FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
03 SEPTEMBER 2014
16:30
WS10
NEW GLOBAL VISIONS FOR INTERNET GOVERNANCE,
ICTS, AND TRADE
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The following is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Good afternoon, everyone. With your permission let's wait two more minutes. The room is not an obvious place to find. We wish ‑‑ first of all, thank you all very much for being so creative to find the room. Let's give a couple more minutes to colleagues to find it. Thank you.
(Standing by.)
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: All right. We are ready now to begin. First of all, again thank you all very much. Good afternoon. My name is Dick Beaird. I'm with the law firm of Wiley Rein in Washington, D.C. where I'm the Senior International Policy Adviser. A couple of points first before we get started. I would like first of all to acknowledge people who have made this panel possible. First of all, I would like to recognize Jessica Jones, British Telecom. If you could raise your hand, please? Who has nicely volunteered to be a substantive rapporteur and thank you, Jessica.
In addition to Wiley Rein as sponsors of the panel, I would like to acknowledge LIRNE Asia with my colleague, Rohan, as well as the government of Colombia and the Minister who will be addressing us, and Colombia is cosponsors of this panel. And Barbara Wanner, raise your hand? Without your efforts this panel would not have been possible. Thank you, Barbara.
The title of this panel is the New Global Visions for Internet Governance, ICTs, and Trade.
It was the thought of the panelists in discussions in forming this panel that the digital economy which is based on the Internet, as we all know, allows for large or small businesses to have a global reach, to virtualise their processes, to mobilize their employees and business associates and to drive velocity into their efforts. This panel is to consider the dependence, codependent relationship of globalization and the Internet. And as the combination of those two factors as drivers of future models of governance, economics and trade.
We will look at this complex issue as it is now evolving as we speak and will continue to evolve over some period of time into the future from at least four different perspectives. First of all, from the perspective of innovation, that we recognize that globalization based on the Internet with its focus on dispersed production and value chains and consequent interdependence between countries has created potential for new visions for innovation with significant implications for trade and investment.
Secondly, the other perspective, second perspective is the potential for economic growth and development.
Thirdly, the governance policies impact on globalization. We cannot separate the manner in which the Internet is governed or follows governance models, plural, from globalization itself.
Fourthly, the role of the private sector stakeholders in globalization as that role continues to evolve.
So from these four perspectives this distinguished group of panelists will address this complex issue. We wish to say at the beginning that we hope that the panel will interact with you all. So we would expect that you would raise questions and make comments. We wish, of course, and encourage you to do that.
Let me first introduce the panelists and then we will go right into their presentations. Each panelist will have about seven to ten minutes presentation time and then we will open it up for a discussion.
First of all, to my right is Ross LaJeunesse, the Global Head of Free Expression and International Relations at Google. To his right is Dr. Rohan Samarajiva, who is Chair LIRNE Asia, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Next, the second position to the end, the Minister, Diego Molano, of Colombia. Mr. Sam Paltridge, who is a true expert in so many areas and we are lucky to have him as a resource at the OECD. He is a senior analyst at the OECD.
Dr. John Selby, Macquarie University in Sydney. Then we have Subi Chaturvedi, at the University of Delhi at the Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi.
Lastly speaking in the wrap‑up position, Mr. Eric Loeb, vice‑president at AT&T Corporation.
In the order in which I have introduced the speakers, I would ask them to do their presentations and we have conveniently mixed their seating arrangements so it doesn't go just in seriatim. Ross, make your opening remarks, please.
>> ROSS LaJEUNESSE: Thanks very much, Dick. Thanks, everyone for being here. My recitation is going to be very brief in the of IGF. I want to make sure all of the panelists have a chance to share their expertise with all of us.
First of all on Google's perspective on the Internet and the role the Internet plays in expanding global commerce, and especially industry and small business.
I mean, there are certain facts that we are all very much aware of. The Internet has allowed smaller enterprises to reach customers and markets that were never before available to them. There are plenty of examples about this from the U.S. and from very developed markets, certainly. But increasingly, we see examples of small businesses in places like Africa where connectivity itself and the infrastructure challenges present are very real. When you look at the continent of Africa, I think we have only 16 percent Internet usage currently. Yet we still have tremendous examples of very small businesses reaching an incredible customer base, and an international customer base.
Google is doing a lot of work to advance this. We have this programme we call the Magabos, which is basically getting businesses online. We go to a market and we thought: How do we take away every impediment to this small business getting online? Everything that would stand in the way of this small store or small entrepreneur getting online? And we help them with it, do it with them. We've done these trainings in pretty much every state in the United States. And we've gotten millions of businesses online in developed markets. But even in Africa we have been able to get 60,000 new businesses online since we started doing these programmes. So we now have examples in Nigeria, Bazaars Fashion and Style Academy, for example, which reported an increase of 500 percent in their business operations and in their enrollment within six months of getting their business online.
In South Africa there's a party planner's business which has seen the revenue triple in a matter of months by going online. So none of this is news to really any of us here, but I did want to emphasize a few points which may not be quite so readily known to us.
For example, 75 percent of the economic benefit that is now attributed to the Internet does not go to Internet companies or technology companies, but to what we consider more traditional operations like retail and more traditional services.
And I think that's an incredibly high percentage. We have seen globally the averages that small businesses including traditional businesses see an increased revenue of double the previous amount of revenue after they've gone online.
Now, when we look at these facts and when we look at the fact that by 2016 the Internet is posted to contribute $4.2 trillion of economic activity in the G20 alone, it becomes very apparent that we need to do everything we can to minimize the friction or take away the barriers for these small enterprises to do their business online. And that is how we start talking about getting the policy and the government, laws and government policies correct in order to enable this sort of thing. So that is one of the reasons why at Google we look at data localization initiatives, for example, and we become very concerned. That is why we look at issues like sending party pays proposals and we become very concerned.
Last year my team actually commissioned a report by the Dalberg Institute which found pretty much a one to one correlation, and is beginning to find evidence of causation between country's regulatory approach to the Internet and how well that country's businesses do online. And the effect of those policies on a country's GDP.
It was perhaps the most astounding part of that study to be honest was that we hadn't found anyone who had done that work before. That is an area ripe for additional study. It only will become more relevant as the Internet plays an increasingly great role in the world's economy.
The other issue I just wanted to raise is the issue of trade. Many Internet companies and Google is certainly in this situation have come late to the issue of trade and to the idea of using trade to advance the right policies to promote Internet businesses. And I'm glad to say that we recognize that we need to be much more present and much more engaged in those issues. We are starting to see real recognition in draft trade agreements and among trade negotiators for the need to assure that trade rules advance the Internet and promote Internet businesses globally.
And with that I wanted to wrap things up, and I am open and welcome to taking any of your questions after my other panelists have had a chance to speak. Thanks.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thanks very much, Ross. If I may introduce Dr. Rohan Samarajiva for his comments, please. Rohan?
>> ROHAN SAMARAJIVA: Thank you. I was quite interested in this, have been interested in this subject for a long time partly because when I was in government I was on one side trying to create a problem called in Sri Lanka, which is a comprehensive ICT development programme for Sri Lanka, but on the other side I was also in charge of services trade negotiations for the country. So there were some people who felt that these were contradictory objectives. That the only way that we could develop our ICT industries would be through protectionism. And to some extent, I think they are wrong, but I think to some extent there is some substance to their impressions, the feelings that they have. The issue is that ICTs on one side have an incredible positive potential. That positive potential is why organisations such as mine, which are basically knowledge‑based organisations, can function today. Based in countries like Sri Lanka can compete with anybody, basically.
So that means that it has a very positive story, the kind of positive stories that we normally hear at these kinds of discussions. It is what has made business process out‑sourcing real because we apply ICTs. We unpack business processes. We unpack supply chains. Now people who are in far away locations who have some comparative advantage can participate in these business processes.
However, the negative side of it is that in fact this is a two‑way street. The markets that were earlier shielded from competition by large players are now open to competition by these large players.
So let me discuss that in relation to two example that is a lot of people in the developing world, a lot of government people and industry people that I interact with are looking at these days. One is China where you heard that the eCommerce giant Alibaba does more business than Amazon and other organisations combined. It is a huge organisation and to some extent they have been protected from competition. They use ICTs, the potential of the Internet; they are eCommerce pioneers, but they have been shielded from global competition.
On the other side, we have this extraordinarily challenging eCommerce environment in the second most populous country in the world, India. And in India as you know, the rules are Byzantine. I'm in Turkey and I'm talking about Byzantine. The payment systems are made by people with twisted minds. It's extraordinarily difficult. And the trust levels, the idea of small percentages uses credit cards, but even those who have credit cards are not willing to give them on the Internet. They are not willing to part with money until they actually see the product, and so on and so forth.
Even in this extraordinarily difficult environment, you have two companies, Mitra and Snap Deal, I think, which pioneered and actually did some very significant innovations. For example, they took that old delivery, payment on delivery model that we had in the postal system in the old days and they applied it where these people would ride around on motor bicycles and give the product and then they would take the money in cash, or even on a credit card at the premises where the goods were changing hands.
So now we have a very interesting example where China is still not open to the global giants, but India is. I look at Indian TV all the time even though I don't live there, and I see the Amazon ads running big. Amazon is throwing enormous amounts of money at the Indian market.
So many people that I talk to are looking at these two models and say will the Indian businesses survive in this environment? Or is it going to be that we will all have to retreat to the Chinese model of putting in gardens, walled gardens, et cetera, et cetera, building up our companies and then going out to compete?
In the old days we used to talk about and say bad things, some of us ‑‑ not me ‑‑ about the Washington consensus. I think it's time that we start addressing the Beijing consensus because this is basically a world view that is engaging the attention of a lot of people in the developing world.
The issue really is, we have to understand that not every country has to do every single service activity or Internet‑based commerce activity or Internet‑based business that there is. There is the law of comparative advantage has not been abolished. We should be open to the Amazons coming into our countries.
I am a loyal customer of Amazon. I wouldn't give it up if you take off even ‑‑ not my arm, but maybe a small finger, I would keep. I would be deprived of the books and the ability of my organisation to function if people take away such services. So I am not at all in sympathy with this protectionist argument.
But what we need to do is we need to address the problem. Why is it that our governance ‑‑ this is no international conspiracy. The arcane and convoluted and sometimes contradictory rules that our businesses are subjected to are enforced by other governments. There is nobody in the world that says that a young person or a small business, young man or woman starting a business should not be able to receive payments, in payments from PayPal. It is my government that is preventing it. It is not a foreign government that is telling the Indian payment people who are trying to do payments on the Internet that they must get off the transaction, get on SMS, receive a one‑time PIN code and input that PIN code into the payment connection, which is now already got disconnected.
And it is the Indian government which isn't giving enough spectrum. So that even in the middle of that transaction we would have gotten disconnected anyway even if we didn't disconnect in order to put in the PIN. We are handicapping and hampering and hindering our own businesses. Our governments need to think: Quite a lot of innovation that has taken place in our part of the world and I'm very proud of these innovations including the will budget telecom model, has been because of hardship, has been because we have been subjected to such difficult circumstances that in the process of working around we have come up with new business models. Is this the only way we know how to innovate? Is it not possible for our governments to make it possible for our small businesses to use the potentialities of the Internet and the ICTs? By creating a conducive as against hostile business environment. I think this is a challenge that the government representatives as well as the chambers of commerce, as well as all of us have to address and have to think about as we see the commercial activities on the Internet rising in importance. Thank you very much.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much, if I can now ask Minister Diego Molano, to address us, please.
>> DIEGO MOLANO VEGA: Thank you very much, everybody. The Internet economy is of course changing every single business on earth. Every single business. We cannot stop that. What we are seeing this week at the IGF is that the regulation power is always kind of diminishing, you know?
So regulating the Internet economy is going to be harder and harder. And I fully agree with that.
The thing is, how we really take advantage of this Internet economy to solve the real problems of the world. How we take advantage of these revolution to finally solve many, many problems such as poverty, access to education, food supply, et cetera, et cetera.
So far what we are seeing is that in this Internet revolution we are not doing that. We are going to have deeper gaps between the haves and the have‑nots.
Why is that? Yesterday morning we heard quite an interesting discussion on jobs. Jobs. The detail economy has great advantages for education, health coverage, to include people. But we are destroying a lot of jobs in the world. We can't do anything ‑‑ I think that's the right way. All revolutions have created unemployment. The thing is that there is no other revolution in the history of the world that destroyed more jobs proportionately than this revolution. What should we do? Because the whole world is going to blame our industry for that.
So we have to improve the resilience. So we have to train our people. That is the main element, how we train people. How we prepare people to be resilient in the job market because people are going to blame again, I tell you blame our industry for that job losses. And in terms of economic trade, Developing Countries are also losing the battle big time, like never before. Look, for example, in the '90s. In the 1990s the trade balance between the developed and developing world in terms of telecom and IT was very, very positive in favor of Developing Countries. Why was that? It was because telephone traffic. So the guys from AT&T used to pay a lot of money to our countries, thanks to their rates. Of course with the technology, that doesn't happen anymore. Calls are for free. So that is really, the traffic is really balanced.
What happens today is that, in those days it was like the Robin Hood effect. Rich people giving money to the poor people in terms of the whole balance. What happens today is the whole opposite thing. We pay a lot of money for Internet access to these guys, and also we pay a lot of money for services to the other guys, to the Google guys and all the ITs. This is the Robin Hood effect, the Hood Robbing effect. It has to be said, they are doing legal business, creating value for their shareholders, which is fine. Don't take me wrong.
The thing is that today the Internet is still a tool for the rich of the world, not for the poor. Why is that? Because the Internet doesn't have applications for the poor. And that's where the issue is. Of course, we discuss a lot about expanding infrastructure in those poor countries. Which we have to do and we've done already that in Colombia. The Colombian basis already connected. We deployed fiber, even in the middle of the junk em, everybody is connected. That is not enough. The value of the Internet is not in the infrastructure side. The value of the Internet is where the applications are. Without applications, there is no value. And the challenge we have is how we create those applications. But that challenge, the only way to tackle those challenges is to create our own local ecosystems to create those applications. Because the guys from Silicon Valley, they have no clue what a poor person is. They have no clue what the needs of my small companies are. We know, we know what those needs are.
For example, and somebody was saying about the examples of the small companies. In my country four years ago, just 7 percent of the small companies were connected to the Internet. Today more than 70 percent of them are connected. Why is that? Because we focus on developing applications for them, creating value in the application layer for them. The challenge we have is how we create these innovation ecosystems to develop applications for the base of the pyramid and the key success factors of those ecosystems are very, very simple. The first is talent. We need more people trained in engineering, IT, technicians. We also need to strengthen our IT skills. At OECD you worked very, very hard on this. We have to strengthen the IT skills of our people. We need doctors, lawyers, nurses, everybody understanding how Internet works. Every single laborer of the future has to be a little bit of an engineer, an IT engineer. We have to work on that. So the first element is talent. The second one is to create local ecosystems, not nationwide ecosystems. We have to focus on regions or cities to create these local ecosystems.
And the third key success factor is the leadership of the private sector. I haven't seen even the first ecosystem led by the government. Governments are very, very bad at this. So those ecosystems should be led by the private sector.
Those are my initial comments. Thank you.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much, Mr. Minister. Our next speaker is Sam Paltridge.
>> SAM PALTRIDGE: I'm on? Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. So I just have one slide that I would like to show you. It is from a report we did earlier in the year. I perhaps just better explain what it is. I hope it's big enough on the screen for you. On the left‑hand side you have minutes of telephone any going from telephony from the United States to India. That's the blue line. The red line is the minutes of the notes going from the U.S. to Africa. You have the average termination charge determining the minutes to that country.
In both areas there has been tremendous penetration of Internet. That's the result of competition. In Africa you can have up to six mobile operators. In India it's an extremely competitive market. That's really fantastic. So why do you have an eight fold increase in out going minutes from the United States to India and as you can see, for Africa it's basically a flat line or if I put a different scale on it, you actually see a decrease in recent years. Now, there's lots of different reasons you can look at. You can look at the growing importance of India to the U.S. You know, the economic exchanges. But there's another reason. And that is the policies around termination of traffic. I want to talk about that in my seven minutes and then say how it affects the Internet.
So on the right side you have the average prices for U.S. operators terminating traffic in those regions. You see actually it ethos prices have been increasing in Africa in recent years. Whereas in India they have been decreasing.
Now, I'm picking a bit on Africa, and perhaps I shouldn't be because there's a much wider trend in other parts of the world. In the Caribbean or countries like Pakistan, for example, where as you see, the prices increase. You see, as you might expect, demand decrease. There's something more at work here. In a lot of these countries the governments introduced policies which basically recreate cartels for incoming international traffic. And in some cases they create market shares. So you have the same market share you might have had ten years ago. And then there's a whole series of policies around that to try to make this work. Basically as the prices increase, you create the potential for arbitrage in a gray market. There's a huge gray market that emerges in these countries. Pakistan for example two years ago increased the termination price for incoming traffic and the official, it shows that the official termination of traffic coming in went down from about 2 billion a month to 500 million.
Now, this actually leads to a decrease in revenue. So even though governments get sold a story that if we introduce such a policy we are only really charging those foreigners and they are rich and they can pay.
What actually happens is the wealthy foreigners, if you want to look at it that way, use broadband and bypass all of this. Broadband to broadband and Skype to Skype bypassing this. What it doesn't bypass is the diaspora from certain countries calling family friends or trade or whatever it is, in those countries.
Those calls get terminated back on the fixed network and these policies come into play. It's the diaspora that increased price conscious. So for example, in Pakistan where it went from two cents to eight cents, it increases the price for people calling their families, so the traffic falls off. It affects the poorest people in the Developed Countries, if you want to look at it that way. It has other implications, leading to double taxation. If you're a diaspora in the U.K. that gets applied to the surcharge. Actually you're paying tax on tax.
So there's a lot of stories here, this event about people avoiding tax. Here you have a fact with due to certain sets of policies you get double taxation.
It also leads to all sorts of bad practices around Internet management. To try to make the policies work, in some countries they create so‑called white lists. If you are oh he a business, you get put on the white list. You can have a virtual private network. If you are not on the white list you are likely to get knocked off. When these policies come into effect. Quite often businesses don't know about this, NGOs don't know about this and their private network gets knocked off the Internet. You can imagine what that does to economic stability, to things like investment, growth, et cetera.
There's also other policies. Just recently there has been a case in the Caribbean where Skype was being blocked. Again it's the idea that if we block this traffic somehow we will try to stop this. But it doesn't. It just leads to more gray traffic and that leads to all sorts of problems around legal intercept and so forth.
I'm going to stop there in part because my tracker just went dark on me. I think I was about six minutes when I did. So I'll stop there. There's much more I can say on this, but it is a serious problem. And it is going to increase as a serious problem for the Internet as networks converge because, as the Minister said before, some countries based certain policies around the old accounting rate system and incoming revenue, but those policies aren't appropriate for the converged Internet. It won't work. It really leads to less revenue than more revenue. I'll stop there.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much, Sam. Dr. John Selby, please.
>> JOHN SELBY: Is that working? Can you hear me?
So one of the major themes of this year's IGF has been globalization, localization, and debate on different sides. We have been hearing quite a lot about it today. I'm going to focus on routing and looking at some of the consequences for international trade.
Traditionally network engineers have made routing decisions with technical protocols like BGP. While data hosting selection and peering arrangements have a business element, lawyers on the whole stayed out of this space. With regard to some aspects of the debate over globalized or localized Internet this relative aspect of lawyers might be about to change. There is a briefcase study about how there is Internet privacy and security services and implications for Internet Governance stakeholders.
In 2014 in response to the Snowden leaks and concerns about the governments available to, Angela Merkel proposed an Internet Communication Europe which would route European traffic in that government. The French government expressed support for this. Building upon privacy concerns, Deutsch.com wanted routing localization and routing of the EU safe harbor, under which data is exported to the U.S. There is a possibility of data localization at the national level, at the regional and EU level. We have seen debate and discussion about other proposals in other countries as well over the course of this meeting.
So how might these proposals bring lawyers into the routing business? The first way seen in April when the office of the U.S. trade representative placed the German government on section 1377 watch list on compliance with telecommunications Friday agreements. Stating that a variety of EU voices were advocating for trade distorted restrictions on data flows, purportedly justified on privacy grounds and claimed such steps could amount to provide protectionist advantage to EU based ICT suppliers. U.S. trade representative claimed that that raised questions about the EU's compliance with its trade obligations with respect to Internet enabled services. At this stage the U.S. said it plans to monitor the development of such proposals.
So how could the implementation of localized routing requirements create a trade dispute? In the limited time in this panel I can't discuss all relevant trade options but I have three I would like to mention. The one I'll focus on most is the WT0 GATS, two draft agreements, Transpacific partnership and Transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreements.
First to the GATS, that is a top‑down regulatory system that lacks a multi‑stakeholder policy process. Speaking at a general level amongst other things the GATS requires each Member State to provide other Member States with market access in those sectors to which it made specific commitments on specified terms.
Under its national trade and principle to treat those foreign competitors on domestic footing. And thirdly under most favored nation principle not give business from one GAT state more advantageous terms than it gives to any other GATS member estate. Member States set out in technical documents called GAT schedules, with schedules and on terms they are willing to open their markets for trade. So some nations have included in their GAT schedules trade in Internet services.
Within the GATs there are both general and specific exceptions to these free trade requirements. Regulations are generally preferred if they have the least trade restrictive option. There are several relevant GAT provisions I'll paraphrase for you so you don't fall asleep. The most relevant, GATS Article 14C, Subsection 2, which permits Member States to introduce laws that protect the privacy and confidentiality of the data as long as those laws are least barrier restriction to trade or barrier to trade. GATS could close that laws are permitted under 14C Subsection 2. Unfortunately this article has not been interpreted under the GATS dispute settlement process. We don't know with certainty whether any particular localization proposal will fall within its scope north.
The second relevant provision is GATS Article 14BIS which gives broad power for Member States to intervene in Friday to protect their national security interests. However, this is focused more on a central security and war time situation. And it is a risky provision for a GATS Member State to invoke because of the opportunity for tit for tat member responses from other Member States. This article is not meant to be an unfettered access and any community might need to determine whether the Snowden leak resulted in an emergency in international relations.
GATS disputes are resolved on a state against state basis not on an individual corporate basis. It would be governments who would decide whether or not to bring such an action before a GATS dispute settlement body panel. If a country included niece would implement data localization requirements, then to avoid breaching their GATS obligations they have to amount a defense in a GATS dispute that such rules are that they introduced fell within the Article 14C2 privacy exception or the 14BIS security exception to their GATS commitments.
It is possible we may see such a dispute in the next few years on this issue and the settlement such as a trade article could be applying Article 6 necessity test to determine how the Internet should be routed. They would be asking whether a particular data localization law is proportionate to the disbalanced powers of the NSA. If a private security exceptions were found not to apply, then there would be public moral and orders exceptions. That is the GATS where we might see lawyers getting involved in determining these issues.
I'll move on to a couple of new and upcoming trade agreements. These are the Transpacific partnership and Transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreements. Some of the leaked drafts have included terms that Member States one endeavor to refrain from creating barriers to information flows across borders. A leaked draft reveals the EU did not place limitations on access for computers and relate the services including online information and data processing. These data localization laws might see disputes under the TTIP. We don't yet know the final version of that, though.
So we should be thinking about these proposals as to whether the dispute resolution mechanisms that form part of the GATS or TTP or TTIP, are the venues where we want to resolve disputes about routing and hosting. We may see under the TTIP and the TTP, being disputes in state against state. That is a.
Governments engaging in these debates, needs to recognize that Internet Governance disputes are not created in a vacuum. Commitments made have different processes than the multi‑stakeholder model we are used to. Dispute resolution processes may constrain policy decisions we can make. Consequently we can't afford to ignore these other institutions and it would be wise for Internet Governance stakeholders to engage with them. Thank you.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much, John. Our next speaker is Subi Chaturvedi, please.
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you, everyone. I feel like an interloper here. I am overwhelmed speaking with you and sharing my thoughts on this really important issue. May I request for a show of hand any first timers here for whom this is the first IGF?
Thank you. A special shout‑out to you and our young friend in the back. Well, what is it that we are looking at in terms of a new global vision? As the only woman on the panel I have an additional responsibility also to speak to that very important question. The Internet roughly has about 4 billion people online which has been equal to both men and women. And has been gender sensitive in terms of being an enabler. This is a resource that is really important for us. And that is something that we all value and cherish. So when we speak about a new global vision, what is it that we look at in terms of barriers? And what is it that we see in terms of potential?
So I will cheat a little because I have the mic and being a teacher, the tyranny of the mic has to be unleashed.
In terms of questions, let me start with a little story. I want to go back to a favorite dead white man with whom I have had a slightly troubled relationship. None other than Mr. Aristotle who talks about locating context in society. Who talks about valuing anger and who talks about looking at a society which is also based on friendship, on understanding and empathy.
So when we have big business on the panel and when we have policymakers and organisations and governments, and technical communities, media, academia, and those are the stakeholder groups who we want to see in policy making so we have an environment which is enabling, it is important to recognize that we need to appreciate differences. Why is it that technology matters? Well, it matters for people, planet and it matters for profit. We can all profit in monetary terms or we can profit in terms of the knowledge economy, in terms of transfer of skill sets and capacity building.
So many, many years ago the Long Island beach could only be accessed if you could have access to public transport. But somebody decided to design bridges were which were low hanging and passes that would not allow you to have a bus, which is roughly about 14 feet high, to navigate those roads. You could not get to the beach because there was racial and social economic segregation. Many, many years ago also the invention of the bicycle gave women empowerment both politically and socially, and also gender politics ensured that the invention of the female pedal and not the male pedal. When we looked at policies that allowed businesses to thrive, Rohan mentioned the Flip Cards. This is an experiment. When you look at small businesses trying to come online and use this medium to deliver new products and invent new products that meet local needs, it is very important that you have policies which are consultative, policies which are not rushed.
I want to recognize a colleague here in the audience, Ms. Mishi Choudhary from India. She has done a lot of work on intermediary libraries. When you look at intermediaries which initiate trade and commerce, and permit these conversations to happen, they are going to recognize a unique initiative called Tech Moms. This is a group of mothers who plan to come online, go back to academia and teaching and use the Internet to sell or connect, collaborate and create comfort groups and spaces.
This is the power of the Internet. So when we have to recognize that this is something that grew out of the framework of governments and needs probably less governance and even little governments to ensure to ensure that the core values of the Internet and ICTs can publish. Whether it is interoperability, whether it is freedom of speech and expression. And each of these are both limitations and potentials. If you have laws which are enacted without due consultations, or policies which are ambiguous, you create an environment which is not good for small business.
Big business also has access to fantastic legal advice and reports and input, but small businesses struggle. When they create applications which will allow you to review a product or review an institution, and it allows people to engage with that community and that platform, and they get sued for millions and trillions of dollars and have to stand in court, they cannot run the business. They need the time to engage with that space. So one of them is policy which is potful which is consultative, which looks at the Internet.
Second, let's bring in some numbers. We love numbers. When you are looking at the India story, where right now contributing, looking at the Internet economy at 1.6 percent of its GDP, roughly about 30 billion U.S. dollars. If they are able to provide in the next two years some key requisite, we can make sure that this number moves up to about 100 billion U.S. dollars, which is a significant shift in terms of what is it that the Internet can contribute to the GDP.
But despite credible initiatives like the national optic fiber network which will connect 200 villages or self governments, that is not good enough. You are not giving enough incentive to the private sector to be on the table and use that fiber to provide services and deliver goods. It is just a piece of let's say plastic which is no good. When you look at laws which are ambiguous, you create and environment which chills and quells free speech. So the young man in the back, I hope he's still there, I urge people to engage because when you look at countries like India, we have immense amount of demographic dividend, but if our youth are unemployed and angry at being cornered every single time there is an impediment to using that space for actualizing its full potential. In terms of the evolution of a multi‑stakeholder environment, that is something that is very close to my heart. Where you convene these meetings, which is why I wanted to know who is here for the first time. How easy or difficult is it to be on the table?
As governments, if you're not on the table, you will be on the menu. And you will have a really unhappy country, which in the form of social media will make sure that though corporate media may disallow plurality and diversity of expression, we will find ways for an outlet to express dissent. This is part of the new vision. We have to make sure that traditional institutions of socialization have been over turned. We have to learn to engage with this new reality and this new paradigm.
In terms of whose voices are not here, who is it who is missing? In terms of legitimacy of representation, who is not on the table? And are those people around the table, can they speak for those who are not in the room? When we are looking at trade and policy, the one company which is giving nightmares to Amazon is Flip Card. And there is a lot of money which is being pushed to make sure that it comes to you. But what Amazon has also managed to do is, it's taken service agreements on its head. It has taken conversations and it's invented a new language where communication flourishes and where new goods and products are made accessible. And competition is a good thing, provided you recognize local innovation and make sure that it is an environment based on empathy. Maybe like the river.
And I want to go back to Jovan with the Diplo Foundation who talks about many sediments and layers of this river. If you are looking at big businesses becoming bigger, you have to make sure that you give a helping hand. If you are a stakeholder community from let's say academia, you have to ensure that you have to continue to engage with this environment despite it being acronym riddled, despite it being a close community.
And if you are the youth, this is your Internet. You are the key stakeholder group. If they tell you no, no, this is cyber security or this is trade negotiation, you don't have to engage, you will still have to come to the table because you are the end users. And for policymakers it is important to realize that from the citizens, the slave to the citizen, we made a long journey and we are part of this process.
India again is a beautiful story. And the new government which has come in understands the value of the Internet. So this potential and this medium can be harnessed by all, provided we look at it not in silos but as a conversation where all of us speak to each other and with each other. Thank you.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much, Subi. Eric Loeb, please.
>> ERIC LOEB: Great. Well, thank you. It is fun to do cleanup because you can pick up on lots of interesting ideas that have been raised. Subi, Sam, Diego and many themes that come together. A lot of this is about the discussion of making sure that you have in place the right tools to achieve the policy goals that you want. And we heard a lot of very interesting ideas about what the different goals appropriate for each market at the situation that that market is in. And I want to start with a point that is perhaps a little bit pedantic but I think helpful to keep in mind. That is the interrelationship between market facts, policy, and regulation how these are distinct, interrelated and need to be dynamic.
As your market facts change, so must you continue to reevaluate are your policies the same, have your policies shifted? More importantly are the regulations you have in place or the lack thereof fit for the purpose you want to achieve?
So it's a pedantic point but I think it's an important starting distinction to make. First, you set your policies. What it is that you want to achieve. As we heard from the efforts in Colombia, for example, of ensuring that now that there's a lot of competition, the next goal is to extend it out to ensure that folks that currently aren't accessing the technology have demand side incentives to do so policy can cover economics, politics, social, whatever it may be. The regulations that you have in place, of course, and the decision forebear from regulation, has to be constantly reevaluated depending on what is happening in your market.
I make this point again because sometimes things get stale. You have something in place, it's the legacy approach. It's what you've done for a long time. And you may find yourself one day realizing that your rule is actually disserving your policy. Great case in point in Colombia, something they resolved eight years ago or so. The fee to get a voice license with $150 million. Originally in place to give someone incentive to be a voice service operator so they would deploy services. Well, the market was changing around them. All of a sudden you find actually that is impeding your goal by impeding competition and frankly no one can justify paying that much money for a license given all that was going on. So smart choice, remove that rule, change it and open the market up. That's just an example.
I bring this up just because we are in an era of just unprecedented change in everything about networks and services. We can look six years back. We can look six years forward. We can only guess about six years forward.
But six years back even if you look on the mobile side you'll see places where you've gone from 4G, 3G, LTE in that space, from there being basically a smart phone, no app store, to how we exist. All right? That's six years. Obviously, you know, massive changes of the type of service, the type of capacity consumed and traffic, changes how people compete, what services are there. It's truly astonishing when you think about all of that. And so it's worth wondering once in awhile are the market facts, the regulations and the policies still the same? Should we kind of open the windows and blow the dust around a little bit just to evaluate, have things changed so you are still accomplishing your goals? Or might you impeding some? It's a healthy process to go through.
When I look ahead to the next six years, I'm excited about what is up there and kind of wondrous about what it will raise in terms of policy challenges. I work for a company that is an operator of networks and provider of services. You look at the core and we are going to an all IP defined network where you have the collapse of the stack, the layer O to layer 3 stack and intelligence in the network is not going to be hardware based but software based.
Services can be rapidly deployed. You are going to have diminishing distinction between folks operating networks and folks just providing services. It is going to raise very interesting issues, particularly about how from a policy standpoint you decide you want to encourage the investment of these much more efficient and effective networks. What rules are in place. And on the edge of the network, this is going back to something Diego was getting at, what might be the societal benefits? How do you encourage them?
One of the areas that gets a lot of discussion and I would say deservedly is in the area of machine to machine or Internet of things. Small points: What am I due? In terms of rural agriculture, for more intelligent use of scarce resources like water, so you are not turning the spigot on at the same hour every day even if you don't need to but if you have a soil moisture meter, so you put on water or fertilizer only when you have to.
I raise the point again because when you go back and look at policies, the market facts, what you want to achieve, if you look at wireless machine to machine and assume I'm going to treat that like a hand set or tablet because it's a sim connected device, if you apply all the same rules to something that has none of the will same characteristics, you may end up stifling something before it begins.
So that's one point there. The other point I wanted to pick up from what Rohan and Ross said, and then I'll stop so we go to something that is evolving and interesting, is this notion of cross‑border data flows and its relationship to trade. Somewhat we take for granted in the nature of how businesses around the world operate, services are provided, innovation moving without sense of boundaries, that that will always be expected.
There are recipient things that pop up, not driven by a business reason to say we are going to put an artificial boundary on the movement of information.
And there may be some situations, limited situations where there's a rationale for that. But if it is done in anything other than the most justified legitimate need, it is going to have really significant consequences on the services that people enjoy. Certainly on the ability of businesses to operate and invest in an effective manner. And that has economic consequences.
It is important from a trade consequence that maximizing that flow of information and the flow of opportunity to use the most innovative services is a benefit. Without a pause, I look forward to questions from the participants.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much, Eric. Let me open it up to questions or comments from the audience or remotely, please.
Yes, please?
>> AUDIENCE: Louise Bennett from the U.K. You were talking about small businesses online. For high value transactions, the banks mostly deal with payments. But the small businesses particularly in Developing Countries, people may be on bank to make the payment. You may have the man on the motor bike as the intermediary or you can use mobile phone technology as they do in Africa with M‑Pesa. Do you think there's a need for an open standard that will enable small payments from on bank people and small businesses to enable Internet commerce?
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Let me ask the Minister to address that if you would, please.
>> DIEGO MOLANO VEGA: Again, the main bottleneck to spawn technology is not? The infrastructure side, it is in the demand side. The problems with the small companies is not about infrastructure. It is not about price. They do have the money to pay for a computer, for Internet. The bottleneck is in the application side again. What we did in Colombia, we went to big companies and we told them: Look, you have the supply chain a lot of small companies, either your providers or distributors. If you develop applications for them, I sponsor that development up to 50 percent. So for example, we are going to Cemex, the big cement company; and they have 25 little shops that sell cement around the country. These little mom and pop shops that they didn't have Internet access. And they developed these application where the store owner can order cement online.
The big company saves a lot of company because now they can manage their inventory online. We did the same thing with Proctor & Gambles and many of those companies that involve SMEs in their supply chain. What happens to that store owner today? Today they can order the cement online, but in Cemex, saved a lot of money and shared savings with those guys. Cement online is ten to 20 percent cheaper than the regular way. That's a lot of value. Most of those store owners were old people. They were afraid of using technology. But the value was so big for them, they found a way to connect to the Internet. They asked their daughters and sons, nephews, whatever, but they found a way to hook up.
What happens next? Cemex said this is a great business. I have to collect the money from those guys. They used to have a whole network with armored cars and guys collecting cars store by store. They decided to move to online banking. But they gave additional savings to those guys. So now they are all paying online because they see the value for them. The money value, day‑by‑day value. The good thing about it, the tax man is very happy because those guys who were not, for their ‑‑ that were not part of the formal economy, now they are part of the formal economy.
We are also eliminating taxes for technology. We went to the tax man four years ago and said you should eliminate taxes for economy. They said no, impossible. We need the revenue. We demonstrated that eliminating taxes for technology is way better off for the tax money because thanks to technology more people move to the form am economy. And we have proven that already.
So there is enough supply of online banking systems. The problem is in the demand side. You have to develop policies to encourage the demand to jump into the new electronic means.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much. Other questions? Comments?
Please.
>> AUDIENCE: Patrick Curry from the British Business Federation Corporation in the U.K. and also the International Cyber Alliance.
The question that I have is really in two parts. The first thing is that I'm struck by the fact that none of the primary sectors in the end use for primary globalized supply chains is represented in this discussion at all, which is where most of the money is.
So I would expect to see banks, telecos, energy, health, and so on. And these are the increasingly regulated sectors as well in this space, which ties into privacy and many other things that are being discussed while we are here.
The tough issue that we are hearing from nations, from governments is the requirements for trust mechanisms to support the sharing of information. And that is in many, many senses. We are seeing this is being incredibly important in regulated industry sectors and the introduction of us trusted clouds to support SMEs, to go back to Louise's point. We are looking for mechanisms which will help to improve the interoperability of trust mechanisms to underpin both sharing of information and payment transactions. We can talk about LEI and G8s and so on.
I would be pleased to hear from the panel's point of view what we can do within IGF to build trust into all aspects of what IGF seeks for the future.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Who would like to take that question? It's an institutional question. Subi, maybe you would like to address it, please?
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you for that question. So the IGF is a nine‑year‑old baby which is looking at going to its tenth next year. And rightly so, the evolving Internet ecosystem I recognize that digital trust is at the heart of everything Internet. If you are not sure that the information that you are sharing or the profit purpose for which you are coming online is met, there is absolutely no incentive for you to trust money, your resource or yourself, which is your entire identity and existence online, how is it that the IGF is ensuring or responding to some of these questions? This year a lot of innovations have happened. The IGF was trudging along and going out and doing good things and initiating good conversations.
Then NETmundial happened and specific outcomes and responses which were requested. This year with ISOC colleagues and members of the initiated best practices foras online which are looking at some of the problems that you have indicated which go to the heart of spam, which look at sorts and how is it that more can be established? Looking at multi‑stakeholderism.
>> AUDIENCE: I want to qualify this is about business.
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Yes, right.
>> AUDIENCE: We need more trust to underpin the business evolution and economic advantage. So forgive me, I didn't make that point clear enough. Could we have the economic lens on this, please?
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Sure. So in terms of the best practice for us, there are five. They are looking at exactly these problems that you are indicating from an economic social perspective as well as a policy perspective. I would urge you to go online. What they do not have are prescriptive solutions and for that there are many similar processes which have initiated. So there is the Web NETmundial initiative.
I invite you to a session tomorrow morning 9:30 a.m. which is looking at the way forward and strengthening IGF, what is it you expect from IGF? Your inputs are valuable there.
>> ERIC LOEB: I was going to pick up one other element to address the question. You raised an important challenge with all these kind of trade friction points and your message is critical that this is an insular issue about IT companies. It is about every one of our customers that operate in a lot of places. And that's what the cross‑border data flow issue is about at the end of the day is their ability to conduct their business. One of the friction points certainly is how to operate and be in compliance with the patchwork of different privacy obligations, many of which normatively may be important but not always identical. One of the more interesting mechanisms that is playing out right now, that I think is a good model is a work going on between APIC and the EU Article 29 Working Group to do a mapping of different privacy regimes that are in place to find the extent of overlap. So it is an active project aimed at this motion of interoperability to see how much overlap is there, where are the gaps and how do you determine them?
But I think that more efforts of that type which kind of require cross‑jurisdictional cooperation aimed at a goal are going to be really important, not just for reducing friction but improving confidence and trust. That's helpful for investment. I raise that as a model that is being used in this context, but ideally is something, a type of mechanism to look at for use with other issues.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much.
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: May I shortly respond to that? The call for new best practice foras and issues which can be mapped to solutions is still open. So if you could go online on to the IGF website and suggest that we need to address this issue, and maybe be one of the lead experts to look at mapping the idea and putting more people together, it would be a wonderful addition to the IGF. Thank you for your question.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: I would like to take in this order, please, the person right in front of me here, sorry. If we could give her the microphone? There are some others.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. I'm from the Telecom Center of Excellence in India.
Two points. When we talk about of the trust issue, especially the awareness, we are doing some work with rural people and mobile payments, especially government pensions, et cetera, to mobile payments. And one of the things that emerged was that they have been given receipts, paper based receipts through a small printer, but the ink dries up. These are very poor people. They have concerns about they have no record of something so how do they seek redress. Maybe that is one area where we can develop some trust with them that some accounting is being done somewhere and they can access it somehow.
The second is about the initiative in India from the national payment corporation of India which develops standards for payments and that needs to be further work done. We are looking into the aspect of trust and awareness in Developing Countries. That was just information and how can some of these things, actually things being done on the ground can be taken for scaling up. Thank you.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Excellent. Thank you. Maybe the gentleman here and then we'll go to the table. We have two people who want to speak there. First the gentleman and in the back there. Did you ask to speak?
>> AUDIENCE: After me?
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Yes, please.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Joe Silim. First of all, you are welcome to our country. I'm from the host country. After several bankrupt offline enterprise, I have late decided to go online. And now we are working on a project. My question is, it is mentioned that going online making twice at least twice business potential, but unfortunately we are seeing that big companies even are working online with a very small team. Also they are trying to pay very little tax. So what is your advice for online enterprises also using big workers for increasing the employment and prevent the unemployment? Thank you.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much. Rohan, may I ask you to address that, please?
>> ROHAN SAMARAJIVA: Businesses are there to make money. They are not there to increase employment. It would be ‑‑ I am not a businessman. I have always been in either in government or in the academia or right now I run a search organisation. But even in my organisation, if I were to create employment, I would be in trouble.
So you employ the number of people that you need. So in one of the examples that I gave, we have eCommerce which has a significant number of employees because you have a model that actually results in people having deliveries to their homes, which is not found in the United States or in conventional eCommerce models.
In that case you are actually creating a significant amount of employment. In other cases we are picking up the back office operations of various kinds of enterprises. In Europe, maybe in Japan, maybe in the United States. And we are doing it in our countries because we have a competitive advantage in doing that. We are therefore creating employment. In my country, in Sri Lanka we now have over 70,000 people employed in business process out‑sourcing and software exports, where we had none pretty much ten or 12 years ago. So the employment picture I think is something that we cannot give you advice on as a business how you should create employment. You should run a good business. From what I know, any businessman that I know, I know several young entrepreneurs. They do hire. They have to keep hiring because of when their business is growing. But that is not for the purpose of creating employment.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much. Now, in fact back to that table. We had two people who wanted to speak.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Misha Choudhary, a lawyer in New Delhi and New York. Thanks for the shout‑out.
My question for the panel, you guys who are all here. Two parts. I believe the panel suggested that IGF is great and so is multi‑stakeholderism. Or at least I'm hearing that. Maybe I'm incorrect. If it is all that I am a little perturbed and perplexed by these various calls for all of us to come together and decide about how these trust issues are addressed as well as the various other legal problems which the governments are presenting.
But at the same time the civil society does not get much of a voice, when a lot of important issues are being taken up in negotiating treaties like the TPP which is going on and the gentleman highlighted some of the clauses as well. It is probably the first time an agreement has been taken up which introduces a direct obligation on cross‑border data flow. And I believe that most of the negotiations are secret. None of the people know anything about it. It is not just this, but extension of the copyright term from 50, life of the author, 50 to 70 is talked about. And everyone is kept occupant and there is all this talk about trust we find it very difficult to understand which direction the government and the business is trying to take us and how and where is our role. Because all of these things are going to impact innovation, as well as the small and medium enterprise businesses. Thank you.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much. John, would you address that, please?
>> JOHN SELBY: Yes, I agree with you. Here at the IGF you get ICANN talking about accountability and transparency and people say all these issues, if you've got a spectrum, you have ICANN transparency at this end, TPP, multi‑stakeholderism, TTIP at the other end, and GAT and WPTO somewhere at that end.
Yes, one of the things we need to recognize is that the processes, particularly the World Trade Organization and international trade organisations have been going a long time. They have a particular model which the stakeholders who have engaged with have benefited from. New stakeholders coming in are always at a relative disadvantage. You don't necessarily control the process. If you don't participate, then yes, you are not helped. Couple things you can do. The World Trade Organization has a public Forum once a year where civil society can talk to World Trade Organization. And it's coming up, the third of October, so next month. Go to Geneva and you've got three days there. ICANN has a session on the 1st on the ecosystem development. The next day, the U.S. law firm White and Case is hosting a session on data management and global economy, opportunity or threat. We are on the agenda and some Internet stakeholders are engaging. Again the effectiveness of that is minimal to awareness as the first thing for stakeholders in civil society.
If you're feeling excluded then yes, you are. But learn what you can do. Baby steps. Then talk to your governments. Lobby them hard because they are the ones that have a more powerful role. At the moment government has their ear and civil society is being ignored. It's only stained pressure and coordinated staying pressure. Use the Internet and collaborate across countries to build coalitions which are influencing the government, would be my suggestion.
And keep going at it. It's a long process. You will not achieve results overnight.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Yes, the other person?
>> AUDIENCE: Following up on the ‑‑ first of all, my organisation has been following the trade negotiations very closely. I think I have been to almost 15 TPP rounds as civil society as a stakeholder. The doors are closed for us, but I am from Turkey and we have a saying in Turkish if you can't get through the door, you should try the window. And that's what we are trying to do as a civil society. And in IP I have just started working on eCommerce issue because there is no civil society dealing with eCommerce issues than and free flow of information, the businesses are really enthusiastic about. That makes us wonder what is in that chapter. Unfortunately eCommerce chapter hasn't been leaked. We don't know what is in the chapter as civil society or the public.
But we know that the Internet companies are really happy with that chapter and the USTR because the USTR is pushing for free flow of organisation and as a consumer rights organisation we are really concerned. The TPP will introduce the first direct publication on the free flow of information.
There are exceptions but those exceptions most probably will be the trade exceptions under GATS and other WTO improvements. We are not sure whether privacy will be called out as an exception, but that is on the issue that no one discusses. We hear from the businesses free flow of information is great. It's great for trade. It's great for businesses, but how about the consumers?
So that is a upon for us for the civil ‑‑ that's a problem for us as a civil society. I have to say that we are a bit disappoint that had there is no one representing the consumers there on that panel because ICT and trade is also about business, but it is also about the consumers. And the doors are closed to us. Thank you.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Okay. Thank you very much. I think we have a point in the far back here.
Gentleman back there? Then we will take one more point or comment and then we should conclude. Go ahead, please.
>> AUDIENCE: I am from the Sweden Ministry Department of Public Affairs. If you wish to discuss TPPI, all yours. We are interested in hearing the opinions and suggestions and are constantly looking for better solutions to various problems. We do believe that will free data flows are very, very important but we are also quite interested in finding the best solutions for also ensuring a good privacy protection, for example, and data security. And that is actually also my question. From especially Mr. Loeb who mentioned this a few times. Do you have any interesting suggestions or ideas for me to bring home when we see in the TPPI?
>> ERIC LOEB: Yes, conceptually, certainly. You know, first of all, I just would like to say I find it unfortunate when the instincts is if business is for something, civil society or the public should be suspicious of it inherently. That's too simplistic. Businesses have customers. And exist and continue to have business over the long‑term if they are serving their customers. And I always appreciate having the drive. Subi and I talked about this a lot. I like people pushing us to be better. That's good. But I urge that the conversation not be viewed as the zero sum approach. If one is for, the other should suspiciously be against. Let's work together on things. On the cross‑border data flow issue, on one hand there is always a recognition that there will be a very narrow field of legitimate interest that might be raised where a limitation on flow of information is required. And it is narrowly constrained. It could be for a security reason or the like.
The concern that business has is that at times industrial policy could drive a broader restriction than is necessary to reach a legitimate goal. And it could be to disrupt the scale of operations, to impose additional costs, to drive parties to do things more on a localized basis than there may be an economic or technological reason.
And the point in an agreement is to get across the notion that there should not be any more restriction on the flow of information than absolutely necessary to meet those narrow legitimate reasons. It is not to say there can never be a barrier because that is not, that wouldn't even be true in the current instance. What we don't want to see, and I say this from the standpoint of a company that serves customers that operate around the world, they operate around the world and they invest in other countries and they employ in other countries and serve customers in other countries but they do it in an integrated manner where not everything is hermetically sealed within that place. They are connected to other parts of their business or supply chains in other locations and need to have some flexibility in the models that they built to be able to move information around rationally. That is really the emphasis of why we raise it.
We raise it in this instance because we have seen a rising incipient risk of more than just narrowly constrained reasons but sometimes industrial policy reasons to impose those limitations. That is of a concern.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Subi?
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you, Dick. Just two quick responses. We have had some success as far as SOPA and people are concerned. The process and what is it that is trying to be achieved is equally important for us. When decisions are taken behind closed doors there is dissent, there is push‑back. Governments need to recognize along with private sector, this is something that is not acceptable. This has far reaching consequences.
If you are looking at policies which are looking at counter feeding but will disallow somebody to share recipes if they haven't paid for them, that is absolutely unacceptable. As civil society and when we look at multi‑stakeholder platforms of participation, it is not perfect. It is far from it. People from the business communities often governments will always have more resources to be present at places in Geneva or in equally expensive platform for discussion. But it is our responsibility to continue to engage. I appreciate the woman from Turkey who pointed out when doors are shut on us, we have to look for those windows.
It is this genuine desire for consensus, for collaboration which is what gets us the results. Of course, there are failures. But we are looking at constantly engaging with the platform to get somewhere. I would be very welcoming and happy to listen to alternatives to this platform. Thank you.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: I think John wishes to say something?
>> JOHN SELBY: Yes. One of the things I would encourage is the WTO and TTP, TPPI, et cetera, to come and propose workshops here at the IGF. Engage with Internet Governance stakeholders a as well. Don't sit back in Geneva and one day here and think that the world must come to you. That would be a big issue.
The OECD is coming here and is engaging with platforms and workshops in a really good way. I haven't come across much from the WTO. That's one thing.
Secondly, the schedules for the GATS and for these trade agreements, what we've seen of some of them any way that have been leaked, particularly with the GATS, the development of what is the Internet, what is Internet commerce, the definitions of what elements of trade will be opened up within particular companies in those schedules is really out of date. So speeding up that process and perhaps coming to this sort of Forum where those organisations can learn a lot more about what is going on, to better define elements of trade over the Internet, that would be really helpful as well.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: We are running out of time. I see one more person wishes to speak.
>> AUDIENCE: No, just to comment that there was a proposal on TPP specifically on a panel that we were hoping to get some of also the companies like eBay and Mozilla and other Internet companies and it was not inserted in the session and was not asked to be merged with this. Just to say that we actually did try to have that and have some government officials on that.
But I agree that I think it is the responsibility of all of us here to really raise awareness on how the binding decisions in trade agreements do affect Internet Governance and actually, they affect more our lives than many of the things that come out of IGF.
So I am thankful that you guys had this panel and I hope we collaborate in the future to raise this awareness here. Thank you. And I invite you to Brazil next year for IGF. I'm from Brazil. It is going to be in the Brazilian Caribbean.
>> RICHARD BEAIRD: Thank you very much. I'm certain it will not take too much encouragement for us to be in Brazil next year. Thank you.
Let me conclude. We have hit this subject from many directions. It is a complex subject. And obviously we are going to continue this discussion, I'm certain, at future IGFs. We looked at it from the point of view of innovation and economic growth and development and from the point of view of governs policies and private sector.
Interestingly enough we concluded on the subject of trust. And that trust must run through all of these aspects of the new relationship between globalization and the Internet. I would also encourage in future IGFs as we have our colleague from the OECD, Sam Paltridge, there are many institutions like LIRNE Asia, OECD, who look at these issues of new trade models given the new technology and, of course, we can expect the OECD and LIRNE Asia to look at these subjects and bring the results of their considerations to places like the IGF.
But with that I would conclude and thank you all very much. Also, please give appreciation to the panelists.
(Applause.)
(The session concluded at 6:15 p.m.)
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This is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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