7 November 2012
Tuesday, 6th November 2012
EMERGING ISSUES
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Seventh Meeting of the IGF, in Baku, Azerbaijan. 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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THE SECRETARY: We have to use our headphones. That's the only way we can hear each other. You have to get the headphone from there, please. I'll now hand over the session to Mr Philip Verveer who is going to be the Chairman of the session. Thank you.
THE CHAIRMAN: Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure to open this first main session of the 2012 Internet Governance Forum. Welcome to Azerbaijan and welcome to the IGF. For the next three hours, we will be discussing a number of emerging issues focussing on various aspects of the free flow of information. We will be guided through the session by three moderators: Ms Ana Neves of the Government of Portugal, Mr Izumi Aizu of Tama University in Japan and Mr Thomas Spiller, Vice President of the Walt Disney Company. Our moderator for remote participation is Ms Valeria Betancourt from the Association of Progressive Communications.
There will be four parts to the session. Each discussing different topics. First, the role of information and communications technology and disaster relief and mitigation and the possible policy frameworks to enable collaboration; second, the core issue of this session, the free flow of information and internet governance and Human Rights; third, protection of intellectual property online in the appropriate and proportionate measures for protection while maintaining the ability and rights for people to share cultural assets and content and to be able to innovate and create; fourth, the opportunities and challenges arising as traditional media are increasingly accessed over the internet, for example, new models for accessing content, user generated content and so forth.
I will now pass over to our moderators for the session Ana Neves, Thomas Spiller and Izumi Aizu. Valeria Betancourt will bring comments from our remote participants.
MR AIZU: Thank you very much, Ambassador Verveer and we are really glad to see that our session around the emerging issues are now beginning as Ambassador told us there are four parts but we are largely breaking this into two different parts.
The first part deals with the role of the internet and ICT and the traditional media for disaster recovery or disaster management. We will spend first 45 minutes‑ish on this subject.
Then we combine the questions two, three and four, and make it one large section under the theme of free flow of information, freedom of expression, human rights, balanced with intellectual property rights and possibly some other dimensions.
I would like to just briefly introduce our excellent speakers here from ‑‑ I can't see that far ‑‑ from very far, ladies first, Ms Sabina Verheyen. Am I right? She is a member of the European Parliament. Then next to her is Mr Ko Fujii. He is the Google Japan policy councillor. Then next to him is Mr Valens Riadi. He is the head of APT Foundation and also Apji, the ISP's Association from Indonesia.
Then we have Mr Chengetai, the Chairman, and Ambassador Verveer. Then we have Mr Patrick Ryan. He is the policy counsel Open Internet at Google.
We are expecting Mr Scott Sykes to take the floor but somehow we haven't been able to bring him up on to the stage. If you know where he is, please ask him to join.
Then last but not least Mr Giacomo Mazzione, he is the head of Institutional Relations and Members Relations South European Broadcasting Union or EBU.
Without further ado, I would like to go into the first session. There will be some video to show you.
(Text of video follows:
"The quake triggered a giant tsunami. The waves easily poured over sea walls ten metres high. The tsunami devastated communities along more than 500 kilometres of coast line. The rain swept through fields and towns leaving 24,000 people dead or missing and destroying 100,000 home. Thousands lost family members, their jobs and their livelihoods."
End of video text)
MR AIZU: Now I would like to introduce my Government Japanese Government Mr Toru Nakaya the Director General, Institute for International Communication Policy, to say a few words only about this disaster. Mr Nakaya, please.
TORU NAKAYA: Thank you, Mr Aizu for your kind of introduction. My name is Toru Nakaya. I am from the Japanese Government. As you just see on the video, on 11 March 2011 the earthquake of magnitude 9.0 hit the north‑eastern coast of the Japanese mainland. About half‑an‑hour later a giant tsunami arrived at the coast of the area. As it was announced, approximately 20,000 lives were lost.
In the aftermath of this disaster, Japan received assistance from many countries, in total 163 countries or regions and 43 international organisations.
On behalf of the Government of Japan, I express my sincere gratitude to those countries and regions who extended assistance to Japanese people and victims.
As you may easily anticipate, the telecommunication infrastructure in the devastated area was severely affected, firstly by congestion because many people want to check if their friends are safe or not and, secondly, by physical damage either by earthquake itself or tsunami and, thirdly, by black out. That means loss of electricity supply. ICT doesn't work without an electricity supply.
The tsunami washed away everything, including mobile communication stations; so it is really, really difficult to communicate to each other in the devastated areas.
On the other hand, in the outside of the devastated areas, people tried to save or assist those victims making use of ICTs and some went very well but some didn't.
We, I'm Japanese, learnt a lot from this disaster and I believe it will be the same for the panellists sitting here on the stage and that they have something to talk to you so that you can learn something and use it for the future disaster.
I sincerely hope that this first session is very useful for you. Thank you very much.
MR AIZU: Thank you very much, Nakaya San. Now we would like to have two speakers. First one, is Mr Ko Fujii from Google Japan. Mr Fujii will elaborate their crisis responses, not only confined in Japan but touching upon other global crises and how the ICT saw their services are used or utilised or not. Mr Fujii, the floor is yours.
MR FUJII: Thank you, Mr Aizu. Please give me a moment to prepare my slides.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak about the role of internet for disaster reduction. This was a very difficult time for us in Google Japan. I was there in Japan when the disaster struck and we went through this operation of several months of disaster relief as well as disaster, rebuilding the economy.
So I would like to first tell a little bit about the history of Google's disaster response.
When disaster strikes, people turn to the Internet for information. Technology first helps first to responders to save lives, so technology doesn't save lives per se but it helps the first responders save lives.
You didn't hear about the role of internet in disaster relief until about ten years ago but in Google it all started in 2005 when people spontaneously started using Google Earth as a clearing house for information and idea‑sharing. This was a very good platform because it can visualise a lot of data and people can exchange ideas on the map.
Then during 2010, during the Haiti earthquake, Google developed the person finder. This is a registry for missing persons. As you can see on the green it says "I'm looking for someone" and on the blue on the right it says, "I have information about someone". People can exchange information about their loved ones, people they are looking for, through this platform.
After Hurricane Katrina, a lot of websites created person registries but the idea of Google person finder was to create a common data format so we could centralise and accept data from different registries so these registries do not get fragmented. That was the whole purpose of person finder.
Haiti was another watershed moment for us because we saw that maps could be combined with other disaster relief tools. This is actually the area image of Port Au Prince in 2009 and this is what you see after the disaster. Responders used maps to plan and choose medical evacuations, locations. It proved to be a very useful tool.
Then what Google were doing was that we created a disaster response crisis response team explicitly dedicated to disaster relief.
Since then we have responded to about 28 disaster cases including, most recently, Hurricane Sandy which was late last month.
Now I am going to talk about the great East Japan earthquake of March 11, 2012. Obviously, this was not just an earthquake, it also involved tsunami as well as the nuclear disaster so it was a triple disaster.
This was actually a picture taken from our office. You can see the smoke by the horizon. It is actually an oil refinery by Tokyo blowing up in the sky. It was a really scary moment about 2.00, 2.30, 2.46 in the afternoon but because we had been preparing for this crises response as a team, we were able to put up the person finder in less than two hour. So we were able to put up the person finder at about 4.30.
Within an hour after putting up the person finder we were able to establish the crisis response portal site which after this moment helped many people go through these difficult times by providing various information.
I am going to talk about Google Japan's operation, not in a chronological order but I am going to pick up different themes so that we can flow directly into the next part of the discussion, which is the various emerging issues such as issues having to do with mobile devices, connectivity, social media and our relationship with traditional media.
The first thing that we did was we aggregated and visualised data from public sources. This is like the ABC of crisis response. This is the first thing that you would do. You would visualise data from public resources, usually on maps.
This is the data of driveable roads. We got these data from probe data, Honda originally provided these data. After that we got similar data from the ITS Society of Japan which is a publicly affiliated organisation.
Driveable roads are important to know which roads can be driven for disaster relief purposes.
A similar map, planned power outage map, because of the nuclear disaster was out we had a rolling power outage and, you know, different blocks of the city went through power outage at different times and people wanted to know the plans. We got this data from the electricity company through the co‑operation of Ministry of Economy and Trade and we created these maps.
Similarly, we are creating the lifeline map. These are mobile availability, gas and other data aggregated into one format.
What is important about this operation? Access to data and open Government. We talk about open Government, on that recently, but this is really crucial in times of disaster.
Uniform standards in machine readable format are also key because in a lot of cases in Japan the Government provided the data in PDF or they would just have the information in hard copies, which are not useful or not readily usable and so this was actually a lesson learned. Machine readable format is very important.
Collaboration with traditional media, something really phenomenal happened. This is actually the news of TBS. TBS is a big television broadcasting station in Japan. Immediately after the earthquake they started broadcasting TV news on the internet through YouTube.
This is not something that would happen normally because at normal times we would have to go through loads of copyright restrictions and business transactions and contracts to make this happen but in a crisis situation internet companies and broadcasting companies really co‑operated to make this happen.
The same with YouTube person search channel. People were searching for people and TV broadcasters interviewed and we put it up on YouTube immediately.
We also did TV advertising. This may sound odd but TV can really reach a lot of people and a lot of people don't know what information is out there on the web so we actually ran TV ads to show what information you can find on internet portal site that are responding to crises.
The same thing, we had information up on mobile and then the next week we did newspaper ads to tell people that you can find this information on mobile.
Infrastructure, connectivity, data traffic and devices, these were the physical layer of the internet but these were also very important. For example devices, you know, people didn't have PCs and PCs they didn't have connectivity because the devices were washed away and cables were cut and the only devices that people could rely on most of the time were their mobile phones in their pockets so we enabled person finder for mobile. We also enabled crisis portal site for mobile and so our devices, the choice of devices also play a crucial role when you are responding to disasters.
This is also an infrastructural problem. Government websites and public utilities websites started going down because there was so much traffic going there so they could not just hold off the concentration of traffic.
The Government and internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and other companies collaborated to mirror government and public utilities websites so that vital information was always up there on the web.
Another issue that was really interesting for us was digitising real world information. When we talk about the internet you sort of assume that the information is already up there on the web and it is just a matter of how to corroborate and curate that information but in a crisis situation, especially in times of natural disaster, a lot of the information is actually in the real world. It not even on the web. It is not digitised. How do you do it?
This was an interesting case. This was online sharing of refugee rosters in shelters. What happened was ‑‑ so we had the person finders and those who had digital access to the internet were able to use person finders but in the core regions of the disaster, people only had pencils and paper and markers so what they would do is they would scribble their names on these pieces of paper and post them up on the walls of the hospitals and the shelters hopeful, you know, hoping that somebody will find out that they are alive.
But somebody started tweeting that, you know, if this information is there on the walls why not take pictures of them and if you have a web enabled digital phone then you can put it up on the web. Volunteers started taking pictures of these list of names, they put them up on the web and volunteers from all over the world who can read Japanese actually started entering this information on to person finder. We had about 5,000 volunteers in a matter of a few days that entered about 140,000 names onto the web. This was a real case of online/offline collaboration.
Health and hygiene map. This information had to be collected by foot by nurses and doctors and then once they were collected we were able to digitise them but the next time, you know, hopefully we will have devices, mobile devices, that will enable doctors and nurses to be able to collect this information more easily.
Satellite images and aerial images. These were also real world information that needed to be put up on the web. These are actually, you know, a costly and heavy operation but when the Government will not do it you have to do it yourself.
We ran Street View digital archive project. This is also a powerful tool. For example, this is the scenery before the earthquake and this is after the earthquake (indicated). You can see that whole rows of houses are just gone on the left side, so these are powerful tools.
In the next few slides I want to talk about the different phases we go through in crisis response. I said in the beginning of this slide that technology helps first responders respond.
After the first responders we get into a phase where the technology can help the survivors survive on their own. We provide them information about where they can get food, shelter, or where they can take a bath, where are the toilets, where can they store garbage, things like that.
After that phase in the third phase we really start helping communities rebuild, that is rebuilding the business, economically, socially and also culturally.
What we did after a month and a half after the earthquake is that we put up business finder. This is not person finder; it is business finder. A lot of factories were gone and shops were gone but people throughout Japan and across the world wanted to know where their suppliers were, if their clients were okay so we put up a business finder to enable business to know, to reconnect again with their business partners.
YouTube business support channel, this was also a collaboration between web and business trying to help the community rebuild.
I am getting close to the end of my story. I only have two more slides but what are we going to do for the future? Google, Twitter and other web companies, we discussed and we decided to do a big project calling Project 311. It is a big data workshop, a post‑mortem for the future.
What the idea was we wanted to know what we did right and what we did wrong and we wanted to know how we can improve in the next disaster.
What we did was, since we don't have a time machine we can go back into the past but we can replicate the flow of information from March 11.
We gathered information from various partners, one week of newspaper articles, text of TV coverage, one week of entire Tweets, travel, roads information, people location information, railroad operation information and we did a series of ‑‑ we actually had a series of 50 workshops, various data, scientists trying to analyse and assimilate this data.
This is actually a media coverage map. The red is where the traditional media was able to cover the reporting and the yellow is where we saw a concentration of Tweets. As you can see the traditional media does not necessarily correspond to the location of where the Tweets were happening. These are powerful tools that can give lessons to the traditional media where reporters and correspondents should go in the next disaster.
This is another example, overlying data from various resources. The green is real time population based on GPS enabled mobile phone data and the red is Government's radiation detector network system. You can see how people were exposed to radiation.
This is a still picture but it actually moves, you have a time slider on this slide so it is really neat to watch.
This is the end of my slide, so record, share and simulate and build new tools for the future. Thank you very much.
MR AIZU: Thank you very much Mr Fujii. It is not what Google did but what the larger community, Yahoo or many others, it is something like 300 different websites came up in a week or two to help the victims all share information about radiation or about power stop and other crisis.
Now I would like to introduce our second speaker and then, if you have any questions, we will hear from the floor after our second speaker finishes his presentation. Mr Riadi. He is from Indonesia. He worked right after the Aceh tsunami, flew with the military airplane and helped build the Wi‑fi centres but that is 2004. Since then they have started for the preparation or relief works using ICTs for any other large‑scale disasters in Indonesia, including volcano eruption and so on and so forth. Mr Riadi, you have the floor.
MR RIADI: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity that I can share our experience when we faced several disasters in Indonesia. Maybe I can preface the presentation talk about how we co‑operate to do something for the disaster but what I want to share here is more from the civil society, how we can do hand‑in‑hand together to do something for the disaster relief.
Right now I work for the Indonesia ISP Association and also I am a volunteer for the (inaudible) foundation. We created this foundation especially for disaster relief management.
There will be several examples how we do on the disaster area but that is not all of my project. This is also to acknowledge several other friends that do almost the same things.
I will start from 2004 where we got hit by the tsunami, especially in the Aceh area, and also several areas on North Sumatra. It's quite big earthquake it's 9.1 richter and tsunami go more than 30 metres high on some areas.
After the tsunami hit, most of the people in Indonesia didn't know what really happened on the disaster area. We lost contact to the area. Some friends have family there and they don't know what's really happened there until after several days after we send several outline to do a site survey we know that the condition is really bad and APJI at the time, the ISP association, we think if we send like food or blanket or some other needs maybe some other body already done it. But we think that we are on the IT association, I think it will be better if we send some engineers to the disaster area and we will help on the IT programmes.
At that time we sent six people and I'm one of the six people who flew to the area just three days and five days after the tsunami. Of course we still see all of the terrible things there, dead bodies everywhere, and everything.
After that we established the foundation because we got some donations from big corporations, for example, from Intel. They give us several laptops and also the Wirenex(?) network.
We create also a website, Aceh media centre, and it is information about what really happened in the area so the journalists from everywhere can understand what really happened there. We also make short code SMS and people in the area and also people outside the area can communicate with each other. I think it is traditional of the people finder that we have seen in the previous presentation.
After that we create early warning system application and this application connected through, through the meteorology system. Where we got the information about the earthquake, it will analyse the information and if we have a tsunami warning it will go to the television and also a radio station, so the television can initiate information if the Government think that it will be a tsunami warning.
This is several photos from the area. We made public computer, public access internet and also we have to clean up several satellite dish to create internet access there.
This is the plan we make for Banda Aceh. It is the city of Aceh. We make very nice wireless network and we deployed three access points and also 50 CPE with the WIMAX technology. Maybe right now the WIMAX technology is not very ‑‑ at the tie the WIMAX technology is one of the new technologies we have to deliver the internet.
This is a photo when we deployed the access point and also this is a photo when we deployed CPE. It is quite a nice photo.
Okay, it is a disaster area. You cannot hope you have the ideal conditions to work with.
We make also several media centres and several other things. Also of course community development. The programme we do in Aceh has not stopped there. There are still several disasters after Aceh. We worked at Nias, Wasior, Patang and several other disaster areas.
I will move to the next disaster. This is also my personal experience here about the (inaudible) we had an earthquake. It was not that big but several areas were hit by the earthquake and the mission is that the national government will needs to establish a special task force to do the verification of victim data of earth quake at Bengkulu area. The challenge is that we only have 20 hours of preparation time and only two weeks of time‑frame.
The area is quite big with the low density of population and for this project the Government asked me to work together the Indonesia's special force, Kobasus. The team is only 20 people, 2 IT people and 18 people from the army.
This is several photos how we go to the area. It is not near from Jakarta. It is quite far. If we drive, it takes two days. That is why we use a plane to move the car and all the equipment. That's the photo .
The last disaster experience I want to share is from Yogyakarta. It is from October until November 2010. We have a volcano. The volcano is located only 30 kilometres from Yogjakarta city. Yogjakarta is not a very big city, only 3 million people live there, and the volcano is located only 30 kilometres and it is an active volcano. There several eruptions happen that year and after the first eruption on October 26, almost 50,000 peoples from the ten kilometres radius evacuated by the government. You can imagine we have to make all the settlement for 50,000 people.
We also have real time life report using communications radio. It is 149 megahertz and it is also related to several internet‑based radio streaming; so people from everywhere in the world, they can hear what is happening in the area.
Then we have a second eruption on November 4th. It is really on 1 a.m. at the night and the government extend the evacuated area, to 20 kilometres and from 50,000 people it goes to 100,000 people. You can imagine we already have 50,000 and after the government extended the evacuation area, it goes to 100,000 and it is 1 a.m. in the morning.
The ABJIDA Association, we deploy several wi‑fi area on the government building, refugee camp and also but half of the area wi‑fi area is swept by the second eruption. Then we think how we can reach the people in the refugee camp. They don't have internet, they don't have electricity. So we initiate to build the FM radio station. Of course, this is not very hi tech but it is more collaboration with several other bodies.
The government, the director (inaudible) communication assign a temporary allocation 100.2 fm and we can build our radio station. This programme is supported by a lot of associations and bodies. RRE is the national radio of Indonesia, they also support us. We have also several others officiating.
[Pause: audio problems, sound looping]
This radio station we make it online ‑‑ not online. We make it on air 24 hours a day for 30 days on the eruption. It is operated by almost 60 volunteers, including announcer, script writer, IT support and other function. Also we do live streaming for this radio on that website. This is several photos from the radio station and we have also several other civil society programmes that help. One is the web site.
[Further sound problems: audio looping]
This is the web site (indicated) and this web site have a lot of information about the area, they have cctv, they put several TV's on the web site so you can see the real, what happened in the area, real time. Also, they have feeding from Twitter so people can exchange information related with this disaster on Twitter and also displayed on this web site.
I will ‑‑ I want to review several other disasters, Indonesia. Indonesia have a lot of disasters in the several last years and in 2010 we have approximately 644 disasters, small and big disaster. Most of the disaster is about hydro‑meteorology disaster. It is about a water and also a volcano.
From my experience what I think and take a position on the disaster relief is three things. One is the communication, information dissemination and also disaster management. The most important thing is the communication. Once the disaster happens sometimes all the communication broke and people cannot call, people cannot do texts, people cannot access to the internet that is why we have to be able to make very fast internet access with the special mobile telecommunication unit and several other special equipment.
For example, if we have a telephone line and cell are broken we can deploy our voice operaty(?) and make a termination to the telecommunication network.
One of the friends in Indonesia learned about the open BTS. We can also deploy open DPS to make special and small GSM network on the disaster area. It is very useful when you don't have any ideal infrastructure. Also, social networks like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube can take important position to give for the people to communicate disorder.
Of course, about the information dissemination, this is to the people in the disaster area, sometimes government needs to tell something to the people in the disaster area and also we need to bring the information from the disaster area to other ‑‑ to the world. For example, if some other country can help or some body can help to do the disaster relief. Also, the disaster management, it is about coordination, data collection, relief supplies, missing person, humanity programme and other things.
Ok, this is ‑‑ maybe if this slide can download somewhere, I don't know but you can see the diagram we make for this special cars, special mobile telecommunication unit. I think it is too small for you to see but in Indonesia right now we have with the government used the USO funded programme for internet and information dissemination at the remote area. Right now we have 2,600 mobile units. The photo is like this (indicated). It is already deployed on almost all areas of Indonesia, as long as you can have a road, I think right now, we have this type of the unit so when if we have like a disaster, it is quite easy for the government to create new internet access on the disaster area.
Also, this is quite similar unit from the civil society. We have ‑‑ several NGOs in Indonesia have this type of car, almost the same with the FreeSat, with the internet access, laptop and everything. This car have 4x4 capabilities so it goes to more a remote area. This is almost the same car (indicated), but from the operator. Okay, I think that is all my presentation, thank you.
MR AIZU: Thank you very much, Valens. Despite your noise and interesting echos really, all your activities or actions stand out. How many countries in this globe have 2,600 mobile units ready for the disaster communications, there was almost none in Japan about two years ago, so with that I would like to, if you have any questions or short comments, please take mic to the floor, I mean the microphones. I am, yes, we are trying to find our remote participation if they have any comments but so far I don't think there is. Is there any brave guy? If not, then I will use my ‑‑ Giacomo, you have one? Okay please.
MR MAZZIONE: Yes, I have two questions. One is about these experiences are related with the organised, the forum for exchange of information about intervening in an emergency for communication. There is one coordination within the ITU and there is another one within the UNESCO, there is any relation between this experience we listen now.
The second is, what about the co‑operation with broadcasting? I have seen that in Indonesia, this was mentioned as an essential part. In Japan, what about ‑‑
MR AIZU: Thank you, the first question is in relation with YT and the UNESCO activities? Yes, Sabina, you have another question, please.
MS VERHEYEN: Yes, I think one of the most important issues that came out was to get an early technical support for building up a new net after a disaster. The second is the question of warning before a disaster happens and for me the question would be, how do you avoid an uncontrolled mass panic caused by, let's say, information that is not correct or informations that are not let by the government via the internet, via Twitter and via the social networks and how to build up after the, the trial, of all these infrastructural issues to come to the places to build up the networks and how, yes, the capacity of these networks, can it deliver all the people who want to use their mobile devices so that they can use the services you offer?
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, before I see if there are any from the floor, may I ask Thomas?
MR SPILLER: Yes, thank you, I have a follow up question to Sabina's question: in the recent case of Sandy in the US we have seen a number of false information on Twitter that were put by individuals and that actually diverted needed help to other places, so in the case of use of social network how to ensure the information is as accurate as possible? Thank you.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Valeria, can you grab some microphone and give us the question? Can somebody bring in the microphone? There is another question within the audience. Yes, thank you.
MODERATOR: There is a question from maybe it is Joseph Webbe from Uganda. The question is: is the programme about the disaster still ongoing and how can they measure the success of the radio station, especially the new network?
THE CHAIRMAN: Now I would like to ask any panel members to respond. Mr Fujii first.
MR FUJII: Yes, sure. Why don't I start with the question of social networking services and the risks of false information, misinformation and false rumours.
I think this was the first disaster in ‑‑ the Japan earthquake was the first disaster in which the social media was probably used so extensively. As I said, in many parts of the region it worked to cover the holes, where the traditional broadcast were not able to cover so it proved very useful.
We did have cases where there were risks of people panicking due to misinformation. One typical case was that, as I said, oil refineries near Tokyo, they blew up and somebody started tweeting that they should not go outside because poisonous rains due to this burning oil refinery would fall and you would get poisoned by this poisonous rain. Scientifically, this seems to be false information and so a lot of this information got panic tweeted and people started panicking.
The government, especially the National Police Agency did issue warnings and take down requests to many social networking services and other internet forums to remove harmful information and information that caused people to panic. However, the industry took the position that more information is better than hiding information because once you start hiding information under the instructions of a government people do not know which information to trust so we took the position that more information, more accurate information, is better so that we can crack that misinformation.
We actually worked with the Ministry of Communications and Ministry of Industry and Economy who sided with the internet industry, so the industry and the two ministries worked together to form a web platform, which is kind of like the chillingeffects.org in the United States. Whenever we would get a removal request from the police agency we would post that information on to the web site and we would choose or not choose to remove it but the process is all transparent so that is how we kept the right balance.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Valens, would you answer. UNESCO ITU, have you been approached or something like that?
MR RIADI: Not really, I don't have any relation right now with the UNESCO programme or ITU but locally in Indonesia we have quite correlation with the government, civil society, journalists and several other things, but I want to answer about the how we trust the information when we have too many information in the social media.
Of course, we have to train the people before the disaster. People have to know each other before the disaster, like the one portal I told before regarding [inaudible] about 800 of volunteers trained to how you manage disaster. They know how to report, to make a report, good report, to not make panics in the people. That is why there is if there is several Twitters from someone we don't know, there will be volunteers that will recheck the information and if it is valid it will go to the Twitter or other social media. It is not an instant process. We need the training, we need collaboration with several bodies, several institutions, to be able to use social media in effective way.
MR FUJII: Okay, I wanted to respond to the question about broadcasting as well, I said that the collaboration between internet and broadcasting is very difficult in Japan. I think it is that way in many of the other countries as well because media conversions between traditional media and the internet is a difficult topic and, you know, if this was a result I can go home very early everyday. Anyway, so, traditional media complementing the information on the internet, this was easy to achieve. As I said, for example, we would air commercials about what information is on the web, so the lack of information by the various information platforms and media, they complement each other, that is easy to do. The most difficult part is getting traditional media content directly on the web.
In Japan, we have always had difficulties with the broadcasters because of issues with copyright and other business issues but in this exceptional instance of disaster relief, the broadcasters were okay with airing their content on the internet. I think what I important is that the next time a disaster happens we will already have concluded such an MOU that in these exceptional cases such broadcasting would be permissible.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, can someone answer to the Sabina's question about two things? One element is early typical support after the disaster, how do you build the infrastructure as quickly as possible? The second question is how do you a manage to deploy the early warnings before the disaster happens? Any ideas or lessons learned?
MR FUJII: Yes, I think on the issue of how to build the infrastructures as quickly as possible. I think that is all preparation and logistics. In Japan, the large telecoms such as NTTKDI and Softbank(?), they were able to get up there using the vehicles very quickly and resume communications. That is due to their technical expertise, I think. I don't think it is something that an internet company can do. It's not in the web data.
As for the ‑‑ sorry, what was the second question again?
THE CHAIRMAN: That is the warning before it happens.
MR FUJII: Right, yes. Public alerts is also a disaster preparation tool that Google has. There is a lot of public information that is out there. For example, in case of Japan we have the Japan Meteorological Agency which gives you alerts about not necessarily earthquakes but storms and typhoons. But such information, we need partnership with these organisations and government agencies so that such information can be quickly deployed on the web.
There are issues with data formats and there are also contractual issues but these are things we need to work on before the crisis happens.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. We are a bit running over the estimated time frame, but last but not least, there is one question from Uganda about the ongoing disaster and how we measure the success of the radio services. Am I right, that area? Okay, anybody can pick up and how do we measure the success?
MR RIADI: Yes, it is difficult to measure what we do in a disaster area, not because the conditions usually it is not ideal, the most important things is how you save lives, how you can make the condition more comfortable for the refugee and how you can support all the relief programme, I think it is more important than we just making declaration, success or not.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think we need to have some transition to the second part before moving so I would like to try summarise 30 seconds of what we heard.
I think they all emphasise the importance of information not necessarily the information technology. Whatever information you have, whatever information you have inside the devastated areas that work, that is what they need. The sometimes lack of infrastructure may cause some disruptions, electricity, but sometimes that is human errors or misinformation could be troublesome but with a combination of the conventional medium and the new media that may address some of the areas which never been able before.
Also, the question of free flow of information versus some kind of a social constraints, if not IPR but they are having some IPR or copyright issues of the government and other website during the earthquake in Japan, for the public use can you use them without granting the right, some brave guys did that anyway for the radiation and the other areas.
How much are they tolerated? Under the circumstances only or could we have measures prior to these so we can have no frictions on the fly, when something of that magnitude happens. We will have these speakers on board until the end of the session because some of the questions we may have later in the second part of the question about free flow of information versus some other rights or medium, the traditional medium, the internet questions, might be relevant from the lessons we learned from the disaster areas. With that I would like to thank the two speakers and I would like to hand over the coordination to our colleagues out there. I can't see them, Thomas and Ana?
ANA NEVES: Okay, thank you, after this very interesting presentation about the world now with the internet and a digital media, I think that we are going to discuss other components of this society, before and after the internet and the digital media.
The main points here that we are going to put on the table for discussion are what are the implications of the use of new technical and political instruments in the internet age.
The dialogue around these questions should embrace a wide range of issues such as: the free flow of information; the human rights; the freedom of expression; access to information; new business models; are there common challenges for old and new media; the user generated content online, how much is it reliable; the impact of the low cost mobile access to the internet; and, the use of the same screen by the new internet services and the traditional media, such as broadcast TV and radio but with different rules.
We have three speakers here. I am going to moderate from the governmental point of view; I work for the government so my point of view is always to give the best to all stakeholders and it is very interesting that we have three moderators here, one from the civil society, one from the government and another one from the private sector, it is Thomas so I give the floor to Thomas.
MR SPILLER: Thank you very much. To follow up on what Ana has been saying, I will co‑moderate this session from the private sector angle.
What I would like to say is in addition to what has been said already, this is a brave new world outside, a brave new world for all of us, a lot of new things happening and for companies this brave new world has real implications and those questions we are going deal with now affect not only the large companies that you can see on the table here but small and medium companies as well. Not only in the region of developed countries but all over the world and, in particular, more and more in emerging companies.
I would like to point out before we start that after this discussion, tomorrow and after tomorrow, there will be four workshops that will drill down on those particular issues, workshop 92, workshop 146, workshop 138 and 169, so if you are interested to learn even more about those issues please do attend one of or all of those four workshops.
Having said that, we are going to ask the first speaker to give us her perspective and that is going to be Sabina Verheyen from the European Parliament.
MS VERHEYEN: Thank you, Thomas. I think we have a wide range of questions about what internet governance should look like. If we want to ensure that we have an open and free internet, that we respect the fundamental rights of freedom of speech, freedom of information, free flow of information, the technical things, but also to make the internet a safe place for people and to ensure, yes, also intellectual property rights in the new medias.
The question we have to deal with is to bring all these different interests together in a very balanced way, in a cultural surrounding, in a cultural ‑‑ it is not working quite well ‑‑ in a cultural environment that is very, very different and specific in each country.
But the internet is not just to be local, it is not just there to find local solutions but it is there to find global solutions. That is the reason why we need a wide and big exchange between different stakeholders and this multi‑stakeholder approach we have here, because we cannot solve the problems that are coming up with ‑‑ perhaps I will take another one.
(Pause: changes microphone)
I think it is better now, yes. I think we have to find a wide range of solutions and to discuss this very intensively.
There is one point, for example, the question of net neutrality that will be posed in the next years and months, not just on the European level but also on the next WCIT we will discuss these things. Net neutrality is important in order to guarantee equal access to high speed networks which is crucial to the quality and legality of online audiovisual services. The problem is even where legal alternatives do exist, online copyright infringement remains an issue, therefore the legal online availability of copyrighted cultural material needs to be supplemented with smarter online enforcement of copyright while fully respecting fundamental rights, notably freedom of information and speech and protection of personal data and the right to privacy.
The digitisation and preservation of cultural resources along with enhanced access to such resources offer great economical and social opportunities, therefore we don't need a system where, for example, internet providers and service providers and the telecommunications companies decide which data package is delivered fast, which is slow, so we have to find solutions to have really a net neutrality so that also small and medium enterprises that also individuals can offer their services and their content.
A very important thing is the accessibility of the net. There one point is the question of the financing, financing the infrastructure, financing and finding technological solutions for different ways of building up infrastructure, to have worldwide good access. Especially in Europe we have problems with the rural areas where you don't have the same high speed accessibility of the net in many areas.
We had a big discussion also on the spectrum debate on how to deliver broadband and fast internet access via LTE and other technologies and I think we should be open to other technologies too because we found out that in a long term view, the LTE technology will not deliver all the needs we will have if we have e‑health, e‑government, e‑skills, in many, many ways learning electronically the social exchange we have and there will be a wide range of data.
If this technology alone will deliver the capacity we need in future is the big question. I think we should be open in the technology debate, which kind of technology combined, combining for example, wireless systems, LTE systems, glass fibre systems, that are questions we have to solve on a very wide approach and not just on a specific point of view, because spectrum, for example, is not too widen up, we just have a separate quota of spectrum that is available and we have to be careful because it is a public good and cannot be just taken for just commercial use.
I think I stop with this. There are many, many questions on free flow of information but I want to give also the other colleagues the opportunity to get an entrance to this and I think I will come back to some points afterwards when it comes to intellectual property rights.
CHAIR: Thank you very much. Now I think that the floor is to Patrick Ryan, please.
MR RYAN: Thank you very much. I am going to take off my headphones so somebody hit me if somebody says something but I find it very frustrating and I'm a little unable to speak while listening to myself speak as well.
My focus is going to be on question 4, the opportunities and challenges about accessing content over different sources. Increasingly users are getting content from apps, mobile apps on their mobile phones and on their tablets. There have been calls to regulate apps in a new way, like the Cloud, a few years ago there were calls to regulate the Cloud, if it was something new and shiny, it was the bright shiny object that everybody wanted to regulate because it is new but now we of course know that the Cloud is the internet and it is impossible to pass rules that specifically regulate the Cloud without regulating the internet at large.
That is what is happening in many cases with apps today.
What are apps? At its core, all apps are is software. That's it. We don't have any special regulation for software on floppy disks, software on CDs, anything that's installed on the computer per se. There's no Software Act, there's no software legislation.
There were experiments in the 1970s to look at software as a special thing but in the end law makers realised that consumer protections that already exist apply to software just like they apply to any other product that any other company sells.
As to apps, should we regulate them in a special way even though software is not regulated in a special way. Software is software is software is software. It doesn't matter where it runs, whether it is in a data centre or on a mobile phone or rendering through an HTML page. So the challenge before us in the course of the next few years is going to be to come up with common rules that apply across platforms to devices, regardless of how they may be labelled, Cloud, desktop or mobile.
So, as I mentioned, at the core of all of these devices is code and software. All of our devices that we use, and many of us have multiple devices, phones, tablets, PCs, they are all supercomputer. Why should it matter how the device connects to the internet, whether it's connected by fibre, by copper wire, by Wi‑fi or by licence spectrum. All of these things are very important in order to be able to assure that consumers have access but, as to the data themselves and the regulation of the software itself, consumers don't know the difference and they don't care how their devices are connected to the internet. Since the user doesn't care, why should regulators?
In some of the calls for regulating apps, some have suggested that location is a differentiator. Because people are on the move, we therefore need to regulate the software that moves with them differently. This just is not the case. Computers that connect to the internet online through their IP addresses already provide information about location of the user and, in fact, when users access the internet on their mobile phone, most providers allow them to disactivate the location sensitivity so that they can essentially hide where they are located from whoever it is that wants to find them.
It is not that these things should be unregulated, it is that they already are regulated through consumer protection laws and other things that are cost cutting. Foe example, the Fair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act in the United States applies to any product, as I mentioned earlier, across companies and these regulations do have teeth.
Finally, in regulating apps, some say that the screen size matters, that smaller screens mean that consumers need more protection. In fact, again, this is the opposite of what is in fact true today. If anything, the smaller screen sizes are helping consumers. Consumers still need a contract in order to purchase software in order to download apps but rather than having to read a very thick terms of service book that come with shrink‑wrapped software that very consumers read, what is happening is companies are providing their terms of service on one very small screen size. And it is working. According to the Pugh Internet Research Report 50 per cent of all app users have decided not to install an app on their mobile phone after they discovered how much personal information they would have to share in order to use it. So they read it on their small screen size and then decide not to purchase. That is a sign that things are improving, that contracting between providers and consumers is getting better and, in fact, the smaller screen size helps with that because it makes it simpler for people to understand and they are reading contracts that they may never have read previously.
So, rather than passing new laws for apps, we should regulate the abuse of technology not the use of it; to the extent possible, rely on existing laws on our books ‑‑ cyber crime is one example ‑‑ and the many criminal laws on the books all around the world have been used to put bad guys in jail for fraud and for theft and for many other things, both in the real space and in the virtual space. We should be legislatively agnostic about which ecosystem is better and not create rules that support one ecosystem over another.
Finally, we should encourage innovation and change allowing the market to develop and for users to tell us what they love and we shouldn't regulate based on technical categories, whether it is mobile or Cloud or apps. It may be convenient for us to think of things in this way. I can tell you as a lawyer it is sometimes convenient to say I am a specialist in a particular area of law and to hold myself out as that specialist and charge premium rates but if you agree with me that the main difference between these devices is their screen size or whether or not they have a keyboard, it is simply harder and harder to justify separate regulation for these things because of those physical characteristics.
Thank you.
MR SPILLER: Thank you, Patrick. The third speaker will be Giacomo Mazzione from the European Broadcasting Union. Before Giacomo starts, I just want to agree with Patrick on one particular point which is that indeed more and more content, in particular for kids, is consumed through apps. That is a very clear trend that we are observing all over the world. So that is a fact of life and that's only the beginning. That is how we see it. Anyway, Giacomo, over to you. Thank you.
MR MAZZIONE: Thank you for inviting me. The media people are rare at the IGF. There are two at this table. That is quite an exceptional average.
You talk about contents. We don't call contents, we call newspapers, we call radio, we call TV programmes, we call movies because this is our reason to be here and to be in the market since ages. So content is quite indistinct and you don't know what it is about, it is something that flows quite naturally. It is not the case in my opinion and there is behind a lot of reflection and a lot of rights incorporated, not only rights of the owner of the holders but also rights of the citizen in terms of how they access to these contents, how they can use it, how they can make better the life using this information.
We have seen how important it is in the case of the emergency to have access to traditional media because there is a data that was missing before that was important when Izumi last year presented us the results of the inquiry about the situation in Japan, that the flow of information to the citizens about the emergency came through mobile telephones for the first six hours when the battery ran out.
Then the next 24 hours the only source of information were radio filled by batteries. That was the only way for people to get information in disaster areas. So the traditional media have an important role to play and a complementary role to play that is distinct and has to be considered.
But coming to the emerging issues ‑‑ this is the session about emerging issues ‑‑ I think that the most important issues that we have today to consider is the fact that there are walls that are coming in marching in the same area, marching on the same path. There is the area of the traditional media ‑‑ the television, for instance ‑‑ and the area of the internet that are going to insist probably at the same time the attention of the citizen. But they are differently regulated with very different regulation going on.
This regulation in Europe, for instance, or in North America or in Japan, it is a fruit and is the rival of dozen of years of social fights or acquisition of new rights from a certain part of the population.
So the day that we say that we use all these different sources in an indistinct way because there is no more distinction between the device and there is no more distinction in the kind of connection, we have to be aware that this means that the different level of protection that we are having in a certain environment or in another tends to vanish because when you put all on the same level, of course the lower level of the protection applies.
The connected TV that is the new phenomenon of the last year is a typical example. As broadcasters, we have in Europe a certain number of obligation about the TV, for instance, when there is electoral campaign we are very heavy regulated about the time constraint, about how to split the time between the different actors in the field. We cannot have campaigning in the last days before the elections ‑‑ different from the US ‑‑ we don't have advertising or very regulated advertising, et cetera, et cetera.
Tomorrow, today, we do connected TV which regulation applies. The last election in France was a typical example. In France they banned on TV and radio, on traditional media, the possibility to announce beforehand the results before the ballots were closed but this was completely screwed up because on the internet this information was already there available four hours before the ballots were closed.
Okay, it is right or it is wrong but it is a regulation of the French State that they decided not to protect the right of the citizen to express their vote without it being influenced there is a regulation. This regulation now is vanishing because of the news question, so we need to find a new level of protection and regulation but it not to be the lowest possible because the lowest possible means the part of the world gets the benefit today, tomorrow will be less protected.
MR SPILLER: Thank you, Giacomo. I think that is it for the interventions. What we would like to do now with Ana and Izumi, who is there, is to get as much engagement from the room as possible. This is your session. It is an open session we would like to hear from you, clearly we heard a little different things between three main speakers in particular on the place of regulation so please who wants to go first? Any volunteers. Yes, we have a volunteer. No ... do we have a remote question?
We have one here.
MS NEVES: I am moderating but I would like to emphasise several things from what we heard from our very good speakers.
They were very different but don't forget that we are here discussing emerging issues, so it was very interesting to hear that global challenges deserve a wide range of solutions, that net neutrality is important to have equal access, that fundamental rights, freedom of expression, privacy and personal data, they cannot be forgotten, that accessibility of the internet is very important and in Europe, for instance, to the rural areas.
Then in the part of the opportunities and challenges it was very interesting to hear that if you want to regulate the Cloud you have to regulate the internet. Do you agree with that or not?
The user doesn't care how he is connected to the internet, so why regulate it? Do you agree or not?
Then it was very interesting what Giacomo said that media normally they are not, they are rare in the internet governance fora of discussion despite its complementary role.
It is very interesting to see that TV is very regulated and internet is not. I picked up these issues as very interesting and I wonder if, from the audience, is there anyone that would like to raise?
MR SPILLER: You have to push on the red button. Could you please say who you are.
MS HOFFMAN: My name is Janet Hoffman, I am a German researcher. I have first a question to Giacomo. I wonder if you argue for sort of regulating internet content the way we have used to regulate traditional media, would you be prepared to accept that this could mean that we will also get more territorial national borders on the internet as we used to have as a requirement for national regulation of traditional media? That would be my first question to Giacomo. Then I have also a question to Patrick.
There has been a discussion where people ask about more transparency as with regard to what content providers, service providers do with the data of the users they collect.
Do you agree that this is a good idea, that users should know in greater detail what companies do with the data of users?
MR MAZZIONE: The regulation ‑‑ I am not seeking for more regulation, I simply say that the regulation is the crystallisation of a civilisation so in Europe we arrive to a certain regulation or in Japan and other countries because there has been years and years of events that they bring to that regulation in order to set up the rules that there is a judge in Berlin. This was fundamental for creating Europe, to where the rules were even the King has to answer to the last of the citizens of his kingdom.
We need to have this kind of regulation. If we give up with the current regulation we need to know where we go and which level of lower regulation we are ready to accept knowing that each regulation means we renounce a certain level of rights for the citizen and for the economic subject and for all people that are concerned.
Coming back to the point of the territories, yes, we have already a lot of examples in which, for instance, programmes are sold or rights are sold but Thomas can know better than me for languages. The satellite distribution, for instance, is typical because if you a programme for the German language market usually you sell also Austrian and German Switzerland because they go together.
This exists because the new bussing of the internet is more based on the language, part of the English that is lingua franca so it is more complicated but for all the other languages you have homogenous bastions that could be used as a reference.
MR SPILLER: Thank you and before Patrick goes on I just want to add to that point that the language issue is about really cultural diversity in one aspect and the other one, as Disney company, when it comes to kids parents want their kids to learn first their national language and then maybe another language like English. The point of delivering content in your national language is very strong for kids' education and that doesn't mean it prevents other language to be also fed through this process.
Patrick, and then we will have a comment from Sabina as well.
MR RYAN: Thank you. Absolutely no question, more transparency is a very good thing for users and I would even add that users should be asking questions not just about transparency but even more so about security and how the stewards of personal data, the companies that end up collecting personal data from users in various different tools and products that are used to make sure that the companies are held accountable for how that data is kept secure.
So, for example, one of the things that we have been talking a lot is educating users about two factor authentification, ways to make sure data on our products, on Google's platform, are secured not just by a single pass word but by having an additional factor, an additional security layer, that provide an additional key in order for the user to access even their own data which, you know, by proxy also helps make sure that others can't get into it.
The privacy issue is an important one but the security issue is I think something that needs to be discussed a lot more in this context.
MR SPILLER: Sabina?
MS VERHEYEN: I just want to make some remarks to the question of hybrid TV or connected TV. I think consumers have access to a very regulated audio visual content and a non‑regulated online content on the same screen and you sometimes have a problem that not all of the users can defer while watching a movie whether it is regulated or watching a TV programme or broadcast programmed and beside on the same screen you have other offers and especially in questions of child protection and other things we need solutions to make clear that you are dealing with different systems on the same screen.
At the moment, for example, the European Commission makes a consultation on this question of TV, connected TV, and at the end of the year they will offer a green book and show us how was the outcome of this question around would be and we will discuss it in the Parliament during the next month.
The main questions the policy makers need to solve will be which degree of regulation and minor protection consumers can expect when using connected TV and how can fair competition be ensured between providers of regulated and not regulated content. I think it is a question of how these both players deal with each other and how would a new qualitative minimum standard be designed and implemented in order to comply with the obligations of public interest.
The protection of minors, media pluralism, cultural diversity, consumer protection, promotion of European cultural content, there are so many questions we have to solve and there is not a fixed solution yet but we have to work on this and we have to find to get a big impact from many sides so that we find a fair and good solution for the new technology and the new challenges and chances that are combined with this.
MS HOFFMAN: I have been encouraged to ask a follow‑up question. Can you hear me? That would be actually about the "we" you have mentioned. Who is actually the agency that should set the rules? Is it, when it comes to private content, the terms of services of content producers who should set the rules or should also sort of, with regard to the multi‑stakeholder process, should the users who buy or consume those content issues, should they also have a role in this and I would like to come back to the issue of several languages.
I know, for example, lots of German users would access content in English if they could but very often they can't and it seems right now that nobody asks them, so it also if you create boundaries by languages how difficult this is to actually overcome those boundaries. In Europe I don't need a passport any longer to go from country A to country B but when it comes to digital content on the internet, it's very difficult to overcome such boundaries, so who should set the rules?
MR SPILLER: Sabina, you want to ...?
MS VERHEYEN: There are many, many questions and many rules and laws and regulations you are talking about, if you talk about this wide issue, because the copyright question and the way copyright is organised until now without having regard on the special aspect of a worldwide internet is covered by this question you are asking. The "we" is not just the politicians because I say we now have consultations so all the stakeholder are able to give their input into the discussion.
We will have discussions during the Parliamentary process so it is a democratic process. If there will be rules for connected TV. It not clear what it will look like because we have to work together on a multi‑stakeholder level, let us say it like this, but the decision taking is by a democratic elected Parliament and system, if we make rules afterwards and if we see that there is the need for new rules on that.
At the moment we just see the problem and the challenges and we have to find solutions for, let's say, two different markets coming together unto the same platform with different rules and that's not fair for both sides.
I think that is the reason why we need solutions and "we" is not just one person and not just one agency. That is a process of decision taking on the political level.
MR SPILLER: Before we change questions and I am not forgetting your point about language, I am giving a chance to any other panellist who want to say something.
Giacomo?
MR MAZZIONE: Absolutely. The problem of the language is crucial and essential because the cultural diversity is based on language and one of the main problems we have in this development is that the abolition of national barriers, national boundaries provoked by the internet, means that there are less resources available all over the countries and this becomes more crucial in countries that are small or have a small linguistic bastion.
How to produce, how to continue to ensure production of a quality contents in countries that have only 1 million inhabitants sharing the same language, while the resource of the advertising are going more and more towards the internet? This is a problem that for the moment has no solution because there is a transfer of resources. This means there are less resources in the country to finance national products. This will affect more what we called identity products, the programmes that reflect the national culture, the national heritage, the national language and is an increasing problem to which I don't see solution because there is no business model that would deal with that at the moment.
CHAIR: Thank you, Patrick, then Patrick and Sabina and then we have a question from the floor as well, so Patrick, Sabina and Co and a question from the floor.
MR RYAN: Thank you, Thomas. I will give another perspective on the language question which I think is a very good one and access to content in foreign languages. Obviously, there is a lot of content that is available around the world in English. I personally have found it very frustrating and very difficult as somebody who appreciates and wants to learn other foreign languages, particularly European languages, to get access to the content while in the United States. For example, if I go on ‑‑ I'm not picking on iTunes but it's a great product, I use it a lot ‑‑ when I go on iTunes and want to download French movies or German movies they are just unavailable, if I live in the United States.
I went through a process one time where I set up an account in order to access French content using a French address, that I ended up ‑‑ please, don't tell anybody, but I guess this all public, we'll just ignore that for a minute ‑‑ but I set up a French address at a hotel that I once stayed at in France in order to be able to have a local address and be able to download local French content so that I could continue to have access to that type of resource. That type of work‑around is just crazy. Users want to access content in language they want, not language that is determined for them ad hoc. I think we need to work hard at changing the system, in order to address the demands of users and make international content more available in both ways on the internet.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thanks, Patrick.
Sabina?
MS VERHEYEN: I just want to come back to one point I had forgotten to mention. It's not just the question of the same regulation for the connected TV platforms, it is the question of the net neutrality or let's say the gateway position also such platforms like the connected TV have.
At the moment you don't really have really free internet access to all what you want but you have in these systems we have at the moment, a gate keeping process and so we have to make sure that from the consumers' perspective that we have a free choice and pluralism and pluralism with regard to content and access to this technology and to the devices. I think there is a need to taking a special look at what's going on there so we open up and that we don't have a concentration of several markets and we have a fair competition also on the content providing markets.
MR SPILLER: Thank you, Sabina.
MR FUJII: I just wanted to make a comment on content regulations. I agree and disagree with Giacomo on how we regulate content across different devices and media. I think if you are a regulating a content depending on the nature of the content, it should not make a difference what media or what device or what type of mechanism you are using to distribute the content.
Defamation is always defamation, copyright infringement is copyright infringement whether it is on the internet or it is broadcast. Child porn is always child porn. These things you regulate, depending on the pure nature of the content should be regulated across platforms or across media.
However, I would like to bring up a traditional argument which people have different opinions about, which is that TV is different, broadcasting is different in that it is giving a position of a responsible steward of spectrum which is a public property so which is a limited resource and it is given a special position by the government to broadcast this content to the people, which is not the same with internet. With internet the content can be as diverse as you want. If you disagree just put up another web site. It is not so with TV. I think that is one aspect where TV differs from internet but I think if you look at the pure nature of the content itself regulation should be the same across the board.
MR SPILLER: I just want to add my personal two cents on that. There is also the question of there is content and content. What we are seeing is that in particular because of the internet which is a fantastic enabler to actually distribute more content to more people across the globe, there is still a very, very strong demand and in particular in emerging economies for premium quality content ‑‑ that is actually a very good news ‑‑ alongside user generated content. It is not versus the other. It is the two going along but, actually, the emergence of mobile internet like in southeast Asia has actually increased the demand for premium quality content, quality content, which I think is good news for all actors in this eco system. This is a good example that the positive convergence is happening.
Unless there is another comment on those questions, I will give the floor to the gentleman here and I think you have a microphone, thank you.
FROM THE FLOOR: Thank you very, Mr Chairman. My name is Masa Nobu Kato. Can you hear me?
MR SPILLER: Yes.
MR MASU: My name is Masu Nobu Kato, private sector participant. I also have a question to Giacomo regarding levels of regulations. You mentioned that if there are different levels of regulations always the lowest regulation may apply.
I just, you know, want to make sure if that is the case or not. In many cases that is not necessarily the case. Here is one example: you know, sometimes market mechanism applies. If you have the lowest regulations and if you don't have enough security protection for instance, well, companies, countries and people try to, you know, protect themselves, try to make some, you know, laws sometimes, some local rules, more like the industry mechanism for protecting those securities. That is one example.
Another case is in a case of, for instance, in a criminal area or, you know, copyright where, you know, people try to have the lowest protection, some countries for instance tend to criminalise those activities. That has some negative impact, therefore, the lowest regulation may not be the best in that case.
The third example is, copyright is another case. The right holders say they need more protection and if you see the lowest protection, that doesn't have a much worse impact, tends to have more protection for the rightholders.
Therefore, the question really is, what is it balanced regulation, what is the best way of regulating this? Is it alone the market mechanism? I guess that is the question to you, thank you very much.
MR MAZZIONE: I think it is a question for everybody in the room but not to me but thank you Mr Katu for the question.
I think that there is ‑‑ is not something that can be solved by tomorrow but let's say that for instance if we say that we apply to our countries the regulation existing in the countries, so the regulation of the user and not the regulation of the source, probably this could, for a while, create an environment in which we could discuss properly and to find the common solution because today, in the internet, what applies is the regulation of the owner of the distribution platform.
On Facebook you apply the rules of California law, on Google you apply Google national country of origin law, et cetera, et cetera, and this creates a lot of problems to us.
Let's say that if we say that if we say in the distribution of contents over the internet you apply the country rules or the regional rules, because countries can be sometimes difficult, but in Europe we have example of regional laws that apply, regional rules, this could be a temporary transitional moment that could bring to a global regulation later.
Global regulation that, again, I would like not to be the lowest possible.
Just to make you an example very simple on the problem we face everyday. It took in Europe twenty years ‑‑ Ms Verheyen knows very well ‑‑ to arrive to ban the advertising of tobacco on car racing. You know that formula one is based on tobacco advertising. It took 20 years for legislation in the Parliament to arrive to ban this.
Tomorrow with the connected TV, if I would be the platform owner, the Samsung or the Google or the Apple, when I see you are watching formula one on the TV screen, I will put on the internet that is just beside, the advertising on tobacco. It is the easiest formula you can apply, it makes money and it will completely vanish all the 20 years discussion we had in the parliament. Is this correct? Is this fine, is fair? I don't know, I look to you the ...
MR SPILLER: Sabina also has a comment on that.
MS VERHEYEN: The general question we asked, we have sometimes in cause of the culture in the country and also in the law making and in the tradition of the country, different kinds of regulation for several parts of content. But on the internet it isn't worth anymore because I can get to internet pages from all over the world and it is always the local law, the regional law or the national law that is relevant to the content they provide.
I think we have to look on several sides; one side is the side of the consumer who is used to that standard of safety he has used in his country. Consumer protection is one question in this but also, for example, the data protection: he is used to a special kind of data protection while using traditional devices, traditional media and traditional offers but in the internet there is no, let's say, global law for personal right, for data protection and other regulations we have in different countries. Let's say one example. Giacomo said in Europe not just the 24 countries. It is 27 countries. It is also regional law that is relevant for the people there, because we have for example in Germany 16 different countries in our state, different states in Germany, and they all have a different data protection law. So, it is very difficult also for those who provide content and who provide a service to find the right way to be compatible with all the different laws that exist.
If you want to provide a worldwide service, you have to take into account the law of many, many countries all over the world if you want to make it correct and compatible with the existing law and that is the problem we have when we don't have bigger solutions than that, than just the national or the regional solutions. We need more global solutions for rules, for regulations on the internet in relation today data protection, in relation to consumer protection, child protection and all of these things. We have to find out common solutions for that and I think the problems will stay like they are as long as we don't find worldwide common solution and agreements on that.
THOMAS SPILLER: Thank you. Valens, I would like to get your perspective, if it is possible, since you come from Indonesia, a vibrant country with a lot of young people, below 30 years old. Since this is an emerging issues session, how do you see this debate that we are just talking about, about media regulation? How do you see it evolving from your perspective?
VALENS RADIA: Right now we have a lot of new internet users in Indonesia, especially they do not maybe realise they are using the internet because they use a cell phone or smart phone, they use a Facebook Twitter, but if we ask them do you use internet, maybe they think that they don't use internet. But, yes, I think that maybe if Twitter or Facebook the same as the text messaging, not the internet. But that is the reality, that we have a lot of users, new users, that are using those kind of media.
About the law and the regulations of new media, we have also a lot of difficulties to access a lot of contents in the US‑based contents especially that we cannot access the content because we are using the ip address or account based in the Indonesia, especially in iTunes or several others' content also.
Of course, the law is the law and the people know how to deal with it and they make another account using another address and in Indonesia it is quite easy to have a US‑base [inaudible]. They just buy the prepaid card and they make a US account. It is quite common. Because the law and the regulation is very strict and not flexible, but I want to underline several interesting things about how people use the new media, especially the Twitter and Facebook. We have several law processes that interferes by the social media. One things is maybe it is one or two years ago it is (inaudible), it is one women who wrote comment about the hospital services. She went to the jail because the hospital thing that this woman make a better name for the hospital, but the people in the social media fairly crowd(?) about the issue and they collect money to pay the fine and I think they got almost 80,000 US dollar in coin. Yes. You imagine that the biggest coin in Indonesia is less than one cent of the US. So it is 80,000 of US and they collect it, I think thousands of them, maybe ten thousands of people collecting coins to pay the fine.
Then finally the court of Indonesia released her without any penalty or fine. But it is, we understand it, it is pushed very hard from the social media that the government or the other bodies should think about the freedom of expression also. I think it is a good case in the law of Indonesia and also related with the freedom of expression and intervention.
Thank you.
THOMAS SPILLER: Thank you. So any questions from the room? Is Ana... and in the room? Somebody wants to pick it up from the audience or from remote participation?
No?
If not, well ...
FROM THE FLOOR: This is not the question from the floor, but a question from me if you allow, a sort of combination with what Valens just said because Valens didn't elaborate when you made the presentation about the volcano evacuation thing in 2011; am I correct?
NEW SPEAKER: Yes.
FROM THE FLOOR: He said there is some use of Twitter, but actually what happened was some more than 100,000 people or 150,000 people who had to leave their house or evacuation camp after 2 a.m, they have to walk down to the villages, three hours away or something like that, and alas, they had all the breakfast prepared ready, around 7 right?
Explain why.
MR RIADI: You know that at the first dates we had 50,000 of refugee on the high level and after 1 a.m. the government asked to make the evacuation area bigger and they removed all the refugees to the lower area and the refugees become 100,000 people. What happened is all the equipment of the refugee equipment is still on the high area. That is what the Government have at the time and we didn't have anything to prepare breakfast for all the refugee and start from 2.00 am people start Tweeting and at the morning at 7.00 am or something, the people of the Yogjakarta manage to have breakfast in the box or any kind of a breakfast to serve hundreds of thousands of refugees.
I think Izumi, if allowed, I have friends here from Indonesia also with me, Sita or Loni, can tell more about this story.
MR SPILLER: Where are they?
SITA: Thank you so much. My name is Sita from Indonesia, from Hivos. I think I would like to add what Falan said about the volcano and add to answer Izumi's questions. The main point of the volcano is not only with Twitter and Facebook but also beforehand the community radio stations on the volcano's slopes are really working very hard and they already make mobilisations and make routine information on the status of the volcano from I think eight years ago or five years ago. I think the community itself is already strong enough and Twitter and Facebook is only to add‑on on that phenomena. I think that should be highlighted clearly. Thank you.
MR SPILLER: Thank you much, very interesting. Other comments from the Panel or from the audience on this aspect of the social media in an emergency situation or from remote maybe? Izumi, is there anything?
MR AIZU: Yes, there is one from the remote participant. Can you read it out?
MODERATOR: The question is how to protect internet users against cyber crime and still allow freedom of access. His name is Ridia Vastnic.
MR SPILLER: A very good question. Anyone in particular from the Panel would like to start?
Patrick, I am sorry, you go first.
MR RYAN: No problem, Thomas, I figured you would probably call on me.
MODERATOR: He is from Belgium.
MR RYAN: I would say that this is obviously one of the hardest questions. I mean, cyber crime is something that affect users all around the world. Passing new laws is certainly one way to approach it but we're finding that one of the most critical things, one of the most critical keys to user protection on the internet is education of users, for users about how to use the internet in a safe way.
Companies like Google play a role in that. I mentioned earlier the two factor authentication that we have. That is a technology that we developed and so certainly play a role in developing new technologies that protect consumers but at the same time there is a non‑trivial task in teaching users how to use that technology and how to be safe on the internet.
It wasn't that long ago that most all of us had, you know, as our password the word "password" or the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, right.
That's gotten a lot better by teaching users how to use strong passwords in order to protect themselves and also companies not allowing users to put in very simple passwords, so there is a give and take. That is part of the answer for protecting people from cyber crime. It certainly isn't all of it but it is a very important part of it.
To the extent that users do feel more comfortable and safer online using the internet, well, there are a direct correlation between their ability to share and receive information online and their comfort level in using the internet as a platform to share and exchange information. That itself is in many ways what freedom of expression is.
MR SPILLER: I absolutely support that point and when it comes to children in particular education of parents is absolutely essential because here we see a kind of generation divide between the kids who are tech savvy basically and the parents who might not be, which raises a number of issues on how teenagers and even younger kids do use the internet, let us say, while their parents don't even know what they are doing.
Sabina you have a comment on that?
MS VERHEYEN: I absolutely support the question of the need for more education and information for people on the internet but one thing must also be clear: cyber crime and illegal content is illegal. It is illegal in the real world and it is illegal also on the internet.
We have laws that are valuable for law enforcement and that but we have new, via the new technology, via the multi‑media platform internet, we have other challenges to enforce the existing law, the existing consumer protection.
For example, the European Commission has an e‑commerce directive that should help to enforce the protection of consumers on the internet but it never will hinder people to do illegal things. Like we don't have it in the real world, you never will protect people from being confronted with illegal content or cyber crime because you will ever have people who don't respect existing law.
But the question that come to the question of freedom of speech and freedom of information and all the questions that are combined with it is with which instruments you make existing law enforcement on the internet and there are several approaches in several countries that are very different. One says there should be no thing at all to control the internet or to do something but sometime I say in special cases we need controlling. Let us say for child protection, we need controlling, we need not a filtering system but a search system so that we can find illegal content, but we don't need the blocking we need to delete it at the source.
There are some questions we have to deal with in the question of combating cyber crime and combating illegal content but we must be very careful to respect also the freedom of information and the freedom of speech and we have to find a balance.
It is a very difficult way to find the balance but we need to do because on the one hand we have the fundamental right of persons not to be hurt. On the other hand we have the right of freedom of what to do and to take your own decision what to do and what to do not, even if it illegal but you have to take the consequences of illegal behaviour.
MR SPILLER: Thank you, I think this whole question of offline and offline application of rule of law is clearly an emerging issue going forward but I think we have a comment from our friend from Indonesia as well. Hello?
MR HASSAN: This is Faisel Hassan from ISOC Bangladesh. I am one of the ISOC ambassadors as well. My question is about the freedom of expression. Is hate speech covered under freedom of expression? If not, then do global companies have any role in preventing hate speech? Thank you.
MR SPILLER: Thank you. Let us take your second comment then, please.
SITA: Sorry, hello, my name is Sita from Hivos. I would like to ask Sabina on the question of the balancing between fundamental rights and how to protect. I agree totally with the terms of education but how we talk to the Government when the Government think of if something happened inappropriately, for example, in Indonesia there is just filter or blocking. How we should communicate with the Government to be able to manage the balance.
Can you share an experience of a country about that, thank you?
MR SPILLER: We will start with Sabina since you went to her and then we will come back to the hate speech question from our colleague from Bangladesh, thank you.
MS VERHEYEN: For example, I make a very concrete example from Germany. We have systems, we have, for example, organisations like Weit IT and others who have, let us say, a combined approach between police, between companies, between NGOs who try to have a common approach and to help.
First is the education, the information but also to find out where you have ‑‑ where are these picture on the internet. That is the reason why they collect hash tags to filter from special computers or content where there is, let us say, where you think there is illegal content there and you have a basis on which you can ‑‑ it is difficult for me in English ‑‑ the situation where you think there might be illegal content, they have the possibility to filter and to take a look, a special look, and then if there are pictures of illegal content, child pornography, they are deleted and the cases are brought to court. Nothing can happen without having court decisions, also the filtering has to be done with court decisions.
That is very important that we have legal, clear systems and a frame where this might happen but without filtering, without having the opportunities also to take a look what is going on there, we have it in real life and we also need it in internet but that should not tackle the freedom of speech and to open up your own mind and to do something that's legal, that should never be touched, but I think we also have to protect children especially with systems but not the blocking is the solution because everyone who knows about the techniques knows that each block can be turned around and that you can enter the pages also then and with the blocking you never will get the peer to peer networks and all these pages where most of this content is found.
So I think we need intelligent systems that work together, we need exchange also between the different agencies all over the world, not just all over Europe but also co‑operation between the police everywhere to find the right sites and to delete the illegal content, the child pornography content, at the bases, at the source.
MR SPILLER: Thank you, I would just add from my own experience before going to the hate speech question that the whole point about legal clarity, legal certainty, is very important for business in general. I mean, all businesses, big, small, medium, everywhere because of course child pornography is a very specific case but in general when it comes to those new business model on line knowing what we can do, what we cannot do and where and when is extremely important, so that is also call to policy makers around the world to make our lives as easy as possible.
Hate speech, who wants to go ‑‑ no, I cannot ask Patrick again. That would be unfair. Ambassador Verveer, may I call upon you. I apologise about that.
AMBASSADOR VERVEER: I would be happy to try to address it and of course it can be no accident that one would ask a US citizen about hate speech because our First Amendment to our Constitution basically indicates that almost all speech ‑‑ there are some very limited exceptions ‑‑ but almost all speech is to be tolerated. In the United States we accept and permit speech that in many part of the world would be prohibited because of the nature of the speech.
Now, this all relates to a very interesting and important initiative that Secretary Clinton of the State Department has sponsored involving internet freedom involving the proposition that we want to make the internet as open as possible, that we want to encourage openness all over the world and this general recommendation is one that requires us to acknowledge, however, that because of our First Amendment we start with respect to content issues in a somewhat different place than many, many other societies happen to do.
There is one perhaps generic point, however, that is very important here and perhaps very useful. That is when we are trying to deal with matters of content, legal process is very important. It is important to have a well‑defined legal processes; it important to have autonomous judiciaries or autonomous arbiters who can make decisions that will be respected, will be regarded as reliable.
From that point of view, again, recognising that in some countries, for reasons that are entirely satisfactory from the standpoint of their individual cultures, there are going to be some kinds of expressions that would be regarded as so offensive as to be prohibited, as to be sanctioned at the outset. You want to be as confident as possible where you encounter that that the legal processes, the rule of law, is very, very carefully observed.
MR SPILLER: Thank you, Ambassador. Anybody else on the Panel on this very important question? No, Patrick, I am not pointing at you! Oaky, Giacomo.
MR MAZZIONE: Talking of another world I can say what we do for this very sensitive topic in the broadcasting area when we come to online so the cross point between the two worlds.
There is a thick guideline book that is provided by BBC to the people dealing with the social network and the online application of the BBC that is now more or less adopted by most of the broadcasters in Europe and says that when you associate the contents of the broadcasters to the online world, for instance, creating a group of interests or chats, et cetera, et cetera, this cannot be done without having a permanent web master that is always present in the room until it is possible to post comments or the chat is active.
In case of hate speech that, according to UK regulation means racist comment and other kinds of incitation that are not permitted by law then they are allowed to immediately isolate this kind of intervention on the chat and to stop and prevent the person to participate to the chat.
Of course, this changes again country by country. For instance, the denegation of the holocaust in some countries Europe in forbidden, in other countries is tolerated, so we don't have a measure that applies all over the countries in the same way.
MR SPILLER: Thank you, Giacomo. I am going to call upon the two other ‑‑ you want to add something? Please.
MR FUJII: Yes, sure. Since I haven't had a chance to speak much today, on the issue of hate speech I would draw a difference between the simple existence of content on the web and content that exists on a private platform. In terms of pure existence of content on the web, I believe as a Japanese citizen we have the same constitution, not the same constitution but the same Article as in the United States, which completely protects the freedom of speech, so I believe that content should be allowed to exist on the web. There should be minimal regulation but when you are talking about private platform, content that exists on services that are on a certain company's platform, for example, certain social media, certain community services, these communities all have community content policies and it is dependent upon these content communities policies which content is allowed and what is not.
Companies who provide these services would like consumers or users to have an enjoyable and productive experience so sometimes these rules are allowed and sometimes they go above the law.
For example, we do not permit hate speech on YouTube. YouTube has a community guideline and there are certain contents that get flagged and sometimes taken down, so I would just draw that difference between a service and existence on the web.
MR SPILLER: Thank you. I think Sabina wants to add something here.
MS VERHEYEN: I just want to ask a question. If you now have on the web a group of neo‑nationalistic persons making together a common garden for their blog or for their thing is that freedom of speech? If you tackle the freedom, the respect and the nondiscrimination of other people, their fundamental rights are standing against each other. There are fundamental rights of each person and I think you always have a border between the right on the one hand and the right of the other person on the other hand. The freedom of your own rights can just go as far as you don't tackle the freedom of the other person. I think in this respect we have to find solutions for questions like hate speech. That is why in some countries or in some communities you have these common rules, these common behaviour because you say, this is not what we accept in our society, in our community, in our platform, and it is not binding your freedom of speech because the freedom of your speech can just reach as long as you don't tackle the fundamental rights of another person.
THOMAS SPILLER: Thank you. I think we have a remote participation comment. Can you please read it out?
FROM THE FLOOR: Another question from (inaudible) from Belgium. He says that due to the lack of conformity in the ways that are the problem of tackling cyber crime is very, very difficult. So what could be done from the regulatory side in order to control the voice data?
THOMAS SPILLER: Okay, thank you. So, anybody wants to start with that one knowing that the question targets regulators and I happen to have one next to me? Sabina, are you okay with that?
MS VERHEYEN: I just talked about the e‑commerce directive, for example, as a safe harbour or not. Let's say internet intermediaries are playing an important role in these questions today in the context of free flow of information, access to information and the respect of human rights. There are various rights and you also have illegal content. Online intermedia liability has become increasingly controversial in relation to, for example, copyright material but also in other cyber crime activities. Some countries give a special role to the internet intermediaries, such as internet providers or online marketplaces, and under certain conditions they are liable for the content that their subscribers or even other internet users put online via the servers. That is one way it is done.
In Europe, the prevalent model of ISP liability for third party content is knowledge‑based. Apart from the duty to remove expeditiously illegal content that they know of, there are few duties of care resting on hosting on intermediaries. In this directive, it is very clear where our responsibilities and where not. The directive on e‑commerce, for example general monitoring duties, the directive does leave room for the creation of specific monitoring duties for example possibly monitoring duties that may be compatible with the directive are intermediary monitor for certain illegal content like phishing pages or something like that. The intermediaries falls outside the scope of application of the directive because it does not act as a service provider as such. For example, a service provider that also acts as an editor of a forum cannot avail itself of the exemption.
So, we try to with the e‑commerce directive to include also the service providers into yes, the protection of consumers on the one hand because if you have trust into a special service offered to you, the service must be, yes, let's say legal and safe for you to use and that is the reason why sometimes intermediaries become gatekeepers and have a special responsibility on what they do and what they not do. But they are not always responsible for the whole content on their sites and all the offers provided there. If you have an offer on eBay and you don't get the right product you ordered, it is not the responsibility of eBay, but I think it is a responsibility of eBay to put these offers out of the service because if you use such a provider, such a service provider, you will want to be sure that it is a legal offer and that it is clear. I think we have to do many things on that but also to include in a special, in a specific, way the intermediaries is very important.
THOMAS SPILLER: Thank you Sabine for the answer on a European angle. Unless anyone from the panel wants to comment on that point and because time is going very fast, we are going now to a wrap up the session. So, last chance for a question from the audience or from some, or a point from somebody on the panel. No, then I will pass the floor to my two co‑moderators and Ana and then...
NEW SPEAKER: I think it is the first day of the IGF we are warming up, our speakers were very good, well, they were excellent and I like to thank them very much because I think that we had a very good discussion, these are emerging issues the discussion, I sent everybody to continue this discussion in the workshops, that will follow in the, in the next days. And now I just, I just would like to emphasise or to z underline the main ideas or the main words that I think that I heard here today from these discussion. So, that there were challenges deserve wide range of solutions, we didn't have a very good discussion about freedom of expression but a little bit of hate speech.
We discussed neutrality and it's importance. The accessibility of the internet to everybody. I think that we had a very good discussion about the traditional media versus internet and the regulation problems.
So too many questions still to be answered and day‑by‑day more questions will come up and therefore that is why this fora at the multi‑stakeholder model are so important. Thank you.
THOMAS SPILLER: Thank you, Izumi up to you, but just I want to take up one point that Anna said, yes, because it was reflected into a discussion like all media versus new media, I think here there is, there is it is all media and new media, it is all media that we are going to benefit and now benefiting from this, from this incessant revolution and it is up to us to put in place the right framework, Civil Society, business, policy makers, NGOs and journalists as well. It is up to us to make the new world happen and that everybody can benefit and then consumers can benefit from a rich and safe online experience.
IZUMI AIZU: Well to remember we started with the internet or the role of the internet based services and also that of the traditional media during and after the crisis or disaster areas or hours and days and months.
Well, the first it is my personal comment that the disaster thing in Japan hasn't really recovered much at all. People were moved to the some of the temporary houses, more than a hundred thousand people are there and beyond that many citizens around the nuclear power plant has no hope to return in coming 30 or 50 years and also the industry, especially local industry, the SMEs were heavily destroyed and there are very few jobs.
You may think that Japan is one of the developed countries and with some economic powers, yes, we do have economic powers but it is not really there in the some of the devastated areas of the people and can ICT or internet do something better for them? We are working on but perhaps from those people, those citizens in the devastated areas viewpoint it is far less and sufficient yet.
However, as I mentioned in the beginning that some of the experiences we learned from the disaster experiences, I mean, there are certain lessons that [inaudible] described that we are finding some new ways of using so call pink data. I was part of the workshop of, about six weeks long and we were offered whole tweets of the week after March 11 from Twitter and a lot of information about Google's search as well as the TV broadcasters, the national NHK, the almost something similar to BBC also provided the one day full text and the newspaper company also provided one week text of whole news not only about the crisis but old news in text. Then, the data from the traffic driving traffic cars and other interesting material and you can being open data you can mush it up the way you like and you can animate them and you can sort of reproduce them. The only thing I do regret is these, had there be measures say ready when the earthquake hit us, not 18 months after; and that technically speaking if you have the will and we can do that for the next one you never know when it will come to where.
But also there are certain exceptions of constraints of the use of the personal data in certain areas has been removed. In other areas they didn't. By the authority or others.
We had some observed some use of the public creator and they share that beyond the copyright or other regulatory constraints. Broadcast linked with the internet and this and many examples that not only in Japan perhaps but in the Christchurch cases and other cases we may see. All this new emerging new use of combination of traditional and new media, we don't, as I said, the victims didn't care if it is this or analogue. They care about their lives and they care about the information they need or the way that they want to express their state.
I am getting a bit too long, I may wind up, one more word. Because these are emerging issues I would like to bring up, one areas following your fantastic phrase of the regulation is that crystallisation of the civilisation. Okay, how many people know about the 3 d printers?
And the regulation over that?
Not too many?
Combined with open source, you can share any design of a product material or artifact online and use this 3 d printer or laser cutter or other digital machines. You can create your weapon, you can create your medicine perhaps; in the years to come. It is called fab lab or fab life, fabi... it is a big movement over the horizon especially in Europe, certain movements in Japan, Indonesia. Certain country folks finding the short cut not to rely on the mass production which are usually coming from the north and combined with this interesting sharing of the knowledge and experiences in the digital format that allows you to create something tangible and real and it is opening una new real interesting word that whether it falls within the internet governance, multi‑stakeholder we don't know, but it is highly likely; that is the end of my observation.
THOMAS SPILLER: Giacomo ‑‑
MR MAZZIONE: I am scared, this will concern spaghetti.
IZUMI AIZU: Okay, you can create the pasta machine first of all, the way you like, seriously.
THOMAS SPILLER: As long as it doesn't concern French cheese, because my home country, that is fine then.
I want to on behalf of my two colleagues here, thanks again to the panelists we are lucky it was multi‑stakeholder here, we had one official, one ambassador, business, NGO. Thanks to all of you and remote participation and yes we have a comment? Yes, we have a question.
MODERATOR: We have a question from a remote participant, his name is (inaudible) from Bangladesh, from ISOC, the question is ant religious content in social net works are causing unrest around the world. Google are not readily to remove the con ‑‑ this list of web sites, what is the solution?
THOMAS SPILLER: That will be really the last question because we are running out of time. Anybody in particular wants to tackle that, it is a tough one.
IZUMI AIZU: Yes, instead of Google speaking too much on behalf of you guys because how many of you were in the big tent yesterday? Last night? Vince dealt with this question interestingly they removed some of the real offensive content about some of the religious issues because they knew it may hurt more people violently, directly, so they went beyond the free speech sort of standard and took it as a special case perhaps but sometimes like the disaster thing, I think it is a healthy move, how to really as Sabina said, create a balance and there is no similar word but I think cases like this will indicate how to move. Of course the civil society will make further noise but let's take it aside.
THOMAS SPILLER: I think the last word will be from our Chairman, Ambassador.
AMBASSADOR: It has been a pleasure to chair this afternoon's session, thank you for your comments and contributions na, Izumi and Thomas, thank you for keeping the comments along smoothly and thank you for the comments from the participants.
I want to thank the panelists for the contribution.
With these comments I would like to again thank all concerned. I call the session closed and pass the microphone to the IGF secretariat.
THE SECRETARY: Thank you. That's it. We will see it tomorrow, the buses are out front to the dinner and I just have a small announcement to make. Somebody has lost a wallet which is a white pink and red with Arabic calligraphy on it, it is cloth with Egyptian pounds and some cards. If anybody has found it, please hand it to the security.
Thank you.
[end of session]