poorer people because it’s quite clear that the ones that don’t have so – so good background are suffering on that. And at the same time, we are talking about the equal participation. So how can they be assured if we don’t have access or if we don’t have opportunities or education for that matter.
So basically, what we would like to point out, that in all of those matters that I have now mentioned is it’s extremely important that all the stakeholders work together to find the solution and design a better Internet for tomorrow.
Do you have any questions? Then I don’t know if there’s time.
>> Okay. Thank you Trin for this introduction and I would like now to address the first topic that you are going to discuss a little bit more in detail, perhaps also by saying that we have for the time being a rather uncustomary situation. Usually the old generation is costing and the young generation, we have four representatives of the youth, and we have only one representative from the industry, but over time, this inequality should probably be balanced.
Our first topic is a very for ranging topic, social corporate responsibility, and this topic has become quite important in global discussions from 2000 onwards together with the millennium development goals and the so-called global compact has been included, an instrument which has been elevated by the United Nations together with some large companies, globally acting companies, and the aspect of ethics, of social responsibilities, of compliance of juvenile rights by enterprises has been identified as an important issue.
Before asking the specific questions, I would like to get Susan Morgan to speak about the possibility to show us her video. She could not be with us, and we will have now the possibility to listen to this video. And I should also say in the meantime, two other industry representatives are here, mainly Patrik from Cisco and Marco from Google.
Let’s go ahead with the video.
>> We seem to be living at the moment, that’s pushing the technology sector to the spotlight. So we know the numbers, 30,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every day. 600 million users of Facebook. About 2 billion people around the world online and give or take around 5 billion people using mobile phones. Technology is without doubt playing an ever greater role in people’s social economic and political lives pretty much everywhere. And what that means is that the business decisions that technology companies take really do matter.
From where they decide to store data to how they hand over data to authorities when they are asked, to who they decide to sell technology to, through to how they respond when they receive the types of demands that we have seen in the Middle East and north Africa.
These and many other decisions that these technology companies make really can impact on the lives of millions of people around the world. So the question is: What’s the corporate responsibility of companies when they face business decisions, where decisions intersect with human rights.
So I would offer three things. The first is the importance of companies understanding the human rights implications of the business decisions that they are taking. From the technology that they are developing, the products and services that they are selling, and the markets that they operate in around the world. Whether it’s through processes and contacting human rights impact assessments, taking a risk management approach can help.
Number two, the importance of involving stakeholders. These are fast moving, complex challenging issues and it’s likely that companies will have all the expertise that they need in house. Engaging stakeholders with specific knowledge or expertise on the ground really can help improve decision making.
And finally the importance of dialogue with users. They also need to understand if a decision that’s being made might impact on them. Being transparent with users is a really important way of building and retaining trust with users around the world. These are the issues that the global network initiative seeks to address every day. If you are interested in finding out more, please visit our web site. Thanks.
>> Our discussion in the presence. When preparing this workshop, we have formed for ourselves a couple of questions that I would just refer to these questions but, of course, these questions are not binding. We have based our considerations on the foundation that ethics must join forces to give the universal framework of rules. Now the question is, what is role of corporate responsibility? And in order to say perhaps a little bit more, how far are corporations willing to commit? Effective corporate responsibility cannot be achieved in a traditional format. How can users, governments and other interest groups be involved in the process, and a third set of aspects and questions could read as follows, can corporations maintain their office in a specific country, do they really respect rights in particular human rights and defend liberties, traditional liberties such as the freedom of expression?
As I said, the questions are perhaps partly and by purpose a little bit provocative, and I’m wondering, who perhaps first from the industry side would like to give a few reflections on one or several of these questions. And you will get the microphone. We do not have nine microphones, so please show us who would like to give a comment and then you will be served the microphone.
Patrik.
>> Patrik Faltstrom, with Cisco. We are different from Google and Facebook and others. We don’t have the same kind of end user contracts that people have to choose to press, click or not. But on the other hand, we, of course, feel that we, of course, have a big responsibility of following ethics and human rights issues, and we already in 2001 signed up on – on the United Nations global initiative on human rights issues, which many enterprises the world looks up to regarding human rights.
Ethics is real important for us and one can say that if it’s not the case that we as a company behave, in that case, people will most certainly stop buying our goods. So it’s absolutely in – if I use market economy terminology, it’s in our long-term strategy to make sure that we are not behaving in a way that we get bad press so that people don’t like us because, of course, will hurt us.
There is, of course, though, a problem with some of the products that are sold, that – or some products existing both from us and from others that both products can be used in multiple ways, and it’s also the case, of course, that the views on what is right and wrong is not completely harmonized which doesn’t make it easy for us.
And it’s always easy for someone who don’t like, for example, a decision that we made on selling things, it’s not favorable for them or their interests but I would say that – that having enterprises taking more responsibility and long-term responsibility is an absolute must to be able to survive in the future.
That said, I think it would be – I think it’s an interesting discussion and you also heard me saying a little bit on the previous session before lunch, that we have both regulations – as you point out, we both have regulations, the basic foundation loss in countries and then the customer agreements that – that are written to end users regardless of what kind of they are. And the two of them together must create an environment, which everyone is happy with and that is the problem and the challenge, specifically before we are completely harmonized.
>> Thank you, Patrik. I’m not going to reply because I’m only moderating. Is long-term reputation more important? Does it oblige the employees who comply with certain general fundamental legal principles, et cetera, but do you had comply with the view. Patrik, if you could just hand over your microphone.
>> I want to say, we absolutely have that. We have a code of conduct that every employee at Cisco must sign off to. So every employee every year must go through training so they understand what bribery. Is they understand that you cannot buy a – a government representative. You cannot even buy them lunch, et cetera. And it’s part of the agreement between is Cisco and the human rights issue is an agreement between the company and the employee. I don’t know companies that do that, especially the smaller ones, but we do it every year.
>> Okay.
>> All right. Maybe I should start off with a question, actually, because I was kind of triggered by your story, especially by the line, you know, it’s about economic survival. And I think quite honestly, that is – that disappoints me a lot. I’m very happy with Google. I’m very happy with Facebook. I’m very happy with Windows Live and all of those kinds of things that made my life differently, basically, you know, and that gave my generation the opportunity to communicate differently with each other, to basically work towards maybe new sort of world in a sense. What triggered me in the morning session, a lot. People kept talking about in real life and online.
For my generation, it’s not two worlds. It’s one world. And we connect those two worlds. So honestly, you know, I’m happy with Google. I’m happy with – you know, so I don’t want to attack you like I’ve heard a lot, actually the last couple of days.
>> Patrik is from Cisco, no the from Google. So –
>> No, no, I know. I’m not addressing Patrik in general. I’m addressing the whole spectrum. So exactly, Cisco – I mean, as a youngster, you know, you don’t have a lot to do with Cisco, to be honest. If I look at the average spring, it’s pretty cool that Twitter and Google hooked up. They closed the Internet down in Egypt, but you could still put things online. At the same time, it serves as a marketing goal and I think as – if you ask me, you should go a step further, actually.
You know, there’s a lot of local groups, fax, here in Belgrade or like where I’m from, Amsterdam, there are a lot of local groups, youth groups that are trying to do something, trying to change something and I do not see a lot of tools coming from, you know, the different companies to serve those groups. I would like to see more when it comes to that.
Also, and that is – you know, look I said, to me online and offline, you know, it’s one world. And it surprises me, again, that, you know, if there’s companies like Cisco, as well, you know, who make a lot of money basically of the changing world but they still go with the old world. They put their headquarters with a lot of money in the same places where they used to put headquarters. They are not going towards – I know for a fact here in Belgrade, there’s an area right over there that’s less privileged. Why don’t these companies have the balls now to, you know, try to change this world and put the headquarter over there?
You know, put out some tools for groups that are not interesting when it comes to marketing. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I would like to see it more. So for – you know, for a start, I would like to start with that.
>> Okay. You want to add a comment and then we go back to maybe to Patrik or to Christoph.
>> I’m Marietje Schaake. I think there are some problems for the standards that we believe in Europe or some of them in the United States or other countries should be applied when it comes to human rights and the fact that we have a global economy and exports across the world. There are a number of issues where there’s a massive tension between economic incentives and human rights, such as cyber security and such as intellectual property right enforcement, but there are many other issues. These are just two examples.
There’s also a problem when it comes to the relationship between political leadership and corporations, because political decisions are slow. And technologies develop quickly. So how can we safeguard fundamental rights of people? And what is realistic to expect that – about the influence that western governments can have in containing corporations from Europe, for example, in respecting fundamental human rights.
I think there’s too much thinking in silos or different departments than to look only at their own little element of the process, and don’t connect the dots. And sometimes technologies are developed just because it’s possible without considering what’s potential human rights violations could be the result a little bit further down the road.
And I think that governments, but also society, young developers, a broad spectrum of those stakeholders should be in touch more. After Vodafone was pressured by the Egyptian government to terminate all of its services to Egyptian customers as a serious tool of oppression by the government, I believe it would be important to see an investigation into the role that European ICT and telecom companies played in violating human rights and that there should be more discussions between companies, governments and NGOs to look at the potential impact and perhaps Vodafone would have called the highest level of political leadership to seek support in denying this or order.
>> Vodafone could not have done so. Because two days intervention by President was illegal. He was fined in 68 or 67 million Euro. So hopefully the next time Vodafone will not be so inclined to follow the intervention of the government.
>> Exactly. But it depends on what damage they might face in complying. So will they be punished yes or no? Will there be support if they ask for support? I personally believe that courage is always a choice. I think it would have been much better for Vodafone to have denied this and to also take the possible consequences because they essentially became state television or state media by passing SMS messages by the government and denying any communication by customers.
I have been in communication with Vodafone, they are not the only ones. Nokia Siemens had problems in Iran. We have a potential to have a win/win in the economic situation and in human rights. In Egypt, it was only due to financial damages. I think in a way it’s encouraging a good precedent that there’s such a good follow-up and people are held accountable for shutting down the Internet and the mobile services but I really miss the human rights aspect. I think we shouldn’t forget about that and we should keep in mind that in general free societies in which there can be more speech allows for more markets for these companies and so it should actually be a win/win went rights and money.
>> Okay. Thank you.
>> I must respond to two things. First of all, what I wanted to do when I said – when I was referring to market economy and money, I just wanted to point out that – that – that people that do believe that enterprises do only live because of money, I just wanted to point out that there is a relationship between making money and following human rights issues otherwise you would not go green and all of those kind of things. So one can use the argument in both ways. Then regarding the cutoff in Egypt, I wanted to – like you said, I calculation must be done. If they did not comply, something else would have happened – might have happened. So when they could restart after two days, the start might not have been so fast. So – so – but, yes, the option should always be there and be thought about.
>> Would you like to add some kind of rejoinder?
>> Definitely. I mean, everybody understands the relation between money and what you can do as a company. I mean, that’s not up to discussion. I think what is up to discussion is what your priority is. If you want to change the world, really, and you are willing to even put a little bit of your profit aside because you make a shit load of profit, let’s be honest. Or let’s do it when it is profitable for us. Like I said, I don’t think that honesty the Twitter Google, how they work together for the Arab spring in Egypt. I don’t think it’s because they wanted to change something. It’s a marketing tool as well and I see loads of opportunities, Cisco as well, to be involved and, you know, I think we are in a changing world. So you need to take your responsibility and then business models are changing and, you know, you need to step up basically.
If you ask youth as well to be here, I mean, honestly this conference is not very interesting in a lot of cases for youth, but we are still here with 30 people. We are not making money here. You know? I gave up my spare time. I gave up everything to be here and to, you know, make an effort to change this world and I would like to see that from you.
And like I’m saying, this whole morning, I haven’t seen it too much. There’s no passion. There’s not companies standing up saying we want to change this world. We want to step up. I want to see that passion.
>> Okay.
(Applause)
>> Christoph.
>> No, it’s for the remote participants.
>> Okay. Okay.
>> Okay. So I just wanted to make a quick response to what I just heard by the representative of Cisco. You said something along the line that goes companies must go with human rights and you named an example such as going green as – because it goes with the apparent long-term goal of making profits. Well, apparently, we – I don’t – I don’t speak for all the youth, but, like, the groups where I’m active and the people that I interact with would generally disagree with this, and would, like, throw it out the window and laugh at it at the first moment.
I mean, if we just take off the gloves and it’s very simple then. The companies that are interested in making profits and there is the legal system that prevents them to go all the way. I mean, that’s Lou the process of singlization came to be, as response to private capital. So a law exists to prevent companies to go all the way, like break human rights that’s why some human rights came to be.
Essentially I technically disagree with this. Going green, yes, you can say it’s a beautiful facade. It’s good PR. It will probably make us sell more products to people who are environmentally aware and stuff. Okay. But, if we take off the gloves, I will say this – I will use this again. It’s – we give something, you give something. That’s how it goes. We buy the products, but for that we ask you to, like, invest in green projects and invest in like community development and invest in rural development. So eventually everyone gets what they want. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the big companies are not the big evil.
I feel that the general interest is sugar coated but heavily sugar coated. It is not a problem if someone wants to make money. Come on, I want to make money one day, but it’s – it’s a simple lie when you say, like, we’re doing it – we’re doing this and this because profit is the same as promoting human rights. No, it’s the exact opposite. So let’s just go both ways and, like, shake hands and do our thing but not lie to each other.
>> Okay. Christoph?
>> Yes, thank you very much first. I’m here for Telefonica, so we are even worse, I would say, than Cisco because we have 300 million customers worldwide. So I will help Patrik a little bit because he’s very much in the fire line. So you can fire on me now as well.
I think we are getting very negative here and I’m not sure if that’s very helpful. I mean, we should see a little bit the positive implications of what we see in the last years and build on that for the future and there might be improvements from what I heard, you know, but I mean, let’s face first of all that all we are talking here, as you mentioned, the new services, the new connectivity, the new networks we see around the world, I mean this all did not exist ten years ago. This is new. This is very new and this was done in the end, you know, not by some state authorities investing money in that to kind of bring up the Internet. It was done by private investments. That’s the world, you know.
And I think it is a good development because we have seen that it’s helpful to have people on the Internet and it’s helpful to have connectivity on a global scale, more than 2 or 3 billion people worldwide now, and companies are playing a big role in there. I’m not saying that we are perfect. I think we are playing a good role. We have – I mean, as Patrick said, internally, global standards. So my company, for example, is operating in 25 countries worldwide and we have the same standard in Germany, Brazil, and Colombia. So in the end we are also bridging a little bit the world, you know. And we have – we are 300,000 people working for us and we are all under the same obligations as Patrik explained that we are not allowed to do things. We are supporting the global compact which is for human rights and against corruption and all of these kinds of things. There are a lot of positive things that we are doing and they may not be perfect. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we are here to change the world. I think we are, of course, to run a business, make money and give work to people and at the same time have clear standards, human rights standards and not go below that for, you know – for some interest which we might have as well.
>> Okay. One last – one minute and then we move to the next topic.
>> That’s exactly why I disagree with you. The first part I was exactly agreeing with you. I started out, if I’m right, with saying, you know, I love these new companies basically. I love you. I thank you for all the opportunities that you gave us but at the same time, like I’m saying, the EuroDIG, it’s the third time, right?
>> Fourth.
>> Fourth. Okay. Is the fourth time. Yeah, we weren’t involved in the first three, so that’s why I don’t know.
>> That’s not true. That’s really not true.
>> I know.
>> You have been involved since the second one.
>> All I’m saying is there’s a huge difference between our involvement now and earlier. I think it’s fair you ask from customers and people in society to step up to change this world, right? We have to do a little bit extra to make it a better world. At the same time, I think that’s – if you asked that from us as a newer generation, if the government asked that from us to be more – you know, to be more as a participant in society, then I think as that generation, I can ask from companies to see a little bit more than, like you said, build little bridges. I want you to build bigger bridges.
>> Nothing is holding customers and consumers back to take action, but a lot of people are lazy, and they just want to go about their lives. But I suspect and I predict that there will be a lot more consumer activism in the next couple of years, but in practice, I see a lot of people being very upset about what companies do and not even willing to change their phones, not willing to take another brand, not willing to write a letter or go on the streets to demonstration. So that’s just a reality.
>> I have now a little bit of a problem. We have prepared a couple of topics and first of all, I have not asked the floor to intervene. I would like to get a chance for one representative. We have to move forward. I had to do my Ph.D. thesis in a mechanical typewriter. That’s how things have changed.
>> This is an extremely fascinating and serious discussion, which will lead us very far away. I do want to make a point to the young people here please do not change. Please continue to remain like this. There will be plenty of time to tone down your enthusiasm that you have now and we do need that enthusiasm, but having said that, having said that, as a person that works for a big, bad, public administration, we do need a little bit more pragmatism. We need a little bit more details and specifics.
You say that companies should build bigger bridges. I happen to agree, but I would like to hear how. What are your ideas? Now we don’t have the time to do it now. I will be here in Belgrade for the next two days. I would be interested to hear your views of every peoples and the youngsters. I’m not young any more unfortunately. Please continue like. This you need to turn the principle you have, it needs to be turned into practical action.
>> Hi. I just want to point out one thing. As you are from parliament, you just said that people are in bad position because they don’t want to take action and do anything for themselves. If that’s the point, why are you on – and why are you in the parliament? Why aren’t you doing anything for the people who elected you? Since people don’t want to write emails or anything, maybe the politicians should take and listen for the people that elected them. Thank you.
>> This may risk sounding like I’m, you know, trying to defend myself, but it’s an observation that it’s easier to click a like button than to really write a letter or to do something to put pressure on a company. And I think consumers have more power than they sometimes use. But as an elected official, I believe I do what’s within my capacity to represent the people I represent, to highlight these issues to be available to speak with people, considering the fact that I’m a human being and that a day has 24 hours.
The reason why I’m here is because I believe in Internet freedom. I have talked with corporations about their responsibility. I initial knowledge exchanges within the European Parliament, write articles, engage in discussions on the Internet. So given what I believe is – is the space within which politicians can act, I’m – I’m trying. And I’m sure I can improve and if you have ideas on how, please let me know.
I just don’t think it’s up to me to tell people how to behave as consumers or as voters. That’s their own choice. I believe very much in the responsibility of people to make their own decisions, and I think politicians should create a framework within which they can freely do so.
>> Okay. Thank you very much. Now, very last and final word by Elena so we can move to the second topic.
>> I will be really short. Hello, everybody, I come from Macedonia and I’m 17 years old. And I’m not here to say, hello people, hello, everybody, I have grown up. I haven’t grown up and that’s the reason why I’m still here. I am – I best serve the whole – lots of hours on Facebook and Twitter and I have all the – I really spent lots of hours on the Internet. So I really, really know how it looks like to be on the other side.
I will really disagree with the fact that youngster are lazy. We are not. If we were lazy, we wouldn’t be here. We are here to make our voice heard. We have our opinion. We know what we want to do. We want our own freedom. We want to be apart from that whole big companies out there doing some stuff and we hear our own ideas and we want our ideas to be realized. That’s why we are here. If we were lazy, we wouldn’t be here.
>> Okay. Thank you very much. You are here for the their time at the Council of Europe and we insist on having youth representatives here. Now we really have to move onwards and it’s again, on leading the discussion.
>> One of the specific issues that has been brought up once and again and that raises a lot of discussion regarding what companies really want and really do and whether they are behaving in an ethical way is privacy. Privacy and the right to be forgotten. So users in the web 2.0, users are not only consumers. They are prosumers. They are doing. They are putting their information out. They are contributing to the content and they are being exposed. So there’s a commercial interest in knowing who does what.
With the industry, with the advertising industry fooling the Internet, our users are paying with the personal data. So this – there’s two questions here. Do we need to increase the awareness of users and are corporations offering real choices, real alternatives for those who wish to behave differently?
>> Actually, I was very interested to give my contribution to the perspective of this discussion. So somebody is interested, I be here for the last two days – next two days. I will be happy to give my point of view.
For what concern, I think you are completely right as requested from a lot of participants in society, Internet service providers should provide all the tools from a technology point of view to make informed choices about their data online. Maximum control over their data, different kind of approach from Internet service provider in the relationship with the Internet that the citizens want to do if I’m an activist and I’m blogging from a country where I could have some consequence for my action, I should be – I should be in the position to control my navigation that keeps me out of any risk.
The same thing for one concern, the role of the prosumers is online. They need to know what type of relationship they are having with a company. If they are using an email address, what type of information should I share with the Internet provider. Second, the log to his computer. So using any kind of tools that he feels comfortable in using it without adding to user, the tools provided by the Internet service provider.
Third, having the opportunity to take the data – all of this data and email the context out with just one click and if he thinks he wants to change the service provider.
>> Yeah, I’m Faye from the UK and I hear you, Marco, with everything that Google has done and I’m very thankful for me being able to use that tool. I have grown up with the Internet and as Leonid said, it’s online. It’s never really offline. I guess I feel I am really – I’m putting a lot of information on the Internet, but it’s just the way it is. I’m never going to stop being a user any more and maybe I feel a bit exploited now that I – I’m not sure if I can take it off, like, it probably will be there for a long time, forever, even if I tried to delete it.
I guess, yeah, just the Internet is this open space, and there doesn’t seem to be – I can’t really identify the borders anymore. And I am worried just where my information is floating around, like, I am a blogger and I’m sure people are taking my ideas and I have seen my photos in other places on other web sites, which I’m really confused about. But, you know – yeah, I’m confused with the situation, generally.
>> So this confusion, is this – this is often a problem too because everybody agrees that being transparent and being – and having the user be informed is one solution, but the problem comes to – comes up that sometimes too much information is actually the root of the problem. The way the users behave is online, is not they study all the options and they search all the possibilities, that’s now how we use the Internet. How can we make sure that users, as they come, they are aware of what’s going to happen later on, that they don’t find themselves in a point where they can’t go back. How do we make sure that users can change their – the way they interact in the Internet easily intuitively, as intuitively as they share?
>> I think what – I think what users actually are asking you for is the ability to separate the information or the service from the provider of the service. We had historically services like, for example, for the web mail and other services between having to choose, putting up the web server. On the web server, you install and write your own software and you could also, of course, rent space at a COLA so you don’t represent the hardware but you have control of the software to what is quite popular today that you go to one of the providers or the web hosting company and you just put your blog there. But you can choose what kind of solution you want. The same thing with email, that you can put up your own mail server if it is case you are not happy with the service that one of the providers – again, the providers provide.
But some of the big providers of services today end up being – the service itself is tied with the provider and I think that is a discussion that we might have. And also how easy and how hard it is to migrate the data that you want control, the service that you would or the information that you would like to provide to migrate that over, like, from one place to another. For example, if we look at storage in the cloud, for example, where Cisco is pushing extremely hard to come up with an open standards for how you access the data. So someone who has data in the cloud, you can move it from one provider to another. So I think it’s tied to what service is tied to a provider or not.
>> I can use either one? I’m going to be provocative, as I happen to like young people’s very fresh perspective. We are discussing what happens when you put your data online. Now my question is why the hell did you put that data online? Why did you take the decision – now most of you, not 18 years old now. Maybe some of you are not over the legal age of voting. I would trust that all of you have the right age to take responsible decisions about what you do or you don’t do. I would be that I’m being provocative here. And I know the mass is there. So I guess awareness is good but there’s also personal responsibility of what you do with your life. You will never take a picture of yourself and put it on a billboard in the main street of your city – well, some of you might do it. But generally I would assume you wouldn’t do it, yet you put that kind of – not you in the room, but youngsters and people put that information online. So there’s this element of personal responsibility, which I think you should discuss. You think you should take responsibility. It starts with the personal choices but then there’s another element which is more technological. Many companies out there actually design their systems in a way that it is difficult and coming to your help here. It’s difficult to put less data, rather than more data.
The interfaces, the human/computer interfaces, the way you register an account, there’s no reason to tell where’s your address, where you were born, what is the name of your cat, the name of your mother and father and all up until the seventh generation. So that’s something where we can as public authorities we can probably work and we are working but I iterate until people take their own responsibility in their hands not much is going to change.
>> I – I fully agree with you. One example that I would like to mention, to make it really practical maybe is I just signed into Facebook this morning and they said that my profile was low risk and I had to put up my phone number and now it’s high risk. You know, but it was basically, you know, these things as a youngster, you know, if you see, like, a – it’s like a little piece and it goes from red to green, right? So it shows red right now. And if I put up my phone number, it’s green, you know?
And, yes, I do think about, it but you can’t imagine as Trin said with the socioeconomic position, your education and where you come from, but not everybody at the same moment thinks about that. So I fully agree with you. I mean, there’s – it’s our responsibility as well, I guess that’s why we did this new media summit school as well, is that we have to, you know, help each other do that from peer to peer as well.
But like, I guess, that’s – you make the statement yourself, you know, it’s – it’s a two sided story and, I mean, I’m willing to take my responsibility but it’s a two side thing. You know, so, yeah, I fully agree but we do need – I’m saying we do need your help. We need to help with the companies and from as well the governments to supply, like – like roads and stuff like that to communicate that to the rest of the world, you know, and to our generation as well. So we need help with that, but I completely agree. We need to do it, you know, together. So, yeah, we have our own responsibility when it comes to that, period.
>> Yeah, I wanted to say, well, you were asking why do we do it? Well, I come from a rural part of England and, time outside of high school wasn’t – I couldn’t play in the street because it was fields and stuff. We live miles apart. So what we did was we talked on MSN, it was then, and now it’s Skype and now it’s the phones. It is just the way we were communicating and I think now it’s always the way that the youths are going to communicate is through the virtual way.
And then, what Patrik said, like, these other options of putting our email in other places. I know about the Internet but all of these technical things, like how is someone who is illiterate and digitally illiterate, how are they going to make these choices? I mean, they will just go out there and make the emails and how – I just – all of these other options, I just – I don’t know about them.
>> Now, that was – that was sort of part of – part of my point, actually. So you are actually – you are actually exactly made the point.
(Music).
This is not me.
(Laughter)
There. Cool! I want one of those! So – so it was exactly my point that for email compared to let’s say Twitter, you can set up your own email server. Okay? With Twitter that is difficult. Okay? So that kind of difference is something that you might not know, but – but the way the Internet architecture being open where these kind of things are not tied to each other, that creates an ability for innovation that can help to build new services and we see that it’s happening now on top of Twitter, for example, that people use all different kinds. Where Twitter is just another cloud server, a storage service.
The other thing I want to mention, tying to the – I’m sorry for the – I think I want to say, for example, one thing that we have done at Cisco, which I’m really, really happy with because it was a lot of work. One thing that we are working with, because we are an infrastructure company is that we are trying to enable competition regarding Internet providers in the world, and one of the things we are doing is that we are building Internet connect points. And the latest Internet connect point that I helped building is actually in Kosovo. And such simple things are hard things. Like, just, getting Cisco equipment into Kosovo, do you understand how many papers and customs we had to fill out. It’s phbbbt!
>> I think it’s an interesting point and we have to go back to the awareness point which Andrea mentioned. I think this is where everything starts and this is where also users have a lot of power and maybe they are aware about it and maybe it’s a development. Again, this is all very new for us, but the moment you are aware, you might be also, you know, you put a value to your privacy, for example. And once you put your value to, that there might be services coming up, where you know you might have a higher protection of your privacy. You are talking about these services, they are all for free in the sense that you don’t pay for it, but they are paid for in different way of advertisement. And for advertisement, they use the data, you know, to target the advertisement.
I mean, there’s no other business model in the Internet. You have the subscription based model where companies, you pay and you get access to the Internet and then you have advertisement based models where they make money from a third party and this is – I mean, as big business. There might be others, you know, but as the big, big kind of models, these are the two that work. And maybe there’s – there are new ones. Maybe there are ones where you pay a little bit more and then you have the high protection of the privacy in the cloud or wherever, you know. So I think – I’m quite – with a lot of – I’m quite positive that I think we will see, you know, and there is growing awareness and people get more aware of the data and how available that is. And I would agree to that, by the way, that, you know, you have space for development of your new services which might be different from the ones we see today.
>> Okay. We have –
>> Please. Very, very quickly. In my opinion, there is not a balance, between the privacy and the advertising and money. So that’s not the kind of relationship that Internet service providers should have with their user. I think the kind of relationship they should have is – should be based on trust, should be based on control and it should avoid any kind of looking, to allow the user if they don’t see and find what they need, to go to another provider. And in particular, about the digital illiteracy and how we can improve our awareness, this is our main – main task. And if we feel to do this, it’s important that the society gives a clear sign that they don’t have enough information.
>> Okay. We have two interventions from the audience and then we need to move on to the next topic, okay?
>> Yes.
>> I want to pick up – I’m sorry, John Carr from Inesco. I wanted to pick up on consumer power and how that may change things. It’s true in the long term consumer power can change things, but let’s be clear, some of the companies that we are, in fact, discussing, like Google and Facebook, are for all practical purposes monopoly. They occupy gigantic amounts of space. If a new company comes along, they buy it up and incorporate the technology. So the potential for consumers to influence things can be very, very limiting, which is precisely why we need governments and we – why we need regulators because – and, again, let’s be completely clear about this. These companies say and Patrik, you know, was speaking about profit and long-term interests and so on being one and the same. That again, may be true in the very long run but let’s not forget as John Wayne once said, in the long run, we are all dead. Under capitalism, it’s sometimes very urgent that companies bring in big amounts of cash and so what might be a long term objective can very often be put on the back burner or given second play – secondary status to the need to drag in vast amounts of cash.
Privacy by design, privacy by default, these are the things that I think we should be expecting from companies. It is, of course, very unpopular with companies because they make their money by having the maximum information about us, that’s what makes them valuable to advertisers. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Don’t expect capitalist enterprises to be socially, politically active campaigners for change. That’s not what they are created for. They have a legal obligation to their shareholders and investors and that does not extend to changing the world, it extends to maximizing profit.
>> Matthias. My question is going in the same direction as the statement just made. I see a problem when you say as a company we want people to encourage to keep their data private, and that’s exactly the opposite of what you are living. From you are living by selling targeted advertisements which is not wrong. I’m not saying wrong. Be honest about it. Say this is how we make our money and in order for us to make money, we need you to give up information. We need you to give up your preferences. We need you to tell us or to let us know, not to tell us but to let us record without telling you what your preferences are.
And I would be interested in hearing from Google representatives and others from companies, what other models do you see? How do you see – how do you plan to make money while helping people protect their privacy?
>> If you promise to be very, very brief.
>> Oh. Okay. Oh, okay. I’m sorry.
You promise to be very brief.
>> Very quickly and I don’t want to – I mean, it’s fair to have your opinion and I don’t want to provide you to the smoking gun and so you change your opinion. So please don’t get me wrong, but advertising is not the business model. The only business model that Google is applying. Google main business model based on that is based on ads. The advertiser can bid for key words and we connect key words to the search made by the user when they search on Google. So that’s the main business.
By the way, we are also in the advertising – we are advertising, although it’s called interspace advertising as we do. For example, we believe that in this kind of practice, the key for the Internet – for the Internet service provider is not to know all about a single user, but is to create a connection between the interest of the user and the interest for the advertiser in reaching this user.
This means that the user should then always, in order to be receptive user, should always have the control over its navigation, and the opportunity of not be targeted at all. Again, it’s not a change – I mean, I see – I completely see your point and it’s fair. Internet providers, there’s possibility of empowering user.
>> We are moving on to the next stopping, right?
Yeah.
>> Okay. The next topic is called filter bubble and perhaps I should say in preparing this workshop, it has not been done. It has not been done around people of my generation exclusively. To the contrary, not only Ana but also user representatives have been included in the discussion and filter bubble has been identified as an important ethical problem. I do not think I have to go too much into the details with my questions, search engine somehow implementing and creates itself based bias, putting us in a narrow loop of information, questions for example, how do we provide users with the right tools that allow them to have a say in what information is filtered out. And create opportunities for users tools for selecting different but visible link challenge their standard view points.
So, again, a couple of questions and I would like to invite industry representatives, perhaps, to tackle one or the other aspect of the Internet filter bubble problem. Who is volunteering?
>> Lee, can you want to?
(Laughter)
>> Okay.
>> I didn’t hear the question what is the question?
>> Oh, sorry, well, the question was just to what extent do we have filtering? Who is controlling what kind of filtering is done? Is there any responsibility for those who do the filtering? Is there an impact of a diversity of information, if certain filtering mechanisms are implemented?
>> I can say that filtering and blocking is totally against the nature of the Internet. So as really to be considered the last resort. When all the other measures failed and the proposal of protecting the user is requesting really a last resort this solution, but overall, these are not part of the solution that should be taken into consideration because they are against the nature the Internet.
>> Maybe not about filtering, about personalization, about taking into account the user’s likes and customs and adopting the content we present the users, you know, search engines or other Internet places. What – what results actually come up with different users to the same church – the same search. Are they different? Are they different. How does that affect the way users identify themselves?
>> That’s a completely different question. If we are talking about providing to user a service which is going in the direction of fulfilling the needs of the user, I think that’s totally fair, but the user has to be informed, has to be able to control the relationship with the Internet service providers. So if I’m connecting from my cell phone and I’m looking for a restaurant.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> I’m expecting I should have the expectation of every information the restaurants that are surrounding me, but if I don’t want to have any kind of information in relation to the restaurant that are surrounding me, I should have a function in my cell that should avoid geolocallization.
>> How about when the user is not actively avoiding this information but it’s automatically being learned by the search engine without the user being aware of those changes, without the user being aware that he’s not finding the same results that other users are finding.
I don’t know if Matthias wants to intervene with that.
>> I was waiting for a corporate standpoint first. Okay. Actually, when talking about not filtering but personalization, actually, that’s the issue I understand and actually I – the biggest issue that concerns me is what you just said. What happens when I use a search engine, not necessarily Google, but whichever and let’s say some other service. And it follows what I search, say, for a month, without me knowing. And then like, it provides me with information related to what I have just – what I have searched. Because – and this is something that bothered me ever since – because I live in Macedonia. So when I wrote Google.com, first it was just Google. And after a while, it would I say Google Macedonia. Then I was like, how does it know where I am?
I was like, okay, maybe it’s the IP address. Maybe it’s this or that but then you learn about situations when – like you just said, you are walking and you are Googling restaurant and it shows restaurants around. Actually, me and my surroundings, people I talk with about this, the new media summit school. There are two stances on this, the first one being more extreme, yes, it is corporate power abusing data and gathering data without permission, and it’s profit based and all of that. But then you have this moderate stand that says, yes, it’s extremely handy that I just write restaurant and it shows me the closest restaurant and I don’t really care if they know what I have Googled like a month ago. That’s fine.
It depends on how interested are you. It depends on how much you care, but then there’s this question what if in ten years Google tells me, you know, in 2011, when you were in Belgrade, you Googled something that is now illegal. Maybe even – maybe it was let in 2011. Maybe it’s illegal now, whatever the hypothetical situation is. Say I’m a public figure and it’s like, ruining my reputation. And they are just using two key words that not necessarily have been typed by me, but it was my IP address back then. I – I don’t remember agreeing to that – to that, like – I don’t remember agreeing that my situation, like, what Google has followed.
I’m sorry for saying Google, Google, it’s a common expression. I’m not referring to anyone in particular. And what I think as like, a medium point between these two stance that I just mentioned is that a generally prefer to be asked. I don’t like people assuming things.
Like, I don’t know, if I had chocolate ten times, maybe the 11th I want vanilla. And if I looked for pizzerias 100 times maybe I’m looking forge a kebab. I don’t want to be given on the information based on what I have searched before. So in a very fine point, like somewhere – somewhere very far there, there is a limitation of freedom because certain information is giving – is given priority over some other, and I – I don’t like that, and if we are going into like really, really fine details, it essentially is a limitation of freedom.
>> Yes, just to point out exactly, it’s not only Google. It’s not only search engines. It’s actually almost all major information distributors.
>> I know. I said like twice –
>> I know. I want to point out.
>> It is a phrase to Google it.
>> Okay. We come back to the competition issues that I talked about before and I think when you said a little bit provocative that some people are too lazy, I think what you point out is that if it is the case I’m not happy with the service, why are you using it? Why don’t you use something else? I think it’s really, really good that you are raising your voice here because now, for example, Google, to not mention or Cisco, do hear your voice and obviously that is something that I will report back. Oh, there were some strong voices there because one of the reasons I didn’t get paid to go here, there were some strong voices that said, okay, we need to think about this when we develop our future products which is a slow, long-term things.
A friend of mine just started a company – just? They have been working for four years developing something, a product called my cube which is a competitor to Facebook, that – that the main argument for them is that the – in the end user agreement, the information never, ever belongs to My Cube. It belongs to the end user. So they have not really opened yet. It’s just opened for beta, but here you have someone who has reacted to exactly what you say. What they did is they created their own service and they hope people will vote with their feet and choose a better service.
>> Matthias?
>> I would like to go back to the actual issues, for putting it that way. I think Marco did a very nice job of framing this issue, if it was about searching for pizza or getting pizza, while, in fact, it’s about much more than that. It’s about searching for whatever going on NewYorkTimes.com and or other news portals and only get the site or “New York Times” is assuming that I’m interested in. Meaning I might only see issues – well, nonissues, rather, about celebrities I may never, ever, see an article about poverty in South Africa because I have not clicked on such articles.
Go talk about the talk from Eli Parzer. I think this is really where corporations have responsibility to do something to provide people not just with the opportunity to choose, if they want this personalized results or not, but actually force them to also see and realize that there is – there are issues out there that are not just the things that they agree with or that they are interested in in the first place.
>> Okay. I think now Marco has had the possibility to reply and perhaps take up the introductory question of diversity. Afterwards we will have probably the European Commission.
>> This is exactly right. When I was mentioning the marketing possibility, it should always be for the user to change the interest and therefore pick the interest of their choice or in any case, have no collection whatsoever in relation to their interests. So, yes, that’s a huge risk, because it brings to the Internet and really a lack of possibilities.
>> Okay. Do we have a microphone? No.
>> Yes, but we’re jumping a little bit. So I –
>> Okay.
>> I wanted to talk about something that was in different conversation. So I was just going back and forth a little bit but also a correction, I’m from the European Parliament and not the European Commission.
>> Thank you.
>> Very interesting discussions. I hope we have answers to our questions which will be the messages from this workshop. That’s very important for you, and inspiring other spaces first of all. I felt quite liberated by this discussion and I thank you for all of that, so I will speak freely.
I don’t think I’m in control of my data and I’m an adult and I am, I think, quite technically proficient. I may be illiterate for different reasons, I’m not lazy. I have a certain knowledge, but I still don’t think I’m control of many I data. I don’t think that’s an awareness. That’s easy to say, literacy is wonderful but what does that mean? I want to go to the point of services. It was mentioned a bit by John Carr, actually. The services, we talk about consumers, but we are not consumers if they are free services. We are not buying those services. They are free, they are given. You can choose not to use them but when they are bundled with everything that you are using, and, you know, the penetration rates of certain search engines, like in the Netherlands, its so high, that it is the wisdom of the crowd, it’s the masses which are just being herded towards those services, but you can still choose. It’s too easy.
If you add on top of that, things like minors or adults. Minors are until which age, 18, generally, maybe 16. You can open your own Facebook page from 13. Okay? So you are encouraged to and even Mark Zuckerberg is talking about reducing that age from 13 to lower. So the target group is not adults and not even young people of a certain age. They are children, I think. So I have a feeling that young people, not just young people are being kettled with the services offered which are for free and all of these solutions on the horizon about horizon or mirages of things. I’m being provocative because I think we need to be provocative.
And when you heard the talk earlier today about we can do so much, but it’s for the governments, then John Carr rightly says about the facts that governments need to do more. Everybody is looking at each other but no one is connecting. And it call comes down to trust, and we want – you are calling for more trust and what trust is that and what agreement of trust between the different groups of stakeholders. Where is the trust here? Are we – I mean, I feel that the services are being – the companies are sort of dividing and ruling. There’s no agreement. So we are not standing together or being taught together. Trying to find a way forward for trust for young people so we can control our data, for example.
So I want to know what pledges or what are we going to do here in EuroDIG and hereafter, not just for a next conference but create more coherence to do things, like Ludo is suggesting.
>> Ludo would like to speak. I think that’s very – very important that we try to lay out what – what the grid issues are. What did we do around? Is that – is that something you would like to do to – you know, to tell us what you take away from the session? What the divergent points of view are? Is that okay? Do you want to start?
>> Yes. I guess. Yeah.
I think the willingness is there to cooperate. Only I think we need to, you know, get together and – and honestly, you know, to get something done. I have my doubts if you get it done with 1,000 people together, you know. I have my doubts about, that but I think it’s a start and we have to have several different sort of sessions basically where we get together and we – we talk about solutions.
Just I don’t know if the moderators allow me, just the one thing that I’m – that I want to add to Lee’s story, basically. I mentioned the penetration rate and in this case, it’s Google in Holland for I believe it’s 98% of Holland is searching through Google. What I’m wondering and that is not Google. That’s Facebook, that’s all the thing, but social search that’s incorporated as well now.
If you do the plus one, for example which is in the US, what I’m wondering and this is an open question. I don’t know, but I’m interested, if there’s a penetration rate of 98% in Holland, when it comes to searching with Google and there’s a plus one system, basically, so what if all of my friends like a certain answer that is not the truth, so to say, that means in my opinion that new generations that just searched through Google, they will find the answer that is liked by most people and it’s not about what is quality information.
So when you – you know, when you mentioned the filter basically being the search filter, whatever you want to call it, you know, and you take an account that social search is getting a bigger and bigger place, then I’m – I don’t want to say concerned, because I don’t like to be concerned but still I’m a little bit about, you know, the future of quality information. And maybe – it’s an open question, really. I’m just, you know.
>> Okay. We’ll just proceed in the way how we were sitting with short messages what you take home, basically, your key issues identified during this workshop.
>> I believe there is a tension between different players in the field. Corporations have different objectives and different responsibilities than governments. Governments have the primary responsibility to protect citizens, and their fundamental rights or they should have that. I want to highlight one short example from the Netherlands because it’s not always in sort of, you know, life and death situations but it can be in subtle differences. Two weeks ago, it was discovered that one of the major telecom companies, called KPN, a former Dutch state telecom, now privatized owning 45% of the market or servicing 45% of market, was violating that neutrality to ban voice over IP services like Skype from being used to preserve the business model.
In order to monitor the behavior of customers to see whether or not they were using Skype, they deployed deep pack inspections, which are considered heavy ammunition, infringing fundamental rights of customers and their right to privacy and right to personal communications, et cetera.
For about two hours this was a scandal until it was discovered that Vodafone and others also did it. So I predicted this will be a domino effect. We will certain learn that every telecom operator in Europe, if not the world is doing this or pay majority.
Now, one option to take action is through a regulator. They are there to look at market forces, whether they are operating fairly or not but in the Netherlands in the telecom market, they can only step in when a player has significant market share, which is more than 50%, which KPN doesn’t have.
The minister responsible said initially that they were not going to take action about net neutrality infringement but that they would investigate the violation of privacy until the parliament protested and turned it around and now the minister will come up with a plan to protect say net neutrality. What I’m trying to say with this example, there’s a lot of creeping situations.
People can only make choices whether or not they want to say with KPN, whether or not they want to stay with Vodafone whether they want to use a cell phone at all or live in a tent, if they know what’s going on. I think that’s fair, for people to be informed and make well-informed decisions and governments have to help with that and possibly review the status quo if it’s deemed unfair.
Everybody does play their own role and does have their own interests and without transparency, there’s no such thing as choice or guarantee of rights because if nobody knows what companies do, nobody can interfere.
>> May I ask you to be very brief.
>> Thank you. I just want to say one to two minutes maximum, please.
>> First of all, we strongly believe in transparency on the Cisco side. We have been strong proponents and try to support the new telecom’s direct live in the EU. What is happening in Sweden regarding the blocking of voice is that the government is currently looking at whether or not Internet access should really be opened and Internet access without blockage.
So – so as you heard, transparency in the market economy and they really hope that people actually the choose with their feet, that will help because you have strong – there are strong voices we are here and I believe in that. That will change the world, but we need more meetings like this. That’s why we at Cisco support meetings and others similar like this.
>> There’s a question still bothering a little bit me. We are talking about privacy and how much we feel safe on the Internet and our conclusion was we must be aware of what we want on the Internet and Faye mentioned that she has her own blog and she can find some of her pictures on other blogs that she doesn’t want to. So is the only way – on the one hand, she may choose the option not to have her own blog and not to be – not to risk to see her picture somewhere else, and on the other hand, she wants to keep blogging.
So is the only way to feel safe on the Internet not being online? Does it mean that your privacy is guaranteed only if you are not on and you don’t have any online links or something?
>> Okay.
>> So just to be brief.
>> Yes, please.
>> As a young person, I really like the fact that the Internet is generally a free place and I want to see it even more be free – being even more free. No regulations. The least regulation possible would be like the best solution, but then we come to the problem of corporate responsibility because they are the biggest boys in the playground. Let’s not forget one thing. I mean, whoever thinks, whatever. They are now – there’s stuff falling out of the sky. There was someone who had an idea, whether it was long ago whether it’s current and ideas are money. With freedom comes responsibility.
And to counter that possible negative effect on freedom that corporations may have, solutions are exactly what we are doing now. It is together talk, create pressure groups and be active within civil society. And keep that freedom going on.
>> Thank you. Faye?
>> Yeah, I would also like to say I too enjoy the freedom of the Internet and, of course, that’s the whole point of the Internet as a tool to be free and what not, but it just seems the Internet is like an experiment that is just maybe going too far on different levels and – and, indeed, they do need to work with the bigger people in this, because, well, we do need to be kept safe and we are – there’s no point in asking why we are using these sites if we don’t want to. We are part of it now. It’s, you know, we have to be kept safe, because we are always going to use the sites.
>> Christoph.
>> Well, first of all, thanks for the debate. I think this type of positive energy needs to be transformed, you know, and we need to get that feedback as companies as well. I think even better would be that, you know, as it was said earlier, you know, you would come up with really more specific ideas and really channel that energy into – into specific actions and come up with ideas what we can do.
I’m quite positive. I believe there’s an open Internet and we have some examples and I think they – I mean, it’s good to talk about these, but I can also give another example. When in Germany, I’m a big operator, did the same as KPN in Holland. Another big operator, which my company, which is the smaller in Germany did a marketing campaign to ask people to come use us. We like people who use Skype on the mobile network. I believe there are market forces and the best thing, you know to preserve a lot of the freedom and a lot of the – of the information – the informed choices as was said earlier is on a competitive market and that people can choose.
I still believe that. It’s often much better than regulators who are usually late, who are very – how say? Where solutions become very rigid and do not change over time. I think that there are a lot of forces in the market, a lot of incentives for companies to become better and thank you very much. I think this is really working.
>> Marco?
>> Transparency can be something that the industry can provide to the user. Third-party independent control on our procedure and ethical guidelines, like the GNI is another possible solution. Privacy by default and privacy by design are the two big team – the two options that can be taken into consideration but you need to consider that your voice is heard and your feedback is very important, and let’s take, for example, Google buzz. We made something that was not in line with the expectation of our – of the Internet community and we – we change it according to the feedback that we receive.
So don’t think that your voice is not heard.
>> Okay. Thank you very much.
>> The report.
>> Yes.
>> Would you take the microphone, please.
>> The representatives of the digital world, hello, my name is Janna. I come from Russia and there as a representative of new media summer school for youth. It is a great honor for me to be able to sum up and the key issues in ethics and responsibility. We have just tape part in a whole discussion. I really hope it was a dialogue and what we have just heard will be affective in shaping the Internet voice in the coming years. Like in any other sphere where we face conflict between the interests of stakeholders and others, there are still lots of problems. I will go topic by topic, but it’s more about how do we address the companies.
The first point was the role of corporate responsibility and how can we trust corporations and expect that we will be able to defend our rights?
It was also brought up access to Internet, to prevent this gap between wealthy people with opportunities and those who don’t have them.
But it’s more about how we are concerned about our relationship between political decision makers and corporates, and sometimes we are missing the whole issue about human rights there.
What makes us feel good, corporates are doing some step to developing to society, like green programs mentioned there and customs, agreements and regulations but good market strategy is not enough to contribute to the development of free Internet. I hope that after these discussions we all understand we have built a sustainable dialogue between authorities. It’s also about users and first of all about youth, who are doing their best to be heard.
The second point was data privacy and the right to be forgotten. I guess that no one will doubt that their relationships of – also has Facebook account and mailbox or whatever else. It’s not only about consumption but about trust. We have basically agree that everyone has a right to privacy, but also everyone corporates to provide more tools to secure our privacy and personal data and this is a point where we as young people we rely on corporates to trust our personal data. We want to have the right to be forgotten or the Internet to keep our data safe.
And the last but not the least, we have talked a lot about personalization on the Internet. Providing a user service that takes into being his personal interests is good, but they should also force the users to see there are not only things that they agree with, because there’s such an interest in how to do the choice instead of us and I can say that it limits us in getting truthful and reliable information.
To sum up, I hope that we manage to make a dialogue in order to hear the corporates and youths that it was not only the dialogue between service providers and the consumers. I hope the statements will be taken into consideration by corporates to find the solution and decide better internet for tomorrow. That’s all we want. We need more transparency.
I really like Michael’s statement, that with freedom comes responsible. And it also comes with power and there we address the corporates.
>> Okay. Thank you very much. Now we are coming to a close of this workshop. Fortunately, this coffee break is half an hour long. So you will have a chance to get a coffee.
Let me say two things from the famous U.N. Rocky. We know we should fulfill free aspects, namely protect, respect and remedy and I was very happy to hear Mikhail took up the responsibility. This is another aspect that we should look at, we didn’t have time to go into. However as a law professor, the responsibility and the remedy belongs to any kind of legal or ethical framework.
And my second remark is I would like to thank all the panelists for their contributions and their lively contributions. I would like to thank the representatives who prepared this session and I hand over now to Ana for the really final closing remarks.
>> No. Actually, I think everybody wants coffee. Just really, really thank everybody for their contributions and that’s it. That’s the end of the session.
(Applause)