FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI-STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
03 SEPTEMBER 2014
14:30
WS 195
THE INTERNET AGE: ADAPTING TO A NEW COPYRIGHT AGENDA
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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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(Internet outage)
>> The environment we are working in is one we are seeing for more emphasis on enforcement than we have in dealing with things related to the public interest. When it comes to exceptions to copyright in the public interest we have seen just one international treaty benefitting users in the last century and this compares to eight international treaties that benefit right's holders. We think that copyright laws are actually outdated and increasingly preventing us from doing our job simply because we moved from print to digital. When I have my user hat on, when I want the pay for some music and I'm trying to hand over my money to a major corporation, I find it frustrating that the music I want to buy is not available in my country. As an Internet user I know this product which I also know is not being sold to me is basically zeroes and ones and the technical feet to getting it to my computer is extremely easy. I want to pay for it. It stops us at the border, that means I can't get hold of what I want to. So this is what I want to concentrate on and what I think it's most important for the future of copyright and its cross border information sharing. Facilitating that cross border movement of information.
In libraries we are seeing increasing requests for information from other countries where people want to obtain materials from other institutions. And the current international treaties on copyright do not regulate these activities, so nations have quite a lot of discretion in setting the terms. The problem is the way that copyright laws are set up territorially means we are very uncertain about whether or not it's legitimate for us to send materials from one country to another. I said earlier librarians have a responsibility to educate people about copyright. We want to be the most law abiding citizens on the Internet when it comes to copyright. But if we are unsure we are in a difficult position. We can't confidently take advantage of all the information activities that the Internet offers us. It's not enough just to complain about a problem, I think it's useful to propose a solution. So IFLA is working and we have proposed a treaty for libraries and archives.
Now this is a piece of work which we have been working on now for about five or six years. Those of you in the room who have followed if negotiations that led to the Marrakesh treaty for the visually impaired know that your hair color can go from full black to total gray in the time it takes to get a treaty resolved at international level. You can also possibly acquire heart problems, lose friends, and discover a whole new way of well, international treaty making. What we are proposing is there's an international treaty put forward for libraries and archives that has international standards.
We operate under a patchwork of different laws around the world and don't have the unique roles of libraries and archives recognized. We want to ensure equal treatment of digital resources and we want to ensure through the instrument copyright laws that protect the use of traditional formats such as print in libraries and archives also applies to digital. We want to protect the ability to acquire and lend to digital collections. This is a huge issue for us. We don't want lending of materials to stop just because we moved to a digital age which means we would try to make sure we would not refuse the opportunity to buy or label e‑books for example. And we would try to make sure we can safe guard our cultural and scientific heritage. And then the other major thing we would seek to achieve is unlock orphan works. We have value works which are held in our libraries and archives but they are unavailable to the public because the copyright holder cannot be found. We don't think that these are too big to ask. We can't do many of these activities yet, particularly not cross border, and therefore we are proposing that WIPO member states move forward with this and we think that could be libraries and archives contribution to a future facing copyrights. I'm going to leave it there. I'm sure there's going to be questions, thank you very much.
(Internet outage)
Ordinary law that creative works artistic works, movies, songs, et cetera so we tend to focus on copyright as protecting these on the Internet as well. And the point I really want the make two points today. The first is historically copyright has been quite good at adapting to the new technology. Let's look at what it's done well. First of all, particularly in my country but I think in many countries like mine the law was originally technology neutral and adapted quite well so copying was done whether by photocopier or fax or the Internet. But four specifically exacts of the way law responded was to the phenomena of the Internet and others may talk more about that. The first was this point about copying by browsing. And many of you will know that in fact approximately seven copies of any particular work are made in the course of transmitting a document from one computer on the Internet to another.
By the time you look at the copies made by the routers and the ISP and the video card on your lap‑top and by the display on the screen there are actually seven copies of a work made. The way they responded to that was quite the same. It was not an infringing copy in the way the law said ‑‑ you have to make something and say this is not really making anything. In some cases it's not made for a long type. This is not an enduring enough work to be an infringing. In New Zealand is call an ephemeral copy, it's only here for a short time. Another law was the safe harbor for ISPs. They are providing a service. And somewhere in the course of that in their machines people can be found infringing works. So most jurisdictions work hard to be sure that ISPs either were not liable at all or had liability but could lease it if they didn't perform certain conditions. Now there's a continuing struggle in that area as to within an ISP or another provider in the chain might lose that current protection and we have seen different systems develop where the ISP has to give notice or notice and take down. And this is a developing area of the law but I regard it as an area of the law that responded reasonable well in terms what the ISP ought to start with the protection they might lose. My third point is a Google victory taking snippets of digitized books and presenting them as part of the search content. The judge in that case said there were many things very positive about Google books. It's a wonderful research tool. There's no harm to the copyright owner to have this material made available for searching. My final point starts off by being almost a joke and that's that chimpanzee selfie. We saw photograph of a ‑‑
>> An ape.
>> I'm sorry, as a zoologist I should have got that right. I'm sorry. So the question was who owns the copyright in that picture taken by that animal? It's in the public domain. And that actually is an indication of a slightly more complex problem and that is the authorship in other circumstances when there's a direct human agency and we have had to deal with the circumstances where copyright works are authored, music is written, et cetera without any parent author. This is software written by a programme that's written by another programme that written by another app. Who owns the copyright on that work? So I point to those as being examples of how good copyright has been typically in responding to the challenges that Internet brings. But there are other sides to that story. If there hadn't been that accommodations probably to kill off the adoption of the Internet in the early days, remember that copyright law was invented in the united kingdom not as a result of the pressure from authors to control their work but state censorship law.
We go back to the licensing of the press act in 1662 you see stationers and printers were authorized to record all books printed, to burn book and to have the only right to print and publish. This was the state's right of method and controlling this growing and dangerous act of printing. The roots go back to the British Star Chamber from as early as 1637. So that act was repealed recently in 1694. Printers clamored for it. They wanted that kind of statute back. The authors didn't really want it. So it took some time until the printers went back to the law and say we need to protect the authors. And they managed to get an act through the British parliament in 1710.
And the reports of that at the time are the stationers knew quite well they should be supporting rights because the only thing the authors could do with the rights was sign them over to the printers because the printers had all the power. It's important to realize there's competing interests and it's still very much part of the distributor’s model and part of the distributor’s weaponry that we have these disputes. The thought of the Internet to disturb the ‑‑ the idea of an IP monopoly is that the state will give you a period of reward where you have the market to yourself, as an incentive to creativity to award you for creativity. You don't get it forever and you're not entitled to make grows profits. Between 600,000 to a million books published every year. The records indicate at least half only sell about 250 books and many best sellers sell 5,000, 10,000, 15 or 20,000. But that's the context in which the copyright bargain is sort of framed. So let's assume that you sell 20,000 books and the author gets $5, that's a return to an author of $100,000. What the Internet offers is access to 100 million customers. So what we tend to see happening is the copyright owners and the distributors saying the same work must now be worth half a billion dollars.
The same work that was worth $100,000 under the previous model, because of the huge increase in availability the Internet provides they say that work is worth half a billion dollars and yet the work is the same. Not only that, the market has changed. What should a fair return be in these circumstances? What price should the author pay at no additional cost, who gets credits for the cost savings and not having to pay for transport and insurance and all those other things. So that's the point I want to leave you with, whereas copyright laws are flexible in some ways, developing a new distribution model and pricing model which reflects the vastly different model is something we have yet to grapple with and we as a society need to think through things.
>> Well, thank you, Peter. Very interesting thoughts, specifically because of the ape, it wasn't a monkey. So with respect to authors and even apes. But I will look to Linda now. Thank you, Linda.
>> LINDA KINNEY: Hi. My name is Linda Kinney I'm here on behalf of the motion picture association. And sort of a funny story I ran into a former colleague of mine, my background is in Internet and tech policy and I spend over a decade at the federal communications commission trying to get broadband out to rural areas to people who don't have access to it. So that was 20 years ago in the US and I feel like 20 years later we are now talking about the same issue only with countries instead of the United States. So I ran into a former colleague of mine who there's a competing panel now on net neutrality. They say said are you coming to the net neutrality anymore? I said no. They said oh you're so lucky, what I didn't say was I was representing the entertainment industry on a copyright panel so I avoided that small fact.
So anyway I'm excited to be here. This is a terrific forum. I think it's a great chance and opportunity for all of us to have a discussion and to be honest, we all I think everybody at this forum has the same objective in mind which is to see broadband deployment pushed out further and further and really access to broad band throughout the world. It great for the entertainment industry but also great for every government because it facilitates economic growth and terrific for people who want access to information, people who want the share information, NGOs. The digital economy has been really transformative and I like the fact this is an opportunity for to us get together and work together on best practices in ways that I think really should be a common goal. That said, we are on a copyright panel so I was asked to address a few issues. One of which is what has the impact of the Internet been on copyright law and also whether there are some new players now as a result of the Internet.
There's no question that the Internet and broadband deployment have really changed the world in a whole new way particularly for the entertainment industry, we have a new distribution platform. It difficult for an old law that was written at a time when you're talking about physical copies to then have that law actually applied in a digital context. But one of the things that I learned a long time ago as a public servant writing statutes is you're never going to be ahead of technology. Whatever law we pass thousand needs to be flexible enough. I was happy to hear Peter go through some of the ways that copyright law has adapted in this new environment because I think we all owe it as a society together to try to figure outweighs to get that balance right and support both creators and creativity and also this new world that gives everybody access to information and spurs economic development.
So one of the questions we were asked as a panel is who are the new players as a result of this Internet, this new development? And I think there are new players in the copyright world. From our perspective starting with there are now intermediaries that have been brought into this conversation. And that is the result in part by one of the things the Internet does which is facilitates easy copying of digital works. And what we are seeing as an industry and we deal with it every day, unclear how much the average population knows about it is criminal enterprises that develop as a result of the Internet and are able to hide. So they can go to different countries, they can buy servers and deliver their content across the world. It not just our content, it's child pornography and we have been talking to a lot of different groups, NGOs, too, on some of these issues and we all face the same problem. You have a criminal enterprise and mostly it's because the people can remain anonymous and that doesn't work had the physical world in the same way so that's a new group of players. As a result we also have a new group of intermediaries that are involved in this issue now and that's the broadband or the ISPs in addition to search and there are several other registries, another one for those of us that work on ICANN issues. And because it's so difficult for us and again when I say us I don't just mean copyright owners but also child protection advocates and people worried about the financial industry, financial fraud, these are all things that governments and people really care about. It's very hard for us to track and to capture and to deal with those enterprises that we cannot find access to or who just jump from country to country within ever there's a take‑down notice. So it's a big challenge for us to deal with. So that's kind of the second group of new players that has emerged that did not exist back in the physical world in the same way. And the third I would say is user generated content.
Again, the Internet digital technology, it's enabled all of us to become users, creators, and it’s been really phenomenal, even our industry has been in awe of the stories and films that are made by people all over the world that are created with sort of very few resources and little equipment and the creativity that that's inspired. And in fact this goes to I think something this formed as really well. I've been to a lot of different workshops on local content, generating local content, which is critical.
As we know there's a virtuous cycle between Internet and content. Nobody is going to buy a tablet just for e‑mail. You're going to buy a tablet because you want access to content. International content is not enough much I think every single person in the room wants access to both local content and local language and access to international content, whatever that content may be. So you have to have both. And especially in the emerging world we have this challenge because there's ‑‑ it's difficult to get financing. There's lots of different barriers to developing that local content. But I think a lot of our members are stepping up to the plate and going into these emerging economies and trying to hire local developers writers, directors, which provides jobs and creates content. Why? Because people want that.
Like I said it has to be both. And frankly those people understand their culture, they understand the inside aspect of what people in that population are interested in. And I would really like to hear hopefully there are some producers of content that are local producers either here in Istanbul or in other emerging economies and can tell us about their experience both with developing that content but also with copyright and what role that plays from their perspective. So I think a few of the things that we have talked about at the IGF in terms of these challenges to local content or number one, an environment that supports free expression. Oftentimes an environment that supports free expression will also have strong copyright laws; those things go together because you have the rule of law in a more lawful environment. And I was fascinated to hear Peter's story actually that it was protecting the censorship.
>> I did not know that fact because America did not exist back then. We didn't learn British history in America, turns outs. So I think we also know that you need an environment that it's a trusted environment and we are hearing and finding out that that is more and more important throughout the world. It's something that as knew countries come online, they're discovering themselves. When I say a trust environment, part of that is strong consumer protection laws. It may be privacy has become a really big issue. People want their privacy protected. They want to ensure that their bank accounts are not going to get hacked, that there's not malware botnets. And it has to be that there's a certain level of consumer protection and law enforcement that backs up the Internet and creates a trusted environment in order for these countries to even want to adopt or people to get online.
I think the last thing I would like to mention is digital skills. That goes to this issue of developing local content. The more people have digital skills, the more access they have to information which is one of the goals of the IGF. Also they're able to create content and share content. That's an area where the entertainment industry as well as everybody in this room can get behind and support best practices for promoting digital skills and especially these emerging economies. So I've been told that my time is up. I will now pass the mantle.
>> Thank you, Linda. I think it very important. The idea to have the new players around I think raises very important questions that we didn't realize it was important in the past. And the other thing is maybe to think a little bit about what is the role of the copyright. And you raised that question. I think it's very important. The role of copyright for the creation of content, I think that's an unanswered question yet. So Konstantinos?
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. Hello everybody, my name is Konstantinos Komaitis and I work for the Internet society. For those of you who do not know what the Internet society, very briefly I will explain that is an organisation established in 1992 and with a very basic but very important mission as far as I'm concerned to make sure that the Internet is accessible by everyone around the world and that the Internet's underlying design and architecture maintains the same ‑‑ maintains ‑‑ continues to be the way it was originally designed. So the Internet society was essentially created to provide institutional home to the Internet engineering task forks the ITF and this is the body that creates the Internet. So here we are again. I feel that this issue is recurring. I've been coming to the IGF for the past nine years and there's always a copyright stream but I am feeling over the years that the discussions actually progressed and we have come a long way. I think that where we started and we are we will except right now and should except how important copyright is for everybody. And the choices also that copyrights provide to content creators.
We also see more stakeholders engaging in discussions of trying to understand the role of copyright law and especially the access that copyright has with the Internet and how Internet affects copyright and how the copy affects the Internet. So content is key and everyone is a creator and this was I a couple years ago was the topic of decision at the ITF and I see Glenn Deen down there in trying to adopt technology and trying to understand this relationship that exists between copyright and the Internet. So I ‑‑ well I used to be an academic and my Ph.D. was actually investigating this relationship between those two what appear to be at the time and for many, many people conflicting things but they're not conflicting.
They actually work hand in hand and one can facilitate the other. Linda, I think, and Peter as well as Stuart really pointed out the fact that there is this stream between copyright and the Internet and over the years we are moving closer together in actually identifying the commonalities and how one can help the other. We see new business models emerging but we also see traditional models not only adopting but you know occasionally thinking outside the box we see how the relationship between the new business models and the existing business models gets tighter and the marriage gets much better. And I'm thinking right now Netflix and how it's being used as a distribution channel for traditional business models and for many people to get access to content that we all read and want to get access to because of the Internet.
So and in talking I've been talking to various studios then and content owners and one of them said something to me which I loved, that the Internet might be disruptive but it's not destructive for copyright. And ink this encapsulates perfectly the challenge but at the same time the opportunities presented to all of us to move forward and understand actually what are the best ways in order to make sure that we use this opportunity in order to have a copyright regime that is adjustable to the Internet and gone an Internet environment that understands the copyright regime. So one of the questions that we were asked to deliberate on is, for example, whether we see any approaches being developed to address those copyright challenges that have emerged because of the Internet. And I think that Linda when she said you know what I've learned very early that law cannot catch up with technology and it can't. Stuart mentioned 14 years for an international treaty and five years in the making and discussions for another treaty. So what we have seen lately and I think it's a very interesting thing that is happening is that key players are taking the initiatives voluntary initiatives, self‑regulatory initiatives to try to address this challenges. Are they perfect? Perhaps not. But they are definitely a great step and a very vital step towards identifying those solutions.
We need to remember that those initiatives are part of this multistakeholder programme that we are here to preserve and encourage. For example I'm thinking about the copyright alert system in the United States was actually open to all stakeholders, it had content owners, businesses, Civil Society groups. The government was behind it. We see those trends emerging and those trends request be with beneficial. Of course there are principles they have to be based on but at the same time they have critical issues that we see emerging. I will stop here because then I will start repeating what other people are saying and look forward to discussions.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. We have been hearing you a lot. That's all right. That's a joke. This relationship between the Internet and the copyright which of course is something obvious but I think it's important the idea to think a little bit about how the systems can understand each other. I think that will be interesting to go around later. So the last but not least, Mishi.
>> MISHI CHOUDHARY: Thank you. My name is Mishi Choudhary, I am also a lawyer, fortunately or unfortunately. And my clients include the world's greatest software projects some of which all of you are using or some products based on them that includes apache and other things that run‑ins your cars, your phones and elsewhere. Also included in that are biggest content creators. Some contributors like Wikipedia. So perhaps those people have actually contributed to learning and dissemination of more digital rights based on minimal copyright such as the use of creative commons which led to way more content than anything else has. We are these days living in an era of hyper active copyright enforcement, scaled up, automated and it is set to meet the boundless new capacities. The opportunity to create is weakened in this current hyperactive copyright. The law which was made initially for the printing press is not very well suited for this age. It needs a major re‑think of fair use, penalties and the duration of copyright protection. It needs to be more forward thinking and flexible than ever before. In fact getting rid of it will be perfect. I'll find something else to do. There are more interesting things. But honestly, and even it's impossible because big content and the power of (?) Will not let it happen and it's inevitable because of the power of time and innovation. People are more interested in asserting the rights that they have against the so called online piracy. It requires these rights holders to manage sites for infringing content, a process which is never ending. Because the Internet has grown. This requires reframing of the question itself. Given the decades of the rhetorical en French meant of the property rights and the law enforcement around it.
As I said we live in an active hyperactive copyright enforcement area. It seems very, very far away from what were the original narrow purposes of intellectual property right. I practice in the United States and I'm it is an Indian and I practice in India as well. Whether the children in India who posterior actually very, very excited now because education is not limited to the elite few and can reach anybody through this wonderful thing called Internet. But obstacles which were only limited to our country have expanded everywhere.
I also practice in the United States where the constitution under article 1‑8 had given which is perhaps the copyright law had originally established production. It was renewable for another 14 years and where are we today and where are the TDB discussions about the extension of copyright today? Well it's all a secret unless you check WikiLeaks. It was about the state granted monopolies against the natural condition of circulation of information. That time the natural condition of circulation as Thomas Jefferson pointed out was different today, a little different. Over the past century everything has turned on its head. The prioritizations have changed. Public domain has been reduced to a historical artifact. It's out of date.
Now we can challenge the imperfect control of the Internet that enables piracy but also allows a lot of free speech. One, this is the major biggest issue of the century, let's make it even more strict, more strong, enforce them strictly, put them all behind bars and often presented as a fact it not well‑equipped we need more through secret doors. We need more, or we change the copyright laws to ensure that more of what we are doing these days, all of us, very, very naturally this sharing, this creating every day, this new digital culture which is happening is made legal and we can expand the rights to reuse and remix copyright work in non‑commercial contexts. We should think carefully also about its enforcement necessary and proportionate is not a word just for surveillance. Necessary and proportion Internet enforcement that will minimize harm to free speech and individual liberty. Yes our privacy, at least some of our new freedoms, the ones emerging because of Internet, our right to be producers, creators, users as well takes consumers.
We are beginning to see in the TV, film and the publishing industry. Yes, piracy is a part of this destruction but it is just a symptom, it's not the cause. There is a different business model out there. The cause is because there is a decline in the cost of copying of distribution, of making different copies, storage, and various other things and this cause is Internet. And this is the new condition. The natural one, which the constitution is talking about. And again it's time to weigh and balance it about the state grant of monopolies, about what is now the natural condition.
Most copyright people‑most people amongst us will enforce in general will support copyright enforcement but not when it will start and begin to compromise free speech or piracy through monitoring of our Internet activity. Whatever you do has to be monitored in order to know what are you exactly doing? Let's recast this debate. We have seen the intermediaries. I do come from India and there have been at least in 2013 because blocking of websites is so secret and nobody tells us but we did hear that 1,208 were bought, some for copyright, some to restrict what we didn't want people to see. Some were handed out to regimes and they are laughing it up because isn't that what was sent to them or forced for them? Let's recast the intellectual property rights description, let's rephrase all of this.
Intellectual property rights as perhaps sometimes they are government‑granted monopolies, that's why they are jurisdictional. Let's see these restrictive laws and Internet surveillance can only happen with a lot of digital surveillance. Sorry, copyright enforcement can only happen in a lot of digital surveillance. If we are all mindful of these and also see how the various intermediaries whether it's your social media websites or search engines or various other people who have been burdened with this duty to take down user generated content to monitor and which forces them to err on the side of caution because people like us are expensive and charge by the hour. And who wants to face all that money? When small and medium enterprises are facing these problems. When innovation are suffering because the cost of entry has been raised to such a large extent. It might all sound drastic. At least minimization and editing it will lead to us a very different world. Thank you.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you Mishi. I think you raised a counsel of very interesting issues regarding enforcement and how the trade agenda are trying to address that issue in a very complicated way and how to connect somehow the enforcement with the respect of others. I think there are a couple of very interesting ideas but there are a couple of questions on the whole. I can see that. So we will like to have some questions from the floor and then we will like to hear if there's something about the remote participation. So okay. I will need a mic, please. Do we have a mic?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, I have a question ‑‑ my name is Andrew Bridges. I'm from Fenwick and West in San Francisco. I have a question about incentives in creation. From the motion picture industry we hear that there needs to be more copyright rights, more enforcement and more production tax credits from states in order incentivize motion pictures. The US chamber of commerce blasted India for its IP regime and said that Bollywood, already the world's most prolific film industry would suffer unless India increased its IP protection. But I believe the United States produces about 450 feature length films per year and Bollywood about 1500 per year. To what extent is it really true that Bollywood will thrive more if India increases its IP protection, or can we explain the success of Bollywood by the relative lack of IP protection in India? Thank you. And that's for both Ms. Kenny and Choudhary.
>> LINDA KINNEY: One thing that is very interesting and a use tool what the IGF has done is put of draft language, draft reports online. One of the comments that was post online in the local content section, there was a study that was referred to by a Harvard law professor that in fact was a Bollywood study. And there were some economists and statisticians who looked at Bollywood and during the time when there was rampant piracy there was less creativity. So they found a connection statistically between copyright law and a stronger copyright law and that it does in fact have an impact and effect on development of creative content. So I would refer you to that study that's referenced again on the IGF website by a Harvard law professor. And I think that's a very interesting ‑‑ it's something we have all been thinking about and really have thought for a long time. Again there are some local producers I think here who may have their own stories but there is an impact and this study actually proofs it's statistically.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: We are having more questions from the public and I ask the panelists to wait a bit. So we have one question there. Can you please raise your hands?
>> I'm a member of the European parliament for the pirate party. And I feel we have heard very different views on the relationship of copyright and fundamental rights. Ms. Kinney, you said during your presentation that an environmental freedom of expression also has strong copyright laws. I would like to hear the panel's opinion on instances where copyright law is being used as a censorship tool. For example in Germany where I come from an NGO as recently used freedom of information laws to obtain a government document from the ministry of the interior that where the legal experts the ministry were arguing a law that was being passed was unconstitutional. Even though with it was released it could not be published ton Internet because would it violate the copyright of the lawyers even though the lawyers are being paid by taxpayer money to do the research. So I would like to know what you mean by saying copyright law and freedom of expression necessarily go together and can you imagine instances where the other takes place?
>> We have another question. Please stand up.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, coming back to the trade agenda and the TPP, we have been discussing agenda, multistakeholder regime and Internet and copyright Internet age but I don't know how many of you are aware but the 12 countries, the negotiators for 12 countries simultaneously discussing negotiating free trade agreement in Viet Nam, the negotiations are started and they are discussing proprietary enforcement. And unfortunately these rules will be original rules for Asia Pacific for 12 countries for now but it will extend to new countries. So I want to hear more about the trade agenda and more about the copyright and net in trade agreements from the panelists.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. We have one question there.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. Internet exchange, I've got a question from a business perspective relating to how copyrights incentives can boost creativity. I believe it's very advantageous to us all if creators of original works can reap the benefits of investment in their creativity. And when it comes to piracy and the freely available infringing works online, those value added platforms to make it provide a better user experience than the pirate platforms are very much part of the solution to this issue. What concerns me is in an environment where you have the exclusivity principal and the right to set your own price arbitrarily for your original works. Those that add value to other people's original works have to negotiate for the rights to license that. And if you're successful and you make profits you would hope to make return on your investments. But when the licenses expire you would have to renegotiate that and whether there is essentially a monopoly seller, there was a strong ability to extract all the value La the value adder has created and passed that back to the creator of the original works. I'm concerned this might create a structural disincentive to invest in third‑party original content. And the exclusivity principle that therefore has the potential to reduce both the diversity of such platforms and the ability to set prices at any rate you choose without any form of set pricing or whatever it might be, means that there was an ability toy the extract value from those that have been successful. You wonder whether the exclusivity principle is still fit for an Internet in which adding value to other original works is increasingly important.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. We have another question here. Please, the lady in white.
>> AUDIENCE: Well, exactly not a question, it's more like a comment. Copyright is I don't know, in Colombia we of right now a case of criminal case related with copyright where a master's student shared master's tests on the net and he is accused right now and facing a criminal process fashion up to eight years of jail for doing this, which is showing that there is a clash around copyrights and Human Rights ‑‑ exercise of Human Rights is more or less like this is the thing we do on the Internet, we share things. And this is something that this student did with the idea of helping other colleagues at his university in the regions in Colombia, not in the city and the capitol city. The reasons where libraries are ‑‑ you don't see that many libraries where libraries have a lot of constraints on getting databases and getting licenses and so on. So we in Colombia are very concerned about the constraints copyright is presenting for the exercise of Human Rights especially access to knowledge and access to information. Also another thing that we want to discuss or to listen more about it, is what are the reasons for the extensions of the protection of copyright terms. What are the reasons for that? When we wanted to have more exceptions than limitations in Colombia they are telling us where is the meat for that? You have to show proof while for the extension of the copyright turn, no one asked for that. It's easy to do it.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you, one last and then a round of our panelists. Here in the front, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon, my name is Pranesh Prakash; I'm a policy director up India. Up until 2011 when there was an amendment in Indian copyright law, search engines were illegal, a specific clause was added to the law to actually make search engines little and to allow for legality of what ISPs do. In the US, et cetera, there are in the fair use rights in US copyright law things like transformative use. In much of the rest of the world that is not the case. In the UK private use is still very restrictive until recent amendments. My point is we can't have the US perfect for the rest of the real world where those laws don't apply. Where the laws are much more restrictive and much of what is taken your granted in how we use the Internet such as search engines are actually illegal under many country's laws. Secondly in people in Bollywood with the support of the MPA have actually pushed for video piracy to be dealt with under this act which allows for preventive detention which is something that was used against Indian freedom fighters, it was used in repressive regimes with people without having to show cause are allowed to be just be jailed.
Now selling CD's by the roadside I don't think should merit ‑‑ that's not even punishment, that is preventing someone from committing a position crime and a couple other examples, random house is now preventing libraries from lending a book more than 27 times. What if I told that you book was an e‑book? That was perfectly legal. Now I would like to know how any of this promotes or safeguards access, freedom of expression, privacy. So that was the substance. About the discussion happening here at IGF. What role does this discussion actually have on the kind of discussions that are happening at the TPD trade negotiations or when the world intellectual property organisation commissions an operator on Internet reliability and certain countries are pushing for greater action. I don't see any governments actually stepping in here and listening saying you're going to take this to the trade negotiation processes. What is the role of the Internet Governance Forum if it can't inform any of those processes is it just a mere talk shop which doesn't affect any decisions made anywhere else?
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. So we have a couple of questions here. So I don't know if we can start it by Stuart.
>> STUART HAMILTON: I'll do my best to tackle a few of those. First I think there's definitely a connection between access to knowledge, Human Rights and copyright. And in terms of censorship I think the most classic case brings to mind are the scientologists who very active use copyright law to take down term. There's a particularly interesting case this year in the UK where an academic paper was censored buy its publishers on the grounds there were some outstanding copyright issues that needed to be cleared up. The paper was held up tore about 8 or 9 months and eventually published. But the actual subject of the paper was the increasing price of academic journals and possible corruption in academic journal industry and the publisher was forced to apologize in the end. So I think that's what we need to keep an eye on when it comes up. Pick up the TPP. We are very worried about the secrecy around those negotiations about how can we get involved in this process, we don't exactly know what is going on, we can't base policy just on WikiLeaks much one thick interesting this morning reading the tweets about an earlier copyright session I think there were calls to dismantle WIPO, while that would stop me from going to many, many meetings, on the other hand at WIPO, all of us NGOs can access the documents on the table and can see a lot of the raw materials for the discussions, I think's an interesting approach.
We have librarians in Canada and other countries working on this. E‑books is ale huge problem because there's a lot in there about whether or not we have the right the purchase and whether or not we are ever purchasing something as opposed to licensing it. It's kind of interesting the concept you're talking about only 27 loans is something called friction. Any librarian that's ever worked with sticky tape will tell you it's not the case; you can keep it going for quite some time. We can get up to 40 or 50 times. So that's a huge problem for us. But I would go more general and go back to the IGF one. I particularly enjoy having dialogue with our colleagues in the entertainment industry. We can have very good conversations; even informal support for some aspects of what the libraries are trying to do at WIPO t more you turn up on the floor there, nothing of those discussions will make to it the negotiating position. All you get is a stone wall and there's no attempt to be flexible. It makes perfect sense. This is how I would go into it. But anything that could be perceived as weak and copyright will go nor unless you really push and have the energy for the Next three years. Those people, when the treaty of the blind cropped up, we have always supported it. Rubbish. I don't know how many it actually affects those hardcore conversations.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Peter? Peter Dengate. Thank you, I don't have answers to any of these questions, I don't think anybody does but I can perhaps give you thoughts on two of them and the first is the role of IGF and whether it makes any difference. And the answer like most legal constitutions, it depends. First it's very important what the IGF replace other decision making bodies for all sorts of reasons and part of the charter of the IGF is to respect and work with other institutions. The question is how do we take it from here and go somewhere where else? The bottom line is there is no “them” here. Just us. There isn't an executive body or staff that can listen and convert this into a discussion document, unless we do that ourselves. You have to understand the way the IGF works we need to understand how it works and turn it into something. So it's not ‑‑ there's no them, it's only us I guess is the point there. I think the other point I would come to is most of these questions are directed at the fundamental question, what is the value, what drives ‑‑ is the original premise a copyright or the original understanding most of us have about copyright still true.
Does it as people say in creativity and the hint of that in the Bollywood question we had before which we haven't had an answer from our Indian colleague. It was not a creation of authors clamoring for rights. It was done by distributors. The Internet has changed mostly the mode of distribution. This is the debate we have to have, what are the fundamental underpinnings and have they changed? I think they have and I think we have to have that debate.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: We have one tweet. One tweet.
>> Just going back a little bit to the IGF and the role. Yes, Peter is right, we don't want the turn the IGF into a negotiating platform. And I think that I will disagree with Stuart that the influence it has had. First look at this room we are all together because of the IGF to discuss all these issues and going bike to WIPO, gradually and over the years we were getting our hand on the text even if it was at 2:00 a.m. in the morning and we had to stay until 5:00 a.m. to get our heads around it. We were still getting and know what governments were discussing. Sure, there are other venues where this is not happening and we cannot possibly be expecting that everything is going to happen at the same time. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think that we would have gone there if it was the IGF support this idea of bringing everything together to discuss and providing if you want the form to do so.
>> Well, following the discussion, Linda.
>> LINDA KINNEY: So I just wanted to address more broadly one thing that has always baffled me is the movie industry really is founded on the premise of free expression. Developing movies is about telling stories. And there are a lot of stories in life that are painful and there are a lot of stories that maybe don't flatter a government or a certain ethnic group or whatever the issue is so you're not always going to have stories that agree with your point of view. But at least in America the entertainment industry rests on free speech. We are the aggressive defenders and bring cases to the Supreme Court defending again our right for free speech. So I've never quite understood how this concept that copyright is and tension with free speech when that is the absolute fundamental foundation of the entertainment industry. We met with another group, another thing about IGF is there's so many great groups here and all of us are brought together because we want a better online environment. We met with the group from freedom house, all of them focused on free speech. Again they're whole mission here, they don't know ‑‑ most of them don't know anything about copyright law. They know about free speech and in their country it is repressed. And we had so many things in common talking to those people in though countries. So I think what we have found is that in countries where there is a tradition of free speech, there also tends to be strong copyright and it allows industries like ours to tell difficult stories that perhaps others want the sensor. And that's why I think it's important that those two things go together.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: Thank you. So do you have another tweet? No. Great. Mishi then.
>> MISHI CHOUDHARY: Just one quick comment about the fact of copyright law. In the United States the justification always for a copyright law which is being given is the balance is two things, one is the fair use and the other is idea expression dichotomy. And it has mostly been said and cults have usually justified and evaded the tough question about the powers of copyright and saying that copyright law balances the first amendment concerns because it has these two basic concepts built in.
Despite being the most widely used example, copyright cases almost never invoke first amendment scrutiny. Court issues regular injunctions before any evidence actually comes into account. The question about IGF being a forum, I don't think I am well‑placed to answer it is the right question to raise why all of us are here and debating these things and what is the outcome of all this discussion and where do these input really go if these back ally on the side various treaties between this country that, one, and now you're at this conference we are going to already is that right? Discussion. Having all of these separate silos is not going to serve any purpose. I don't know what is the purpose. It's definitely an enriching discussion, I agree, absolutely that we hear so many viewpoints; we understand what people are thinking. It also gives us ideas about our own words but I can't comment anything if about the outcome unless we have a comprehensive way to answer these questions. Having this one conference to the other it's just going to add miles to everybody's airlines record and that's about it.
One thing I do want to say which I agree with Stuart, the Internet has been hailed as this biggest success story. It broke new grounds about bringing together many people and engaging in a very something which had never been done and involving a lot of people remotely. It wasn't perfect. There was a lot of problem. But if you see the number of comments about intellectual property rights in the document and the insistence about addiction of the word, the rights of not just others but created and established by law it will tell you All Quiet on the Western Front of this plays out not the real world. The study I believe was in Nigeria, and not in India of Bollywood but maybe I'm mistaken. So I do not know exactly which ‑‑
>> The study you were referencing was Bollywood. It's Nigeria. So I don't think we have that question answered and I'm still very interested in that question.
>> (Off mic.)
>> I've got it here.
>> Can you pull it up? Does anybody else?
>> I can get it for you.
>> Claudio, Twitter wants to know that as well.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ:
>> We had lost connection earlier but I tried to follow the discussion on Twitter and everyone is asking the same thing about this report so we want the read it and see if it still exists. There's another question but we want the share.
>> CLAUDIO RUIZ: There is another question?
>> There's just one question that it's if let's see if I can formulate it properly. Oh, ink I lost it. Okay. Here it is. If the reason to conflict township copyright and free speech surely locking away content means that this is not going to be part of the conversation and not going to be part of what constitutes free speech.
>> Okay. We are running outs of time but we will have another round if you want. Stuart?
>> STUART HAMILTON: I wanted to say another thing about the censorship aspect. I think when copyrights is going to get really cause up in censorship it going to be the result of automation and take‑downs as a result the algorithms, that's where we do move into an area where humans aren't making decisions. Often perhaps the algorithms to take down the content may have been influenced by industry whose really want that content taken down. I independent Google gets millions of take down notices every period, every day. But some stuff caught up in that I would wager is not going to be. Infringing copyrights. I think there's a real danger that we can be over zealous in this.
>> Linda?
>> LINDA KINNEY: Here is the reference to the study. It is Bollywood piracy. And they look at the Indian market.
>> We can discuss it further. I don't know if any other panelists had some closing remarks? No? We can talk for weeks about copyright but we don't have more comments. Okay. Thank you everyone, thank you my panelists and it's been a great discussion. I hope we enjoyed. Thank you.
(Applause)
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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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