IGF 2010
Vilnius, Lithuania
17 September 10
Session 55
1130
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF
INTERNET GOVERNANCE, 1995-2010,
AND LOOKING FORWARD TO WSIS 2015
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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. 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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>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you very much, everyone, for coming. We'd like to start on time for this session because one of our panelists has to leave and I'm sure some of the audience may be in the same position with flights going back home this afternoon. So we'll start as soon as everyone is seated. So just take your seats and we'll commence. And I'd ask if the technical folk at the back could switch to the presentation. We've got a couple introductory slides, and then we'll get right into the speakers.
So thanks again and welcome to successes and failures of Internet Governance and looking forward to 2015. This is one of three workshops organized by the Internet government caucus as this IGF meeting in Vilnius. Next slide, please? The panelists that we have in order -- in the order that I've placed them. Catherine Trautmann, Tracy Hackshaw, David Souter and I'll be the -- I'll be the moderator. I'll give a brief introduction to each panelist before they speak as well. Next slide, please?
So, we're talking about (off microphone) of Internet Governance so we need to know what Internet Governance is and I think we'll stick to the definition the working group came up with and accepted by the world summit on information society which stated that Internet Governance is the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. In other words, it's the very broadest definition we're work talking about, not just laws, not just IGF standards, not just what ICANN does. We're talking about the whole gamut and all of the actors who are involved in that process. Next slide, please?
Talking about successes and failures raises the obvious question, what criteria do we use to determine whether an Internet Governance mechanism has been successful or not, and really, each of the speakers will probably have their own definition. But some of the criteria that I think of, and these are just personal, firstly, the technical success of the -- of the governance mechanism, depending on what it's supposed to do, does it success in doing that. If it's a technical standard, does it work? If it's a way of allocating IP addresses or domain names, does that process run smoothly? If it's a policy issue, does it succeed in addressing the policy problem that it's aimed at?
Second criteria might be to look at for whose benefit does it operate? Does it operate only for the benefit of the privileged or does it also operate to advance development of the Internet -- development of the use of the Internet in the global south.
Another criterion could be based on the WSIS process criteria which stated that international management of the Internet should be transparent, Democratic and inclusive of all stakeholders in their respective roles, so it is transparent, participatory and inclusive. These are some of the criteria we could look at judging success or failure, but on the other hand, one could take the view that perhaps nothing is a failure as long as lessons have been learned from it, so maybe we can look at even the less successful Internet Governance policies and practices as successes in their own ways.
Having said that, I'm going to -- I only have two more slides. I'm going to give two uncontroversial examples of what might be thought of as successes and failures, so move to the next slide. Here is what's hopefully an uncontroversial example of a successful Internet government strategy which is the specific of HTML by the Worldwide Web Consortium. If certainly works, it's -- it advances the goals of development because it has the capacity to be multi-lingual and to be implemented easily and at low cost, and it's developed in a relatively transparent and participatory way, so we might say that it satisfies that criterion as well. Others may disagree because of course the W3C has rather high membership fees for participation in its processes, but this is just an example anyway.
And the important thing is that although this is a -- the example that I've given is the development of a technical specification, we shouldn't assume that it doesn't involve policy issues as well. In fact, it does. The W3C's work brings in public policy issues such as its policy on patents. It's got a policy that it won't accept a standard for specification if it involves patents that can't be freely licensed.
So there's a successful Internet Governance policy. Let's move on to a failure. And here I've had to be very careful to be noncontroversial. So let's move to the next slide. And I've taken a very old example so nobody will get too upset. It's not my job to be controversial. That's the job of the panelists.
The gTLD-MoU or global top-level domain memorandum of understanding was a predecessor to ICANN around 1997. It was developed by the Internet community. They ended up with 224 signatories, including WIPO and the ITU, yet in the end it completely failed. And ICANN took over the role of administration of the global domain name system.
So this is one very clear example of failure, and why did that happen? It's been -- the obvious reason is that governments weren't really involved. And so a lesson we might have taken away from that if we were -- if that were a more current example was that governments have to be involved in Internet Governance in some fashion, otherwise they'll simply do what the Internet protocol was designed to do, which is routing around failure. They'll simply route around this failed Internet Governance mechanism and create their own replacement.
So I think that's my last slide. Can we check? Maybe there's one more slide, or is that -- oh, yes, of course, because once we've looked at successes and failures we're then going to look at the future for the World Summit on the Information Society. Of course the original was held in 2003 and 2005, and it may be that there will be a WSIS 2015, which will coincide with the -- the date the completion of the millennium development goals also. Given the experience of the IGF it may be that this will be a very different beast, and so like some of the panelists to touch on that, what role might civil society have in a future World Summit on the Information Society. Will it still have the same focus as the earlier summit? Will it retain a development focus or are there other issues like human rights that the summit might move on to?
Has the earlier summit fulfilled what it was designed to do? It pointed out a whole, in global -- hole in global governance or policy vacuum in global governance that was designed to be filled by the IGF and the process of enhanced cooperation. Does that vacuum still exist? If so, what does WSIS 2015 -- what is left for WSIS 2015 to do. I'd also like us to link the two parts of this session. Looking at the successes and failures and then linking those forward to what WSIS 2015 might do. Can WSIS learn from the successes and failure in the preceding 20 years of Internet Governance?
So that's more than enough for me to say. I'll move on to the first of our panelists, and the first panelist we're very lucky to have Catherine Trautmann here with us. As you may know, she's been a member of the European Parliament for the party of European Socialists since 2004, and previously when she was a member of the French Parliament, including Foreign Minister for Culture and Communications, and she's also been involved in the IGF since the very beginning. So although that's a very short and incomplete biography for her, I know she does have to leave at noon, so I'm going to pass over to Catherine Trautmann. Thank you very much.
>> CATHERINE TRAUTMANN: Thank you very much for your introduction and for this workshop. My first remark is to say that the originality, the specificity of IGF is also this type of debate on evaluation of the process, and this is very precious. Normally when you are a member of a government or a representative of a state, you know, you can decide what is good, what is wrong. But having a transparent and open debate is very important for the delegation of the European Parliament, we think that, you know, it's not perfect if we look on the ambitions and objectives we wanted to obtain but it is acceptable and profitable. Even in the -- you know, the factors of difficulty. So I agree with the most part of your introduction.
I think that if we look at first, with the same decisions about Internet Governance that were made in 2005 -- would they have been made today? Not sure, and I think probably not. There are some (off microphone) which led to the decisions taken in Tunis and are now different. For example, the whole ICANN issue is to some extent (off microphone) recently yet it might also be the result of a process which benefited from the existing of the IGF like it was, so it's a bit of an egg and chicken situation. And I think that your remark on the top-level domain names and the gTLD is a very important one. We need to continue and in a certain way the job is -- now on the table, and especially for the aspect of multi-lingualism, and we discussed in several workshops.
The WSIS process criteria due for revision. On multi-stakeholder we think that it worked well, probably beyond expectations. We didn't know, really, what were the dynamic and what could be the effect of the process itself. So it's a greeting question from the side of elected people to see that there is such an investment, such participation, but such a limited participation, because it's also a question of cost and a question of time, you know?
So there is a question about the openness and Democratic aspects of IGF, and (off microphone) process.
On the question of enhanced cooperation, we said several times to our governments in European Union that an on enhanced aspect the process was not so good. I think a civilian society could show the contribution they make and this is essential in the evolution and the decision of IGF and we are a bit worried about the fact that we will decide -- they will decide in this General Assembly in the United Nations about the continuity and after, you know, on the improvements. And as Markus said, devil can be in the detail. So we will pay a lot of attention for this equilibrium between the different stakeholders because this is the success.
This is the question we have now because the question that the states were not -- fact the states were not so invested can be a danger for the next decisions if they want to close more the process or be a too heavy influence. So the potential revision, we must hope that we can be more influential through IGF and encourage policy makers to import was discussed and agreed upon into their respective systems, it's also (off microphone) to understand and to prepare and to defuse all the good things we can listen and all the best practices.
We need and we decided to make a sort of summary of the good results and bad results for us, you know? And also to discuss them with the civil society, because it's very interesting to see their point of view and not only our point of view. So how will the role of private actors defer between the present and future WSIS (off microphone). I think private sector is to play an increasingly important role and also scientific experts, yet public authorities, especially elected ones, important to keep in the loop.
So this will be, for example, our role, to be more active and invested in the process. And they are the only ones to be legitimacy of representing the people. For us the IGF and WSIS process don't concern only consumers, as we say, end users. It's also a question of democracy and citizenship. And that's why we think also young people must be represented more in the process. It's not, you know, a populist view or a socialist, so to speak, but I think the usage of the Internet is the real question for innovation and development of it. So it's very important that the IGF, which is trans-border, trans -- across interests, professional interests and interest of civil society can use this approach.
So we have some discussions in the moment which are linked to these issues, as actor -- Parliament will be very exigent on the -- because we know very well some decisions can injure the way we construct Internet Governance. So for us Internet Governance must be protected. Why? Because we think that we need some modifications in the organisation of the global world, and we must not, you know, take IGF as a sort of flag for that. IGF has a specificity and we want to defend the specificity for the future.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you very much. That was very interesting, and I'll understand if you have to leave in a few minutes. Okay. And a message to the other panelists, if they could speak close to the microphone due to the surrounding ambient noise, but I think certainly I heard -- I heard very well. Hopefully most other people in the room did too.
So our next speaker will be Wolfgang Kleinwachter, who is the professor of Internet policy and regulation in the Department for Media and Information Sciences at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He was a co-founder and Chair of the Internet Governance Caucus and has been involved in Internet Governance since 1977.
It just occurs to me that before we move on to him, because Mrs. Trautmann is due to leave, maybe we should ask if there are any questions on her presentation, since she won't be around at the end to take questions. So do we have any questions or comments from the floor in response -- yes, we do. Can a microphone be passed to you?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, is this working? Okay. Hi, this is Almadean from the European Use Forum, and I would like to thank Ms. Trautmann for involving youth, to highlight and put it in a certain spotlight, and I would like to offer the contact to follow this up with the newfounded youth coalition on Internet Governance, where I have the pleasure to be on the steering committee and I know many people are also around here, so I would be glad to provide the contact and keep it up -- so we can keep it up and make this happen better in the future. Thank you very much.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Any other comments or questions? Yes? In the front here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: (off microphone) European media, Ukraine. My question is about your words about the relationships between democracy and stakeholder project, governance. For non-EU countries, what programmes you (off microphone) and -- maybe we'll have in the future, maybe on (off microphone) stakeholder understanding.
>> CATHERINE TRAUTMANN: I think we have, you know, questions about our methodology, for, you know, the elaboration of directives, and for example, for the roadmap, the strategy, 2020 strategy. The commission, European Commission, had consultations. The problem is after the consultations what happens. We need to find a way to discuss the results and to discuss the decision. This is something we can ameliorate, you know? The participation not only for the proposals but also for all the process.
On other questions, in the moment we have debate between those who want to tackle the questions about security and the question, for example, to cut the access to net for child protection, for example, to cut off, and those as me who say it's not the good solution. The reason can be understood for, you know, some Web sites, but after that you can use some pretext, you know, like IPR or like, you know, child protection to be intrusive.
So the problem in the debate we have -- in democracy and Democratic debate is how we balance the obligation to have a secure and stable Internet but to protect also in the same way with the same importance, and I think in a more important way the fundamental rights. So that's why between the (off microphone) and the council we have strong fights, strong fights, and another way is also to obtain that access for disabled people can be a priority and not just a second-rank question.
So these are the questions for democracy, and the transparency for the decisions of the council about these questions. It's not always the case.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Unless there are any other questions for Ms. Trautmann, we'll thank her again and move on. Thank you again. So back to Professor Kleinwachter. Sorry for the false start.
>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you very much, Jeremy, and also thank you very much for Madam Trautmann to be really a pusher for the stakeholder dialogue, because if we speak about the successes and failure, I believe the development of the stakeholder dialogue is one of the big success stories, but to have a dialogue among various stakeholders you need people who are interested in this dialogue, as people say, you need two for tango. And I think Madam Trautmann had a very good example, that the parliamentarians are now involved in this type of dialogue as never before, and if we talk about success and failure, then I would put the existence -- today's existence of a stakeholder dialogue as one of the big successes of Internet Governance in the last 15 years. I remember the early days of (off microphone) on information society and after the opening speeches civil society and private sector people were removed from the room, and then we were knocking on the doors and saying, please open, we want to sit in, we want to listen what you are talking.
And step by step, you know, next to access right to the room, speaking rights and other rights, you know, emerged which gave other stakeholders a certain (off microphone) in the process and discriminated in the definition of Internet Governance because I think this definition is really crucial and it says a lot of things in just three or four lines. And I remember the hot debates around this draft of the definition, I was a member of the United Nations working group on Internet Governance in the year 2003 and 2004 when this definition was drafted, and the key element of it that it settled an issue which was under dispute for more than ten years, and this was an issue about leadership, who takes the lead in Internet Governance.
Originally, you know, it was in the hands of the technical people but then it was, you know, just one million users, ten million, 100 million users, and it got bigger and bigger so that some governments realized, wait, have to take this over now, and called for the implementation of the principle of government leadership in Internet Governance. This was the year of 2002.
On the other side was the position and the approach of the United States government, which originated in the concept of Clinton administration, which said, okay, the Internet -- the success of the Internet is partly because it has developed in the shadow of governmental regulation, so we have created a space for innovation without (off microphone) and should continue. (off microphone) always argued if it isn't broken, don't fix it. Do not take harm. That means private sector leadership is good -- this has proved to work for 25 years and should continue. But it was the question, who's the leader? And this was a conflict.
And the discussion of this conflict in the United Nations working group of Internet Governance produced as part of the solution this (off microphone) stakeholder approach. What does this mean? There's no leader. It's a collaborative effort. Each party has a role to play, in a position that has no central authority, which is a decentralized system, where with many layers and many players and each party has a certain responsibility. That's why the formulation, Internet Governance is the collaboration of civil society, private sector and government in their respective roles. It's very, very crucial, because this allowed all sides, you know, to remain involved and to avoid a battle about who is the leader in a certain arena.
And I think this is also important on the success of Internet Governance, success in the sense of conceptual clarification, that Internet Governance means not one mechanism for all Internet Governance issues. You can have very different governance mechanisms for different issues. The problem here, and this is really the innovation in global and national policy making is that you don't build first a legal framework and then fill it. You look at an issue and then you ask what is needed to manage this issue, which can include also regulation, but probably can include also self-regulation or arrangements among the people who has to deal with issue.
So far an Internet Governance mechanism to fight cybercrime can look totally different than a -- to manage the domain names. I think this is a very, very important achievement. This is a very, very important success, that we move beyond this traditional thinking in the 21st century that you have to have a hierarchy with a decision maker on the top and authority which decides. So I think this was a fundamental -- a revolutionary step, you know, from a hierarchical influence thinking to network thinking. We have all parties still are needed, and -- but have to find their role and have to execute their role in a collaborative way.
In other ways we discussed what would happen to the -- nation-state? Will the nation-state go away? My answer is no. In the 21st century, the next 90 years we will have the nation-state, but the problem is that the (off microphone) of the nation-state, which will not disappear, will be executed in a different way than it was done in the 20th century. We are dealing with a borderless cyberspace. We are dealing with resources which we (off microphone) when we use them, resources which do not disappear when we use them. We can reuse. We are dealing with resources which are unlimited, are not linked to (off microphone).
All the resources of the 20th century, we are bound to (off microphone) and we are -- resources and we have wars around who controls the resources, on oil, coal and something like that. But the resources of the information economy, the Internet economy, like IP addresses, domain names, all this are in a certain degree unlimited resources. If you need an IP address you will get it. If you need a domain name, you will get it. Even if it's difficult to get more TTIDs, but technically it's a nonlimited resource.
And so far the mechanisms how to manage these resources has to be different from the mechanisms to manage resources in the 20th century. And here we moved over to the concept, what we say today, collaborative or shared (off microphone). It means we need a new approach how we can execute this interaction among the stakeholders. Here come the weaknesses. While we have the acknowledgment by all sides, including members of the Parliament in Europe and other Parliaments, it's the only answer to deal with the complex issues of Internet Governance, though we do not yet know how to do this. If you take ICANN as an example, I think ICANN is pioneering this -- we have well-established procedures how governments talk to the ICANN board. Governments give advice to the board under certain circumstances, if public policy issues are involved, and then the board has a chance to reject the advice of the government but has then to explain to the government why they rejected it, and then there will be consultations. The government advisory committee has now a discussion about the legal nature of an advice of the government advisory committee. Interesting question, but, you know, unclear. Let's move forward.
But what about the interaction with other stakeholders in ICANN? We have a number of advisory committees. What happens if the at large advisory committee gives an advice to the board? Here we have missing links. That means the procedures for the interaction among the stakeholders are still rather weak, and we should move forward to develop such procedures. What if the at large advisory committee have something to say to the governmental advisory committee? So if they give advice not only to the board but to the governmental advisory committee, what would be the interaction done among the user representatives in ICANN and the government in ICANN? I think all these are still open questions where we have to move forward to be more specific, and I think to discuss more the procedural elements, which guarantee the equality from the -- among the various stakeholders by taking into account the different roles the stakeholders play.
I think this is an important challenge for the future, and so I will stop here for the moment because, you know, we will have certainly a discussion, and if we move to WSIS 2015 I have a special position but I reserve this for the second round.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you very much. And we'll hold the questions until the end. We'll get all the panelists to answer their questions together.
Next we have Tracy Hackshaw. I should add that all of the biographies are available on the IGF Web site. If you want more information about any of the panelists go to the IGF Web site, click on workshops and then find the name of this workshop in the list.
Tracy Hackshaw is the chief solution architect and lead of the Solution Architect Office for the Government of Trinidad & Tobago's ICT Company, and he has a presentation to show us on the screen, so if we could switch that on and I think he'll advance the slides himself.
>> TRACY HACKSHAW: Thank you Jeremy. Thanks for inviting me on this panel. I'm glad to be here especially since it appears that not many developing countries sits on panels, so I'm happy to be here and present what I think is a slightly different view of what's been discussed thus far. Internet Governance for developing states, what I want to speak on, is not at a level which we've been talking about thus far. We haven't reached there yet. We aren't talking about high levels of theoretical things. They're very realistic views we're dealing with. I'll try to touch on those views quickly and hopefully that will open up different discussion on the floor.
All right. Just quickly for those who don't know, who are these developing states? On the screen I'm just going to show you, there were 38 of them who are union members and 14 non-UN members. 14 million, population (inaudible) 67 billion. Where are they? Generally speaking they are just off the continents in the middle of the ocean, you may not hear of them, but -- you may hear them only when disasters strike, pretty much. An upside down view, as you can see, we are literally in the ocean, and the world is at the bottom and we're at the top, right?
A little closer view of where we are. I'm from the one on circle, Tobago, there you can see it, just off the south -- coast of South America in the Caribbean sea. What I can say before we get to governance. The first is vulnerable. We're extremely vulnerable to many things, primarily climate change, natural disasters, things that happen in the economies of the world happen to us. People see when the U.S. sneezes we get the cold -- when they sneeze we get a cold, so we're (off microphone) to things that happen in the world and there's not much we can do about economic challenges and so on.
Generally speaking, we're extractional plantation-based economies. We take things off the ground and try to get markets in the developed world and sell. If they're available the economy struggles. And that way we have continued dependency on these countries based on the old Marxist-developed communicating-thinking-dependency theory but that hasn't changed recently.
With the market of protectionism, the economies of this region, of this part of the world are facing serious challenges. The Internet is not one of those challenges right now. There are many other challenges we are facing to deal with, issues of getting water to the homes, getting power, energy, just the cost of living is intense, which results in -- plus we have the challenges -- various socioeconomic problems, crime and deviance (off microphone) infrastructure, social equity, poverty and effective dependence on state welfare strategies.
So Internet Governance, or am I meeting this up? This leads to these. There's a (off microphone) most countries is very weak, a monopolistic -- (off microphone) was not existent in government, I'm using ICT. I still was not very much used at all. At best, people-based systems. Some countries are being forced to move forward but pretty much by utilization. A lot of state-sponsored incentives, so when the countries are trying to do something, the state can't help, so there's customs and duties on computers, we have to import everything, software is very costly. Mobile phones are very costly, broadband access is very costly, et cetera, which led to (off microphone). Imagine the Grand Canyon. That's what happened to those countries.
What's been happening since? Well, generally speaking, in most of the countries of the -- we've had a contact which has created opportunities. Mobile wire (off microphone) has increased dramatically. If you look carefully at the SIDS, you'll see they're speaking high in penetration, normally 100%, specially on the Internet. The reason for that is primarily the Internet access in those countries are very slow, midland to nothing. So Internet access is now being provided through mobile operators through phones, and you will start to see in the next few years the mobile Internet generating a great deal of activity in these countries.
We're beginning to see private-sector investments in the (off microphone), countries, so in wireless states, the Microsofts of the world are going to come in and create satellite industries around that and that's been good. We start to see private/public partnerships between these -- and governments as well, and that's created Internet type of activities. Big, big, big, big issue. The government (off microphone) use the Internet and IT. Once government is a model use in the SIDS you find Internet taking off. Government is the biggest utilizer of the economy. Our services are in high demand. It's very hard to get them acceptable to offices, so by putting up these services and using the Internet you find that Internet user use is becoming more on the forefront.
In addition development financing is available in these countries (off microphone) for Internet-centered efforts. We've begun to see the regional ISP. In Haiti created an ISP. That's been very important but with the ISP traffic in most of these countries are routed to the U.S. So what happens in these countries that accesses are expensive because of that, and by putting an ISP in country to remove that additional cost of getting access to the U.S.
As soon as Wolfgang mentioned with the ICANN issues we begin to (off microphone) ccTLDs. Dot TV is too (off microphone) and developing states, should be aware of that. The -- ccTLDs to market for themselves as well as make some money, literally, but there's -- there's renewed interest now in the new gTLDs and ccTLDs, so you're going to see some interest there.
The last two I think are probably more simple (off microphone) social media and cloud computing will benefit developing states for many reasons, not the least of which it will be cheaper to do things. Cloud computing is important for SIDS. We don't have the -- so the cloud computing will create a new (off microphone) for Internet usage in these countries and may actually affect things one way or the other. We should see that happening, and as well there's a high appropriation growths in these. (off microphone) in the SIDS who haven't seen anything but a computer, or (off microphone) in these countries, they're going to see -- they're going to see tremendous growth of the Internet in these countries.
Just quickly I'm going to go through (off microphone) Tobago. Our current state, we have a very high (off microphone) attrition. Fourth in the world, excess of (off microphone) 2.3 per hundred subscribers, .5%. This is low for you but high for us. 100 inhabitants, broadband, 43% of the subscribers, which is interesting that broadband is taking off for Internet in that region. Our teleconference is very close, 2.6%, and we are around 81st and dropping in the index. 2012, all have to be in the top 13 in the index in the various studies are out there.
We'd like to be number one in Latin America and the Caribbean region. We'd like to increase our contribution to 10%. We'd like to improve government connectivity to 100% and we'd like to start pretty much at the schools level to improve connectivity to 90% and through one laptop -- one-to-one laptop distribution programmes. We want to increase (off microphone) to 90%, I would like to increase (off microphone) to 150% or even beyond, and we don't have very many (off microphone) citizens. We'd like to increase that to just 50. Just 50, but in the (off microphone) of things that's a big number.
How do we plan to get there? Well, we have established a great strategy, as we call it, for multi-channel access, so TD connected school, on-line, mobile, it's self-service, service centres, hotline call centres, et cetera. We believe that as part of the Internet Governance issues and access and diversity et cetera, we want to tackle it at all levels, and allow the Internet to come through, not just on-line but through all facets that currently excess.
We're also establishing a single electronic window for trade, based on a single (off microphone) laptop projects in Tobago, Europe and so on. We want to start an IXB (off microphone) in Tobago. We want to improve our (off microphone) initiatives, we'd like to establish (off microphone) build a park, people will come. We are doing government cloud computing as well and we're to (off microphone) by next year also.
In terms of the WSIS process, Tobago has always been on the WSIS process. We intend to be there in 2015. Our national (inaudible) was developed in 2003 and being refreshed now to be released next year toward 2013. However, as with many or SIDS our limited bandwidth has affected -- we're interested in requesting additional support mechanisms be put in place to help SIDS follow the WSIS engagements and the process, and we would like to congratulate the foundation and the society, the commonwealth, ITU, et cetera, for providing fellowships and ambassador ships, which I am on, to come to the IGF and to make our views heard and to share (off microphone) concepts, share these among all (off microphone). I'm sorry, I hope -- it's interesting but I am on the panel. And we'd like to also encourage remote participation activity continue to evolve as we have it today.
Internet Governance. We recognize the -- we've recently rejoined the (off microphone) and we also like to point out that we like to have an Internet Governance strategy with the (off microphone) to ensure it's (off microphone) economic and social integration. Thank you very much --
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you. Once again we'll take questions at the end, and it's great that our first three presentations have been very diverse. We heard mostly about the views on the WSIS process from Catherine Trautmann, then from Professor Kleinwachter we heard more about the multi-stakeholder, one of the great successes of Internet governance, and then we heard from Tracy a very grassroots picture of how Internet Governance issues actually affect access in the small island developing states.
So I'm going to challenge the speakers to address some common questions as well once we finish hearing from them in their presentations, but we have two speakers left, and I am glad that we'll have at least an hour left for discussion after that. Our next speaker is Carlos Afonso, who is a member of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee and former Chair of ICANN's user committee. He's a coordinator for the NUPEF, which is a new society, nonprofit-based institute in Rio De Janeiro that was established last year. So thank you very much, Carlos.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Thank you, Jeremy. I have a list of topics here. I think that I would like to begin with a major success, which I think we achieved in the process from the (off microphone) years to the IGF, which is the multi-stakeholder nature of these processes, which is really not new. I remember that at 1992, the first U.N. conference on environment and development held in Rio De Janeiro in 1992. This was the first conference in which civil society organisations were brought to the governance to participate, not really in an assembly way in equal footing with the governments, because this is not a U.N. space not necessarily works that way, but had a tremendous opportunity to participate, to raise issues, and I think this was the beginning of a process of civil society participation and (off microphone) process which was followed later on by the U.N. conference in Vienna.
And I remember that for that the Internet had a very important role in 1992 in Rio, in which we managed using, of course, very simple technology for today but very complex at the time, to involve (off microphone) in other countries which were not able to go to Rio to participate in the discussions and that using terminals and Telnet and so on. This was a very important milestone in multi-stakeholder participation. So not really that (off microphone) invented the multi-stakeholder process, in that environmental, but it really was a very important experience from which we learned a lot, I think.
And then this multi-stakeholder process continues, and this is a very important success with all its imperfections. One interesting aspect is that it's been used (off microphone) regional and even nationally, and in several countries you have national IGF processes which as much as they like them to be multi-stakeholder. This is the measure of success so far, WSIS process as a whole.
What is the -- this in its aspect? Perhaps a measure of the success could be the quality and effectiveness of the regional coordination that we have achieved in the different regions. How it works, how did it benefit from the W3C's IGF process. Important question. For instance Latin America and Caribbean, how does it integrate the Internet Governance discussions, with the regional ones.
We have parallel process, sort of parallel process running in the region, like the SDIS example show for the small states, which is called a gulik organisation, in which government is (off microphone) to discuss strategies for ICT development, and the ELAC process, which is a multi-stakeholder process, in which also ICT for development is discussed with the establishments contrary to what we're doing in the IGF, of course, but establishment of certain milestones to be achieved by all countries in the region, by, say, the first one was 2007, then 2010, now we have a new one for 2015, and this is the ELAC process, and as much as possible the region tries to make it go together with the regional IGF process.
One note which I think is interesting for us to analyze is why some countries which were very active in the (off microphone) process simply disappeared from the IGF process. In your region I can quota particular country, Bolivia. Bolivia was very militant, very active, in the beginning of the process, the whole process, and is not here. Several other countries are not here and were very interested in the process. We should analyze that. Why is it so? Some countries share lots of difficulties to locate resources and people to come and participate, but others -- for others it's not the case, so we should look at that as well to evaluate this. Why they are not coming. Did they lose interest? Is the IGF not really relevant to them? Why?
Another important aspect is sharing of successful policies, processes and experience. I think the IGF itself has -- has a good space for sharing this. In several dialogues and discussions, not only in the workshops but in the main sessions as well, sharing of initiatives related to national regulations and legislation, which is a very difficult process in most countries, our country, Brazil, is going through a very difficult process of establishing legislation because some legislators think they know about the Internet and they know absolutely nothing about international and complex nature of the Internet, but they have the power to propose laws, bills of law, and they have the political power to put them through Congress, and this is a very dangerous process which I'm sure is not happening only in Brazil but in many other countries, and this is completely disconnected of all these international governance discussion, and this learning process we have here, that teaches governments, teaches civil society, academics et cetera, on the ways to go in regulating or not -- regulating or not regulating, as well, which is very important in the whole of the Internet.
However there are some successes as well in this, like Brazil is cooperating with Argentina in running the ccTLD system. We have shared with Argentina the entire software system that we use in Brazil, and the same -- and we did the same with some African that were trained in Brazil in the use of the ccTLD operation. And this is also a result of the participation in the WSIS process and the IGF process.
Other issues, border issues, questions that define political spaces and the international nature of the Internet. And here we have some difficult -- difficult cases to analyze, and are examples of process we share conducted but by some -- a few countries with very powerful leverage, political leverage, and not in agreement with most other countries, necessarily.
One typical example is the Budapest convention, in which you have a very, very well developed countries getting together to write a convention on cybercrime, which has a lot of implications for privacy, for freedom of expression, et cetera. Sometimes I feel that the pirates of the cybercrime convention have been written by the police and not by legislators or policy makers, no? In those very few countries expect, all 240 countries to sign and ratify the convention. This is not a multi-stakeholder process. This is not even a due process to do an international convention involving the whole of the international community. Only -- as a result so far only 10% of the countries are even less -- or less have ratified the convention. I'm sure this will be difficult if the approach is not radically changed for this, no?
The other thing I think is that it is important to take into account is that we cannot (off microphone) to develop the countries. The responsibility for not being able to effectively participate in this process, so the Internet Governance process must find ways, resources or otherwise, to bring them the opportunity of participation. It's like when a big Internet services provider or a big search engine provider says that no, no, actually the final user has most of the responsibility for his privacy or her privacy. No, it is not so. This is a complex system, it is very difficult for someone to go by the rules and keep his privacy and so on.
The same goes for very small countries which are in a very difficult situation and practically isolated from this process, and we simply expect them to come. This is a problem, I think. It's a failure for me for IGF -- I'm sorry, for the Internet Governance discussion in general.
One technical economic and political element that I would like to bring to the discussion is the issue which keeps coming and going of interconnection. Everybody says, no, we have to go to the border to universalize broadbands, make sure that everybody is well-connected but this is pyramids. Let's not forget the Internet in terms of data transfer is a pyramid in which huge organisations control the main backbones, and access to this is done on a very unequal basis in terms of pricing, and of course the small island states know about that, and all of the same -- the majority of countries in the world know about that.
There is -- this problem is practically solved for developing countries. There is no interest anymore to discuss interconnection, no? This is all solved by bilateral agreements, and that's okay. Most of the countries, I would say 90% of the countries, for those it's not okay. It's not okay, no?
So why don't we work -- I know it is very complicated. You know, there are many papers and Ph.D. dissertations and pricing of the Internet or interconnection costs, and we ought to create a system of sharing costs and so on, and this is even more complicated by the -- the interconnection -- the (off microphone) interconnection in which big organisations own the network in a country, a small country and own the big network up there, no? And do a completely different pricing structure for this small country regarding what they do, for the big ones that they serve.
So I know this is complex, but we must discuss it, we must bring it to the fore. This is a crucial wish that must be discussed if we want to effectively universalize quality broadbands to the edge. No?
Well, not to extend too much, I would like to only finish with a phrase that Internet is its edges and users were there. The Internets are users at the edge, so let's not forget that when we discuss Internet Governance. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thanks very much, Carlos, and it's good to see that some of the inside presenters are linking into each other. Wolfgang identified (off microphone) stakeholder as one of the great successes in Internet Governance and Carlos said that the cybercrime is maybe a failure because it didn't open that multi-stakeholder process. There may be something to debate later on. There may be people from the council who want to debate that. But we'll have opportunity for that after we hear from our last presenter, David Souter, managing director of ICT developing, a U.K. group that brings together specialist to work on ICTs in the environment, ICT policy and regulation and Internet Governance. He's an associate of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Thank you very much, David.
>> DAVID SOUTER: Thank you, Jeremy. Is this microphone on? Okay. So the request in this particular session was to talk about successes and failures of Internet Governance over the past 15 years and also look forward to 2015, and I think everybody on the platform has done that in a different way. I'll be no different from that so what I thought I'd do is give something of a hypothesis about the changing nature of Internet Governance and my starting point for that would be to take us back to 2005 to the second -- the second plenary session of WSIS.
Now, what we have there, we just -- at the end of that in Tunis, three days, we had a prolonged argument for the past year about one dimension of Internet Governance which threatened to reduce the whole debate not just about the Internet but about the information society to some relatively small intergovernmental disputes about the role of root service and the role of ICANN. So I think a starting point is to say whatever happened in the past five years we're in a better position now than then.
My hypothesis that I would like to put forward comes -- is really centered around that moment in time, because I think the critical moment here seemed to be when I was -- when I reviewed WSIS -- when I was writing about WSIS to be the point during the WSIS-1 phase when government suddenly became a -- as you look back over the history of governance from now backwards I think you can see that perhaps as a point of maturity, it's a point at which the Internet ceased to be considered by the majority of people in it as something that was exempt from mainstream governance debate and became something about which that position of exemption was no longer sustainable, and was certainly no longer sustained by many -- in the debate.
Why did that happen? Partly a matter of geopolitics about the United States, about ICANN, about root service, but also I think because of a wider kind of change in thinking that came from the WSIS process itself.
The Internet by that particular stage was no longer something that was really of importance only to those who used it. By that particular point in time it was important to the world as a whole. It was having changes -- it was bringing about changes in society and economy and culture and politics, which were exogenous to the Internet itself, and that made it a subject for a much greater interest by the mainstream governance community, by governments, by businesses, by agencies, which are not themselves within the Internet.
In particular I think it's interesting that the WSIS-1 process, or the main string of ICTs in development, and I think in a sense for any governments it wasn't terribly different to think about mainstreaming the Internet in governance from that. So arguably for WSIS-2 as a point of transition in which it ceased to be possible for the Internet community to tell the rest of the world to go away, because from that point the Internet had become central to society and economy, politics and culture worldwide and was understood to be central, to those things, both by the Internet community and by others.
I think that since that time both the Internet community and mainstream governments have been struggling to find ways to order the relationship between them. And I suggest those three dimensions where this is problematic. I'm thinking gee met dramatic dimensions. Breath, depth and time.
Breadth. The Internet is far more important than it used to be and importance lies in spheres not governed by the Internet itself, so while it's possible to govern the Internet itself by process which are internal, it's not possible to govern impact on trade or production or consumption or education or crime or the environment.
Two, Internet specific mechanisms. The relationship between the governance of the Internet itself and governance of those other domains is much more important than it used to be. From a depth point of view I think there's an inherent clash between the universalists ethos values of structured thinking, technology, networks governance on the one hand and the national characteristics which are much more important in an application and the governance of impact of the Internet.
So an interesting issue here might be cultural diversity. On the one hand the Internet proclaims a culture which is universal but also proclaims value in promoting cultural diversity, but of course culture cultural diversity is rooted in the difference in the way things are done in different cultures. So there's an inherent contradiction between the universalist ethos of the Internet and the relativist norms in mainstream government.
And the third issue is time. The Internet changes very rapidly and the issues surrounding it change very rapidly. So do the governance requirements for those issues. It seems to me inherently unlikely the mechanisms which worked when the Internet was a small thing, which was used by a small group of people in a small number of countries -- it seems inherently unlikely that those mechanisms would be equally appropriate for a global resource which is having dramatic impacts on all aspects of our societies.
Now, it may be that those old mechanisms are sufficiently robust but there's nothing to guarantee that and there is a need to constantly explore whether that continued relevance. So the short lessons I've learned from that are the Internet is in a continual state of flux, and its development is unpredictable, and so its government arrangements need to be responsive to the changes that are taking place within the Internet and its -- the Internet, its development and its impact. It's the prime example of adaptiveness which is a big question in domains.
Secondly, I think we need a more thoughtful approach for accommodation between the Internet world and government. The interface between the two seems to be more crucial than the identity of either, and in reality, a long-term conflict between an Internet model and mainstream governance is not sustainable. What is sustainable will be some form of accommodation between those that brings in dimensions from both and enables them to work together in some sort of way that is effective. I would say that both enhanced cooperation and the IGF attempts to reach an accommodation of that kind.
So let me say a few things about the IGF and then about WSIS-3, if that may happen. The IGF itself as an example of -- yes, I would say success, because what is -- what is valuable about the IGF over the past five years is that it's enabled hard-line argumentation, this WSIS-2 to transform into what is actually often quite bland discussion in 2010. That's -- if you like, it's created a space in which debate can be assertive but not usually hostile and can cover a wide range of issues like that.
It's interesting, Jeanette Hofman was discussing yesterday with me how the critical Internet resources question three years ago was full of suspicion and anxiety and this year it was boring. So there's a kind of sense in which it's enabled arguments to move to comfort, a sort of comfort area. That's actually a substantial change in ethos, and I think it goes beyond the IGF itself. I think you could argue that the Affirmation of Commitments is an outcome of that change in ethos, that you could not have had the Affirmation of Commitments in 2005 in the way that you could have in 2010.
The weaknesses that I would suggest are there in the IGF as it stands to do what I think the changing nature of governance, who should participate and the importance of the Internet. So I think it has been extremely successful in creating something that is genuinely multi-stakeholder, but it is multi-stakeholder of an insider community. So the participants in the Internet Governance Forum, you people here, the people outside, are people whose primary interest is the Internet. Internet is of importance to society, culture, politics, the rest of the world. We need to be listening to the rest of the world in order to understand where the -- what the Internet is now doing in -- to society, economy, politics and culture.
So I would suggest three things there. The first, that we need to look again at the distinction between governance of the Internet itself and governance of the impact of the Internet, between the things that can be done by Internet-specific bodies and the things that can't. And to recognize the policies -- the process differences between those two different aspects of narrow and broad Internet Governance.
Second, I think the Internet Governance bodies need to look at the consequences of the decisions that they take, so in many other fields of public policy, standard setting takes seriously issues such as environmental impact assess him. It isn't rooted simply in whether the standard helps the functionality of, let's say, the power industry. It also looks at the environmental impact assessment or other aspects of impact assessment. I think that the Internet standards and coordination bodies could look again at whether they -- at how they might pay more attention to the external impacts of different standards or means of coordination or network deployment strategies on outcomes such as accessibility, affordability, carbon emissions and waste generation.
And the third is that I think the IGF needs to bring into its discussion space people who are not primarily interested in the Internet. What I find most interesting is the discussion between those who know about the Internet but not about its impact and those who know about its impact but not about the Internet. And I think if we are to move forward from where we are now we have to have a kind of second phase of multi-stakeholderism that brings in the missing stakeholders, developing country governments, many of them. People in government whose role is implementation of things that may be -- may make use of the Internet, the demand side of industry such as financial services sector and mainstream such as trade unions, women's organisations -- all of whom are absent from this forum.
Can I say a few words on 2015? I'm interested about the question. WSIS ICANN documents don't say there will be a 2015. They say there will -- it might be a summit or might not be a summit. That decision has not yet been taken. And I'm interested by the question of what people here would really want about this.
So I'd raise two points about that. The first is I think there is a danger of being carried away with what historians like me would call here the myth of merry WSIS. It's actually that we reflect back and think, didn't we have a lovely time when we went to Tunis? Well, did we? You know, WSIS-2 was overwhelmingly concerned with a specific dimension of Internet Governance, not with the information society as a whole. How well do we really think it handled that issue? You know, do we want to see a repetition of the second WSIS plenary or do we think there is something that might be preferable to that. It seems to me that's actually something this community should be thinking about, rather necessarily assuming that a third summit is the right way to do this.
And the second point I'd make about it is that the World Summit on the Information Society is not supposed to be primarily about Internet Governance. It's supposed to be about the information society. Well, 2015 also sees the final assessment of the millennium development goals. We spent a lot of time argue that the information society is essential to the achievement of millennium development goals. Might it make more sense to have a review of the world summit, into outcome into the review of the NGDs and that would emphasize it's about human development, not technological development.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you, that was provocative and interesting and I'm sure there will be many questions from the audience. But just before we turn to the audience I'm going to ask the panelists if they have any questions or comments for each other? Wolfgang, I know you said specifically that you would have some comments on WSIS 2015 issues, so why don't you address that now.
>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Yeah, it's -- I discussed this with David already yesterday night and we have here probably -- you know, we need more communication to have a position either from the civil society, Internet Governance caucus. And I just want to from an IT perspective to remember that the -- having a process between 2002 and 2005 had an incredible mobilizing effect for the civil society. In the beginning civil society, in 2002, was unorganized and there were a lot of arguments by governments saying, okay, what are these people? Who would they represent and things like that? And in the learning process I think civil society emerged as a serious player, which then got a place on the table and, you know, it's now an equal partner in the proceedings here of the ITF.
But if I look into the WSIS follow-up, then I see that a lot of the activities which were driven by civil society between 2002 and 2005 have gone now, and if you go through the participants of the various panels and the WSIS forum in May in Geneva, then you see that the representation of civil societies was low, and one explanation at least for me is that it needs a certain goal, a certain mission. Here we have to do something.
If there would be a summit in 2015, this could be mobilized again, civil society organisations need to get better organized, clearer in their perspectives, and it would help them, obviously, also to justify, to ask for resources so that they can be more active. But this is just one observation, and it needs further discussion, and one risk -- what I see the risks is that it would be -- David -- probably just repetition of what was decided in Tunis and Geneva and now in 2015 that means a bureaucratic summary and not new opening of new conception of thinking for the next ten years, forward-looking summit, it would probably be a backward-looking summit, which would be a waste of resources and energy, and there's also a risk that the IGF, you know, which is now more or less an independent child and is moving forward could be, you know, put into the shadow of the world summit, and this could have also a negative inflow into the IGF. Probably it's better to strengthen first the IGF but to have another big world summit, to have a ministerial meeting, which is based on the principal Peter Wolfman, multi-stakeholder in 2015.
There would be no need to have heads of state in 2015, but this is just first ideas. I think the plenary conference in Guadalajara discuss this and then it will be the subject of discussions in the United Nations General Assembly and in this forum, which will take place either in Geneva or New York or Paris in may 2011. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thanks very much. We have a contribution from Tracy.
>> TRACY HACKSHAW: Yes, thank you. I just wanted to ask a question to the -- well, I guess to the panelists and to the audience. Are the regional IGFs working? I'm interested to hear what the views are. We've heard Carlos talk about it. I'm interested to hear what the views are of the people in the audience, are IGFs working, are they coming to the fore, are they working in the region, are they working here as well? Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Who would like to respond to that, and perhaps -- yes, we have -- did you have your hand up? Yes.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can I respond and ask a question as well? Okay. Thank you very much. I'm Rodney Taylor for Barbados, and I also participate in Regional Caribbean Internet Governance Forum, and I would probably say that the regional forum works as well as the international forum, basically.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Does that mean yes or no? (chuckle)
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, I guess depending on the outcome of this particular workshop we would get the answer to that.
Based on my question, also, actually my question might help to answer that as well, which is -- the question is -- since your presentation was specifically on SIDS, well, what I was really saying is that the regional process is faced with the same challenges that the international process faces, which is really including those who really should be an active part of this, really being all inclusive and including those persons who are individuals or organisations which really should be a part of the process, are sitting as a table, who aren't.
So my question really, have SIDS contributed to the outcomes, have they benefited and are they any wiser? Does the forum lend itself to their full and meaningful participation? Draw a parallel, on the U.N. system, that small and -- what people may even consider insignificant countries have a vote. And yes, they may not have the influence that the larger countries have, but the fact is they do have a say, they do sit at the table, and they have an equal seat, an equal place. They also have representatives jointly in some cases in places like New York and Geneva, they do have representatives there, so they have a mechanism by which they can -- they can address certain global issues, and the question is, if they haven't, in fact, been an active part of the process, what can we do to address this?
My own view is that organisations such as ICANN and IETF and IANA are doing a great job managing the technical governance issues of the Internet and what is needed to be able to engage other international -- what is needed is to be able to engage other international organisations which were established to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, et cetera, the same issues that we talk about here, and let them -- and let the established global processes complement and not replace what is already happening with respect to specific Internet issues. And maybe we can even use the Internet to change global government itself or global governance models so they are more agile and more representative of the multi-stakeholders we have here.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Well, you've just answered the question whether they have any -- the discussions at the SIDS have in this IGF is that the answer is no. There have been some situations that have occurred that I've actually been involved in where there's been some marginalization, whether it's been delivered at all or actual is the issue. So we're here and trying to make some things heard but the question is always whether it's going to make a difference.
You asked a question, how can we make a difference? I do agree with you that the system is flawed, if that's what you're suggesting, but compared with the U.N. system, for example, I don't want -- to go to the -- which is government only -- state representation. I think there should be remote -- as I said remote participation is happening now and I'm hopeful that will improve over time.
I am hopeful that the developing states can mobilize within country and within regional IGFs together. I put together a call of the Latin America and Caribbean, where there's a regional IGF and there's a Caribbean IGF. The reasons are very complex and we know the reasons. I would like that regional IGF to become a truly Latin American and Caribbean IGF, and that IGF can be represented here.
Unfortunately I don't see that -- I would like to see that. I don't see that here, and (off microphone) can address that. The Caribbean views are not addressed within Latin American and Caribbean. It's very much Latin American issues being addressed. So there's a flow and a system in the developing states and the Caribbean system can't get their voices heard unless they actually attend in the audience and see things, and hopefully that can be addressed very quickly. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: What I'm hearing is that the same issues with inclusion that the global IGF has and that David alluded to with the absence of some important voices from the forum on issues that are affected by the Internet but aren't -- who weren't involved in the Internet are also being replicated at the regional level where we've got regional IGFs that aren't inclusive enough within the region. And Carlos, do you want to talk on that?
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Yes. I agree with Tracy on the difficulties in our regional organisation, and maybe good examples of what happens in other regions as well. What are those difficulties? They aren't basically originated from -- the way in which this is implemented, the organisations which implement it aren't small. They don't have lots of resources, and they are the same that have been implementing the (off microphone) three years ago. And it's very hard to bring people to a meeting when you have very scant resources.
And the other thing is that we try as much as possible to bring the representatives of all the diverse, say, subregions of Latin America and the Caribbean, but also with this limitation, no? We are looking in our specific -- lucky in our specific case there are two powerful organisations which try to sustain at least part of the costs to bring people together, which are of course CGI.br and LACNIC, which help a lot. (off microphone) also contribute somehow, but these aren't, say, the backbone of our funding for these projects, for this initiative.
And the other thing is that the region is not well connected, as you know, no? And if we -- if we had the ability to do what we are doing right now here, I sit in the main room at the main session and I can switch from room to room and watch the workshop -- I went from the main room and very well, this works perfectly. If they had this kind of quality of connectivity, we could bring many more people virtually to the meeting. At least have them participate and like they are participating now in international IGF.
Unfortunately we cannot do that for most countries. In some we can, most not. So all this is is very imperfect, but we try our best to make sure most of them can participate. IGF for Latin America and the Caribbean, we try to bring people from Central America, from the Caribbean, Mexico, which some consider as North America, no, no, it's Latin America. I remember a famous division of the word when (inaudible) decided to elect the directors the first time, and Mexico was put together with North America, like a very small child cutting the world with a scissors? But it's difficult. The next one I think will be Mexico, right? Yeah.
And of course (off microphone) can speak more about this, but it will continue, and I think it's one of the good things of the IGF, this regional process, even if the IGF for some reason -- some superior reason of the General Assembly or CSTD or the forces (inaudible) described to us stops, no longer IGF. I think it is regional processes will go on, and this is one of the good things that we inherited from this whole process. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: So let's take another -- yes.
>> Thank you very much, my name is Wolfgang Benedict from University of Krats in Austria, and I was involved with Dynamic Internet Principles, in drafting a chart where we put together main rights and principles for discussion at this forum here.
Looking at the challenges for the future of Internet governments, still 2015 and also the shortcomings in the past, I was wondering why nobody took up the question of decision-making? I mean, we are sitting here, we are discussing, we are kind of giving free advice to governments, international organisations, ourselves, but decisions are still made elsewhere. And how to deal with that question in the future, I would be quite interested in having views from the panel.
Certainly there is also the need to talk about what are the major threats, which might be anticipated for the future. Such threats can come from governments because of their sovereignty-oriented approach. They can come from business because of their money-oriented approach. They also can come from ourselves, let's say the at large community, because of negligence, not being actively involved enough. And so the challenge here is also how to get people more participating and how to make all this more transparent and inclusive.
And here I think the original (off microphone) have a lot to contribute, and I also agree that this will add to the resilience of the whole network, but there is still a lot to be expected here, and this would strengthen also the democratic legitimacy of what is going on and give us some oversight of the process, which I think is very necessary to count the balance of the forces, which are taking the Internet, as I said, for their own particular purposes.
And the IGF in my view has the function of renewing a common vision of Internet Governance, of Internet information society, and as you said, there is a need of adaptability because of changes, which can come forward anytime. So the possibility to meet regularly is a good possibility also to react to such changes.
For the future structure, I think it's a good development that we'll have this working hope of CSTD, which is like a second (off microphone), which would allow us to take stock and develop a vision for the next five years, at least. I also think that this 2015 is a positive thing, because like Rio plus ten we need Tunis plus ten. We need from time to time a way to reflect on the whole process, but how this is being done, that would be the big challenge. Will this be an international government conference with marginal participation or will this be a form of the (off microphone), which is -- I think the big challenge to come finally in this charter we tried to work on basic rights and principles based on values, core values, for the process of the information society for Internet, and I think this is also a big challenge which should unite all of us in looking together, what is the consensus in that field, and can we agree efforts are made on different sides, (off microphone) ten principles, giving orientation, a framework, guidelines, and I think that is a process which should come out of the IGF and in which as many as possible should participate. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you. That was very detailed question full of lots of things to stimulate us. So who would like to take that on? I know the issue of decision-making and whether the IGF should be making recommendations, for some that's a success and for others that's a failure. So -- yes?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: (inaudible)
>> Sure. Come on.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: All things remaining equal as they are today, we'll have the same difficulties in civil society participation, unfortunately, no? All the process that is being discussed now is of structures, like emulating the double GAG, et cetera, but not really on universalizing the participation. This is not being discussed as it should. So all things remaining equal we'll have the same kind of limited participation we have today.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: So what do you suggest?
>> CARLOS AFONSO: We need to hear more about the civil society leaders. We need to find out ways for them to participate either remotely or face-to-face. There is a big job to do here, no? A big job that I don't -- I recall again the beginning of my speech today. We did that in 1992. In 1992. Can't we do it now? With the limited technology we had at that time. We could do it now again. No?
So it's just a reminder that we have to do something, and of course civil society is responsible for doing something.
>> Can I -- another comment is I think Wolfgang was absolutely right by putting the finger of the risks what can happen as a result of inactivity or not showing up, not raising the questions, letting in the hands of somebody else. And I think this is really a challenge for the civil society, and I mentioned already that some of the dynamics which has driven the process between 2002 and 2005, the emergence of a rather powerful civil society structure is gone and that we have to say how to stimulate this.
Probably, you know, we have also to listen to the -- let's say, new generation of citizens, civil society members, because the majority are here -- here, some of the drivers of this process are now in their 50s and 60s, and we should listen more to the young people in their 20s and 30s what are their issues, and what are the Internet Governance problems of this new generation because they have to settle it.
When we talk about Internet Governance today we are talking about Internet as a whole, but we see, I would not say a fragmentation of the Internet but we see based on the Internet we see a lot of new emerging networks where we can also ask the question, is there a need for these new emerging networks, for a government structure? Did I mention that Facebook is now using -- Facebook.com is using top-level domain, dot-com domain, and a whole nation of 5 million people on top-level domain is managed just by Bob (off microphone). And if he gets up in the morning and says I change the privacy rules in my 500 million network, then he does it.
That means the question is, is there a challenge for Internet Governance within a social network? And should not have the 500 million users of Facebook a right to participate in policy development for Facebook? Probably it's much more easier and much more challenging and you can create a mobilization, probably Facebook has a large counsel and we elect 15 representatives from the world, Facebook users, which would give advice to Mr. Tokerbare to develop privacy issues. This is a new governance challenge, which is not in contrary with what we discuss here but would be the next step, going beyond to discuss Internet as a whole, you know, with 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion, it's so complex. It's new units but there are still -- I wouldn't say -- boxes but work has to be done. Makes sense or not, it's a private company.
Probably we have -- have to invest more in formulating agenda for the next five or ten years, what are the new challenges. Just now they're discussing in the main room cloud computing, who governs the cloud? Other good questions, what are my rights within the cloud? Shouldn't we have some kind of participation in managing cloud? Seems like that -- so all these are more specific than the governance issues which, you know, emerge from the debate we had the last five, ten years.
We have to understand our history, but it makes no sense to repeat this history again and again and again and not to move forward. So we have to take history as a source of inspiration, but we are still on the way into unknown territory and we have to explore this territory, to come with innovative solutions. And I think this would be my challenge for, let's say the next five years of the IGF to make the IGF a place where such new ideas are discussed.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: It's interesting that one thing we could do if there were a WSIS 2015 would be to make clear that the WSIS process criteria requiring governance of the Internet to be transparent and multi-stakeholder, et cetera, don't just apply to governments but they also apply to virtual nations like Facebook. There are models for the governance of Web communities in a consultative and open way. For example, Wikipedia, the Wikipedia community is governed in that way, in a very Democratic and open and consultative fashion and there are other on-line communities like that. So it's not out of the question that Facebook, which benefits from all of our private information, shouldn't take on some responsibilities to govern itself in a way that complies with the WSIS process criteria or something like them. So there's just a thought.
Before we -- I do have another two people from the floor, but before that, David, do you want to contribute anything?
>> DAVID SOUTER: Yeah. History has just -- it's -- Alan Bennet, British writer, history is one damn thing after another. To my perception you don't actually learn things from it, you observe things and you maybe understand more, but I think you can go back to -- you can go back to the earlier summits and try and takes things from that, which I'll come to in a second.
It seems to me the question of the information society that is really important is whether it is an aspirational goal or whether it's an observable phenomenon. And the WSIS Geneva outcome documents essentially talked of it as an aspirational goal, rather than analyzing what was actually happening within society that might represent something that you could see, in the sense that earlier work by other U.N. agencies had actually done in the late '90s and earlier this decade.
With WSIS-3, it seems to me that the default organizational position is going to be that of WSIS-1 and 2. So I think you make an assumption that it will be organized and structured in the same way, if there is a summit in that sense.
The questions about what are the (off microphone). Any anxiety about it is that WSIS-1 was essentially reached technical conclusions, that was, most of the people who attended it came from technical backgrounds rather than human development backgrounds, and its content is techno-driven rather than human development driven.
And the other issue is with the review summits there's always a tendency to look back. In this particular context so much has changed already now between now and 2005. For example, what social networking existed in 2005? Where was the mobile broadband in 2005? So much has changed already. Take that five years forward, so the review summit that looks back won't be very constructive. What's needed, if you're going to have a discussion about this, it has to be one that looks forward.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: We have two contributions from (off microphone) and then another one.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. My name is Alfaro Galvani from Brazil, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. First I'd like to congratulate the very high-level debate. Congratulations to all the experts and the contributions from the floor that were very, very useful and rich.
Well, I have one comment. I will be brief. I know we have not so much time, but I will do one comment and two questions. My comment is that there is a false and an artificial dilemma between multilateralism and multi-stakeholderism. If you consider -- if you look at the Tunis agenda, the principles are very clear they're IDS, that they're complementary and they reinforce each other, but this dilemma exists in our impression. We have the impression they exist. I can realise (off microphone) the dilemma when I heard somebody saying in 2015 maybe we shouldn't have any -- a traditional diplomatic conference. We should try to make (off microphone) process. What have you. This is kind of attacking unilateralism. We know some people use this to attack moot stakeholders, saying, come on, they are just discussing. The whole thing is we have to bring things to the United Nations and decide among ourselves.
So people use these words in other -- to achieve another -- an ultimate goal, and what's the name of the -- that's the name of the game. That was mentioned here many times, is democracy. Democracy among countries. We have to fight, to struggle for genuine multi-lateralism. That's the topic. We have to -- we have to struggle to challenge -- 2015, all the countries must be involved in their respective votes. The same thing, democracy is an issue for the moot stakeholder sector. We have to struggle to achieve democracy in the stakeholder (off microphone). I'll give you two examples. From (off microphone) itself, we saw increasing improvement of methodologies, new information, coalitions using remote participation. They're very useful recordings that are available in Web site. This is amazing. This is a form of including diversity.
And another experience regarding democracy in the multi-stakeholder experience, what you remotely (off microphone) in Brazil our experience of debating Bill of Rights for Internet. We're using electronic platforms and including newcomers. We didn't -- the debate wasn't restricted only to government or specialists or Internet community. We tried to involve people that are not experts in Internet but as they use Internet, as they are affected by Internet, they had to give their opinion.
So it's a kind of democratizing debate. I'm just mentioning this experience because it was an effort we are trying to do in that sense. Okay.
Just to finish this comment, if we don't have democracy in the multi-lateral level and at the multi-stakeholder level, we will repeat the failure of experience we had in the global governance of economics. In the last 20 years we had a very centralized, not democratic governance on economic roots, and now we are facing a very deep economic crisis and all countries are struggling to achieve multi-lateralism in the economic conference. The same thing, we have to avoid that ever and the same in Internet Governance issues. Okay. My two very brief questions.
First, I would like to listen to you about the risks of ICANN expense, do some acts that are beyond their -- its mandate. For example, ICANN is responsible for names and numbers. Is there a risk that ICANN can avoid keeping the core (off microphone)? ICANN starts talking about security, talking about morality. What are the risks in institutions? I mention ICANN, but are there institutions going beyond their mandate? I'd like to hear that from you.
And the second comment I would like to hear, it was very (off microphone) the CSTD working group on forming IGF, and (off microphone) it would be like a second Wiki. To me this is very disappointing, because we are in a crazy thought because we are saying that so much has changed in this -- in this five years, Internet -- IGF has improved a lot of mechanisms for democracy, and when we want to create a structure to have a minimal decision, we will repeat on a structure that we did five years ago. Why don't we use for the CSTD working group, why don't we use a firm to -- as a firm to collect input and send it to the CSTD. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you very much. We've only got 12 minutes left so I'll take three more questions. We have one here at the front, one in the back and we have the gentleman here and then if we have time -- I'm sorry, the lady in front of him. We'll come to you afterwards.
>> Microphone is not working.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: -- from Ukraine. I am representative from the civil society, unfortunately. Next generation of civil society, and I have to say thanks to (off microphone) for helping me on this -- stakeholder approach during European summer school and Internet Governance, and I have one question to all of you. As a representative of civil society, I visited (off microphone) for a lot of meetings, or for civil society organisations, and what I saw, that all these organisations built their work in the same way as the government structures, as really voting system, and when you say about Facebook community, why you mentioned about the necessity of election of representatives. Why the stakeholder approach is the nearest way to direct democracy, why Facebook cannot vote by everybody in this community.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Okay. The gentleman with the red tie, and sorry about -- we will come back to your question as well. I don't mean to omit you. Please keep the question --
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. I'm (off microphone), French, special envoy for the Information Society. Very quickly, regarding the WSIS 2015 format, I think it's very important that we actually look forward but that we also do not repeat the format of the heads of state summit that we had in 2003 and 2005. If we want to be true to the multi-stakeholder evolution, we need to have a multi-stakeholder format and the best way to do this is probably to have the IGF and the WSIS forum, whatever form it takes, developed during the next five years and converge on a single meeting in 2015 to address both the projects and the policy issues.
Second point very quickly, (off microphone) used an interesting formulation among the many that he uses, which is the fact that we're not working within preexisting structures, but rather organizing around topics, issue-based networks is the core element of the Internet Governance multi-stakeholder approach, and I do see in the last two years or three years the emergence in the IGF of more structure, groupings of people who are concerned about the same forward. That's the way forward, on a regime by regime basis.
Last -- one point afterwards. The notion about democracy, we have to be careful. When we talk about democracy, on the one hand we seem to equate it to representative democracy, which is one modality, and the second thing when we talk about democracy among countries, we need to keep in mind a fundamental question: Should or could governments maintain the monopoly of representation of their citizens at the international level? This is a fundamental question. You can answer yes, you can answer no, but this is a question that is in front of us. There are pros and cons, but it is more and more difficult to maintain this monopoly of representation.
And finally on the question of CSTD, the question was raised on whether we should use an open consultation seating into the CSTD itself. The reason why we chose the format of a working group that is multi-stakeholder because the CSTD may welcome comments by other stakeholders but it is not multi-stakeholder per se. It is still (off microphone) so the Wiki format is an opportunity to have a real discussion by the stakeholders on the improvements. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: We have to limit it to two more questions. We have one gentleman here and one gentlemen here. So I will pass the mic to those two and then we'll come back to the panel for closing statements.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much. My name is Charles Gay from Liberia, an ambassador of the Internet Society. I just wanted to know if some of the mechanisms put in place to measure the successes, the success in, and how do you call it, the failures of our meeting? Because here we have discussed a lot of topics coming from security, from freedom of speech, freedom of collection, a lot of topics have been covered, whether we have put some yardstick that we can measure the progress that we have made thus far in some of these topic. Just what I wanted to know, how do we know that we have made some progress? Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you. We have one more intervention in person and we also have a remote, moderation which is on the screen. I won't read it out just to save time but perhaps you can read it yourself.
>> I'm Sean from (off microphone). I'm from Civil Society. I just wanted -- I have a question. As a way forward I propose that the development of more (off microphone) process, this monitoring process is important to communicate to new players, new -- because I myself am a new player in IGF, and when I'm here I want to know, no? So if there is no such process, I will -- you have to consider that development of some kind of metrics, you know, some kind of visualization so we can narrow our gaps, red color, green colors. Targets. This is what has been brought up, recommendations, and this is what has been agreed upon and these are targets. So every year you can know, okay, what has been achieved, what hasn't been achieved.
And so perhaps there's a need to be some kind of mechanism, say, okay, if it can be resolved, these other issues, it's red color, so can this be brought up (off microphone), things like that. And there will be some -- like me, I would say, okay, this is my role. We may not meet the government intervention, but at my level what can I do and what (off microphone)? Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Okay. Thank you, and I apologize to everyone who hasn't been able to get their thoughts in. I'm going to give the panelists now one minute in which they can either respond to the questions and comments from the floor or they can just wrap up in an overall fashion. Randomly, let's start from the left-hand side of the table.
>> Well, I think I already said as much, but just to say that I found this, like (off microphone) said, a wonderful exchange, excellent. I would like to have the transcripts to it more carefully, especially with the noise, you know? And I think that many very good points were made and maybe we could try to do a good summary of it would be very useful. That's it.
>> All this is archived forever in the Web, so that means we can go back and if we remember in 10 or 15 years from now. A very brief question. A risk of (off microphone). I would say it's low. There are some forces within ICANN which will stop ICANN if they go beyond their very limited technical mandate. You cannot avoid to discuss the MOPO issue or the security issue if it is critical resources which has some implications, but this is very specifically linked to the specific issue under consideration, like WSIS or -- which of our -- ccTLDs, and I do not see it can be an organisation for more (off microphone). So the risk is very low.
And as a working group in Internet Governance, I think we have to look really forward and to be being (off microphone). On the other hand we have to look what has worked in the past probably is also useful. What a practical experience, be creative and try to do both.
Question between direct and representative participation and representative democracy from Oxana. This is really very philosophical questions and I think we live in a transformation phase. Representative democracy has a lot of benefits, but we see it has reached -- in some area it limits, and I think for the next 50 years at least we will have probably a combination of elements, of representation and direct participation. To substitute a representative democracy by a participative democracy now would be a very counterproductive effect, and so far, you know, we have to move forward by bringing new elements to existing institutions and changing it more slowly, so it's an evolution, not a revolution, but it goes towards a more participatory democracy. I think this is new though we are just in the beginning of this. It's a long menu and we have just the soup. So the main course is still to come.
Monopoly of representation of governments for their people in international space. Yes, I think this is a challenge. A lot of people do not feel represented anymore by their government when they are traveling around the globe or, you know, working in international organisations. So -- that's a new challenge. Let's invent something, you know, which would make mighty stakeholderism a goal in the 21st century and measuring success, this is a weakness. We have no instrument and this is sad and bad. All players should have a book where they really have criteria and can measure the success.
ICANN was very clever by saying, okay, the success of IGF and ICANN we listen to the criticism in IGF and we introduce new ideas for ccTLD. To listen to the success of the criticism and change into AoC. Concrete results can be -- if all organises, if the idea would be, say, listen, to the critical remarks here and we change our constitution, we (off microphone) civil society, this would be a success story for the ITU. Let's wait and see what they will do in Guadalajara. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Thank you. Tracy, quickly?
>> TRACY HACKSHAW: Just like they said, I support (off microphone) on the merging of the IGF and (off microphone) in 2015 and support Carlos's original IGF sustaining beyond the process. Last point would be that that is a decision, think about it carefully. A decision doesn't have to be a U.N.-type decision where you sit down and you discuss documents and make changes and scratch out things and so on. A decision could be different. And if we look at that as a decision-making of the IGF, then maybe we could take it a little differently. Thank you.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Very good point. And finally, (off microphone)
>> I will say three things. Go back to regional IGF. I think those I've experienced, they're successful where they explore what is happening within the region. If they see themselves as feeders to the global IGF they're not successful. Metrics, second, they're very difficult. Firstly because those we have in WSIS-1 are extremely vague, connect every village with ICTs, what does that mean; second, because those who report them tend to report inputs rather than impacts or outputs; and thirdly, because any talk, as you said, is out of date in two years' time so you end up measuring things that are easy to reach because technology and markets have moved on.
And thirdly, the most important thing, I think, in Internet Governance is that Internet Governance entities and specialists should spend more time listening to those who experience the impact of the Internet.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Well, I don't know about you but I've benefited greatly from the insights of our panelists and contributors from the audience. I'm not going to keep you any longer from your lunch, however. I'd just like us to close with a round of applause.