Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 30, 2011 - 09:00AM
***
The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. 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.
****
>> LUIS MAGALHAES: Well, I guess we have to wait a little bit more.
(Standing by)
>> LUIS MAGALHAES: Good morning to all. So finally due to traffic delays, we can actually start this session.
As you know, it is dedicated to "Global Principles for an Open Internet." And it is related to the follow-up of the High-Level Meeting on Internet Economy that OECD organised in last June.
Well, with this we'll deal with several matters of Open Internet. It can actually be quite wide as it relates to innovation and economic growth to freedom of speech and democracy to human rights and the rule of law to self for co-regulatory initiatives and role of industry and other points, if the speakers or the participants wish to raise.
I will introduce the panel. And then a word from the Chair of the meeting. Myself as moderator, my name is Luis Magalhaes. I'm the president of the Knowledge Society Agency Ministry of Education and Science in Portugal and to OECD. I am a member of the committee ICCP, Information Computer and Communications Policy Committee and also the actual Chair of the Working Party on social indicators for the Information Society.
The Chair who is sitting right to me, Dimitri Ypsilanti is head of the Division of OECD and, as a matter of fact, in charge of the Secretariat for this committee I just mentioned, ICCP.
And for the panelists I have on my left Ambassador Philip Verveer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of the United States of America. United States of America coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department.
Then next to him Heather Shaw, vice president for ICT policy, United States Council for International Business and here on behalf of stakeholder scheme of participation to ICCP, which is actually the long-standing representation to ICCP for a long time. It's not one of the new ones. It's for the Business and Industry Advisory Committee, BIAC as it's usually known.
Then Henrietta Asantewah, Chief Executive Officer of the Association for Progressive Communications. And on behalf of another of these organisations that allow for multi-stakeholder participation in the committee, the Civil Society Information Society Council for the OECD.
Then we have Alice Munyua, who you know very well I'm sure because she is behind the organisation of all of the IGF that we have -- where we are now. She belongs to the Ministry of Information and Communication of Kenya.
Then we have Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of ICANN. And here also connected to one of these multi-stakeholder bodies that participate in the ICCP which is usually known by ITAC Internet Technical Advisory Committee to the OECD.
So please, the Chair, could you please address and bootstrap the discussion?
>> DIMITRI YPSILANTI: Good morning, everybody. Apologies to keep you waiting. It's not normal for organizers to not turn up for their own meeting. But it took us at least an hour and a half to get here. I think you are all aware of traffic conditions in Nairobi.
We've heard a lot about principles during this last week in many different workshops. And in fact, the first workshop I attended Monday morning -- Tuesday morning was the Council of Europe. 0And they have just come out with some draft principles.
I think I need to start by explaining that OECD is very concerned about economic globally, economic development, and all its components, productivity, jobs. In fact, our slogan, if I can call it that, is "Better Policies for Better Lives." And that's fundamental to us. Everything is based around that type of concept.
And for years we've been working on the Internet economy, trying to ensure that the policies adopted facilitate openness, facilitate economic growth.
Some of the early work that we've been doing has been trying to actually estimate the impact of what we call the Internet economy on GDP. And these are very preliminary figures.
We found that if -- where the Internet -- in a country where the Internet develops 10 percentage points higher than in another country, GDP is expected to go up to 1.5% higher. Preliminary figures. But the point is that the Internet as a platform has an extremely positive impact on our economies and on jobs and growth.
And it's underlying that that we've developed principles. Our Member Countries in looking at what's been happening over the last couple of years felt that in a number of countries, policies were adopted. In many cases policies with very legitimate objectives. But some of these policies perhaps were a bit disproportionate.
When they were adopted, governments didn't look at the wider impact that these policies may have on the Internet.
And for those type of reasons, it was decided actually just in March of this year to hold a High-Level Meeting which took place as Louis mentioned in June of this year. And for that matter, we worked on what we called a communique. And we worked with our stakeholders. And I'm very happy to see all of our stakeholders here.
It was a difficult process, one, because of time constraints. But secondly, we've got -- we, the OECD, have 34 countries. So they have to find a consensus. It's possibly much harder for the stakeholders because business Advisory Committee has members that come from the telcos, the ISPs, from the Intellectual Property of the content providers, Civil Society obviously have a range of different members with different interests. And ITAC, the Internet technical community, as well. And they had to find a consensus before even trying to give us their comments as we developed these principles.
There are 14 principles. I'm certainly not going to go through them. We do have copies available here. And in those blue folders. But we need to distribute them or put them on the table. You can get them -- Corrine, if you can move the slide one. Well, anyway, one of the slides will show you has a shortcut to our Web site where you'll be able to get -- at the bottom of that slide, you'll be able to get first a copy of those principles. You'll also be able to, if you wish to listen to interventions which were made, which were webcast, you'll be able to go there and listen to individual intervention.
What we are trying to do now is take the communique of Internet policy making principles and transform it into OECD soft law, which we call Council recommendations. Obviously these are voluntary type of recommendations, which we exhort governments to follow where possible. And we hope in the next few months we will be able to get OECD governments to formally adopt these principles as a Council recommendation.
I suppose I would have two issues here, how do we take these principles and move them forward, in other words, get other countries, other stakeholders to agree to them and adopt them in some form. And I should say that when a High-Level Meeting did finally agree on these principles, it was unfortunate that Civil Society could not sign on.
But perhaps as we move forward, there may be a possibility that we can get them to agree as we move forward with the Council recommendation perhaps.
But I think the most important issue is to get non-OECD countries involved.
And the second issue is, as I mentioned at the beginning, there are these different principles of Council of Europe, of other organisations thinking and developing principles. And at the meeting that I attended on Tuesday, there was a suggestion that somehow we should try and get together to form a coherent framework. In other words, try and form a single body of principles, which are not formal in the sense that they are not treaty based. They are not regulations. They are voluntary principles.
If you do look at the details of our principles and you look at the Council of Europe's for example, you'll find a lot of similarities that the headline, in other words, the title of the principles, tend to be slightly different. But in fact, the substance, the description, are quite close together. And I think it's good that that has occurred that way. That means that there's some emerging consensus.
So I'll stop from here Chair and I'll be happy to answer questions as necessary.
>> Thank you very much. As a matter of fact now we are going through addresses by each one of the speakers and then finally we will have questions and debate. So I ask from the speakers if they can keep their interventions to possibly less than seven minutes. And we'll start with Ambassador Verveer, please.
>> Thank you very much it's a pleasure to be with you the United States was one of the proponents of the OECD it was thought within our administration that the OECD was an excellent place to invest effort in terms of the development of principles because of the very high quality of OECD work. And because of it's inclusiveness because it includes not just governments but all relevant stakeholders.
These principles emerged as far as U.S. administration is concerned mostly from our Department of Commerce and I think it's fair to say that we are quite happy with the agreed communique that came out of the High-Level Meeting.
I think that this very meeting is an indication of the initial success of the principles. The interest in them. It's something that we're very happy to see.
We, of course, would like to see a kind of universality with respect to these. And I take Dimitri's point very, very seriously. That we do have a kind of proliferation of principles. But, however, they do tend to converge very significantly.
And while there may be some modest differences in terms of semantics, some very modest differences at a kind of theoretical level, it seems to me as a practical matter, the relevant communities are very, very much centred on the ideas that you find in the communique.
Now, how to move forward.
We in the United States are making it a point to try to recommend these to other administrations whenever we have the opportunity to do so.
One of the things that's very much on my mind is the World Conference on International Telecommunications that will occur at the end of 2012. And I think that these principles are something that ought to instruct very seriously those of us who will be convening for that very important conference.
But I think it tells us that the Internet really does need to remain open, free, and certainly largely free of any unnecessary regulation. So we intend and expect to use these in that regard.
One last point, as Dimitri said the next step at the OECD would be to turn the communique principles into Council recommendations. This is something that we hope will occur very, very quickly. We genuinely believe that it would be most desirable not to make any changes in the communique principles.
We think that these are entirely satisfactory as they are. And we would hope that we can see these become recommendations without alteration.
>> Well, thank you very much. I will follow the order that was on the outline of the conference. So I will ask now Alice Munyua to address the audience, please. I'm sorry for the way I pronounce names. But that's a problem we'll let us have I think.
>>ALICE MUNYUA: No. Thank you and good morning and thank you again for inviting me to this meeting. I was having a discussion today with my minister and one of the decisions we've come up with is that Kenya is keen and is going to be working on developing our own Internet policy principles. And so I will state from the onset that I'm actually here to listen and to learn from what others have done and see what we can use in the coming few months.
But also taking into consideration that the high level ministerial meeting of the IGF at the beginning on Monday was for us the beginning of looking at it from a high-level perspective and beginning to consider some of these principles that would inform policy processes at the national and regional level.
The ministerial meeting acknowledged that the Internet is essential and a major driver for economy, political, social and cultural engagement and is also very critical to innovation, entrepreneurship and development.
And it developed -- while we didn't call them a set of principles we just started discussing them from that perspective. And a few of the issues that came up, what to do with access, universal access to infrastructure, broadband and content and then acknowledging and wanting to implement the multi-stakeholder role at the national level it's pretty much done because it's enshrined in our new Constitution where we have to apply the multi-stakeholder model to all of our processes and not just ICT related processes but broadly. And then issues of privacy and cybersecurity and inclusiveness and transparency as well as commitment to freedom of information.
Diversity was another issue, as well as, you know, multilingualism. And protection of data.
Ensuring that we have conducive laws and regulation, again, to enhance the use of Internet for entrepreneurship and innovation was another issue as well as protection of children online.
So as mentioned those are the few issues that we have begun to discuss at the ministerial level but we are going to be considering seriously developing our own principles at the national level and see how that can also be harmonized at the regional east African level so I'm here to listen and learn from the processes that have already started. But also we support the OECD principles. You know, as well as acknowledge the European Commission for Digital Agenda and the cross exact principles, as well and we are beginning to look at that in terms of how we form our own process at the national level. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Now I would call Rob Exton to speak, please.
>> Thank you very much, Louis. And we thank you for allowing ICANN and ITAC, the technical community, to participate today in this forum. And we really thank the OECD for integrating the technology community and other stakeholders into their so actively. So I'm here today speaking on behalf of ITAC or the Internet Technical Advisory Committee that was formed ICANN is one of the founding members there's more than 20 today the members include most of the world's primary Internet standards and coordination bodies technical standards bodies like IAGF, IAB and the numbers resource organisation and the registries, et cetera, APNIC we also see here in the room. And ITAC works with governments national international organisations Civil Society and the Private Sector we use a collaborative and inclusive process. We're motivated by a common vision which is an open and accessible Internet with economic and social benefits for all.
There's a couple of -- two important points to summarize our High-Level Meeting in June. And the first is collaborative multi-stakeholder processes remain key to the future of the Internet. As I shared in my opening remarks on Monday, the multi-stakeholder model itself can actually be viewed as a technology. And it's a catalyst that helps drive all the components of the Internet forward whether those are the technical standards, the research and development technical standards, policy and the governance structure.
So we can look at the multi-stakeholder model as something that's absolutely essential in this system and it's part of the architecture of the system that in many ways reflects the Internet itself that drives -- was designed for collaboration and drives collaboration.
The second is the need to keep the Internet unified.
Fragmentation, for example, along national lines would do harm to the OECD principle of open information sharing, including doing so across national borders.
So the freedom to connect must be preserved.
Also, one of the important principles in the communique that is of particular interest to ITAC and our group are the effects on intermediaries need to be minimized in part by focusing on ensuring accountability of the actors at the edges of the network or think for a moment content publishers. And not all of those that help to support the infrastructure of the Internet and provide coordination services.
The ITAC organisations did endorse the June OECD ministerial communique and other basic principles that ensure the Internet remains open and dynamic so Dimitri I appreciate your comments about we are not signatories but we do endorse and we met and made that decision to strongly support the communique.
The principles foster the flow of information globally. And we help to do that as a community by keeping a single authoritative route and also by making sure that the Internet address policies ensure the uniqueness of all Internet addresses.
An example of our collaboration in the ITAC community is how ICANN works with the IRRs on IPv6 rollout globally.
We also work with the CCTLD managers Private Sector companies and industry peers on DNS SEC deployment the DNS SEC effort which is a more secure version of the DNS requires participation of an entire ecosystem of parties including registers, registrars, the ISPs the registrants any company organisation that has a domain and also users who actually -- domain name and also users who download tools into their -- the days is another example of the successful collaboration in the multi-stakeholder model there have been six years of efforts to develop this programme which is very complex and sophisticated in order to help both protect the security and stability of the Internet and to seek to protect the rights of various parties.
Also within the gNSO for example the generic name supporting organisation law enforcement is working with registries and registrars to foster trust in the Internet and the DNS respecting international and local laws and also we're doing work with WIPO on domain name dispute resolution and now gTLDs ITAC in our view clearly represents multi-stakeholder collaboration we thank you very much for supporting ITAC as a tool to support multi-stakeholder participation in the OECD efforts. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Now I would ask Henrietta Houston to take the floor, please.
>> Thank you, Louis. And thank you very much for this opportunity. In fact, CSaC, Dimitri we would like to think that the trajectory is somewhat different in that as time passes more OECD members will understand and grasp why CSaC chose not to endorse this. We hope to persuade others and particularly with the policy phase some of these problems we found identified might emerge. CSaC is as Dimitri outlined the Civil Society advisory information Council to the OECD it's a coalition of over 80 international Civil Society organisations many are expert based organisations such as electronic privacy information centres, -- centre and Electronic Frontier Foundation and some like my own are more broadband Civil Society networks that work with use of the Internet and access particularly in Developing Countries.
CSaC members supported the Seoul Declaration. And we think it's rather significant with multi-stakeholder processes we believe it's important as other speakers have elaborated I won't say much more on that. CSaC's baseline that we feel should be considered by any set of principles -- and we do agree that there's a need for the development of principles or at least dialogue on principles because of the cross-border nature and cross jurisdictional nature of the Internet.
Principles that are important to us. And I'll go through some of them and then comment briefly on how we feel they are reflected in the communique or not.
Multi-stakeholder processes we feel is very well expressed and endorsed by the communique and we're very pleased by that.
Role of intermediaries is an area where we have concern given the extent to which most facets of our lives are being intermediated online the potential for surveillance and control over individual activity that intermediaries can exert is enormous.
And so while the communique has a heading for a paragraph limit Internet liability if you actually read the communique carefully, there are several aspects which we feel is threatening to actually create or encourage more liability of intermediaries.
And we think this is particularly important because these norms of intermediaries not being liable, they actually don't exist in many parts of the world they exist in many OECD countries, we are still trying to establish this we are still trying to protect intermediaries from being liable in many parts of the world so when the OECD seems to be stepping away from that, we are extremely concerned.
Another area is the importance of due process and rule of law in implementing of any kind of governance of the Internet at an international level. And we feel there's a trend towards eroding legal protections for due process and maybe I should explain what we mean by that due process is concept of innocent until proven guilty and proven so through a legal process and we think it applies as much to copyright infringement as it does to other infringements.
And the rule of law requires the determinations of legality are made by objective decision makers that are duly appointed to judiciary or quasi judiciary bodies so that's why the encouragement to develop voluntary code of conducts where intermediaries actually become parties to enforcing copyright infringement consensus.
And then with regard to intellectual property rights, I think there's real contention here. And the communique I think has a phrase that says the forum is necessary for the growth and develop of the Internet for copyright. And we question that many have argued in fact that rigid enforcement has greater potential to restrain and limit the Open Internet while we are actually are trying to add it. And even if there's not a consensus view, I think the traditional notion of balance is extremely important and not reflected.
So the balance between the protection of Intellectual Property and copyright. And then dealings with documents such as fair use, fair dealing. Those are not mentioned.
And they are real concerns that we have here. We think in fact that the privacy rights of users can be violated by enforced technically -- digitally enforced copyright infringement. And I can elaborate more on that later.
We also are concerned that penalties are out of proportion. And I think we are seeing that already with the increasing one strike two strike three strike policies where users are losing their entire Internet access because they have been found guilty of copyright infringement and the process of finding them guilty is very unclear. We are not saying that copyright should not be enforced. We are questioning the methodology.
And just a few I'll just touch on a few things we feel is not really reflected is net neutrality. Affordable and universal access is not effectively reflected for us in the communique. And I think I mean the reason why we feel so strongly about this is because of cross jurisdictional impact. The impact of any adopted set of principles must be considered of a diverse of -- set of international players in mind endorsing limitations to access to lawful content for example which it's a term the communique uses can be deeply problematic. Because who decides what is lawful and what is not? As one state's definition of lawful content going to be the same as another states so jurisdictions differ and that will make the implementation of this principle of access to lawful content impossible as far as we're concerned the manner in which global principles will be implemented particularly in countries with weak democratic institutions inadequate consumer protections and protections for fundamental human rights could in fact be really damaging and limiting to the role that the Internet can play in growing our economies.
For this reason and all of these reasons, we think that governance framework that aspire to an open and inclusive Internet needs to be really concerned and build this fundamental consideration of rights into it more effectively than the communique has done. We do recognize the efforts. And we learned enormously from the process of negotiation. And in fact both BIAC and ITAC and Member States were very supportive negotiating partners. So the process we have no regrets about the process but we do hope that as time passes you'll have a greater understanding of why Civil Society chose not to endorse.
>> Thank you very much. And now the last speaker from the panel Heather Shaw will be talking on behalf of BIAC, please.
>> HEATHER SHAW: Thank you. So as the Chair just mentioned, I'm here representing BIAC the Business Industry and Advisory Committee to the OECD. BIAC represents industry across OECD committees and has a presence in all Member States my organisation is the U.S. affiliate of BIAC. And I personally had the pleasure of working across industry sectors in several countries to find consensus while we were developing these principles and it was quite a useful process that really did underline the value of multi-stakeholders in discussing principles like this.
We believe it is very important to have a common framework for countries to consider when making policies around the Internet. Establishing baseline concepts to anchor policy and regulatory frameworks helps to prevent unnecessary burdens and unattended consequences. Principles serve as a basis for greater international coherence on these issues vital for issues related to the Internet where there are no borders although countries will continue to set their own policies and regulations, adapting international principles to suit their individual cultures, legal systems and priorities.
However, interoperability must be maintained for information flows to continue across borders promoting greater investment and innovation.
The OECD played an important and influential role in this regard early on in the development of the Internet by issuing the Ottawa declaration in 1998 and more recently in Seoul in 2008 the most recent set of principles builds on the OECD Seoul Ministerial Declaration of 2008 we were pleased they pleased to see they continued with creativity and confidence they emphasize preserving free flow of information and open and interconnected Internet and promoting investment which happened to be the first three principles.
The OECD principles have an underlying foundation of promoting economic development. Consistent with OECD's overall mission.
Setting policies related to the Internet based on strong economic principles rather than political purposes will help ensure that the Internet continues to flourish leading to increased innovation, economic and social benefits.
There is now as we've heard throughout the IGF wide recognition that the Internet is important for economic growth. However, there's a continued need to maintain a framework that establishes an enabling environment.
The OECD principles clearly provide this framework and set an example. Industry believes that these principles will be useful in many settings and especially in discussions leading to the World Conference on Information Technology, WCIT, taking place next year as the Ambassador mentioned the OECD Internet policy principles are broad ranging and flexible which means they can be applied on topics where technology and business models are still evolving and emerging indeed six years ago when we first met at the IGF we couldn't foresee the technology changes that are today Omni present emerging issues has always been a standard theme here at the IGF and I think also reflects the quick pace of change in this area and the need for flexible principles.
The OECD has been a pioneer in understanding from the beginning of the Internet the importance of all stakeholders involvement in policy discussions and invite active participation of non-Government participants at all levels from developing agendas for High-Level Meetings key speaking rolls and responsibilities and documents coming from the OECD policies involving the Internet as I said earlier need to be high level in order to allow for rapid changes always occurring in the sector all stakeholders in dialogue together should be involved in policy making so that decisions are well informed from all perspectives. We appreciated the commitment from many governments in the OECD Secretariat to seek early buy-in from all stakeholders and the objectives and the content of the principles.
The broad consultation process in advance of the High-Level Meeting included all stakeholders and gained consensus from a majority while others recognized the positive element and the principles but still want some further precision on language and to have some additional areas reflected as Henrietta has just mentioned industry through BIAC endorsed the principles and will be seeking wide support indeed I'm very pleased to be participating in this forum on behalf of BIAC the IGF is a great place to bring better awareness of these principles given the wide and broad participation here in addition to bringing it up in other fora where we encourage principles to be developed to echo the language or adopt the same language especially on principles that were highly negotiated and represent a break-through in reaching consensus across different stakeholders the OECD will soon consider whether to take the communique forward to the OECD Council to adopt as a recommendation the principles are a solid framework and one way to increase their influence is to elevate their status in this way however this shouldn't come at the cost of changing them they reflect a delicate balance that a range of stakeholders have endorsed rather we should all focus on promoting them outside of the OECD membership and implement them in domestic policy making.
>> Thank you very much. So it was very good because the -- all of the speakers were very well behaved so we even recovered the delay we had at the beginning of this session and now have time for questions and debate. So please.
>> Patrice Lion, CNNI. I appreciate the effort that went into it and once having participated in these exercises, once you get a primate, you really don't want to go back and rethink it but I would strongly urge you to rethink the whole part on promote the distributed interconnected nature of the Internet I have about ten things in there that I find aren't really the way I'm perceiving it now you can say this is just my opinion. Fine. But I've worked with the Internet community now for many, many years. And in particular Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf. I represented them when Vint was Bob's --
(Audio lost).
>> In a lot of the mobile environment Bob and Vint wrote something in the world of nobots in the late '80s and right now some of those theories and we actually have running code are actually being implemented and practiced. Just to highlight something else -- by the way the basic idea of the Internet in my view is its open architecture. It's actually the protocols and procedures that people can implement on their own and have known commonly understood and available. So this doesn't mean that mandated open access. This doesn't mean that you're going to have some sort of test for appropriate quality of services. I think if you have some sort of test, it would interfere with the young people. Say for example with their apps. They come up with all of these apps right now. And if somebody is going to say to them: Well, you have to pass some sort of test, I think that could be -- inhibit some of the very productivity that you want to achieve here.
So just briefly you're not connecting to anything. It's not like you're plugging an extension cord in the wall. There's no real edges. It's not re-edification where you have an edge of the Internet as Bob Kahn often says you have a circulatory system in your body, you have other parts of your body you can look at them separately but basically you have an integrated whole. So I look at the Internet as an integrated whole. And in that essence, it's a global information system and it's the protocols and procedures that enable that.
>> Thank you very much. So please. And I'm sorry. I don't know your name. Please identify yourself before speaking.
>> My name is Suneil Abraham from the Center for Internet and Society. A comment again about the categorization of Intellectual Property --
(Audio lost).
>> Yes, please, please do.
>> Thanks, Corrina. Thanks for pointing that out. Because actually what we have seen of that set of recommendations, it's really very strong. And I think that's precisely one of our concerns. That because the principles in the OECD are possibly I think Dimitri possibly too detailed and maybe I think you're quite right and I think maybe a very simple paragraph on Intellectual Property that refers to balance might have been enough. Instead of so much emphasis on the protection of rights.
But I think we are aware as another level OECD is producing very strong material but when it comes to guidelines developed at OECD level and the statement of principles that could be taken up by other states or other regions where you don't have as entrenched a discourse and knowledge about due process and about protection of intermediaries from liability, they could be interpreted in a way that could actually have a very unintended consequence.
>> Thank you very much. Heather Shaw, please.
>> HEATHER SHAW: I just wanted to make one further clarifying point since we've had a few comments on the terminology of how stakeholders or non-Member States have endorsed the document and I do just want to actually draw everybody's attention because I really do think it does speak very strongly to the commitment of the OECD and Member States to multi-stakeholders that the document actually refers to Member States and stakeholders and one non-Member State agreeing to the principles within the document itself. So I think when we talk about endorsing it, it implies that the governments came up with the set of principles. And some stakeholders then later said: We support these principles. It speaks very strongly that that level of support and agreement is actually indicated in the communique itself.
>> Thank you. There was a question, intervention from the floor.
>> So Fred Baker, Cisco Systems.
There was -- hi, Patrice.
There was something that Patrice left out in her remarks, which I think is actually important to understanding them. Which was that the system that Bob had to deal with in the mid 1990s that called itself the Internet and was trying to get us to pay for the use of the term was in fact a closed network run by a bank to connected cash machines. And so the point is that when you talk about the Internet, you need to be very careful as to which system you're talking about. And that is based on the open standards which have been developed in our community and so on.
>> Thank you very much.
>> I need to reply to that with clarification. What Fred is referring to is when we incorporated the Internet Society, I applied for registration for the term Internet Society. And the time the Internet this was in the '90s, Fred. We had run the Internet for a long time before that. And nobody was paying. And you're right, there was a great of banks that had the term Internet. And they wanted the Internet to be your ATM machine. Well we had an honourable settlement and I won't get into all of the details. There were a lot of other people involved at one point I had 800 marks on hold different people wanted to own different pieces but it's now a generic term. --
(Audio lost).
>> I may have missed. Any signal? No. So if this is the case I will address a few questions to the panels.
Well, there is quite a lot of consensus on the things that have been put forward. It's also useful on these instances to address the controversy. Right? To bring a little bit of that flavor to the discussion.
So --
(Audio lost).
>> In the most elemental terms we think it would be damaging for two reasons. One is any of us familiar with the decisional processes intergovernmental organisations understand the dynamism of the Internet would be compromised to an extent that I think almost no one would regard as optimal. The Internet has been permitted to evolve as it will, subject to the kinds of technological progress, innovations in business practice, changes in consumer behaviors. And this is something --
(Audio lost).
>> That would suggest that there is any obligation on the part of administrations to co-operate in censorship and restrictions on the free flow of information. So from that point of view we certainly believe that remitting the Internet of any kind of control by intergovernmental organisations would not be a desirable thing.
Now, that is not to say that the Internet isn't going to continue to evolve in terms of the way in which it is organised and managed. It's very, very clear that it has evolved a great deal as you've said. And that no doubt will continue.
There's simply no reason to believe that the specialised institutions that have grown up around the Internet the ICANN IAGF and others won't continue to change and evolve with circumstances but we believe these ought to be involved by multi-stakeholder processes, not by individual Government processes.
>> Thank you very much. Now I will address a question to Alice Munyua taking the benefit of your strong involvement in the organisation of this event here in Kenya and from the point of view of Kenya, actually an African country.
What are the main concerns of Kenya? And as a matter of fact, your perception regarding main concerns of African countries regarding the openness of the Internet and the main difficulties faced by these countries in this regard, in particular from a governance point of view?
>>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. As mentioned earlier, we had many of our ministers present on Monday and with the exact issues we were discussing. And some of the concerns that came up are again to do with affordable and universal access is to both infrastructure and content.
The role of stakeholders and the role -- and how Government -- and how Government then relates to the various stakeholders. Internet Governance obviously being a new way of governance that most of our governments are having to get used to because of the nature of the Internet itself.
Privacy and cybersecurity. And then issues of protection of data and conducive laws. And a new and upcoming issue was the role of intermediaries you know especially from a content perspective. So those are some of the concerns and challenges that we are discussing that many of the African countries are discussing and are going to be considering at that level. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Are there any other questions from the floor or any comment?
>> If I can just supplement what you said, one of the concerns when we developed these principles is obviously the Internet as a platform is very important. But you need to access it. And the underlying communications infrastructure is important. And I guess one of the key areas which differentiates these principles, say from Council of Europe, is the fact that it does mention one of the principles is promote investment and competition and high speed networks and services. And I think universal access, which is affordable, in other words, is provided in a competitive environment is very important. And not only for developing economies but also for developed economies.
>> Thank you very much. Any other -- anybody from the panel that wants to comment on the things so far? So I think we will proceed on this register. Please.
>> Just I want to comment on Ambassador Verveer's remarks.
I agree with him that intergovernmental structured institutionalized intergovernmental Internet Governance bodies won't work very well and could potentially really place basic freedoms at risk.
But I think at the same time the challenge is not that simple. The Internet has changed and it's an environment which is constantly being modified by stakeholders. And it's become a place of business. There are powerful commercial interests that are being very innovative on the Internet. But they are also changing the nature of the Internet.
And I think then the challenge for those of us involved in public interest oriented governance is how do you manage that. How do you balance that? How do you not prohibit the Internet as a place for innovation and opportunity and competition for Private Sector entities but at the same time ensure that their interests, which tend to be quite powerful and backed by powerful forces and skills and, you know, legal expertise don't end up limiting the public interest, particularly those who are not able to be inside those governance processes and lobby for their own interests?
Something like access for knowledge, for example. You know piracy is a crime. But access to how many students are there in countries like India and South Africa where if they weren't able to use pirated textbooks would not be using textbooks at all.
>> I think what you said is important. But it's exactly why you do need principles to kind of limit the powerful lobbies and put them -- let them work within a framework.
>> I agree.
>> I think even within a country you'll find that different Government departments take different actions, which are not always consistent with an aim to develop the Internet, diffuse it, and keep it dynamic. And you find certain ministries are more powerful than others. And that's why I think principles play a key part.
>> Please.
>> Yes, I have a question actually. I would like to come back to the phrase where it says maintaining technology neutrality and appropriate quality for all Internet services. That's what I find particularly troubling. Because yesterday we had the so-called Internet of things and it was generally agreed I thought it was the consensus that you're really talking about information about things. Like a SmartPhone is a thing. The chip is the thing. But it's really the information and the management of the information resources in that context.
So was there any notion when you say technology neutrality, you know, what would be the objective there? Because the technology is dynamically changing and the services for providing the actual management structures in that environment is changing. And we were particularly focusing on the identifiers, where you have identifiers of all kinds that have to work together in a more integrated fashion. You know, from the identifier in SIM chip or an RFID and how you would enable that what we call the heterogeneous information systems that you have this dynamic interaction. So I'm troubled by that. And if somebody could -- Rod, were you involved in those words? I don't want to put you on the spot but just out of question.
>> I was not involved in those words. I think the ITAC group was. If somebody else from the ITAC group is in the room and wants to speak to that, they can I think the words of neutrality are appropriate the reality is the standards to evolve through the standards policies continues to evolve but it's a neutral process but it's a neutral process and based on adoption and what is agreed upon by the multi-stakeholder community I think they wish to adopt so I don't want to get too deep into the words because at a high level the colleague at the table here can --
>> HEATHER SHAW: I think it's exactly for the purpose that you mentioned that technology is changing. So the point there is that policies shouldn't specify the kind of technology. I mean if we had policies that specified facts, I mean that was something that came in and out pretty quickly. You know, you don't want -- you want policies to be able to evolve with the technologies. And the term technology neutrality is simply that to not limit and to focus on the information and the objectives that you're trying to reach rather than the actual technology that's being used.
>> Then I think that's basically that's not really reflected here in my humble opinion is that when you're saying maintaining and quality, then you have somebody that's in charge. Instead of having -- putting in the processes and -- they are guidance but it doesn't mean that somebody has to absolutely follow it because somebody has some innovative idea. And it's their issue if it's not going to connect with anything else and it's not going to interact with anything else. But it's the idea of the maintaining and the neutrality because it's the basic neutrality that doesn't allow the evolution.
>> I would beg to differ. I believe the neutrality and the openness of the processes to the multi-stakeholder organisations and the collaboration drives the evolution technology. And I think the Internet system has evolved extremely, extremely rapidly at all levels. Raw technology, he technology standards, the policies and the governance structures.
>> Even after you saw that --
>> I'm sorry.
>> If you actually say that here, then I would be happy.
>> If I would say what.
>> If the words would be changed to accommodate what you have just said.
>> I think that gets back to Dimitri's point of you have to have -- there's a limited amount of language here you know. And the idea is to share some high-level principles. So we're probably in violent agreement on many of these issues.
(Chuckles).
>> Anybody wants to take the floor?
>> My name is Mark Ozawa from BIAC and also representing the GIIC.
And well I just wanted to highlight just one thing that is related to the risk mitigation inside internal risk of the ICT as well as external risk which means that you look at the tsunami and the earthquake in Japan. I think the year 2011 is the year of the natural disasters. So many people are just looking for how stable infrastructure we can provide to the society and economy from the ICT.
And so I think it's the overarching issues to all over the communities. And it is already commented I believe. But I just wanted to highlight how those each issues or items related to the viewpoint of the risk mitigation or risk management. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you very much.
>> I'm sorry if we have more people in the room and we start going through the text, we would never get any kind of consensus on every single word or definition. But I think in general, there is much wider consensus in that it is important to have some generic high-level principles, if you want, for policy making. And perhaps what I would like to hear from you is how can we move these forward. How can we get other people to sign on in brackets or endorse or whatever word you want to use. But how can we diffuse these better among other governments at a global level. And get them to understand that it is important to have an open dynamic Internet. And to have some framework that allows them when they take policies, which gets them to understand that there are certain needs to balance and to ensure that their policies don't create obstacles and -- in allowing people to access the Internet and use it and create economic activities.
>> Okay. Anybody from the panel or the floor wants to react to this? Please. Heather.
>> HEATHER SHAW: I think one way is for the OECD Member States to implement them. To actually consider what's in the principles. And to really live by what they have said. And then going back to my earlier point about the OECD itself being aimed at economic development, the countries can really lead by example and show that they have implemented policies that -- based on these principles. And perhaps share success stories that have happened. I think that's one way of getting others to see how these principles can assist them in their policy making and lead to positive results.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Thank you, Louis. I think that's a good idea. And I think also learning and reporting on process of using the principles. And assessing where they work well and where they don't work well. But I think it's not that simple. I think I discussed this at length with my Government, the Government of South Africa who attended the forum where the principles were discussed and then adopted. And they feel fundamentally uncomfortable with endorsing anything that they have not drafted. And I've spoken to many other Developing Country governments who feel the same.
I think there are other principles, as well. I think we have consensus that the process of developing these principles are important, the Council of Europe principles and these principles. And there are others.
So I would rather advocate a process where we encourage other governments, other regions, to discuss these principles. To take perhaps some sense of ownership and develop their own. Or decide what they will use. And I think those have to be -- those discussions should take place in multi-stakeholder concepts. Because ultimately if there's not a sense of ownership and a very strong identification with those principles, it's not that likely that they are going to be used or implemented consistently and effectively and the other reason that's important is you want to bolt bottom-up feedback as well you want citizens and consumers business society stakeholders in those countries to be part of this discussion so that if these are principles that are effective in endorsing the openness of the Internet free flow information that they can actually play a watchdog role to ensure those principles are adhered to.
>> Yeah, thank you. I would like to I think totally agree with Henrietta here and I think that's my opening comments were that we acknowledge all of the principles that have been developed, the OECD principles, the European Commission the Council of Europe and others but we do intend to make sure that we have our own bottom-up multi-stakeholder process at the national level and also do it in context with the east African IGF as well that follows the same process and the issue of ownership is very important because when you have the principle developed from -- you know from that perspective then it's much easier to begin to think about how you implement them or how you use them to develop policy and regulation. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Any more comments? Here, please.
>> I'm Sala I'm from Fiji and I bring greetings from the Pacific. I would like to welcome the developments in terms of principles for Internet policy making.
I think that a lot of what's mentioned in it is actually -- you know, it's really good because there's a need for general principles for those who actually are going to be developing policies.
However, I would like to suggest if it could include the underserved communities. I think it was sort of raised by Henrietta and also marginalized communities those who have no capacity to speak and that sort of thing and also in terms of the processes in which consultations are going to take place. Maybe perhaps looking into mechanisms how the views can be extracted or at least how their views can sort of you know be affected.
And the other thing, also, is in terms of procedures, also in terms of timelines, given that I know it's in English. But if it could also, you know, be translated into different native scripts. And also time be given for broad institutions. Thank you. You've probably done it already. That's all. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Any other -- yeah, please.
>> Hi, Joy Litico from APC and also the regulator in the dot NCCT space. I want to welcome this discussion and make concrete suggestions APC has been promoting the idea that the IGF itself should be the forum of which principles of Internet Governance are discussed and canvassed and whatever governments may like to discuss amongst themselves in other forums which may be useful for them that this is the place to which those principles should be brought and tabled for discussion.
So in terms of concrete suggestions, one of the suggestions is that those people with various proposals bring them to these forums and perhaps they should be matched by concrete proposals for those -- from those dealing with critical Internet resources.
For example, we know that there are many core principles and human rights baked into the very design of the Internet. The idea of a local Internet community. The idea of trusteeship of the DNS system. The idea of bottom-up multi-stakeholder processes. I think it would be a very useful contribution for multiple rights and principles to be brought so we can discuss shared values in this forum as a practical suggestion rather than in the black boxes that we all have in the planes we're flying elsewhere.
And further, as a way to do that, our concrete suggestion is that human rights be the main theme of the IGF for 2012 and further it would be great to see a thematic ICANN meeting on human rights, as well, that would be very welcome initiative and a concrete proposal and addition that those managing critical Internet resources could contribute. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much for that contribution. It is certainly useful. Any other person? We are arriving more or less to the time where we should close. But if there is somebody with an urgency to intervene, this is still possible. If not, let me try to drive the meeting to a conclusion.
Well, the -- as a matter of fact, I'll also use it for conveying some information this process of the principles conveyed by the OECD and what was discussed about enlarging the support or the connection or complementarily with other agencies and engages on the process of discussing them wider communities for there actually to be adopted and have effects will go on. As a consequence of the High-Level Meeting there are other processes going on like for instance trying to work on metrics, to follow the developments let's say for short. But in this context, following the High-Level Meeting that happened in Paris in June the OECD is organising together with the United States the technical workshop in Washington October 12th and 13th. So the next month. With the title: Broadband and it's impact on consumers and economies.
The subtitle: Developing a new framework for future metrics. So there is also this idea for observing what is going on with the different and maybe detailed and more adjusted to current time metrics.
And now would you like to close the session Ambassador Verveer.
>> PHILIP VERVEER: I'll close the session but just to add on what was said one fact that Member Countries or OECD countries brought up is that if you're going to policy you should be aware of what's happening in the market and therefore metrics measurement is important and it is important to have comparable data across countries to benchmark your progress and what Louis mentioned is ongoing process where we are meeting to discuss on the data side what are the -- how we can improve our existing metrics and what new metrics we can develop in order to help policymakers.
So with that first I would like to thank the panelists for their participation. I think for us this was very useful. And thank the audience for coming here. As I said, we are moving forward with these principles. And I understand very much what Alice said, that -- and Henrietta said that ownership is important. But I think you have principles that we've developed. You can take them and try to build on them or modify them to your own local needs perhaps. But I think it's important that we do have the framework. And that we all work towards the same goal, which I think is the goal of IGF. And that is to keep an open dynamic, accessible Internet for all and to ensure that it's used in a way which helps our economies and helps us from the social side, as well.
So with that, thank you, all, very much. And please --
(Applause)
(Session ended at 10:31)
***
This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
***