Centre for Internet and Society

April 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T03:38:00Z

The newsletter for the month of April can be accessed below:

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the fourth issue of the newsletter (April) for the year 2014. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

We have published a compilation of the various central government schemes in a blog post as part of our National Resource Kit project.

The 27^th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO-SCCR) was held in Geneva from April 28 to May 2, 2014. Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the event. CIS made its statements on Technological Measures of Protection on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, Orphan Works, Retracted and Withdrawn Works, and Works out of Commerce on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, and on the WIPO Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations.
CIS signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Mysore University for converting to Unicode and re-releasing their encyclopaedia under Creative Commons License. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU.
A two-day global stakeholder meeting on future of internet governance (NETmundial) was organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee in partnership with /1Net at Sao Paulo in Brazil on April 23 and 24, 2014. Achal Prabhala participated in the event. As part of its research to enable productive discussions of the critical internet governance issues at the meeting and elsewhere CIS published a total of 16 blog entries.
We conducted an empirical study of five separate and diverse banks (State Bank of India, Central Bank of India, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, and Standard Chartered Bank) to gain a practical perspective on the existing banking practices and policies in India, and published a Banking Policy Guide.
As part of the Making Change project Denisse Albornoz interviewed Tuhin Paul, an artist and storyteller behind Menstrupedia, an India-based social venture creating comics to shatter the myths and misunderstandings surrounding menstruation around the world. Denisse provides an analysis of ‘menstrual activism’ — a movement that despite its trajectory in feminism remains unnoticed in most accounts of traditional and digital activism.
Six research studies were commissioned by HEIRA-CSCS (over November 2013-March 2014) as part of the collaborative exercise with CIS to map the Digital Humanities within a broad rubric of exploring changes at the intersection of youth, technology and higher education in India. P.P.Sneha in her blog post presents a broad overview of some of the key learnings from these projects.

Jobs
CIS is seeking applications for the post of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge). There are two vacancies for this post one in Delhi and one in Bangalore. To apply, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org), Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three writing samples of which at least one demonstrates your analytic skills, and one that shows your ability to simplify complex policy issues.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. We compiled the first draft of the kit (29 states and 6 union territories). The chapters along with the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA

Monthly Update

NVDA e-Speak Text-to-Speech Project Update (by Suman Dogra, April 28, 2014).

National Resource Kit

Blog Entry

Central Government Schemes (by Anandhi Viswanathan and CLPR, April 27, 2014).

Other

Blog Entry

Polling Pains (by Amba Salelkar, April 30, 2014).

Media Coverage

Are Elections Fair to People With Special Needs? (by Papiya Bhattacharya, New Indian Express, April 8, 2014).
Enabling Elections (Vijay Karnataka, April 9, 2014). This was published in Kannada.

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

WIPO SCCR

Participation in Events

Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights: Twenty-Seventh Session (organized by WIPO, Geneva, April 28 – May 2, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the event. France, Greece, India and the European Union signed the Marrakesh Treaty. CIS delivered statements on Technological Measures of Protection on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, Orphan Works, Retracted and Withdrawn Works, and Works out of Commerce on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, and on the WIPO Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. Transcripts of the discussions can be accessed here.

Blog Entries

Report on CDIP-12 (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 22, 2014).
Signing and Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (by Nehaa Chaudhari, April 25, 2014).
Report on the WIPO Director General’s Meeting with NGO’s (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 30, 2014).

Media Coverage

Is the WIPO Treaty for Broadcasters Moving Forward at SCCR 27? (by Manon Ress, Knowledge Ecology International, April 29, 2014).
At WIPO, Authors, Civil Society Watchful of Rights for Broadcasters (by Catherine Saez, IP Watch, May 1, 2014).

Other

Event Organized

NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2014 (CIS, Bangalore, April 12 – 13, 2014).

Blog Entries

Online Survey for Indian Mobile App Developer Startups & Enterprises (by Samantha Cassar, April 9, 2014).
App Developers Series: Services, Products, Dichotomy & IP – Part I (by Samantha Cassar, April 10, 2014).
Report on CDIP-12 (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 22, 2014).
Report on the 31st Session of the Standing Committee on Trademarks (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 29, 2014).

Wikipedia

The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation:

Announcement

CIS Signs MoU with Mysore University (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, April 16, 2014): for converting to Unicode and re-releasing their encyclopaedia under Creative Commons License. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU. The signing event took place earlier on February 22, 2014.

Articles

Vachana Sanchaya: Bringing Access to 11th century Kannada Literature (by Subhashish Panigrahi, April 3, 2014)
୭୯ ବର୍ଷରେ ସ୍ୱତନ୍ତ୍ର ଓଡ଼ିଶା: ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଏହାର ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Amalekha, April 4, 2014).
ଓଡ଼ିଅା ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Kadambini, April 8, 2014).
Report from India: Relicensing books under CC (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Creative Commons Blog, April 19, 2014).
14 Odia books re-released under Creative Commons license (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, April 26, 2014). The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane.

Events Organized

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop (organized by CIS-A2K, Balmatta Computer Centre, Mangalore, April 5, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (co-organized by All India Konkani Writers Organization and CIS-A2K, Kalaangann Shaktinagar, April 6, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Tulu Wikipedia Editathon (co-organized by Karnataka Theological College and CIS-A2K, Mangalore, April 19, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

Participation in Events

Wikipedia Session for Trainee Journos (organized by Prajavani, Bangalore, April 28, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja took a session for the trainee journalists of Prajavani Kannada daily on Wikipedia.
World Book Day (organized by Karnataka Publishers’ Association, Indian Institute of World Culture, Basavanagudi, Bangalore, April 23, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was a speaker.
Relevance of Bhagabat Tungi in the evolution of Odia language from Buddha era to digital age (organized by The Intellects, Shree Jagannath Mandir and Odisha Art and Cultural Center, New Delhi, April 24, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Media Coverage
CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

M'lore: Wikipedia Workshop held for Konkani writers (Daijiworld, April 6, 2014).
Odia Loves Wikipedia (Rising Voices, April 10, 2014). This was also published in Spanish and in Russian.
International Book Day (The Hindu, April 21, 2014).
Books are a bridge between generations (The Deccan Herald, April 23, 2014).
World Book Day Report (Vijaywani, April 23, 2014).
Seminar on Odia Language in New Delhi by the Intellects (Odisha Samachar, April 24, 2014).
Delhi meet focuses on Bhagabat Tungi revival (The Pioneer, April 26, 2014).

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

NETmundial

As part of its participation in the NETmundial event organized in Brazil by Brazilian Internet Steering Committee in partnership with /1Net at Sao Paulo on April 23 and 24, 2014 CIS produced a total of 16 outputs:

Sumandro Chattapadhyay produced these visual representations: Comparing Appearance of Fifty Most Frequent Words, Contributions by Countries of Origin, Contributions by Types of Organisation, Which Countries Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?, Which Governments Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?, Word Clouds of Contributions by Types of Organisation and Tracking *Multistakeholder* across Contributions. Achal Prabhala participated in the event and wrote these: Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2. Transcript of the NETmundial for archival purposes was made available by Pranesh Prakash. Smarika Kumar produced two research outputs: NETmundial and Suggestions for IANA Administration and Accountability of ICANN. Geetha Hariharan wrote two blog posts: Marco Civil da Internet: Brazil’s ‘Internet Constitution’ and Brazil passes Marco Civil; the US-FCC Alters its Stance on Net Neutrality. Jyoti Panday wrote one blog post: NETmundial Roadmap: Defining the Roles of Stakeholders in Multistakeholderism.

Privacy

Analyses

Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy vs. The Leaked 2014 Privacy Bill (by Elonnai Hickok, April 14, 2014).
Banking Policy Guide (by Elonnai Hickok, April 22, 2014).
The Embodiment of the Right to Privacy within Domestic Legislation (by Tanvi Mani, April 29, 2014).

Articles

Who Governs the Internet? Implications for Freedom and National Security (by Sunil Abraham, Yojana, April 4, 2014).
Privacy Law in India: A Muddled Field – I (by Bhairav Acharya, The Hoot, April 15, 2014).
Very Big Brother (by Sunil Abraham, GeneWatch, January – April 2014 Issue).

Blog Entry

South African Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (by Divij Joshi, April 16, 2014).

Participation in Events

Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy: The Third Man Theme Revisited: Foreign Policies of the Internet in a Time Of Surveillance and Disclosure (jointly organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, the American Austrian Foundation (AAF), and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (DA), Vienna, March 30 – April 1, 2014). Nishant Shah participated in the event as a panelist.
GSMA Partners Meeting (organized by Privacy International, London, April 9, 2014). Elonnai Hickok participated in this meeting.
The Critical Life of Information (organized by Yale University, 100 Wall Street, April 11, 2014). Nishant Shah spoke in the panel on Big Data and Governance. Malavika Jayaram spoke in the panel on Big Data and the Arts.
Round-table on User Safety on the Internet (organized by Consumer Voice and Google, Infantry Road, Bangalore, April 24, 2014).
6th Biannual Surveillance and Society Conference (organized by Eticas Research and Consulting, University of Barcelona and CCCB, April 26 – 24, 2014). Malavika Jayaram gave a talk on “Biometrics in beta: experimenting on a nation (while normalising surveillance for 1.2 billion people)”.

Other

Articles

Between the Local and the Global: Notes Towards Thinking the Nature of Internet Policy (by Nishant Shah, cgcsblog, April 1, 2014).
Networks: What You Don’t See is What You (for)Get (by Nishant Shah, April 17, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Two Indians in Global Commission on Web Governance (April 1, 2014): Sunil Abraham was named as one of the experts. This was published in Outlook, Economic Times, and in Matters India.
The Take Down of Free Speech Online (Newslaundry, April 1, 2014): CIS research on Intermediary Liabilities is quoted.
The politics of Facebook (by Shweta Tiwari, April 1, 2014).
New privacy Bill more refined & has wider ambit, say experts (by Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, April 2, 2014).
Should Nandan Nilekani's Aadhaar project, for identity proof and welfare delivery, exist at all? (by M. Rajshekhar, April 3, 2014).
Lok sabha polls: Social media companies launch special pages for polls (by Varuni Khosla, Economic Times, April 10, 2014).
Parties give short shrift to privacy (by Pratap Vikram Singh, GovernanceNow.com, April 12, 2014).
No party's got a clear stand, Aadhaar's fate hangs in balance (by Pratap Vikram Singh, GovernanceNow.com, April 13, 2014).
'India wants core internet infrastructure' (by Indrani Bagchi, April 24, 2014).
India for inclusive internet governance (by Indrani Bagchi, April 25, 2014).
Facebook launches FB Newswire for journalists; loses part of its immunity under IT Act 2000 (by Amrita Madhukalya, DNA, April 26, 2014).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Blog Entries

Confession in the Digital Age (by Rimi Nandy, April 14, 2014).
Animating the Archive – A Survey of Printed Digitized Materials in Bengali and their Use in Higher Education (by Saidul Haque, April 14, 2014).
‘Doing’ Digital Humanities: Reflections on a project on Online Feminism in India (by Sujatha Subramanian, April 14, 2014).
The Machinistic Paradigm Collapse (by Anirudh Sridhar, April 14, 2014).
Exploring the Digital Landscape: An Overview (by P.P.Sneha, April 14, 2014).
Digital Humanities and the Problem of Definition (by P.P.Sneha, April 25, 2014).

Digital Natives

CIS is doing a research project titled “Making Change”. The project will explore new ways of defining, locating, and understanding change in network societies. Having the thought piece 'Whose Change is it Anyway' as an entry point for discussion and reflection, the project will feature profiles, interviews and responses of change-makers to questions around current mechanisms and practices of change in South Asia and South East Asia:

Making Change Project

Blog Entry

Multimedia Storytellers: Panel Discussion (by Denisse Albornoz, April 16, 2014).
From Taboo to Beautiful – Menstrupedia (by Denisse Albornoz, April 30, 2014).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Event Organized

Tech Talk: Landscape of Wireless Communications & Electromagnetic Spectrum (CIS, Bangalore, April 28, 2014). A. Radha Krishna gave a talk on wireless communication technologies.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2014-bulletin

The Embodiment of the Right to Privacy within Domestic Legislation

tanvi — 2014-09-08T02:37:39Z

The Right to Privacy is a pivotal construct, essential to the actualization of justice, fairness and equity within any democratic society. It is an instrument used to secure the boundaries of an individual’s personal space, in his interaction with not only the rest of society but also the State.

It is within this realm of the social transaction that there exists an unending conflict between the Right to Privacy of an individual and the overbearing hand of the State as a facilitator of public interest. This right thus acts as a safety valve providing individuals with a sacred space within which their interactions in their personal capacity have no bearing on their conduct in the public sphere. The preservation of this space is incredibly important in order to ensure a willingness of individuals to engage and cooperate with the State in its fulfillment of public welfare measures that would otherwise be deemed as intrusive. It is in this regard that the Right to Privacy, one of the last sustaining rights that an individual holds against a larger State interest, ought to be protected by the law.

There are numerous dimensions to the idea of the Right to Privacy. These include but are not limited to the privacy of person, privacy of communication, personal privacy, transactional privacy, privacy of information and the privacy of personal data.

The Supreme Court of India has come to the rescue of individuals, time and again by construing "Right to Privacy" as an extension of the Fundamental Right to “Protection of Life and Personal liberty” under Article 21 of the Constitution. This has been reflected in the adjudicatory jurisprudence of the Constitutional courts in the country. However, there exists no Constitutional remedy to redress the breach of privacy by a nongovernmental actor, except under tortuous liability. The power and authority of public and private institutions to use an individual’s personal data for larger interests of national security or effectuation of socio-economic policies is still under extensive scrutiny. It is in this regard that we have compiled a number of sectoral legislations, regulating domains ranging from Finance and Telecom to Healthcare, Freedom of Expression, Consumer rights and Procedural codes. The highlighted provisions under each Act pertain to the mechanisms embodied within the legislation for the regulation of privacy within their respective sectors. Through this we aim to determine the threshold for permissible collection of confidential data and regulatory surveillance, provided a sufficient need for the same has been established. The determination of such a threshold is imperative to formulating a consistent and effective regime of privacy protection in India.

Click to download the below resources:

Legislations
Master Circulars
Finance and Privacy
Code of Civil Procedure and Code of Criminal Procedure
Freedom of Expression
Identity and Privacy
National Security and Privacy
Consumer Protection
Transparency and Privacy
Healthcare
Telecom

Case Laws
Code of Civil Procedure and Code of Criminal Procedure
Freedom of Expression
Identity and Privacy
National Security and Privacy
Consumer Protection
Transparency and Privacy
Healthcare
Telecom

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-embodiment-of-right-to-privacy-within-domestic-legislation

India for inclusive internet governance

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T10:36:52Z

India wants "core internet infrastructure" to be part of an international legal system that would accommodate governments, civil society and other stakeholders. In typical Indian diplomatic style, its position can be interpreted to mean everything and nothing.

The article by Indrani Bagchi published in the Times of India on April 25, 2014 quotes Sunil Abraham.

An MEA team, led by joint secretary Vinay Kwatra, told Net Mundial (forum for internet governance) in Brazil on Thursday, "The elements of India's approach on internet governance respond to its growing complexity and rests in supporting the dynamism, security and openness of a single and unfragmented cyberspace. We also support innovation and robust private sector investment to augment internet's continuing growth and evolution."

The Indian position is essentially an MEA position, because there has been little prior inter-agency consultation in the government. In fact, while the MEA had decided upon its team almost a month ago, the department of information technology woke up only last week. It was on Friday that the nodal ministry for IT-related issues even agreed to send a team to Brazil on Monday- the same team that the MEA was sending. If nothing else, sources said, this only highlighted the lack of seriousness within the Indian system.

Kwatra said internet should have a democratic governing system involving everyone, which would essentially mean creating a parallel international system. While India does not want the status quo to continue, there is no clarity whether it favours a multilateral or a multi-stakeholder system. India, like China, wants a strong state presence in the decision-making process of internet governance because "it is used for transactions of core economic, civil and defence assets at national level and in the process, countries are placing their core national security interests in this medium". On the other hand, it wants unfettered access to knowledge and technology as a nation-building and governance tool.

Additionally, India wants non-governmental stakeholders to be properly audited and a "clear delineation of principles governing their participation, including their accountability, representativeness, transparency and inclusiveness". There is a crying need for India to clearly define the future it expects to thrive in.

Sunil Abhraham of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society says India should take the lead in defining new internet rules, keeping its future in mind. "We could use patent pools and compulsory licensing to provide affordable and innovative digital hardware to the developing world. This would ensure that rights-holders, innovators, manufactures, consumers and government would all benefit ... We could explore flat-fee licensing models like a broadband copyright cess or levy to ensure that users get content at affordable rates and rights-holders get some royalty from all internet users in India. This will go a long way in undermining the copyright enforcement-based censorship regime that has been established by the US. We could enact a world-class privacy law and establish an independent, autonomous and proactive privacy commissioner who will keep both private and state actors on a short lease. We need a scientific, targeted surveillance regime that is in compliance with human rights principles. This will make India simultaneously an IP and privacy haven and thereby attract huge investment from the private sector, and also earn the goodwill of the global civil society and independent media."

This is more than the Indian government has thought of.

While no binding decisions are expected from Brazil this week, the high profile event is expected to trigger a high-level debate on possible reforms. India, say officials, needs to come up with concrete proposals. This is imperative after the US made two crucial decisions on internet governance this year. In March the US announced that by September 2015 it would give up oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based non-profit group, that assigns domain names. But the US is clear it will not hand over the levers to any organization that can be controlled by any other country. This week, the US' FCC dealt a body blow to the concept of "net neutrality" (which essentially functions on the premise that access to the internet is the same for everyone) by allowing companies like Disney and Google to pay for premium internet speeds.

Countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia (may be even Iran) seek to control net access for their citizens as a measure of political control. Second, cyber offensive by countries which are ramping up capacity in these fields could take over internet governance structures if they are not crafted carefully enough. If the US is relinquishing control over ICANN, the next global battle is likely to be over who takes over that mantle. This makes it important to get net governance right. At least China has a plan: It wants the UN to take control. India wants a bit of everything, without actually giving it a shape, making it virtually impossible to shape the debate.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-april-25-indrani-bagchi-india-for-inclusive-internet-governance

NETmundial Day 2

achal — 2014-04-25T04:58:26Z

Fadi Chehade, the ICANN boss, closed NETmundial 2014 with these words "In Africa we say if you want to go first, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together." He should have added: And if you want to go nowhere, go multi-stakeholder.

For all the talk of an inclusive global meeting, there was exactly one governmental submission from the African continent, and it was from Tunisia; and the overall rate of submissions from Africa and West Asia were generally very low.

The outcome document perfectly reflects the gloss that the "multi-stakeholder" model was designed to achieve: an outcome that is celebrated by businesses (and by all embedded institutions like ICANN) for being harmless, met with relief by governments for not upsetting the status quo, all of it lit up in the holy glow of "consensus" from civil society.

Of course there was no consensus. Civil society groups who organised on Day 0 put up their position: the shocking omission of a strong case for net neutrality, ambiguous language on surveillance, weak defences of free expression and privacy. All valid points. But it's striking that civil society takes such a pliant position towards authority: other than exactly two spirited protests (one against the data retention in Marco Civil, and the other against the NSA's mass surveillance program) there was no confrontation, no provocation, no passionate action that would give civil society the force it needs to win. If we were to compare this to other international struggles, the gay rights battle, or its successor, the AIDS medicines movement, for instance - what a difference there is. People fought to crush with powerful, forceful action. Only after huge victories with public and media sympathy, and only after turning themselves into equals of the corporations and governments they were fighting, did they allow themselves to sit down at the table and negotiate nicely. Internet governance fora are marked by politeness and passivity, and perhaps - however sad - it's no wonder that the least powerful groups in these fora always come away disappointed.

It's also surprising that there is no language in the outcome document that explicitly addresses the censorious threat posed by the global expansion of a sovereign application of copyright, as seen most vividly in the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation in the United States. The outcome document has language that seems to more or less reflect the civil society proposal, and it's possible that a generous interpretation of the language could mean that it opposes the selective, restrictive and damaging application of what the intellectual property industries want to accomplish on the Internet. But it's puzzling that the language isn't stronger or more explicit, and even more puzzling that civil society doesn't seem to want to fight for such language.

This seems like an appropriate time to end the multi-stakeholder diaries. Hasn't the word been used enough? Here is one last instalment. We thank the kind folks who gave us their time.

Q: What does "multi-stakeholder" mean? What is "multi-stakeholderism"?

A large part of the discourse prior to the NETmundial conference has been centered around the issue of what is the best structural system to regulate a global network – this has commonly been portrayed as a choice between a multistakeholder system – which broadly speaking, aims to place ‘all stakeholders’ on equal footing – against multilateralism – a recognized concept in International law / the Comity of Nation States, where a nation state is recognized as the representative of its citizens, making decisions on their behalf and in their interests.

In our opinion, the issue is not about the dichotomy between multilateralism and multistakeholderism; it is about what functions or issues can legitimately be dealt with through each of the processes in terms of adequately protecting civil liberties and other public interest principles – including the appropriate enforcement of norms. For instance, how do you deal with something like cyber warfare without the consent of states? Similarly, how do we address regulatory issues such as determining (and possibly subsidizing) costs of access, or indeed to protect a right of a country against unilateral disconnection?

.....The crux of the matter rests in deciding which is the best governance ‘basket’ to include a particular issue within – taken from both a substantive and enforcement perspective. The challenge is trying to demarcate issues to ensure that each is dealt with effectively by placing it in an appropriate bucket. (The full post can be accessed here).
Rishab Bailey from the Society for Knowledge Commons (India)

If I would have signed the campaign http://wepromise.eu as a candidate to the European Parliament I would have made it an election promise to defend "the principle of multistakeholderism".

That means that I "support free, open, bottom-up, and multi-stakeholder models of coordinating the Internet resources and standards - names, numbers, addresses etc" and that I "support measures which seek to ensure the capacity of representative civil society to participate in multi-stakeholder forums." Further, I "oppose any attempts by corporate, governmental or intergovernmental agencies to take control of Internet governance."

My very rudimentary personal view is basically that it's a bad idea to institutionalise conflicting competences.
Erik Josefsson, Adviser on Internet policies for the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament

And so it ends.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-day-2

'India wants core internet infrastructure'

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T10:29:30Z

The article by Indrani Bagchi was published in the Times of India on April 24, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

An MEA team led by Vinay Kwatra, joint secretary told the Net Mundial in Brazil on Thursday, "The elements of India's approach on internet governance respond to its growing complexity and rests in supporting the dynamism, security and openness of a single and un-fragmented cyberspace. We also support innovation, and robust private sector investments to augment internet's continuing growth and evolution."

The Indian position is essentially an MEA position, because there has been little prior inter-agency consultation certainly in the government. In fact, while the MEA had decided upon its team almost a month ago, the Department of Information Technology only woke up last week.

It was only on Friday that the nodal ministry for IT-related issues even agreed to send a team to Brazil on Monday — the same team that the MEA was sending. If nothing else, sources said, this only highlighted the lack of seriousness within the Indian system.

In Brazil, Kwatra said internet should have a democratic governing system, involving everyone, which would essentially mean creating a parallel international system. The internet is essentially owned and led by the US, controlled by the fact that the overwhelming number of root servers are situated in that country. But after the Edward Snowden leaks on

NSA surveillance, the US' intentions and practices have come under a cloud.

While India does not want the status quo to continue, there is no clarity whether India favours a multilateral or a multi-stakeholder system. India, like China, wants a strong state presence in the decision making process of internet governance, because "it is used for transactions of core economic, civil and defence assets at national level and in the process, countries are placing their core national security interests in this medium." On the other hand, it wants unfettered access to knowledge and technology as a nation-building and governance tool.

Additionally, India wants non-governmental stakeholders to be properly audited "there should also be a clear delineation of principles governing their participation - including their accountability, representativeness, transparency, and inclusiveness. Clearly, it makes it even more important that we define the multistakeholderism."

There is a crying need for India to clearly define the future it expects to thrive in.

Sunil Abhraham of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore says India should take the lead in defining new internet rules, keeping its future in mind. "We could use patent pools and compulsory licensing to provide affordable and innovative digital hardware to the developing world. This would ensure that rights-holders, innovators, manufactures, consumers and government would all benefit ... We could explore flat-fee licensing models like a broadband copyright cess or levy to ensure that users get content at affordable rates and rights-holders get some royalty from all internet users in India.

This will go a long way in undermining the copyright enforcement based censorship regime that has been established by the US. When it comes to privacy - we could enact a world-class privacy law and establish an independent, autonomous and proactive privacy commissioner who will keep both private and state actors on a short lease. Then we need a scientific, targeted surveillance regime that is in compliance with human rights principles. This will make India simultaneously an IP and privacy haven and thereby attract huge investment from the private sector, and also earn the goodwill of global civil society and independent media." This is more than the Indian government has thought of.

While no binding decisions are expected from Brazil this week, the high profile event is expected to trigger a high level debate on possible reforms. India, say officials, need to hone its position to come up with concrete proposals. This is imperative, after the US made two crucial decisions on internet governance this year.

In March the US announced by September 2015 it would give up oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned of Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit group based in California that assigns domain names. But the US is clear it will not hand over control to any organization that can be controlled by any other country. This week, the US' FCC has dealt a body blow to the concept of "net neutrality" (which essentially functions on the premise that access to the internet is the same for everyone) by allowing companies like Disney and Google to pay for premium internet speeds. Countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia (maybe even Iran) seek to control net access for their citizens as a measure of political control. Second, cyber offensives by countries who are ramping up capacity in these fields could take over internet governance structures if they are not crafted carefully enough. On the flip side, as Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society puts it, "The US censorship regime is really no better than China's. China censors political speech - US censors access to knowledge thanks to the intellectual property (IP) rightsholder lobby.."

If the US is relinquishing control over ICANN, the next global battle is likely to be over who takes over that mantle. Which, in turn, makes it important to get net governance right. At least China has a plan — it wants the UN to take control. India wants a bit of this and a bit of that, without actually giving it a shape, which makes it impossible for India to shape the future of the debate.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-april-24-2014-india-wants-core-internet-infrastructure

NETmundial Day 1

achal — 2014-04-24T09:02:49Z

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's speech at the opening of NETmundial in São Paulo was refreshingly free of the UN-speak that characterised virtually every single other presentation this morning. The experience of sitting for five hours in a room where the word "multi-stakeholder" is repeated at the rate of five mentions per minute is not for the faint-hearted; it almost makes you wish for more of the straight-talking tough-love of people like Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

Surveillance was mentioned by a few brave souls. Two peaceful, silent - and rather effective - protests broke out during the opening speeches; one, against the data retention clause in Brazil's otherwise path-breaking and brand-new law for civil rights on the Internet, Marco Civil, and another for honouring US NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and urging action against surveillance. Sadly for Brazilian civil society, the Marco Civil protestations went unheard, and Rousseff signed the bill into law in full.

There were lots of speeches. Lots. If you missed them, here's a handy visualisation you can use to catch up quickly: just add some prepositions and conjunctions, and you'll have a perfectly anodyne and universally acceptable bureaucrat/politician keynote address.

The afternoon was given over to assimilating previously received comments on the outcome document and adding new ones from people in the room. Much contention, much continuity, lots of hard work, lots of nitpicking (some of it even useful) and lots of ambiguity; after more consultation - the slog goes on until tomorrow afternoon - the outcome document will be laid to rest. Lunch was excellent: there's a reason the Grand Hyatt São Paulo costs as much as it does.

Our quest to plumb the depths of multi-stakeholderism continued: we thank the kind folks who gave us their time and allowed us to record them.

Q: What does "multi-stakeholder" mean? What is "multi-stakeholderism"?

Multi-stakeholderism to me is the ability to engage with every stakeholder and have them in the room, and have them understand that it is not an equal opportunity for all. I also understand that civil society and academia will never be at the same place as business, which has far more resources, or governments, which have the sovereign right to make laws, or even the technical community, which is often missing from the policy dialogue. There are three things which are important to me: (1) Will I be able to make interventions not just in the dialogue but in the decision making process? For me, that is key. (2) Do I have recourse in a process which might be multilateral or inter-governmental - do I have recourse when international treaties are ratified or signed, because they become binding national laws? and (3) What is it that happens to dissent in a process that is not multi-stakeholder? I think even the ITU (the International Telecommunications Union) has taken cognizance of multi-stakeholderism. So it's not new, but it's also not old or accepted, which is why we contest it. We will never have equal stakeholders. And who gets to represent the stakeholder communities? I don't think power imbalances get resolved, and I think it's a deeply flawed process. It's not perfect. But what worries me is the alternative. So give me a better alternative.
Subi Chaturvedi, Media for Change/ Lady Shriram College (India)

Simply put, multi means many components, and stakeholders are people who have the stakes. So multi-stakeholder means many people who are informed to take the process forward. The process is still on: it's evolving. The idea is that everyone who has an interest should bring it forward, and the dialogue must be balanced. Proof of concept is important - it's not about taking a dogmatic position but a scientific position. Business is concerned about the justification around return on investment.
Jimson Olufuye, Africa ICT Alliance (Nigeria)

Everyone who has a stake in the use and operation of the Internet should have a stake in the way it is managed. I think we shouldn't be considering this as a power game - it's not winner takes all. Decision making should be as much as possible consensual, where no one has a veto power.
Getachew Engida, Deputy Director-General, UNESCO (France)

It is very simple. I think people are complicating matters. It's not a power game. The Internet is fundamentally a global network of interconnected computers. People have become not only consumers of information but providers of information, so the stakes in the media/ICT world are massive. Unprecedented. Therefore, around major issues confronting the Internet, decision making should be as participatory as possible.
Indrajit Banerjee, Director, UNESCO (France)

Additional Links

Watch Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's speech at the opening of NETmundial
Follow Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt on Twitter

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-day-1

NETmundial Transcript Archive

pranesh — 2014-04-23T14:31:50Z

We are archiving the live transcript from the NETmundial meeting (April 23-24, 2014).

NETmundial Day 1

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>***LIVE SCRIBING BY BREWER & DARRENOUGUE - WWW.QUICKTEXT.COM***
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>>> LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, GOOD MORNING. IN SOME MINUTES WE WILL HAVE OUR OPENING SESSION OF OUR GLOBAL MULTISTAKEHOLDER MEETING ON THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONES OR TURN THEM INTO VIBRATING. PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS. OR SHUT IT OFF. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
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>>> LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS AND PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONES OR SET THEM INTO SILENT MODE. IN SOME MINUTES, WE ARE GOING TO START OUR OPENING CEREMONY OF OUR GLOBAL MULTISTAKEHOLDER MEETING ON THE FUTURE GOVERNANCE OF THE INTERNET.
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>>> PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS AND TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONES OR SET THEM INTO SILENT MODE. IN A FEW MINUTES, WE WILL START OUR OPENING CEREMONY OF THE GLOBAL MULTISTAKEHOLDER MEETING ON THE FUTURE OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE.
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>>> LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IN SOME MINUTES WE WILL START OFF THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE GLOBAL MULTISTAKEHOLDER MEETING ON THE FUTURE OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE.
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>[MUSIC ] >> THIS IS MY INTERNET.
>>> THIS IS MY INTERNET.
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>>> LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL, HER EXCELLENCY DILMA ROUSSEFF. THE CHAIRMAN OF NETmundial, VIRGILIO ALMEIDA, AND THE MIKE RODENBAUGH OF SAO PAULO, THE COO OF ICANN, FADI CHEHADE, AND THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE TECHNICAL SECTOR AND CREATOR OF THE WEB, TIM BERNERS-LEE. REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PRIVATE SECRETARY AND VICE PRESIDENT OF GOOGLE, VINT CERF, AND THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE -- OF CIVIL SOCIETY, COFOUNDER, NNENNA NWAKANMA.
>[APPLAUSE ] >> WE ARE STARTING OFF THIS EFFORT AND WE ARE GOING TO LISTEN TO THE NATIONAL ANTHEM OF BRAZIL.
>[ PLAYING OF NATIONAL ANTHEM. ] [APPLAUSE ] >> WE ARE GOING TO LISTEN TO THE WORDS OF THE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS, PAULO BERNARDO.
>>>PAULO BERNARDO SILVA: GOOD MORNING, HER EXCELLENCY DILMA ROUSSEFF, MEMBERS HERE AND PARTICIPANTS OF THIS MEETING.
>LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO BRAZIL AND TO NETmundial. WE ARE VERY PROUD AND FEEL VERY RESPONSIBLE FOR RECEIVING YOU IN SAO PAULO.
>ALL OF YOU WHO CARE ABOUT INTERNET IN THE FUTURE HAVE REASONS FOR BEING PLEASED WITH WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO TODAY.
>THIS MEETING IS THE CONCRETIZATION OF ALL OUR WISHES. WE NEEDED AN ADEQUATE ENVIRONMENT FOR THIS TO BE VOICED. WE BELIEVE THAT NETmundial IS THIS ENVIRONMENT WE NEED. FREE PARTICIPANTIVE AND PLURAL, AS WELL AS THE INTERNET WE BELIEVE IN.
>AND THIS IS SO BECAUSE THE CONCERN THAT GETS US TOGETHER IS GREATER THAN THE CONCERNS OF EACH PARTY. WE ARE DISCUSSING THIS INTERNET AROUND THIS TABLE OR OTHERWISE WE WILL HAVE NO FUTURE FOR THE INTERNET FROM THE VERY FIRST MOMENT, THE DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS GOT INVOLVED IN THE ORGANIZATION OF THIS EVENT AND THE PROOF OF THIS ENVIRONMENT IS HERE IN THE GREAT DIVERSITY OF CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED.
>WE ALSO HAVE HERE MANY AUTHORITIES AND PARTICIPANTS. WE'D LIKE TO THANK EACH ONE OF YOU AND CONGRATULATE EACH ONE OF YOU FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. WE'RE ALL PROTAGONISTS OF AN HISTORICAL MOMENT AND TODAY WHAT WE HAVE BEFORE US IS A CHALLENGE TO MAKE THE MOST FOR ALL THE DIFFERENT OPINIONS IN FAVOR OF A UNIQUE PATH.
>THIS PATH HAS A VERY STRAIGHT SENSE OF ORIENTATION, A FREE AND UNFRAGMENTED INTERNET. THAT'S THE BEST WE CAN HAVE, THE CAPACITY TO CONNECT, TO MOBILIZE, TO INNOVATE, TO CREATE RICHNESS OF CULTURE OR WHATEVER, AND RESPECT THE LINKS. SO INTERNET BEING RULED BY MORE PEOPLE COULD REACH MORE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.
>SO I WISH THAT WHEN WE LEAVE SAO PAULO, WE CAN 81BRATE A NEW AND PROMISSORY BEGINNING. THIS IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY HERE, AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH. AND HAVE A GOOD MEETING. THANK YOU.
>[APPLAUSE ] >> NOW, MR. HONKING, SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS FOR BUSINESS MATTERS WILL DELIVER HIS MESSAGE FROM THE SECRETARY-GENERAL, BAN KI-MOON.
>>>WU HONGBO: YOUR EXCELLENCY, PRESIDENT ROUSSEFF, DISTINGUISHED MINISTERS, EXCELLENCIES, DISTINGUISHED DELEGATES, COLLEAGUES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
>I'M HONORED TO BE HERE WITH YOU FOR THIS IMPORTANT EVENT. IT IS MY GREAT PLEASURE TO DELIVER A MESSAGE ON BEHALF OF THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY-GENERAL, MR. BAN KI-MOON.
>HERE I QUOTE: I THANK THE GOVERNMENT OF BRAZIL FOR HOSTING THE NETmundial MEETING, AND I COMMEND THIS GLOBAL MULTISTAKEHOLDER NATURE. ONLY THROUGH INCLUSIVE AND BOTTOM-UP PARTICIPATION WE BE ABLE TO FOSTER AN ACCESSIBLE, OPEN, SECURE, AND TRUSTWORTHY INTERNET.
>THE INTERNET IS TRANSFORMING SOCIETIES IN ALL REGIONS. IT IS THE BACKBONE OF OUR GLOBAL ECONOMY AND AN ESSENTIAL VEHICLE FOR DISSEMINATING INFORMATION AND IDEAS.
>ONE-THIRD OF THE PEOPLE NOW HAVE ACCESS TO THE INTERNET AND THE KNOWLEDGE AND THE TOOLS IT PROVIDES. INCREASING NUMBER OF PEOPLE NOW HAVE A PLATFORM TO VOICE THEIR OPINIONS AND PARTICIPATE IN SOCIETY FROM COMMERCE TO DEMOCRATIC DECISION-MAKING. THAT IS WHY IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT INTERNET GOVERNANCE POLICIES CONTINUE TO FOSTER FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND THE FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION.
>THE INTERNET AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY HOLD TREMENDOUS PROMISE FOR THE POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA.
>THE INTERNET CAN STRENGTHEN EFFORTS TO ERADICATE POVERTY, ADDRESS INEQUALITY, AND PROTECT AND RENEW THE PLANET'S RESOURCES.
>BUT REALIZING THE PROMISE MEANS EXPANDING INTERNET ACCESS TO NEARLY 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE WHO CURRENTLY LACK IT.
>MOST ARE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT GENDER GAPS.
>INTERNET GOVERNANCE MUST, THEREFORE, WORK TO BRIDGE THE DIGITAL DIVIDE THROUGH INCLUSIVE RIGHTS-BASED POLICIES.
>INTERNET GOVERNANCE SHOULD AIM FOR UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO AN INTEROPERABLE, GLOBALLY CONNECTED, AND SAFE ONLINE SPACE.
>TO THIS END, THE PRINCIPLES OF THE WORLD SUMMIT ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY REMAIN RELEVANT.
>THE UNITED NATIONS INVITES ALL STAKEHOLDERS TO JOIN IN THE ONGOING SUMMIT REVIEW PROCESS.
>CONFIDENCE IN THE INTERNET AND ITS GOVERNANCE IS VITAL. IF IT IS TO BE EFFECTIVELY CONTRIBUTING TO THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.
>IN THIS CONNECTION, I WISH TO INFORM THE MEETING I INTEND TO APPOINT AMBASSADOR JANIS KARKLINS OF LATVIA AS THE CHAIR OF THE MULTISTAKEHOLDER ADVISORY GROUP OF THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM.
>[APPLAUSE ] >>WU HONGBO: I COUNT ON MR. KARKLINS TO PROMOTE A STRENGTHENED INTERNET GOVERNANCE THROUGH BROADER PARTICIPATION, NOT ONLY BY GOVERNMENTS BUT ALSO THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND CIVIL SOCIETY, INCLUDING THE ACADEMIC AND THE TECHNICAL COMMUNITIES.
>BUILDING CONSENSUS ON THE ROADMAP FOR THE FUTURE OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE IS CRUCIAL. THIS NETmundial IS AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE. I WISH YOU A PRODUCTIVE MEETING. UNQUOTE.
>THANK YOU VERY MUCH ON BEHALF OF UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS, UNDESA. I WOULD LIKE TO THANK BRAZIL AND THE BRAZILIAN INTERNET STEERING COMMITTEE FOR NOT ONLY HOSTING THIS IMPORTANT MEETING, BUT ALSO FOR BEING CONSISTENT SUPPORTERS OF INTERNET GOVERNMENT FORUM. THE IGF COMMUNITY LOOKS FORWARD TO RUNNING TO BRAZIL FOR THE SECOND TIME FOR THE 10TH IGF IN 2015.
>THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
>[APPLAUSE ] >> NOW, WE ARE GOING TO LISTEN TO MS. NNENNA NWAKANMA, A REPRESENTATIVE OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND CONTRIBUTOR OF THE OPEN SOURCE FOUNDATION OF AFRICA.
>[APPLAUSE ] >>NNENNA NWAKANMA: OOH-LA-LA. YOUR EXCELLENCIES, COLLEAGUES, PRESENT AND REMOTE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, (NON-ENGLISH WORD OR PHRASE). MY NAME IS I COME FROM THE INTERNET. I ALSO COME FROM DIVERSE CIVIL SOCIETY TEAMS AND NETWORKS, ONE OF WHICH IS THE TEAM THAT WORKS WITH THE WORLD WIDE WEB FOUNDATION.
>AT THE WEB FOUNDATION, WE ARE ENGAGED IN THE ALLIANCE FOR AFFORDABLE INTERNET. WE'RE ENGAGED IN THE WEB INDEX AND OPEN DATA INITIATIVES. ONE THING I DO FOR A LIVING IS TO ESTABLISH THE OPEN WEB AS A GLOBAL PUBLIC GOOD AND A BASIC RIGHT, ENSURING THAT EVERYONE CAN ACCESS AND USE IT FREELY. THAT'S WHAT I DO.
>I ALSO BELONG TO THE (INDISCERNIBLE) CIVIL SOCIETY PLATFORM, THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE CAUCUS FOR THE PAST 12 YEARS, AND THE AFRICA INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM.
>SO FOR ME, NETmundial, IN CONVENING US TO TAKE A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE PRINCIPLES AND ROADMAP FOR THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE AVAILS ME WITH AN OPPORTUNITY TO RAISE THREE KEY ISSUES.
>THE FIRST ISSUE IS ACCESS.
>AS MUCH AS TWO-THIRDS OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION IS NOT YET CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET. THE PENETRATION RATES IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES AVERAGE AROUND 31%, BUT IN AFRICA WHERE I COME FROM, WE ARE ABOUT 16%.
>IN THE WORLD'S 49 LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, OVER 90% OF THE POPULATION ARE STILL NOT ONLINE.
>WE HAVE 1 BILLION PEOPLE LIVING WITH DISABILITY, AND 80% OF THESE LIVE IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. EACH ONE OF THESE DESERVE ACCESS.
>ACCESS TO INFORMATION, ACCESS TO LIBRARIES, ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE, AND ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE INTERNET.
>MY SECOND ISSUE IS SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE.
>THE INTERNET IS FAST BECOMING THE DOMINANT MEANS OF WEALTH CREATION, SO THE RIGHTS TO DEVELOPMENT, I THINK, SHOULD INCLUDE SOCIAL JUSTICE.
>FOR ME, IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO DO A SUPERFICIAL CAPACITY-BUILDING JUST FOR A FEW PERSONS. I'M LOOKING FOR THE MECHANISM THAT ALLOWS THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF PERSONS TO BE INCLUDED, THE LARGEST NUMBER OF VOICES TO BE HEARD, THE WIDEST EXTENT OF ACCESS TO INNOVATION, AND THE DEEPEST CREATIVITY FOR THE HUMAN MIND TO FLOURISH.
>FOR THIS, I THINK WE NEED TO START CONSIDERING THE INTERNET AS PUBLIC COMMENTS.
>MY THIRD ISSUE IS HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOM.
>NOW I WILL INVITE YOU TO LISTEN THROUGH MY VOICE TO SOMEONE THAT I GREATLY RESPECT.
>THIS PERSON IS A "SHE." SHE WAS SPEAKING AT THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY IN NEW YORK ON THE 25TH OF SEPTEMBER RAFT YEAR. DO YOU WANT TO HEAR WHAT SHE SAID?
>>> YES!
>>>NNENNA NWAKANMA: SHE SAID, "I CANNOT BUT DEFEND IN AN UNCOMPROMISING FASHION THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY OF INDIVIDUALS. IN THE ABSENCE OF THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY, THERE CAN BE NO TRUE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND OPINION AND THERE IS NO EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY." AND THAT WAS DILMA ROUSSEFF.
>[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE ] >>NNENNA NWAKANMA: OKAY. THANK YOU. RIGHT. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IN LOOKING FORWARD TOWARDS THE ROADMAP, I ALSO NEED TO RAISE THREE KEY ISSUES.
>MY FIRST ISSUE IS PARTICIPATION. WHEN WE STARTED, WE KICKED OFF WITH THE BASIC UNDERSTANDING THAT ALL STAKEHOLDERS HAVE A PLACE, A ROLE, A CONTRIBUTION.
>BUT AS WE'VE MOVED FURTHER DOWN THE LINE, THE IDEA OF MULTISTAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT IS GETTING MUDDLED AND IT'S LOSING A BIT OF ITS MEANING, SO I WOULD REQUEST THAT WE GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD AND WE REVISIT IT, AND IF IT NEEDS TO UPGRADE, PLEASE LET'S DO THAT.
>BECAUSE WE NEED TO ENGAGE ALL STAKEHOLDERS AT A GLOBAL, REGIONAL, AND NATIONAL LEVELS.
>WE NEED TO ESTABLISH RESPECT AND VALUE FOR ALL CONTRIBUTIONS COMING FROM ALL STAKEHOLDERS, AND WE NEED MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATION FROM INDIVIDUALS COMING FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND UNDERREPRESENTED GROUPS.
>MY SECOND ISSUE IS RESOURCES.
>HOW DO WE ENSURE THAT RESOURCES ARE MOBILIZED AND MAINTAINED FOR A VIABLE INTERNET GOVERNANCE MECHANISM?
>THE QUESTION IS NOT JUST AT THE GLOBAL LEVEL. IT'S AT CONTINENTAL, REGIONAL, AND EVEN NATIONAL LEVELS.
>WHO'S RESOURCES ARE WE GOING TO COMMIT?
>MY FIRST THOUGHT IS THAT THE INTERNET SHOULD BE ABLE TO PROVIDE RESOURCES FOR ITS OWN GOVERNANCE. MAYBE PART OF THE DOMAIN NAME FEES SHOULD BE REINVESTED IN THIS AREA.
>[APPLAUSE ]
>>>NNENNA NWAKANMA: NOW, MY THIRD ISSUE IS CHANGE.
>NETmundial IS OFFERING US A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE. CHANGE FROM ONE STAKEHOLDER HIJACKING THE PROCESS TO AN OPEN AND INCLUSIVE PROCESS. CHANGE FROM ONE OFFICIAL ISSUING ORDERS TO COLLABORATION. CHANGE FROM JUST REPORTS TO REAL TRANSPARENCY.
>CHANGE FROM POWER TO ACCOUNTABILITY. CHANGE FROM MONOLOGUES TO DIALOGUES AND DEBATES. CHANGE FROM THE RHETORIC OF CYBER-WAR TO THE NOTION OF INTERNET FOR PEACE. CHANGE FROM CYBER-THREATS TO DIGITAL SOLIDARITY. AND I DO BELIEVE THAT ALL OF THESE PRINCIPLES WILL ALSO GUIDE US IN IANA TRANSITION.
>LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THERE IS ONE MESSAGE I MUST LEAVE WITH YOU TODAY, IT IS THE MESSAGE OF TRUST.
>WE'RE IN BRAZIL BECAUSE WE TRUST THE PERSON OF DILMA ROUSSEFF. WE ARE HERE BECAUSE WE TRUST THE NETmundial PROCESS. WE TRUST THE MULTISTAKEHOLDER APPROACH OF BRAZIL IN ITS OWN IGF, AND WE HAVE FOLLOWED THE STORY OF MARCO CIVIL AND I WANT TO SEE CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL BRAZILIANS ON THIS.
>[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE ] >>NNENNA NWAKANMA: HANG ON. HANG ON. HANG ON.
>THE TRUST THAT WE HAVE IN BRAZIL IS NEEDED AT ALL LEVELS. BUT THIS TRUST HAS BEEN DESTROYED BY THE COLLECTION, PROCESSING, AND INTERCEPTION OF OUR COMMUNICATIONS.
>[APPLAUSE ] >>NNENNA NWAKANMA: YES. SURVEILLANCE ON INTERNET SECURITY AND OUR TRUST IN ALL PERSONAL BUSINESS AND DIPLOMATIC COMMUNICATIONS. THAT'S WHY WE SAY "NO." THE WEB WE CAN TRUST, THAT IS THE WEB WE WANT. THE WEB THAT CONTRIBUTES TO PEACE, THAT IS THE WEB WE WANT. THE WEB THAT IS OPEN AND INCLUSIVE, THAT IS THE WEB WE WANT. THE WEB OF OPPORTUNITIES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE, THAT IS WHY I AM HERE.
>LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, NETmundial, I THINK, IS THE WORLD CUP OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE. WE NEED A ROBUST STADIUM THAT CAN HOLD US. THAT IS INFRASTRUCTURE. WE NEED TO ENJOY THE GAME. THAT IS PARTICIPATION. WE SHOULD NOT DISCRIMINATE. THAT IS NET NEUTRALITY. EVERYBODY'S FREE TO SUPPORT THEIR TEAM. I SUPPORT (SAYING NAME) OF NIGERIA. THAT IS FREEDOM. I SUPPORT BRAZIL AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT PLAYING AGAINST AFRICA, ANYWAY.
>[LAUGHTER ] >>NNENNA NWAKANMA: WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO WEAR OUR COSTUMES AS FANS AND THAT IS DIVERSITY. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, WE NEED TO KNOW THE RULES OF THE GAME AND PLAY BY IT. THAT, FOR ME, IS TRANSPARENCY.
>SO IT'S NOT GOING TO BE ABOUT POWER AND CONTROL FOR GOVERNMENTS. IT'S NOT GOING TO BE JUST INTEREST FOR THE INDUSTRY. IT'S NOT GOING TO BE NAMES AND NUMBERS FOR TECHNICAL COMMUNITY. IT'S NOT GOING TO BE FOR OR AGAINST FOR CIVIL SOCIETY. I THINK THAT WE NEED HUMILITY. THE HUMILITY TO LISTEN TO DIVERSE VOICES IS ESSENTIAL FOR AN AUTHENTIC DIALOGUE. LET US TALK TO EACH OTHER AND NOT AT EACH OTHER. BECAUSE SOMETIMES WE CAN BE SO DROWNED IN OUR OWN VOICES THAT WE DO NOT HEAR THE OTHER STAKEHOLDERS.
>JUST BEFORE I SIT DOWN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TOMORROW IS GIRLS IN ICT DAY, SO I'M GOING TO SPEAK TO LADIES.
>GIRLS, IT IS UP TO US TO SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY THAT THE INTERNET HAS GIVEN US. LET'S SEIZE IT AND LET'S ROCK THE WORLD! LET US GET WOMEN ONLINE. LET US GET US ONLINE.
>AND THIS, I WANT TO SAY A SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO ALL THE GIRLS IN MY WORLD FOUNDATION TEAM. ALEXANDRA IS HERE, RENAT AVILA, SONIA GEORGE, ANGELA, AND NOT JUST NETmundial BUT GIRLS ACROSS THE WORLD WORK ON THE INTERNET EVERY DAY. DEBORAH BROWN IS IN THE U.S. MARION FRANKLIN IS IN EUROPE. ANNA IS IN INDIA, (SAYING NAME) IS IN LATIN AMERICA HERE, (SAYING NAME) IS IN AFRICA, JOY LID I COT IS IN NEW ZEALAND, AND SALANIETA IS SOMEWHERE IN THE ISLANDS OF FIJI. GREAT WOMEN WHO DO THIS WORK. AND EVEN HERE IN BRAZIL, WE HAVE GREAT LADIES. ONE IS (SAYING NAME) AND THE OTHER IS (SAYING NAME) BUT COME ON, IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT WOMEN. THERE ARE GUYS, MEN, WHO WORK EVERY DAY, WHO PUT IN THE ENERGY, WHO PUT IN THEIR LIFE, WHO PUT IN ALL THEY HAVE, PUT IN THEIR EXPERTISE, SO THAT WE CAN HAVE A GLOBAL, TRUE, OPEN AND RESILIENT. AND TO ALL OF US WHO LOVE THE INTERNET AND TO ALL OF US WHO ARE HERE AND TO SOMEONE CALLED EDWARD, EDWARD SNOWDEN, THANK YOU.
>[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE ]
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>>>VINT CERF: PRESIDENT DILMA ROUSSEFF, EXCELLENCIES, DISTINGUISHED GUESTS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IT IS AN HONOR AND A PRIVILEGE TO PARTICIPATE IN NETmundial. THIS DIALOGUE IS TIMELY AND MUCH NEEDED AS THE INTERNET CELEBRATES THE 40th YEAR OF ITS PUBLIC UNVEILING AND THE 31st YEAR OF ITS OPERATION. IN MAY 1974, THE DESIGN OF THE INTERNET WAS PUBLISHED IN THE IE EX-E PUBLICATIONS. ROBERT KAHN AND I FELT STRONGLY THE DESIGN AND THE PROTOCOLS OF THE INTERNET NEEDED TO BE FREELY AND OPENLY AVAILABLE TO ANY INTERESTED PARTIES AND WITHOUT ANY BARRIERS TO ADOPTION AND USE.
>OVER FOUR DECADES BY WORKING TOGETHER AND INCLUDING THE EXPERIENCES GATHERED FROM OTHER GLOBAL NETWORK EXERCISES, AN INFORMAL COALITION HAS BUILT FROM THE BOTTOM UP THE SUCCESSFUL, FREE AND OPEN INTERNET AND THE POPULAR WORLDWIDE WEB. SOME 3 BILLION PEOPLE ARE ALREADY ONLINE WORKING TOGETHER TOWARDS GROWTH IN A POWERFUL ECONOMIC ENGINE AND POSITIVE SOCIAL FORCE.
>THIS INTERNET GOVERNANCE MEETING COMES AT A TIME WHEN THE INTERNET AND ITS USE REFLECTS THE FULL RANGE OF INTERESTS OF A GLOBAL AND INCREASINGLY ONLINE SOCIETY.
>IN ADDITION TO APPRECIATING THE ENORMOUS BENEFITS ALREADY OBTAINED THROUGH THE COOPERATIVE CREATION, DISCOVERING AND SHARING OF INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET, IT IS ALSO APPARENT THAT USERS AND GOVERNMENTS ARE BECOMING CONCERNED ABOUT POTENTIAL HARMS THAT MAY BE ENCOUNTERED IN THIS DIGITAL WORLD.
>A SMALL FRACTION OF THE INTERNET'S USERS DELIBERATELY SEEK TO BENEFIT THEMSELVES AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS OR JUST SEEK TO DO DAMAGE THROUGH A KIND OF DIGITAL VANDALISM, AS ALSO HAPPENS OFFLINE.
>MOREOVER, IT IS APPARENT THAT THE RICH SOCIAL NETWORKING APPLICATIONSES THAT ARE RAPIDLY PROLIFERATING ALSO HAVE A POLITICAL POTENTIAL THAT MAY BE ALARMING TO SOME REGIMES.
>GOVERNMENTS UNDERSTANDABLY SEEK WAYS TO DEFEND THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS AGAINST HARM, SUCH AS FRAUD, MALWARE, IDENTITY THEFT AND BULLYING. OTHERS VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS BY USING THE INTERNET TO CENSOR, MISINFORM, CONDUCT SURVEILLANCE AND RESTRICT SPEECH OR USE IT AS A MEANS TO IDENTIFY AND INCARCERATE THOSE WHO SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER.
>THE OPENNESS OF THE INTERNET HAS BEEN THE KEY TO ITS GROWTH AND VALUE. PERMISSIONLESS INNOVATION IS THE MAIN SPRING OF INTERNET'S ECONOMIC POWER. WE MUST FIND WAYS TO PROTECT THE VALUES THAT THE INTERNET BRINGS, INCLUDING THE RIGHTS OF ITS USERS WHILE ALSO PROTECTING THEM FROM HARM.
>THESE PRINCIPLES, TOGETHER WITH GROWING ACCESS TO THE INTERNET WILL PROVE TO BE OF LASTING VALUE TO THE DEVELOPING WORLD THAT CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE POSITIVE BENEFITS OF AN EXPANDING INFORMATION ECONOMY.
>OUR WORK IS NOT NEARLY DONE UNTIL THE INTERNET IS ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE AND IPv6 IS ACCESSIBLE EVERYWHERE.
>BRAZIL HAS SET A POSITIVE EXAMPLE IN NETmundial. IN A MULTIPARTY INITIATIVE LED BY CONGRESSMAN ALESANDRO MALONE, THE COUNTRY HAS JUST LEGISLATED MARCO CIVIL WHICH OFFERS IMPORTANT SAFEGUARDS TO PROTECT INTERMEDIARY INTERNET PROVIDERS AND PROTECT USER RIGHTS. ITS INTERNET STEERING COMMITTEE, CGI.BR, IS A MODEL OF NATIONAL MULTISTAKEHOLDER GOVERNANCE.
>THIS MEETING, AMONG MANY OTHERS, REPRESENTS AN IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY TO EXAMINE A MULTISTAKEHOLDER MODEL FOR INTERNET GOVERNANCE BASED ON THE PARTICIPATION OF ALL STAKEHOLDERS, INCLUDING ROLES FOR GOVERNMENT, ACADEMICS, CIVIL SOCIETY, PRIVATE BUSINESSES AND THE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY. THIS CONFERENCE HAS BROUGHT TOGETHER A RICH AND VARIED GROUP OF INTERESTED PARTIES TO EXPLORE PRINCIPLES AND GUIDELINES FOR FUTURE INTERNET GOVERNANCE AS IT REACHES THE OTHER 4 BILLION STILL UNCONNECTED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.
>THE INTERNET HAS BEEN BUILT ON THE BASIS OF COLLABORATION AMONG A DIVERSE AND CONSTANTLY EVOLVING SET OF INTERESTED PARTIES. AND THIS IS A FOUNDATIONAL IDEA THAT MUST BE PRESERVED. NEW INSTITUTIONS AND OPERATIONAL PLAYERS HAVE BEEN FORMED AT NEED, SUCH AS THE INTERNET ARCHITECTURE BOARD, THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK, THE INTERPRET SOCIETY, THE INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS, THE REGIONAL INTERNET REGISTRIES AND THE NUMBER RESOURCE ORGANIZATION, OTHER REGIONAL TLD ORGANIZATIONS SUCH AS CENTR AND LacTLD, THE ROOT SERVER OPERATORS, REGIONAL NETWORK OPERATION GROUPS, THE EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAMS, INTERNET EXCHANGE POINTS, THE TOP-LEVEL DOMAIN REGISTRIES AND REGISTRARS AND THE NETWORK INFORMATION CENTERS SUCH AS THE BRAZILIAN NIC.
>OUT OF THE WORLD SUMMIT ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY HAS COME THE ANNUAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM AND ITS REGIONAL AND NATIONAL ANALOGS. WE CREATE INSTITUTIONS AT NEED.
>AS WE GATHER HERE FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS, WE HAVE TWO SPECIFIC CHALLENGES TO CONSIDER. THE LARGER ONE IS THE GENERAL DESIGN OF A GLOBAL, MULTISTAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK THAT PRESERVES THE FREE AND OPEN INTERNET AND PROVIDES TRANSNATIONAL PROTECTIONS FOR THE RIGHTS OF USERS.
>THE FRAMEWORK HAS TO ENABLE THE EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNET AND BE ABLE TO ADAPT TO IT. THE MORE FOCUSED CHALLENGE IS TO DEVISE A RESPONSE TO THE U.S. INVITATION TO ASSURE THAT WHEN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND ITS CONTRACTUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH ICANN, THE MULTISTAKEHOLDER FRAMEWORK FOR ICANN'S MANAGEMENT OF UNIQUE IDENTIFIERS AND PARAMETERS WILL ADHERE TO THE PRINCIPLES THAT HAVE MADE THE INTERNET A REMARKABLE, GLOBAL AND BENEFICIAL INFRASTRUCTURE.
>I BELIEVE THAT THE CHALLENGE BEFORE US, ASSURING ICANN'S ADHERENCE CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED BY REINFORCING ITS ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY MECHANISMS. THE LARGER CHALLENGE, PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF USERS WHILE ASSURING THEIR SAFETY WILL REQUIRE LAYERED, LOCAL, NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL ENABLING MECHANISMS. WE CANNOT PRETEND TO KNOW THE SOLUTION TO ALL THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES THAT THE INTERNET POSES. WE CAN, HOWEVER, CREATE STRUCTURES THAT WILL ALLOW MULTISTAKEHOLDER COLLABORATIONS TO DISCOVER AND EVALUATE POSSIBLE ANSWERS.
>AMONG THE MECHANISMS THAT SHOULD BE REINFORCED AND SUPPORTED, I WOULD SINGLE OUT THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM. IT NEEDS FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND A PROPERLY STAFFED SECRETARIAT. IT HAS ILLUMINATED OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS ARISING FROM THE GLOBAL GROWTH OF THE INTERNET.
>MOBILE TECHNOLOGY RAPIDLY DROPPING COSTS FOR INTERNET-ENABLING EQUIPMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS, AND BOUNDLESS DEVELOPMENT OF NEW APPLICATIONS HAVE CREATED A RICH PALATE FROM WHICH TO PAINT A BENEFICIAL DIGITAL FUTURE. THE GLOBAL IGF AND ITS REGIONAL AND NATIONAL COUNTERPARTS CAN BECOME AN EVEN MORE HELPFUL MECHANISM FOR HIGHLIGHTING ISSUES BY TRACKING THEIR SOLUTIONS IN A VARIETY OF FORUMS AND ENABLING THE EMERGENCE OF NEW APPROACHES WHEN THESE SEEM NECESSARY.
>WE WOULD HAVE TO BE A PRETTY SILLY SPECIES NOT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE GIFT THAT THE TECHNOLOGY HAS GIVEN US. THOSE OF US PARTICIPATING IN THE NETmundial -- WELL, I HAVE A VERY INTERESTING PROBLEM HERE, MY SPEECH ENDS BECAUSE THE REST OF IT WASN'T PRINTED OUT.
>[LAUGHTER ]
>SO I WILL END BY THANKING YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE TIME ON THIS STAGE.
>[APPLAUSE ]
>>>TIM BERNERS-LEE: TECHNOLOGY IS PERFECT THEN.
>45 YEARS AGO VINT CERF AND BOB KAHN PUT TOGETHER THE IDEA OF THE INTERNET, DESIGNED THAT, AND MADE THAT OPEN. 25 YEARS AGO -- A LONG TIME LATER, THE INTERNET WAS RUNNING. THERE WAS REMOTE --- . THERE WAS EMAIL RUNNING OVER THE INTERNET. BUT THERE WERE NO WEB, NO WEB SITES, NO WEB PAGES, NO LINKS. I FELT IT WAS REALLY IMPORTANT THERE SHOULD BE SO I INVENTED THE WEB. AND AS THE WORLDWIDE WEB PROJECT GREW, I NEEDED COLLABORATORS. I INVENTED HTML AND HTTP AND URLS BUT THE DEVELOPMENT OF THOSE HAD TO BE DONE BY A LARGE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY. I WENT TO THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE, I FOUNDED THE WORLDWIDE WEB CONSORTIUM THAT ASSESS THE STANDARDS FOR THE WEB AND ITS MOTTO IS TO LEAD THE WEB TO ITS FULL POTENTIAL.
>SO THE COLLABORATION BETWEEN THESE MULTISTAKEHOLDER GROUPS LIKE IETF AND W3C AND ALL THE PEERS THEY WORK WITH LIKE ECMA, TC39 FOR (SAYING NAME) THAT HAS BEEN REALLY CRUCIAL AND IT REALLY HAS BEEN HOW THIS HAS ALL WORKED.
>I HOPE YOU WILL AGREE THAT PEOPLE WORKING TOGETHER HAVE DONE A REASONABLE JOB AND LOOKING BACK AT THE 25 YEARS OF THE WEB, IT HAS BEEN -- IT HAS BEEN AN INCREDIBLE RIDE AND WE REALIZE NOW THAT RATHER THAN BEING A FUN PROJECT LIKE ALL THESE THINGS STARTED OFF WITH, IT NOW BECOMES SOMETHING WE HAVE TO REGARD AS TO BEING CRUCIAL.
>SOME OF THESE ORGANIZATIONS WHICH BELIEVE IN OPEN STANDARDS IN THIS PARTICULAR SORT OF MULTISTAKEHOLDER OPEN ON THE WEB SORT OF MEANING OF THE WORD, DEVISED THE WORD OPEN STAND. YOU CAN GO TO OPENSTAND.ORG TO EXPRESS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE ABOUT WITH OPEN DISCUSSION WITH THE DOCUMENTS BEING FREELY AVAILABLE ON THE WEB. WITH W3C SPECIFICALLY COMPANIES COMMIT THAT WHEN THEY START AND WORK TOWARDS THESE STANDARDS, THAT WHEN THE STANDARDS COME OUT THAT THEY WILL NOT CHARGE ROYALTIES TO ANYBODY WHO WANTS TO IMPLEMENT IT. SO KEEPING IT ROYALTY FREE HAS ALSO BEEN REALLY IMPORTANT.
>THE WEB GREW AS SOMETHING WHICH DID NOT INVOLVE BORDERS BECAUSE IT GREW ON THE INTERNET AND THE INTERNET, WHEN YOU CONNECT -- WHEN I WROTE A PROGRAM TO CONNECT FROM ONE COMPUTER TO THE OTHER, NEITHER PROGRAM HAD AN AWARENESS, NEEDED TO KNOW OR NECESSARILY FOUND IT EASY TO FIND OUT WHICH COUNTRY THOSE TWO COMPUTERS WERE IN. BUT INTERNET WAS TECHNICALLY -- IS A NATIONLESS THING. SO IN A NON-NATIONAL ENVIRONMENT, THE WEB GROWING UP, IT HAS BEEN A NON-NATIONAL SOCIETY WHICH HAS GROWN UP AROUND IT.
>YES, THERE HAS BEEN -- FORMALLY, THERE HAS BEEN A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND THE WAY INTERNET NUMBERS AND NAMES HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED. AND I'M VERY GLAD THAT THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS ACCEPTED TO RELEASE THAT OVERSIGHT. I THINK THAT IS VERY OVERDUE AND A VERY IMPORTANT STEP.
>IT IS AN IMPORTANT STEP BECAUSE ICANN SHOULD SERVICE -- IT SERVICES THE GLOBAL PUBLIC INTERNET, AND, THEREFORE, IT SHOULD BE A GLOBAL PUBLIC BODY. SO FOR ME, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? IT IS EASY TO SAY IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST. FOR ME, FOR ICANN, THAT MEANS THAT DECISIONS THAT IT MAKES ABOUT TOP-LEVEL DOMAINS, ABOUT WHATEVER, ABOUT HOW TO SPEND ITS FUNDING, THEY SHOULD BE MADE BY STEPPING BACK AND THINKING, WELL, NEVERMIND THE PEOPLE WE KNOW INTIMATELY WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THAT DECISION BUT LET'S THINK ABOUT THE PLAN AS A WHOLE. WHAT IS BEST FOR HUMANITY AS A WHOLE? THAT SHOULD GUIDE EVERY DECISION THAT ICANN MAKES.
>OBVIOUSLY, ONE OF THE THINGS THAT ICANN DOES IS IT HAS FUNDS TO SPEND AND SO PARTLY IT CAN FURTHER THE WORLD BY SPENDING THOSE IN A BENEFICIAL WAY SUCH AS SUPPORTING -- WELL, SUPPORTING STANDARDIZATION, SUPPORTING HARDENING WEB TECHNOLOGY, SUPPORTING PIECES OF TECHNOLOGY LIKE THAT, THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE TECHNOLOGY, KEEPING IT SO IT WORKS WITH EVERY CULTURE AND LANGUAGE, ACCESSIBILITY FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES AND, OF COURSE, CLOSING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE FOR REALLY IMPORTANT AGENDAS WHICH ICANN CAN THINK ABOUT SUPPORTING.
>THE INTERNET HAS THRIVED FROM THE EMPOWERMENT OF CAPABLE AND PUBLIC-SPIRITED PEOPLE. INITIALLY, THEY WERE FROM THE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY AND ACADEMIA BUT MORE RECENTLY THE WHOLE PRIVATE SECTOR, CIVIL SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENTS. WE NEED INTERNET GOVERNMENTS WHICH ALLOWS EACH COMMUNITY TO BRING ITS PARTICULAR STRENGTHS TO THE TABLE BUT ALLOWS NONE OF THEM TO ELEVATE ITS OWN INTEREST ABOVE THE PUBLIC GOOD.
>FIVE YEARS AGO, RELATIVELY RECENTLY IN INTERNET TIME, SOME OF US REALIZE THAT ALL THE TECHNICAL WORK WE WERE DOING WAS WONDERFUL BUT IT WAS EVERY SINGLE THING DID WAS INCREASING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE, INCREASING THE GAP BETWEEN THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE WHO HAD THE WEB AND DID NOT HAVE IT. SO AT THAT POINT, WE STARTED THE WORLDWIDE WEB FOUNDATION ABOUT WHICH YOU ALREADY HEARD SOME TO MAKE SURE THAT THE WEB -- WELL, YES, THAT IT GETS TO, FOR EXAMPLE, THE 60% OF THE PEOPLE WHO IN THE WORLD WHO DON'T HAVE IT AT ALL BUT ALSO FOR THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE IT, THAT IT REALLY IS THE WEB THAT WE WOULD WANT, THE WEB HAS NOW BECOME AN ESSENTIAL PUBLIC UTILITY SO WE HAVE TO REGARD IT AS SUCH.
>MUCH OF OUR TRADITIONAL THINKING ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS APPLIES DIRECTLY TO EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET SUCH AS FREE EXPRESSION. BUT NEW THINGS BECOMING IMPORTANT IN THE NETWORK CONTEXT, NET NEUTRALITY MEANS KEEPING THE NET FREE FROM DISCRIMINATION, BE IT COMMERCIAL OR POLITICAL.
>THE INNOVATIVE EXPLOSION WHICH HAPPENED ACROSS THE NET OVER THE LAST 25 YEARS HAS HAPPENED ONLY BECAUSE THAT NET HAS BEEN NEUTRAL. THE SOCIAL GROUND-BREAKING SENSE OF POSSIBILITY THAT WE CAN UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER AND POSSIBLY LIVE IN PEACE RELIES ON AN OPEN NET. OH, AND THANKS TO EVERYBODY WHO HAS EVER HELD UP A BANNER IN ANY FORUM ABOUT PUSHING FOR THE OPEN NET AND PUSHING AGAINST LAWS WHICH RESTRICT THE OPEN NET.
>SO THAT SENSE OF EXCITEMENT WHICH WE ALL HAVE GIVES US ALSO A RESPONSIBILITY THAT WE MUST KEEP THE NET NEUTRAL -- THE NET AS A NEUTRAL PLATFORM IN THE FUTURE.
>FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS A CRUCIAL RIGHT BUT IT HAS TO BE COUPLED ON THE NETWORK WITH A COMPLIMENTARY RIGHT TO PRIVACY AS, MADAM PRESIDENT, YOU HAVE POINTED OUT BEFORE AND HAVE ALREADY BEEN QUOTED TODAY.
>SO I WON'T QUOTE YOU AGAIN, BUT I WOULD, YES, AGREE THAT THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE THAT ARE WORRIED ABOUT SURVEILLANCE AND FEEL IT IS PERHAPS THE MOST IMMEDIATE THREAT. IT FEELS THE MOST IMMEDIATE THREAT. AND, OF COURSE, SURVEILLANCE ALL AFFECTS THE INTERNET, IT IS ONE OF THE MORE INSIDIOUS ONES BECAUSE YOU DON'T SEE IT HAPPENING UNLIKE CENSORSHIP.
>IT IS GREAT TO BE BACK IN BRAZIL TODAY, NOT JUST BECAUSE BRAZIL IS A WONDERFUL COUNTRY AND ONE WHICH HAS HAD A REALLY VIBRANT SENSE OF WHAT OPPORTUNITY ON THE NET BUT, OF COURSE, ESPECIALLY TODAY IS A SPECIAL DAY. YESTERDAY WAS A VERY SPECIAL DAY, THE MARCO CIVIL GOING THROUGH IS WONDERFUL. A FANTASTIC EXAMPLE OF HOW GOVERNMENTS COMPARE POSITIVE ROLE IN ADVANCING WEB RIGHTS AND KEEPING THE WEB OPEN. YES, EUROPEANS ALSO CELEBRATE, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PASSING LEGISLATION PROTECTING USERS ON THE WEB. WELL DONE. SO TWO DATA POINTS THAT SUGGEST WE ARE MAKING PROGRESS. THAT IS GREAT, BUT, BOY, WE HAVE GOT A HUGE WAY THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN RIGHTS ON THE NET ARE NEW AND THEY'RE NOT UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED.
>THE WEB BECOMES EVER MORE EXCITING WITH EVERY ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY LIKE MOBILE WEB AND SO ON, BUT 60% OF THE WEB -- OF THE POPULATION CAN'T USE THE WEB AT ALL.
>AS THE WEB GIVES PEOPLE GREATER AND GREATER POWER, INDIVIDUALLY AND COLLECTIVELY, SO MANY FORCES ARE ABUSING OR THREATEN TO ABUSE THE NET AND ITS CITIZENS. THE WEB THAT WE WILL HAVE IN ANOTHER 25 YEARS' TIME IS, BY NO MEANS, CLEAR. BUT IT IS COMPLETELY UP TO US TO DECIDE WHAT WE WANT TO MAKE THAT WEB, WHAT WE WANT TO MAKE THAT WORLD.
>THAT'S WHY I'M ASKING WEB USERS AROUND THE WORLD, NOT JUST PEOPLE HERE IN THIS CONFERENCE ROOM AND THE OTHER CONFERENCE ROOMS WHERE THIS IS BEING RELAYED, NOT JUST PEOPLE IN THIS CONFERENCE BUT PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD, TO GO AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT AND TO FIND SOME SORT OF GLOBAL MAGNA CARTA FOR THE INTERNET. THAT IS WHY --
>[APPLAUSE ] >>TIM BERNERS-LEE: THAT IS WHY I'M ASKING COUNTRIES EVERYWHERE TO FOLLOW BRAZIL'S EXAMPLE AND EUROPE'S EXAMPLE AND DEVELOP POSITIVE LAWS THAT PROTECT AND EXPAND THE RIGHTS OF USERS IN AN OPEN, FREE, AND UNIVERSAL WEB.
>[APPLAUSE ]
>>>TIM BERNERS-LEE: THANK YOU.
>[APPLAUSE ] >> LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC HAS APPROVED A LAW THAT GUARANTEES THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES FOR THE USE OF INTERNET IN THE WORLD.
>[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE ] >>H.E. DILMA ROUSSEFF: GOOD MORNING TO ONE AND ALL. I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THOSE WHO SPOKE BEFORE ME FOR PERFECTLY PRONOUNCING "GOOD MORNING" IN PORTUGUESE, (NON-ENGLISH WORD OR PHRASE) AS VOICED BY OUR DEAR REPRESENTATIVE FROM AFRICA, NNENNA NWAKANMA.
>THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR PERFECTLY PRONOUNCING (NON-ENGLISH WORD OR PHRASE) IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE. GOOD MORNING.
>AND BY GREETING HER, I WOULD LIKE TO EXTEND MY GREETINGS TO ALL WOMEN WHO ARE CURRENTLY ACTIVE ON THE WEB. BOTH THE GIRLS AND THE GUYS WHO ARE EQUALLY ACTIVE ON THE WEB.
>GREETINGS, LIKEWISE, TO THE MAYOR OF SAO PAULO WHO HAS SO KINDLY WELCOMED US, AND ABOVE ALL, I WOULD RECYCLE TO, FIRST OF ALL, GREET TWO MEMBERS OF CONGRESS FROM BRAZIL. NAMELY MR. (SAYING NAME) REPRESENTING THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WHO SERVED AS RAPPORTEUR OF THE BILL OF LAW WHICH LED UP TO THE PASSING YESTERDAY OF THE INTERNET CIVIL FRAMEWORK, AS WELL AS REPRESENTATIVE -- RATHER SENATOR (SAYING NAME), AND THROUGH HIM, I WOULD LIKE TO FURTHER EXTEND MY GREETINGS, LIKEWISE, TO THE SENATE RAPPORTEURS WHO WERE ABLE TO PASS THE PIECE OF LAW IN A RECORD TIME, SENATOR (SAYING NAME), SENATOR (SAYING NAME), AND SENATOR (SAYING NAME). THANK YOU.
>AND SO SENATOR (SAYING NAME) AND TO REPRESENTATIVE (SAYING NAME), I WOULD LIKE TO VOICE MY THANKS FOR YOUR EFFORTS IN PASSING THE INTERNET CIVIL FRAMEWORK.
>GREETINGS, LIKEWISE, TO THE SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS, HONG BO. SPECIAL GREETINGS LIKEWISE TO THE INVENTOR OF THE INTERNET, TIM BERNERS-LEE.
>I WOULD LIKE TO GREET THE VICE PRESIDENT OF GOOGLE, AND A KEY PERSON -- RATHER A KEY PERSON IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INTERNET, MR. CERF.
>GREETINGS, ONCE AGAIN, TO MR. (SAYING NAME) WHO, ON OCTOBER THE 8TH LAST YEAR, 2013 -- CORRECT, FADI, IF I'M NOT MISTAKEN, WE MET IN BRAZIL YEAH AND ON THAT OCCASION DURING THAT MEETING WITH YOU THE SEMINAL IDEA SURFACED OF ESTABLISHING THIS INTERNET GOVERNANCE SUMMIT MEETING THAT IS REALIZED HERE TODAY, SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH AN ALL OF YOU, INCLUDING CABINET MINISTERS AND FOREIGN DELEGATES ATTENDING THIS SESSION TODAY. ---
>MAY I ALSO USE THE OPPORTUNITY ---
>MAY I ALSO USE THE OPPORTUNITY TO GREET ALL CABINET MINISTERS WHO HAVE BEEN ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS THAT LED UP TO THE PASSING OF THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE CIVIL FRAMEWORK, AN EFFORT WHICH OF COURSE INVOLVED ALL STAKEHOLDERS AND SOCIETY.
>SPECIAL THANKS TO MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AMBASSADOR (SAYING NAME), MINISTER OF JUSTICE CARDOZO, ALSO MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS, MINISTER OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, (SAYING NAME), AND MAY I ALSO GREET AND THANK SENATOR AND MINISTER OF CULTURE (SAYING NAME) AS WELL AS THE BRAZILIAN SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE PRESIDENT'S OFFICE, (SAYING NAME). GREETINGS LIKEWISE TO ALL ATTENDEES, PARTICULARLY THE MEDIA PROFESSIONALS, JOURNALISTS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, AND CAMERAMEN AND WOMEN.
>MAY I SAY THAT YOU ARE ALL MOST WELCOME TO BRAZIL.
>AS ATTENDEES TO THIS GLOBAL MULTISTAKEHOLDER MEETING ON THE FUTURE OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE, THE SO-CALLED NETmundial AS WE CALL IT IN PORTUGUESE.
>AT THIS POINT IN TIME I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO VOICE MY GREETINGS TO THE ORGANIZERS, I.E., THE INTERNET MANAGEMENT OR MANAGING COMMITTEE AS WELL AS THE 1net COMMITTEE. IT GIVES ME GREAT JOY TO SEE IN THIS PLENARY HALL REPRESENTATIVES OF ALL DIFFERENT SECTORS WHO -- OR WHICH ARE IN ONE WAY INVOLVED IN THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE.
>IN THIS HALL TODAY, WE HAVE CIVIL SOCIETY, ACADEMIA, MEMBERS OF THE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY, BUSINESSES, AND GOVERNMENTS AT LARGE.
>THIS HEALTHY DIVERSITY -- AND I STRESS IT IS A HEALTHY DIVERSITY -- IS ALSO A HALLMARK OF THOSE GROUPS THAT HAVE JOINED US THROUGH THE INTERNET AND THIS MEETING, AND I WOULD LIKE TO USE THE OPPORTUNITY TODAY TO ESTABLISH A DIALOGUE ON THE ISSUES AND THE PURPOSES THAT BRING US TOGETHER IN SAO PAULO TODAY.
>BACK IN MID-2013 WHEN THE REVELATION SURFACED ON THE COMPREHENSIVE MECHANISMS FOR COLLECTIVE MONITORING OF COMMUNICATIONS CAUSED ANGER AND REPUDIATION IN VAST CIRCLES OF PUBLIC OPINION BOTH IN BRAZIL AND IN THE WORLD AT LARGE, IN BRAZIL CITIZENS, COMPANIES, DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIONS AND EVEN THE PRESIDENCY OF THE REPUBLIC ITSELF WERE TARGETED, AND THEIR COMMUNICATIONS INTERCEPTED.
>THESE EVENTS ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE. WERE NOT ACCEPTABLE IN THE PAST AND REMAIN UNACCEPTABLE TODAY, IN THAT THEY ARE AN AFFRONTMENT AGAINST THE VERY NATURE OF THE INTERNET AS A DEMOCRATIC, FREE, AND PLURALISTIC PLATFORM.
>THE INTERNET WE WANT IS ONLY POSSIBLE IN A SCENARIO WHERE HUMAN RIGHTS ARE RESPECTED. PARTICULARLY THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY AND TO ONE'S FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.
>ACCORDINGLY, IN MY ADDRESS TO THE 68TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS, I PUT FORTH A PROPOSAL TO TACKLE SUCH PRACTICES. I THEN PROPOSED A DISCUSSION ON ESTABLISHING A GLOBAL CIVIL FRAMEWORK FOR INTERNET GOVERNANCE AND USE, AS WELL AS MEASURES TO ENSURE ACTUAL PROTECTION OF DATA THAT TRAVELS THROUGH THE INTERNET.
>ALSO, WORKING TOGETHER WITH GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL WE SUBMITTED TO THE UNITED NATIONS A DRAFT RESOLUTION ON THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN THE DIGITAL AGE.
>BY CONSENSUS, THE RESOLUTION WAS PASSED AS PROPOSED AND WE ALSO PASSED A CALL FOR STATES TO DISCONTINUE ANY ARBITRARY OR ILLEGAL COLLECTION OF PERSONAL DATA AND TO ENFORCE USERS' RIGHTS TO PRIVACY.
>I SHOULD ACTUALLY STRESS THE FACT THAT THE SAME RIGHTS THAT PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO OFFLINE OR IN THE OFFLINE WORLD SHOULD BE LIKEWISE PROTECTED ON THE ONLINE WORLD.
>THIS MEETING TODAY, NETMUNDIAL, PROVIDES FURTHER MOMENTUM TO THAT EFFORT. THIS MEETING ALSO LIVES UP TO A GLOBAL YEARNING AS WE PROPOSE CHANGES IN THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS AND FOR AN ONGOING CONSISTENT STRENGTHENING OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION ON THE INTERNET AS WELL AS EFFORTS TO ULTIMATELY PROTECT BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS, AS IS THE CASE OF ONE'S RIGHT TO PRIVACY. AND WITHOUT THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT, THAT IS ALSO THE CASE OF ONE'S RIGHT TO PROPER TREATMENT OF WEB-BASED DISCUSSIONS IN A RESPECTFUL FASHION, TO ENSURE ITS OPEN, DEMOCRATIC NATURE. WE HAVE ALL TO SAO PAULO, THEREFORE, WITH A SHARED PURPOSE, THE PURPOSE OF ENHANCING AND DEMOCRATIZING INTERNET GOVERNANCE BY MEANS OF CONSENSUS BUILDING. AND I MEAN CONSENSUS AROUND PRINCIPLES, AND ON A ROADMAP TO BE DEVELOPED FOR ITS FUTURE EVOLUTION.
>A POINT I'D LIKE TO MAKE PLAIN AND CLEAR IS THAT THE IDEA HERE IS NOT, OF COURSE, TO REPLACE FOR THE COUNTLESS FORA OUT THERE THAT ALREADY ADDRESS THE TOPIC OR THE MATTER AT HAND TODAY. THE IDEA, RATHER, IS TO LEND A NEW MOMENTUM TO THE ONGOING DISCUSSIONS IN A MUCH NEEDED SENSE OF URGENCY.
>WE, THEREFORE, WORK FROM TWO PREMISES OR KEY ASSUMPTIONS.
>THE FIRST SUCH PREMISE IS THAT WE ALL WANT TO PROTECT THE INTERNET AS A SPACE, AVAILABLE TO ALL, AS A SHARED ASSET, AND AS SUCH, TRULY HERITAGE OF HUMANKIND, MORE THAN SIMPLY A WORK TOOL AND WAY BEYOND ITS WELL-KNOWN CONTRIBUTION FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH, PROVIDED, OF COURSE, THAT IT BE INCREASINGLY INCLUSIVE AND THE FACT IS THAT THE INTERNET HAS ENABLED THE CONSTANT REINVENTION OF THE WAY PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS INTERACT, PRODUCE CULTURE, AND ORGANIZE THEMSELVES, EVEN POLITICALLY.
>AN OPEN AND DECENT NETWORK ARCHITECTURE FAVORS GREATER ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE. IT HELPS MAKE COMMUNICATIONS MORE DEMOCRATIC AND ALSO FOSTERS CONSTANT INNOVATION. THESE BASIC FEATURES ARE THE FEATURES THAT WE WANT AND THAT SHOULD BE PRESERVED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND IN ANY SCENARIO, IN ORDER TO ULTIMATELY GUARANTEE THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET AND, THUS, BOOST ITS TRANSFORMATIVE EFFECTS FOR AND IN SOCIETIES.
>THE SECOND PREMISE OR ASSUMPTION IS THE DESIRE WE ALL SHARE TO INCORPORATE AN INCREASINGLY BROADER AUDIENCE INTO THIS PROCESS.
>OUR COMMITMENT TO AN OPEN AND INCLUSIVE DEBATE HAS GUIDED THE EFFORTS TO ORGANIZE THIS MEETING IN SAO PAULO TODAY. ALL DIFFERENT WALKS OF LIFE HAVE TAKEN PART IN ITS PREPARATION AND ARE DULY REPRESENTED IN THIS PLANE HALL TODAY.
>WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THOUSANDS OF PARTICIPANTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD WHO ARE JOINED BY VIRTUAL CONNECTIONS IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT POINTS OF THE PLANET.
>THE TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED HAVE BEEN THE SUBJECT OF BROAD AND PRIOR INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC CONSULTATION AND HAVE RECEIVED INPUTS FROM PLAYERS OR STAKEHOLDERS LOCATED IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AND IN DIFFERENT GEOGRAPHIES.
>THESE PROPOSALS IN TURN, OR INPUTS, HAVE SERVED AS THE FOUNDATION TO DEVELOP A DRAFT DOCUMENT, THE DRAFT DOCUMENT TO BE DISCUSSED AND FURTHER ENHANCED HERE IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS.
>I WOULD LIKE TO WELCOME THE WORK CONDUCTED BY THE EXECUTIVE METRIC SECTORAL COMMUNITY AS WELL AS THE HIGH-LEVEL MULTISTAKEHOLDER COMMITTEE FOR THIS JOINT EFFORT.
>THE INTEREST OF BRAZILIANS IN THE INTERNET IS REFLECTED ON THE SUBSTANTIAL PARTICIPATION OF BRAZILIAN NATIONALS IN THE DOMESTIC PUBLIC CAPTION AS FACILITATED BY THE.BR PORTAL. AT THIS TIME, CIVIL SOCIETY IS ORGANIZED IN THIS FORUM, THE SO-CALLED NETmundial ARENA, WHICH IS THE BRAZILIAN LOCUS FOR ACCESS TO TODAY'S SESSIONS.
>MAY I REMIND ALL THE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND FRIENDS ATTENDING THIS SESSION THAT BRAZIL ADVOCATES THAT INTERNET GOVERNANCE SHOULD BE MULTISTAKEHOLDER, MULTILATERAL, DEMOCRATIC, AND TRANSPARENT IN NATURE.
>IT IS OUR VIEW THAT THE MULTISTAKEHOLDER MODEL IS THE BEST WAY TO EXERCISE INTERNET GOVERNANCE.
>VERY MUCH IN ACCORDANCE WITH THAT VIEW, OUR LOCAL GOVERNANCE SYSTEM WHICH HAS BEEN IN OPERATION FOR 20 YEARS HAS RELIED ON ACTUAL PARTICIPATION OF REPRESENTATIVES FROM CIVIL SOCIETY, MEMBERS OF ACADEMIA, THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY, AND THE GOVERNMENT AT LARGE AT THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE -- OR AT THE INTERNET MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE.
>FULLY IN LINE WITH WHAT I JUST SAID, I ALSO ATTACH A GREAT DEAL OF IMPORTANCE TO THE MULTILATERAL PERSPECTIVE, ACCORDING TO WHICH GOVERNMENT PARTICIPATION SHOULD OCCUR ON AN EQUAL FOOTING AMONG GOVERNMENTS IN SUCH A WAY AS TO ENSURE THAT NO COUNTRY WILL HAVE OR BEAR GREATER WEIGHT VIS-A-VIS OTHER COUNTRIES.
>[APPLAUSE ] >>H.E. DILMA ROUSSEFF: OUR ADVOCACY OF THE MULTILATERAL MODEL IS THE NATIONAL CONSEQUENCE OF AN ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLE THAT SHOULD GOVERN TODAY'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AS ENSHRINED IN THE BRAZILIAN FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. I'M TALKING ABOUT EQUALITY AMONG STATES.
>WE, THEREFORE, SEE NO OPPOSITION WHATSOEVER BETWEEN MULTI- -- OR THE MULTILATERAL AND THE MULTISTAKEHOLDER NATURE OF THE INTERNET. ACTUALLY, THE OPPOSITE OF THAT WOULD BE A ONE-SIDED UNILATERAL INTERNET WHICH IS UNTENABLE.
>AN INTERNET THAT IS ULTIMATELY SUBJECT TO INTERGOVERNMENTAL ARRANGEMENTS THAT EXCLUDE OTHER SECTORS OF SOCIETY IS NOT DEMOCRATIC.
>MULTISTAKEHOLDER ARRANGEMENTS THAT ARE IN TURN SUBJECT TO OVERSIGHT BY ONE OR FEW STATES ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE EITHER.
>WE TRULY WANT TO MAKE RELATIONS BETWEEN GOVERNMENTS AND SOCIETIES MORE DEMOCRATIC, AS WELL AS THE RELATIONS AMONG GOVERNMENTS. WE WANT MORE, NOT LESS, DEMOCRACY.
>THE TASK OF PROVIDING A GLOBAL DONATION TO THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE CURRENTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR CENTRAL FUNCTIONS OF THE INTERNET IS NOT ONLY NECESSARY, BUT ALSO AN UN-POSTPONABLE TASK.
>THE COMPLEXITY OF THE TRANSITION AT HAND, WHICH ON THE ONE HAND INVOLVES JURISDICTIONAL COMPETENCE, AS WELL AS ACCOUNTABILITY AND AN AGREEMENT WITH MULTIPLE STAKEHOLDERS, DOES NOT, NEVERTHELESS, MAKE IT LESS URGENT A TASK.
>THAT IS WHY I'D LIKE TO AGAIN WELCOME THE RECENTLY VOICED INTENTION OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO REPLACE ITS INSTITUTIONAL LINKAGE WITH THE AUTHORITY FOR -- OR WITH THE INTERNET AUTHORITY FOR NUMBER ASSIGNMENT, IANA, AND THE INTERNET CORPORATION FOR NAMES AND NUMBER ASSIGNMENTS, ICANN, BY A GLOBAL MANAGEMENT OF THESE INSTITUTIONS FROM NOW ONWARDS, A NEW INSTRUMENTAL AND LEGAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE ISDN UNDER THE RESPONSIBILITY OF IANA AND ICANN SHOULD BE BUILT IN SUCH A WAY AS TO INCLUDE BROAD-RANGING INVOLVEMENT OF ALL SECTORS THAT HAVE AN INTEREST IN THE MATTER WAY BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL STAKEHOLDERS OR PLAYERS.
>EACH SECTOR, OF COURSE, PERFORMS DIFFERENT ROLES BASED ON LIKEWISE DIFFERENTIATED RESPONSIBILITIES.
>THE OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF THE INTERNET SHOULD CONTINUE BEING LED BY ITS TECHNICAL COMMUNITY. MAY I, AT THIS POINT, VOICE MY PUBLIC RECOGNITION -- AND THIS IS ON BEHALF OF MY GOVERNMENT -- TO THESE PEOPLE WHO DEVOTE THEIR TIME AND ENERGY ON A DAY-TO-DAY BASIS TO KEEPING THE INTERNET AS AN OPEN, STABLE, AND SECURE PLATFORM, A KEY EFFORT WHICH REMAINS LARGELY INVISIBLE IN THE EYES OF MOST OF US END USERS.
>MATTERS PERTAINING TO SOVEREIGNTY SUCH AS CYBERCRIME, BREACH OF RIGHTS, ECONOMIC ISSUES OR TRANSNATIONAL ECONOMIC ISSUES, AND THREATS OF CYBER-ATTACKS ARE THE PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY OF STATES.
>THE TASK AT HAND IS, ABOVE ALL, TO ENSURE THAT STATES WILL HAVE AT THEIR AVAIL THE TOOLS THAT WILL ALLOW THEM TO FULFILL THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES BEFORE THEIR CITIZENS, TO INCLUDE THE GUARANTEE OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS. RIGHTS WHICH ARE ENSURED OFFLINE SHOULD BE EQUALLY INSURED ONLINE.
>THESE RIGHTS THRIVE UNDER THE SHELTER AND NOT IN THE ABSENCE OF THE STATE.
>IN ORDER FOR THE GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE TO BE TRULY DEMOCRATIC, MECHANISMS ARE REQUIRED TO ENABLE GREATER PARTICIPATION OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN ALL DIFFERENT SECTORS.
>THE MATTERS THAT ARE IN THE INTEREST OF THESE COUNTRIES THAT ARE THE HEAVY-DUTY USERS OF THE INTERNET, TOPICS SUCH AS, FOR EXAMPLE, EXPANDING CONNECTIVITY, ACCESSIBILITY, AND THE RESPECT TO DIVERSITY, SHOULD BE CENTRAL ON THE INTERNATIONAL AGENDA.
>IT IS NOT ENOUGH FOR FORA TO BE OPEN FROM A PURELY FORMAL STANDPOINT. WE MUST FURTHER IDENTIFY AND REMOVE THE VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE BARRIERS TO ACTUAL PARTICIPATION OF THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF EVERY COUNTRY OR ELSE WE WOULD BE ULTIMATELY RESTRICTING OR LIMITING THE DEMOCRATIC ROLE AND THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL REACH OF THE INTERNET.
>THE EFFORT AT HAND FURTHER REQUIRES THAT THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM BE FURTHER STRENGTHENED AS A DIALOGUE FORUM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
>IT ALSO REQUIRES A COMPREHENSIVE, BROAD-RANGING REVIEW OF THE 10 YEARS FOLLOWING THE SUMMIT -- WORLD SUMMIT MEETING OF INFORMATION SOCIETY AS WELL AS A DEEPER DISCUSSION ON ETHICS AND PRIVACY AT THE UNESCO LEVEL.
>GIVEN THE ABOVE, MAY I SAY THAT WE ARE STRONG BELIEVERS THAT THE CYBER-SPACE -- AND I'M SURE THAT BELIEF IS SHARED BY ALL OF US -- THE CYBER-SPACE SHOULD BE THE TERRITORY OF TRUST, HUMAN RIGHTS, CITIZENSHIP, COLLABORATION, AND PEACE.
>TO ACHIEVE THESE OBJECTIVES, WE MUST AGREE ON BASIC PRINCIPLES THAT WILL ULTIMATELY GUIDE INTERNET GOVERNANCE.
>AS REGARDS PRIVACY, THE RESOLUTION PASSED BY THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION WAS AN IMPORTANT STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, BUT WE MUST -- BUT WE STILL HAVE MUCH PROGRESS TO MAKE.
>ANY DATA COLLECTION OR TREATMENT SHOULD ONLY BE CARRIED OUT WITH FULL AGREEMENT OF THE PARTIES INVOLVED OR AS LEGALLY PROVIDED FOR.
>HOWEVER, THE DISCUSSION ON PRINCIPLES IS MUCH MORE COMPREHENSIVE. IT SHOULD -- AND I STRESS IT SHOULD -- INCLUDE UNIVERSAL INTERNET ACCESS, WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY KEY FOR THE WEB TO SERVE AS A TOOL FOR HUMAN AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT SO AS TO ULTIMATELY HELP BUILD INCLUSIVE, NONDISCRIMINATORY SOCIETIES.
>IT SHOULD ALSO INCLUDE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND NET NEUTRALITY AS AN SINE BRAZIL HAS ITS CONTRIBUTIONS TO MAKE FOLLOWING A BROAD RANGING DISCUSSION, DOMESTIC PROCESS THAT HAS ULTIMATELY LED TO THE PASSING OF THE INTERNET CIVIL FRAMEWORK ACT AS PASSED YESTERDAY BY CONGRESS IN WHICH I HAD THE HONOR OF SANCTIONING JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO. THE LAW -- AND I MAY QUOTE TIM BERNERS-LEE WHO QUOTED THE LAW AS A PRESIDENT TO THE WEB ON THE OCCASION OF THE 20th -- OR 25th ANNIVERSARY AS SUCH THE LAW CLEARLY SHOWS THE FEASIBILITY AND SUCCESS OF OPEN MULTISECTORIAL DISCUSSIONS AS WELL AS THE INNOVATIVE USE OF THE INTERNET AS PART OF ONGOING DISCUSSIONS AS A TOOL AND A INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION PLATFORM.
>I THINK IT IS FAIR TO SAY THAT THE PROCESS THAT LED UP TO THE CIVIL FRAMEWORK ACT CAN BE DESCRIBED AS A VIRTUOUS PROCESS IN THAT OUR CIVIL FRAMEWORK, AS IT CURRENTLY STANDS, HAS BEEN EVEN FURTHER APPRECIATED GIVEN THE PROCESS THAT PRECEDED THE EFFORTS TO ESTABLISH IT AS SUCH.
>MAY I, THEREFORE, CALL TO MIND THAT OUR CIVIL FRAMEWORK ESTABLISHES PRINCIPLES, GUARANTEES AND USER RIGHTS, CLEARLY ASSIGNING DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS AND GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ON AN ONLINE ENVIRONMENT. AND EQUALLY IMPORTANT, IT ENSHRINES NETWORK NEUTRALITY AS A KEY PRINCIPLE, A MAJOR GAIN WHICH WE WERE ABLE TO MATERIALIZE AS A CONSENSUS IN THE PROCESS.
>IT ENSHRINES NETWORK NEUTRALITY BY ESTABLISHING THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY SHOULD TREAT ANY DATA PACKAGES ON IN A --- FASHION WITH ACCOUNT TO AGENT, DESTINATION, SERVICE, TERMINAL OR APPLICATION. THE LAW OR FRAMEWORK AS HAS TRULY ENSHRINED NETWORK NEUTRALITY. FURTHERMORE, COMPANIES MAY NOT BLOCK, MONITOR, FILTER OR ANALYZE THE CONTENT OF DATA PACKAGES.
>THE CIVIL FRAMEWORK PROTECTS CITIZENS' PRIVACY IN THE ONLY IN THE RELATION WITH THE GOVERNMENTS BUT ALSO WITH RELATION WITH THE INTERNET COMPANIES. COMMUNICATIONS ARE, BY DEFINITION, NON-VIABLE EXCEPT BY A SPECIFIC COURT ORDER TO THAT EFFECT. THE RECENTLY PASSED LAW FURTHER CONTAINS CLEAR RULES GOVERNING WITHDRAWAL OF CONTENT FROM THE INTERNET. ALWAYS, OF COURSE, WITH A VIEW TO ENSURING THAT THE APPLICABLE COURT ORDERS BE AVAILABLE.
>THE CIVIL NETWORK IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE FACT THAT THE INTERNET DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO IT WITHOUT A DISCUSSION PROCESS AND THE INVOLVEMENT OF NATIONAL STATES. AS SUCH, IT STANDS AS AN INNOVATIVE BENCHMARK MILESTONES BECAUSE IN ITS DEVELOPMENT PROCESS, WE HEARD THE VOICES OF THE STREETS, THE NETWORKS AND OF DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONS.
>FOR ALL OF THE ABOVE, IT IS OUR FIRM CONVICTION THAT ON A NETWORK, EACH NODE MATTERS. THE LARGE NODES SUCH AS THE MEGA PORTALS TO WHICH A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF WORLD TRAFFIC CONVERGES AND SMALL NODES ARE EQUALLY IMPORTANT.
>AT THIS TIME, I WOULD LIKE TO BRING TO THE FORE A KEY FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE AND TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT THIS COUNTRY HAS TAKEN A MAJOR STEP FORWARD AS PART OF THE ONGOING PROCESS WHEREBY WE NOT ONLY INCLUDE BUT ALSO GUARANTEE A STEADY STREAM OF INCOME TO A SUBSTANTIAL SHARE OF THE POPULATION.
>INCOME AND ACCESS ARE EQUALLY IMPORTANT. WE BELIEVE THAT IT IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT TO ENSURE WE HAVE PLACE IN SOCIETY WHERE CITIZENS HAVE THEIR OWN VIEWS AND THEY ARE ABLE TO VOICE THEIR VIEWS FREELY. HENCE, THE INVALUABLE DEGREE OF IMPORTANCE WE ATTACH TO THE INTERNET IN OUR SOCIETY.
>WE ALSO HAVE YET ANOTHER MAJOR ASSET. I'M TALKING ABOUT BRAZIL'S ETHNIC CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY. IT IS OURS TO NOT ONLY RESPECT BUT ALSO PROMOTE AND FOSTER OUR CULTURAL DIVERSITY. WE DO NOT WISH TO IMPOSE BELIEFS, CUSTOMS, VALUES OR POLITICAL VIEWS ON ANYONE.
>MAY I PARTICULARLY HIGHLIGHT THE THOUSANDS OF USERS THAT MULTIPLY ON A DAY-TO-DAY BASIS NOT ONLY HERE BUT IN ALL THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF LARGE URBAN AREAS AND ALSO IN TRADITIONAL COMMUNITIES OUT THERE. ALL OF THESE NEW USERS ENRICH THE NETWORK WITH NEW ALTERNATIVE IDEAS AND ACCOUNTS OF THE WORLD, NEW WORLD VISIONS. THESE PEOPLE MAKE THE INTERNET A STRONGER AND MORE UNIVERSAL PLATFORM.
>AND IT IS ON THEIR BEHALF AND BECAUSE OF THEM, THAT I WOULD LIKE TO AGAIN VOICE MY THANKS TO ALL OF YOU FOR ATTENDING THIS MEETING IN SAO PAULO. FOR US, THE INTERNET IS A MODERN-DAY PRO EMANCIPATION, PRO TRANSFORMATION TOOL THAT CHANGES SOCIETY. SWEEPING CHANGES ARE INTRODUCED THROUGH THE INTERNET. YOU ARE ALL MOST WELCOME. AND I HOPE YOU WILL ALL COME BACK FOR THE WORLD CUP OF ALL CUPS. IF NOT, MAKE SURE YOU WATCH IT THROUGH THE INTERNET. THANK YOU VERY MUCH AGAIN.
>[APPLAUSE ]
>>> LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENCE OF YOU ALL. WE CLOSE NOW THIS CEREMONY.
>
>
>
>

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/netmundial-transcript-archive

NETmundial Day 0

achal — 2014-04-23T10:58:50Z

Day O of NETmundial began at Arena NetMundial, an alternative-ish, Brazilian counterpart to the official "multistakeholder" meeting being organised at the very expensive Grand Hyatt. Arena NETmundial began today and will extend until the last day of NETmundial; it's being organised at the very democratic Centro Cultural São Paulo - free to all, no registration required - and offers space for a whole host of organised and spontaneous activity.

Every evening is capped by a music performance, and the opening act was a stand-out two-hour visual extravaganza by Tom Zé, Tropicalia's most avant-garde exponent. Lula (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the previous President of Brazil) was supposed to join us at 7 p.m. today to discuss Marco Civil da Internet - the Brazilian bill for "civil rights" on the Internet - but was a no show.

No matter: Marco Civil was passed into law by the Senate at about 8 p.m. this evening, and President Dilma Rousseff (who reportedly willed this meeting into being) is expected to sign her assent to it tomorrow morning at the opening of NETmundial, which she is scheduled to attend. (While the global press around Marco Civil is unanimously positive and upbeat, it's worth noting that there is one problematic provision — the issue of data retention — that many folks from Brazilian civil society see as a huge loss).

A host of civil society groups spent the day at Arena NETmundial figuring out how to stage a coordinated, detailed and forceful response to what many saw as watered-down text from the NETmundial organisers. (Several corporate representatives and some academics also saw it as watered-down, but from another direction).

There are several puzzling aspects to the shape NETmundial has assumed. What began as a response to the Snowden leaks — the unprecedented scale of the US government sponsored, NSA-executed surveillance — has become a meeting that strangely doesn't have all that much to say about surveillance, perhaps thanks to the various partners roped in to manage the process. There is little that references the bitter SOPA/PIPA battles of two years ago, and not much in the NETmundial outcome document that addresses the manner in which a sovereign state has outrageously sought to export its national application of copyright onto the global Internet landscape. The civil society meeting produced language to address both these situations.

Perhaps the most confounding aspect of this meeting is the manner in which the word "multistakeholder" is thrown about by people of every political stripe. Seemingly, if there is one thing that most everyone, from governments to businesses to civil society activists at NETmundial agree on, it is that multistakeholderism has an essential place in the future of Internet governance.

That being as it is, I asked a bunch of people what their interpretation of the term was, and many agreed to be recorded. Their answers were surprising, to say the least.

This is what they said:

Q: What does "multi-stakeholder" mean? What is "multi-stakeholderism"?

I think multistakeholderism is a kind of democracy, which means, in the public policy area, other than the critical internet resources, usually only governments make public policy. They sometimes consult with other stakeholders, but it is not usually open or transparent and it is very selective. They only choose the experts they like. I think "multistakeholder" is useful in comparison with an inter-governmental or governmental process.

Byoungil Oh from the Korean Progressive Network Jinbonet

Multistakeholderism is a mechanism to ensure that people who are affected or have the potential to be affected by a policy or a technical decision get to have a say in the decision, in the process, or in coming to a decision, so that their rights — the rights of the affected people — are assured. I think there should be some sort of equity, currently the way multistakeholderism is being carried out is that certain stakeholders carry much higher weight and I think that is something that needs to be addressed.

YoungEum Lee from Korea National Open University (Korea)

If multistakeholderism is a form of institutionalising participatory democracy, then it's good. But public policy decision making is only something that the representatives of people can do. For me, that's sacrosanct. When you're taking in views, in consultation, multistakeholderism works. But public policy decision-making, at a global level, has to be a multilateral process. However, it has to be embedded into a huge amount of public consultations, transparencies, accountabilities, etc., which could be a multistakeholder system.

Parminder Jeet Singh from IT for Change (ITFC) (India)

I hate with a passion the concept of multistakeholderism. For me, how it can make sense is by recognising there are multiple stakeholders. And they’re not fixed. But issues affect different people in different ways and these people need to be involved in decision making processes. It's an approach that can potentially democratise processes by identifying who is affected by those processes and making sure they participate in them. But turning them into an -ism which is undifferentiated, which doesn't recognise conflict, power, voice, and that there are differences, makes it meaningless and also possibly dangerous.

Anriette Esterhuysen from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) (South Africa)

This multistakeholderism thing I think is bullshit. We now a have a clear picture of technology as a whole being turned against its users, being turned into a tool for oppression, for control. And when you look at the most important struggles of the 20th century, whether women's rights or civil rights or gay rights, it never happened with a total global consensus. This is an illusion. What we need is to affirm that we citizens have the right to decide. We are the only stakeholders here, because we are the co-owners of the Internet as a public good.

Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net (France)

Everyone has to participate, and everyone has to decide what is the future of the Internet. I think that we need to improve our networks. There is no real answer here: for me it is very difficult to think of the kind of discussion we will have, but I know that my voice is probably useful for others who are in a similar situation to me.

Pilar Saenz from the Karisma Foundation (Colombia)

Multistakeholderism means that we are going to smash the patriarchy. Ask me what the colour blue means? [Ok: What does the colour blue mean?] The colour blue means we are going to smash the patriarchy.

Jacob Appelbaum, journalist, activist and core member of the TOR Project (USA/Germany)

Ultimately rights are embedded in laws. But when it comes to an international framework, in the current Internet governance model, nothing is based in law, including the domain name system. So the whole structure of international Internet governance is divorced from international law, and that's why, when you talk of a multistakeholder model, what you are really saying is that the market will finally determine what happens. No stakeholder is going to operate against its own interest whether it be governments or corporations. We need an international legal framework, from which the powers - or rights - of Internet governance emerge. Without that you're leaving it to the market. In reality, even today, what we have is a private-sector-led multistakeholder model.

Prabir Purkayastha from Knowledge Commons and the JustNet Coalition (India)

What does multistakeholderism mean? Listen, I'm a brown person from a developing country, and I'm female.

Anonymous

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-day-0

Principles for Internet Governance: NETmundial 2014 — What do the Contributions Reveal?

geetha — 2014-04-23T04:01:21Z

The Global Multi-stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NETmundial) is scheduled for April 23-24, 2014. Towards its stated end of establishing "strategic guidelines related to the use and development of the Internet in the world", NETmundial sought contributions from stakeholders around the world on two topics: (1) Set of Internet governance principles; (2) Roadmaps for the further evolution of the Internet governance system.

This post analyses the contributions of the academic community to draw out broad agreements and divergences concerning Internet governance principles.

I. Introduction

In two days, a large measure of the global Internet community – governments, the private sector, civil society, technical community and academia – gather in São Paulo, Brazil, for the Global Multi-stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance. The NETmundial (April 23-24, 2014), touted as the World Cup of Internet governance, is a global conference convened and supported by the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, and organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and /1Net, a forum comprising various stakeholders involved and interested in Internet governance. It hopes, importantly, “to establish strategic guidelines related to the use and development of the Internet in the world”. To this end, it sought open-ended Contributions from interested stakeholders on the topics, “Set of Internet governance principles” and “Roadmaps for the further evolution of the Internet governance system”. The agenda for NETmundial may be found here.

To fully utilize the 2 short days available, knowledge of the stakeholder positions, especially their broad agreements and divergences on the two topics, is of immense help. Through a series of posts, I analyse the contributions to NETmundial on the question of Internet governance principles, seeking to dig deep into definitions and interpretations of suggested principles, such as management of Critical Internet Resources (such as the Domain Name System), human rights including freedom of expression and privacy, cyber-security, inclusiveness and participation in Internet governance, etc. In separate posts, I shall analyse contributions of each sector (governments, the private sector, civil society, technical community, academia and ‘Other’) and finally, present an overall analysis of the contributions pitted against the Draft Outcome Document, which is presently under discussion.

II. The Contributions

The NETmundial has received 187 contributions from 46 countries. Sector break-ups are given below:

Sector	Number of Contributions (187)
Academia	20
Governments	28
Private Sector	43
Civil Society	61
Technical Community	16
‘Other’ (such as UNESCO, the European Commission, etc.)	19

A quick look at the contributors indicates that contributions are primarily from North America, Europe, South and East Asia, and South America. No or very few contributions were made from large parts of Africa and South East Asia, Central and West Asia, Eastern Europe and Western South America. We present a graphical representation of contributing countries here.

Of the contributions, stakeholders from various sectors contributed to the two topics listed above in the following manner:

Sector	Set of Internet Governance Principles	Roadmaps for Further Evolution of the Internet Governance System	Combined: Internet Governance Principles & Roadmaps
Academia	7	7	6
Government	7	4	17
Private Sector	11	3	29
Civil Society	25	21	15
Technical Community	8	5	3
‘Other’	7	4	8

Despite the above classification, I focus on all 187 contributions for analysis. This is as some contributions expressly set out principles while others do not. Therefore, eliciting and analyzing principles from stakeholder contributions has involved a certain amount of subjective maneuvering. However, such elicitation has been restricted on the following bases:

The contribution is externally categorized as falling under either “Set of Internet governance principles” or “Combined – Internet governance principles & Roadmaps”.
Internally, the document places principles under rubrics of ‘Internet governance principles’.
Internally, the document makes references to Internet governance principles before setting out (without rubrics) principles.

With this caveat, I go on to discuss the NETmundial contributions from the academic community to Internet governance principles.

Part I: Academia

Of the academic contributions, the main contributors are Africa (Kenya – 1, Sudan – 3), Europe (Germany – 1, Poland – 1, Portugal – 1, Russia – 2, Ukraine – 1), South America (Argentina – 1, Brazil – 3) and the United States (8). No Asian country has made an academic contribution, and as evident from above, academia is geographically severely under-represented. Furthermore, only 4 out of 20 contributions expressly set out Internet governance principles. These four are:

Semantics aside, certain broad, high-level consensus emerges within the academic community. On substantive principles of governance on the Internet, the greatest support is found for freedom of express and access to information, with 6 contributions emphasizing this. Equally important is Internet universality and non-discriminatory (3 contributions), universal access to the Internet (6). Protection of privacy and permissible levels of surveillance come a close second, with 5 contributions referring to these. Cyber-security (5), respect for human rights (4) and support for net neutrality (3) and cultural and linguistic diversity on the Internet (3) also emerge as issues of concern for the academic community. The UNESCO and academics from Sudan emphasize training and education to use the Internet. Inter-operability (2) and a single, unfragmented Internet (2) also find a place in the academic community’s contributions.

With regard to processual principles for Internet governance, inclusiveness and participation are the most important concerns (5). The academic community asks for an open, transparent and multi-stakeholder Internet governance system (4), calling for international cooperation (2) among governments and other stakeholders. Interestingly, one contribution requires that the role of governments in the multi-stakeholder model be limited to “the facilitation of the participation of their domestic stakeholder communities in Internet governance processes”, while a Brazilian contribution advocates a multilateral model.

While no contribution expressly calls for these principles to underscore global Internet governance, the author believes that a high-level consensus may be gleaned in favour of respect for and protection of human rights, especially freedom of expression, access to information, privacy and protection from unwarranted domestic or extraterritorial surveillance. This is further supported by cyber-security concerns. The call for universal access to the Internet, alongside mention of net neutrality, emphasizes inclusiveness and non-discrimination. Processually as well, inclusiveness and participation (including equal participation) of all stakeholders finds the largest support, reflected in the calls for multi-stakeholder models of Internet governance.

No glaring divergences exist with regard to human rights or principles of governance on the Internet. The only major divergence amongst academia is the call for multilateral or multi-stakeholder models of Internet governance. While a majority of the contributions call for multi-stakeholder models, the Brazilian contribution (linked above) calls for “Open, multilateral and democratic governance, carried out with transparency by stimulating collective creativity and the participation of society, Governments and the private sector”, while at the same time supporting a “real multi-stakeholder governance model for the Internet based on the full involvement of all relevant actors and organizations”. Indeed, even this divergence is marked by a common emphasis on open, transparent and inclusive participation in Internet governance.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/principles-of-internet-governance-net-mundial-2014

6th Biannual Surveillance and Society Conference

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T04:57:59Z

Malavika Jayaram is a speaker at the conference organized by Eticas Research and Consulting at the University of Barcelona and CCCB from April 24 to 26, 2014.

Malavika will present on the UID and biometrics at the session on “Surveillance: Ambiguities and Uncertainties". Malavika's talk title is "Biometrics in beta: experimenting on a nation (while normalising surveillance for 1.2 billion people)" and is being held on April 26. See the full event details on this page.

In the developing world, privacy is often portrayed as a luxury, as something alien to local culture and of interest only to the elite. This ignores the probability of the most marginalized sections of a society being disproportionately impacted by privacy intrusive technologies. The hype about ‘big data’, ‘open data’, ‘data for development’, ‘ICT4D’ and other buzzwords often ignores the fact that the global south is particularly vulnerable to data collection and processing. Literacy issues (lingual and technical), a massive digital divide, desperate socioeconomic conditions and the lack of a robust data protection law render ideas of consent or tradeoffs all but meaningless.

Techno-utopian welfare schemes present technology as progressive, neutral and frictionless – a seductive and compelling narrative in a region wracked by inequalities, corruption, lack of transparency and structural violence. This vision underpins the world’s largest biometric ID project, which has already registered the irises and fingerprints of 540 million people without even being completed. Yet the assumption that bodies can be rendered into infallible verifiers, as repositories of unchanging truth, ignores embedded biases and normative baselines within such technologies. Welfare projects are further complicated when they are architected as public-private partnerships: the collusion of governmental and corporate agendas in creating massive databases and profiles, in a manner that transforms the citizen-state relationship in profound ways, has sweeping implications for choice, autonomy, anonymity and ultimately, democracy. This is true even when the systems function as intended, without mechanical failure, data breaches, or other consequences of trading privacy for convenience, welfare and security.

I would like to discuss the risks of using technologies such as biometrics to solve socioeconomic problems, and their potential for excluding the very demographics that they seek to include. I intend to locate my presentation in the context of India’s growing surveillance state, which deliberately intends to use the unique identification number to link disparate databases. I propose to describe the new Centralised Monitoring System, the relative legal vacuum in which data is mined and harvested, and the shaky constitutional foundations on which many of these new regimes stand. In so doing, I will effectively have provided a tour of India’s Rogue’s Gallery of recent incursions into the zone of privacy, free speech, informational self-determination and dignity. I hope also to redress in some small measure the largely western focus of academic and policy debates in this field, despite the risks of developing countries seeking to commoditize and export identity schemes, normalize censorship or opportunistically benefit from the west no longer having the moral ground to resist third country surveillance practices.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ssn-2014-sixth-biannual-surveillance-and-society-conference

South African Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013

divij — 2014-05-05T06:59:51Z

As the rapid spread of technology in developing countries allows exponentially increasing availability of and access to personal data through automatic data processing, governments are beginning to recognize the necessity to evolve policies addressing data security and privacy concerns.

The source of pressure for strict legal regulations addressing data protection are both the growing recognition of the importance of privacy rights, as well as the risk of falling behind on international standards on data protection, which would hamper the potential of developing countries as destinations for outsourcing industries which depend largely on processing of information.[1] The Protection of Personal Information Act enacted by South Africa is an example of a policy which enables a comprehensive framework for data security and privacy and is a model for other developing nations which are weighing the costs and benefits of establishing a secure data protection regime.

The South African law traces the right to protection of personal information back to Section 14 of the South African Constitution, which provides for a right against the unlawful collection, retention, dissemination and use of personal information. The law establishes strict restrictions and regulations on the processing of personal information, which includes information including relating to race, gender, sexual orientation, medical information, biometric information and personal opinion. The processing of personal information under the Act must comply with 8 principles, namely - accountability, lawful purpose for processing and processing limitation, purpose specification, information quality, openness and notice of collection, openness, reasonable security safeguards and subject participation, in line with the international standards for fair information practices.[2] The Act also recognizes ‘special personal information’, including religious or political beliefs, race, sexual orientation and trade union membership, as well as any personal information of children below the age of 18, which require stricter safeguards for processing,. Similar to the draft Indian legislation on privacy, the Act contemplates an independent regulatory mechanism, the information regulator, which would have all the necessary powers to effectively monitor compliance under the Act, including the power for punishing offences under the Act.

The Protection of Personal Information Act contains 115 Sections and is meant to be an exhaustive and heavily detailed policy to bring South Africa’s laws in line with EU and international regulations on data protection.[3] Though such progressive policies should be a model for policy changes in other developing nations, one aspect in which the law fails is to address increasing privacy concerns arising from widespread government-enabled surveillance and data retention. The POPI excludes from its application the processing of information related to national security, terrorist related activities and public safety, combating of money laundering, investigation of proof of offences, the prosecution of offenders, execution of sentences or other security measures, subject to adequate safeguards being established by the legislature for protection of personal information. Unfortunately, the ambiguous wording of the exclusions, especially in determining “adequate safeguards”, leaves its interpretation and application open for governments to engage in mass surveillance in the name of public security. Over the past few years, governments have taken to using technology and information, particularly through mass surveillance, to collect comprehensive information on their citizens and violate their liberties and privacy. In India, particularly with programs like the Central Monitoring System being implemented, any policy which purportedly aims at the protection of privacy must not only seek bare minimal compliances with the current international standards for data protection, but should also address the mass, unrestricted surveillance and data retention which is taking place in the name of public security.

Developing nations like South Africa and India face significant challenges in ensuring individual privacy, particularly the lack of sufficient legal safeguards for the protection of privacy. The right to privacy is often dismissed as an elitist or western concept, which does not have value in the context of developing nations, without engaging with the realities and the nuances of the right. Further, the costs of expensive technical safeguards means private and public bodies are required to spend significant resources in maintaining data security and these factors often outweigh privacy considerations in policy debates. The South African Act, hence, serves both as an important model for legislation and as an indication that the right to privacy is valuable to recognize in developing countries as well.

[1]. Article 25 of the European Union Directive on the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of such data (Directive 95/46/EC) prohibits the transfer of data to non-member states which do not comply with adequate data protection norms.

[2]. http://oecdprivacy.org/

[3]. Link to Act: www.gov.za/documents/download.php?f=204368

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/south-african-protection-personal-information-act-2013

Privacy Law in India: A Muddled Field - I

bhairav — 2014-05-05T06:17:06Z

The absence of a statute expressing the legislative will of a democracy to forge a common understanding of privacy is a matter of concern, says BHAIRAV ACHARYA in the first of a two part series.

The article was published in the Hoot on April 15, 2014.

Privacy evades definition and for this reason sits uneasily with law. The multiplicity of everyday privacy claims and transgressions by ordinary people, and the diversity of situations in which these occur, confuse any attempt to create a common meaning of privacy to inform law. Instead, privacy is negotiated contextually, and the circumstances that permit a privacy claim in one situation might form the basis for its transgression in another.

It is easy to understand privacy when it is claimed in relation to the body; it is beyond argument that every person has a right to privacy in relation to their bodies, especially intimate areas. It is also accepted that homes and private property secure to their owners a high degree of territorial privacy. But what of privacy from intrusive stares, or even from camera surveillance, when in a public place? Or of biometric privacy to protect against surreptitious fingerprint capturing or DNA collection from the things we touch and the places we visit every day? Or the privacy of a conversation in a restaurant from other patrons? Clearly, there are multiple meanings of privacy that are negotiated by individuals all the time.

Law has, where social custom has demanded, clothed some aspects of human activity with an expectation of privacy. In relation to bodily privacy, this is achieved by both ordinary common law without reference to privacy at all, such as the offences of battery and rape; and, by special criminal law that is premised on an expectation of privacy, such as the discredited offences regarding women’s modesty in sections 354 and 509 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), and the new offences of voyeurism and stalking contained in sections 354C and 354D of the IPC.

The law also privileges communications that are made through telephones, letters, and emails by regulating the manner of their interception in special circumstances. Conditional interception provisions with procedural safeguards – which, for several reasons, are flawed and ineffective – exist to protect the privacy of such communications in section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, section 26 of the Indian Post Office Act, 1898, and section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Territorial privacy, which is afforded by possession of private property, is ordinarily protected by the broad offence of trespass – in India, these are the offences of criminal trespass, house trespass, and lurking house-trespass contained in sections 441 to 443 of the IPC – and house-breaking, which is akin to the offence of breaking and entering in other jurisdictions, in section 445 of the IPC.

Some measure of protection is provided to biometric information, such as fingerprints and DNA, by limiting their lawful collection by the state: sections 53, 53A, and 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 permit collections of biometric information from arrestees in certain circumstances; this is in addition to a colonial-era collection regime created by the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920. However, nothing expressly prohibits the police or anybody else from non-consensually developing DNA profiles from human material that is routinely left behind by our bodies, for instance, saliva on restaurant cutlery or hair at the barbershop.

Physical surveillance, by which a person is visually monitored to invade locational privacy, is also inadequately regulated. Besides man-on-woman stalking, which was criminalised only one year ago, no effective measures exist to otherwise protect locational privacy. Indian courts regularly employ their injunctive power but have been loath to issue equitable remedies such as restraining orders to secure privacy. Police surveillance, which is usually covert, is an executive function that is practised with wide latitude under every state police statute and government-issued rules and regulations thereunder with little or no oversight. The risk of misuse of these powers is compounded by the increasingly widespread use of surveillance cameras sans regulation.

Other technologies too compromise privacy: GPS-enabled mobile phones offer precise locational information, presumably consensually; cell-tower tracking, almost always non-consensually, is ordered by Indian police without any procedurally built-in safeguards; radio frequency identification to locate vehicles is sought to be made mandatory; and, satellite-based surveillance is available to intelligence agencies, none of which are registered or regulated unlike in other liberal democracies.

No uniform privacy standard in law

None of these laws applies a uniform privacy standard nor are they measured against a commonly understood meaning of privacy. The lack of a statutory definition is not the issue; the lack of a statute that expresses the legislative will of a democracy to forge a common understanding of privacy to inform all kinds of human activity is the concern. Ironically, the impetus to draft a privacy law has come from abroad. Foreign senders of personal information – credit card data, home addresses, phone numbers, and the like – to India’s information technology and outsourcing industry demand institutionalised protection for their privacy.

Pressure from the European Union, which has the world’s strongest information privacy standards and with which India is currently negotiating a free trade agreement, to enact a data protection regime to address privacy has not gone unanswered. The Indian government – specifically, the Department of Personnel and Training, the same department that administers the Right to Information Act, 2005 – is currently drafting a privacy law to govern data protection and surveillance. At stake is the continued growth of India’s information technology and outsourcing sectors that receive significant amounts of European personal data for processing, which drives national exports and gross domestic product.

An inferred right

For its part, the Supreme Court has examined more than a few privacy claims to find, intermittently and unconvincingly, that there is a constitutional right to privacy, but the contours of this right remain vague. In 1962, the Supreme Court rejected the existence of a privacy right in Kharak Singh’s case which dealt with intrusive physical surveillance by the police.

The court was not unanimous; the majority of judges expressly rejected the notion of locational privacy while declaring that privacy was not a constituent of personal liberty, a lone dissenting judge found the opposite to be true and, furthermore, held that surveillance had a chilling effect on freedom. In 1975, in the Gobind case that presented substantially similar facts, the Supreme Court leaned towards, but held short of, recognising a right to privacy. It did find that privacy flowed from personal autonomy, which bears the influence of American jurisprudence, but subjected it to the interests of government; the latter prevailed.

However, in the PUCL case of 1997 that challenged inadequately regulated wiretaps, the Supreme Court declared that phone conversations were protected by a fundamental right to privacy that flowed from Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. To intrude upon this right, the court said, a law was necessary that is just, fair, and reasonable. If this principle were to be extended beyond communications privacy to, say, identity cards, the Aadhar project, which is being implemented without the sanction of an Act of Parliament, would be judicially stopped.

But what does “law” mean? Is it only the law of our Constitution and courts? What of the law that governed Indian societies before European colonisation brought the word ‘privacy’ to our legal system? Classical Hindu law – distinct from colonial and post-independence Hindu law – also recognises and enforces expectations of privacy in different contexts. It recognised the sanctity of the home and family, the autonomy of the community, and prescribed penalties for those who breached these norms. So, too, does Islamic law: all schools of Islamic jurisprudence – ‘fiqh’ – recognise privacy as an enforceable right.

Different words and concepts are used to secure this right, and these words have meanings and connotations of their own. But, the hermeneutics of privacy notwithstanding, this belies the common view that privacy is not an Indian value. Privacy may or may not be a cultural norm, but it has existed in India and South Asia in different forms for millennia.

Bhairav Acharya is a constitutional lawyer practising in the Supreme Court of India. He advises the Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, on privacy law and other constitutional issues.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hoot-bhairav-acharya-april-15-2014-privacy-law-in-india-a-muddled-field-1

Parties give short shrift to privacy

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T05:54:11Z

Both the Congress and BJP vision documents disappoint, but the real surprise is the CPI-M document that deals with cyber issues in a substantial manner.

The article by Pratap Vikram Singh was published in GovernanceNow.com on April 12, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

For civil rights activists in the internet and cyber space, the election manifestoes of major political parties including the Congress and the BJP have come as a disappointment. Both the parties are mute on privacy. In the recent past there has been a vociferous demand for a strong legislation on privacy. A draft bill on privacy has been making rounds of the bureaucratic circle for three years. Manifestoes are also silent on the need for correction in the information technology act, which activists say is characterised by 'arbitrariness and lack of processes'.

“A healthy democracy gives equal weightage to transparency and privacy. It’s disappointing that the two parties have overlooked these two,” says Sunil Abraham, director of the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). Both Congress and BJP don’t mention about the lack of implementation of the open data policy. The policy, aka NDSAP 2012, requires all departments and ministries to put high value data sets in public domain within a few months of the policy enforcement. The parties are also silent on need for a balancing act on surveillance and civil liberty.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of Medianama.com, a portal posting news and analysis on digital media, says “The parties could have talked about reforming the IT legislation, especially the Section 79 and IT Rules 2011 which gives the intermediaries—the ISPs, websites, and cyber cafes—the power to strike down content without even hearing the author.” The law, currently, doesn’t provide a redressal mechanism to the author.

Similarly both parties are mute on internet governance, which has become a major global issue after the US showed willingness to cede its monopolistic oversight over the body governing the internet ICANN.

The Congress manifesto is also blank on making websites and systems accessible for specially-abled population, also called as e-accessibility. While the BJP too doesn’t talk about making government portals e-accessible, it speaks about the use of technology to deliver low cost quality education to specially-abled students. Issuance of universal identity cards for all applicable government benefits and disabled friendly access to public facilities are two other things which the party promises to implement if voted in power.

Both election manifestoes don’t mention concerns related to telecommunication sector. Broadband is the only term that appears in the two manifestoes. The Congress promises to bring high speed Internet to every village panchayat. This is not a new initiative; a project under DoT called national optical fibre network, NOFN, proposes to do the same. The BJP’s manifesto says, “Deployment of broadband in every village would be a thrust area.”

Both parties also talk about putting public services online. There is also nothing concrete about promotion of indigenous manufacturing in electronics and IT hardware. While there are serious omissions in the two manifestoes, the manifesto of the CPI-M surprises many, highlighting key issues concerning civil rights and liberty.

The manifesto talks about ‘demilitarisation of cyber space’ and ‘protecting Internet and telecommunications networks from cyber attacks and surveillance by building indigenous capability’. Edward Snowden’s revelation of the PRISM programme seems to be the context. It also talks about promoting ‘free software and other such new technologies which are free from monopoly ownership through copyrights or patents; knowledge commons should be promoted across disciplines, like biotechnology and drug discovery’.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/governance-now-april-12-2014-pratap-vikram-singh-parties-give-short-shrift-to-privacy

The Take Down of Free Speech Online

praskrishna — 2014-04-06T05:19:50Z

As part of a study to access rate of compliance, in 2011, the Centre for Internet and Society Bangalore sent frivolous “take down” requests to seven prominent intermediaries. The study showed exactly how easy it is to take down online content.

This was published in Newslaundry on April 1, 2014. CIS research on Intermediary Liabilities is quoted.

CIS found that six out of the seven intermediaries “over complied” with the notices. Facts such as these about intermediary liability were discussed in a panel discussion “Intermediary Liability & Freedom of Expression in India” in Delhi on March 27, 2014 organised by Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University in collaboration with the Global Network Initiative.

The panel also included Professor Ranbir Singh, Vice Chancellor of NLU, Jermyn Brooks (Independent Chair – Global Network Initiative, Washington DC), Shyam Divan (Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India) and SiddharthVaradarajan (Journalist). They discussed proxy censorship by government through private players and how e-business’ lose out on opportunities because of the current legal framework in the country within which intermediaries have to function.

According to Section 2(1)(w) of The Information Technology Act, 2000, “intermediary”- with respect to any particular electronic message -signifies any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that message or provides any service with respect to that message.According to Rishab Dara, recipient of the Google policy Fellowship 2011, in an article titled, Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet, “intermediaries are widely recognised as essential cogs in the wheel of exercising the right to freedom of expression on the Internet. Most major jurisdictions around the world have introduced legislations for limiting intermediary liability in order to ensure that this wheel does not stop spinning”.

The “safe harbor”or what is also known asIntermediary Liability Laws according to Section 79 of the Information Technology Act are given below:

Intermediaries not to be Liable in Certain Cases

(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in any law for the time being in force but subject to the provisions of sub-sections (2) and (3), an intermediary shall not be liable for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by him.

(2) The provisions of sub-section (1) shall apply if—

(a) the function of the intermediary is limited to providing access to a communication system over which information made available by third parties is transmitted or temporarily stored or hosted; or

(b) the intermediary does not—

(i) initiate the transmission,

(ii) select the receiver of the transmission, and

(iii) select or modify the information contained in the transmission;

(c) the intermediary observes due diligence while discharging his duties under this Act and also observes such other guidelines as the Central Government may prescribe in this behalf.

(3) The provisions of sub-section (1) shall not apply if—

(a) the intermediary has conspired or abetted or aided or induced, whether by threats or promise or othorise in the commission of the unlawful act;

(b) upon receiving actual knowledge, or on being notified by the appropriate Government or its agency that any information, data or communication link residing in or connected to a computer resource controlled by the intermediary is being used to commit the unlawful act, the intermediary fails to expeditiously remove or disable access to that material on that resource without vitiating the evidence in any manner.

Under the Act, the intermediary needs to act on a complaint within 36 hours of a take down notice -failing which they will be liable to legal action if the case is taken to the court.

Shyam Divan spoke about the absurdity of the 36-hour turnaround time that an intermediary has between receiving a complaint and taking down the content. According to him, without any kind of legal option to fall back on, intermediaries decide to comply with such take down notices fearing “serious penalties and possibility of prosecution” which results in “indirect censorship”. He also said, “Domestic constitution in itself is not going to be sufficient”. “Meta-constitutions” which are transnational and have uniform laws across countries could be a possible solution to the current confusion as the internet is a global phenomenon and it would ensure that “the extent of our online rights would not be limited to the constitution of the country”.

Giving the example of hate speech, Siddharth Varadarajan, mentioned the Indian executive’s different approaches towards different mediums. Referring to hate speeches made during the 1993 Bombay riots by Shiv Sena leaders and those made during the 2002 Gujarat riots, he said, “Hate speech never gets prosecuted when made amid a physical crowd in a volatile situation.I can understand why politicians won’t be prosecuted but why so much sensitivity on online content. This paradox is worth reflecting on.Despite its limited reach, the executive reacts in such a hyper-sensitive manner”.He adds that as the editor of a news website one faces daily problems in taking decisions on online content especially on comment moderation and whether the website would be responsible for a certain comment made by a reader. Echoing Shyam Divan’s views,he said that in India more than the punishment, when a case is filed, the legal process itself becomes a punishment, which forces Internet Service Providers to comply with requests of blocking online content.

The Global Network Initiative is a Washington-based organisation that provides a framework for companies to deal with governments requesting censorship or surveillance of online content, “rooted in international standards legal framework also interesting people”. According to a report released by it, “provided that the existing safe harbour regime is improved, intermediaries can become a significant part of the economy and their GDP contribution may increase to more than 1.3 per cent by 2015. The potential corresponds to $41 billion by 2015”.Jermyn Brooks,Independent Chair of GNI,argued that instead of focusing all efforts on ensuring that the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 gets struck down by Courts for its unconstitutionality, there should also be a movement to effect policy changes through the amendment of the law. According to him, such a proposition would be more lucrative for a government looking for “re-invigoration of economic growth in India”.

The discussion was significant in the light that a number of cases related to the IT Act and freedom of online speech will be heard in the Supreme Court in the coming months. A petition by Mouthshut.com challenges the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011 “which effectively creates a notice and takedown regime for content hosted by intermediaries”. Another important case up for hearing is a petition by Member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrashekhar,“which also challenges these rules on grounds that they are ambiguous, require private parties to subjectively assess objectionable content, and that they undermine the safe harbour exemptions from liability granted to intermediaries by section 79 of the IT Act”. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has challenged the Intermediaries Guidelines rules as well as the Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by the Public Rules 2009. “This petition has pointed to the lack of transparency in the blocking procedure, which does not currently offer the public any notice or reasons for the blocking.”

“The cases pending before the Supreme Court will have a significant impact on the freedom of expression. We should never take our rights for granted – the interpretation of these rights needs to be consistent with their spirit”, said Professor Ranbir Singh.

Citing the recent example of the Wendy Doniger episode, Varadarajan says, “If Penguin chooses to pack up at the District court level, you know how Internet Service Providers would react to take down notices…Specific targeting of online speech would ultimately have a negative impact on the traditional media”. And that is the crux of the matter. In the absence of intermediate liability not being limited, online censorship and the curtailment of the freedom of speech will become far easier and will only worsen.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/newslaundry-april-1-2014-somi-das-the-take-down-of-free-speech-online

Who Governs the Internet? Implications for Freedom and National Security

sunil — 2014-04-05T16:23:36Z

The second half of last year has been quite momentous for Internet governance thanks to Edward Snowden. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff became aware that they were targets of US surveillance for economic not security reasons. They protested loudly.

The article was published in Yojana (April 2014 Issue). Click to download the original here. (PDF, 177 Kb)

The role of the US perceived by some as the benevolent dictator or primary steward of the Internet because of history, technology, topology and commerce came under scrutiny again. The I star bodies also known as the technical community - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN); five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) ie. African, American, Asia-Pacific, European and Latin American; two standard setting organisations - World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) & Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF); the Internet Architecture Board (IAB); and Internet Society (ISOC) responded by issuing the Montevideo Statement [1] on the 7th of October. The statement expressed "strong concern over the undermining of the trust and confidence of Internet users globally due to recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and surveillance." It called for "accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions..." - did this mean that the I star bodies were finally willing to end the special role that US played in Internet governance? However, that dramatic shift in position was followed with the following qualifier "...towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing." Clearly indicating that for the I star bodies multistakeholderism was non-negotiable. Two days later President Rousseff after a meeting with Fadi Chehadé, announced on Twitter that Brazil would host "an international summit of governments, industry, civil society and academia." [2] The meeting has now been dubbed Net Mundial and 188 proposals for “principles” or “roadmaps for the further evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem” have been submitted for discussion in São Paulo on the 23rd and 24th of April. The meeting will definitely be an important milestone for multilateral and multi-stakeholder mechanisms in the ecosystem.

It has been more than a decade since this debate between multilateralism and multi-stakeholderism has ignited. Multistakeholderism is a form of governance that seeks to ensure that every stakeholder is guaranteed a seat at the policy formulation table (either in consultative capacity or in decision making capacity depending who you ask). The Tunis Agenda, which was the end result of the 2003-05 WSIS upheld the multistakeholder mode. The 2003–2005 World Summit on the Information Society process was seen by those favouring the status quo at that time as the first attempt by the UN bodies or multilateralism - to takeover the Internet. However, the end result i.e. Tunis Agenda [3] clarified and reaffirmed multi-stakeholderism as the way forward even though multilateral governance mechanisms were also accepted as a valid component of Internet governance. The list of stakeholders included states, the private sector, civil society, intergovernmental organisations, international standards organisations and the “academic and technical communities within those stakeholder groups mentioned” above. The Tunis Agenda also constituted the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the process of Enhanced Cooperation.

The IGF was defined in detail with a twelve point mandate including to “identify emerging issues, bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the general public, and, where appropriate, make recommendations.” In brief it was to be a learning Forum, a talk shop and a venue for developing soft law not international treaties. Enhanced Cooperation was defined as “to enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out their roles and responsibilities, in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet, but not in the day-to-day technical and operational matters, that do not impact on international public policy issues” – and to this day, efforts are on to define it more clearly.

Seven years later, during the World Conference on Telecommunication in Dubai, the status quoists dubbed it another attempt by the UN to take over the Internet. Even those non-American civil society actors who were uncomfortable with US dominance were willing to settle for the status quo because they were convinced that US court would uphold human rights online more robustly than most other countries. In fact, the US administration had laid a good foundation for the demonization of the UN and other nation states that preferred an international regime. "Internet freedom" was State Department doctrine under the leadership of Hillary Clinton. As per her rhetoric – there were good states, bad states and swing states. The US, UK and some Scandinavian countries were the defenders of freedom. China, Russia and Saudi Arabia were examples of authoritarian states that were balkanizing the Internet. And India, Brazil and Indonesia were examples of swing states – in other words, they could go either way – join the good side or the dark side.

But Internet freedom rhetoric was deeply flawed. The US censorship regime is really no better than China’s. China censors political speech – US censors access to knowledge thanks to the intellectual property (IP) rightsholder lobby that has tremendous influence on the Hill. Statistics of television viewership across channels around the world will tell us how the majority privileges cultural speech over political speech on any average day. The great firewall of China only affects its citizens – netizens from other jurisdictions are not impacted by Chinese censorship. On the other hand, the US acts of censorship are usually near global in impact.

This is because the censorship regime is not predominantly based on blocking or filtering but by placing pressure on identification, technology and financial intermediaries thereby forcing their targets offline. When it comes to surveillance, one could argue that the US is worse than China. Again, as was the case with censorship, China only conducts pervasive blanket surveillance upon its citizens – unlike US surveillance, which not only affects its citizens but targets every single user of the Internet through a multi-layered approach with an accompanying acronym soup of programmes and initiatives that include malware, trojans, software vulnerabilities, back doors in encryption standards, over the top service providers, telcos, ISPs, national backbone infrastructure and submarine fibre optic cables.

Security guru Bruce Schneier tells us that "there is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy.” Blanket surveillance therefore undermines the security imperative and compromises functioning markets by make e-commerce, e-banking, intellectual property, personal information and confidential information vulnerable. Building a secure Internet and information society will require ending mass surveillance by states and private actors.

The Opportunity for India

Unlike the America with its straitjacketed IP regime, India believes that access to knowledge is a precondition for freedom of speech and expression. As global intellectual property policy or access to knowledge policy is concerned, India is considered a leader both when it comes to domestic policy and international policy development at the World Intellectual Property Organisation. From the 70s our policy-makers have defended the right to health in the form of access to medicines. More recently, India played a critical role in securing the Marrakesh Treaty for Visually Impaired Persons in June 2013 which introduces a user right [also referred to as an exception, flexibility or limitation] which allows the visually impaired to convert books to accessible formats without paying the copyright-holder if an accessible version has not been made available. The Marrakesh Treaty is disability specific [only for the visually impaired] and works specific [only for copyright]. This is the first instance of India successfully exporting policy best practices. India's exception for the disabled in the Copyright Act unlike the Marrakesh Treaty, however, is both disability-neutral and works-neutral.

Given that the Internet is critical to the successful implementation of the Treaty ie. cross border sharing of works that have been made accessible to disabled persons in one country with the global community, it is perhaps time for India to broaden its influence into the sphere of Internet governance and the governance of information societies more broadly.

Post-Snowden, the so called swing states occupy the higher moral ground. It is time for these states to capitalize on this moment using strong political will. Instead of just being a friendly jurisdiction from the perspective of access to medicine, it is time for India to also be the enabling jurisdiction for access to knowledge more broadly. We could use patent pools and compulsory licensing to provide affordable and innovative digital hardware [especially mobile phones] to the developing world. This would ensure that rights-holders, innovators, manufactures, consumers and government would all benefit from India going beyond being the pharmacy of the world to becoming the electronics store of the world. We could explore flat-fee licensing models like a broadband copyright cess or levy to ensure that users get content [text, images, video, audio, games and software] at affordable rates and rights-holders get some royalty from all Internet users in India. This will go a long way in undermining the copyright enforcement based censorship regime that has been established by the US. When it comes to privacy – we could enact a world-class privacy law and establish an independent, autonomous and proactive privacy commissioner who will keep both private and state actors on a short lease. Then we need a scientific, targeted surveillance regime that is in compliance with human rights principles. This will make India simultaneously an IP and privacy haven and thereby attract huge investment from the private sector, and also earn the goodwill of global civil society and independent media. Given that privacy is a precondition for security, this will also make India very secure from a cyber security perspective. Of course this is a fanciful pipe dream given our current circumstances but is definitely a possible future for us as a nation to pursue.

What is the scope of Internet Governance?

Part of the tension between multi-stakeholderism and multilateralism is that there is no single, universally accepted definition of Internet governance. The conservative definitions of Internet Governance limits it to management of critical Internet resources, including the domain name system, IP addresses and root servers – in other words, the ICANN, IANA functions, regional registries and other I* bodies. This is where US dominance has historically been most explicit. This is also where the multi-stakeholder model has clearly delivered so far and therefore we must be most careful about dismantling existing governance arrangements. There are very broadly four approaches for reducing US dominance here – a) globalization [giving other nation-states a role equal to the US within the existing multi-stakeholder paradigm], b) internationalization [bring ICANN, IANA functions, registries and I* bodies under UN control or oversight], c) eliminating the role for nation states in the IANA functions[4] and d) introducing competitors for names and numbers management. Regardless of the final solution, it is clear that those that control domain names and allocate IP addresses will be able to impact the freedom of speech and expression. The impact on the national security of India is very limited given that there are three root servers [5] within national borders and it would be near impossible for the US to shut down the Internet in India.

For a more expansive definition – The Working Group on Internet Governance report[6] has four categories for public policy issues that are relevant to Internet governance:

“(a) Issues relating to infrastructure and the management of critical Internet resources, including administration of the domain name system and Internet protocol addresses (IP addresses), administration of the root server system, technical standards, peering and interconnection, telecommunications infrastructure, including innovative and convergent technologies, as well as multilingualization. These issues are matters of direct relevance to Internet governance and fall within the ambit of existing organizations with responsibility for these matters;

(b) Issues relating to the use of the Internet, including spam, network security and cybercrime. While these issues are directly related to Internet governance, the nature of global cooperation required is not well defined;

(c)Issues that are relevant to the Internet but have an impact much wider than the Internet and for which existing organizations are responsible, such as intellectual property rights (IPRs) or international trade. ...;

(d) Issues relating to the developmental aspects of Internet governance, in particular capacity-building in developing countries.”

Some of these categories are addressed via state regulation that has cascaded from multilateral bodies that are associated with the United Nations such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation for "intellectual property rights" and the International Telecommunication Union for “telecommunications infrastructure”. Other policy issues such as "cyber crime" are currently addressed via plurilateral instruments – for example the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime – and bilateral arrangements like Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties. "Spam" is currently being handled through self-regulatory efforts by the private sector such as Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group.[7] Other areas where there is insufficient international or global cooperation include "peering and interconnection" - the private arrangements that exist are confidential and it is unclear whether the public interest is being adequately protected.

So who really governs the Internet?

So in conclusion, who governs the Internet is not really a useful question. This is because nobody governs the Internet per se. The Internet is a diffuse collection of standards, technologies and actors and dramatically different across layers, geographies and services. Different Internet actors – the government, the private sector, civil society and the technical and academic community are already regulated using a multiplicity of fora and governance regimes – self regulation, coregulation and state regulation. Is more regulation always the right answer? Do we need to choose between multilateralism and multi-stakeholderism? Do we need stable definitions to process? Do we need different version of multi-stakeholderism for different areas of governance for ex. standards vs. names and numbers? Ideally no, no, no and yes. In my view an appropriate global governance system will be decentralized, diverse or plural in nature yet interoperable, will have both multilateral and multistakeholder institutions and mechanisms and will be as interested in deregulation for the public interest as it is in regulation for the public interest.

[1]. Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation https://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-07oct13-en.htm

[2]. Brazil to host global internet summit in ongoing fight against NSA surveillance http://rt.com/news/brazil-internet-summit-fight-nsa-006/

[3]. Tunis Agenda For The Information Society http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html

[4]. Roadmap for globalizing IANA: Four principles and a proposal for reform: a submission to the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance by Milton Mueller and Brenden Kuerbis March 3rd 2014 See: http://www.internetgovernance.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/ICANNreformglobalizingIANAfinal.pdf

[5]. Mumbai (I Root), Delhi (K Root) and Chennai (F Root). See: http://nixi.in/en/component/content/article/36-other-activities-/77-root-servers

[6]. Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance to the President of the Preparatory Committee of the World Summit on the Information Society, Ambassador Janis Karklins, and the WSIS Secretary-General, Mr Yoshio Utsumi. Dated: 14 July 2005 See: http://www.wgig.org/WGIG-Report.html

[7].Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group website See: http://www.maawg.org/

The author is is the Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore. He is also the founder of Mahiti, a 15 year old social enterprise aiming to reduce the cost and complexity of information and communication technology for the voluntary sector by using free software. He is an Ashoka fellow. For three years, he also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/yojana-april-2014-sunil-abraham-who-governs-the-internet-implications-for-freedom-and-national-security