Governing cyberspace: How to keep the Internet safe, free and open? – PL 02 2013

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20 June 2013 | 11:30-13:00
Programme overview 2013

People

Key Participants

  • Fadi Chehadé, CEO ICANN
  • João Confraria, ANACOM
  • Luigi Gambardella, ETNO
  • Janis Karklins, UNESCO, Sector for Communication and Information
  • Sir Richard Tilt, Internet Watch Foundation

Co-moderators

  • Wolfgang Kleinwächter, University of Aarhus
  • Ana Neves, Foundation for Science and Technology

Reporter

  • Lorena Jaume-Palasi, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich

Messages

  • Overcoming the ”If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” mantra and by addressing the different political expectations of societies concerning trust in stakeholders.
  • Addressing the need for scalable models for consensus building and investing into education.
  • Changing regulatory paradigms towards regulation based on principles.
  • Noting that the multistakeholder model has most proximity to universal regulation.

Session report

The plenary analysed the different regulation categories, i.e. technical regulation versus political regulation and therein the diverse models of regulation with regards to deliberation and policy making. ICANN president Fadi Chehade pleaded “to overcome the if it’s working don’t fix it” mantra and addressed the different political expectations of societies concerning the trust on stakeholders like the private sector and governments in different continents.

The deliberations addressed the necessity of further developmental progress in several aspects, stressing specially first the need for scalable models in the process of consensus building which should provide for global inclusion and second, the educational aspect, since digital technologies are developing fast and steadily causing a growing gap between technological innovation and the understanding of its social consequences.

The concluding debate focused on several proposals for specific intergovernmental treaties and international law to regulate global issues such as cyber-security, copyright or data protection. Jānis Kārkliņš, UNESCO’s Director of Communication and Information emphasized the importance of changing the regulatory paradigms towards a regulation based on principles and not on particular technologies. Some other concerns raised with respect to international law alluded to the standard quality of international treaties, since they constitute a compromise on the lowest common denominator, and to the implementation of those norms and principles, since the existing national law systems are different.

All arguments considered, the plenary led to the conclusion that the closest approach to universal regulation is the multistakeholder model which has already generated agreements fostering stability, security and innovation in the internet.

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.


>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: In the first plenary, we discussed the public interest and in the second plenary, we will discuss now the type of regulation. You know, how to translate public interests into the safeguards, into norms, principles, and what we call regulation.

This was the subject of the EuroDIG in 2012 last year, in Stockholm. All of us have spoken about it. And this is an ongoing debate. I do not expect that we will settle this today in the next 90 minutes for the rest of our century. So this will remain an ongoing debate, you know, what type of regulation we need to keep the Internet, open, free and safe.

And these are really three key elements. Everybody wants to have security. Everybody wants to be free. And it should be easy access, open standards and open Internet is very important. But how to arrange this, because there are conflicting values in it.

So we have a wonderful panel here, experienced people. We do not plan to have a long introductory statements. We will start immediately into a discussion by asking direct questions to our panelists, you know.

I start on the left side, Fadi Chehade’ is the CEO of ICANN. And ICANN is labeled a regulator itself. But we are interested to see what Fadi’s position is on Internet regulation.

Next to him we have Sir Richard Tilt from the UK. He is the Chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation, which is a programme which works to find out, you know, the bad guys on the Internet in the field of – for tight protection. So this is part of the Europe Internet safer programme to keep the Internet safe, and they are working together both with the broader public and with also law enforcement agencies, you know, to get – to keep the Internet secure in particular for children.

And I think this is an interesting perspective, which brings the business and Civil Society perspective to it.

Next to him we have Luigi Gambardella, the President and Chair of the University Telecommunication Network Operators Organisation. They play an important role, they have made proposals for the WCIT conference in Dubai in 2012 last year in December. And certainly the telecom operators are in the midst of the debate about future regulation. And this will be another interesting perspective.

On the right side we have Yanis, Chairman of the Government Advisory Committee by ICANN. He was the President of WSIS 2, the intergovernmental process. That means he brings the governmental perspective, because certainly the Government has to play a role and the Internet will not remain free and open and safe if everything is done by regulation or other nonlegally binding norms. So that means the Governments play an important role.

And on the right side we have really a regulator, he is the member of the board of ANACOM, the Portuguese regulator for telecom, Joao Confrania. We are happy that you are here.

And Ana Neves was sitting in a lot of Committees in the Government regulation, in the ICANN and ITU, so I hand over – and Portugal. And I hand it over to Ana, and please ask your first question. Thank you very much.

>> ANA NEVES: Thank you very much. I don’t think I’m going to sit down, because I’d like to see everybody. Sitting down, it’s like being in a coffin.

>> JANIS KARKLINS: We will leave a seat empty here.

>> ANA NEVES: I’d like to start with something that was there. And because during the last session I saw something that – well, I didn’t really like, because – so now it was like coffee breaks are the most useful part of EuroDIG. It’s where the real dialogue happens. Well, it’s coffee breaks, it’s where we can network, right? In any conference, any meeting. So in anyplace. So, if we don’t have more dialogue, so you have to be more efficient, you have to be more ambitious, and you have to be more active. Because we have here a very good panel, so we make an effort to have very good panelists that can be controversial or not. It’s up to you. But the dialogue, we have to learn how to do this dialogue. So it’s not being so critical. It’s true, real dialogue and to talk and to put the ideas, raise questions, et cetera.

So my very first question goes to Mr. Fadi Chehade’. Internet is not a law free zone and we know also that the same human rights that people enjoy offline are also relevant online.

In the early days of the Internet, we had the net-etiquette. Internet etiquette as self regulation by Internet users. But basic elements of the functioning of the Internet are regulated and now via industry and technical self regulation.

Mr. Chehade’, what is your perspective how various types of regulation, including governmental regulation, are needed in the future, in your opinion, to keep the Internet free, safe, open and single?

>> FADI CHEHADE: Thank you, Ana. Can you hear me okay? Thank you.

This is a pretty big question. But let me just attempt to address it under one side.

We have worked together as a community for the last 15 years or so, to put rules around how we govern the Internet. I think the rules served us well. We all benefit from these rules today, in major ways, economically, socially, politically. The value has been tremendous.

I think, however, that as we move into the next period there have to be better and newer ways to deal with governing the Internet. It has become too fundamental for us to simply say it’s working, let’s not touch it. There are things to be done.

The difficulty is how. Because I think some of the ways we know how to govern things may not work for the Internet.

Let me give a couple examples. The velocity at which the Internet moves is not matched by the way we make rules today. So how can we keep up with the velocity of the Internet? So we may take ten years to make a Treaty. In the meantime, do you remember how the Internet looked like ten years ago? Can you think of how it might look like ten years from now? So we have an issue of synchronization of velocity between the speed at which we can regulate and the speed at which the Internet is moving.

The second issue we have is what I call verticality. We know how to do things top down. Some of us try to do things bottom-up. But in the Internet space neither works fully well. In the Internet space, things move horizontally, not vertically. People coordinate, they talk to each other, they solve problems, and out of chaos I often find a solution comes out because people were willing to talk in a very open, coordinated, cross stakeholder action.

So if we try to do it top down, which many of our Governments, that is how they work, many of our International organisations, that’s how they work. My church works this way. So I have nothing against Governments, but that’s the way these organisations work. In the Internet, that is not quite evident, because I go to one continent, they trust their Government. I go to another continent, they trust their companies, and that is not the case in the first continent. They trust the Government more than the companies. Some people trust their Civil Society and no one else. Some people trust no one.

So it’s very important for us to appreciate that some of the existing norms of regulation are actually not very applicable. We need to be open-minded. We need to be creative. We need to be innovative. But I as the President of ICANN can also tell you we cannot also say it works, don’t touch it. Because what worked for the last 15 years may not necessarily be how we move forward.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you. Let’s move to a regulator. I think Fadi said okay, there are obvious issues which are different from traditional regulation as it comes to the Internet. One is the speed of the technological elements. The other was the way how the Internet was self regulated in a broad way, in a more horizontal way, not a vertical way. But it means we have two different cultures which emerged and now they are coming together.

The Internet is not everything. Even now telecommunication is based on IP Protocols. So it’s here? What is here? How can you embrace the Internet and which way you want to embrace the Internet if you look at regulation and how you would bring these two different cultures together.

>> JOAO CONFRANIA: Of course we have a dilemma in the Internet there yet, because in the first place, we don’t trust governments. We don’t trust each one, the International Governments, we will not trust foreign Government, we will not trust of course the interventions on the Internet system of nonDemocratic Governments. But at the same time, we need some kind of state intervention in the Internet area.

In the scope of electronic communications, and actually I work in an authority that is a regulatory authority for electronic communication. And in the scope of electronic communication, we need Government intervention at least in the areas of network neutrality, and in the areas of, well, security in the sense of availability of safeguarding the continuous availability of the services and the integrity of the networks.

Now, here in Portugal of course we follow the European Union regulatory framework, and in these areas, the European Union regulatory framework seems to be very much based on the idea that transparency and increasing transparency rules is a good way to avoid the market problems.

I think that probably the idea is that increasing transparency rules will make sure that the consumers and users in general are aware of the quality of service and of the warranties concerning network neutrality and the integrity of networks that are provided by each ISP. And there is a belief that the market system will solve the problem, as long as there are some transparency rules. It is hopeful that firms will compete to make sure that – and in that competitive process, it is hoped that the consumers will have the level of quality of service, will have the level of availability, and the network integrity that they need.

Probably it’s too early to conclude that this is enough. Some things happening suggest that this may not be enough, but at the same time let me point out that in these very same areas, we need to have effective regulatory mechanisms in other regulatory jurisdictions.

For instance, when we talk about network neutrality, we must of course talk about all the competitive issues. And we must think about the effectiveness of competition law to solve network neutrality problems.

At the same time, we must also consider the effectiveness of competition policy when dealing with some security issues. Because companies may well use security councils to lock in consumers and to have anticompetitive strategies. And so the effectiveness of competition law in these areas must also be evaluated. In a sense these are totally new areas.

Finally, we have the efficiency of the court system. Whenever there are – whenever liability law applies, the eventual inefficiency of the court system, I believe, favors anticompetitive strategies by companies, because usually they are more efficient and more effective in taking advantage of these inefficiencies of the court system.

So I think that this is basically, in general lines, our own regulatory framework, in the sense it’s out of the main things. These are the red lines in our framework.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you very much.

Luigi, this guy regulates your business? Are you satisfied with this? Would you look for something else? Would you go, you know, more in Fadi’s direction or how do you see the future from an operator’s point of view? And Luigi is the Vice President of Telefonica.

>> LUIGI GAMBARDELLA: Thank you for the invitation. It’s good for us to give our view. You know unfortunately for us, Europe is the most regulated region in the world. And in Europe we have too many regulators. I don’t know if there is an estimation, there are 6000 or 7000 regulators in Europe. So we have a lot of people working for us and for the sector.

But I think here, what is the problem that is clearly emerging? And, if I may say, the reason why we have had also some clashes when we have had this discussion? I would like to remember what we said, what has been said in Dubai, and to consider it today, after the development that we have seen in the last months.

The problem is that telecom regulators are heavily regulated. The Internet world is not regulated at all. Now due to the fact that the technology is evolving, consider the Internet connection. You know that Europe interconnection is a telecom service, outside of the Internet. And this is creating discussion on how the situation should evolve. If you ask an operator, an operator would like to see as much of less regulation as possible. Because we believe in the market.

But I would like to, if I may, I liked a lot what Fadi has said at the beginning. Something has to be done. This is precisely what we said in Dubai a few months ago. We recognize the importance to evolve the discussion. And here there are a lot of things at stake.

And if I might try to answer the question of the panel and the title of the panel, I think that we have to work for an Internet more open, more safe and more free. Because I think that should be our goal, everybody, all the stakeholders.

But let’s try, if I may, to say a few words on these three magic words. Because it’s important also to clarify what we – what is our understanding of these three words. Let me check with you also the word “Free.” Obviously, I think here that we refer much to the freedom of the cities and of the users. And we should clarify, because free can have different meanings, and that does not mean that the Internet should be free, that you should not pay for it.

And if I might say, I think it’s very interesting that we should conduct a study, Fadi. I think in several countries, water is more expensive than the Internet. Sometimes we say Internet should be as free as water. And in some countries, water is much more expensive than the Internet today.

So first let’s try to don’t mix up commercial matters with freedom, human rights, and rights of the users and of the citizens. I think this is a very important topic. And obviously we support a lot the freedom, even if we know that this is more in the hands of the Government rather than the private operators.

The second point is about open. Yes. We support open. But what does it mean, open? Because we want – we would like to see – I always say that the people believe that operators, the main operators want to – no. We want as much open as possible. And today, I think, we need to broaden the debate on what open does mean, because for us open means also access to content. There are a lot of limitations. Today we know that a lot of users have limitations with access to specific content. There are problems with interoperability. There are some Internet players that are limiting the possibility to use the services. We know if you use a certain kind of server, you cannot choose the other. So I think we have to work together in order to remove these barriers. Because what we would like to see as operators, an Internet much more open than it is today.

And another point that obviously I would like to raise is safe, yes. Obviously, you have to work for an Internet that is much more safe. But also here, what does it mean safe? You know what has happened recently with the PRISM case and the problem that has been raised. And we have to also, too, to take into account, I will make just one example, just to show the complexity, that, for example, privacy, that is an important element that has to be defended. In Europe, the privacy is a fundamental right. In the U.S. it’s not a fundamental right. So there are, in our legislations, different situations and we have to understand that this is the reason why we are having such kind of debate and such kind of different interpretation on what should be done.

But I think, and I leave you with myself with a question, I think that we have not only to work in order to have an Internet more open, more safe, and more free, but also we have to work in a way which we keep the Internet global. Because the risk is if you don’t share at the International level some rules, the risk is that each region will do it their own routes and we could create a regional Internet. So that should be part of the debate and I would like to discuss with you further during this.

>> ANA NEVES: Well, you mean single, right?

>> LUIGI GAMBARDELLA: I mean that each region could then make its own legislation. Let’s consider now the issue of Net Neutrality. Do we want to allow each Government to decide what Net Neutrality is and do we want to have a different interpretation of this law? What will be the effect for Internet if the different Governments, even within Europe you are having a discussion on this, we will allow them to regulate in a different way the Internet. Because at the end of the story, the Net neutrality is a way to regulate the Internet, to put some limitation, some rules. So we have to be very careful before to regulate the Internet, and I think it would be important to have an International discussion of such important matters.

>> ANA NEVES: Okay. Thank you very much. I think that we have to move on.

And I would like to ask Sir Richard Tilt, what do you think is the right balance between freedom of the Internet and privacy of individual Internet users? How do you think that can be achieved for the right balance?

>> SIR RICHARD TILT: Ana, thank you very much for the invitation both to join the panel and to answer the question.

As we have just been talking about, we want an Internet that is more free and more safe. I’m not at all clear that those two things can be brought together in that way. I Chair a very small organisation that is an example of self regulation. We work on behalf of the Internet industry in the UK. We have 100 plus members. And on behalf of them, we arrange for the removal and if necessary blocking of child sexual abuse material on the Internet.

It’s – the self-regulation model seems to have worked well in the UK. We work closely with both our members and with law enforcement agencies in making sure that we’re proceeding down the right path in terms of the criminal law. We work closely, also, with Government departments.

I don’t in any sense, I can’t speak for the UK Government, but our assessment would be that the UK Government is not anxious to have statutory regulation, would very much like some form of self-regulation to work, as we are making it work.

As Fadi said, I think whether that model will persist over the next ten years really very much remains to be seen. I think the position in the UK is that as a backstop the Government might well want to intervene if it was not satisfied that, in fact, the industry was tackling the problem in a robust way. And the problem, I mean there will be people in the audience who are well aware of the problem, but I mean complete freedom as far as an organisation like mine is concerned is impossible because of the capacity of human beings to behave very badly.

The children sexual material, you have to differentiate it from pornography. It is images of children who are being forced to take part in sexual activity with adults, often involving rape and sexual torture and sometimes beastality. It’s very hard to see that anybody would want that sort of material to be readily available.

And, interestingly, in the last few weeks in the UK there has been public concern about it, because of two particular very unpleasant cases of peedphiliac behavior, cases that came to court. One was a five-year-old girl called April. In the second case, the perpetrator who was convicted admitted freely that he had been using child sexual abuse images on the Internet. It’s a leap to say that one causes the other, but there is a very considerable concern that there may be a connection. And I think there needs to be quite a lot more research about that aspect of it.

But nonetheless, that is the public mood in the UK.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you very much.

And this raises or brings us to the last panelist, to Janis Karklins who worked in the governmental context for many, many years. Janis Karklins, with all the issues that were raised now, network neutrality, child abuse on the Internet, content related things, freedom, Human Rights aspect, what Governments can and should do in this world, taking into account that the Internet is very dynamic and procedures to draft International treaties are very complicated and will eat away a lot of time, UNESCO is the host of a number of very good Conventions which are working and which has a certain effect on the Internet, like the Convention on cultural diversity. But, you know, from – if you look back at all the experience that you had in WSIS and ICANN and now in UNESCO, what is your basic approach about the role of Governments and the role of intergovernmental Treaties to introduce intergovernmental or governmental regulation to help to keep the Internet open, free and safe?

>> JANIS KARKLINS: I think that what we had in the first plenary and right now shows how difficult it is to apply the old recipes to the new situation. The Westphalian system was mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, and this system is based on different principles than Internet is based. The borders, the serenity of representation, these are fundamental principles of the Westphalian system.

The Internet does not recognize boarders. It is universal, and that creates this clash between the – our knowledge, how society has been regulated and organised or passed at least three centuries since the adoption or the signing of the Sorbonne Peace Treaty, and what is developing very fast on the Internet.

What we have to do is apply our best knowledge to understand what are these elements or principles that the new system should be based? And I think that we, in these past ten years, we have crystallized some principles, and three of them are mentioned in the title of this panel. But then – and we try – we need to agree on those principles.

But then the next step would be to translate those principles in practical actions. Here of course we will always have difficulties. If we take the Westphalian principles, the legal systems in each state are different, the laws are different, but they are contained in the national border.

It is possible to make a universal regulation for Internet? Whether it’s possible today, I am doubtful. I don’t think that we will ever arrive to a universal. The closest we could get would be a regulation with a variable geometry and that certainly should not be intergovernmental regulation. But that should be multi-stakeholder agreement on specific issues. Because it is obvious that big intimate players have exactly the same legitimacy as any Government in this world to say specifically on issues of their competence. But, of course, from the governmental perspective, we’re not yet there.

We saw during the WSIS process how difficult it was to open doors for nongovernmental participation in the intergovernmental decision-making. And it is still ten years later, it is not given. Because there are still Governments which do not feel comfortable with the presence or involvement of nongovernmental actors in intergovernmental decision-making. Whether we will ever get over there, I don’t know. It takes time.

And also, in different organisations, different intergovernmental organisations, it’s a different culture. For instance, if we take UNESCO, UNESCO from the very beginning was very much, in modern terms, called a multi-stakeholder organisation, being an intergovernmental organisation. Because the engagement with academia, with the Civil Society, was at the heart of UNESCO’s activities from the very beginning of existence of that organisation.

That is certainly not the case with other UN agencies and programmes. And, therefore, we need to see how far we can get with the universality. On universality I think we can agree on principle, but then implementation might be rather difficult.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Okay. Thank you very much. We want to open as early as possible the discussion to the floor. That means you have seen now the basic positions of all our panelists. And Jan is from the Council of Europe. He already announced that he wanted to be the ice breaker for the discussion. And we need a microphone, probably. And, you know, please, if you come from the audience, say your name and your affiliation. And then if you have a question, put the finger on which of the panelist should answer your question.

>> JAN: I would like to make two points. One is that in the Council of Europe we have a recommendation, which we call the “do no harm regulation.” And, Wolfgang, you know it well, because you participated in the work preparing it. It states a commitment of 47 States to do no harm to the Internet.

And then it goes on to develop a few principles in respect of protecting and preserving the integrity, universality and openness of the Internet. So there are commitments that are there.

Now, in respect of the discussion I am hearing here, I have a concern. I have a problem with this question of regulation and what are we talking about?

(Microphone feedback)

I have the impression that we have been taught that there is a plethora of regulators in Europe. What I would like to know is more concretely what regulation we have and who the regulators are. What are they regulating? And for whom? I think that it would be very important to map the regulatory landscape to know who, why, and what interests, for whom, and who influences their regulation ? And then we would have a better idea of where we stand. And we should go down to the principles. And the principles, if we go down to the principles, and we try to protect them, I think we would have a better answer.

We have in the Council of Europe Conventions that protect against cybercrime, against child abuse. We have a data protection Convention, we have rules. We have a Europe court of human rights where countries can be taken and made accountable for their actions or their omissions in respect of these things. We have to interpret them. There we have the possibility to have concrete answers.

Regulation, the principles of the court require that the rules have to be cast in law if there is going to be an interference with fundamental rights. They have to be necessary in a Democratic society. They need to be proportionate.

We all agree that to protect children from abuse is essential. It’s a necessity in a Democratic society. Now, what measures we put in place in order to do that, are they going to be effective? Are we really protecting the values or are we having other effects and undesirable consequences and so on?

We have to go to the fundamentals and respond to the basis of the fundamentals. And if we do that, I think that the Council of Europe has a contribution to make.

Thank you very much.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you. Are there more interventions from the floor? Okay. Yes.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I’m Robert, an entrepreneur from Amsterdam. I want to raise a concern. And my concern is that big organisations and Governments are really afraid of bottom-up interventions. And bottom-ups don’t choose Governments. So I like the idea that we need, like, self-regulated control on the Internet. A Democratic way in which the three, four billion stakeholders we have on the Internet, every user can intervene and can decide on what is good and what is not.

Because I really feel like there is a real lack of trust and it went wrong with NGOs that tried to interfere with the Government. Like the example you gave.

But what I’m afraid of is that once we start to build a system for everyone to regulate and want to make laws and rules for an Internet that changes every day, and an economy on the Internet that changes every day, we’re going to give power into Governments and to NGOs and companies, that one year later we might think that they don’t need it anymore. So where we need to move to is a system where the Government can intervene but not can decide what is good or not. So I really believe in like a global way in which we can intervene in problems that are around, and maybe we can solve problems with child abuse, et cetera.

But what we need for that is trust. And to the people on the Internet, and what we need to do is like empower good examples of people and organisations that actually try to work and actually try to solve problems as well, because the Internet is a place where people make and create and solve things. It’s not a place where Governments can decide on things. And we really should work together to build trust. And really should put up some more examples.

So if the Government wants to regulate, the first thing they should do is like trust the things that are already out there, and empower them and make them a showcase as well.

Thank you.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you. By the way, we have also –

(Applause)

That’s the first applause on EuroDIG 2013.

>> ANA NEVES: It’s the second one.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Yes. We have a moderator here for remote participation, it’s Vladimir Mirani (ph) the Rapporteur. And do we have a comment from the remote participation.

>> REMOTE MODERATOR: Yes, currently we have 41 and rising number of remote participants, which is really great. And we have two remote hubs. Currently one is from (?) and the other one is from Romania. So with some greetings to them.

A couple comments. One hub is focused on safety. And they said they think they should have in Moldavia, they should improve the framework about safety online. And also the regulation governing is needed when it comes to the Internet and especially regarding information sharing and access to information. And also, they note that the governance and regulation might be needed when it comes to human trafficking or the use of the Internet in human trafficking.

Albert has a question or a comment specifically to what Sir Richard Tilt mentioned about self regulation. And he raises a concern of self regulation when it comes to the possibility of unilateral actions by the actors that are doing the self regulation. He mentions in specific the case of the wikipedia killer, and he asks for comment from the floor and anyone else.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you. Before Sir Richard Tilt can reply to this, I want to take the first question and to ask Janis Karklins how Governments are now prepared to take this bottom-up approach in terms of doing International laws or treaties. And I would also ask Luigi do we have any idea of how the millions of users of telecom services could be included into policy development for things like that, or like network neutrality? Or do you want to do it in a direct bilateral discussion with Governments?

>> LUIGI GAMBARDELLA: I think it’s been a very interesting intervention before, when you asked to describe a commission of the regulation in Europe. And it’s very difficult to give you an answer.

Because today, just to let you know, we have only in the telecom sector 27 national regulators. From the – on the first of July we will have 28. Because in Europe we have 27. First of July, 28 national markets.

Then we have national antitrust authorities. Then we have Barrak (ph), which represent at the European level the network of all the national authorities. Then we have the European Commission. We have the antitrust at the European level. Then we have the national Government. Each Government has its own ministry. Then we have the European Parliament, and this is not only for – for example, privacy is the same. We have 27 privacy authorities. Then we have at the European level a group with authority. Then we have a regulator for audiovisual, for TV. Each country does it in a different way. The country – they put together, the country may have a different authority.

So it’s really difficult to answer your question. And the problem is that when we deal with such important matters, like the Internet, we cannot regulate anymore or think to regulate at a national level. It makes sense, as I said, that one single country decided to regulate Net Neutrality, and another one decides to regulate in a completely different way, this is the right way for the Internet. We will keep it this way, and you run the risk of regionalizing the Internet, to not allow the customers to have the same right to have the access to the Internet.

Because we see that we need to keep, as I said, we have to do a broader affection. What has to be done in order to remove the barriers that are not only for the access, if there are any, but are mainly for the application, for the services, for the interoperability. We need to be sure that the citizen, the user, the customer, they can use all the services on the Net without any restriction.

We know that if you are a customer of one provider over the top, sometimes, you cannot trust further data. You cannot use one service with another. So there are many limitations. And this would require – but this can be done. It can be done at the national level or we should have something at the European level. And I think much more important, at the International level.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Okay. Janis Karklins, how open are Governments to the bottom-up approach?

>> JANIS KARKLINS: I think Governments are, again, we cannot generalize. Governments are – consist from different governmental agencies, and I’m speaking now about national levels. And as a rule, rather than an exception, one Government agency rarely speaks to another Government agency, and therefore we need to be prepared to, when we are talking about Governments, also, to address what part of the Governments we are talking about.

Those Governments who are dealing with Internet related issues or the part of Governments dealing with Internet regulation issues or Internet issues are more receptive to multi-stakeholder bottom-up engagement than other parts of the Government. And so this is always an uphill battle to convince that engagement of relevant actors is needed to find the best solution.

And if we take 2005, the Government participation in the ICANN Government Advisory Committee, and today we see that there is a clear progress between how it was then and now, whether that translates that the same Governments who participate in Government Advisory Committees and adviser’s board of ICANN on the Internet related to public policy issues, do the same in other UN foras, I would say not necessarily. A few Governments do, but not all.

So what we would need to ensure is that Government agencies dealing with the Internet related issues spread that practice of multi-stakeholder dialogue with the colleagues who are not so familiar with that. And I think that that would be another way how to advance with the multi-stakeholder dialogue on Internet Public Policy issues. Because Public Policy related to Internet, they cover every area of our life and every Government agency in one way or another may justify their activity in formulating Public Policy in their specific area. And that is why it is fairly complex and there is no, again, universal answer.

>> ANA NEVES: Thank you very much, Janis Karklins, because my next question, it has to do with something about – well, you bridged with my next question.

The definition of Internet Governance as agreed by the 190 countries, you know, countries in the Tunis Agenda in 2005 speaks about shared norms, principles, and decision-making procedures, so I’m talking about the definition of Internet Governance in 2005. The multi-stakeholder model is seen as the most effective governance model for the Internet, currently.

Just wait a second.

Okay.

So my point is whether you agree, could you specify what in your eyes are the specific roles of the various stakeholders, the different stakeholders? Where is their legitimacy? That is one of the great points. How far do you think policy development and decision-making should and could be shared among Governments, private sector and Civil Society?

So I would like to ask from our panelists, who would like to start.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Fadi?

>> FADI CHEHADE; well, I’m the one who declared ten minutes ago that we have to evolve what we have. So in doing so, we should not reinvent what is working. We should take what is working and evolve it.

I will submit to you that the way we are dealing with making policy on naming and addressing at ICANN is the closest thing to a truly working multi-stakeholder model. Government, business, Civil Society, users, academic, technical people, are involved. It’s messy. It takes time. It’s not as pretty and people sit and raise their hand and they vote. Consensus building is difficult work. And it is work at ICANN. Do we need to evolve it and improve it? Yes. We need to scale it. The models we have are not scalable. We need to make it less English centric because what we do today is very English centric. We need to make it inclusive of all people on the planet.

It isn’t yet. These are things that we can evolve. We can fix. But the reality is that this is a real place where at least for the remit we have, which is limited to names and addresses. It is working. We can evolve it, we can fix it, we are committed to it.

So am I saying that ICANN is the example? No. It’s an example. It is working. It needs work to evolve. We are committed to it. Now, Governments, as Janis Karklins has said, have had a tough time inserting themselves into that moment. Because we had a culture that started with the early days of the Internet that said the Governments are just going to meddle things. But the reality is as we grow beyond the developed world, Governments have a role. They must have an equal role. No one stakeholder group, no one Government, no one organisation should control or govern the Internet. All of us should figure out how to do it together, in an open, multi-stakeholder way. And we’re committed to that.

>> JANIS KARKLINS: If I may, I would be very willing to have somebody from the Governments who would oppose that view. And I think that in this room most probably we would not find many Governments who would oppose what Fadi just said. But there are another three continents apart from Europe on this planet. And there are Governments which would not subscribe to that position.

And what I personally see, what is lacking in this universal dialogue is dialogue between those who are converted and those who are not converted and who are not adhering to the same principles or understanding of a multi-stakeholder governance model of the Internet. Because that is still very, very missing an element in this.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: That’s true.

A very brief question to Mr. Joao Confrania. How could you confirm as a regulator, as a stakeholder, or do you just do it in your silo in consultation with Brussels?

>> JOAO CONFRANIA: Let me make a point on the previous intervention. We must not make a decision between two different issues. One is a need for regulation or not. The other one is the form of that regulation. And I think that that was mixing these two issues. One thing is to say there are too many regulators in Europe, and to say we should have or not a European level regulatory framework. But 27 regulators does not mean 27 national markets. This is of course completely false. Or does not necessarily mean that. And, of course, that is because of the electronic communications.

Now we may find that the regulatory structure is deficient and it can be argued that the European regulatory structure might be more efficient. You can defend the opposite. But that is one issue, the efficiency of the regulatory structure. We should not make a decision between that and the need or not for regulation. And the need or not to increase the protection of security or the Net neutrality of networks, or the need or not to defend competition and protect consumer rights. And I think that distinction must be clear.

And I think we should also emphasize a different issue is that, of course, there are too many regulations or too many laws in the sense of stating intervention going on right now in Europe and almost everywhere concerning the Internet. Violation of these laws, sometimes it’s a crime. Other times you have a violation, a fine, because you have violated competition law or intellectual property law or eventually you have a fine because there are several types of serious or less serious misspent matters involved.

But in that case, and I agree, we should evaluate all the types of laws that have an impact on the Internet. We are not talking about regulation in a strict sense. We are talking about all types of intervention, and we should say not mix them. They are different legal procedures and they have different types of relationships with concepts, and we must be aware of that.

We might like it or we might not like it, but population, even in Europe, nowadays expect still a lot from the national governance structures concerning the protection of their own rights as consumers and as stakeholders. And of course we cannot ignore that.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Okay. Thank you.

So Richard wanted to answer to the remote question, and then we have –

>> ANA NEVES: We have more people.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: And then more interventions from the floor. You and you and you. So these are the next three.

Okay.

>> SIR RICHARD TILT: This is an entirely legitimate question to ask, in terms of who is watching the self regulators. What are the institutional requirements to make sure that we are behaving properly?

In terms of the particular organisation that I’m involved with, we work on the basis – we are a charity. We have trustees. We are therefore regulated in the UK framework by the Charity Commission. We have independent trustees. We arrange for an annual audit of the decisions that we’re making, by outside experts, police, lawyers, child protection experts, to give us some internal assurance about what we’re doing and that it is legitimate.

We are at the moment embarking on a human rights audit led by a human rights lawyer. Because there are issues, and we have to either make sure that we’re behaving responsibly. Or if we’re not, we have to take steps to put that right. I believe that we are. We are very open. And if you want to look at our website, you see that we are entirely open about what we do.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you. I think now we take four questions in a row and then we distribute among the panelists who relates to what. Introduce yourself.

>> ANA NEVES: If I may, one minute.

>> I’m David Munir Nabti. I’m from Lebanon in the Middle East. I’m here from the RIPENCC as well. And I’m a firm believer in the open and free Internet. But I think self-regulation is maybe a nickname for massive abuse by powers that are much bigger than many of us. And money and monopolies oftentimes rule and have been in the Middle East. We are seeing countries increasingly trying to take bites out of the freedom on the Internet. Censorship in the Gulf, in Jordan they just announced, in Lebanon now possibly. And the troubling part is that many of the companies, tools and technologies that are allowing the Governments to do that are coming from the West.

i know there was some discussion on Twitter before about a Universal Declaration of Human Rights and applying something like that to the Internet, and that document isn’t perfect, but it establishes some accepted value. And maybe we can have something like that, that can put pressure on many of the western companies that are providing the tools and technologies that are encroaching on that, to not.

Maybe we have to look at somehow the bully pulpit of public opinion or the Governments and these other regions that have maybe some more respect for that openness, to have that be a more global system.

So do you think that there is something like that that could apply before there is some sort of global governance that would keep the Internet open?

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Okay. Thank you very much. I think instruments which allow naming and framing are always very useful.

I think you had the next question.

>> AUDIENCE: Hi again. All these different opinions, and I – I’m very interested in – to know all the effects of pornographic images and all this kind of sexual images. Imagine if you have deaf parents with a hearing child, it’s very difficult to decide or to know which law can provide or can save this child. He or she has a different outcome, if you will, that can protect these families and this child, because this is very important.

Because if you – we are talking about investment and the Internet safety, please, you have to also intend that is very concerned for us as deaf persons. As a deaf person, that is very important to think about the families of this child that is also he is a hearing person, but he has this deaf family. And I really want to know if they are kind of a law that can protect these families. Because I think this is very crucial right now. And I want it now, please. Because it’s very dangerous, as you know, as all of us know.

And copyrights also deserve – and also these are kind of crimes. It’s not a toy. And the family must know, must have the accessibility to know what is happening to this child.

Just to show you my concern in all areas, and I really want that can you please answer my question? Thank you so much.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you very much. Certainly Sir Richard will answer this question.

We had more questions, Thomas and Luis, and then we will come to the final round.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. Thomas Schneider working for the Swiss Government.

I want to react to much of what has been said about simultaneous stakeholder regulation and to what extent these models are better than traditional regulation. Because I think the multi-stakeholder model is not per se better than a traditional governance model. Sometimes one culture is more dominant, then this multi-stakeholder model has no value, either.

Like in a traditional model, basically, the oldest simultaneous stakeholder forum are Parliament. They are supposed to represent the interest of all people living in a country, and so on and so forth. If that is well done, then the system works. If that is not well done, because some cultures or some people in the country have no access to get their people into the Parliament, then the Parliament will not make the right laws if there are no checks and balance.

In my country we have direct Democracy. If we don’t like a law or the decision of the Government, we can challenge it. We need to discuss it. It’s a lot of work. It’s not always right. But at least we have the possibility to say no, we don’t want this. We want something different.

If you have that in ICANN, if you consult people, that is a good tool. However, the problem is when you consult, make a public consultation on the GAC advice on the gTLDs, and then you have the percent of those who respond in the public comment periods are those that have done the applications themselves. Okay, that is an interesting result. But that is not representative of the public interest. Because other interests have no access, not because you don’t offer it, but because they are maybe not aware of this or have other reasons that hinder them from participating in such a public comment.

So I’m very happy to see that you are aware of these challenges and that you and your team are trying your best to improve inclusion, to improve accountability and transparency, and that goes for all forms of governance. No matter whether the private sector is in the lead or the Government is in the lead, if the checks and balances are not right, then the outcome will not be in the public interest. And that’s why we end up with the discussion of the first plenary. If the people have no influence in defining the public interest, any Government system will fail.

Thank you.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you very much. Luis?

>> LUIS: Thank you very much. I’m going to try something I shouldn’t, because it’s very quick, two in one.

So first, regarding – I start with this issue that Thomas raised. With a multi-stakeholder it’s how we can contribute. It’s a fantastic way of bringing diversity and all points of view. But we have looked at it from a point of view of participation of individuals, even if individuals sometimes represent organisations.

I want to achieve a better possibility of synthesis. We should also cross it with other organizational processes, like multi-organizational or multi-institutional sort of participation. We should not block or be separated of the other one, but maybe it would require a different sort of process and procedures.

The other point relates a bit more to the no regulation, nor self-regulation discussion. And this is the falling. We know that open networks by necessity, by structure, build dominant notes, even without entering into the details of why that is, but that can be rationalized in very precise terms.

Now if we feel that markets don’t work well with monopoly, the challenges are much more than traditional businesses. So I’d like very much to hear what you think about that.

Thank you.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you. And one more, and then Ana takes over.

>> BERTRAND de LA CHAPELLE: Okay. My name is Bertrand de La Chapelle and I’d like to speak just as an individual citizen here.

I take issue with the wording of the title, the positive issue. We cannot keep the Internet safe, because the world is not safe. And I just want to warn, on a completely individual basis, about the illusion of creating the best of all worlds. The Internet will not be a dream and I hope it will never become. So my question is: What are the appropriate tools to do things?

And I would like to take a very concrete example of child abuse measures. From all of the information that I get from people who were talking about this in the last seven years in IGF meetings, I don’t know what the number of people around the world who do produce those images is. My guess, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that it’s in the thousands or tens of thousands worldwide at best.

If I make the equivalent at the level of a city, it’s the equivalent of having a few hundred people, maybe less, in a city of millions. In no country in the world will anybody propose, if you need to catch 200 people in a City of million, to put a policeman behind every street and every car, check your papers all the time. What is needed to catch 200 people is a very dedicated team that focuses exclusively on this.

My question is: I do not understand why, after all those years of speaking about this issue, it remains the hugest alibi for surveillance, whereas the only solution is to create a dedicated global multi-stakeholder enforcement team to catch the guys who produce those images.

(Applause)

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you.

So we have one comment from or question from Armenia.

>> ARMENIA: A question and comment. Who should protect the interests of the groups, like vulnerable children and other vulnerable groups, who are not able to protect themselves? So a question and a comment.

And then a couple of hot spots from the Twitter. Some people mentioned there should be more education and literacy than regulation. Some people mentioned we should be safe from the Governments. There is discussion back a bit on the public interest, and what are the public interests that eventually regulation should protect? And that self-regulation if it exists has to be human rights sensitive.

Thank you.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Okay. Now we ask the panelists to react to the questions, and then Ana comes with the final questions. Fadi?

>> FADI CHEHADE: I want to react to what Bertrand de La Chapelle shared. And I want to give you an example, to explain how multi-stakeholder coordination, not the vertical kind but the horizontal kind, is working.

Just in the last 48 hours, we have had a criminal starting about with 800 million nodes attacking the DNS. We have policies that cross Governments, businesses, individuals, that actually address threats like this. No one Government could have addressed this. No one organisation could have addressed this. The way we – this morning, there was a major global website that was hijacked. In less than 45 seconds, we had Governments, DNS operators, users, the company itself, ISPs on the phone to actually address this, using policies we have developed in a multi-stakeholder way that define how do these things get fixed and addressed?

So this is reality, folks. There are now multi-stakeholder agreements, policies, operations, that work, that are protecting the stability and the security of the core parts of the Internet as we speak.

It’s not Government regulation. It’s multi-stakeholders coming together, and no one of them could solve these problems. It’s very important for us to keep that in mind as we rethink how we’re going to do this in the next ten years, to take stock of the one thing that is working to protect the Internet’s integrity and stability today and to build on that success.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you.

>> SIR RICHARD TILT: First of all, the question that came in about protecting vulnerable children. I hope that the activity that we’re engaged in offers something on that front. It doesn’t offer everything, but it is a contribution.

And the question about what happens with a family where there are children or adults who are deaf or indeed presumably vulnerable in some other way, well, because of course all the material we deal with is criminal, people are committing criminal offenses in making that material and in propagating it. And there are officials where we’re able to get the police to intervene and to find the people who are making it because of what we see and because our analysts become skilled in all of this. And I do agree with what you’re saying. It must be the most obvious thing to do is to direct a lot of police resources at finding the people who are making it.

Unfortunately, and certainly in the UK situation, I think many people would argue that not nearly enough resources are put into it. And we’re filling a gap. I mean, we are either removing material, because the police find it extraordinarily difficult to actually track people down. We have – just as we have good relationships with police organizations in the UK, we have good relationships with Interpol, just as a tiny example.

In the last couple years, 12 individual children have been rescued from these situations because we have seen the images and passed them to the police. It’s tiny, but it’s something that we can do.

If I could have a final thought that I could leave you with, is that Internet should not become a medium where crime can flourish. That is not any sort of freedom for any of us as citizens, nor, indeed, for our civil societies.

>> LUIGI GAMBARDELLA: First, I would like to react and to clarify one Twitter I received from Nigel. I don’t know if he is here in the room. Nigel is here from ICANN. He said “Did I hear Luigi state that human rights can be separated from Internet rights?” I didn’t say that. I said when we speak about free, we should clarify free. Should the Internet be free? And we disagree on that. And whether we speak about freedom, which is different. You work for ICANN. I think you have a salary, also a good salary, you’re not working for free, I imagine. So, right? So I was referring to that, and not to the freedom and human rights, which we respect a lot. And I think the operators are very committed in defining human rights. So don’t play on such important matter.

But if I may say a few things. I think here that clearly at least for me, and I’m not an expert on this, I think that what is – has been said, what is a criminal law is a criminal law. This is a matter of Government. And we as operators, stakeholders, we have to facilitate in order to allow them to do what has to be done in order to assure that if there is a violation, the law should be pursued.

But I think here what is important is that there are some aspects, we should not be naive, that are in the hands of the Government already. National security, it’s a matter of Government. So obviously we can discuss that, but there are issues that are really – and what we should ask is there should be much more cooperation among Governments, among the police, who are dedicated to such kind of matters.

What is important on the data of the country, and I think this is key is one thing, ensure that there is transparency when there are such kind of data. We watch – we very welcome this model, but I think it is important to be sure that there is a real transparency when such kind of discussions are done.

Another last aspect is regarding antitrust. I agree with you. I don’t know, you should antitrust should regulate. In Europe there are several investigations against big Internet players, you know that. I think you read it in the newspapers, also, quite recently. So I think that in Europe we have all the tools and we have all the capacity to overlook whether the behavior that should be considered and then we will see what the antitrust will decide to do.

Thank you very much.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you. And the reaction on the right side for the questions, and then we will come to the final one.

>> JOAO CONFRANIA: At the national level we have been working with the regulated parties on issues of defending procedures to improve transparency in the matters of network neutrality, network integrity and availability of services.

We think that we are still in the early stages of the cooperation process in this type of cooperation conflict type of relationship that we normally have with operators. But right now, we feel that the regulatory framework provided by the the universal service directive is appropriate or the main public objectives that we as communications regulators are supposed to defend.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you. Janis Karklins?

>> JANIS KARKLINS: I think we have to clarify. When we speak about regulation, we are speaking about regulation in a very broad sense. It’s not just writing laws and policies. This is more about ways, how we are approaching issues.

Literacy was mentioned. And indeed the educational aspect is important and needs not to be neglected and left outside this debate.

Because what we see in the past ten years, that International debate has clearly shifted already and is going even further from the debate about physical access to Internet and infrastructure development to actual use of Internet. And when it comes to actual use of Internet, we are talking about human behavior, which is fairly unpredictable. And we need to sort of continue that engagement in order to understand complexities related to actual use of Internet, because the technological developments as mentioned this morning are much faster than our understanding about the impact of our understanding of the technological developments of the human behavior.

If UNESCO studies prove that the handwriting of kids at school is sort of gradually deteriorating, but their ability of typing is improving, if we know that the next big thing that is coming is voice recognition, then of course the unintended consequence may be that kids will lose also abilities of typing. They will not acquire ability of handwriting. What are we talking about? What education system we are looking at in the future? These are very complex issues that do not come into mind at first glance, but they have profound impact on our societies. So that is why these types of reflections are very, very important.

>> ANA NEVES: Thank you very much.

Well, I think that we didn’t really conclude anything. But I think that we move on, on our reflection.

And I have a final question, I think – I know that it is too late. But this final question I have to put. So it’s for all our panelists. So do you think that a set of nonbinding high level principles for global Internet governance would be helpful as an orientation or guideline for the Internet? If yes, who and where such a universal document for the Human Rights Declaration should be negotiated and adopted? Do you see the need to specific intergovernmental treaties to regulate specific elements of Internet management, applications and use or not? Final question and then lunch.

Fadi?

>> FADI CHEHADE: I believe a universal declaration framework, as you suggested, may be a good idea. But it’s just a framework. And it’s a framework that guides. And I think the framework that was created years ago on human rights has assisted many people in countries to actually create good policies.

Having said that, it’s critical how we build that framework. If we end up building that framework again from the top down, from the intergovernmental approach, I think that framework will not stand. That framework has to be built on the principles of the Internet, which is a more lateral, more horizontal environment, where people participate and build consensus together. If such a consensus achieves that, and maybe the IGF is a good place for that to happen, then we very much would support it.

>> SIR RICHARD TILT: I would certainly support such a framework, presumably under the aegis of the UN. I don’t see very much sign of us getting very near to it. But I guess these things are so significant that they are well worth looking at for many years. The benefits later are worth the effort now. But there is not a lot of signs of it at the moment.

>> LUIGI GAMBARDELLA: Yes. I think it might be difficult, but I believe what Fadi was saying.

And if I may, because this is important, I forgot to say this at the beginning, I would like to thank Fadi for what he is doing. Since – with the – with his leadership, we saw that, if I may, Fadi, ICANN made a lot of progress and we are very happy as operators. And also we like your engagement and the way that you are very open to discuss with everything. And I think this is the right way to do the things.

And I think we should congratulate, all of us, with Fadi, because he is showing the leadership and it’s very important. So I took this occasion for thanking what you are doing and your deeds.

>> JANIS KARKLINS: I think we need to work towards that consensus, and that consensus will emerge when the time will be right. My observation from the intergovernmental practices is that if a very good concept is proposed at the wrong time, it may not stand. So therefore we need to know when the time will be right, we will reach the consensus on the principles related to the Internet.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Any idea when the time is right?

>> JANIS KARKLINS: When the time is right, it will be right.

(Laughter)

>> ANA NEVES: Good.

>> JOAO CONFRANIA: Well, the Universal Declarations on Human Rights assured a single historical moment and the power of that declaration came from that moment. I’m not sure that right now we have a comparable situation concerning Internet Governance and perhaps we should expect for the time to be right. Not yet time, perhaps.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Well, thank you very much.

This brings us to the end of this session. As I said at the beginning, we will continue this discussion for the next years. We are waiting until the time is right. Probably 2015, 2020, 2025. The Internet will certainly continue and we will have a lot of other opportunities to discuss this.

But I see here from the activities that there is some housekeeping information. Please be quiet and do we have to announce something?

>> ANA NEVES: Yes. Some housekeeping –

>> We all follow Ana.

>> ANA NEVES: Second floor lunch. That’s it. And the time, well, we follow our schedule. So we will start the sessions at 2:30, the workshops, and the next plenary will be at 4:30.

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: So you have a shorter lunch. Enjoy it. Thank you very much.