The rules of the digital world – economy versus human rights – PL 03 2016

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10 June 2016 | 9:45-11:00
Programme overview 2016

Session teaser

Are human rights, including right to privacy, being redefined by the economics of the Internet?

Session description

Internet intermediaries have created new services which challenge traditional industries leading them to call for regulatory intervention. The European Union and many European countries are considering legal changes which many civil society groups fear could hurt core human rights and fundamental values, including non-discrimination, right to freedom of opinion and expression and right to privacy.  

How do liability protections for Internet companies, implemented by EU and Council of Europe member states, safeguard the rights and freedoms of European Internet users? What efforts are governments making, and how do they dialogue with industry and civil society, to address challenges to online rights and freedoms of their citizens?

Keywords

digital economy, intermediary liability, protections and safeguards for users/consumers, right to freedom of opinion and expression, right to privacy, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the EU e-Commerce Directive

Format

The session involves the representatives from all stakeholder groups in order to emphasize the importance to respect the multi-stakeholder model in internet related issues. Panelists will have the opportunity to give comments to the previous VIP panel discussion. The big part of this plenary session will be guided through interactive engagement with the audience.

Further reading

People

  • Focal Point: Ms Piret Urb, Political Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of ESTONIA
  • Key participants
  • Ms Kaja Kallas, Member of the European Parliament (ALDE), co-rapporteur for the report "Towards a Digital Single Market Act" (see note 1)
  • Mr Dirk Van Eeckhout, Belgian Ambassador to the Council of Europe, the Thematic Coordinator for the Information Policy (TC-INF) at the Council of Europe (see note 2)
  • Dr Christina Angelopoulos, Information Law and Policy Centre, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London (see note 3)
  • Mr Joe McNamee, Executive Director of EDRi (European Digital Rights) (see note 4)
  • Mr Stefan Krawczyk, Associate General Counsel & Head Government Relations International, eBay Inc. (see note 5)
  • Moderator: Ms Emily Taylor, Profile Page
  • Remote moderator: Mr Lee Hibbard, DG1, Human Rights and Rule of Law, the Council of Europe
  • Org team
  • Ms Piret Urb, Political Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of ESTONIA
  • Mr Christian Borggreen, Director, International Policy, Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA Europe)
  • Ms Louise Bennett, The Chartered Institute for IT
  • Mr Charles Bradley, Head of Strategy and Operations, Global Partners Digital
  • Mr Lee Hibbard, DG1, Human Rights and Rule of Law, the Council of Europe
  • Reporter: Mr Luukas Kristjan Ilves, Counsellor for Digital Affairs at the Estonian Permanent Representation to the EU (see note 6)

Current discussion

See the discussion tab on the upper left side of this page.

Conference call. Schedules and minutes

  • dates for virtual meetings or coordination calls
  • short summary of calls or email exchange
  • be as open and transparent as possible in order to allow others to get involved and contact you
  • use the wiki not only as the place to publish results but also to summarize and publish the discussion process

Mailing list

Contact: pl3@eurodig.org

Messages

  • It's not private companies' job to solve public policy problems, especially the small startup that needs room to innovate. Hold big vs small companies to different standards? We expect responsible behavior from companies.
  • Regulation also provides predictability and legal clarity. Courts in Europe making more waves than legislator.
  • CoE study on intermediary liability, filtering. Useful to companies. Could put in a database and update continuously. Benchmarking, standards, capacity building?
  • We need to get security services in the room talking with us. Government responsibility is not to violate trust we have in them, which is what US did w PRISM. U.S. citizens want privacy too.

Video record

See the video record in our youtube channel

Transcript

Provided by: Caption First, Inc., P.O. Box 3066, Monument, CO 80132, Phone: +001-719-481-9835, www.captionfirst.com


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.


>> EMILY TAYLOR: So you’ve all be sitting quietly for the last well nearly an hour. Thank you, very much. And thank you to our speakers. What I’d like to do now, we have panelists who I can see dotted around the room. Could I ask you to take your seats for the next discussion? But what I would like to do is to give the audience an opportunity to raise any questions or remarks or reactions to what you’ve just heard. We have a fantastic panel coming along now who can pick up with great authority a lot of the subject areas that we heard in the last speakers. So who would like to pose a question or should I just go with the panel? Anybody?

>> (Speaker off microphone).

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Great, Ian come forward; there should be a microphone down here. I would like about 3 or 4 remarks from the audience if we can before coming in and introducing our panel and getting their thoughts.

>> Shall I, Emily?

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Yes, please introduce yourself and crack on with your question.

>> I think it was very positive the discussion you were just having Emily with the minister about trying to get security much more integrated into these multistakeholder debates because as Kathy Brown also said yesterday those debates lose out from what they can gain from being in EuroDIG and things like it. I think a way perhaps the technical community the companies and academia would help with that is to really have a lot more of the developers and the designers come along and get stuck into the debates because they have a huge impact on people. And all of the people who work on privacy and technology, many of those technologies could really address some of the legal and social concerns raised at these meetings but they won’t if those people don’t come along and explain what they could do and hopefully get the CEOs and the people at the top of the businesses get those into their widely used browsers.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you, Ian. I have a question for you. How would you do that? How would you get them into the room? All of us in different ways are on this circuit and overrun with requests to spend three days here or there talk then and it will be good for us. What motivation would they have?

>> Good question. Perhaps try to do co located meetings. So maybe think in 2 or 3 years could you do EuroDIG in the same time as place as perhaps IGF.

>> It was said earlier that we need to start talking to security people. Actually it’s the other way around. They need to start talking to us because usually they are the ones avoiding us and disregarding our input. At least that’s a lot of our experience when trying to defend the digital rights. Thank you.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Does anybody feel like having a crack at that remark or not? It seems to have silenced everybody. So it’s not that we won’t speak to them, it’s that they won’t speak to us. I often find people in conflict situations have the same sort of responses but I think that the you know, you just have to keep trying the dialogue. I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. Anyway, welcome to our panel. Very nice to have you all here today. I think what I’ll do is run through and introduce the panel to you. And then just perhaps ask you to give some initial reactions to the speeches we just heard and the subject matter. There’s an awful lot to get stuck into. I’ll start with you. This is ladies and gentlemen, Kaja Kallas who is a member of the European parliament and co rapporteur of the report towards digital single market. So I imagine you’re fairly well embedded with ideas about geo blocking and all of the other themes that come through on the digital single market. But one of the things that we were talking about yesterday is about why it is that Europe doesn’t seem to have produced the entrepreneurs that other countries or other regions have produced. Why do you think that is? Is it because we are, you know, is it something in our DNA or something about the regulatory environment?

>> KALA KALLAS: Well first of all I don’t think it’s in our DNA but at the same time I think it is about the environment and also mentality that we have in Europe. What I very often said that the mentality is not a very risk prone in Europe. And if you just can’t take risks, if you have to be 100% successful, then you also have zero gain if you have zero risk. And if we treat failure as failure in Europe then also all the people who try of course you don’t succeed the first time so it may be easier to fail elsewhere. But I just wanted to come back to the comment that was made about the security people. I actually agree that very often we have the discussions only amongst the policy makers and the companies, and the consumers; but when it comes to human rights, when it comes to really tackling hate speech, all the problems that we have and the discussions there, then we should have the security people on these panels because then you really have the debates because on one side of course there are arguments that we have to survey everything and try to get the bad guys in the Internet but at the same time there are so many risks related to that if we start to do that. And at the same time also we have to understand that people’s behaviors have changed very much. So although when we have the discussions about the security, then we have calls like, you know, you shouldn’t have encrypted communication and it should be open to police to look at; whereas if we would have same conversations in the offline world that please all the people keep your doors open because police want to come and see what you do there then we would say it’s absurd but on the Internet discussions it’s on the table. The same of course we have to look at the other side that people also do things that they wouldn’t do in their offline world like post their pictures on their front doors or windows about their children or post a sign on their door that by the way I’m not home; I’m on holiday in Spain. So they wouldn’t do this offline but they do this online. So I have to keep this in mind that the trust is very important but also how to find the balance.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Anybody who wants to ask a question? We just heard a lot of speeches so my plan is if anybody wants to ask a question of the panelists or contribute to this conversation, please do so. Please come up to the microphone, please raise your hand, and don’t worry, we will carry on talking but if you would like to join in this conversation, you’re very, very welcome to.

Okay. I will move to the next panelist. You’re going to have to help me with your surname, I’m so sorry.

>> STEFAN KRAWCZYK: Krawczyk.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Stefan who is the associate general council and head of government relations international at eBay. And I think this is a very nice link with the remarks you were just making. Here you are in Europe as a European working for a global company. Do you sense a difference of approach in terms of risk taking and how do we get an entrepreneurial spirit in Europe while protecting Human Rights? And the role of companies in take down, I know there’s an awful lot of work that eBay does in that record with regard to counterfeit goods, for example. So you have responsibilities, you take responsibilities, how do you do so in a way that doesn’t end up eroding human rights?

>> STEFAN KRAWCZYK: Thank you for that question. It’s probably one of the most difficult questions and we have been struggling with that for a good decade if not more, probably 15 years by now. What we see is that the more the outside world thinks that something is really easy for an Internet tech company to do, the more them actually burden that company with doing it and that can range from tax police saying listen, could you please give me the sales figures of all your users in the Milan area, we just want to have a look at them and see maybe if we can pick out a few that are selling more than a private person should be selling, or it could be something that we faced in Germany even by the German constitution. They said, well, if you have a producer of children’s chairs there are also a few cheeky producers who make imitations of them and they put them online. EBay, could you please check every single listing of a children’s chair that may look like the stocker children’s chair and if you think it’s infringing their design rights please take it down. And the list goes on and on and on which for a company like us is extremely burdensome.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Do you feel that people are just hoisting that on you in the absence of anything else or they know you can technically do it?

>> Absolutely. But we come back to the innovation piece here. A big company like eBay has the Bandwidth to deal with a couple of those cases. Can you imagine a European startup who wants to engage in the same line of business that gets this burden slapped on them immediately? They will not even begin with their business, they will drop it and move somewhere else. And Europe is really if this is allowed to be the general rule; Europe is driving themselves into the ground.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Those requests are they solely coming from Europe then?

>> They’re coming everywhere, obviously. In the regulatory system certain courses are member states and Germany not being the least of the smallest actually come with rulings like that that really put innovation and freedom of speech in danger because we put a responsibility and the liability on intermediaries that create a situation where they actually feel the need to do this in order to stay out of the line of fire but it isn’t the right balance of duties. And there is no legal check and balances that are in place.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: So you’re just mentioning intermediary liabilities so I’m probably going to come to you next Christina if I may and then back to you. Dr. Christina Angelopoulos who is actually you’re based in the University of London aren’t you at the advanced legal studies.

>> Yes.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: And we just heard on judgments of intermediary liabilities and imposing more and more burdens. Let’s think about this overarching question. Are we actually stifling the economics of the Internet by imposing burdens on poor eBay and poor all of the other companies, or, should they have some sort of duty of care?

>> DR. CHRISTINA ANGELOPOULOS: I think that’s an excellent question. I’m not an economist. What I do think is very important from the legal perspective is to dig into the legal principals and figure out what a law base solution would be. Once we figure out what those parameters are that point we can start to consider what we can do with economic aspects and how we can take an approach that would be best suited to invigorating a European economy. I think what has happened a lot is Information Society has thrown a lot of our settled legal conventions into disarray so we are being forced to retract to very basics principals and trying to re create sort of ideas of how we go about settling what traditionally has been situated in much more mundane areas in criminal law and so forth. So what we are seeing is a reopening of the discussion, normative deliberation on the basic underlying values of our legal systems and trying to figure out how we can approach that. I think one starting point would be to try to calm down a bit and see exactly how we used to approach those things in the past and how we can reinterpret existing laws and apply them.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: So we should all just try and keep calm. I think this is quite a good piece of advice for the Internet because we are always told the Internet changes everything. And of course the technology is incredibly exciting and disruptive. But there are lessons that we can learn from the last couple of thousand years of you’ve been struggling with these issues for a whole 15 years. And actually you see similar sort of dialogue and struggles going on in ancient Greece about similar issues and how you get the balance right between, you know, the strong arm of the law and people’s freedoms. Perhaps I can come to you, Joe McNamee who is the Executive Director of EDRi, how do we get the answer? How do we mainly I know that you’re very strong on Human Rights. What I had like to you do is try to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur. How do you make sure they can thrive? Because we all need businesses to thrive without squishing Human Rights.

>> JOE McNAMEE: I’d like to come back on the liability issue because I think that’s quite central. First of all in that context I have to praise the Council of Europe for the study. It was a really brave decision to look in detail at what the member states were doing, look in detail at the law, look in detail at the practices. And I’m amazed that it was done and I’m amazed that it was done so well.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: And it’s hard hitting and it names names.

>> JOE McNAMEE: It says a lot of things we have been saying for years which is nice to get independent one of the things the Secretary General said was with regard to legal activity. We need a clear and united stand and that means dealing with the problems in a comprehensive way and there’s an episode of the Simpsons where Homer Simpson gets elected on the slogan of why can’t somebody else do it? For most of the history of Internet regulation that is how regulation is seen. And it’s the approach of politicians is sometimes it’s an almost beautiful ideological vision that they can give eBay a problem. It could be a liability problem or it could be a public relations problem. And while eBay is solving that problem, eBay is going to accidently solve a public policy problem. And it’s going to accidently solve this problem in a proportionate necessary predictable way magically. In a changing Internet it’s going to continue fixing it as the Internet changes. It’s going to fix it durably while not creating any counter-productive side effects for the public policy objective.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: This is sounding great.

>> JOE McNAMEE: But it is blind ideology. I’m sorry but as wonderful as eBay is and even if that were to be the case for eBay it may not be the case for the companies that are startups.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: And it’s not eBay’s actual job, is it?

>> JOE McNAMEE: That’s what I’m saying. We are expecting them to accidently solve public policy problems while solving the liability problems that we are giving them.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Doing it loud and clear.

>> JOE McNAMEE: As the Secretary General said, clear united approach to dealing with problems.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you. And that leads nicely to our speaker from the Council of Europe who I think is not an ambassador.

>> And I’m not with the Council of Europe.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I’m so sorry. Apologies, ladies and gentlemen, especially to you ambassador. I saw the panel coming up. This is embarrassing. Terribly sorry. Perhaps I can come to you, excuse me.

>> Mr. Ambassador.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: You started your remarks. Ambassador, I’m soap glad that you’ve joined us. I was wondering where you were.

>> I was listening. Ambassadors usually talk but I was for a moment Pennsylvania exception and listening to a very interesting conversation.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you very much. Of course as not only the ambassador to the Council of Europe this is great, thank you. Very Internet solution. Solving things by accident. So as well as being Belgian ambassador to the Council of Europe you’re also the thematic coordinator so you’re the person, the focal point to speak about this report which is causing a lot of excitement. It’s nice when you have both Civil Society and others welcoming these sorts of reports. It must have been quite quite a challenge to put this together. And I’d like to know where it’s leading. And we heard from Secretary General Jagland that is going to maybe create some standards which I’m hearing from different people could be very helpful in championing Human Rights.

>> DIRK VAN EECKHOUT: Thank very much for this question and the reference to this study. I do think that the study is a game changer. It’s the first time that actually as said before by you that we have a state of play. How in the 47 countries on the continent, how is this situation when something needs to be filtered, blocked or taken down, what regulation where applies? So actually it’s a very comprehensive study. And the Swiss institute put all that work in it. But it’s the let’s say the easy part. Because your question is a difficult part. So what next? What do we do with this study?

Why could it be useful? I think for a company it must be very useful to see what regulations apply in what countries because if you’re doing business on the Internet, you’re not doing business on the Internet necessarily just to doing business in your own city or country, but with a global reach if possible. And then that is very useful material. So we could think of updating this transferring this into a database continually updated. It is not only interesting for businesses but also for NOGs to see where there are gray zones, where there is nothing. What is the Council of Europe doing? On the basis of this it could construct best practices. It could give orientation recommendations, not hard law but recommendations. This is what we see. This works. This is well accepted. We see there’s a gray zone here so please get your act together, do something. What does the Council of Europe also do, it is monitoring. How is this applied? Because it’s one thing to have regulation, it’s quite another thing to apply. And the third thing that we do is okay, there are countries where these things are not that developed. Well, Council of Europe does capacity building. We organize training seminars. Actually together with other international organizations, sometimes with the EU we are thinking of doing this with the ITU. So these are the three fundamental core elements of what we do. It’s benchmarking, standard setting. It is monitoring. And it is actually capacity building.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you. Just because you’re sitting next to each other and because I’m still recovering from the last five minutes of shock of my mystery panelists, sorry. Could you just both of you both Kaja Kallas coming from the European union side and the digital market and the single market, how do you think this study and the Council of Europe’s role in the Human Rights aspect will support each other and how are you going to work together to achieve that?

>> KALA KALLAS: I think the study is always very useful. And it is useful in that respect to understand what is there and what needs to be done in different member states.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Were you surprised of some of the practices?

>> KALA KALLAS: Not really because we know also the practices even in European Union not even wider but even in European Union we have differences. And I think when we have the discussions of unified rules and understandings, it is very important but the question of course is always the implementation. And different countries see the rules and their implementation differently. And so we still end up in a position where we don’t have a unified approach because for one country because our histories are different as well from where we come from. And therefore the attitudes of people and the policy makers are different. So I’m well, not really entirely skeptical but cautious being optimistic as well that we can solve these issues. But I think the fundamental question first is to understand that these are the problems and together actually we can have the best practices and as Internet is global, not European wide even, we should look at these things in a uniform way to have it under control. For example the same what was brought as an example as child abuse online. So it’s not the European thing, it’s a global issue. And so if it is regulated in one country, it moves to another. So it has to have common approach everywhere.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: One of the things that programs I can perhaps people from the audience might be able to pick up is we also have to think about the competitiveness of Europe as a block globally and if we actually weigh down our businesses and entrepreneurs with a lot of regulation we are not going to thrive. There are already a lot of worries about transatlantic data flows, there might even be worries about data flows when the U.K. and the European Union in a few weeks’ time, who knows with our surveillance laws. Something to look forward to.

Anyway, are there any questions from the audience? I’m going to come to you takes first question. But please there are microphones there and there. You have an amazingly knowledgeable panel and an incredibly interesting subject. We can talk but we would rather hear from you. So please stand up and ask a question. Thank you. Ambassador.

>> DIRK VAN EECKHOUT: I would still like to make an additional comment about not burdening companies with excessive ruling. Well exactly, that’s why we prefer to have a dialogue. That’s why we prefer to have a platform with business. We know that the Internet business is a creative dynamic process. And these two things can go hand in hand. You can either wait for a wheel going of your car having an accident, have a reputational accident or you can be aware of what your risks are. Does this put European countries at a disadvantage? Let’s look at the conventions of the Council of Europe are not only signed by the 47 countries. So these are things that are globally of interest. If you’re doing business in United States or Canada or where ever, you’d like to know how actually crime can be persecuted and what are the rules applied? So it is not something that is an extra burden. It can also be seen as a guarantee to protect your business.

Another important convention that is globally, the Istanbul convention about abuse and violence against women. Do you want your company to be associated with a tendency that is careless in this respect? Not at all. And it’s a global convention. The Estonian minister of foreign affairs was talking about upscaling. Some of the conventions of the Council of Europe are not just European; they’re upscale at the global level because I think they are universally seen as your clients that are also citizens. Instead of waiting for decision over the European court of human rights, we could have this Human Rights by design in a dialogue where you tell us what is possible and we tell what we think that your clients think is necessary.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I have a question from the audience and then I’ve got several people wanting to come in on that. Should we go to the audience and then come back to you.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. My personal obsession, we talk about economic growth, innovation, and we talk about people centered. The user and the citizen. So maybe it’s a big question but I find this mantra maybe just avoiding the elephant in the room. The government should things on behalf of the citizens for the citizens. Shut the door. The big company raising the bar for the small company. And then we say innovation, economic growth, what is the development? Where is it? It should be human rights, the fundamental that we never change. Is responsibility linked to human rights?

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Who would like to pick up on that one? Joe? And you, Stefan? And I know that Kaja okay, go for it.

>> STEFAN KRAWCZYK: Unsurprisingly I would tend to agree with that statement. I think there are certain mantras that keep being repeated until they become accepted. One of them is that Internet intermediaries can solve all the world’s problems. Another one is regulation equals burden. That’s not true. Regulation allows predictability, allows structure. If you want to remove regulatory burdens on car drivers in Brussels we can remove the traffic lights and let’s see how happy everyone is with the burden removed.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I think there was an experiment about that in the Netherlands, wasn’t there? It worked brilliantly.

>> So well we are all doing it now. And briefly in terms of Council of Europe conventions, we in terms of conventions that can be signed by non Europe countries we should remember convenience 108 and rigorous implementation of that

>> EMILY TAYLOR: For people not on top of their numbers can you tell us what 108 is.

>> It’s on data protection.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you. Kaja Kallas.

>> KALA KALLAS: Well I wanted to come back on this conflict between the companies and the overall or the consumer. So actually there is no such conflict. I think also with the governments as well as the companies, because everything that is done in Internet also for the companies is based on trust. So if the company loses the trust of the citizens it also loses the business. So we have studies in European parliament also showing that the consumers have more and more power. They have never had that much power before because of all the feedback systems and everything. So actually they are also, you know making the case. And I think this Apple case or their conflict with CCIA was an example and I think the company gained a lot with posing to these ideas coming from CCIA.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Press that point a little bit because we do hear a lot there’s a shared interest in trust all around everybody’s interests are in fact aligned and of course that’s true, of course it is. But at the same time it’s not true as well, isn’t it? And the businesses have slightly different drivers so if Stefan’s company were asked to take down something that may or may not be illegal, you’re going to err on the side of caution because you’re going to protect your own liability and that might not be what you sitting from the Council of Europe would recommend to happen because it might potentially stifle freedom of expression and so on. So while it’s true that trust is important, we also have to be a bit real here about how realistic it is for people to switch between services when you have an increasingly concentrated market for the global platforms. We love them, they’re brilliant. But it’s not so easy to be on a social network with one person.

>> KALA KALLAS: Two. And of course the issue of both importing your content to another platform, I think it’s a different issue. But we can say we also had a study that people trust the online platforms the most so this is what what I wanted to comment also was the regulations do not create the burden but also can be improving the environment. So I also can bring the example from Estonia so from 2000 we had a law on digital identity and digital signature. And it has improved a lot our environment as well. And giving the security for the people that you can have encrypted communication, you can have also what is fundamental for this trust that you can understand that who is who on Internet. Because what the Internet or the anonymity in the Internet brings is the feeling of impunity that I can do whatever and what is the hate speech also about is nobody knows that it’s me. I would never say such things out loud but if everybody is properly identified so that everybody understands that okay this is the person, would you really say it loud then? I think this is a very fundamental issue that we should have the digital identities for Internet.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I’m going to go to you, sir.

>> Sorry for disrupt but I think I’ve been regularly invited and we have a few things to say so here I am.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I’m delighted to welcome you.

>> We are supposedly the voice of the digital industry in Europe. And on privacy we have a few things to say. One is that as you heard about security as well as privacy there’s no position in our mind between economics and privacy. Economics is not stifling or let alone killing privacy. The economics of the Internet is helping everybody express themselves so I think freedom is the best way to make the most of people. So it’s a simplification, there are problems as there are problems in the physical world when you let people free.

So we also have to make sure the people are educated to use the power correctly and I think that’s a collective work and all collective society, government and industry together.

But the other thing I would like to say is that we are not the only ones spreading chaos because the judiciary sometimes spread chaos. For example, I don’t think we mentioned right the right to be forgotten but it’s unfair what used to be a product of governments of the judiciary to tell what request is receivable, what is not to a private company. So they did the right thing. But probably they were not expecting to have this role to play. Same thing when if you expect ISP’s to play a role of policeman you need to hire more skills. How much we love justice when supporters are on copyright, they have a record of telling us you are on the winning side of the argument on copyright. On data protection, a case between Europe and the U.S. wasn’t made any easier. As a private citizen I don’t think it’s very healthy to have this confusion between the role of government, the role of industry and the role of Civil Society. Democracy is based on balance of powers and you don’t need to have this sort of legal arm’s race building up and then have to rely on the judiciary to tell the future, our future. One thing is that they lack the speed. And the other thing they lack consistency precisely because it takes years to get another decision, it’s another judge.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you, very much. And thank you for raising the role of the judiciary. It really highlights how changing this environment is and the sort of part of the perhaps part of the down side of everyone being responsible for solving the Internet problems is that everyone has a go. And it sometimes does create confusion as you mentioned. I’ve got a question from the audience. And please do come forward with any other questions. And I know the other panelists are eager to jump in as well.

>> AUDIENCE: Yes, so I’m Jeff. I’ve two small comments one to the gentleman from eBay which made an altruistic claim that the care about small startups not overly burdening them with regulatory burdens by the government. Of course eBay and Google and Facebook are targeted because they are so big so there’s not much of an interest for law enforcement agencies to target these smaller entities with such requests. With great power comes great responsibility. Second, the fraternization of innovation. I personally would rather of 1 or 2 privacy friendly than 20 that might share my data with hundreds of different parties across the world that might not even exist.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Or be hackable, for that matter.

>> AUDIENCE: Yes, indeed. So instead of trying to copy Silicon Valley successes, why not in Europe focus on building sustainable technology with fundamental human rights from the ground up.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Isn’t it interesting, I don’t know if you were on the Internet of Things session yesterday and saw the presentation of Ross LaJeunesse of Google but one of the things that struck me was the brains behind the textile threads seemed to be European person, yeah?

>> KALA KALLAS: It is said if you want finance go to U.S. If you want engineers, go to Europe. So the engineers come from Europe. And I also agree we should focus on the strengths that we have in Europe and build on the strengths rather than try to overcome our weaknesses which will still remain our weaknesses. And this is definitely the approach. And regarding the privacy, I think we have a different approach with the U.S. in general and how we see privacy as human rights here and all that is relating to Internet and communication on Internet is the same. So I think people are becoming more aware of these topics as well. And then it’s also a business case for companies.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Christina.

>> DR. CHRISTINA ANGELOPOULOS: I just had a comment. I wanted to go back to what we were discussing before about the existence of a clash between intermediaries on the one hand and users on the other side.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Do you have a response to the question from the audience at all?

>> DR. CHRISTINA ANGELOPOULOS: Yes because I think that it fits in with that point very well. I think that the essentially part of the problem we are facing over here is we are trying to address the issues in very broad strokes. What I would argue in favor would be if I can delve into the nitty gritty and pass down each individual case as it comes and pass down as it comes. I think with regard to the question of clashes that brings to the question of balances. Sometimes we have individual rights of users that clash with each other. In those cases I think the secret that comes with the answer that the courts have been giving which is fair balance and in that case we have to that’s why I was delighted to hear from the Council of Europe. Next move forward would have benchmarking. I think these are all considerations that should be taken into consideration when we try to figure out exactly what a fair balance would be in the context of benchmarking exercise. So one of the things that I think should be taken into account is for example the size of the company. I don’t think we should hold big companies to the same standard that we hold small companies and that is one of the aspects, one of the many aspects that we ought to start addressing individually and trying to find a way to fit them into the discussion.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you.

>> Just to echo what you just said about privacy and maybe I will try to answer part of the question privacy is maybe should be changing as well because we are human beings. And I would like to quote a professor, he says in other words what you said, that privacy is like our lungs in Europe and privacy is like underwear in the U.S. So you can get a change of underwear but you cannot change your lungs. If it’s not lungs but kidneys, why are we able to donate our kidneys in Europe and why are we not authorized to donate our so maybe that’s a question for policy makers. The point is that it’s always changing in privacy as well as the rest. I don’t mean it shouldn’t be a fundamental right, privacy.

It’s all about scaling up for businesses to grow. I think one piece is missing is regulation. I think there is easier access to capital in the U.S. but also they have a huge market and we don’t have a single market. We have heard people say how much this struggle, I mean, the people in charge of building this digital single market but it’s a pity that in the 21st century we are still trying to build the market and we are not there yet. The digital single market strategy is brilliant, visionary, but we are not there yet. It’s not only the judiciary, but it’s the whole balance of powers that shouldn’t be falling on the shoulders of business because it has been said before business is not all the time supposed to fix what other people elected to fix or are not able to fix. Thank you.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I’m going to come to you Stefan for a reaction as the business person on that panel. I think that I have everybody else waiting. And please, we of got 15 minutes left in this session so this is a moment now to pose your questions and have the panel react to it. Thank you, very much.

>> STEFAN KRAWCZYK: I first want to thank the gentleman in the audience for paying a big complement to eBay as an altruistic company which we are. We care a lot about the small people and the small and medium size business that sell on make a great living on eBay. What I basically heard if you’re big you should be subject to a set of rules, if you’re small you don’t have to. I don’t think that is what we have in mind. And what I’m saying is if you create an environment in which any company operating on the Internet is subject to duties of care and notices and stay down, you force all of them to implement monitoring systems to stay clean.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Stefan, I think we have

>> Excuse me, I really have to intervene. Big companies know that with power comes responsibility. That’s actually what the dialogue is about. Nobody is hitting on big companies because they’re big. What is the situation when you start from a small company and you become important? You first provide a private service but at some point you become so important that it becomes a public service. And that’s when indeed responsibility behavior applies. And what are we talking about regulations? Well, your customers expect to be treated in the same way in an intuitive trust that you don’t want to lose and that actually government needs to be sure that it is upheld. This process should be as less cumbersome as possible because it should not it should certainly not be something that prevents or becomes a burden on innovation. But on the other hand, the train left the station in the sense that we all expect companies to be trustworthy and behaving responsible. I’m referring to the UN; I’m referring to the European Union’s code of conduct. This is just the expression of an expectation of responsible behavior. And indeed it has costs but it also has benefits namely to trusts of your clients.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Quick reaction (applause)

>> I think this warrants a reaction because I don’t want myself to be misunderstood as saying that big companies don’t want to have responsibilities. I’m saying that the kinds of liabilities that are put upon us entail general monitoring and filtering obligations that are at odds with very basic human rights and that as our kind panel chair said, it actually puts you in the position to rather be on the safe side and get rid of everything and thus kill the business of small people and private people just to be safe and not to be liable. And that’s where the problem lies. We take our responsibilities and everybody knows that eBay does. So I think that we should put things in the right perspective here.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you I’m going to take this question from the audience and then I know you’ve been waiting for ages, Joseph. Please.

>> AUDIENCE: Hi. While I wouldn’t deny governments that like

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Would you mind speaking up and speaking slower so we can understand what you’re saying.

>> AUDIENCE: On the one hand I wouldn’t deny that there are governments that like the idea of putting burdens on companies so that they don’t have to do it themselves but isn’t it true from the perspective of regulators it is difficult to think they can get access to the kind of information they would need to have that’s in the databases of the companies if they wanted to do the kind of scanning you look the database to find the problem cases? The company it’s true the company has the database, they have the access and at least as an academic we know it’s difficult to try to do recent projects, API’s keep changing, those kinds of things, that’s one element. The other thing is the collapse of safe harbor agreement I would say is not the fault of the courts, it’s the fault of the security agencies in the U.S. that abuse their powers and that way violated safe harbor.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you, very much. So we have two elements to that, we have a safe harbor element which I think we haven’t covered in much so that would probably be a good last ten minutes out there. But also to the access to information and the difficulty for research and changing API as and so on. Joe can I come to you first on that and then I think probably in the last minute sweep around the panel.

>> JOE McNAMEE: The issue of big companies is a significant one. The Internet has been an amazing tool in creating new public spaces. And some companies have been exceptionally good in helping to broaden that public space but they are they govern that public space. And therefore in line with what you said you expect a certain agree of predictability from them. I’m involved in a project called onlinecensorship.org where you can learn a lot about the abuses that are happening with regard to content being censored.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I’m glad you mentioned content because this is a big topic for us to deal with.

>> JOE McNAMEE: That’s one of the problems that we have with the hate speech agreement that was reached last week, the agreement that what is illegal will become parts of the terms of service and what is reviewed is the service and not the law. And the text includes that the Internet companies taking the leading role in dealing with these contents. I missed the democratic shift in our society where issues of that nature were being given to private companies to take a leading role.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Isn’t there an estimated hundred thousand workers involved in content moderation according to one article across the big Internet platforms? And I think this is something that people often don’t realize that isn’t done by an algorithm it’s done by actual people.

>> JOE McNAMEE: I want to say something briefly

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Very briefly because I want to come to everyone

>> JOE McNAMEE: about privacy in the EU versus U.S. Our governments and legal systems might have different approaches but every opinion poll, every piece of analysis I’ve seen suggests that Europeans worries and preoccupations are very similar to those in the United States. And there was a recent study that showed a vast proportion of people in the U.S. avoided using online services for reasons of security and privacy. And unfortunately U.S. businesses are burdened by not having a clearer regulation in the area of privacy. Finally the one point of shouldn’t we be able to give the data? Well in the era of Big Data we don’t know what data is going to be built out of our data. If you have the Uber app you will give Uber access to your battery meter. You have no idea why. They have done some Big Data analysis and have discovered that if your battery is low you’re more likely to pay search pricing. You didn’t know that when you gave them the data. They promised they won’t abuse this. I believe them.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you. So some very last very quick remarks. I know that we can continue this conversation and I would like to hear more from all of you but we are unfortunately under time constraints. One sentence.

>> That’s why consent is instrumental in the GDPR. To the question about access to data, regulators have an access that is not access of other people and that’s rightly so. The beauty is you can trace everything but you cannot access everything but there is different in the policy maker.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I’m going to have to stop you.

>> And the privacy shield. And I don’t blame the judiciary or the US. I’m just a layman I cannot take sides but it will come from putting our heads together.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you. Christina?

>> DR. CHRISTINA ANGELOPOULOS: Perhaps one last year on the duty of care. I think if it’s going to be introduced of intermediaries it should be on which duty of care. It does involve general monitoring. Other duties may be considered depending on varies factors including the size of the business. It’s not simply a blanket to have intermediaries monitor the information they use.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you. Stefan?

>> STEFAN KRAWCZYK: Yes, I think everybody should act responsibly and that should be done irrespective of whether there is liability or not.

>> KALA KALLAS: Yes. I would just like to comment on the question that was before on the safe harbor. I think when it comes to the consumers then more people have the same views about privacy in U.S. but we had a meeting with U.S. congressmen on this issue and then you could see that there’s a fundamental difference on our ideas about this. So the security aspects that the security officials should have access to is

>> EMILY TAYLOR: I think it’s also fair, sorry to but it’s not just the U.S. governments who want that access, is it, speaking as someone in the U.K. And even the European court of human rights is saying it’s part of life now to have that access and that we need to think about oversight rather than

>> KALA KALLAS: This is exactly what I said in the beginning that this is a different approach on the offline and online. So whereas online it is more likely that, UN, everybody or you could explain to the people and people would say that some people would say that okay if you catch the terrorists then let’s open all the doors but why not open all the doors also like literally. I think we shouldn’t have that difference between online and offline.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you. Ambassador?

>> DIRK VAN EECKHOUT: I completely agree with the former speaker here the last sentence, there should not be a difference between human rights offline and online. What is legal online, our line and online. But my conclusion of this debate is a very positive one. Indeed I think there is an interest to have a dialogue with business on the role of intermediaries, whether they’re doing government job or not, what is responsible, what is not responsible. And what are best practices and what could be the orientation. Council of Europe is working on this. So I’m looking forward meeting you and others just to exchange ideas on what is the best practice, what should be part of it.

>> EMILY TAYLOR: Thank you, very much. And thanks for ending on that positive note. We are out of time, ladies and gentlemen. It’s now time for coffee. I think after last night’s celebrations we are grateful for that. So I think we will reconvene at 11:30. Did you want to say anything? I’d like to really thank our panelists for an excellent discussion and sharing their expertise. Thank you.

(Applause)

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Hashtag: #eurodig16

Notes

note 1: Ms Kaja Kallas. Bio

Kaja Kallas is an Estonian politician. She is currently a Member of the European Parliament elected from Estonia and belongs to the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). She has previously worked as an attorney-at-law and been a Member of the Parliament of Estonia (Riigikogu), where she chaired the Economic Affairs Committee. She is also Vice-Chairman of the Estonian Reform Party. As an attorney, she specialised in European and Estonian competition law.
In the European Parliament Kaja Kallas serves on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and is Vice-Chair of the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. She is also a substitute for the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and the Delegation for Relations with the United States. The European Parliament recently voted on her jointly drafted strategic report "Towards a Digital Single Market Act" that calls for ambitious action to remove barriers in the digital world as well as to avoid hindering the technological revolution by overregulating the sector.

note 2: Mr Dirk Van Eeckhout. Bio

Having two masters in philosophy and management, the ambassador’s interests vary as much as his impressive hat collection. Mr Van Eeckhout has represented Belgium in Japan, Nigeria and Chile. Recently, he chaired the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe from November 2014 until May 2015. More specifically to the topic of the debate, he is the Thematic Coordinator for the Information Policy (TC-INF) at the Council of Europe, promoting the institution’s standards and instruments on Internet Governance and the Information Society. In 2015 he participated in the Internet Governance Forum 2015 in João Pessao, Brazil, 10-13 November; the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg, 18-20 November; and took part in the Kyev closure event of the EU/CoE joint programm "Strenghtening information society in Ukraine".
You can catch a bigger glimpse into his life and interests (i.e. social media and digital diplomacy) by following him on twitter and LinkedIn.

note 3: Dr Christina Angelopoulos. Bio

Christina Angelopoulos is a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) of the University of London. Before joining IALS, Christina was based at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam. There, she worked on a variety of projects in information law, focusing especially on copyright and media law. In 2011, she began her PhD. This examines the European harmonisation of the liability of online intermediaries for the copyright infringements of third parties.

note 4: Mr Joe McNamee. Bio

Joe McNamee is Executive Director of European Digital Rights, an association of over 30 digital civil rights organisations from across Europe, where he has worked for the past seven years. He as worked in internet-related roles almost continually since 1995, when he worked in technical support for a dial-up internet access provider in the UK
Joe has a particular interest in issues surrounding the rule of law, privacy and freedom of expression in the online environment.

note 5: Mr Stefan Krawczyk. Bio

Stefan Krawczyk, a French national born in the Netherlands, is a civil, media and copyright law graduate from Leiden and Amsterdam Universities and former research fellow of the Munich Max-Planck-Institute for foreign and international industrial and intellectual property law. In June 2009, Stefan Krawczyk, a seasoned government relations specialist, joined Internet marketplace eBay. He heads eBay Inc’s International Government Relations team, covering all of the company’s interests in areas such as e-commerce, mobile commerce, distribution and sales, intellectual property, competition, consumer rights as well as parcel delivery and postal services in EMEA and APAC. Stefan currently also serves as President of Europe's digital media association EDiMA and Vice Chair of the Committee on Digital Economy Policy (CDEP) of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD. Before joining eBay, Stefan worked for over five years as intellectual property litigator and for almost 15 years as senior lobbyist for the international recording industry with a focus on IPR enforcement, licensing of recorded music and organization of industry representations in the EU, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

note 6: Mr Luukas Kristjan Ilves. Bio

Luukas is Counsellor for Digital Affairs at Estonia’s Permanent Representation to the EU, where he makes Europe a more connected and innovative continent by bringing Estonia's outcome-oriented experience in digital markets and government to bear on Brussels. He is responsible for preparing Estonia’s ICT agenda for its EU Presidency in 2018.
Luukas has previously served as Head of International relations for RIA (Estonia’s central agency for e-government and cybersecurity), where he lead Estonia’s push to integrate its e-government systems with neighbouring countries and the EU. He has also worked as a policy planner in the Estonian Ministry of Defence, and as a national expert at the European Commission (in the Cabinet of VP Neelie Kroes). Luukas is a graduate of Stanford University and a reserve officer in the Estonian Defence Forces.