Session Transcript

 Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the
 The 2nd Meeting of the IGF.  Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it
 may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription
 errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session,
 but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

 (Gavel.)

 >>NITIN DESAI:   Good morning.  This is the reporting-in session on the
 workshops which took place yesterday. We have -- I know that I have a couple of
 people who are waiting.  But if there are more, please send me a piece of paper
 that you have some reporting to do.  But I know that I have two here. So can I
 first call on Richard Sambrook.

 >>RICHARD SAMBROOK:   Thank you, Chairman. I want to report back from the
 workshop yesterday afternoon, "Trusting Quality on the Internet." The workshop
 was organized by the world's eight broadcasting unions, the Council of Europe,
 the International Federation of Journalists, and the BBC, for which I work. 
 And it was moderated by Nik Gowing, who is an anchor for BBC World T.V.  The
 panelists included Andrew Keen, San Francisco-based author and media analyst,
 Karol Jakubowicz, Polish media scholar and analyst, myself on the panel, and
 Elizabeth Costa, a global TV journalist and representative of the Federation of
 Journalists.  There was additional participation from  (saying name), Council
 of Europe; Mark Kelly, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties; Catherine
 Trautmann, from the European Parliament; and Vint Cerf, from Google. The
 objective of the workshop was to examine the extent to which content today on
 the Internet can be considered to be high quality, to try to weigh up the value
 it has for society, and to draw conclusions on how to raise and increase the
 quality of information on the Internet. The discussions concerned user-gender
 content and professional content and the relationship between them. A number of
 points emerged from the discussion. There is a wide range of opinion about
 whether, on balance, content on the Web today and, indeed, in future is
 necessarily creating a better-informed, thinking, or caring society.  Producing
 content for the Web is now done simply and at low cost and in principle can be
 done by everyone from school children to media professionals, which seems to be
 a major advance for society. And although there is much creative and valuable
 content on the Web prepared by ordinary people who are not necessarily skilled
 professionals, which is equally much more which is considered to have little
 positive value. Furthermore, UGC, user-generated content, as with other Web
 sources, can be exploited by marketing, advertising, and by politics. UGC can
 have a dramatic impact and high value for society particularly when it captures
 news stories which may otherwise remain hidden from the world.  A main problem
 for the world is to know, however, whether UGC, which contains news or a
 message, is necessarily trustworthy or genuine. The mainstream media industry
 or parts of it has the professionalism to check sources and to provide a
 reliable gateway for such content, to be guardians to the islands of trust. 
 Nevertheless, the panel members reported that mainstream professional
 journalism is not in a good condition everywhere.  There is also lack of trust
 about much of what it produces.  It is in danger of being swept away by the
 attraction of content produced by the public at low or no cost.  One panelist
 also reported strong corporate influence on news today.  One point of
 disagreement came over the value of having available the wisdom of the crowd,
 the wisdom of many from the Web and whether this really produced greater value
 to society. Improvements, everybody agreed, could largely come from two steps. 
 Firstly, a recognition and acknowledgment by mainstream media of the job they
 have to do as media professionals in today's Web, Web 2.0, and in the Web 3.0
 of tomorrow. They must be points of reference for quality in media content, to
 show transparency and accountability, to have a clear set of values.  And this
 must include the journalistic skills of verification and checking. Secondly,
 media literacy is of the utmost importance.  Young people need to be taught
 from an early age the skills of media literacy, taught how to make media and
 how to read media.  The society must recognize that media literacy is a
 priority, and the mainstream media must help to achieve it.  If we achieve both
 of those objectives, the workshop agreed we can bring value to society rather
 than just using these new technologies for amusement or for its own sake. Thank
 you.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you. Thank you, Richard. I have a second person from
 BBC, Matteo Maggiore head of EU and international policy, reporting on the
 workshop on "Finding the Courage to Provide Balance."

 >> MATTEO MAGGIORE:  The best practice forum, "Finding the Courage to Provide
 Balance," was organized by the World Broadcasting Union and the BBC, with the
 support of PANOS and the Council of Europe.  The forum was moderated by Nik
 Gowing of the BBC, and the panelists included Alexander Shulzycki, EBU head of
 strategic information service, Karol Jakubowicz, Polish media scholar, and
 myself, Matteo Maggiore, from the BBC. The objective of the forum was to
 discuss the preliminary results of two studies.  The first was commissioned to
 the human capital consultancy by the BBC and the EBU.  It is an analysis of the
 developing role that broadcasters can play in the future development of the
 Internet. The study states that broadcasters can play a very important role in
 the future development of the Internet, cooperating with other Internet players
 with mutual benefit.  We're entering a new phase of convergence in which
 established media and the Internet influence and transform each other rather
 than take over of all media by the initial Internet model, we are seeing a
 blurring of the lines between networked and active content, between tools and
 resources, and between content providers and content users.  But as long as
 broadcasters adapt, they can and will make a decisive contribution to Internet
 development in three ways:  By providing quality-rich content which the growing
 number of online video users prefer; by developing partnerships with network
 operators, creating the conditions for the sizable investment in infrastructure
 which the rollout of broadband requires; and by leveraging their brands to
 deliver on user demand for trusted guides for the growing Internet content
 offer and contributing to making self-regulatory frameworks more robust and
 credible on public-interest issues such as the protection of vulnerable users
 and linguistic and cultural diversity. The second study has been made by the
 EBU and is an analysis of the evolution of user Web sites so far.  And the part
 played in the WEP landscape by public-service broadcasters.  Established media
 companies including public-service media have become an important part of the
 Web and the Web services are among the most used in many countries of the
 world.  The evolving patterns of use of the Web is a significant and growing
 concentration on fewer than a thousand sites, mostly from North America.  The
 cottage industry is there, but has few customers. The low barriers to entry to
 the Web allow access by anyone to anyone, but equally, they also allow
 unchecked market forces, which bring unprecedented levels of concentration. 
 Concentration on this scale may have an undesirable effect on the media and
 cultural ecosystem. Public-service media may become an even more important
 element for society, providing a reference in an increasingly concentrated
 World Wide Web. The conclusions of the discussion included that regulators must
 understand better the way that market forces, which are largely unchecked in
 the Web environment, will shape the media content we see.  And public-service
 broadcasters must also understand the development of the Web and take an active
 part in it in order to bring to users the advantages and features of the Web,
 together with the societal benefits the public-service media.  The feeling of
 participants was that while we understand well the evolution of technology on
 the Web, we have less understanding of the evolution of media business which
 will result.  And this needs to feature more prominently on the agenda of the
 IGF going forward.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you. And I turn to Thomas Dailey.

 >>THOMAS DAILEY:   Thank you very much and good morning.  My name is Tom
 Dailey.  I'm with Verizon communications.  And I moderated the ICC/BASIS OII
 workshop on authentication and ID management.  International Chamber of
 Commerce, its initiative Business Action to Support the Information Society, or
 BASIS, and the Oxford Internet institute held a workshop yesterday afternoon on
 managing security issues, authentication at the transaction level. Three
 panelists, Caspar Bowden, chief privacy advisor, EMEA, from Microsoft; Simon
 Davies, founder and director of Privacy International; and Dr. Gulshan Rai,
 director of CERT-IN in India had an interactive exchange on the roles of all
 stakeholders in promoting authentication technologies to promote trust online.
 The workshop provided an opportunity for representatives of government,
 business, technical experts, and civil society to discuss their current
 priorities and express a variety of views. Panelists discussed the need to give
 choices to consumers.  Authentication should be in a competitive environment
 where companies can offer different options to authenticate the user as
 appropriate to the transaction and desired by the consumer. The architect
 should be flexible to permit a variety of approaches proportionate to different
 needs.  Microsoft's Caspar Bowden explained the company's thinking on an ID
 meta system or a system of authentication systems. Sector-specific identity
 management systems can be specific to circumstances.  At the same time,
 user-centric identity management systems enable effective control over the
 authentication interface, while ensuring good system security and the
 protection of privacy. From a government perspective, we heard from Dr. Rai of
 India about a five-part strategy to create secure e-government applications. 
 For some countries, barriers to improving authentication include availability
 and cost of technology and interoperability standards. While panelists had
 different opinions on the adequacy of legislative approaches, the panelists
 agreed that consumers should be empowered.  Simon Davies stated that
 market-based and innovative solutions can help to build confidence.  Increased
 awareness, and engagement of users can reduce vulnerabilities to threats such
 as phishing. Governments have an important role in facilitating
 awareness-raising and discussions between users and providers, but should do so
 in a manner that enhances confidence and encourages participation in the
 information society. Finally, panelists debated whether mandated approaches and
 standards are necessary.  While there was some divergence of opinion on this
 point, panelists believed that all identity architectures are not equal and
 that involvement of all stakeholders is necessary to manage security issues.
 This workshop provided a truly multistakeholder discussion of important issues
 regarding identity management and authentication which are fundamental to the
 transactions between businesses and consumers, between businesses themselves,
 and for governments. ICC/BASIS and OII were pleased to provide an opportunity
 to delve into these technical and policy issues and the interactive discussion
 with the audience highlighted facets of the challenges that stakeholders are
 grappling with and contributed to the capacity-building and development
 cross-cutting themes of this IGF. Thank you.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   I next have Michael Remmert who's reporting back on a
 best-practice forum on participation in Internet governance.

 >>MICHAEL REMMERT:   Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This event was organized by the
 -- co-organized by the United Nations economic commission for Europe, the
 Council of Europe, and the Association for progressive communications. The best
 practice forum heard a message from deputy secretary-general of the Council of
 Europe and discussed with Hans Armfelt Hansell of UNECE as well as with
 Anriette Esterhuysen, the executive director of APC, and Pavel Antonov of APC.
 The main proposal coming from the best practice forum is the development of a
 self-regulatory mechanism to force the participation, access to information,
 and transparency in Internet governance. Such a framework, it was said, would
 not replace any existing institutional configuration, policies or regulations,
 but would underpin other processes and support them. A model for such a
 participatory mechanism could be the United Nations Economic Commission for
 Europe's Convention on Access to Information, public participation in
 decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters, the Aarhus
 convention.  This convention firmly establishes access to information,
 transparency, accountability, and participation in governance processes as a
 shared value, and supports institutions in implementing the convention. The
 proposed mechanism should ensure that all the institutions which play a role in
 some aspect of governing the Internet commit themselves in their activities to
 transparency, public participation of all stakeholders, and access to
 information. This new proposal reflects the Council of Europe's commitment to
 the concept of public service value to the concept of the Internet. The view
 was held that for Internet governance to satisfy democratic needs, the part to
 be played by users should be recognized and strengthened. The forum also
 explored which tools, online and off-line, should be available for public
 participation in Internet governance.  In this context the Council of Europe
 informed the best practice forum that it is preparing a set of e-democracy
 tools based on existing applications in its member states. In the debate, it
 was clearly recognized that there is a wide variety of actors in Internet
 governance, a complexity that is to be taken into account in any agreed
 mechanism on public participation. The participation of stakeholders, and
 particularly of Internet users in Internet governance should be enabled at
 several levels.  One participant suggested that citizens should engage at
 national level, and why not by means of national IGFs. The importance of
 participation at the level of ICANN and at the IGF itself was also stressed. In
 conclusion, the debate at the forum was a comprehensive, but at the same time a
 tentative assessment of what is what is required for self-regulatory code for
 public participation in Internet governance.  In order to take this proposal
 forward, the organizers of the best practice forum envisaged to commission some
 initial research, the results of which would be brought back to the IGF. Thank
 you very much.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   I must say that as a person who has been involved for a long
 time in environment, I am very happy that you connected the Aarhus convention
 with our agenda of Internet governance. Let me now turn to Katerina Fialová who
 is going to report on a workshop on content regulation and the duty of states
 to protect fundamental rights.

 >>KATERINA FIALOVÁ:   Good morning, everyone. My name is Katerina Fialová, and
 I am working for APC Women's Networking Support Program, and I would like to
 report on a panel on content regulation and duty of states to protect
 fundamental rates which was organized by the APC Women's Networking Support
 Program, EuroISPa, and the Council of Europe. We all agree upon the need for
 regulation on child pornography.  However, we also agree that the discussion on
 content regulation has been oversimplified, and has so far excluded various
 kinds of content and practices, such as harassment and erotization of violence
 of women in cyberspace. Considering the complexity of the issue and concerns,
 it is important that the debates around harmful content involves the diverse
 voices of end users in their different political, social and civil contexts. 
 Regulations must evolve more organically and must take account of the values
 and socio-culture practices of end users. This could include forms of
 self-regulation or peer-to-peer monitoring practices. We also recommend an
 exploration of co-regulation practices where a state may provide a public
 framework and consumers/end users decide the values that will guide their
 practices, and what sanctions will apply where common values are transgressed.
 It is important to recognize there is no easy solution on the effectiveness of
 content regulation mechanisms and tools must be assessed from the point of
 transparency as well as accountability of the different actors working around
 content regulation. Thank you for your attention.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you.  I turn to Kieren McCarthy, who is going to report
 on the ICANN public forum.

 >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Hello, my name is Kieren McCarthy.  I am ICANN's general
 manager of public participation.  Just a brief summary of a forum, an open
 forum that we held yesterday with regard to ICANN, the Internet Corporation for
 Assigned Names and Numbers. The aim of the forum was to explain ICANN and its
 role and answer any questions that people might have. So the ICANN new chair,
 Peter Dengate Thrush, chaired the meeting.  He outlined ICANN and its history,
 its role in the Internet, and how its multistakeholder policy worked in
 reality. Then we have speakers from a number of ICANN's different supporting
 organizations and advisory committees who outlined what their role was and how
 they saw ICANN and how ICANN's processes work from their perspective. Bill
 Graham of Canada spoke for the Governmental Advisory Committee.  Emily Taylor
 from U.K. registry owner NOMINET spoke about the country code name supporting
 organization.  Avri Doria who is the chair of the Generic Names Supporting
 Organization, which is the main policy development body within ICANN, spoke
 about the GNSO.  Sebastien Bellagamba, explained the role of the address
 supporting organization.  And Jacqueline Morris reviewed the At-Large Advisory
 Committee, which represents the average Internet user within ICANN.  And Didier
 Kasole, who represents one of the five regional at-large organizations, the
 African RALO, explained how it was getting ordinary users involved in the ICANN
 policy-making processes. The room was then open to questions.  And a few
 questions were asked which included such things as the recent changes in
 ICANN's activities and processes, and how policy decisions are actually arrived
 at through the bottom-up multistakeholder model that ICANN uses. And then the
 session was ended. So ICANN hopes it was able to explain its role, and we'll be
 happy to have another session if people think that's useful at the next IGF.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you. Those of you who are still to come, which is Leo
 (saying name), Christian Moeller, if you have a written text which you can pass
 on to the interpreters and the scribes, that will be very helpful. If you have
 a written text which you have an extra copy of, then do pass it on. Can I now
 turn to Lee Hibbard of the Council of Europe for the joint workshop on freedom
 of expression as a security issue.

 >>LEE HIBBARD:  Thank you Mr. Chairman.  Good morning ladies and gentlemen. 
 This was a workshop entitled freedom of expression and security on the Internet
 as a security issue.  It was a workshop jointly hosted by the Council of
 Europe, the OSCE representative on media, and UNESCO.  And I would like to
 point out before starting, thanks to the IGF, the cooperation between these
 three organizations is steadily increasing.  It's really thanks to this sort of
 platform that we are out to discuss and join together on matters of common
 interest. So thank you very much. The event brought together experts from
 Europe, India being and the United States and there was a very full audience.
 There are also participants from the private sector, civil society, and
 international organizations. The discussions led one speaker to state that
 freedom of expression and security on the Internet are not contradictory, but,
 rather, complementary. It was considered important not to put freedom of
 expression and security as opposites.  Rather, that the balance between them
 should stem from a democratic dialogue between the states and its people. At
 the same time, the need was stressed to watch out for states putting
 unjustified restrictions on the Internet with a reference to security
 interests, said one speaker. A private sector representative stressed that his
 company always tries to maximize freedom of expression for all users, but was
 banned by local laws and attentive to local cultural traditions. He said that
 limiting access to a small amount of information in a given country instead of
 seeing all the information being removed at the request of the state was
 preferable. The private sector speakers stated that this thin line had already
 triggered industry discussions on a code of conduct, which deals with, amongst
 other things, judgments about information, and therefore access to information
 as part of the fundamental right to seek information, as part of everyone's
 right to freedom of expression. Moreover, in discussing the approach of
 filtering and to taking down Internet content regarded as illegal, it was
 stressed that the industry's Internet content management should fully comply
 with human rights standards, having regard to everyone's rights of freedom of
 expression and information regardless of frontiers. However, the narrowing of
 the openness on the Internet by corporations and by governments was underlined
 as a cause of concern, and that states should not use security arguments as a
 pretext to curb freedom of expression. Especially considering existing
 international policy standards agreed by many states to reconcile freedom of
 expression and security issues, and also considering the international legal
 standards dealing with cyber crime and with protecting children from sexual
 exploitation and abuse. On this matter it was underlined that these two
 conventions of the Council of Europe, with the globalfication, namely the cyber
 crime convention and the convention on the protection of children against
 sexual exploitation and sexual abuse in no way lowers freedom of expression
 standards on the Internet. The overall perception of human rights standards in
 Europe, standards which currently 47 states have signed up to, was that they
 provided a suitable framework for protecting freedom of expression and
 information while seeking to guarantee security. However, these standards were
 also referred to as a luxury that do not exist in certain other regions of the
 world. Ultimately, the three organizations, the Council of Europe, OSCE, and
 UNESCO, considered that the freedom of expression is an underlying basic
 principle that has to be applied and respected everywhere. Thank you, Mr.
 Chairman.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you. I have -- that was Lee Hibbard from the freedom of
 expression and security issue. Now Christian Moeller with the office of OSCE,
 representative on the freedom of the media -- for freedom of expression, online
 dynamic coalition.  This is a report of a dynamic coalition.

 >>CHRISTIAN MÖLLER:   Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I will briefly report back from
 the meeting of the dynamic coalition on freedom of expression and freedom of
 the media on the Internet that was held on Monday during this IGF. The meeting
 focused on case studies on Internet censorship, future challenges to free
 expression online, and the role and possibilities the FOE online coalition has
 within the IGF process. The meeting was open by keynote presentations from
 representatives from Google, Amnesty International, the Bergman center at
 Harvard Law School, the open-net initiative and the world press freedom
 committee. The results of the following discussions include a couple of main
 points.  First, it should be tried to further involve U.N. specialized
 institutions in the IGF process.  Namely, the U.N. special rapporteur on the
 freedom of expression or the human rights council. Secondly, a closer
 cooperation between the technical community and the human rights community is
 necessary.  It was stated that also at the ICANN level decisions are taken that
 have an impact on the right of freedom of expression. Third, there is a need
 for catalogue of principles on how to guarantee freedom of expression in an
 international business environment.  Internet companies expressed the demand
 for such underlying principles, especially when operating with various
 different national legal regimes. Fourth, some countries expressed the need for
 more practical guidelines in how to guarantee freedom of expression online. The
 coalition of course stands ready to offer this expertise if needed. The next
 steps that were identified as the program for the dynamic coalition until the
 next IGF was that we would begin to compile such codes of ethics or a catalogue
 of principles on guaranteeing freedom of expression online. And secondly, we
 will further reach out to the technical community, including ICANN, to the
 human rights -- U.N. human rights institutions, the business community and
 other international organizations. Last but not least let me mention that those
 dynamic coalitions are of course open to other partners and members so whoever
 feels like joining should be just doing so. And concluding, let me thank you to
 the keynote speakers of the Monday meeting, and the audience and coalition
 members for the vivid discussion.  And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you. My last report that we have is from Paul Eagle of
 Amnesty International on the net dialogue openness workshop.

 >>PAUL EAGLE:  Good morning, my name is Paul Eagle from Amnesty International
 and I am reporting back on the joint Amnesty International, Net Dialogue
 workshop that was held yesterday morning. Other participants included Joanna
 Shelton from Google, Mark Kelly from the Irish Civil Liberties, Markus Traimer
 from the Council of Europe, Rob Faris from ONI, and it was jointly chaired by
 Nick Dearden from Amnesty International and Marcelo Thompson from Net Dialogue.
 The title of the workshop which was possibly the longest title at this year's
 IGF is fundamental freedoms in the Internet governance forum, protecting and
 promoting freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and association and
 privacy in the Information Society. The background to this workshop is a real
 concern amongst many in civil society that despite human rights being written
 into the agenda of the IGF, they are not hard wired into the DNA of Internet
 governance. Hence, the need for our workshop. In addition, concern that
 multistakeholder approaches are not an end in themselves.  Real changes in
 behavior need to take place so that the Shetows (phonetic) of this world are
 released and no others are imprisoned with corporate complicity. Our workshop
 highlighted the difficulty of finding a way forward, which results in global
 indivisible human rights being protected, respected and fulfilled, whilst
 businesses are taking the Internet across the world, increasingly in repressive
 regimes, and facing difficult daily decisions. Since the last IGF, despite the
 agreement of all parties on the centrality of these core freedoms, evidence
 grows of content restrictions, arrests, censorship increasing, and spreading to
 more and more countries. Several contributors highlighted the power of the
 Internet to free up people's lives, hold governments and companies to account,
 increase choices, and lead to increased economic growth. But until these key
 rights and freedoms are hard wired into Internet governance and
 operationallized, there is a danger that the Internet that will be spread to
 millions more will be increasingly censored and filtered, and the world will be
 the poorer place for it. Thank you.

 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you, Paul. So that completes our reporting in. Just a
 couple of announcements. Our experience of yesterday was that the afternoon
 reporting session is not working, partly -- I think mainly because the people
 who run the morning workshops don't really have that much time between the end
 of the morning workshop and to prepare for the 3:00 reporting in. So what we
 are proposing is that these workshops which are held today can be taken
 together and report in tomorrow at 10:00. Because in practice, we found
 yesterday afternoon that it was very difficult for people, whereas those who
 are reporting in in the morning have the night to work their reports in. So
 therefore, we are proposing that tomorrow morning we will take not just the
 workshops that take place today afternoon but for all of today. Which means we
 will probably have many more people reporting in tomorrow morning than we have
 had today, where we are going to end in about 35 minutes. So my request is that
 those people who are going to report in do observe the discipline which
 everybody today has observed of sticking to the time.  And I'm very grateful to
 all of the participants in the reporting in today who have stuck to the times
 nominally allowed. And second, that they do give it to us in advance so that we
 can organize the thing so we can accommodate all of these people. And third, we
 will start on time at 10:00 if we want to accommodate all the workshops of
 today at 10:00 in the morning. So this gives you a little extra time in the
 afternoon for your lunch, but it does mean that we are to work a little harder
 tomorrow morning. I think Markus has something.

 >> MARKUS KUMMER:   Yes, I would have a four and a five. Those who spoke today,
 could you please go to our scribes.  There were several names they did not
 understand, so they can actually then add it, edit it in the script which will
 be on our Web site. And five, for tomorrow's reporting in, it is helpful if you
 prepare a written report, at least have the list of the names, abbreviation and
 so on ready, that we can give to the interpreters in advance, and also to the
 scribes.  It facilitates their work, and it is in your interest as you will
 have a correct report then on our Web site. Thank you.

 >>HADIL DA ROCHA VIANNA:   Thank you, Mr. Desai. Actually, I'll be very brief.
 I just would like to thank once again on behalf of the host country the
 participation of all organizers of workshops and commend the excellent work
 done.  And recognize the importance of the outcomes to the discussions on
 openness, especially in the main session that will be held after this reporting
 back session. I would like to take this opportunity to recall what has been
 said in previous reporting back sessions with regard to the filling-in of
 templates that are available in the IGF Web page that could be useful for
 summing up the outcomes of each workshop. So I would like to encourage the
 organizers to use these templates available at the Web page in order to make
 easy recording back activities of all of us. So thank you very much again, and
 let's move on to the next session. Thank you.