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Internet Governance Forum 2016 Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth
Jalisco, Mexico 7 December 2016 Room 8 Workshop DC on Net Neutrality

>> MODERATOR: Good morning to everyone. I think we can get started. So
welcome to this fourth annual meeting on the meeting of Net Neutrality.
Together we'll discuss today some very critical issues. Not only the
implementation and exceptions to net neutrality and various frameworks that
have been adopted so far but also a very prominent issue. The first segment
of the session will be dedicated to discussion of net neutrality
implementations and we'll have Ornulf storm and Roslyn Layton, Carlos Brito
from Mexico. In the second segment we'll have a discussion with -- I would
introduce with a couple of remarks and we'll have Robert Pepper from
Facebook that we're waiting for, Tomiwa Ilori from Paradigm Initiative and
obviously last but not lease Javier Pallero and the session will be
introduced by Mr. Guy Berger from director of freedom of express at UNESCO
who is our keynote speaker. And one other important element is that many of
the teams that we are going to discuss today are in this fourth annual
report of the Dynamic Coalition on Net Neutrality. There is a box full of
copies somewhere in this room there. And the report is also already
accessible online if you go on Internet governance you can download any
copy. Without losing any further time I would like to ask Mr. Guy Berger to
introduce our session speaking to us about the great work that UNESCO is
doing on this topic. Thank you.

>> GUY BERGER: Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Luca, for inviting me
and congratulations to the Dynamic Coalition for this really excellent work
that you have been doing. You may know that UNESCO, which I work for, has
195 member states so as you can see from the work in the -- here, it's very
difficult to get agreement among the participants here. Can you imagine 195
states to agree on a position on net neutrality? There is no position so
you can therefore be thankful I am not able to speak for very long. Because
there is no UNESCO position on net neutrality except I would say a few
things. One is that UNESCO as a political organization is not
fundamentalist in this regard. Most likely if you were to ask the member
states they would say net neutrality is a means to an end, not an end in
itself. Bearing in mind, of course, that net neutrality as a means can have
unintended ends as well. Or violations of it can. The second point I with
like to say UNESCO has a conceptionalization of the Internet that can
discuss and assist some debates around net neutrality. So in that regard, I
would just tell you a little historical experience. At the time of the snow
den revelations UNESCO had a big debate about privacy and also freedom of
expression, access on the Internet. As happens in the U.N. system when
there is a big complex issue, instead of taking a decision, the
secretariat, like me, you have to do a study. So we did a very big study
over 18 mother  -- months with a lot of consultation. The study came out as
this booklet here called key stones to foster knowledge societies and if
any of you have received this publication, this list of UNESCO publications
on the Internet there is a summary there and other ones. So what is
interesting about this study that we did, it discussed these issues, access
to information, freedom of expression, privacy, ethics and it did touch on
the question of net neutrality. But at the time when the research was done
about 2014, the debate around net neutrality was particularly as regards
what had been happening in the U.S. about the debate about fast lanes and
two-sided markets for payment and so on. And this was assessed in the study
pretty much from the point of view okay, net neutrality openness of the
Internet. What are the implications for freedom of expression? The whole
period was to say well, the debate at the time was whether if you gave fast
lanes to certain actors, you would really have unequal playing field and
new players wouldn't have to enter very easily. From a freedom of
expression point of view net neutrality was important you want an open
playing field for anybody producing content to enter without disadvantage.
That was in 2015. You'll find that discussion in the study. Since then what
interesting is things have changed a bit and as is evident in the report of
the coalition, the big issue is now perhaps less net neutrality and freedom
of expression and more net neutrality and access. And this happens to
parallel one of the developments that came out of this study. This is where
UNESCO, which the member states anticipated, and it came out of the study
and a conference called connecting the dots. And it's pretty simple. But
simplicity conceals more complicated things. It says if you want a
universal Internet you need and Internet based on four principles. If you
look in this little leaflet it has it all graphic there. The four
principles are easy to remember under the acronym of ROAM. Rights based,
open, accessible and multi-stakeholder governed. And the point of this is
to say that you have a package here and that if you really want the
Internet to fly, to be universal and to play a role in sustainable
development and everything else, then one has to strive for these
principles. So as I said, when you went back to 2013, 2014, the debate was
how does openness and net neutrality relate the freedom of expression. Now
with zero rating it is no longer so much the O versus the R, the right to
freedom of expression and always A, accessibility. So this is an
interesting shift. And of course as people here will very well know, the
debates about whether you compromise openness to improve accessibility is
essentially -- is access to a closed garden, a garden that may have apples
and snakes, if you will remember certain garden in religious history. Is
access to a closed garden better than being outside Eden, okay? This is the
debate which has a lot of cost benefit analysis and lots of studies will
talk about this. Just a small comment. I think that part of this debate, of
course, came with Facebook's open basics and one could in retrospect
Facebook ought not to have proposed a closed garden. If they would have had
an open system people would have used Facebook. Facebook did have a
relatively closed garden and that's what has caused -- some countries
banned this all together. In India as I understand, I'm not an expert on
this question, part of the reason for banning zero rating on this model,
the closed garden model, was partially under the media concept of you are
going to entrench a dominant power and that's equivalent to media
concentration and you can't allow that anti-competitive development. So in
a sense, the Indian argument was more to the R versus the A -- the O, and
the A was less important, the R was the important argument. I think most
people would say the A, accessibility, is the trade-off more than the
rights. When you do access a closed garden and you have Facebook and free
other sites your choice is constrained but nevertheless your ability to
express is less constrained because you are not just a consumer of media
content, you are also, of course, a potential producer of content on
Facebook even if that's the only thing that you've got. It is a complex
debate. I think it ties in a bit with the paper that we'll hear from Luca
Belli about. To come back to my basic point, I think that this model of
ROAM is an interesting kind of context because when it is talking about
tradeoffs, where there is trade-off of rights in relation to openness or
openness in relation to accessibility and the interesting thing, of course,
is that in all tradeoffs you have to figure out cost and benefits and I
think with this model what's also important if you're only thinking of net
neutrality in terms of restricting openness in favor of access, you are
missing out the rights I mentioned. If you are only thinking of openness
versus rights you are missing out the access dimension and if you think of
all those but you don't think of the multi-stakeholder  dimension you're
missing out. This is good to try to think about how policy making on net
neutrality can best develop, by having a holistic perspective. And the last
thing I want to mention is we have these lovely normative principles at
UNESCO, ROAM, I think they're quite influential. The member signed off on
them and some said they would be helpful in decision making. A norm is one
thing. Giving it impact is another. So fortunately in the study various
member States and other actors proposed there should be indicators for the
ROAM model. That's quite a challenge. You would have to develop indicators
for how is country X performing on balancing rights, on the Internet. What
becomes very interesting for us is where would net neutrality fit into
these indicators? How would you develop indicators that could give you a
map of a country in terms of net neutrality within this model and the
relevance of net neutrality to openness, accessibility and rights? And, of
course, then the multi-stakeholder connection. Having said that I will be
listening extremely carefully to what people say because it may be valuable
to this development of indicators. If they get these indicators developed
and we get the indicators accepted by the member states, then you have
standards. Now they're endorsed by the community. It could be influential
in terms of ROAM. I have to attend another session and I have to leave in
half an hour. So I do have the book and I've read your summary and I look
forward to hearing what you have to say. Congratulations again to the
coalition.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks for those interesting remarks. Let me also say that
the elements that are included and discussed in the book are also included
in very short survey that you can take using the -- going on the IGF
website and so you can also after this session maybe form your opinion and
say evaluate if you agree or not or feedback on the various topic that we
will discuss today. Without losing any further time I would like to ask
Ornulf storm to give us some elements what has been done at the Norwegian
communications -- I was co-chairing the working group that drafted the new
guidelines, so please listen as he tells us something more about this.

>> ORNULF STORM: Thank you, Luca. My name is Ornulf storm, I work for the
Norwegian communications thofrment as Luca said, the reason why we're here,
the colleague of mine was the co-chair of the body of European regulators
expert working group that developed guidelines on net neutrality. So I
think I'll start with just saying a little bit of why the guidelines, why
were they developed, and also what are they, and also a little bit on how
are we going to use them and how are we going to conduct supervision of
this regulation? The background is that the European parliament and council
passed a new regulation on the 25th of November last year, which is in
effect of mid this year. Which regulates requirements for an open Internet.
And in that regulation, it states that BAREC shall develop guidelines by
the 30th of August, 2016. And the reason for this, the guidelines are
supposed to contribute to a consistent application of this regulation, so
it shall provided guidance to the different regulators in Europe on how to
supervise -- supervision and enforcement of these regulations to safeguard
the open Internet. So basically it is important to understand that the
guidelines are not a second level legislation. They are guidelines
developed for the regulators and also, of course, guidelines to provide
guidance also to the market. But first and utmost, it is a guide for the
regulators in how to conduct supervision and how to interpret the maybe
unclear or ambiguous provisions in the regulation. So that is the main
purpose for that. I think that is basically the foundation for it, and I
just briefly on how we are going to use the guidelines in our work in
Norway, we are going to provide guidance to the market in Norway and
especially we're going to use our website to provide that guidance. We will
continue to have meetings and dialogue meetings with the Norwegian
operators to discuss the matters and, of course, we will investigate cases
on a case-by-case basis if that is needed. If we have cases of the
different commercial practices or different practices on traffic management
and so on. We will also use -- we currently have a system for measuring
speeds of broadband connection in Norway, so we will continue to use that
speed test system, and we are also currently developing an app to be used
for mobile term Nance and also measure space on mobile terminals. That will
be ready, I think, beginning of next year. And also we will investigate if
we need to make adjustments or alterations to the system to be able to
measure other things that is required in this new regulation. We will, of
course, also use and what BAREK is planning to do to develop a set of
questionnaires to be sent out to the operators and how their practices are.
So we will also use that in Norway to ask them how they conduct their
business and, of course, we will also gather inputs from the market, end
users, whatever, that is notifying us about possible breaches of these
regulations. And then we will also then produce a report, which is also
required in the regulation, and the BAREK guidelines also are helping the
regulators on how that report should be written and so on, and the dates
when they are to be submitted. They should also be submitted to BAREK and
the commission which we will then be able to compare within the European
market. So I think that is -- of course, we will continue -- we will
continue our national net neutrality forum. We had in the past also since
2009 a national forum to discuss with stakeholders how to treat net
neutrality. And, of course, we also used BAREK net neutrality working group
to seek guidance from the other regulators in Europe to discuss difficult
cases on, for example, commercial practices. So I think that's basically
what I have -- I will start with and if you have questions, please.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks for highlighting the role of the BAREK guidelines is
not only to specify some elements that could be a little bit vague in the
regulation but also to allow harmonization of the implementation. It is an
essential tool for regulators in Europe and it is very good to know that
you are all celebrating an app so that you also involve the user into the
monitoring of the regulation, which is a very excellent strategy. I would
like to ask now to ask Roslyn to provide insight on another very tricky
issue that has been emerging over the past couple of years that is ad
blocking and what implications with the net neutrality regulations.

>> ROSLYN LAYTON: Good morning, everyone. It is a tough act to follow aoun
UNESCO and the Norwegian regulator. I want to salute you, Luca. You have
two books you presented at this IGF and this is the third year I've been
involved in this report. Luca is a dynamo. He has done an amazing job to
organize two coalitions. This report is the fourth report. Anyone can
submit a paper. We have a peer review process. I think if you look at the
quality and the depths and breadth of the articles they get better and
better. I'm delighted to be part of it and thank you for putting this all
together. So I want to talk about ad blocking today and human rights and
one of the discussions we hear in amongst our net neutrality, this is not
about economics, it's about human rights. I think that has been a fairly of
economists to connect economics to human rights because, in fact, economics
comes from human rights. Going back even before Adam Smith and the theory
of moral sentiments it was all about, you know, we have limited amount of
resources and we have an unlimited amount of needs. How do we do this in
the most ethical and equitable way? So this attempt is to try to help
bridge that gap and an issue has emerged since European union net
neutrality process with BAREK and this kind of informed this particular
paper. And it's also interesting before I worked in academia I worked in
Internet advertising, so I know a lot about this industry, how it works and
so on. It is an interesting issue when we talk about net neutrality and not
bringing in economics we don't talk about the ad platforms. A lot of what
is driving the Internet is oh advertising. It's a huge part of what goes
on. I would like to bring this into the discussion to help us understand
some of these issues. What's interesting, if we take the Indian case that
was referenced before, you know, this is kind of a critique, we couldn't
have a free Facebook. But on the other hand what you do have in India today
is an advertising monopoly. The Indian government in this decision not only
banned the ability of Facebook to compete with monopoly but any Indian
company. So I think it's important to just say this is only about human
rights. You are limiting the discussion about human rights because the rate
of ads that people see is also a human rights issue, at least according to
the European charter of fundamental rights and the E-privacy director. In
the paper a reference a number of sources. There is an estimate on the
typical mobile subscription anywhere between 20 to 80% of the traffic will
be advertising. Users see upwards of 5,000 ads a day when they -- from all
the various media that they see and it is estimated 1 in 5 people employed
ad blockers just at the show of hands. Anybody using an ad blocker? Okay.
So roughly -- so this is -- let me explain something. Ad blocking doesn't
mean you are against advertising. I will go into that. A lot of people are
okay with brand messages. They just have a concern about a lot of ads for a
variety of reasons. So one of the issues, though, with net neutrality is
the sense that if all data is the same and all packets are the same and all
traffic is the same, that we have to meter and value advertising to the end
user financially the same as let's say the news content or the video or so
on. And maybe it didn't matter so much if we all had fixed line networks
but it may matter on a mobile network where we're paying for data, limited
bandwidth and the way the ads behave on the network can be -- this has been
a issue brought up by Ellen goodman at princeton. She talked about her
critique of the European BAREK guidelines engaging in edge sent wrist many
where we have putting the rights of the advertisers above the end users. A
particular issue was that the Internet advertising bureau of Europe was
object than to ad blockers at the network level. They were okay with them
at the application level but they said we can't have them at the network
level. And this from the perspective of this human rights activist was a
form of edge sent wrist many. One of the other challenges is we have almost
a billion people using ad blockers today but it is somewhat difficult
because for example Google play you can't download ad blockers. There is an
issue around certain regulators say some kind of ad blockers are allowed
and others aren't. It is an issue in developing countries because of the
cost constraints. And there is another challenge here especially if you
went to Luca's session on Monday when we looked at community networks.
There is a real challenge of getting networks in rural areas and remote
areas and poor areas. If we're considering a lot of traffic may be
advertising, this is an economic question for end users. If we're requiring
these traditional models, traditional net neutrality model that all data
has to be treated the same it will make it more difficult for poor and
disadvantaged communities to build their networks. They don't have a way to
recover and price the services appropriately based on what's most necessary
for them. So a very interesting survey from one of the most widely used ad
management solutions said of 100 million people who were using a survey of
these users, when did they use it? 20% said they used ad blockers for
digital self-defense. They believe privacy is their right and felt ads were
violating their privacy. That was one reason. Usability was another reason.
A lot of -- you may experience yourself the way ads appear they could be
popping up different ways that make it difficult to engage with the
website, with the content, also people have the various phones that they
have if they try to turn off an ad it makes the ad turn on and so on.
Usability was an issue. The number one reason that people had deployed ad
blockers was security. 40%. And we have an increasing challenge with
maladvertising. Fake advertising embedded in advertising. $10 billion of
losses a year. One of the issues why cloud or network level blockers are
important is if you're interested in security, we all increasingly are,
that you need to stop any kind of malware at the network level. You don't
want it in the network, on the device, close to your users, so in many
respects there is a legitimate case to have ad blockers. They protect the
safety of the user and they improve the user experience. Cost control was
there. The other issue is speed, a lot of ads will delay the speed of
mobile content and you have another case of battery life that many cases
ads will have blinking and signaling and so on. That also drains the
battery in the device. Legitimately there are arguments against ad
blocking. Of course, how do we pay for Internet content? This is the
crucial issue of Internet any way you slice it is we have to have a way to
be able to pay for Internet content. In some ways you could say this is
perhaps opposed to the idea of free culture, right? So there is an
essential tension between the essential idea of net neutrality and free
culture from a person talked about and content providers want to be --
well, artists want to be compensated and make a living and the commercial
interest to create platforms to deliver content. You need to do that. If
ads are an important part of that. We wouldn't have the Internet today if
we didn't have ads. Legitimately ad blocking is a violation of free speech.
In the United States it's part of the first amendment. Advertising goes
back to the founding of the United States. So that is an issue. And the
other issue is maybe privacy. So let me wrap up here with the solutions.
Could we make a regulatory solution? Should we make a class of traffic
called advertising that regulators could regulate and make sure it's --
advertising is not unfair or deceptive. Interestingly, ad blocking more
than regulation has forced a lot of advertisers to improve their
advertising. So the Internet advertising bureau has adopted the lean
standards, lighten crypted ad choice supported non-invasive ads. In many
cases this market responds to a problem of too much advertising has forced
the advertisers to make better advertising that's less invasive. One
solution is saying no data caps. That is one way to go. The challenge with
that is we don't address the security concerns. Another would be could we
have new business models? Microtransactions. The other area could be user
compensation. I think this goes back to the key message here that in many
cases, maybe advertisers should be paying for the transmission of their
ads. We know this model from television, radio and print where advertisers
were helping to pay for the cost of the network. So this may be something
we need to think about as we go forward in saying how do we optimize our
goals or network investment and human rights and we may have to allow the
advertisers to participate in the -- to help pay for the transaction, not
just the end user.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks for highlighting the complexity of this issue and
also not only focusing on the fact that advertisement consumes data but
also on the fact that advertisement blocking tools could be also used
directly by users but also by network operators. That is also a very
crucial element that should be taken into consideration when any kind of
reply is wanted. I would like to spaoeng about regulation, I would like to
ask Carlos Brito to provide us some elements what is going on here in
Mexico. You have had a very interesting reform. There is consultations
going on and you have not -- there should be consultation going on. And
well, and I know that you have a very insightful perspective on this study
that you did last year.

>> CARLOS BRITO: Thank you, Luca, good morning, everyone. I presented for
the book here is pretty much a brief version of a report. A research,
report in 2015 because according to the regulators' plan, the IFT, they net
neutrality rulemaking process, we'll start with the consultation process,
was supposed to start in August 2015 and now we are in December 2016.
That's not happening and that's pretty much 2 1/2 years of unapplyable
loss. But what I want to tell you is to make up a framework on how is -- in
2013 there was a major talk about reform on telecommunications and
competition. And so we created mainly two new institutions. They were taken
off the press -- they are Constitutional regulators for competition and
telecommunication. The telecommunication regulator is also competition for
only telecommunications matters. It is kind of complex when we deal with
net neutrality because when we talk about net neutrality it is not only in
Telcos but Internet content. At some point there probably will be judicial
issue on who and what the role of the institution we created will be in the
net neutrality issue. So we reformed the article 6 of the Constitution to
be in these terms, telecommunications are public services of general
interest. Therefore the State should combine -- universal coverage,
interconnectivity, convergence, free access and without arbitrary
interference. From the discussion of that Constitutional reform and the
paragraph I just mentioned, in the Congress we wanted to know what does
that mean. What will that mean in the secondary law? And many lawmakers say
well, probably this will lead to a net neutrality law when it comes next
year. It makes sense when you see what is the specific phrasing they were
using. And so as you can see when your State and Constitutional reform
telecommunications are general interest public services, the whole
discussion that they have in the United States on this public utility
versus information services debate we just went through it, it's a public
service here of general interest. And well, we created this kind of
different regulator. I have had the chance to talk with the regulator this
time on what is their perspective and that's very important. What is their
perspective on their own work? Are they dealing with human rights or not?
You'll find many regulators say no we're dealing with the economics. That's
not human rights. We're dealing with information services. That's not human
rights. But in the design, the very core design of Mexican's regulator, a
Constitutional term. It doesn't depend on political parties like in the
U.S. Not on government. So the Constitution say that the regulator should
be what we call here the -- an institution that is protecting humans
rights, which freedom of expression, access to information, access to
competition and regulation unit. And we have this reform because we had
major concentration problems in telecommunication services and we were
discussing in the case of television concentration it was a national
television concentration, we had the issue of the relation of why people
like so much soap operas? It is not probably the best content when you want
to educate people as well. So I'm not against soap operas but why people
want them? Probably for 70 years that's the only thing they have been
offered. But-so this is a circle argument on why is the demand on that
specific content. I'm mentioning this because of the debate I will mention
later. So we have this enormous concentration in broadcasting services and
telecommunication services and we have to do this reform, which is working
pretty much well. It's slowly in some cases and not so much in others. And
right now well, we also have a problem of vertical concentration in terms
of for example the major player for mobile services, it is also right now
having tell sell has stores, soccer teams, stream services, music services.
They are developing games, video games, so it is getting broader, the
vertical concentration and that may be an issue. Sorry, I have the feeling
that it may be. We go and say what is the public opinion of Telcos in net
neutrality? They are silent very much. Not talking about it as being an
issue. But on their own alliance to talk about public policy issues in the
public sphere, they are a telecommunicationist and they are shy to talk
about net neutrality. But the whole thing is we reviewed what has happened
in other places because we want to tell the regulator who was supposed to
have the rulemaking process what has happened in Mexico. We found we have
some cases of blocking. We found the fixed services from companies, they
were blocking Skype in 2007 and 2008. But it -- there were different
opinions on what was -- shall the  State do on the blockings of Skype. It
ended up because of consumer pressure. We have the full -- everywhere. In
the major players and in the smallest of players they do exactly the same.
Because there is also this saying that probably will foster diversity of
different rates and services. The same three, Facebook, every single player
-- how much time I have? One minute? Whoa. So there is no evidence of --
that is the problem. There are some signs that there may be a problem with
it but the whole game in this issue is that actually the user has no
possibility to actually say okay, this is a problem. No possibility to
create evidence. So summing it up, we have -- may have a problem with zero
rating and also or possibilities of -- the deal is we have a regulator who
has to take into consideration so many human rights that I have to say in
Mexico have come to a different tradition. Is not the same tradition, for
example, the privacy right in Europe is not the same in Latin American
context in this human rights system is not the same on Mexican tradition.
The same with expression and specifically in the obligation, the four kinds
of obligations the State has to answer to how to manage those deals. So we
have a very complicated deal in my perspective. BAREK's guidelines are a
good base. However, we will have to be -- to create a very strict control
of Constitutionality and conventionality for the specific Mexican case.
Thank you very much.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you very much, Carlos. Before we pass to the second
segment discussing zero rating I would like to open the floor for comments
and remarks. Please be quite concise so we can go to the second segment. If
you want to raise your hand to make comments or observation on this, okay.
One, two, three. Start, please. Introduce yourself.

>> I'm roj inMatthews and representing India. COI is the organization I
represent. Two quick comments. One is this notion of rights is in our
opinion a bit dangerous because it leads to law and legality, enforcement,
which is very ant ith sis to an open Internet and the reason it was started
in the first place at private domains. I think we would be very concerned
about this notion of the Internet in terms of a rights-based. Maybe an
opportunities-based discussion might better serve tint of the discussion.
The second point I would like to raise is the issue that the professor has
made in terms of the economics of the deal. Invariably what we find in that
in all of these discussions the access service providers get the short end
of the deal, right? The rest of these folks who play the Internet are
excused of the cost lands up as a result of these discussions on the access
service providers. As in the case in India are licensed and under
government control in most instances. Two things I would like to make sure
is part of the discussion. Thank you.

>> May I ask a quick question? It is concerning the ad block panel. You
mentioned the notion of self-defense. Do you believe that -- I believe when
you have the notion of judicial self-defense you create some kind of
opposition between the user and the business and each one is going to try
to choose to overcome the other over time. Do you believe that competition
can be healthy by itself? Or it needs some kind of regulation as to how far
business can go to try and overcome ad blockers? Or how far ad blockers can
go to overcome advertisement? Basically if it can be healthy to leave it be
or we should have some regulation to make it healthier?

>> Luca, you make a differentiation on ad blocking, stating that it was a
difference between consumers implementing ad blocker and net operators.
What is the difference of downloading an app and a user activating it or
asking an ISP provider to block the ads? It is the same approach and not a
differentiation in that regards.

>> ROSLYN LAYTON: Thank you for the questions. In terms of the gentleman
from -- I think it is a concern in many cases. If we look at the economic
side. Two-sided markets are interested in finding efficient outcomes where
-- and that is -- this is where we have a debate in net neutrality. Is it
net neutrality, which is the edge provider wins, which is the edge provider
-- that is the idea, or the two-sided markets where you try to find an
efficient outcome? I understand his perspective. In the idea of digital
self-defense. There are definitely scholars who work on digital self-
defense. I use it more in a kol oakall sense. Interestly, they have
succeeded to force the advertisers better than any regulation. The EU
adopted a cookie law which people have said has been a disaster. Upwards of
$2 billion a year in lost productivity, wasted time. People don't go onto
the website because a pop-up comes up. They don't know how to disable it
and so on. Ad blocking in a short period of time succeeded to make the
largest advertisers improve their ads. So certainly maybe not the best
solution, but it was effective to send a signal pricing is a signal. Send a
signal to the advertisers, improve it. And then finally, I don't
necessarily buy into the view there is necessarily a conflict or
antithesis. Some users feel pressed or offended from the amount of
advertising they see. Many cases feeling like they can't control it and
they're happy to pay their mobile operator to block the ads for them.
Personally, I don't make a distinction if the user down lo*eds the ad or
the network providers does it but I would say the network provider offering
a network level ad blocker solution has a better solution to manage the
security and many cases you are working with a mobile operator and rely on
them to block malware, to block -- governments ask them to block offensive
material and so on. So I would in this case maybe disagree with perhaps
those in BAREK saying maybe network level blocking was not acceptable.
Incidentally, those guidelines are not binding so even though I know that
regulators in the EU want to work together, the operators are not required
to follow those guidelines. I don't think they want to necessarily object
to them, but there is a considerable amount of debate about the guidelines
in the EU. It is not -- not everyone is happy about them.

>> LUCA BELLI: Just a quick reply to the question. I think the point I
wanted to stress before is indeed that when a user downloads an ad and
knows how to define the setting of the ads is actually in power of what ads
he is blocking. Whereas when the telecom operator that define blocking,
they define what kind of ads are blocked and how and also it requires a
previous monitoring of traffic. In Brazil it would be illegal because the
inspection would be monitoring the content of the traffic and contrary to
the law. That is also some attorney issue in Europe where also the
guidelines and regulation were quite explicit in saying the monitoring
practices have to be reviewed by data protection regulators. But that is
just a beginning of an answer. If you want, we can discuss this more later
and I would like now to pass to the second segment of the session because
we only have 40 minutes left and to start introducing the very prominent
debate and issue that is occupying probably the minds of net neutrality
opponents and proponents over the past couple of years, which is zero
rating. Zero rating is basically the -- there are seven chapters dedicated
to zero rating in this book. Some are pro and some analyze it to try to
define a different kind of zero rating and I think it is very useful to
inform the debate. Zero rating is sponsoring specific application, right?
In the first chapter when I speak about zero rating -- I ask the question
indeed, if it could be a switch from a generic Internet to a mobile -- for
those who do not know what that, it was a popular network in France in the
1990s where the operators -- which kind of application the user could
receive and telecom regulator approved which kind of application receive so
it was a centralized model with a control from operator and regulator
basically. The question I asked and I would like to ask to have reflection
on is whether zero rating could not turn a generic Internet into a mobile
-- the Internet differs from its predecessors because Internet users -- the
Internet as an end-to-end distributed open architecture and the Internet
users are not only recipients of a pre-defined service, the network was
optimized for voice. It was optimized for the pre-defined set of
applications. The Internet is completely different. The user is at the
center. Although at the edges of the network, it is at the center because
it cannot only access content and application, but also produce and freely
share its creativity, its content, its application. It is not a mere
consumer, it is a producer. He can produce and consume at the same time.
What is important understanding zero rating models is that they are based
on two elements. The sponsoring of applications or a set of applications on
the one hand, but also the existence of a data cap. Frequently a very
reduced data cap because a study by a consultant says users have an
interest in zero rating practices when data cap is particularly low. So in
that case that could trigger a sort of circle where the operator keeps the
data caps low in order to maintain zero rating offering attractive and that
is something that's actually has been observed in the EU market and also in
OCD market the monitoring reports in 2014 have shown in the markets where
zero rating practice were introduced, there were considerable increases in
the price of the open Internet. Why? Because the operators kept the data
cap low so it could be kept low to attract new users. On the other hand in
the market where zero rating have been banned like in the Netherlands, the
opposite phenomenon have been observed. A week after the ban on the rating
the domain national operator doubled the -- are you hearing me? I've been
sabotaged. So yeah, exactly, I've been capped. The opposite phenomenon has
been observed in the Netherlands when the national consumer regulator
decided to ban zero rating, the week after the domain operator doubled data
caps to promote careless usage of the Internet. Those were the words of KPN
CEO. So the goal was indeed to promote usage by increasing volume. And that
is something that has been also observed in Brazil when one of the
operators decided to eliminate zero rating offerings and the week after
doubled the data caps, therefore reducing by 60% the cost of Internet
access. So another important element that is in the chapter -- the first
chapter of the book is that I think it is very important we have a
distinction amongst different types of zero rating. We cannot only speak
about zero rating as if it was a unique thing. There are zero rating plans
where an operator selects the applications and can select maybe vertically
integrated services and others the provider can sponsor the application and
in this case mainly content application provider have good financial
resources can sponsor applications. There are zero rating platforms such as
Facebook, free basics that could be opened. Such as a version of Facebook
basic where everyone can build and include services but they can also be
closed such as the first Internet version where only 12 or 13 applications
were provided. Finally, there is also some zero rating that is fully
compatible with net neutrality where I call application agnostic zero
rating. The M sent application or in India air sell program that provides
data package per month that the user is free to use as he or she wants. And
for a couple of months he will have this data package so that the user of
the Internet as an Internet user could do in receiving but imparting
information and innovation can be promoted. So that was my very long
introduction. But I actually as we have lost two panelists, I think we can
have a little bit more of time to discuss this. I would like now to ask
Javier. You have to be very close to the mic.

>> JAVIER PALLERO: Okay, let's hope this keeps working. Great. How much
time do I have? Seven minutes, okay. Well, my name is Javier Pallero, a
work at Access Now. I'm here to talk about the first of the articles you
will find in the book in the part of zero rating pros and cons, this
article was authored by three people, one from our team. Basically we are
in the opinion of the cons of zero rating. Especially not as a matter of
principle, but on the implementation and flavors that we have seen so far
on the Internet. So to start I would like just to assert a couple of basic
arguments that found much of the work we do at Access Now. We believe the
Internet is a rights-based technology. Why do we believe that? We think
that the design and agnostic end-to-end network, which was the main idea
behind the Internet and actually promotes free speech and makes it a really
useful resource to do that. And on the rights-based rhetoric we think that
Internet is and how it should keep working. We think that the role of
regulation in the States quite important actually. We can find that part of
the world of the Internet in the U.S. is also a response to some regulatory
decisions. For instance, the idea of deregulating in market in the 80s and
90s of the telecommunications industry. It is a regulation decision even if
it's deregulating something. And the communications act and other similar
legislation have actually encouraged the participation of more actors on
the Internet allowing them to express their opinions without the fear of
repression in the case of intermediaries, for instance. That's the base
about all of our arguments and our understanding on these issues. How we
arrived to the conclusion that I am going to share with you. So in the
beginning we just would like to say that while we in the article we define
what zero rating is. Luca has just offered an explanation and it is
something that is quite easy to understand. But we differentiate two kinds
of zero rating practices we've seen in the world. We call the first one the
telco model. The practice where a telecommunications Internet provider
strikes deals with specific partners or just to benefit their services or
the services that the telco is going to provide. Their own video platform
or probably striking a deal with a music service to exempt it from data
caps. So that would be what we call the telco model. The other model we
have identified is what we call the sub Internet model which I call the man
in the middle model. Which is the model that arrives from services like
Facebook's free basics, especially at the first iterations, which is an
intermediary between the user and the experience they have of the Internet.
The intermediary designs what applications you have access to and in the
middle of the exchange of traffic. So we have an opinion against both of
those models. At first on the telco model the main objection that we have
is actually the main objection where is the containment of speech and
choice. In the telco model we've seen there is a usage of some quality of
service technologies in order to identify and promote a specific content or
to exempt it from data caps. Actually we assert in the paper that quality
of service technologies were in the beginning created to offer to the user
the ability to shape their own experience in their home. So this
understanding that because we have heard that some telco proponents of this
telco model of zero rating say quality of service exists in the design of
the technology and therefore this means that the creators intended to allow
this kind of practices by using this technology to shape the traffic. But
we say that this is intended actually for the user to shape their own
experience and instead of getting this forced experience over there their
access or enjoyment of the Internet. And the other model we identified is
the sub Internet model. The most controversial one. We see there is an
intermediary between the person using the web and their experience. There
is a problem here because actually there was mention by the person from the
UNESCO at the beginning about the importance of privacy and revelations
about spying and stuff like that. One of the ways in which users themselves
and some market actors have developed solutions for that is encryption. For
instance, this sub Internet model offered by for instance the free basics
experience is incompatible with encryption. Encryption would be a way of
going around the necessary monitoring that has to happen in order to exempt
these specific applications from the data caps. In this sense this is
incompatible with encryption it restricts the control of surveying or
monitoring traffic and provides less innovation and less opportunity for
Internet users to actually use the Internet and engage in businesses and
all of the benefits that arise from the Internet. The assertion that these
restrictions and control are negative for the adoption of Internet is also
in the report by the portable Internet where it was found that zero rating
did not bring most mobile Internet users online for the first time and 82%
-- instead of content limitations. So there was already mentions about how
regulators are dealing with it. We also covered that in the short report we
wrote. And there was mention about BAREK, which, by the way, banned this
sub Internet model in the guidelines of the implementation by national
regulators of the rules. It's in the articles in rule -- you can see the
sources in the paper. Bottom line we think any solutions for enabling
access or incentivizing the con semtion of the Internet need to be
compatible with basic human rights information. The guarantee to the rights
of privacy and the free flow of information. And that sometimes gets a
little bit lost in the discussion about the zero rating models, which is
how the network traffic should be or not be surveiled or monitored or
whatever and what extent and which technologies and which limitations
should those technologies have. That's it, thanks.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks, Javier. As we have lost two of the panelists, we
have more time for discussion, excellent. So I am pretty sure we will have
some reactions to this and some comments. So if you want to have -- to
raise your hand to make a comment, please. The gentleman in the back. Do we
have the mic for the gentleman there?

>> Hello, everyone. I represent the -- community foundation. Some of you
may know our foundation started four years ago started a program by
Wikipedia zero and we've been partnering with mobile operators to provide
free access to the full Wikipedia service. Not only read-only but also to
edit. I have a question for the room that is something that we have been
discussing internally and two years ago we came up with what we call our
operating principles, which are 10 rules by means of which we want to have
the program to be aligned with open Internet principles and at the same
time aligned with our mission. That said, we currently are evaluating not
only the impact of the program, but the impact of those operating
principles. Are those principles, in fact, fulfilling or satisfying the
questions that come out with zero rating and specifically with Wikipedia 0?
My question for the room and panelists would be going a little meta. Are
principles or rules something that could be applied to zero rating in a way
too keep what we believe is possible from zero rating practices like ours,
providing access to freely licensed information, providing people the
opportunity to also contribute back their content on the encyclopedia in
countries where affordability is still a barrier to access the Internet? We
see from many other platforms that there are not a list of rules or a list
of principles and we were the first ones to kind of like come up with the
idea. I wonder if people would consider that creating a line of principles
or a line of rules to do zero rating positively or responsibly could be a
good way to move the debate forward instead of going at a black and white
yes or no model, which I think that's what's going on right now. Secondly,
I think everyone in the room has it on their minds. We need more
information and more data to actually see if these models and platforms are
actually impacting the people that needs to be impacted. The alliance for
the affordable Internet did a great job with this. We are starting our own
research. We're starting to do a little bit of surveys and interviews with
people that we think could be helping us inform our decisions, but I want
to keep that question open about principles for responsible zero rating to
the room. Thank you.

>> LUCA BELLI: Do we have -- I think -- I would take two other comments,
please.

>> I'm Javon Macedonia. Any time Wikipedia or someone like that with such
credibility makes the case for something like this, we're all convinced
that it is a good way to go. And I would immediately as you were speaking I
was kind of attracted to supporting that. But the thing is it's a dangerous
floodgate to open. Net neutrality is a very important principle and if we
start playing with that, it is going to go much more in a different
direction that I don't think we wish.

>>  Good morning, am I on here? My name is Allen and here with privacy
fundamentals. However, for the last nine years until some months ago I was
with Comcast, before that I spent time with AOL and before that with PBS
and so I've dealt with these Internet backbone and net neutrality issues
for a bunch of years now. And I really actually like to respond to the last
comment a bit. But in general for the panelists, when we talk about net
neutrality, and I haven't yet reviewed in very much depth the new European
regulation. My question really is, we need to mess with the important
principle of net neutrality, I believe, because I notice that the European
regulation has a basis of all traffic treated equally, no throttling, no
blocking. Limited exceptions for reasonable network management for
protecting the integrity and the safety of the network. Is there a
prioritization capabilities allowed for things like suppressing child
pornography? For things like paying to build pipes big enough to have
massive content providers able to get their content through? For instance,
aside from the massive ones, very high-level important traffic. If we have
online medical resources available, should that be prioritized over other
types of traffic? I don't know to the extent this is built into the EU reg.
Maybe there are other people that share my ignorance and we could get a
comment on that.

>> LUCA BELLI: One comment here and then we can open.

>> I think that cap is crime against the consumer. But the question is how
to build the capacity to support the growth of the traffic. Maybe the
answer is in the public interest. And this is a question just to make alive
this debate and not to running up the --

>> LUCA BELLI: Actually to the last comment, one of the reasons why zero
rating plans have been deployed is it has been announced as a way to
connect the unconnected, right? And I think there is some sort of
misconception because the fact that zero rating is maybe a possible option
doesn't mean that it is the only option. And I was thinking about this
because I know that you are very much involved in community networks, which
are actually a very feasible option, and we are presenting another report
in two hours in room 8, I think, -- room 9, sorry, on community networks
and how can people -- local communities develop their own network to
enhance infrastructure. Actually that does not only mean that they could be
connected, it also means that they could -- having created local
infrastructure, the infrastructure and connectivity can also create demand
for other traditional operators. They are not incompatible things. They are
very much compatible elements that could be built in synergy. I don't want
to monopolize the debate. I will let the other panelists reply.

>> I think answering to him, I think we're well beyond the platform-wide
discussion. I was asking in the India position as a country, I think no
country is going there. We are going to the gray areas what to do. In terms
of principles, yeah, principles of Wikipedia, principles of the regulator?
What can you do with those principles? That's the main question. But even
above that is what do you want to protect? We want to protect freedom of
expression and user rights and innovations and a bunch of things. It's an
environment, very complicated environment ecosystem. The next question is
how to do it? That's an important part of the BAREK rule I think.
Integrating the human rights discourse. Is this  tool necessary,
enforceable? What are the consequences not applying them? There is this
saying that let's make it principle based but principles without
consequences and that's the main issue. I want to say I find this
discussion in every single world panel I participate on. When we talk about
rights. Here on my left talking about rights, let's talk about
opportunities. I think that it happens a lot but the human rights is the
phrase is understood very differently in every single part of the world.
Even in my own country many people when they hear human rights they think
of money, for example. Oh, human rights are expensive, therefore we don't
have enough money, therefore you don't have to have humans rights. Let's
agree that the concept of human rights is very different and maybe we are
talking at the same time position. So this kind of -- that's very
important.

>> ROSLYN LAYTON: Let me start again by saying I also want to thank Luca.
It is a very rich discussion and to make sure that you get a copy of our
book and I'm also going to point out and make three quick points. If you go
to social science research network, SSRN.com I have three papers going into
a lot of these details. What I want to give you are maybe the other
perspectives when you look at these issues of data caps and zero rating,
which you should take into account. I think for those who are looking at
net neutrality in the introduction of this book written by Tim WOO he is
talking about the Internet as a utility. Even in utility markets there are
limits. There are concepts that data caps and utility markets and zero
rating in you it markets. We have more pricing flexibility in electricity
markets than Internet markets and they have less -- this is a case where
you have just one net. They have more pricing flexibility than most mobile
operators. In this case if you look at an issue of data cap. I may want to
go further on the train but I can't. I can't complain to the train company,
gee, you are violating my rights to go further on the train. There is a
data cap on the train. If you look at the history of data caps over time,
the bundles that we consume, the prices that we have, the bundles get
bigger and the prices are falling. If data caps are not -- is a temporary
solution, it is not the prices that we have today are changing quarter by
quarter. They -- so the sense that data cap is, you know, a threat to the
existence and so on, it actually changes very quickly. On top of that,
where we have the case of the KPN in the Netherlands, it's easy for the
incumbent to remove a data cap because they have the largest network. The
data cap practice is more important for the entrant operator because they
have restrictions on their spectrum. They have smaller networks and they
need to be able to ensure they can control their capacity and make sure
that the users get the adequate amount for what they've paid. So you need
to just square the idea of data caps with utilities. With regard to this
very important point about principles I think you also have to put
regulators in the real world perspective. They are trying very hard around
the world to address this issue. Even if you look at the alliance for
affordable Internet their incidence of the zero rating plans were 1% to 2%
of all the plans they covered. We have to understand in the regulators'
world they have a lot on their table and we're asking them to look at a
small part of the market when they have huge responsibilities on their
plate. Managing the competition issues, managing security and privacy. A
whole range of things we need to be able to have the proper perspective for
this particular concern in light of the amount of revenue we're talking
about and in light of the number of people for whom it's an issue. I have
done a lot of research on Facebook free basics. I have contacted the app
developers who use it. How many net new users do you get as a result of
free basics? A case of a foundation in Africa they have 10 million net new
users who want basics for aides and maternity. This is a legitimate case
where people who are truly suffering because they can't walk and can't
work, this is the only kind of healthcare that they have. They live in
remote areas. And I think this idea that this is how is a sub Internet that
it is a less than viable means to use the Internet it is an affront to
people that avail themselves helping them save and extend their lives and
we need to recognize just because it may not be your idea of what is a
perfect Internet. For these 10 million people it S. it doesn't mean they
won't continue and do other thing. Real people are using the services every
day who take good value from them and we can't devalue that because it
doesn't fit our ideal sense of what the Internet should be.

>> LUCA BELLI: Before I get to you, we have I think a rare occasion of
having two Internet pioneers in the same room by chance. I would like to
ask -- I hate to put people on the spot but I would like to ask Louie, one
of the fathers of the Internet, vin CERF. He was an inspiration to him. I
would like to ask Louie, he is here with us today. Thank you, Louie, and
also to Bob frankson, the father of home networking to give us a couple of
maybe -- one minute of what is your perspective on the debate we're having
here.

>> Very brief. I do agree that Facebook basics serves a need. And we
shouldn't confuse that with the discussion of the Internet. But I also
think there is a larger discussion of the difference between utility and
infrastructure. And I think we need a different narrative for the Internet.
I don't want to confuse the two discussions. That's a longer discussion.

>> LUCA BELLI: Bob will be introducing the session at 12. I would like to
have maybe two words from Louie pazon who can also tell us what are the
basics of mini tell. I think he has some thoughts on that. Can someone pass
a mic to him?

>> Thanks for giving me a few minutes. I've been involved a few years ago
in net neutrality discussions but mostly because it failed. There was a lot
of technical matters involved and they were misunderstood. Now it looks
like it's no longer the major problem as far as I can hear here, most of
the matters in the end impact the whole society. It depends how we want to
share capacities, share opportunities, and share benefits among the
citizens of a certain part of the world. Obviously there is no single
solution to that. The world is diverse. Some countries are still suffering,
not all. And I guess there is no solution if we want to come up with a
scheme or a model which would apply everywhere in the world and everywhere
on the Internet. We have to accept that the world is not really compatible
in every part. The world is I would say specialized everywhere you want to
use, which is fashionable. But we have to admit that a solution, whatever
it is, is a political solution in each country or in each segment of the
world, and as -- we don't debate on what we want as a society, but we will
just balance from one proposal to another indefinitely. Thanks.

>> LUCA BELLI: You had some final comments and then I think we can close
the debate.

>> Thank you, and I think also as you said, one size does not fit all so,
of course, it must be -- we also think that a different approach it must be
allowed different approaches. That is also true in general in a lot of
cases. Just a quick comment to the gentleman of filtering and blocking and
blocking access to images of sexual abuse of children is still allowed
under the new regulation in Europe. So that will continue to -- our law
enforcement will continue to do that. That is not constraining that
activity. A comment on the zero rating. I think the BAREK guidelines are
discussing a little bit on clear-cut cases, which is not allowed under the
regulation. But I think that is -- was the most challenging part of the
BAREK guidelines and also I think will be the most challenging part for the
regulators to assess cases of zero rating and the guidelines have provided
with five, six prints criteria to assess whether a certain practice is
allowed or not. But I think that is the most difficult part. And I think
that is also true that you said that as the regulators, we have a lot of
issues to deal with. So, of course, this is also adding up to put resources
into this area as well. So, of course, we would also not like to regulate
too much if the market can also provide solutions for a lot of issues, then
that is also a very good thing. So we really hope that we will not have too
many complicated cases. But I think there will be some cases in Europe and
that will be challenging and we'll see how it develops. Thank you.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks. For those interested in chapter 8 of this book is
dedicated to the new guidelines that has been altered. I think what is
emerging clearly is that a lot of more accurate and in-depth debate is
needed. Those are the questions we are discussing here are not clear-cut
questions. There is no silver bullet. It is necessary to have public debate
on this. The reason of this report is to inform people and policymakers. It
is necessary to have also some political vision as reminding us and to take
some steps in the direction or another because we want to pursue a specific
vision and that vision, I think, we all agree, should be in the public
interest. So I would really like to thank you for the excellent comments,
presentation particularly the audience. You have had very good comments,
interactions and thanks a lot. I hope we will see you next year at the next
meeting. Thank you. (Session ended at 10:30 AM CT) Internet Governance
Forum 2016 Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth Jalisco, Mexico 7
December 2016 Room 8 Workshop Freedom House 10:45 AM CT

>> MODERATOR: This year, however, we focused on marginalized communities
and often victimized community, women, LGBT, religious minorities and the
disabled. And the unique threats they face online. And how sometimes their
online experience and threats can translate into real-world threats. We
created a project called hyperlinkers where we commissioned research in
eight select countries and advocacy projects around these issues. So in
your honor today, we have assembled five of those here to share their work
with you. We feel that they are some of the smartest, brightest and
compassionate activists we've assembled. Some are veterans in this space.
Some of them just entering for the first time. What I'm going to do is I'm
going to introduce them and then we'll have a bit of a discussion on their
findings and such. I'll start with the gentleman to my left here, Moses
Karanja is from Nairobi, Kenya. He is a research fellow at the center for
international property law based at Strathmore law school in Nairobi. He is
a soft spoken intellectual. He was at the forum on Internet freedom in
Africa in cap all yeah and distinguished himself discussing his
presentation and research findings. Also to the left of me I have Khalid
Abdel-Hadi. His first time at the IGF and pleased to have him here. He is
the founder and creative director of my-Calli magazine. A social magazine
base in Jordan focused on the LGBT community and combating misperceptions
there. Because of its reach and impact and popularity it has been blocked
by the government there and several regional governments. I admire Khalid's
courage for being out and proud, particularly in a culture such as his. I
also want to recognize Japleen Pasricha from India. She smashes patriarchy
for a living but does it in such an intellectually sophisticated and
charming way it doesn't seem so bad. She is the founder and editor of
feminism in India.com, a compelling and provocative online forum on LGBT
community, feminism, sexual adent tee and so forth. She interviewed 500
people, women, for her research on violence against women in India. Oliver
Trejo worked for the Heartland Alliance where much of his research and
advocatesing focuses on labor rights in marginalized community. This, too,
is his first IGF and researched how women in Mexico are threatened online
and faced real life consequences. He has a great recommender of restaurants
here in Guadalajara. We are pleased to have him on our team. Dhouha been
Yousseff to my right. She is one of the smartest people in Tunisia on
Internet rights. This is her second Freedom House delegation experience at
IGF. Her current research focuses on religious minorities in Tunisia and
the unique threats they face. And then finally to my right here Sonya
Kelly, who doesn't need much of an introduction. She has been coming to
these panels for many years. The director of the freedom of the net report
which you see in front of you. And she has been a pioneer at this forum in
introducing human rights into IGF discussions and she will be speaking
about some of her findings a little later in the panel. So we're very
pleased that she is here as well. Because Moses and Khalid's research
focuses on threats faced by the LGBT community, we're going to group their
discussion a bit here. So I'll start with Moses here to my left and ask him
to talk a little bit about the LGBT community online in Kenya, and the
unique threats they face and how is that different from the rest of the
population.

>> MOSES KARANJA: Thank you, Dominic and thank you everyone who showed up.
I'm Moses as has been introduced. Straight to the point around LGBT
community in Kenya, we start out from a point of criminalization.
Homosexuality is criminalized. The penal code. At the at the same time it's
unConstitutional because the Constitution bill of rights clearly grants
rights to all citizens in the country, all humans basically and as such
there have been legal cases to contest the unConstitutionality of that.
That is just a snippet of how the situation is where the supreme law grants
all equal rights but the community around which these principles are to be
implemented are very -- there is massive friction to implement these kind
of principles. And it is that kind of offline reality that then mirrors
online experiences of the LGBT community, because the fear and the stigma
that comes offline just is also online. Importantly before I go to the
threats is that there are massive opportunities that the Internet press to
the LGBT community and especially meeting, you know, friends and making
acquaintances in the safe space without necessarily having to unmask who
you really are for fear of physical violence. However, as this community
has, you know, found space online, the threats that are dominant in the
society have also found -- followed them online and issues of hacking and
breach of personal accounts online so that you can then unmask criminals
gangs that do that to unmask the LGBT community because they know there is
monetary gain or material gain that can be made from Ransom. Those are the
threats that happen to be massively driving people out from what has been
considered for a few years as a safe space for the LGBT community. And as
such the engagements around the use of the Internet to promote or to
challenge the power structures that are embedded in our society and in this
case sexual orientation and gender identity, you can only talk of the
Internet or the technology only as a platform, but how it's presenting its
case in Kenya is a whole different scenario and as such I was privileged to
work with Freedom House to understand much deeper how the Internet is being
used and the threats embedded. We will have more conversation with Dominic.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: You run a website, Khalid, in Jordan based on what you
are hearing from Moses, how the threats may be similar or different from
what you are seeing in Jordan and what your publication is doing to address
those.

>> KHALID ABDEL-HADI: So basically I think the LGBT community in
conservative countries, very similar issues especially when it comes
online. In Jordan, we face two different kinds of prejudice when it comes
online towards the LGBT. One when it comes to the dating apps. There is
often public outing. Through my report we found out that there was a big
website that sort of outed over 100 person online and sort of similar to
that.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Why is privacy or an oh on imtee so important to the
community online.

>> KHALID ABDEL-HADI: Many LGBT can't be online because they're outlined.
Blackmailed and threatened. Jordan, crimes are a lot. When it comes to your
orientation and sexuality you are often targeted for that. Our publication
tries to promote more visibility and more accuracy when it comes to the
LGBT community in Jordan. However, the media does not do a great job when
it comes to promoting or not promoting, discussing the LGBT issues in
Jordan or in the region.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Thank you. I want to advance the conversation a bit to
violence against women online and this is where we turn to Japleen and
Oliver because some of the content of what they're researching overlaps
with one another. Japleen, perhaps we could start your video. You need the
two to three-minute warning or we can do it right now? This is just a small
clip of the work that Japleen has been doing through her interviewing of
500 women and so we'll just play that for you quickly. It is just a minute.
This is like an old silent film. We've had technical difficulties with the
audio, so if can read that, that would educate you as to the content of
this video. (Video being shown)

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Japleen, thank you for creating that video. Thank you
for the research that you've done for this project. A lot of people who are
unfamiliar with this topic might think what is online violence and what is
online harassment? Violence we often associate with physical violence. So
could you explain for us a little bit the difference between like online
harassment, what is online violence, and how it plays out both online and
off line?

>> JAPLEEN PASRICHA: Thank you for the lovely introduction and thank you
everyone for giving us your time. I interviewed 500 women for this resource
report and this question has been asked multiple times why do you term it
as violence and not harassment and abuse? As you also saw in the video, we
in my report I did not just focus on trolling women receive on social media
website but I also looked at online violence, that translates into offline
violence. If somebody's private or identifiable information is put online.
Somebody's home address. That is a serious offense that can translate into
physical danger. Another very common global problem that we're facing,
which is popular known as a sexual abuse or non-consensual -- your images
put online. Private images or videos put online without your consent. This
again is a huge issue not just in one country but there have been many
cases in the U.S. and India where there was a video of a woman who -- non-
consensual private video of a woman who was put online and that shamed her
to the extent that she committed suicide. So when these cases come up, it
doesn't just restrict itself to harassment or abuse by trolling on social
media website but a form of online violence. A lot of women reported that
the abuse and harassment that they face via the screens is not just to the
screens, it has effects on the physical and emotional well-being. It causes
them depression, insomnia and leads to self-censorship where they either
get off the Internet, off Facebook and Twitter or they sensor themselves by
posting their opinions online. Thank you.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Thank you, Japleen. A quick housekeeping note. What I
understand is for those who may be watching us online -- I hope there is
many of you -- feel free to send in your questions and we will be indicated
as to any remote participation. We will have question and answers after we
run through our panelists. Mr. Oliver, you have been researching similar
types of work but even more disturbing findings right here in Mexico.
You've talked often about the term viral hate and you also interviewed a
number of women who have been harassed and have had terrible consequences.
Could you explain for us the term viral hate and also some of your findings
from the women that you've been working with on this research?

>> OLIVER TREJO: Thanks, Dominic. First off, I want to say that the job --
the work that I has to do with violence. That's where the link lies with
research. Viral hate comes from a journalist and Mexican writer in an
article that he has. He coins viral hate as sex-related term. It has to do
with all the aggressions, as my colleague Japleen mentioned -- more than
trolling we're talking about strong instances of violence or situations of
violence against women. My research in particular talks about women who
have been sexually assaulted in Mexico using digital media to bring
attention to the subject of the sexual assault or to ask for help. For
example, identifying a perpetrator. While using popular platforms like
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, the society turns against them and the violence
that they receive -- this viral hate is actually reached instances of rape
threats, death threats, photographs of mutilated women and saying that's
what's going to happen to these people. So basically this online violence,
there is no prevention to it. There is no reaction from the institutions.
And even though there is a strong legal framework here in Mexico for
violence against women, for discrimination and so on, there is no actual
enforcement and no access to justice. So these women cannot rely on
institutions. These women cannot rely on society for protection. There is
no prevention mechanisms. That's where the problem lies. What can be done
in order to prevent that women who have been attacked on the street and
attacked online don't have to move from one city to another to not be
scared? More than trolling, we get to the point where women start losing
weight, start leaving cities. This is not something that any woman can do.
This emblematic cases talk about a couple of people who had the possibility
to move away from the city where they were threatened. But this happens on
an everyday basis to to a lot of women in Mexico. Statistics are really
high. Not everyone has the possibility of moving away. And they shouldn't
have to move away anyway.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Thank you, Oliver. Dhouha, are you ready for my
questions? Dhouha again comes from Tunisia where she is one of the
brightest minds in Internet freedom and governance issues and her research
focused a lot on religious minorities there. So I would like to ask you,
Dhouha, what do you see are the top threats to religious minorities in
Tunisia with respect to freedom of expression? And what can be done about
it? Or what is the legal or Constitutional framework in which those threats
occur?

>> DHOUHA BEN YOUSSEFF: First of all, thanks, everyone, for being here. As
Dominic said, our research with my colleague was about religious freedoms
in Tunisia. We started by verifying if the legal framework we have in
Tunisia is protecting. First of all human rights in general. Then we went
to the religious freedoms, other like right to privacy, etc. We find that
in the Constitution, all the human rights are guaranteed, but if you look
to the legal framework, as you might know, we had a revolution. So we are
in transitional process. We need to reform all those old laws and decrees,
etc. Then we in our research, we saw that it is not only legal threats -- I
mean to any kind of minority groups, but it is also cultural problem. Our
society is conservative, very conservative, so when we talk about
minorities, they represent 1% from 11 million. And those minorities have no
spot from the community. Even online communities like bloggers or human
rights defenders in general. They find only support from international
organizations. One case happened back in 2012 when two bloggers -- one was
a blogger and the other one cartoonist, they got sentenced 7 1/2 years in
jail for sharing a cartoon like the one from Charlie ABDO, what happened in
France. We had a big online campaign and behind the scene lobbying with
international organizations like human rights watch asking for pardon. But
locally only online campaign worked and showed the spot for these
minorities representatives. So to answer your question regarding what
reform we need, we need to implement first like four or five amendments to
our data protection act, because it is old. It is from 2004, and the
cyberspace isn't considered in this act. Second thing, which is very
important, is education. We need to introduce the principle of tolerance
regarding any minority, even in our school programs. So we need to start
from scratch or from -- we need to do a grassroots work as advocate as
civil society in general.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Thank you, Dhouha. We now turn to Freedom House's top
expert and advocate on Internet freedom and governance, Ms. Sonya Kelly,
who has been managing and publishing our freedom on the net report six
years and running. A publication we're proud of and helps set the discourse
and norms around Internet governance as it relates to online rights and
freedoms. This year Sonya and her team, one of whom is here with us,
Jessica white, and Jessica is the Latin American specialist for the
publication and she has also been running backstage engineering for this
delegation and without her we couldn't have been as successful as we were.
So thank you very much, Jessica. In this year's publication, we saw new
restrictions on social media and messaging apps, shutdowns, as well as a
growing diversity of topics that have been sensored. I would like to ask
Sonya if she could elaborate on how some of those restrictions have
impacted marginalized communities.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Dominic. Freedom on the net is
publication that looks at a whole broad range of restrictions on human
rights and Internet freedom. We don't specifically focus on the issues
related to marginalized communities, however, through our research and data
collection, it is impossible not to see links between some of the key
threats that affect everyone and the threats affecting communities that
we're discussing today. For example, one of the key findings of this year's
freedom on the net has to do with a dramatic increase in restrictions on
messaging apps and social media tools. This is obviously something that
affects us all. But looking at the examples from throughout the world, we
have come across a number of cases where these restrictions are affecting
marginalized groups in a very disproportionate way. For example, many
countries in the gulf region such as Saudi Arabia and UAE and so forth,
they restrict messaging apps and voice over IP. This is in part because
they want to protect the prophets of their national telecoms. What this
means is many of the communities, for example, migrants from other parts of
the world such as south Asia, and they comprise a substantial proportions
of these countries, they are actually unable to communicate with their
communities and loved ones home and this is a huge issue particularly
given, you know, quite hard labor conditions in their countries. So, for
example, we have interviewed migrant workers in the UAE actually saying it
was extremely difficult for them to communicate about labor conditions and
even submit complaints to their own embassies because some of these tools
are unavailable due to blocking or other restrictions. Similarly, another
finding from this year's edition -- this is applicable to everyone -- has
to do with dramatic increase in the number of people who are imprisoned for
their speech on social media. And we are actually seeing this also having
very disproportionate affect on religious minorities or women. For example,
we have documented many cases in China where, for example, people were
arrested simply for watching religious videos on their mobile phones.
Similarly, in places like Saudi Arabia we have documented cases of women
who posted pictures of themselves on Instagram and then they were arrested
simply for not wearing a HIJAB. Another finding that is a broad finding
from freedom of the net as posed to Internet freedom at large. Topics being
censored at line. A number one censored topic is criticism of the
government. Something that we have also documented is more and more
governments around the world are censoring information relevant to LGBT
communities as well as religious and ethnic minorities. One example in
Russia we have documented numerous LGBT websites that were blocked, as well
as numerous instances of take-down notices to private companies of content
that is purely content that is meant to -- that is meant to talk about LGBT
rights. One of the platforms that is currently blocked in Russia is
actually a platform for LGBT teenagers, just the completely innocent
platform, but yet it is being blocked because the authorities have claimed
that it is spreading LGBT propaganda. Then finally we've seen the use of
national security laws being used also to imprison minorities as well as
people who write about minority rights. I know that many countries and for
many governments the issue of minority rights is quite contentious but in
places like turkey, for example, when you have the Kurdish minorities,
writing simply about criticism of the government, they are being imprisoned
under national security laws. And they are being sometimes sentenced under
terrorism charges.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Thank you, Sonia, for that. At this time we would like
to open up the floor to questions and comments so that we might benefit
from the audience's wisdom and insight. And allow them to ask questions of
any panelist here. And so we'll just kind of throw it open if anybody has
something they would like to ask or share. We ask you keep your remarks
brief so that as many people can participate as possible. Yes, Ma'am.
Please.

>> Hello, my name is -- there is no translation, right? My name is Loretta
from Mexico and my question is to Japleen and Oliver. I was wondering if in
your research you were able to assess the response of the judiciary and
other reactions, or how women are being able to find or not solidarity
networks in response to the attacks that they experience.

>> JAPLEEN PASRICHA: I will respond first for the India part. So in may
2016 our minister for women and child, she made out a statement stating
that online abuse and trolling of women in India should be treated in the
same way as violence in the real world. She acknowledged that online
violence is a real problem. The very next day the home ministry of India
announced they would be launching cybercrime prevention against women and
children to allow women to post complaints about online harassment. So far
so good. But what happened when our minister tweeted this out and she got
so trolled on the tweet that said that they would launch -- for women to
complain about online harassment there has been since may 2016 no update
whatsoever about the  portal if it is coming out or not. I think that kind
of answers the question. Also throws a huge light on the problem. If a
minister can be silenced by an army of trolls and since then they haven't
taken any action or any decision if they will be launching the portal or
not.

>> OLIVER TREJO: What happened here in the cases in Mexico is lack of
response from the authorities. Basically turned the attention to certain
people within the same society trying to contain the attacks. That was
perhaps the only way to stop the viral hate these women were being victims
of. So basically they all -- in the cases of the people that I spoke with,
they all presented their claims to the authorities and the only response
from the authorities was to tweet whenever they actually showed up to
present the claim saying such person is here to present the claim. The
cases became so popular. There were in the media in different times but as
very popular cases. Like I said they are emblematic cases. Whenever one of
these women went to present and file a claim, then the government in Mexico
city would say oh, this person is here and we'll help her. After the series
of two or three tweets from the Mexico City government, then this person
would be filing a claim for nine hours waiting for psychological
examinations and in the end this sort of either dropped the claim or don't
expect anything. They actually do the policing work is  what they were
saying. They come up with the evidence itself and present it to the
authorities and the authorities disregard them. I don't know how large, but
a segment of the population decided to attack them for vocalizing these
sexual assaults. A segment of the population also resulted in taking action
towards helping them. For example, by telling Twitter or Facebook to block
a user. That's as far as it went. Now, they had come up with their own
efforts. Like this vile hate effort and we just started with the promotion
of this audio -- the real hate -- viral hate is real. Hate in any case.
Basically these people have come up with their own efforts as well. No
means no. No is no. One of them. Don't be silenced at another group of
victims. They are just random small efforts unfortunately. Even though
these people are bloggers, journalists and somewhat became online
personalities.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: You had a question you would like to raise? If you
could just grab one of the microphones. Thank you.

>> Hi, my name is SARUS. I am from the Government of -- I am a truly
activist in some way. I work with private information because I work in
government. I have two very pointed questions. Sorry for the English. One
of them there is some technological advantage or some technological
advantage you are promoting to prevent these type of crimes? Using a Mac is
not a good idea. Second question, there is beside the complaint to get
better laws to punish this crime, there is confines about making conscious
of people how important is their personal information to prevent in the
first line of combat that the people shares information or have a quick
password. A lot of basic security issues that I have 2,000 users that have
the same password. Where are you working about that?

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Anybody want to address that?

>> On privacy and security as a way of promoting trust online to make that
space as safe as possible is really about how secure are you when you are
online? And if you will notice that there have been massive global
movements towards much more consciousness around privacy, and one of the
key things that probably we can all agree on is that it is easier to be
safe if your data is as limited as possible online. As such, the design of
most of these platforms that could be used, it is about if you don't really
need this kind of data, you don't have to collect it and keep it. So that
kind of design thinking towards even if we receive government -- even if
we're hacked, we have nothing to give because we never collect it in the
first place. Two, this ties in with the mainstreaming of LGBT and minority
communities. These things that affect minority communities actually
overwhelmingly affect almost everyone else. By just raising the threshold
of safety online on all these platforms could be a simple thing like
incorporating two step authentication in almost all platforms that you are
engaging in. You raise the threshold for everyone using that platform and
by so doing, you have covered the minority groups who, if you targeted
personally. If you say I just want to target the LGBT community to improve
their safety online, by so doing you are, if anything, marking them out.
Like oh, these are the people who encrypt or these are the people who use
PGP and these are the people I need to engage it. You have narrowed the
sample for me. So it is really about how do we reach the threshold for
everyone else and in so doing we are covering the minority groups.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Did you want to add a comment?

>> We have actually noticed that once governments realize that particular
groups are more likely to use a certain tool then they are actually more
likely to target that tool and we have seen that actually with telegram in
China. For a number of years, telegram was not blocked in China. Although
so many other social media and messaging tools were. And then once the
authorities actually noticed that telegram was popular against -- among
human rights lawyers and among religious minorities, actually that was the
breaking moment when they said telegram is off limits and then they blocked
it.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Be careful about being popular, I guess. The
distinguished -- yes. They'll start blocking you. This

>>  I'm mark from the American Bar Association. Interested the hear from
you, when these cases go to -- when legal action is taken, do you find that
there are enough lawyers? An adequate amount of lawyers who are willing to
take the cases? Do they experience -- do any of the lawyers experience
intimidation for taking on the cases? Do you find there are enough lawyers
who have the capacity to take the cases?

>> KHALID ABDEL-HADI: We were blocked recently in Jordan because we
migrated our platform from being English and bilingual. That was a hazard
toward the government in Jordan because the articles and features we
publish are very sensitive culturally toward our traditional country.
Therefore, sometimes fighting the government could only -- could appear
like there is an organized group that is trying to fight the government.
Therefore, we try sometimes not to retaliate in that way and try to find
solutions around the laws that the countries have presented to us. The
Jordanian laws specifically are very vast and vague. Therefore, you have to
pick your battles in that sort of situation. When it comes to legal work,
there is a lot of lawyers who work with human rights who are willing to
work with people who are like minorities and stuff like that.

>> JAPLEEN PASRICHA: My research found that actually the situation doesn't
even reach the lawyers because people here do not report to -- although we
do have cyber laws. We have a special information technology app under that
app it covers some cyber crimes against women. It covers violation of
privacy, breach of privacy, cyber stalking, etc. So in that sense we do
have laws, but I think that's a global issue, laws do not prevent crimes
and as much as laws are sometimes just on paper and do not get implemented.
In my report, I found people, women are not aware of the laws, B, even when
they're aware they do not report to the cyber crimes. They actually don't
report to social media corporations. There has been -- my research found
there has been a mistrust with social media -- they all have report
mechanisms. However, the fight for -- did report to law enforcement, those
cases were then taken to the cyber cell and in India we have 20 cyber cells
all over the country. So the issue with lawyers is actually not a big
issue. I mean, the Constitution doesn't say that you cannot -- these crimes
are not recognized and you cannot report them. So that as far as I know
hasn't been an issue with the lawyers.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Dhouha, please.

>> DHOUHA BEN YOUSSEFF: Just to add to my colleagues answer. Not only human
rights defenders or lawyers are attacked when they are defending.
Minorities groups rights but especially academia. When they are making like
research about religions, any religion, they got attacked, especially
online, on their Facebook accounts, they got hacked. But also physically.
One incident happened like six months ago or something like that. A well-
known academia person was invited for a conference in Cairo. She was
stopped and sent back to Tunisia in Egypt because she wrote two books about
religion. In Egypt they thought it was against Islam. So they had her name
written and she was blocked, literally at the airport.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: We now invite the participation of the gentleman at the
far end who has indicated he has a question or comment, please.

>> Hi, thank you so much. I'm Amos Toh, and I think this has been a really
amazing panel. This brings one question that we see a lot in our work which
is that on one hand, you know, we see in the context of cyber violence
against women, LGBT communities, there is an under enforcement and under
reporting of well established crimes like identity theft and hacking and so
on. On the other hand we see governments advancing legislation and
legislative proposals like cyber crimes and cybersecurity proposals under
the auspices of protecting children and women and so on and so forth. Given
that landscape, what is the appropriate role of state regulation, if at
all, in an intervention in these situations and then what is the burden
that private entities should bear in relation to that?

>> When it comes to legal frameworks, they have definitely been updated, I
guess. The main role of institutions and public institutions should be to
grant access to justice and to provide the exercise of people's rights. But
I mean that's not the case unfortunately. And I will speak for the case of
Mexico in which we have -- I repeat a strong legal framework. Even
international conventions and agreements and we will sign and adhere to
anything pretty much. You name it, labor-wise, gender-wise, child labor-
wise, like I said, you name it. However, enforcement is not there. The
actual protection from this legal framework is not there. So that's where
one can raise the question as to where does social responsibility come into
play? Just like for any other subjects that affect people's rights. I'm
referring to social responsibility. Our part as a society as well.
Education is a great, great, great aspect of it. Sensitizing and making
people conscious and aware of how advancing in new technologies is
affecting people's everyday lives. Like I said, I don't think -- I
mentioned this yesterday. We were having a sort of internal debate and the
thing is there is no clearance to this. If I had the answer I would
probably be working with ADK as well. But the point is, there has to be
something that can be done without affecting either the freedom of
expression or other rights of people. That's where the difficulty of this
lies.

>> I just wanted to add when it comes to issues such as violence against
women and particularly the examples that we've heard here from the
panelists, for example, women being harassed to the extent that people are
writing down their addresses and sharing them online, you know, threatening
their children and threatening rape and so forth, I would say that many, if
not most, governments already have legal standards that protect women from
such violence and they exist in the off line space. So I'm not persuaded we
need new legal framework for the online space just to address this. I think
the legal frameworks that we have already address this problem. We just
need to ensure that authorities realize that online space actually can have
similar consequences for women and violence against women in the online
space is also something that is important. So for me it becomes an issue of
enforcement of what already exists.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Yes, sir, please, a question.

>> My name is hanz Klein from the Georgia institute and a professor of
public policy. The potential and risk of human rights being co-operated by
other policies. So in the U.S. as a consumer of media in the U.S. and
someone who follows human rights I hear a lot about human rights, but I
hear a lot about bad things happening in Iran, a lot of problems in China,
a lot of problems in Russia. In the U.S. context I don't hear all that much
about problems in Israel. For many years I didn't hear about problems in
Columbia. That is changing as the U.S. relationship with the Columbian
government is changing. For anyone active in human rights, and I've worked
with human rights groups, mostly at the domestic level. But at the
international arena, how do you handle the risk of -- that there is certain
programs that get resources, that get media attention, some countries,
certain programs in certain countries get less resources and less media
attention, and it may or may not be obvious that perhaps some of those
resource flows which lead to stronger or weaker programs reflect underlying
geopolitical tensions or geopolitical strategies to influence you. How do
you pursue human rights for all humans across all countries?

>> I can address that at least from Freedom House's perspective and perhaps
my colleagues will have something similar to say as well. Freedom House
analyzes every country in the world based on their political rights and
civil liberties. So not only do we analyze every country but then we also
analyze disputed territories. And then based on the objective data we
collect throughout the year and for Internet specifically we look at the
number of websites being blocked. What is the topography of those websites
and how many people being arrested for challenging the government online.
We look at this data and we rank the countries based on this methodology.
So then countries like Saudi Arabia, they are going to school poorly as
will China on our rankings the Scandinavia countries score the best. We
then internally as an organization see where the greatest needs are and so
that would be one of the criteria. The second criteria is where can we
actually make meaningful difference? For example, we sometimes work in some
of the most challenging areas and some of the most challenging countries in
the world. But very often what we focus on are actually countries that we
consider to be kind of in the middle. So where the government is somewhat
repressive but there is still space for civil society to operate. So to
kind of directly answer your question, for us then this really becomes an
internal discussion where we determine where the priorities are, where we
can make the difference and then we go out and then we seek funding for
projects that are relevant to those countries. And I'm sure that some of my
colleagues here and some of the other organizations represented can speak
how that has influenced for them internally.

>> Quickly I can just jump in that -- I will just go straight to the LGBT
in Kenya and Africa and how it has been for long been constructed as a
Western input. And that has its own disadvantages, especially because when
the authenticity of a personality or a claim to a human right is just
blocked first and foremost but the political realignment and the global
divide between west and east, it has its own implications. But at the same
level you also need to have programs and outreach and they are, you know,
limited sources of funding that may come from maybe the global solving
institutions. As such if there can be an opportunity to reach out to
whoever it is who is willing to support that kind of work in its authentic
nature, that is something that even from a basic research perspective. The
research questions that you are designing for your own work, who will
approve some of those research questions and are they aligned to maybe the
programmatic or ideological level of whoever is funding, that has always
been an issue. But it's true, the nuances but the authenticity of the claim
to the human rights of the LGBT community in Kenya and the region by
inference, you know, is authentic in its own nature and as such I would
imagine global policies, secondary issues that will have, you know,
secondary implications. But the core issue is the authenticity. Is it real
that these things are normal or are they just a Western input for a program
funded by a U.S. or other organization.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: Japleen, brief. We're out of time here.

>> JAPLEEN PASRICHA: I found two points and I will try to answer it. On
your point of what you see in the media and not see in the media, that is
something that I also find a bit problematic and I will give the example of
sexual violence against women and most specifically rapes. Rapes against
women is actually a global problem but what we see in the media is rapes
are happening in Saudi Arabia and India and other countries. I find the
argument very flawed and also I think we need to understand that there is a
media propaganda behind it where these -- if you talk about early rape case
in U.S., it will get more eyeballs  automatically. Which issues get more
funding and which not. One thing coming from a developing/emerging
country/Third World country I know that a lot of issues have donor agendas
behind it. There is a lot of work going on in India for child marriage and
early marriage as they call it. But we don't have marital rape legalized --
criminalized. There is literally no work in India on this issue. Very few
people work on it and very few donors interested in this kind of work. This
then gets conflicted with the government's whole cultural family issues and
family -- what is the definition of family and -- it's the duty of a
husband and wife, etc.

>> DOMINIC BELLONE: With that we have to wrap up here. I want to thank
everybody who joined us today and for your attention and participation.
We're honored to have you and I want to thank our delegation here who I'm
so fond of. Thank you all again for showing up. (Applause) (Session ended
at 11:50 AM CT) Internet Governance Forum 2016 Enabling Inclusive and
Sustainable Growth Jalisco, Mexico 7 December 2016 Room 8 Workshop OF27:
Freedom Online Coalition 12:00 PM CT

>> Ooh I think we'll stafrment I want to welcome you all here to this open
forum for the Freedom Online Coalition. It's something we do every year at
the IGF and the opportunity for IGF participants to meet with the
governments of the coalition. I'm the director of the support unit who
provides the administrative and technical support to the coalition. The
coalition is now consists of 30 countries who banded together to promote
human rights and understakes a variety of activities. Working with civil
society organizations and etc., etc. There is a range of activities in the
coalition. What we'll do is start with some initial introductions from some
of the governments and some of the independent experts who work with the
coalition and we'll throw it open. Although there is just three or four
governments speaking in the intro, there are a number of other governments
present so they may want to come and speak at different times and I would
welcome them to contribute whenever they feel like it. I would like to
start firstly with Gonzalez from the Dutch. I'll start with you if that's
all right. For those who don't know the coalition was established in 2011,
five years ago, at a meeting hosted by the Dutch ministry of foreign
affairs. The Dutch are very much the parents of the coalition. I thought it
was appropriate to invite them to both explain the thinking behind
establishing the coalition in the first place but also how they've seen the
coalition change over five years because we've grown from 11 countries
which essentially just organized an annual conference, to now 30 countries
with a range of diplomatic and practical connections. So do you want to
give us your reflections on the coalition and how it's changed in the last
few years?

>> Welcome to all of you and great you give me the opportunity to say
something about the Freedom Online Coalition, which we very much cherish as
something as a forum that is of relevance and continued relevance and
importance in the world today. Indeed we started off five years ago in the
Hague with a well-attended meeting at a very high level. We started five
years ago with a well-attended meeting at a high level. Hillary Clinton was
there among other ministers and with a good discussion about the importance
of freedom online for the sake of establishing and safeguarding an open,
free and secure Internet for all. That was I think -- that was a moment
when other international initiatives were also taking form like the London
process, coincided more or less with the first meeting organized by William
Hague in the framework of the London process which dealt with various
aspects of cyber-related, Internet-related issues. Security, economic
development, and also some human rights-related issues as well. There was
definitely a defining moment, I think, for the international interaction.
And it's also important to see the compliments between the different
initiatives that have taken form over the last couple of years. What was
very important for us from the beginning is that although it is designed to
be a coalition of governments, that multi-stakeholder government had to be
assured very firmly and is quintessential for the success of the coalition.
So we are definitely very happy with the way that has been taken shape. I
would like to mention in that regard recent -- the recent achievements of
the three working groups multi-stakeholder working groups that were
established in the meeting in Mongolia they were established or before?
Tunisia? I'm a newcomer. I don't have all the dates ready in my mind. The
establishment of the multi-stakeholder working groups was definitely a
great step forward, a way to work together on more complicated issues that
were where until now, until quite recently, states used to have a bit of
the  monopoly and stakeholders weren't that involved. I would like to
highlight the work of the first working group on a human rights-based
approach to cybersecurity. A working group that has resulted in both a
recommendation -- a definition, human rights based definition of
cybersecurity and a series of very practical hands-on policy
recommendations that could, I think, inspire every cyber strategy all over
the world. Although there are differences, of course, in every -- to be
taken into account. But there are basic tools for a rights based
cybersecurity policy. What I would like to highlight is we think that the
advocacy has come a long way. Its initial goal still stands firmly, to
serve as a multi-lateral coordinating body that advances cross regional
diplomacy to promote and protect human rights online globally. Definitely
still a very valid mission statement and unfortunately we have not made
ourselves obsolete. There is still a need for -- although we've done a lot
of good work not only in the advocacy but we haven't made ourselves
obsolete yet. A lot of work to be done still. So we remain very, very proud
of being part of the advocacy. It has grown. We are 30 members now. There
are active stakeholders. And we would like to continue the advocacy
further. The membership is 200% since 2011. It is a definitely a good
trend. There are some things that are high on our agenda. Essential
elements that we are -- we think would contribute to an even stronger
coalition. And those elements are in the first place the need to design a
collective strategy on how and where to propagate principles and norms that
we've set in our own joint statements. So that means that we have to find
better channels and -- of feeding our statements, our joint positions into
key international events. For example, by means of ensuring better
coordination in other multi-level forums. Advocacy members could gain clout
by coordinating before in another multi-national forum as well. I know it's
already taking shape in UNESCO and other U.N. bodies but we could make
better. Secondly, we are very much also interested in an idea to continue
and to further strengthen our dialogue with other countries and to help to
see whether there are possibilities to increase capacities, for example.
But we also think that as members ourselves, we have to continue to live up
to our principles and to our commitment. The advocacy is not a forum that
you adhere to just by demonstrating your commitment only once. It is an
ongoing commitment that you have to continue to develop. So in that regard
-- and I think that if we demonstrate that more visibly to the rest of the
world that we are indeed doing that, that we are all members and
continuously strengthening our commitment to freedom online, we could
increase our credibility around the world even more. We are very happy that
we could commission a survey to Susan Morgan to undertake a review of how
the advocacy was working. She did a great job and identified many essential
proposals and indeed one of them was that we as members could perhaps
design a way to engage in a discussion among ourselves about how we are
complying. And we hope and feel there is a commitment among all the members
to work in that direction and we're very happy with that issue. Last but
not least we think it is vital that the advocacy continues to increase and
development in a creative way its interaction with stakeholders. And we
could think about issues that are high on our agenda like why we could work
together more visibly like the Internet shutdowns, for example. We feel
there is still more to do in the interactive manner with stakeholders.
Thank you.

>> Thanks very much. One of the early projects of the coalition was the
defenders partnership. I would like to invite Loretta Munoz to explain what
the DDP is doing. Loretta. Press the on/off button.

>> Hello, good morning. Thank you. Well, I am one of the fellows of the
Digital Defenders Partnership and we see an increase of attack to our women
and yet many from LGBT community. Principally here in the Latin America
region. So we are, for example, in my case, I'm supporting women, human
right defenders in Mexico who in the last 10 years receive many attacks
through Internet. Most of the attacks come from different actors, and so we
are trying to support them to increase their security -- online security
and we are working with, for example, many different groups in Latin
America, feminist groups who are working and supporting the sexual human
rights. And so these groups are always under attack. So since 2013, Digital
Defenders Partnership received 300 proposals of which we approved 72
because our funds are limited. The program rejects several good proposals.
For example, to development, because we don't have enough funding for that
so we try to let the ones rejected be found by other OTA, Access Now, etc.
Since 2013DDP approved 26 sustainable emergency grants, 1500 Euros, 25
incidental emergency grants to 10,000 Euros, 590 organization was supported
in the last year. 6,000 individual people are supported and user and target
country by infrastructures and higher solution was 14 million 800. Digital
defender partnership was initiated in 2012 by the coalition to advise
Internet freedom and to keep the Internet open and free from emergency
threat. Specifically in Internet repressive and trans national and
environmental. That's what we are working with. The DDP is currently funded
by six donors and hosted by the INGO HIVOS. Their role is to provide
security for bloggers and other civil society activists and facilitate
emergency responses capacity building, we do these by measure -- by
providing grants, emergency capacity building to individuals and
organizations. And providing service like linking and learning advice and
organizational long-term security and protection measures, and rapid
response network coordination. To reporters and individual experts,
organization, provide security after attack and threat to human rights
defenders. And in the case of human right defenders or critical Internet
users under threat. We work together with a network of global and local
networks in a strategic partners, media/legal defenders initiative and try
to provide a diversity of responses, legal response, Internet
infrastructure. Physical or psycho social support. We work on the demand
base approach and requests come from areas of conflict, elections,
repression, or from areas where, for example, women or LGBT rights are not
being recognized. So actually the DDP current donors are U.S. State
Department, ministry of the Netherlands, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and other
corporation agencies. DDP is an independent entry from donor countries.
Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks very much. I'll move to Kenneth on my left from the
Government of Ghana. From the benefit of people who don't work in
government what did Ghana see as joining. Why would a government choose to
invest any time and resource in joining this type of organization?

>> Thank you, David. I think first of all Ghana finds the Freedom Online
Coalition as a good initiative for all governments to join efforts in
advancing freedom online. We also think that is an opportunity to form
international cooperation and collaboration with other governments in terms
of information sharing and also to lend best practices from a best
practices and successes from other governments. We also think that this --
the freedom online corporation gives us an opportunity to engage with civil
society and the private sector in terms of efforts to ensure that there is
freedom online. And we think it is a good for the benefit of our country.
The citizens are looking up to us to governments to ensure they have
freedom online and it is our duty that we let that happen. The Freedom
Online Coalition gives us a platform to do that. We think it is a good
initiative and encourage governments not part of it, join us so we can
ensure that the freedom -- there is freedom online. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Kenneth. He is an independent who worked with the
coalition through the working groups. Eileen, could you give us the point
of view a sense of the value of engaging with the coalition that you found
but also your thoughts on how it could be improved. How that relationship
working with the Internet policy community in this room, how that could be
strengthened.

>> Yes, so I think that what I want to comment on is the self-identity of
the Freedom Online Coalition. Because I think that there has been a little
bit of a crisis of confidence. The Freedom Online Coalition started at a
moment when there was so much optimism about what technology could do for
human rights defenders. And there was this sense that the governments that
got together saw themselves as champions of the universal human rights
framework and were trying to facilitate access to technology to keep human
rights defenders and activists ahead of the curve. It was a very simple
time 2011. Then we went through a phase sort of the middle years of, you
know, starting with Snowden, frankly, which caused a crisis of confidence
and I think the coalition turned within and did a lot of self-reflection
and reflection between governments about who are we and do we have any
credibility? I think recently there has been a new phase, which is that the
whole world has seen this growing conceptual confusion and complexity about
how you govern in this space, and can universal human rights principles
apply and if so, how? There are multiple dimensions of this that a lot of
us have talked about. But dijtyization of everything itself has dramatic
consequences for human rights. So on the one hand it facility states
communications. The Internet has been great for freedom of expression and
assembly and saofmgts on the other hand, it facilitates  tracking and
monitoring and it undermines privacy and human rights work and actually
leads to this physical threat to human rights defenders around the world.
It also potentially undermines the Democratic mode of governance because it
inverts who is watching who. Governments are watching -- have tools to
watch citizens and citizens are no longer feeling that they can operate
privately, organize privately or they're really the sovereigns watching
government. The other big challenge we've seen and messing with the concept
there can be a universal human rights network, trans border reach of
everyone from hackers to terrorists to governments is the norm rather than
the exception. And the universal human rights framework generally started
with this obligation of nation states defined by boundaries protecting
citizens within, and now everybody has this trans border reach. There is a
lot of confusion on how to handle that. Also the other big trend is the
happening on the ground is the privatization of governance with the big
digital platforms using -- having terms of service or community guidelines
where they are really dictating the parameters of freedom of expression and
freedom of assembly and association in ways that we do not know how to
conceptalize. The human rights framework doesn't really address the private
sector and digital insecurity that comes from being connected. Everything
being connected. So I think it's kind of been overwhelming to the
governments. It has overwhelming for civil society and overwhelming for the
private sector. This is a very complex environment. What do I think the
Freedom Online Coalition should do? Everybody should re-embrace your
leadership role. Remember yourselves -- think of yourselves as champions of
universal human rights and you need to go deeper in thought leadership and
you need to go deeper in process leadership. I think because of all the
complexity we see a threat to the two foundational things the coalition was
formed to protect. Number one, the concept of universeality is under
assault because of the conceptional confusion and then the global platform
for communication is under assault because of this sense of insecurity. So
I think the coalition needs to just get its act together and recommit to
protecting those things. I also would say as a process matter, the multi-
stakeholder process approach is first of all something that has been
demonstrated within. The three working groups that were formed were an
experiment. I think they have been very surprisingly successful. I know the
working group that I'm a part of, we have an output that is potentially
very significant to addressing this fear about digital insecurity. It's a
human rights-based approach to cybersecurity and a set of recommendations
that we agree to in this multi-stakeholder context. And it's a product that
can help the coalition address its own credibility and address the sense of
systemic insecurity that is out there that is causing a fracturing of the
Internet and the universal human rights norms. Start with what you've got
and use it to the max. Capitalize on what you've already demonstrated and
that can help rebuild self-confidence and identity.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks very much. Eileen. Final reflections I'll come to the
U.S. State Department. The coalition started at the beginning at 11
countries that met once a year. It is now 30. Very diverse countries from
all over the world with a series of very different kinds of diplomatic and
political connections. I know it's undertaken review of its processes and
procedures and maybe, Gigi, fill that in and say to the wider community
here what in that review process the governments are looking for to engage
with the kind of people represented in this room.

>> Thank you, Andrew and thanks to everyone who made the time to come to
this. It looks like a great group of familiar faces and some new faces.
This is really an opportunity for the FOC to try to share and communicate
out what it's doing. One of the things that we've heard through the
strategic review is we need to take more time to take the opportunity to do
that. I would like to think of what my remarks will be is explaining a
little bit of how FOC is trying to do what idea just outlined and beginning
with the conference that happened in Mongolia in 2015 may, the FOC took the
decision to undergo a strategic review, assess its operations and look at
performance indicators and try to devise a way forward. A lot of it was
about getting back on a forward foot, recognizing that there had been a lot
of work done in those middle years, and that there needed to be a strategy
for moving forward. And carmen already outlined a lot of what was the
outcome of the review and if you'll permit me just a few minutes to
describe the process of the review because I know a lot of people in the
room won't know about it. And I think it was a very good process and
sometimes it helps to know how it was done to see why certain outcomes are
what they are. So the mandate started with a working group to undergo the
strategic review and was tasked with doing an inclusive and transparent
process to be able to arrive at an evidence-based approach to what the
future of the coalition should look like. It lasted for 15 months and we
can report that there was a high interest from external stakeholders, from
the membership in the review process itself. I can give some numbers about
that high interest. Carmen already spoke about the external assessment that
was performed by an independent consultant, Susan Morgan, working with the
University of Pennsylvania to publish this report. She talked to many
representatives of the multi-stakeholder working groups. Some who hadn't
been that engaged but were familiar with the Internet governance space and
had the expertise to capture external perceptions and some internal
perceptions of what the FOC was. Not many people understood what the FOC
was. Her six recommendations included at the top. Clarify aims and
objectives. I should say that the four categories are pillars of the review
included what are the aims and objectives. What would be criteria and
processes for membership. How to examine structure and shape that structure
to facilitate aims and objectives and finally, of course, funding. How are
we going to resource this initiative? So the working group consisted of
nine FOC members. It was co-chaired by the U.S. and the UK. We had several
face-to-face meetings. We had several calls and we really took on an
ambitious work plan for what we would do. In addition to commissioning the
external report we asked the support unit to do a stock taking report. So
we have now a sort of add on of what the growth of FOC looked like. More
than doubling membership. More than tripling activities and traces what
that expansion and growth looks like and this is available online. Very
useful report for anyone who wants to see how did it start, where did it go
and understand how it can  pivot to where it wants to go next. Third was a
member survey based largely on Susan's external report to capture the
diverse perceptions and perspectives of the membership. All 30 members.
Really happy to say 29 out of 30 members filled out the report. This is
97%. I don't think any of us actually thought that we were going to be able
to achieve that. We set ourselves a more modest aim to have at least more
than half so that we could say it was a mandate from the membership. And we
were aiming for 2/3. To get almost 100% was great and gets to what we've
said about reenergizing engagement both within the membership and with
stakeholders. In terms of next steps after those three inputs were
developed, that being the external report, the stock taking report and
membership survey we had an analysis of the raw data from the survey. There
is a narrative report from the analysis. These three inputs resulted in the
final report and recommendations of the working group to the FOC and then
that was used to device the sort of political statement, strategic decision
by the FOC as the full 30 membership on what to do next. So this is
available in what's called the San Jose statement and work plan and we
consider that to be a roadmap to strengthening engagement with members and
stakeholders. So again not trying to say there would be a sole focus on
just internal members, not trying to say there would be a sole focus on
just the working groups. These needed to be strengthened together for
either to be very meaningful to the other. And there was a work plan on how
exactly that would look. So carmen mentioned in terms of aims and
objectives. Remaining a multi-lateral body that has multi-stakeholder
engagement for promoting and protecting human rights online is kind of the
mission statement of the FOC and also recognized and this is more of an
internal point, but the need to remain flexible and nimble in structure and
strategy. There was a lot of debate about whether the coalition needed to
be formalized and formally registered, legally registered somewhere and how
to increase that. There wasn't a major appetite for that yet. It looks like
it is still a point in the development of the coalition that it benefits
from having a semi formal structure and again, we recognize that comes
sometimes with tradeoffs especially in terms of communication. And so
that's something that the FOC just needs to be mindful of. The more
informal structure means more informal communication and that can cause
some breakdowns in that coordination and collaboration especially with
external stakeholders. This is something that we'll be mindful of and try
to mitigate those tradeoffs, but for now this was the direction the FOC
decided to go. How to give expression to those aims and objectives. The FOC
decided to focus on three priority activities and again, focus seems to be
as many of us know, the way to be successful at some things instead of
being unsuccessful at many things. So these priorities came again from the
responses to the survey. They include shaping global norms and this was
really based on a finding, observation that the joint statements, the FOC
has gradually been releasing since its founding in 2011 have contributed to
shaping global norms and have found ways of filtering into other bodies
that are there to establish human rights norm setting, and this was a way
for the FOC to coordinate on setting a precedent that could then be shared.
Next was local coordination. The FOC was originally founded to be an
information sharing body, a coordinating body for multi-lateral diplomacy
and that continues to be important especially as a lot of the existing
regional and international bodies are making decisions that have impacts on
human rights online and they need to be sort of educated about how to apply
this overriding norm that the same human rights that apply off line apply
online and there are currently three existing local networks, one in New
York, one in Geneva, one in Paris, and how to sort of strengthen these
local networks and maybe establish new ones is going to be a priority
activity for the FOC going forward. Finally, the conference. There is still
value in these major convenings for the FOC governments and with external
stakeholders. Doesn't need to be an annual conference or a stand alone
conference. These are still open for discussion and we'll be doing new
experiments to see what works best. I don't think I'll be announcing
anything too soon to say that the next time the FOC hopes to convene
collectively is on the margins of the Stockholm Internet forum and this is
where we hope to see a major showcase of the work of the multi-stakeholder
working groups. Hopefully all three will be able to showcase the outcomes
of their work much like Eileen was outlining. Again, sorry to speak at
length. This is a valuable opportunity to communicate what we've been
doing. If I have missed anything, I see a large number of FOC colleagues in
the room and I'm sure they can jump in to help me out.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Gigi, we have governments in the room to
recognize. Those of you interested in putting points, questions or thoughts
to do that at this point. Feel free to ask any questions you have about the
coalition. If you have thoughts that we should be looking at including
emerging issues, that would be very valuable. If you thoughts how the
communities could engage with the FOC be very useful and if there are
specific actions for diplomatic arenas that you think the coalition should
focus on, any ideas you have would be very valuable. It is an opportunity
now for you to give us your thoughts and any suggestions and so on that you
have. I'll take the woman first and then --

>> Hellio, everyone. Thank you very much. I'm from the -- we're a latin
American geo we have offices in Chile and Venezuela and Mexico. I want to
take up three minutes to denounce something about the Mexican government. I
think it's very paradoxical we are discussing how to make the Internet a
more Democratic, open, safe and free space when we have still 43
disappearing students that we haven't found. We have torture. Violence
against women. 99 journalists murdered since the year 2000. As we have all
said and known, human rights online and offline must be connected, not
discussed separately. We believe that the Mexican government has not been
complying with some of the commitments setting the -- sorry, first there is
a systematic and interception of private communications. This violates as
we have all well said free speech and privacy rights. Mexican authorities
unlawfully intercept private communication and obtain location in realtime
through illegal means. 99% of these acts according to a recent report made
by a Mexican organization are carried out without judicial oversight. Let
alone a judicial warrant, of course. In a country where authorities are
very much connected with organized crime, this is very worrying. And I put
this question forward. Are we letting organized crime access our metadata
on our private communications? I'm totally terrified. Second the use of
surveillance malware to spy an journalists and political opponent. They are
-- they sell one of the most invasive surveillance softwares in the world.
They bought almost 6 million Euros worth of this malware. Of course, paid
with public resources and our taxes. We knew in the 2015 leak that a very
nearby state the malware was used to spy on political opponents, which was
a political -- who wants to run for president in 2018. Then also two months
ago the Canadian group citizens love published evidence regarding the
malware using iPhones to install and suck all the information. This was the
device of a dissident journalist which is one of the leading investigators
in the biggest corruption scandal regarding the president, and house worth
around $8 million that still no investigation has been opened. We don't
know if this attack was state sponsored but in 2015 hacking team leaks we
do know that the police bought malware from NSO group. Then because this
doesn't end, in March 2016 Bloomberg published a report on a hacker that
was hired by those now in power to spy on political opponents during
election campaigns. Bloomburg published this piece. The Mexican government
denied it but the evidence was pretty solid. The third part calls about
governments to hold hacking as well as blocking and monitoring of
opposition voices and other repressive measures to repress. Lastly, the
DNCA has been used by the president's office to take down YouTube videos
where the president makes mistakes, confusing cities with states and
sometimes cities with countries. It is, of course, a laughable matter for
us Mexican citizens but also a very important matter of public interest.
The six point in this agenda calls about governments worldwide to promote
-- limitations or restrictions line content or user access. Right now the
same president's office is employing tweeter bots using the #IGF 2016. This
is a practice we have seen since 2012 and employ the same bots to spam
Twitter hashtags impeding our right to collectively organize protestesque
the media is also here in Mexico in a very difficult situation due to
public advertising. Then again this space cannot be a simulation, this is
the word that best describes the Mexican government, so I wanted the take
up this three minutes to urge and demand the Mexican government to respect
not only this space as members of this space, but also the international
human rights obligations. Thank you very much.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks very much indeed for I think a very serious set of
information to lay before the room. I don't recognize a member of the
Mexican government in the room. If they are here, perhaps they would like
to identify themselves so they might want to respond. If not, I think we
have the documentation that we've captured of your statement and you could
leave that with us to consider how best to respond. Thank you very much for
bringing it to the meeting's attention and the other governments in the
room. It may not have been familiar with some of the things you talked
about. Thank you.

>> I'm I work for Access Now. I wanted to sol Ute the efforts of the
Freedom Online Coalition and wanted to draw attention to the issue of
Internet shutdowns. We are a coalition, we spearhead a coalition called
keep it on in 100 organizations from 50 countries dedicated to fighting the
disruption of the Internet. Shutdowns harm human rights and create a black
out in which atrocities occur and harm economies. We've recorded more than
50 disruptions around the world this year. We believe there may have been
hundreds in 2016 alone. Around elections, for school exams, even issues
such as end-to-end encryption. We've had major victories. The Human Rights
Council made an important ruling this, the global initiative made an
important statement as well. This last week we had the great news that two
countries, Chad and Ethiopia lifted long-term restrictions on the Internet
and Gambia, which had an election, did disrupt the Internet for one day but
international pressure appears to have made a difference. It certainly made
a difference in Chad and Ethiopia where there is a clear connection between
human rights violations and the Internet being shut off. We have learned
from local partners on the ground that international pressure really does
help stop Internet shutdowns. As a statement of support for the efforts of
the Freedom Online Coalition and to encourage further action, we have a
message from 45,000 supporters around the world, which is right here, this
stack of paper, which we'll deliver at the end of the session today. The
statement reads, I urge you to publicly commit to keep the Internet on,
Internet shutdowns harm human rights and the economy and that's directed at
all world leaders. Thank you very much.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks very much. Rebecca.

>> Thanks very much. My name is Rebecca McKennan and I direct the ranking
digital rights project in America. I just want to applaud what giz Ella had
to say and point out that Mexico is not the only country for which there
are concerns. I was just taking a quick glance at the latest freedom on the
net report that is benchmarking countries levels of online freedom and
noticing among the Freedom Online Coalition countries whose score decreased
in the past year are Australia, France and Germany. And so I think we have
a problem here that we have countries that have made commitments and it's
clear the freedom online coalition has not succeeded in helping or pushing
or encouraging or the member governments to make the Internet at home more
free and open, let alone, you know, certainly the Digital Defenders
Partnership is to be applauded. There are many things with the working
groups that have been good. It is unclear whether any of the
recommendations by the working groups will be actually taken up by
governments or implemented in any way. And I think civil society that has
been engaging in good faith in the working groups and with the Freedom
Online Coalition will maintain the good faith for the period of time. After
which I think people might wonder whether they are helping to offer
legitimacy and credibility to trends that are negative. And helping to sort
of deflect criticism and bring a legitimate fig leaf to something that is
not actually going in the right direction. So I'm wondering if any of the
-- whether it's member government representatives or perhaps anybody else
who has been involved with the Freedom Online Coalition can talk about how
we can see concrete commitments by government to actually meet their
commitments as members.

>> MODERATOR: I'm going to come back to the points you raised but I want to
get any other questions or contributions out before we start. Do we have --
can you --

>> I'm Martin, Kirk is tan. I would like to ask the Freedom Online
Coalition has tools and resources for promoting ideas of Freedom Online
Coalition and membership outside the coalition itself? Because for example,
next year we'll organize in the second regional centralization and would be
happy to have somebody from Freedom Online Coalition to present ideas, the
vision of Freedom Online Coalition on things like cybersecurity, countering
violent extremism online. Because the governments in central Asia sometimes
see not the right ways to do it. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks. Anyone else before I come back to some of the
governments to respond? Yeah. Have you got a mic there I think? Reach for
the mic and press the on/off button until the light comes on. Great.

>> Okay. Thank you. My name is Moses and I come from a network of several
organizations in Uganda that promote and support the use of -- to empower
them and address the issues and challenges. And talking about the Internet
shutdown. We have already had it in Uganda and like they said there have
been great efforts by Access Now and other organizations to help put
pressure on government to stop this emerging trend. But also I'm talking
from the perspective of several women who actually lack the skills and
capacities to be able to bypass such shutdowns in certain instances. And I
would like to see if the efforts by Freedom Online Coalition to work
together with women organizations to build that capacity and to help them
to be able to address some of these issues that they may not be able to
deal with. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks very much. Let's come back first of all to the
Internet disruption shutdown issue. I'll invite, in case your State
Department who is leading on the FOC response in this issue just to explain
what the FOC is planning to do and then I'll come back to Rebecca's points
separately.

>> Thank you very much. Andrew. Thank you very much for your partners in
Access Now for all the work you've done raising this issue and pressuring
us to respond in many ways. We had the good fortune, the United States
Government of co-organizing a panel in San Jose addressing the issue of
Internet shut downs and we had a great response to it. And it really
encouraged members of the coalition to look forward on what we could do.
One of the most concrete examples of what we could do immediately providing
us ourselves a tool or a mechanism to respond to these shutdowns is a joint
statement. The Freedom Online Coalition is a coalition of like-minded
governments that work together to advocate for Internet freedom both at
home in our bilateral and multi-lateral relations and a great way of
establishing our commitment to opposing network shutdowns and providing
partners is to draft language that we can all agree upon and we're
certainly looking not only within the 30-member governments but we seek
participation input anded yits from our partners in civil society and
business. This is an ongoing project and I'll distribute my contact
information but I would be happy to get this input from you all. Another
important component of our response is Kenneth will be co-drafting this
language, with all the bad news there is always the good news story. There
are governments who will stand up and say that the Internet will not be
shut down in the face of these issues. So thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks, maybe I could come over to carmen or Gigi or
Rebecca's points. The question of the coalitions own credibility and
domestic record is an important one and governments can join the coalition
in a fit of enthusiasm and the government can change. Elections can come in
and a different government gets elected and takes a different direction.
How does the coalition respond to that given it does aspire to promoting
high standards globally?

>> Right. I think first of all to say how much we appreciate raising those
concerns in this session and repeatedly. Because this is one of the ways
that the initiative, the coalition works. This is one of the reasons why it
exists. And so the interventions don't fall on deaf ears, believe me. We
talk about this a lot. And carmen alluded to it already in her comments. I
wanted to say that one question to add on top of Rebecca's question is also
what would the State of Internet freedom in these countries if it weren't
for the FOC? It is hard to be able to say if it managed to hold the line on
some indicators. We have been briefed on the findings of the freedom on the
net report and while it doesn't cover all 30FOC governments, it is possible
to spot the trend in there that a lot of the areas of backsliding, when it
comes to this coalition of countries, are in the areas of violations of
users rights and we can hone in specifically on where that is going and
something we've talked at length about how to use. I notice now also that I
spoke mostly to objective two of the work plan that the San Jose statement
has on how we'll implement the decisions that have been made about the
strategic future of the FOC. Let me just say a couple of quick notes about
objective one and objective three. Objective two was about the activity,
the coordination and engagement with members and civil society. Objective
one is about increasing effectiveness, coherence and credibility of the
coalition while sustainably and strategically expanding coalition
membership. Interesting to note there is a commitment to continuing to seek
out new members, use the coalition as a way to, you know, encourage good
behavior. But then if you go into the subset of goals within the objective
you will see there is a commitment to using the FOC as a way to continue to
encourage performance, to be a club of good performers. So in goal one
there is revising and clarifying membership criteria. You can find this in
the Nairobi terms of reference. My colleague will be reaching out to you.
There can be input, too, on what sort of actors we seek to add. And then
coalition -- goal 1.3 and 1.4 get to the heart of commitments and
responsibilities. So first is clarifying member responsibilities engagement
with domestic stakeholders and international bodies as well as
participation in coalition conferences, meetings and other activities. So
there is expected to be an indicator of some kind about stakeholder
engagement and 1.4 is establishing internal procedures to promote adherence
to these commitments and responsibilities. This is intended, again the
agreement was to work with an internal procedure to promote adherence. It
will rely heavily on fellow FOC members being that point of leverage. But
that is there and then I'll let everybody read 3. This is how do we
leverage other existing bodies that have a mandate that overlaps with the
FOC, it includes the open government partnership and includes the community
of democracy, includes existing multi-lateral bodies and stakeholders and
how to strengthen cooperation with them and how to strengthen engagement
with other stakeholders in the private sector and civil society through
those. So this -- you can even go to this work plan and see who has been
assigned the responsibility for implementing these various goals. That is
something that we're going to be able to monitor. This isn't just some
pledges with no follow-up. Andrew, can I add in terms of where there are
little measurements and kind of where there is building a record of some
success is actually on network shutdowns. We were very concerned and then
happy to resolve the concern that no FOC government has been involved in an
Internet shutdown over the past year. Likewise, you know, we turn to an
index from the community to protect journalists and found no FOC government
is listed in the index that CPJ puts out on arrests of journalists.

>> Just to thank you all of you and also Rebecca for your remarks. I just
want to say for my part that as far as the interaction and involvement of
stakeholders is concerned, I mean, you can also see it from the other side.
If there weren't any intense stakeholder involvement we wouldn't be having
this discussion on a regular basis and we wouldn't -- we would have less
opportunity to take your concerns on board. As far as the recommendations
and the work of the working groups is concerned, give us a bit of time. We
definitely are doing our utmost to give them a good future and
sustainability and to make them work. Yes, thanks.

>> MODERATOR: Finally, one further om unindication, do it through the
support units. We can feed the communications to the relevant quarters.
Feel free to contact us, myself and my colleague are both here and we'll
come back to you on maybe having an FOC rep come to the regional conference
to talk about that. We can talk about that outside the meeting. Apologies,
I didn't get in everybody. The time actually was against us. Thank you very
much for coming and we hope to see you and work with you in the future.
(Applause) (Session came to a close at 1:00 PM CT) Internet Governance
Forum 2016 Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth Jalisco, Mexico 7
December 2016 Room 8 Workshop SEEDIG-Internet governance processes in
southeastern Europe, challenges and opportunities. 13:00 CT

>> MODERATOR: I start with thanks to our technical support. Thanks a lot.
Hello, everyone. We know most of us. I'm being a member of the executive
committee of SEEDIG. We are supposed to have a session about Internet
governance practices in the region but looking at the room I guess we will
only be discussing about SEEDIG. So we can kick start that discussion.
Maybe we can start with a short round of introductions so we actually get
to know each other, if we don't. Chris, maybe you can start. Thank you.

>> I'm Chris,. Registry for the Europe and the middle east and central
Asia. We're also an organization that does a lot of coordination of
technical community in that region beyond just that registry function and
so these kinds of discussions, these kinds of activities are something
that's very much something that we're focused on and interested in making
sure the technocommunity andors are involved in those discussion. SEEDIG is
a good example where there has been cooperation and something we want to
see continue and happy to keep participating.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Chris.

>> Hello, my name is Felix, I work in Mexico city. I know nothing about
Internet governance so I believe knowing the case in southeastern Europe
would be a great chance to learn. Thank you.

>> Hi, everyone. My name is Anna and I'm from Bosnia originally but I work
for the area with the national regional and SEEDIG is one of probably the
most outstanding initiatives that we have within the 79 initiatives.

>> A round of introductions because I have to leave soon. Anna, quick
questions for you, first of all there are several initiatives in our
region. If you can tell them a bit about them and what you know what they
are doing around here and about the idea of support of SEEDIG, how do you
see the initiative? Thank you?

>> When I joined the last year in August SEEDIG was probably the most
outspoken initiative within the IGF. Now the things are different so we
work as partners and the 79 initiatives that we have so far probably 50%
are regularly calls we hold twice a month. SEEDIG region, I can say they
are emerging. There are more and more of them and regular -- and seeing
some familiar faces here, there are many of the IGF that are information
which I think is critical. So Macedonia IGF is one of them. I spoke to some
colleagues three weeks ago. Serbia IGF I spoke to one focal point, Romania
IGF joined us two or three weeks ago. There is a progress. I also spoke to
a colleague from Bulgaria and I think soon we will have news from Bulgaria.
There are a lot of things happening around. I know they support the hubs
for our region, which I think is very important because it keeps us all up
to date with the things that are happening in the region. In any case, I
think we should all be proud of the things that we are doing within the
region as partners all together and I think we should just keep going like
that. As for the support that will come from the secretariat, it is not
because I need to leave only, but it is because on Friday there is a really
important session and I would love to see you all there. It will be
dedicated to all the NRIs, critical figures within the global IGF will be
there starting from the secretariat and U.N. and what I would love to leave
this question for that session and I would love to invite you all to come
with concrete proposals, what are the issues and what should we change and
how and what do you want from the IGF? Especially because as we have the
next 10 years ago and I think IGF has already proven there is DNI are so
important for the IGF and the action is about to be put on the work.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us for a few minutes. You can go.

>> I'm Aiden, I work for purpose international. We're based in London. I'm
new to Internet governance issues as well. We work mostly on surveillance.
Just from the personal level coming from there and also we did a report
earlier this year on the wiretapping scandal in Macedonia.

>> Hi, I'm Lana from Armenia. I'm a part of the executive committee for CDI
and the other hat I am coordinating for the arming of IGF. Thank you.

>> My name is -- I am from Armenia.

>> MODERATOR: Welcome.

>> I'm -- I'm a Macedonian diplomat and head of the Macedonian mission in
Geneva and I will try to skip acronyms for -- called the MAG. The
organization that organizes the Internet Governance Forum. It is one of the
aspects of organizations. And I guess the country that will be hosting the
next SEEDIG on the 25th of may of next year. I think perhaps this room,
although some of us know each other, we don't know each other, it is --
this is very important as an image to understand what Internet governance,
how it manifests. We're now in Mexico. Unfortunately southeastern Europe
people cannot come and this is a key thing in considering when we're
talking about Internet governance issue is that most stakeholders and
especially the new ones that need to come into the Internet governance
ecosystem as it's called, are unable to for many different reasons. One of
them is this -- you have now been to the Internet Governance Forum. Like
you said, you are new to it. It is overwhelming. There are so many things
going on, just to wrap your head any one of them, if you start taking it
you start going deep into it. There is so much. I can't. They had a session
on generic top level domains. They've introduced 1200 generic top level
domain. What was .Com there are 1,200 more just this year. Such a big issue
and it needs to be kind of dissected and I think that this is one of the
good ways. By this, I mean what was referred to as the NRI. The NRI is the
national and regional initiatives on Internet government issues. Mexico can
have one. Macedonia has one. Etc., there can be the next level. What is
important is what is developing right now with this global Internet
governance fourm and the national and regional ones are the slow start
between a flow of policies and solutions to problems. So I think that
problems always are local and they can be at least determined what a
problem is at the most local level. Either an Internet service provider or
something like that can -- a user can define it. This is the NRIs are a
good way to define these problems and this kind of a meeting like this one
is a good way to present it to the world. We have identified this problem
in our region. We've tried to address it this way or that way or haven't
addressed it. It is new. Can somebody think of it. Just a little overview
of how at least I see things in terms of this meeting today.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. We will come back to most of those issues. Roxana.

>> I'm Roxana, and I work for dip low  -- Diplo Foundation. We are
spearheading a few processes. I am basing the Geneva office. We are running
a global hub initiative. Come to our session today from 5:00 where we
discuss the global hubs initiative.

>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Roxana. Patrick.

>> I'm the head of the information society department of the Council of
Europe. We are two persons here, Lee has been around the IGF for 10 years,
Lee, a long white beard not to be confused with Santa Claus nor St.
Nicholas. But we're from the Council of Europe. We are interested in the
Internet all together. First of all, because there is a strong connection
to all of the work that we do. Whether that is on human rights, rule of law
or democracy. And all of these elements are connected to issues that are
also present on the Internet. And one of the key things that we also try to
do is to ensure that this is not only taking place at the global level, but
we are also giving support as Council of Europe to ensuring that these
national and regional initiatives take place. SEEDIG is the only regional
initiative, I believe, that we support, Lee. But at least in Europe it's
the only initiative that we support on a regional level but we support
quite a bit of the national IGFs and that is in the south caucuses, in
southeast Europe, in Eastern Europe all together. We participate regularly
in the IGF in Russia, for example. The setting up of a multi-stakeholder
forum where we can transmit concerns that we may have concerning the human
rights, use or abuse on the Internet and therefore we support these
initiatives.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.

>> Hello, I'm Ada I will get ip very short. A member of SEEDIG executive
committee and here as a MAG member and also I'm here to take notes. Lee.

>> Thank you very much. Lee, Internet governance coordinator for too long
in the Council of Europe. Just to build on what Patrick has said, we've
already -- the member states of the Council of Europe including the SEEDIG
region have got a strategy of the Internet governance that encapsulates all
the issues we're dealing with from a democracy, rule of law and an
interesting document to see the picture of the issues and the challenges
ahead. It is worth  looking at that. Internet citizens, democracy issues.
IGF and also working the Council of Europe is becoming more mature and
shifting from basic issues of freedom of expression and privacy to
accessibility, to issues of discrimination, gender issues, etc. And it's
worth taking note. Above all I think what I'm learning from this IGF is
that beyond the legal frameworks that should be robust with human rights
safeguard and beyond the implementation in terms of practice at the level
of practitioners of the people who are here, for example, there is also a
need to have access to the right information so that we can navigate and
understand the issues, the concerns, to make choices which are informed.
Which really is information that we should all have. I think that could
help respond to many of the issues. Many of the technical issues need
access to information, which is actual, which is correct and balanced in
order to address like net neutrality or other things. That's something I'm
learning from this IGF and I think it's common and we should build upon it.

>> MODERATOR: I know you have to leave soon and I will ask a follow up
question shortly, Lee. Any advice for SEEDIG from the experience how can we
strengthen our process in the region?

>> Thank you, that's a good question. If you learn from the model, it grew
out of an initiative between different stakeholders like SEEDIG, it had the
support from the Council of Europe at the beginning. That gave you a foot
of credibility. So you need some trusted actors in the region who people
know are the right actors who can ensure the quality, who can ensure the
seriousness of the activity. So it's built upon a small group of actors.
Some institutions and people in the region who are Internet governance
centric from a civil society point of view and others and with that support
of individuals with partners at its core it is able to function. What it
does it is a microfinanced setup. It doesn't take large donations from one
particular entity to spread risk and avoid capture. It has microfinancing
from a few thousand Euros from here and there and allows it to maintain and
reinforce its independence and for it to grow. On that basis with the
goodwill and support of all these different actors it is learning to grow.
You need a mixture of stakeholders and some trusted known actors in the
region for it to move forward and then you need presence. If you're not
present, it doesn't help. So all the major events, at least some of them it
is good to have people there present or colleagues, for example. We're
here, these -- we have been the voice at different events. There are lots
of little tips that need to be thought about moving forward. But if there
is good faith between the actors here it can move forward positively. Thank
you.

>> MODERATOR: And on this note I would just like to thank our supporting
organizations which are actually helping us raise awareness in the region
and attract more disability for SEEDIG. Saying that you have the support of
the Council of Europe, of the IGF and the European Commission counts in our
region. It is a bit more that saying we have SEEDIG join us. Thank you for
that officially. We have new people in the room if you would like to--

>> My apologies for arriving late and moving out early, I have another
appointment at 2:00. I think you are all used to that yourselves. Allow me
to just say a few words about the IGF SA. You mentioned us as a supporter
and we were happy to support you during the first and already the first
event you held last spring in Belgrade. I attended both of them and I was
impressed with the quality of the event and also at the energy of the
participants. And clearly it validated the concept of having regional and
sub regional meetings because the issues are different, and if you just
joined the very big region, you may have the feeling that your issues get a
bit hidden away or not given enough attention. So this is clearly
worthwhile initiative to pursue. I have a flyer here which is also the map
of all the events. The IGFSA supported last year. Thanks to two
testimonials from SEEDIG, we don't give much but consider it is seed money,
$2,000 to national and $3,500 to regional and sub regional events that we
are told that it can help a lot. And credibility, but you will help us also
gain more credibility by joining as a member if you have not done so yet.
We have a booth in the IGF village. Please visit us and you'll be most
welcome if you join us as a member. Annual membership year of $25 we
decided it was useful and it is not so much that we need the money, but it
is also to give the members some sense of ownership. If it's for free it
isn't worth much. If you pay something, then it is worth much more. My
apologies if it sounds like a commercial. I think you have a very good
return on investment if you join. The more support we have, I think the
more credibility and strength in numbers we have as well. And again,
congratulations for an excellent initiative and keep up the good work.

>> MODERATOR: Olivier.

>> Thank you very much. Olivia, the chair of the European at large
organization, the at large is the part of ICANN that brings the ICANN being
an organization that coordinates the domain system around the world. There
is a European branch of at large involved with EuroDIG and activities in
Europe and SEEDIG is something that we have also been involved with. My
colleagues and it's been a real pleasure to do so. I'm here also to try to
see if there are anybody in the southeastern Europe part of the world that
are interested in taking part in ICANN processes, end users and so on. We
have the ability to have -- because Marcus did an advertisement, I think I
should do one as well. We have the ability to take in both organizations
that -- so they can be like computer clubs or even university departments
or we have organizations like Internet Society chapters and any
organization that deals with end users. And so we're looking to actually
have more of these organizations from this part of the world so that we get
your input into I Kanne processes. I'll beat Marcus and say our membership
is free. Beat that one. Hopefully you aren't going to turn around and say
we pay people to be our members. But it is organizations that can join or
individual users that can join as well through our individual users
association. That's pretty much all I have to say on this at the moment.
Thanks very much for letting me do an ad. Back to your regular programs
now.

>> MODERATOR: Any more ads? Thank you Olivier.

>> Hello, everybody. My name is Marco vifp and I work as ITC policy and
work at the Serbia register -- I am also a MAG member and really have been
involved in Internet government projects in Serbia and southeast Europe. We
co-hosted in 2011  EuroDIG, that was the first DIG event that was
affiliated with the registry and after that we also supported SEEDIG and
also we have a good cooperation and we co-hosted the ripe's regional event
in Belgrade last year. We also support and promote cooperation between the
registries in the region of Yugoslav -- we have a mailing list of informal
communications between the registries of -- next March we're organizing the
third regional gathering of CCDLD registries in Belgrade. You're all
welcome to attend, of course. And we will continue to support SEEDIG
initiative and actively participate in it.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you for hosting our meeting earlier this year. Megan,
do you want to say a few words? Thank you for joining.

>> Thanks for inviting me. I'm Megan Richards from the European Commission.
I want to say that first of all SEEDIG seems free dynamic and active and
enthusiastic group which we're pleased to see. It has also been very active
in contributing to the European dialogue on Internet governance which is
very important and EuroDIG itself is a big contributor and participant in
the IGF. To the extent that we can see this expand and develop and continue
to grow, I think this is a really very good initiative and we want to
encourage you and continue to support you in every way that we can. And to
give a plug for the European dialogue on Internet governance. Perhaps
someone has done it. It takes place in Estonia next year, the 10th
anniversary of EuroDIG and we hope that the SEEDIG participants will be
able to come as well. And one small thing but this is entirely up to you,
of course, to determine how you do it. One thing I thought was particularly
useful is when the SEEDIG meeting and discussion was in parallel with the
EuroDIG discussion. I thought that was particularly useful. It doesn't
always work and sometimes you have to do it in different places and
different times but when you have one day SEEDIG and the other days
EuroDIG, as you did. I thought it worked well. To the extent that's
possible that's an added advantage to consolidation and working together.
Thanks.

>> MODERATOR: This is something we're considering from EuroDIG is happening
in our region. Thanks. Anyone else around the room who hasn't introduced
himself and would want to?

>> Good afternoon, my name is -- I'm working with the -- which is maybe a
little bit organization of Diplo Foundation where I'm involved in our
training and capacity building programs amongst others in terms of Internet
issues. That is one of the reasons being here. The other reason is that
I'll be hosting a workshop on Friday morning related to the global forum on
cyber expertise which you may be fam I area with or not. Where I'm leading
a project dealing with the implementation of open Internet standards and
what I'm in the process of doing is trying to identify where are certain
needs and which kind of platforms organizations or countries would be
willing to join that initiative and I'm curious to listen to what is
happening here and to see whether there is any scope for cooperation as
well.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.

>> I'm Eric salsman with the United States Department of states Office of
international communication policy and I covering the IGF and ICANN for
that organization.

>> MODERATOR: Welcome to our sub regional meeting. Anyone else? Okay. I see
no hands. I'm guessing you wouldn't want to. At this point SEEDIG is an
initiative for southeastern Europe and the neighboring area. We do not
define what is southeastern Europe. Whoever considers himself or herself
part of southeastern Europe are welcome to join. We cannot tell people they
are or are not. We had our first meeting as it has already been mentioned
two years ago back-to-back with the EuroDIG meeting and the second meeting
was this year in April in Belgrade and now we're planning our third meeting
as already has been mentioned in Macedonia. It will happen again on the
25th of may. And that's it. So now what we can do with the remaining time
is try to think a bit about how we can improve this SEEDIG process so it
becomes more than just an annual meeting when we all gather together once a
year and we see each other a year after. We have started this activities
using the word the IGF is using, this year we did a survey on Internet
governance in the region. It didn't have too many responses but not
surprising for our region. But we did see a bit how people around our
countries seen Internet governance. What is the main challenge and what we
hope to be doing for the next year is to do another survey but this time on
a specific topic. So input from you is welcome what topic do you think we
should be addressing in this survey and see how people in the region see
it. That's one thing. The other joint initiative we're doing for the Diplo
Foundation the monthly summaries of development in our region. Every month
we try to gather information about what happens in our region, Internet
governance related. People from our community contribute and send us
updates and we put them together in a short summary and distribute at the
end of the month. When we also call it the southeastern European hub with
the Geneva hub where it gives an overview of Internet governance
developments globally. After the global meeting with meet for discussions
about what happened in our region. Will do my best. Thank you. Yes, let me
know when I'm doing that again. So these are the two things we have been
doing so far in addition to the annual meeting but we think we can do more
so kindly asking for your input. What would you want SEEDIG to do in the
region? How can we help increase collaboration and cooperation in the
region?

>> I'm wondering would it be useful to have an Internet governance school
for southeast -- southeast Asia -- I haven't got very much sleep. Wherever
you are, southeast Europe, to increase awareness and make sure that people
are even more aware? And you could do it intercessionally as people say. Is
that something that could be useful?

>> MODERATOR: I can follow up on that. Thank you for this question.
Actually, this initiative already started but we are expecting end of the
year to formally announce we will have a Balkin school on Internet
governance. We're looking to expand it to the southeastern European region.

>> Sorry if I ruined the surprised.

>> MODERATOR: Now it is a bigger surprise for you here. Thank you, both.
The floor is open.

>> I think one of the things to help Olivia in solving his problem in terms
of having the problems from the user community rise up properly to
different bodies that are dealing with different Internet governance
issues. Among them ICANN and engineering task force, WC3, whatever the body
is, is to see what the local. Just today's meeting for the new GTODs, a lot
of issues arose that are best addressed or discussed at the most local
level. National or regional lfl. Internationalization of domain names and
the use of languages locally. The use of different alphabets. We have
different alphabets. The Greek alphabet. There are a lot of different
issues that -- it's an issue actually of people knowing about what they can
do and how they can use these tools. The tools are there being created by
the different organizations, ICANN and the other ones. But most people
don't know how best to address their needs within this environment. As
we've said already, it is such a complex environment. The whole Internet
governance. Issues around it. I think this is a good way for people to have
a starting point to understand where they stand and how they can start
looking at their problems. Just a quick.

>> MODERATOR: Anyone else? If not. I see two new faces in the room.

>> Valentina, IGF -- for the time being I think this is important. I think
that there is a very positive synergy that started two years ago when the
SEEDIG started and I'm happy we were among the organizations that were, you
know, doing this and started a very positive I would say encouragement. And
so several national initiatives started. Working at the national level is
very different from working at the global or even regional level. The
dynamics are completely different. In a small country as Bosnia the bigger
corporation, the Microsoft have no interest. Their main office is regional
relocating other areas. The registry alone, so to attract all the different
components of dialogue, it asks for a different dynamics and also asks to
have the players of the global stakeholders to be there. For a local
registry that is fighting with so many bureaucracy, it can be an
organization doing this globally. An organization to whom should belong.
For business it is also important to talk about different business. And so
the national authorities come in power with legislative framework. We have
many individuals that use technology and working technology and don't have
any legal framework to pay their own taxes because there is not a new --
the legislation is not following. It is more complex, sometimes four
million people compared to India or China but important if we want to build
and Internet that belongs to everything. Synergy, national is when we can
access more people. Regional we can create learning and then we can go to
the global and coming to the global with all this diversity.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.

>> I will have to leave a little early I'm afraid and thought I would make
this point. I think something that SEEDIG has actually done quite well is
the coordination with other events, other sort of stakeholder groups and
things they're doing like the technical and operate or community. They
organize an SEE meeting for operators for the techno community and we've
had coordination between that and SEEDIG. I think it's important when you
have a one day or two-day event you can't cover everything. I think we
wouldn't necessarily -- we can't have every stakeholder group saying we
need to have our issue discussed in one of the sort of six sessions of that
period. It doesn't scale. But by having a bit more coordination and sort of
maybe co-locating or having them adjacent to each other you provide more of
an opportunity to have stakeholders who wouldn't necessarily come to just a
technical meeting still have the opportunity to say maybe come in a day or
half a day earlier and get a taste of it and get a chance to interact with
those people in that other stakeholder group that they might not otherwise
have. So I think that kind of coordination to facilitate better
communication, better contacts between stakeholder groups is something that
SEEDIG can do and has done but should certainly focus on in the future.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. While Chris is still here I would like to thank
RCC to be one of the first organizations to support the school that will
happen next year. Thank you, Chris, everyone is also very much invited to
support. Marcus. Just for a bit of clarity.

>> He is speaking about the summer school on behalf of different
organization. SEEDIG is not part of it yet officially just to clarify
things.

>> MODERATOR: Yes, thank you.

>> Thank you, Chris.

>> Hello, everyone. I have a few words of the Georgia challenges. It was
just for September.

>> Can you speak a bit loude

>> The last one was done in September, is like communities, there are
certain members and at the last event there are 20 requests from -- sector.
It is what seems a little bit better for the next year and for the
challenges. A little bit difficult to involve technical guys. There is some
kind of lawyers or policymaker guys even. I don't know why but it's true
except for Georgia and it's a problem for us. Thanks.

>> MODERATOR: That's interesting because at SEEDIG we have the technical
community and civil society. What we miss is the private sector mostly and
a bit of the governments. These are the two sectors we need to reach out a
bit more as SEEDIG. Ideas are welcome here as well how we do that and how
we reach out a bit more to other stakeholders to get them engaged into the
processes. Back to the room with suggestions. What else can SEEDIG do and
how can we make the meeting look really good?

>> One of the things -- I'm looking at here from the European at large
organization  perspective. People feeding into a policy that will affect
everyone at the Internet. When ICANN comes up with a policy it will affect
everybody. You have a say but you need to reach the certain level of
knowledge on this. I think the regional and local IGFs do have a part to
play in that as well. There needs to be information sessions at the same
time as sessions that are there with experts that are able to talk about
issues. You need to be able to speak about local issues and also global
issues and there needs to be a balance between the two. Because if you
don't talk about local issues, I don't think you might get much interest
from people. They will say I don't care what goes on in the States. I want
to find out what goes on on my doorstep. If you talk about the local issues
and not the global issues, you are really not part of this global community
that is there to grow the Internet into the Internet that will be there
tomorrow. And you will end up being affected by things that you will have
had nothing to say about. You will wake up one morning and policy will have
been implemented and you'll say this will be bad for our region. Why were
we not involved? That's one of the reasons why you need to constantly look
out for these issues that you can treat very early on at your local level
in SEEDIG. That's what I was going to suggest. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: We have been trying to do that. At least at our annual
meeting trying to combine local and global issues. It is always place for
improvement.

>> I've seen several IGF's grow slowly. I went to five Ukrainian IGF's five
years in a row. The first one talks about basic issues and no one knows
what to talk about, what they can talk about, what they can't talk about.
There was even a question mark as to whether the governments or police
would come in and arrest everyone because we're talking about the Internet.
Okay, so the second year the people started getting better marks about what
was going on and by the third year you start talking about those issues,
the local and global ones and it is interesting. We now have people very
active in global policy and who have influenced, for example, on ICANN the
policies around the international domain names. We have had people involved
in the various aspects of the scripts and the technical problems associated
with it. I do agree regarding the difficulty involving the technical
community. You have a government person that will turn up with a suit. I'm
not a government person. I still wear a suit. I would like to be one day a
government person. I would like to be important. Kidding. You also have a
guys that turn up with a T-shirt and I can tell you I turned up once in an
ITF meeting with a suit and there was only one person allowed to wear a
suit in that meeting, VINT CERF. Three-piece suits and he wears it very
well by the way and everybody respects it. Everybody else is wearing a T-
shirt and if there are holes in the T-shirt it's even better.

>> MODERATOR: How do we bring more stakeholders together?

>> I just have a small question about some kind of recommendation about IGF
initiatives because I'm talking about the trust. When you create our own
some kind of rules of play inside of national IGF, not all of these guys
are enrolled in this. It is impossible to enroll all of them. How about
some kind of -- commendation for national IGF's. Most countries are new
democracy. And maybe we need some kind of more accommodation for our State.
Players in our State.

>> MODERATOR: Globally speaking the IGFs have strength to put together
guidelines. This would be globally applicable. I don't know if there is
something we can do regionally if we have specificities and things we can
look into.

>> The conversation about bringing other stakeholders and specifically
ones that you mentioned. When government is mentioned, government is not
one big thing that there is government, diplomats in the government and
parliaments and courts and I think that one stakeholder group that hasn't
been properly engaged in all these years is parliamentarians. The issues
that we're discussing are policy issues and those policy issues very often
have to find themselves in some kind of legislation for them to be
effective. Not always but very often. And I think that's a stakeholder
group we need to involve and perhaps the next SEEDIG is something that we
can start thinking about stakeholder group specifically. How to bring
different stakeholders together, I think the best way is focusing on one or
a few problems. Whenever you focus on everything, you come out with
nothing. If there is a theme and I've been saying this for the IGF as well.
We need more specific themes that we focus for the IGFs themselves but I
would say the same thing about regional and national ones. If every year
there is one problem that is addressed and you bring the different
stakeholders to bring their own views on that problem and how it can be
solved it is -- that's already an effective dialogue that can -- and a
dialogue should be structured. There should be some kind of an hourglass
structure where you start with the most general and you ask the most
general questions and you get to the most specific questions preferably to
the key question that everybody says that's the key question that needs to
be addressed now and from that one question you go into the next stage of
trying to answer it and see where there are answers. Very often there are
answers not used. Tools there not used. And sometimes there are -- the
answer is we need to do this and this and this and already you have a
roadmap. So I think that's a good approach and I would recommend it as much
for SEEDIG and EuroDIG and also for the global IGF and by the way, I have a
theme for next year's IGF. We need to focus on Internet of Things a lot
more. That's the key thing that we should next year should be be IOT.

>> Just to mention this year we've had the biggest delegation of European
parliamentarians ever. 18 who had originally signed up for it. For one
reason or another five or six dropped out. We're now down to 13 or 12 --
no, last Italian dropped out of the because of the Italian referendum.
We're down to 12. But still that's more than we've had before. Last time we
had nine. This time 12. Each time there is more and more interest. It is a
wonderful opportunity for them to see what's going on. They can go to all
the different sessions that are of particular interest to them. And I must
say they have become more and more interested all of them and they've
participated at SEEDIG. We had a Romanian member and they also go to
EuroDIG as well. They're very active. Where we see there is less activity
and it used to be even more but it has gone downhill over the last years is
the national parliamentarians. One used to pay for at least four British
parliamentarians to come every year to the IGF. They stopped doing it a
couple of years ago because money is not growing on trees, etc. The FINs
used to always have national parliamentarians, etc. At European level this
is probably a good option because it is very expensive for every single
member state and even beyond for SEEDIG to send their own national
representation. In the SEEDIG case not all of you are members of the
European union and don't necessarily have members of the European
parliament. There is a place where they have contact with the local
authorities and national interests. They can start disseminating the
information.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Megan. Michael.

>> First of all I'm Michael, I'm an ISOC ambassador. Sorry I am late. I
want to follow up on something that you were talking about. Sorry, I don't
know your name. I wanted to follow up because actually a lot of what you
were saying is -- has been something that I've been personally dealing with
over the past -- addressing over the past couple of months and I wanted to
share a small case study that we have been working on over the past couple
of months and it really resolves around identifying problems and after that
allocateing -- identifying which stakeholders can help fix that problem.
I'm probably the newest -- I'm probably the person here with the newest --
with the most new experience in the western Balkans. I just moved to
Belgrade in September. When I first arrived I was speaking to some people
that work in the startup scene and my zeal for Internet governance
especially in the Balkans they were talking to me and I was asking what are
some problems you deal with? One person who works at a startup was saying
well, we have a big problem with the fact that we can't use ad words. I
said really? Why not. We started trying to talk about why it was. So then I
started asking other people that I knew in the Internet governance
community in Belgrade. I asked ZORAN from the Internet exchange. You should
probably talk to SLOBADON about this. We met and started talking and
realized it has to do with the local ISPs and it could be a Google problem,
it could be the local ISP. More communication, more research. We discovered
that it is not actually a Google algorithm issue. It is having to do with
the fact that local ISPs in Serbia are not registering their sub IP
allocations. By doing that, basically I'll get to the point, sorry. The
point is that we discovered that actually what we need to do is start
working with the network operators, we need to work with registries and
RIPE and if Google can help to solve an issue that is hindering potential
economic development in this country because of lack of access to the
service. I just think that after we identify the problems, actually then
the stakeholders can become very more apparent. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Michael.

>> I would like just as you mentioned before the toolkit. I think this
afternoon there is a main plenary. I think this is a good at least
acknowledgement that the national and regional level has a role to play and
the more local the more you look at the local problem. So I think that what
is really important is that we contribute from the different perspective. A
policy of small steps.

>> I'm from code for Mexico. So about the issue of how to involve the
technical people. I'm in civil society. I'm also a technical person so I
can tell you that we technical people have to meet up. This is our way of
life. Technology advance so quickly, so if we don't do meet-ups we get
obsolete very quickly. How we articulate here in Mexico, government
officials, especially here in Jalisco, they get involved our events. We
have technical officials going to our events and seeing what we're doing
and asking what -- how they can help and they reach us for decision making.
They reach us for maybe content and for advisory. A cost effective solution
that you can do. There are a lot of meet-ups of technical people. Reach out
to them and I think that will be it.

>> Thank you, Olivier speaking. We spoke earlier about the need to involve
parliamentarians, Euro MPs, local MPs, politicians, etc. I'll say something
that might be controversial and that you might disagree with. Politicians
are smart. Most of us think they are probably not. That's what I mean. It's
very controversial to say that. I hope I won't be tweeted on this. Please,
off the record. Politicians are smart. When something happens somewhere,
they will immediately catch on to this and go wait a minute. There is
something happening here. I need to be part of that or I don't need to be
part of that. They'll immediately check on this and want to be part of it.
The sector you will have the most problem with is the private sector. The
private sector has a main role to make sure their company will make money
and will work and grow, shareholders, etc. And the whole dialogues around
Internet works on. A legislation or something that could come against them
at some point. Many of the private sector think we can lobby the government
directly. We don't need to go through this big dialogue. We have to work on
private sector and we've seen the weakest representation at the IGFs has
been unfortunately private sector. There are some really good organizations
and companies behind the IGF and that have been here for many, many years.
But we need to get a heck of a lot more in there because the Internet is
affecting everyone and their business, too.

>> MODERATOR: Anyone else in the room wanting to say anything on what has
been said so far? If not, a bit of advertising again. We have a call for
issues.

>> I was going to add one thing. Civil society is the moist most nimble of
all the groups. The world of civil society knows about it six minutes later
or before it has been announced

>> MODERATOR: We seed that as SEEDIG as well. We have a call for issues for
SEEDIG and EuroDIG which is until 31st of December if I'm not wrong. Anyone
can confirm? I guess I'm right. So if you have suggestions for topics that
you would want to be discussed at both SEEDIG and EuroDIG or either of them
go on the SEEDIG or EuroDIG website. You don't have to write a session
description, just say I'll talk about the Internet of Things. That's a
proposal. Help us create the program. When it comes to building the program
for the SEEDIG meeting it is an open bottom up and it will start in
January, we will have online planning meetings, everyone interested could
contribute to building it and putting the program together and in addition
to the actual day of the SEEDIG 25th of may we will also have a pre-day
where we'll try to do more capacity building and Internet governance
issues. You are all welcome. Okay. Do we still have time for decision or
should we wrap up with some notes? Can someone -- we have 20 more minutes.
Should we look again into what SEEDIG can --

>> Again connected to the earlier one, which is another way of looking at
government or countries is courts. I think that one issue that is very
complex that has been to some degree addressed is jurisdiction and that is
such an important issue. And each -- our region and every region has its
own specific but all similarities as well. Different to the rest of the
world. So that's something that I think that is worth looking at. The role
of courts and how sometimes global problems are interpreted by the courts
locally because that's also goes back to what I said earlier is that
sometimes there are already solutions to problems and you never know until
you test them and sometimes a good testing ground are the courts. So I
think that that's something that could be a topic. It's a hard one to look
at. It is really a hard one, I know, but it's worth looking at.

>> MODERATOR: Please go online and submit the topic.

>> I will.

>> MODERATOR: We have the Internet of Things and jurisdiction. Already to
topics for SEEDIG and organization work. That takes me back to your point
again about SEEDIG being a platform where we can gather together with
practices from the region. Should we try to do a bit of brainstorming and
think what topics we want to address in this compilation of good practices
maybe? I will go back again to the survey we did at SEEDIG this year. We
asked people what are the main challenges in the region that the region is
basically sharing? And the top three if I'm not wrong, again you can
correct me, were digital divide, cybersecurity and privacy and data
protection, right? These were the three topics people in our region said
are shared concerns and the most pressing challenges. What else around our
region? What can we work on trying to see what -- how people are working on
these issues and putting them together?

>> Freedom of expression, it's dying desperately.

>> MODERATOR: We are taking notes. Thank you. And --

>> Freedom of expression, dying democracy. Never actualize democracy.

>> I can add that's the case in Turkey especially since last year. As many
of you know, I used to live in Turkey one of the reasons I wanted to leave
was because of the increasing State of affairs there.

>> For the topics that you've mentioned, sorry. For the topics you
mentioned, I think we have to challenge ourselves if we were brainstorming
to be more specific. What about the digital divide? What exactly are we
talking about here? Let's formulate specific questions. Digital divide was
the biggest topic in Geneva in 2003, right? Before Internet governance
became the key topic. Digital divide was the biggest thing and we're
talking about it. Let's be specific what we're talking about here.

>> Mobile. People accessing the Internet mobile. Small provider versus big
telecoms and pressure to do filtering and blocking to resolve the issue of
-- people are not equipped to resist and understanding and blackmailed by
the main telecoms or also depend on the regulator. If the regulator is open
and wise they will have someone on their side to try to counter, not
counter react. If the regulate hor is not open and wise and under political
control. The small business are dying and they will become the policemen of
the day with no ability whatsoever to make differences and we enter into
the culture what are they policing? Who is policing to and which criteria?
I think mobile versus broadband be provided if we want to be specific.

>> I do appreciate that question and I will say that we did -- we have
already done quite a lot of foundational work on this question at the
previous SEEDIG. We worked for months trying to basically what's it called,
operationalize what it means, how it exists and how it manifests across the
region? We have a corpus of knowledge to go from that I hope we can
continue to build upon in the coming SEEDIGs and in the coming regional
intercessional work.

>> MODERATOR: That reminds me we had a contribution to the IGF intercession
work on policy options and building on that. The various dimensions of the
digital divide in the region and what recommendations were made to overcome
those at the SEEDIG meeting.

>> I was going to add to what he was saying on the blocking that ISPs are
asked to do. In the UK there is the next level. They have to listen, they
have to provide ways of whatever agency to be able to go into your own
computer to be able to hack you. It is called equipment interference.
You'll hear a lot about that very soon. There has been a discussion in the
UK network operators forum, the technical community had no interest in
following any of this and suddenly they're put in front of the question how
are we going to get all of this information to GCHQ, the main UK
surveillance agency? Do we have fiber that will go to GCHQ and I started
having this vision of the big brother thing where every email will go via
the central point. A guy reads it. Do we forward it or not? Not like that,
but that's an issue that will come up. One country has done it and others
are going to want to think this is one way to do it. In the UK there was
very little pushback on this. You frame the issue in a certain way. Do you
want to be safe from harm? Safe from terrorism and do you want a child
safety? Do you want all of these? Or do you want to have absolutely no
surveillance whatsoever? It was framed in such a way of course they also
added this accessory thing called Brexit. That's a side issue. There was no
outrage about it. If it will make the Internet safer and protect my
children and me, then, you know, I have nothing to hide. You wouldn't
believe the number of people that have said really? You are making so much
noise about this. I have nothing to hide. Okay.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Any follow-up on that? If not we only have 10 more
minutes. You want to say something?

>> This is not -- I think that especially this issue is such an important
issue to start addressing in a proper way. I think that governments have
been made the bad guy for many valid reasons for, you know, many
governments have wire tapped. Many governments have -- I would say most
governments wiretap. It's one of the things that governments do, right? And
the matter is not whether they do it or not. The matter are there proper
Democratic controls to make that suitable for the valid reasons the
government should be doing that and that is to prevent terrorism, to
prevent things that could undermine statehood. There is a lot of global
organizations that have been doing this for a very long time like
collecting information on their users, Google, apple, Amazon, all the big
-- any big company that is right now working at the global level is working
with a lot of data about their users. It is not just a matter -- and I
can't -- if I don't like what Google is doing I can't vote them out, right?
Why is government such a bad guy when it does it if there are valid reasons
for doing it? I think for this especially reason I think we need to open it
up and really address it in a completely different way to -- because this
old way of addressing it government is bad, eavesdropping is really old.

>> MODERATOR: I will put the light right on you because you have just
joined us. You have supported SEEDIG over the past years, say a few words
and introduce yourself.

>> I work with affiliates, a registry originally from SEEDIG country and
happy to support all SEEDIG initiatives. Also very active there in
international society chapter of Serbia and Belgrade and happy to
coordinate with all the SEEDIG participants on various issues. We have a
lot of projects coming up for 2017. A lot of education across the region,
education between Sarajevo and Serbia in terms of privacy and exciting
times. But I don't know what you are discussing right now. I had trouble
finding you. Sorry I'm running late.

>> MODERATOR: SEEDIG issues. We were trying to see what topics we can
address on SEEDIG and from what kind of  view. Trying to be more specific
and ask the right questions. You don't need to--

>> No pressure. I think -- I do have an opinion I think on this issue. Just
mention some of the projects that I think are very valuable for the region
and I listened to the last part of the conversation that we were just
talking about. How to reframe the conversation. I think it is really
important to -- we have seen a lot of movement from a regional IGF in some
of our countries and there is now a lot of acceptance of why these
conversations and multi-stakeholder approach is bringing value to the
conversation. I do think that each of our regions, the countries as well
have specific issues. And SEEDIG is trying to address what is I think
really lacking. First of all, it's really one of the issues is certainly
accessibility and the region is still poorly connected, especially in the
poorer areas. So that is one of the issues that has not been -- have not
seen many programs that are addressing in particular SEEDIG as a region and
southeastern Europe participants. So all the other issues that are
particular to the region, you know, really stem from a different kind of
background of what we think the governmental system is and how the policy
is currently made. And some lack of participation. In those discussions,
I'll just give you one example and that is that recently we had a strategic
session on intellectual property in Serbia where there was a framework that
has been brought up for the acceptance and bill almost passed through
without any public consultation. So we have a lot to learn as a region and
I can only speak on behalf of Serbia here. But I don't know if that issue
has been mentioned and what issues you've actually tabld tabled of how you
deal with human rights and I.P. rights.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. We are reaching the end of the session. So now I
would ask if you have questions for us as SEEDIG, the three of us here. Any
questions for us? Recommendations? More than what has been said already?
Michael.

>> I would like to know if there has been any update on the email that was
sent about basically the support association or the financial aspect of it.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Michael. That's a very good question. For a bit of
a context SEEDIG for two years worked as a non-existing legal entity. We
had to rely on support from our local supporting organizations. This year
it was Serbia who helped us with raising the money and managing them from
their point of view. This has proven to be a bit more difficult than we
expected when you cannot manage your money, things are a bit more
complicated. What we're trying to do from now on to is to give structure to
SEEDIG. Create a support association for SEEDIG open for anyone in the
region or beyond to join and give an institutional home to make things a
bit easier from a planning point of view and when it comes to running the
whole process. At this point we're working on association 0.1 which would
have a basic statute with only the basic things so we can prepare the
meeting which is happening really soon. And then we will open this up for
more complex statute when everyone will be welcome to contribute to the
drafting process. So we make the association open and all the practices are
clear and all the decision making are there from the start at that point.
I'm hoping this will happen starting next year. The community working on
the statute. But it is all volunteer work so it takes time. Any follow-up
on that? Anyone would be welcome to join the association from that point
on. Anything else? I guess not. Then I would thank everyone for having
joined this session. Please contribute to SEEDIG as well EuroDIG. Go
propose topics. And yes, Ida has just mentioned again we have the monthly
briefings on the last Tuesday of every month except for January, because it
is just before new year. But for December, sorry, from January on we resume
the monthly hub meetings. Please join us and we discuss what happens in the
reason and contribute to the summary. Send us one sentence about what
happened in your countries we will elaborate on that and put it in our
summary. Thank you. (Applause) (Session ended at 2:30 PM CT) Internet
Governance Forum 2016 Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth Jalisco,
Mexico 7 December 2016 Room 8 Workshop DC on Public Access in Libraries
15:00 CT

>> STUART HAMILTON: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for coming after
lunch. Hopefully you're fell fed but not to fall asleep. I'm sta*ut
haument. One of the world's longest named NGOs, I am here with Janet Sawaya
from electronic information for libraries. Between hour two organizations
we're the conveneers of the Dynamic Coalition on public access in
libraries. I would say that within the IGF context we're one of the most
specific IGFs. We're dealing with a specific issue and we're looking at a
specific institution and yet some of the things that we can do through
these institutions go across all of the themes that are present here in all
these other workshops. In these Dynamic Coalition meetings every year we
have to conduct some business and some of that business is really to report
on what the Dynamic Coalition has been doing in the previous 12 months. But
I would like to move through that relatively quickly because we're lucky
enough to have some excellent people with us to share their thoughts on how
libraries can take forward some of the IGF issues. Vint, we're glad to have
you here. We have brought you up to top level this year. And I'll introduce
our other speakers as we go. We've got remote participation so I'll be
looking over occasionally to see if there is anyone coming in. But some of
you will have seen the flyer that we put out for this event and the top of
that we put up public access to the Internet is having a moment and I know
we don't really do slides in these meetings, but I did just want to pull
out over the last 12 to 18 months we've seen a number of reports and
processes kind of double back round to where we were in 2001-2005 when the
digital divide was a big issue. We're seeing a number of processes and
reports recognizing without public access to the Internet we aren't going
to be able to bring the next 1.5 billion people online. We're not going to
be able to reach target 9C of SCGs, to get 100% of the people in LDCs by
2020. A rather ambitious target but one we're working on. Some of the
things I pulled out there. The Global Commission on Internet Governance.
The World Bank digital dividends report. Policy options win the IGF itself
for connecting the next billion. The Stanford polling exercise that put
public access to the Internet through libraries. The alliance for
affordable interneither report. The 2015-and 2016 report and the Global
Connect Initiative. We really felt that this time out at the IGF there is a
lot of good things in the air. A lot of opportunities. The second part of
this meeting we're going to have a moderated discussion by Janet where we
want to bring in all of you to sort of think about what do some of these
opportunities translate to in a work program sense? What can we do in the
next 12 months to sort of push forward public access in the Internet
governance context? So before I do that, though, there is business. And I'm
pleased to say in the last 12 months we've had a number of engagements from
the members of the Dynamic Coalition on public access. We tend to focus on
the regional IGFs and the national IGFs. We do this because we're lucky
enough to have librarians at each of those levels and bring in our partner
organization. Some of the things that we've done, we were at the EuroDIG,
which, of course is the European IGF doing workshops on refugees and access
to the Internet. Clearly a hugely important issue. We had a fantastic
librarian from Helsinki city library, he was a refugee himself before
becoming a librarian and he led a workshop on that topic. We were in the
Asia Pacific where we had librarians organize the workshop and right to be
forgotten. We're stretching out. We had people present at the Latin
American IGF and we were lucky enough to have a person from Senegal who
arranged the -- I ask somebody else to give a different percent respective.
I've asked you to give us information on what happened at the Senegal IGFs.
It's where we can see some of these ideas. Talk about what happened there.

>> Thank you, the African idea for organizing IGF organized by the African
Union commission and the Government of South Africa, and it was an
inclusive dialogue between different sectors. Librarians were part of the
debate. The library association in Africa. The African Association of
librarians and -- and before that we coordinate the meeting that we --
under the coordination of the director -- we had a nice panel, six speakers
take the floor just talking about libraries and how they can participate.
The theme we're delivering and development and how libraries help bring
people online and enrich the are African Union agenda 2033. And then before
where the president -- after our workshop we had -- we just organized
sharing and tried to see how we can put in the recommendation the part of
the library in this issue and it was mentioned in the final report of the
IGF that government need to use libraries to deliver and national
development plans and African Union agenda. Another thing is also that
Internet to promote affordability of the Internet to the people in Africa.
Bringing broadband to academia and libraries. That really what the
librarian delegates took the floor.

>> STUART HAMILTON: Can I ask so we can get a bigger picture here? In the
African IGF did you speak to other non-library groups? Who were the people
interested in what you had to say?

>> Yeah. As I say, we organize the librarians and other stakeholders but
just after that we prepare how to deliver the message. All the panels were
librarians. The delegation was in several workshops and sessions just to
put the voice of library and how libraries can bring people online and
helping achieve this.

>> STUART HAMILTON: You found a positive reaction to that message?

>> Yeah.

>> STUART HAMILTON: Is there an outcome document?

>> Yes, a big report. Over 200 participants down from government and
private sector, academia and technical community coming over 30 countries
attend this IGF.

>> STUART HAMILTON: Any questions for him? Any thoughts on the African IGF?
Something we tried to engage with more in recent years and there are
increasing number of country IGFs alerting the librarians to. This effort
at a national level. We have to educate the librarians about the IGFs well.
A substantial bit of work to be done there.

>> It's Vint Cerf. It has to do with the free queen sigh of the annual
meetings. If it's only once a year or do you have meetings during the rest
of the year as well? For the continental African IGF or the national IGFs.
Is there more than one meeting during the year?

>> What we tend to do, we try to have a slot in any workshop in Africa just
to try to take that on and talk about that.

>> STUART HAMILTON: I can pick that up because to move on from there one of
the things we did next is there is an annual conference every August IFLA.
It moves around the various regions and has a transparent bidding process.
But this year we were in Columbus in Ohio. And we had a special session
there on the Dynamic Coalition. So we brought together the Association for
Progressive Communicatioinss, IFLA were there and we began to expose the
Dynamic Coalition to the broader library audience. Think -- we had a
workshop about 70 people and we were able to sort of go through some of
these reports. Let people know this sort of thing was happening and had a
pretty good discussion where some of the issues that we are dealing with
here, particularly in our corp rative work the librarians in the room
recognized that and Janet, I don't know if you have any comments. We had
colleagues from Jamaica talk to us about the situation facing them there
but flipping it back we had a librarian from West Virginia talking about
not having the best access in her library. We're trying to sensitize the
community a little bit to the IGF. We say the last count we had something
like 650,000 information professionals in the world library and reaching
them, sensitizing them to the sorts of issues being described here is a
heavy lift but something that I think the role of this DC is taking on and
can do a lot more work. I think we'll probably turn that meeting and our
conference into an annual meeting. And we also had a smaller business
meeting, I think, on the side just to work out what we were going to do in
relation to this. Anything to add? Go for it. I with like to run this
meeting because we're quite a small group in as open a manner as possible.
I think presentation by presentation is no good. If you do have a question
at any point go for it. Could you introduce yourself to everybody?

>> Sorry to go for it. You asked for a question. I'm Catalina HOSINI have
joined Facebook a month ago and I work with librarians all my life through
open access and other issues. My question for our colleague from the
African region is I'm sorry if the question was made before. What is the
involvement of also the social entrepreneurs and small business and
software developers and app developers in those discussions in your region?

>> Really, a big field of sharing between stakeholders really focused on
putting on the voice of libraries and we tried to talk to all the
stakeholders, yeah.

>> I forgot to clarify what is the connection? I see a lot of libraries and
public access points where those folks congregate. That was the connection.

>> Yeah. We just know that -- say that the safe space to use, to connect
the unconnected person, and for that we try to pattern to all the other
stakeholders on the issue of connected person.

>> STUART HAMILTON: Maybe I can jump in a little bit to tackle. You said
one of the recent contacts we've had in the African context is with the
initiative I am the code. We've been talking and we put Miriam in contact
with him so she is originally from Senegal. How can we use that library
system to host those workshops on getting young women and girls coding
which is what I think the connections we want to be looking for. That's the
beginning of the connection. I would love to see it go to different
countries particularly in Africa and elsewhere as well.

>> Senegal for the National Association of librarians we were planning to
met Miriam. We have a project -- to projects. The one is called cities and
corners. Just want to put what we call a corner in each municipality where
citizens can be trained for information -- they need to describe corners to
be connected to have the possibility to use the information, to use ICT.
They have not this facility in their home but we know that municipalities
are run by the how you say it -- the money of the -- and we are trying to
see how they can work with their local authorities to have -- what we'll
call cities and corners where we will find information about local
governments information, about also how they can exploit all the
possibilities that ICT give them.

>> STUART HAMILTON: So one of the ways that we've been trying to use the
regional IGFs and library meetings to sensitize people to what we're doing
in the IGF is through something we launched at the last IGF but the year
after that launch has been the work period. I'll pass down copies of the
principles on public access in libraries which was developed as a work -- a
piece of work by this Dynamic Coalition over the last few years. And this I
think is part of the principles gets at some of the things you're talking
about, because of the way that we've framed the work that we're doing and
he mentioned skills. I hear skills a lot at this IGF. I'm hearing how do we
have the literacy skills to deal with the post-truth world and it keeps
coming up again and again. I wanted to share this with you so you have a
paper copy, a bit old school, I guess. This is where we've been basing our
work on and when we get to the discussion and talk to our partners, these
are the principles that we talk about public access. It is something that
we talked about within the conference in August and we think there is
enough life in this document to keep us going with the work program for the
next couple of years. Now, because I'm still doing business as what we've
got up to in the last 12 months I have more hand-outs for you. These are
color. You'll be much more excited. We see all of this work that we're
doing is very much connected to the 2030 agenda. Our position in the 2030
agenda negotiations from the very beginning was that access to information
can support the achievement of every single sustainable development goal.
And therefore libraries have a role to play in helping governments reach
those goals and targets. So as part of our advocacy this year we've been
using this document you have in front of you to sort of get our librarians
at national levels to be in with their policymakers talking to them about
how we can help you with goal 4 and goal 8 and it is an effective way of
mobilizing our librarians at national levels. One of the things I would say
about my own library community over the last 15, 20 years, sometimes we
aren't very good at seeing ourselves as part of the bigger picture. If you
ask a librarian what he or she does they will tell you an activity or
something which is contributing to development but they won't be able to
talk about that activity in the way that perhaps a policymaker or a partner
organization wants to hear. So we actually have something new, something
called the international advocacy program which started this year in
August, and we have a huge amount of resources thanks to Bill and Melinda
Gates foundation to take it on national levels and a cascade training
model. We've done four regional workshops by the end of the year where
we've brought together 60 countries and those countries have to commit to
going back to their country and developing an action plan to reach out to
their policymakers. This is where we really see the principles in public
access can come in. First come, first served. We produced a better booklet
that breaks down every goal specific examples of what libraries are doing
in relation to that. And so far so good on this. This has been quite
effective. We actually had libraries in the national development plan of
Jamaica. We have concrete evidence that this advocacy has been working. In
Australia the libraries are close to getting into the national development
plan there and generally I think we'll be able to come back next August and
report with a hope a few more positive examples of that. They are in
Poland. I didn't know that. Someone take the minutes. We've gone up from
one to two, which is great. We know that some countries already have their
national development plans and others are very much at the beginning of
putting them together. That's why it's essential we have to be in those
conversations from the start. So any questions just on this that I've
passed out?

>> It's Vint Cerf again. This is having to do with other public
institutions besides the public libraries that could also offer access.
Unusual cases I've learned about. I was in Cuba in March and I met with an
artist there called CACHO. He has a compound with multiple studios and
galleries and given access by the administration to now a 70 megabit system
to get out to the Internet and he makes it available for anyone who comes
within the compound. It is a WiFi service and there is a major thoroughfare
going around Havana. I won't bother Googleing it. There are other points
where people can get access to the Internet. I hope the scope of the
discussion here isn't limited to libraries because there are other
possibilities to provide public access.

>> STUART HAMILTON: That's a very good point and as I mentioned at the
outset with our name we look like the most  specific Dynamic Coalition you
can get your hands on. Libraries have been working with telly centers for
many years. Pleased to have Nicholas from the Dynamic Coalition that we can
build out to take the public access further. And I think while we're keen
to keep the spotlight on libraries, I wouldn't take anything away from the
other methods that we can do to share the public access. I do think that
extending the reach of WiFi networks through any way, shape or form using
libraries as base stations but you may be picking up WiFi -- hopefully you
have an idea in information security and digital literacy sense comes from
a library. I hope that's something I would also like us to consider for the
work program over the next 12 months as well is how can we broaden
partners. Do you want to say something?

>> Hi, my name is Nicholas from Argentina. Thank you for inviting us. Thank
you for giving me the hand to talk about this. Well, as you were saying,
public libraries having a very important role on distributing -- giving
access to the communities. And as for now, it is awesome for you to be
doing that. But I think we need to commit to give -- to push that forward.
We have already get here and it is awesome because a lot of people that
haven't had the means available to get to Internet can do so. But now that
the devices and the people -- the devices allow us to have more
participation on Internet and technology, the people requires us to be
online or to share content or to put our businesses on top of the Internet
we have a chance from the library sector to push forward this limit and
allow a lot more people to access this technology. I don't know if you
already know about what community networks are. Can you raise your hand if
you know? Do you know? You know? Everyone knows what a community network
is?

>> STUART HAMILTON: We think we do. You might want to say what your
definition is.

>> I will. Okay. So the idea of community networking is to tackle the issue
of unconnected people or the people that want to be connected that is not
already connected. With a solution from the bottom up, right? From the
people that already wants to connect, from that wheel build up on that. So
what we propose, we have already developed a very wide range of
technologies that help people to have the means to get themselves
connected. This not only tackles the issue of being connected to the
Internet but also helps us to fix Internet. Internet nowadays is not what
it used to be when our friend here did what he did at the beginning. But it
is very much vertical structure, right? And people is used to consume more
than produce and to be not -- it's kind of a division to bundle. We need
all together to fix that. So community networks not only help people to
have the access to Internet but also to have the means to get in touch with
technology and empower themselves knowing how it works and building it for
themselves and maintaining it for themselves. And also it's kind of a
commitment. When you build your network, you are involved in that. When you
are involved in that, you start to participate and if you have some time
that you can go to one of the meetings from community meeting the people
that is there participating on IGF is not only technicians like me. I'm an
engineer. But also mothers and fellows from the community. I don't know if
there is any indigenous people, but there are also. So they build
themselves the network that they need and the means are around. For you the
librarians I think that we have a big chance to grow and expand your
purpose. Like open access. Like giving tools for public services.

>> STUART HAMILTON: Hold that thought. We want to come back to you with
some of those details when Janet gets into the moderating bit. We need to
think about these working with the new things in the Dynamic Coalition on
library sense how can we build some new things in. What I would like to do
now. I'm mindful of time. That's my job. Is to invite Vint to pick up on
some of the things we've been getting underway with. I think we put you on
the menu as having asorted library musings or things like this. Feel free
to give us sort of -- take your time but talk to us about the Stanford poll
as well.

>> I'm happy to do that. I'm not the expert on the polling that has taken
place at Stanford, although there were several people at the conference who
can speak to this. Professor Francis and max from Google in particular. The
impression I got from the polling is there is a distinct and rising desire
for access to the Internet and the services that it offers and there is a
great deal of recognition that public institutions have a role to play. And
the libraries have been more visible than one might have anticipated partly
because of their long history of bringing information to people and helping
them find it. So the experiments that you've done, Don, with white spaces
access is just one important example of drawing attention to Internet
access. There have been some setbacks, though. I wanted to mention them,
because they are unexpected and surprising. I have been very interested in
bringing Internet service to the Native American restlations  --
reservations in the United States. They've been left out because of their
rural nature and the long history of neglect, frankly, in American policy.
What I learned, however, is that for example some libraries or schools were
outfitted with WiFi, made it publicly available. People would come to the
parking lot to get access to Internet. And it actually became a problem
because people were coming who were not locals necessarily, coming from all
over the place and consumed so much of the resource that the library had to
do something to control access to make it available to the patrons. That's
an example of scarcity. The problem we have to solve is to remove the
scarcity and provide abundance which is one reason why broader band access
is important. Technologically speaking that's getting better. We're seeing
much higher frequencies being -- I won't say deployed yet but at least
investigated in the 60, 75, 80 gigahertz range. Even at 1 bit per hertz
it's a lot of bandwidth. Bringing higher frequencies could make a big
difference in terms of public access. We have some experience as Google
specifically. In India where we've been putting up public WiFi. Ultimately
we intend 400 railroad stations. I don't remember how many we've put up so
far. I just don't even want to guess. It might be 50 but I just don't
remember. But the responses have been very positive because people are
saying I have access to information when I go to the train station. And
that just reinforces my belief that public access is a really important
element in the Internet spread. When it's still pretty expensive to have
private access to the Internet, finding these alternative ways is really
helpful. In the earlier days of Internet deployment it wasn't uncommon for
universities to come up on the net and then people who graduate from the
universities and it would get out into their cities and towns, and the
first reaction they had is how do I get Internet access? So they would
start Internet cafes as a way of sharing the cost of getting onto the
system. I think that is still true today, although increasingly people are
getting access with mobiles and Smartphones and things like that which is a
very good thing. We have that dynamic going on. Mr. Chairman, I wonder,
though, if I could mention another topic, although we don't need to discuss
it now. And it has to do with another related role that the libraries have.
Historically some of the libraries are institutions that archive content
and they do it to preserve that information for future generations. We are
generating as a society an enormous amount of digital content and it isn't
100% clear to me that we are catering to its preservation. The librarians
tell me they're very well aware of this problem. That many sources of
content are showing up in digital form, whether it's CD-roms or disk drives
or other kinds of things as well as online resources and they are
struggling to find ways of preserving the utility of that digital content.
So perhaps somewhere in the course of our conversation we could look at the
problem of preserving digital content over long periods of time. As I think
about all the people who take photographs with their mobiles and I have
experienced a lot of them in the last few days, I keep wondering what will
happen 10 or 20 years from now? Will all of that important content,
important to the individuals, still be available? Will the formats still be
able to be interpreted can they be rendered correctly and to make matters
more complicated, what if it's a spread sheet or document with special
formatting. Will the software that created the object still be available
100 years from now? So that might be worthy of your attention in the course
of our conversation. But to come back to the public access question, I
think that we should be conscious of and in fact do everything we can to
stimulate willingness to provide public access to the Internet where that's
possible in order to overcome the limitations that we have now for
affordability and accessibility. I'll stop there, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
very much for allowing me to participate.

>> STUART HAMILTON: You'll now get some questions, Vint. We love to take
advantage of haven't Vint here.

>> I'm Larry maggot, the CEO of connect safely.com and may do a radio
stegment on this today. Two comments on Vint's presentation. One in New
York City there is something called link NYC in the process of replacing
pay phones with terminals. This is a great public/private partnership. The
other thing I was thinking about when you mentioned the issue of libraries
archiving content. We have the archive.org the Internet. They can't do it
all. How information can be changed. Many years ago I was writing a
consumer fraud column for the computer magazine and only because of some
kind of archival system was it able to find out this company, which claimed
that they didn't commit the crime that they had committed, in fact did.
They made a claim that they couldn't deliver on and then when they were
caught they deleted that claim. Suddenly they became unaccountable. I think
it was Google cash that enabled me to determine that. There is so much that
can be deliberately changed, not to mention accidentally lost, and I don't
know -- I think the Internet archive is doing a great effort but it can't
possibly keep track of all that.

>> Thank you for bringing that up. The obvious answer is to use digital
signatures and hashs to make information hard to alter. But you still have
to be able to find it. And so the Internet archive as an example is trying
very hard to accumulate as much as possible of what's out there in web
space, in addition to software and other materials including books. And
things like that. The part that resonated with me in your comment are the
instances where something appears on the net and then it's changed later.
Or it's erased. And our ability to prevent the revision of history is going
to depend a great deal on capturing the content and putting it in a form
which is not alterable, at least not without visible tampering.

>> STUART HAMILTON: You had a question?

>> Just a comment on that and it's actually not what I don't -- things I
saw over the years with librarians. We have to keep remembering the
efforts. That both repositories and documents have adopted over the years
open standards to be -- there is an international repository alliance that
have set open standards for that. I think it's important to remember that
for rendering the futu:

>> STUART HAMILTON: I would also comment on something we're working oh with
UNESCO, the persist project. Preservation of digital memory. There is an
interesting thing that has come up. It was a conference organized in the
IGF multi-stakeholder approach and we had a lot of librarians, archivists,
governments and as many private sector companies as we could find who would
come, which was not a huge amount. In the two, three years since that we've
become to work on principles with what needs to be preserved. There is a
huge amount of preservation activity going on. It can't capture everything.
There is a recognition of the problems you've outlined. Personal opinion
here, I don't think we have any idea how big a problem it will be when
people's family photo collections start disappearing. You see what happens
when someone loses iTunes collection. There are some things that will start
to hit home personally. The point I make is we are having difficulty
getting the private sector interested in those discussions. So we have
UNESCO and member states who already have something called the memory of
the world, a good program. We have the librarians and archivists who want
to do everything they can. And we run up against a little bit all three
sides are perhaps unable to explain themselves to each other in this
context. It is something we're trying to overcome but I thought I would put
it in as an example we're trying to deal with that we need to solve before
we can even get onto the main problem.

>> Just to observe, the first problem is business models will count here
because whatever this is has to be sustainable over long periods of time.
As I was thinking about preserving digital information for 500 years, 1,000
years, I got to think what institutions exist that long? And I thought
well, the Catholic church has been around for 2,000 years and they used to
use monks in order to copy information. So maybe there is something there.
Also I discovered that breweries and wineries sometimes have been around
for 500 or 600 years but I haven't figured out how to couple their business
model with preserving digital information. But I'm working on it over the
occasional glass of wine.

>> STUART HAMILTON: Religion and alcohol.

>> Tablets last a long time. Not the electronic ones, the original tablets.
Stone tablets, yeah.

>> You didn't mention -- there are many institutions, by the way and groups
that are concerned about preservation. One of them is the international
Internet preservation consortium which met in April in Iceland and has some
UNESCO support, as I remember. It is important for us to discovering those
parties and do, as you say, find a way to help them recognize each other
and reinforce their work as opposed to effectively competing with each
other for resources to get the work done.

>> STUART HAMILTON: I do think the persist project has given us a framework
to make it happen. We need the resourcing for it. Before we close up --
before we move on to a discussion, any other sort of questions on Vint's
musings or any reflections? We're going to drill into a bit of public
access. I thought the railway station thing was a very interesting
approach. With my librarian hat on I find it interesting, a great public
access points. How can we add skills and value in that with some sort of
information literacy?

>> MEI LIN FUNG: I want to make an observation about the history and that
Douglas Ingle bought was the inventor of the mouse and the second note with
Vint on the Internet and he always reminded us that gathering in community
would be very critically important for moving ahead. I had the honor of
breaking Douglas Ingle bot to Singapore in 2002. He addressed a crowd of
over 1,000 librarians and said you are the navigators for the future. I
just want to bring back that thought which Douglas Ingle bot really saw
libraries as the trading posts and that organizations like the IEEE might
be the trail guides, the technical people exploring into the technical
frontiers and to come together in the trading post to learn from each
other. Today we're in a place where global institutions are trying to
decide the fate of the Internet. We have to give a voice to the local
communities. Libraries are the trading post for the local communities. We
must take advantage of that and that was the Clarion call that Douglas left
for us with his insight that network improved communities the way we needed
to go. I wanted to bring that thought back into this discussion.

>> STUART HAMILTON: I think that's really important. We have a comment over
there. Jesus, you need to get to a microphone, sir. Maybe this one will do.

>> I'm a librarian work for a Mexican university in the southeastern part.
I love to hear your comments about the library role and I wanted to make
two comments. Libraries are access point to Internet in this country how
about 8,000 public libraries. Half of them are in remote rural areas. In
those places the public libraries may be the only place where people can
have access to Internet. Sometimes it's not reliable but it's the only way
to -- for people to communicate. Many of those people want to communicate
with their husbands, fathers working in the U.S. or somewhere. Second,
about the preservation of information. Human beings are having the greatest
information output at the moment but also are facing the greater risk of
losing our memory. And I think we as a team, we have to teach not only the
bigger population but individuals, institutions and businesses to keep the
memories. Latin America has a consortium founded by the InterAmerican bank
and it covers most countries but the focus is academic.

>> STUART HAMILTON: Thanks for that. What I'm going to do, a quick comment,
go for it.

>> I want to make a comment about public WiFi and the security issue and
whether or not as libraries are putting these out or people thinking about
fake WiFi networks that appear to be legitimate or other forms of security
issues and how that can be countered. Just want to put that in the
conversation.

>> STUART HAMILTON: That's good. What I with like to do now. We'll bring in
in, Nicholas. Hand over to Janet to ask a few questions. I want to keep
that security one on the table. That's a skills element and it's quite
important. Janet, take us through the next 40 minutes and we'll tease out a
bit more on public access. I would like you to help -- if something really
resonates with you as something this Dynamic Coalition can do over the next
12 months and maybe you should work with that Dynamic Coalition or work
with those partners, let's bring that into the conversation as well. Janet.

>> JANET SAWAYA: This is meant to be a conversation and I'm here to tee it
up. I've talked to a couple of people and I'll ask them some questions as a
means to get you all engaged. The background is that we as libraries for a
long time have known that we need to work with lots of different actors and
I think that's becoming increasingly so in that we're increasingly finding
ways to do that. The purpose of this conversation is really to continue
that. We found some very specific ways in some certain events and venues in
the last couple years and we want to highlight some of those which Stuart
has already done. We want to expand and broaden in. First I want to give
background about myself. I work for electronic information for libraries. I
worked for eight years on the gate's foundation local libraries program. We
installed thousands and thousands and thousands of computers in 20, 30
countries. In some cases we put computers in every single library, public
library in the country. And in that partnership issues obviously was
crucial. We can't install computers and train librarians if there is no
broadband. People aren't going to come in and use it if there is no
relevant content. So the partnership issue has always been there. It just
takes time to build some of the basic infrastructure which is what the
gates foundation spent years doing and how do we expand the use of that
structure. It's there now. The skills are there, the computers are there,
the new buildings are there. How do we make it bigger? And then I want to
say one of the things that I think going to Vint's point but other public
access points. I think it's crucial. We all need to work together. I would
add that when the gates foundation started their program, the reason they
did it was because they looked at all the different public institutions and
Bill and Linda decided public lie braoers  -- libraries were the best
place. That doesn't mean others aren't important but this is one of the
massive institutions that we can really take advantage as others have
pointed out have information sharing as their core mission. And also
they've been, as we did lots of studies while I was at the gates
foundation, there are in a place where people can get online, that people
who might otherwise not go to a public access point. For example, in many
countries, women. We saw that particularly in Asia particularly in Muslim
countries. You won't get them into an Internet cafe where you have lots of
boys gaming. But they feel comfortable going into a public libraries.
Disabled. They've helped disabled communities for a long time. The elderly
who might be embarrassed to ask a young person to get online. They often
serve a lot of communities that others do not There is a lot saying
infrastructure is there in a lot of places but people still aren't getting
online. What's the missing piece? Local relevant content. Libraries have
been digitizing their local content. That's one of their roles and they've
been doing it at an increasingly quick rate. And they are also really good
at helping people find the content that is relevant to them. You sit down
at a public access point with nobody there to help you and type in words in
Google and you may or may not find what you need or you may find something
that is not true at all in this day and age in the post truth post fact
world. That's my pitch for libraries. I want to go back to the main point.
We know it's important for everybody to work together. Here this this room
you agree public access is a critical issue to get people online. Sometimes
we say it's the gateway to private access but there is a value in public
access in and of itself. Often it's the gateway but we know people find
value in coming together in a place to work together on accessing
information and discussing it. So with that in mind, I wanted to just --
because I said there has been a lot happening in the last couple of years
on organizations working together, recognizing the value of both public
access and particularly libraries, just to ask a few questions to sort of
kick off a greater discussion about how we can expand and I'll start with
Marija from Global Connect Initiative. One of the critical players in
getting Global Connect off the ground and just to say can you tell us a
little bit more about Global Connect for those people who haven't heard of
it and what value you see in what we're doing with libraries?

>> Thank you so much. It is great to be here. Again with this community.
Before we even launched the Global Connect Initiative we viewed the IGF as
the critical forum for consultation on how to move forward and thanks to
Stuart and IFLA we identified early the importance of public access. The
importance of identifying the need for more locally relevant content and
digital literacy to the point of when we actually launched the initiative
we included all the values as the connectivity principles accepted by over
40 countries around the world. It shows the type of impact the IGF can have
and the type of impact that IFLA can have and is having in its leadership.
It is clear to me Global Connect is an initiative that's trying to bring
1.5 billion people online by 2020. That's an international metric agreed
upon by all countries at the I.T. meeting in Korea and one of our take
aways was how do we actually make this goal a reality? What will we do with
the stakeholder community to leverage expertise and be successful come
2020? Another key benchmark is we've launched the initiative purposefully
when the 2030 sustainable development agenda was launched. We're trying to
make the point the Internet is a key means of  achieving those. We need to
be thinking about the Internet as a vital component of success in achieving
the development agenda. To bring that many people online by 2020 we need a
public access strategy. It is not going to happen without one. I think that
just shows the critical importance of moving forward Dell ib ra actively
with this community and I actually have two specific requests that I'll
make at the end of the presentation for us to be thinking about next steps.
From our vantage point we're extremely proud of what this initiative has
been able to achieve in just 14 months. We of course as I mentioned have 40
countries that are now highlighting the importance of public access,
digital literacy and other values that I know this group holds very dear.
We also were able to identify 65 global actions valued at over $20 billion.
Like a clearinghouse of connectivity initiatives. It was designed to try to
also provide them more visibility with -- also maybe get more funding and
support and encourage and catalyze more activity in the Global Connectivity
space. We announced these actions at an important meeting with John Kerry
and with all the presidents of the banks and finance ministers and many
folks from this community. What was interesting to me is we take for
granted the idea that Internet infrastructure is just as important to
economic development as traditional structure. That's new information to
them. We have more work to do to highlight the importance of the Internet
but then also showcasing this is a common misperception that I have to
listen to. I'm sorry to say it like that. That connectivity can be achieved
through industry-driven efforts. That's all, that the industry will figure
this out and bring everyone online. We know the importance of
public/private partnerships. The importance of libraries and public access.
There are so many different ways. A lot of times the market won't provide
connectivity to certain areas because of no commercial benefit. We have to
be real and honest. As we think about the way forward for Global Connect
and how that might intersect with this community and this discussion, we
have announced a number of focused country efforts. We are taking a
listening first approach with this initiative and countries that they would
like to seek help from the stakeholder communities or Global Connect
partners. We're encouraging them to reach out for us, raise their hand. A
number of countries have done so. It is extremely exciting and possible.
Tunisia is one. There are a number of important initiatives there. Liberia,
India, a full list of countries that I will give after this. Really
thinking about how can we build a public access strategy as a key component
of what it means to be a Global Connect focused country. What we have
countries expressing interest, we have a way to work together and deliver
advice or some sort of substantive guidance on how they can better take
advantage of this very important resource. I'm also very open to other
ideas how to strengthen the effort. We have view all of you as key partners
and grateful for the advice and mentorship and excited to see what the
future will bring and what we've achieved.

>> I'm David part of the leaders program and from Columbia. I am going to
talk about my country. In Columbia what happens is that we have a lot of
hardware. The problem is not the infrastructure. We got hardware, not
connection in all the country, but the problem maybe the skills for the
people. The people, some examples, they think it is made for robbers. It is
false. People don't understand how Internet is working. So if you want to
bring Internet to the people thinking public libraries. It is the only
institution in my country that is in 1400 little towns and everywhere. The
public libraries are the place. The people in Columbia lost his faith on
things free. They think it is bad quality if you get free. And something
especially in Columbia is that the people don't go to the library because
they think they are going to have a fee, a payment in their bill for
example. So bring the confidence in use, the free it has quality, too.

>> Hi, again Nicholas. I wanted to a little bit about what my colleagues
here have put on the table. You librarians will know better than me. I
don't remember if it was Einstein or one of those big guys in our history
they said that if we want to achieve different things, that what we have
already achieved, we need to change the strategy. If we keep doing the
same, we will keep getting the same results, okay? Einstein, okay, thank
you. So -- it was great to really hear her because what I feel is happening
to Internet, the reason why there is a lot of -- it hasn't happened yet
getting people connected because we aren't involving the people. The
initiatives always come from top to bottom. We think they need Internet and
we take Internet to them but we have never asked them what they really
need. So that's what I want to say. We need to involve communities in this
process and libraries are an excellent actor in the territory because they
know the community. They can engage with them. Let's do that bridge.

>> JANET SAWAYA: Helen.

>> Hello, I'm Helen. I'm also librarian from Mexico. Thinking of a strategy
to increase access to information, I think that as a librarian, as we see
humanity, people, seven for eight billion people many of them are sick
because they lack information. They don't have the right information to
improve their lives. So I was thinking if one of the strategies is to work
more closely with politicians, with policymakers in our countries to make
them understand it's like -- if somebody has diabetes that is a common
sickness in Mexico, it is better to prevent diabetes than to curing
diabetes. It is more expensive the cure than to prevent. So if politicians
understanding that increasing access to information, going to these remote
areas in the country Mexico we are 123 million people, about 50% don't have
access to information. Those are the people that are getting sick. They
don't have information how to end poverty. They don't have information how
to stay healthy. So it is more costly to ignore access to information than
for the country to set this -- to increase the budget to increase, you
know, infrastructure, training, skills, and I agree it is not only a work
for librarians, it is for everybody in the country until they realize we
are losing money because we are paying for ignorance, for poverty, sickness
and those things. To work more closely with politicians on a strategy.

>> I want to build on Helen and Jonathan and I wanted to add the Helen's. I
don't come at it from a librarian perspective. I'm a lawyer by training. I
became a librarian evangelist in part because I think they are the only
place that can provide access to information. Information is a critical
part of our democracy and I think we can all agree after these last couple
of years this is increasingly a problem. Real information, getting people
access to real information is critical and libraries have a new challenge
on their hands because it used to be I could say library, provide access to
information. Now that information that's out there is often misinformation
or disinformation and so we really -- it's a new strategy and a new
challenge. I'll give this over Jonathan.

>> I'm Jonathan from Mexico. So certainly libraries have many important
issues to address but one of them is we need to be an important actor for
digital literacy. We are now living in a world dominated by algorithms and
we must not forget to rights of privacy threats and censorship. In Mexico
we're facing now some important privacy threat for many states from the
government and libraries have to be an important actor to teach to the user
how to use the information, how to be secure in a not so secure place.

>> MEI LIN. Can you talk about working in Tunisia and with people-centered
Internet and Iy and others?

>> MEI LIN FUNG: I will respond to Helen. I am a citizen of Singapore. It
is an economic miracle. I was activated in a library at 14 years old. It
was the knowledge in a library that got me going. We have the opportunity
to invest in people. Because of the background that I have, I know that
Singapore invested a billion dollars in their library and I would actually
say that you can use Singapore as an example of how investment in libraries
has truly paid off in ways that are incredible to behold. People don't talk
about this, but the libraries were used as innovation labs for technology,
for learning, for teaching, feedback loops, going back to health,
prevention, not cure. Singapore now has -- only spends 4% of their GDP on
health and has some of the best outcomes in the world because when you have
an educated populous, people know that they want to stay well and they know
how to stay well. It is a whole different way of doing things so going back
to what I was saying earlier about the trading post and trail guides,
please consider Singapore as a trail guide. Not everything will work but in
a trading post like IGF, let's take some of the good stuff and you can use
it to influence your policymakers. Going back to Tunisia, it is inspired by
the idea of Singapore as a people-powered economy. A country with no
resources whatsoever but just simply human ingenuity. Singapore had no
other resources and did it. No matter where in the world we are we'll find
the people to do it. So in Tunisia in the first school we found a 14-year-
old and knowing more than college students and he was self-taught. There is
genius and miracles everywhere. There is gold but we just need to begin to
look at it and why we're working together with IFLA and IEEE to do the
trading post, IFLA trading post and IEEE trail guides and to provide a
voice for local communities with local people to then insert these voices
into the global dialogue through Global Connect and the World Economic
Forum.

>> Thank you, I have three things. Vint serf again. Getting equipment into
the library. Operations maintenance and replenishment are problems. How did
that work out in the case of the gates initiative and if I could share I
have two other things I would like to add but I would like to hear an
answer to that.

>> Part of the gates foundation programs from the outset was massive
training of librarians to do advocacy. I come from an advocacy background
and I worked with parliaments in civil societies in gates and part of the
reason I went there. Never was I engaged in such a large advocacy training
initiative. I'm not saying it's successful across the board but part of the
issue is it's local governments who will be there for the operations and
maintenance. The national government has some role to play but usually it's
local government and the librarians needed to learn how to talk to their
local governments to get what they need. We have seen places where it's
failed even in the U.S. where the gates foundation installed libraries in
every community, Jackson county, Oregon, they shut it all down. You'll have
that. I think it's been more successful than not.

>> We've all had the experience of installing a piece of equipment at home
and having it failed and not be able to figure out how to get it to work
again. This problem of maintaining and sustaining and replacing if
necessary is still a very important challenge.

>> You become part of the city, county, local government network no matter
where they are. It is not an individual entity trying to buy its way.

>> The point about sustainability affects each of us individually too. The
second has to do with information to help people stay healthy. One thing
we've seen just in the last year or so of the American political campaign
is the spread of disinformation, misinformation around the network and
people struggling to recognize that it is not good quality. I think we're
still far away from understanding how to detect that and how to help other
people recognize good quality. Librarians have historically been a major
source of information to guide people to good quality information. And in
some sense we lack that in the open Internet and we need to do something
about that and again libraries and librarians might help. One last point
has to do specifically with the health problem that you mentioned. People
who are obese and have diabetes tendencies. This problem is rampant in the
United States but also through here in Mexico. The Gallup company,
historically has tried to help people identify their own strengths and
weaknesses, there is an online test you can take called strength finder,
has also engaged in trying to discover entrepreneurs and those are unusual
people. The head of Gallup, Jim Clifton says, there might be 1 in 15,000
people who is really an entrepreneur they started testing in the rural
parts of Mexico tens of thousands of people and found a small number where
the tests said these are really entrepreneurs. One is a 15-year-old girl
who lives in the most remote, rural part of the country who wanted to start
a candy company to make healthy candy for people who might otherwise have
diabetes or get diabetes. She has been funded by the Gallup company in
order to test whether or not their algorithm actually worked. This is put
your money where your mouth is. I just bring this up because it's an
example of a very creative attempt to discover people who are capable of
making a difference.

>> It is just -- it is a shout from heard all the people -- invite them to
partner with libraries and librarians. Libraries have always been
evangelists for new information, access to information to all. And you know
that access to information is the basic things for personal development,
for global development. And that condition you have a piece in this world,
more understanding.

>> I just wanted to bring back the comment from her about the idea of the
trading post, the library as a trading post. I guess that we need to be --
the roles that get to the trading post also. Just to continue bringing up
this thing about community networkings -- networks. What we promote from
our experience. We are not just an -- we are the community. It is kind of
the closest part from librarians to the community that we will actually be
benefited from the connectivity, the public access connectivity to open a
conversation. And what I wanted to share with you is that what happens on
our networks that we built from our experience is that the networks are not
money intensive. They are people intensive. When we build -- the network
that I belong, it's in Argentina. It is a small town near the mountains.
And we are doing -- we are trying to connect a nearby village. But there is
a mountain between us and the other village. So both of the communities,
our community and the community that needs to be connected got to this
mountain with all the materials that need to be used to build the tower
that we need to connect and them, the poorest and the richest guys helped
to get all the materials up, helped to make the holes in the earth to build
the tower and helped to get the tower up. What we have to offer here is not
just technology to get them connected but also the ways for them to engage
in your spaces to do them for themselves. So the skills that you promote,
this is a way to -- for them to get them there but also get engaged with
the library and repurpose the library in a way that's useful for them. And
also to bring knowledge that sometimes you don't have the means to get
Internet some places, right? You have the library 50 kilometers an Internet
connection and no economic feasible way you say to get  Internet to those
places. They want to be connected to information to call themselves inside
their community. So there is also the knowledge to build this kind of
technology for themselves, okay? Thank you.

>> I'll grab Jim who is here from IEEE on my planted list. Anything else
you want to say but to talk about the IEEE engineers and libraries
partnership that is kind of building.

>> I'm Jim wen dorof with IEEE, for those who aren't aware the IEEE is one
of the largest technical professional associations with over 430,000
members worldwide. So one of our strengths actually is the fact that we
have the strong engineering communities in the local communities spread
throughout the world. We really rely on the strength of our local chapters
to actually represent the strength of technologists, the relevant
technologists in the local communities. I personally am the program
director for the IEEE Internet initiative. One of the main aspects of that
is to bring that technical expertise together with the policymakers so that
all of the discussions revolving around the policy issues associated with
the Internet are well informed by protect  -- technical college. It is well
informed what might be possible and workable when you try to take that into
community. That's introducing where I'm coming from. One of the other
aspects of the Internet initiative is dealing with Internet inclusion.
We've made it from the IEEE a major thrust to try and use our technology
for the benefit of humanity and one of the best ways we can see of doing
that is if we can actually apply all this to extending Internet access,
knowledge and global knowledge to everyone as possible in the world. How
can we build on that? Well, if we have the technical expertise in our
communities and in our local chapters and so on, and that's where we have
the local libraries, and so on as the access point, wouldn't it make a lot
of sense we work together and actually provide that knowledge, treat the
libraries not just as an information point but actually as a teaching
point. That's where you get the education. You bring the knowledge of our
technical community. We have a meeting point that you can use as a teaching
thing. Because as you pointed out, others -- you can take it into the
schools but that's mostly for the students and the young kids and doesn't
reach all of the people in the community. But there is less resistance to
having other people come into the libraries. We kind of look at maybe it's
partly just my own personal view as well that there is this good matching
between our local chapters of technical experts and the libraries which I
regard as in many ways maybe borrowing as a segue eventually into Don's
stuff as the way of -- the best way maybe of bringing the world Internet to
the local communities and then leveraging actually the community networks
not so much to get the libraries connected. We'll probably need better
technology to get them connected but use the local community networks to
take it from the library central point out to the communities and that way
we bring the whole world out and that may be a better kind of overall
architecture way of thinking of it. That's my own personal view. I'm
looking at libraries as the educational points. Let's work together to
actually bring the people who are already in the community, are
enthusiastic about helping their own local communities. Often it's the
student chapters of the IEEE that can do the best there. They're very
enthusiastic. New engineers. They've learned the information. They want to
apply it and make a difference in the world. How can they do that? They
know what the problems are in their own community. We aren't parachuting in
experts from the United States or Europe or something. We're using the
people who know their own problems right there in the community working
with the community. So I think that's where I come from and the value I see
in this kind of working relationship of having IEEE work with Global
Connect Initiative, work with all the funding agencies we've been trying to
bring together, work with the libraries to try to actually make this
happen.

>> I'm a non-profit professional and I worked with the gates foundation.
One of the advisors in the project. My observation and question is much of
the conversation we've had is from the supply side is really looking at
policies creating access to libraries and such. A couple observations,
increasingly millenials and younger people aren't going to libraries,
especially as they get connected because they net the information and
misinformation on their devices. I want to comment on -- I would ask data
on what percentage of people are coming into libraries compared to back
before we had connectivity. What trends are you seeing? And much of our
investment in time, resources and conversation I'm on the steering
committee of USIGF. Many of the initiatives is heavy on supply side. If you
look at the research data, the study that I saw that Brazil did, 90%
availability of mobile connectivity and 30 or 40% adoption. We're
increasing supply side against and not so much how do we engage with this
new generation of people who are interacting with technology very
differently? Far fewer of them are going to libraries. Even if you did the
partnerships, how are you seeing that adoption piece?

>> One quick -- I know we're running out of time and I'll make a quick plug
for an amazing database of information called GL Atlas. It provides a break
down of users of libraries by gender, age. 53 datasets across 200 countries
and there is a lot of information in there. What we've seen is used
increasingly in developing countries, increasingly going into libraries
because they don't have connectivity at home. For many people it's the only
point of access. Anybody can log on.

>> STUART HAMILTON: I might jump in. Don wants to say something as well.
The study which I point you towards is the impact study done by the social
change group at the University of Washington known as TASHA they looked at
all types of public access in a number of developing countries. Public
libraries were the most trusting associations and teased out what the youth
use public access spaces. You can't do your homework on your phone. You
can't do your job application. The public access space was used. You have
the big screen. You have your desktop and actually you are -- happy to
provide them. We're running out of time.

>> DON MEANS: A lot of things you would have said have already been said.
Thank you for everybody making all the points that I would love to respond
to a lot of them and I think that makes a case for continuity of this
excellent consultation and thank you for leading us, Stuart. Well, I with
like to circle back to public access if I might. I come at this from an
infrastructure standpoint and became a library lover about 10 years ago
when we created something called digital village in the mid 90s, about the
time the web arrived just around the ideas that communities need a strategy
for using this new infrastructure and it was more or less a case of plan or
be planned. And it is not the old world of the provider coming in for you.
So I wanted to thank Manu making the key point within the context of doing
real work which was an objective of this forum. What are we coming out
with? And the GCI is an extremely powerful consortium but I think its
greatest power is by providing the metrics to measure progress. To connect
the 1.5 billion people by 2020, okay? It is not just we need everybody
connected, which is a good thing, but, you know, it doesn't really hold
anybody to something. That creates a sense of urgency if you think about
four years from now. So I think the Dynamic Coalition could be joining
directly with the GCI in that goal and I would encourage everyone to
embrace that goal and find a role, local, global and everything in between.
The infrastructure point, I think the library case has been made here for
sure. And it's difficult because the library is so plastic and flexible and
touches so many things it is hard to nail down. I have think that's why a
lot of people tend to overlook it. But from the connectivity side, as
president Kim of the World Bank said, it is critical but insufficient. I
think we can agree on that. Reversing that phrase it is insufficient but it
is critical. So if we don't deliver connectivity. If connectivity is not
created, then what are you connected to and much less why? The whole point
about bandwidth, I appreciated Vint's example in India in talking about new
extremely high-speed wireless, this is amazing stuff. It just has to be on
the wire and you have to be near the wire to take advantage of it. We've
worked in an area in this TV white spaces which are longer range
frequencies and have the ability to travel through things and over hills
quite a bit. This has put me back in touch with the point about
connectivity and versus the concept of capacity. So in the U.S. we're all
kind of giga maniacs. If you don't have a gig you're second class. Working
with TB white space has been an amazing experience. This is public
spectrum, all spectrum it starts out as public property. The public
airwaves. It is being rolled out in different countries at different rates
for difference reasons. A lot of the push back mainly from the carriers,
why should we give away for free something we could sell for billions? Who
is we? Because we in the first place as the public own the airwaves. Our
response is why sell it all off only to have to buy some back to deliver
public services? In other words, example might be a community selling off
all of its public land to have to lease some back to create parks forever.
Retain some of the precious stuff and look to sustain public services and
the library being the anchor institution. TV white space also represents in
my experience the first time that rural has ever caught a break on the
economics of an infrastructure. It is always more expensive. People have
less money, they're farther apart. It is not profitable generally or really
expensive. In the case of TV band spectrum there is an abundance. Vast
amount of spectrum unused. The farther away you are from city core the more
spectrum is available. The rural catches a break for the first time and I
think it's an excellent additional and maybe the missing link, if I may,
component in building community mesh networks, which is where I think
another joint where the DC3 and community, a much better name than DC pal
can join, the notion that why build these community networks? You go around
and say well, do you want Internet access? They go what's that? I would
suggest that there is the application, we've touched on a lot of these but
if I can borrow a term, community learning and information networks. So
that brings in schools and libraries as a primary learning institutions.
Information for anybody and it's an application. It is a network but also
an application that can be built and maintained locally. Data and
connectivity, they're delivering data by semi tractor trailer truck now.
Amazon is shipping things by road because gig fiber or 100 gig fiber is too
slow. Connectivity is the first thing to provide. Capacity should come from
that, and as we say the value of the first mega bit is more the next 999.
Low text and mail and webpages and let's get everybody connected and then
let's build up the infrastructure from there.

>> We've run out of time and I'll quickly recap what I've heard on things
to do together. Manu mentioned partnership in countries where there is
already movement, India, we've talked about Tunisia. Libraries as key
education points and members and a hub for community networks and working
with others who do that. I'm sure I missed points that people made. You can
please join the DC pal list serve or email me or Stuart directly. We're
hear to hand out our cards.

>> STUART HAMILTON: Definitely here for the cards. I do think that
preservation issue is crucial and it is maybe not for this DC but how are
we going to do it? We put a workshop application in for it this year at the
IGF but we never get any traction. That's something we might want the take
to a different place. Thank you very much to those of you who agreed to be
the test questionnaires for that sort of thing and thank you for everyone
that chipped in. Very excited about the DC with community connectivity.
Thanks, everybody over the net. We're done. Thank you. (Applause) (Session
ended at 4:32 PM CT) Internet Governance Forum 2016 Enabling Inclusive and
Sustainable Growth Jalisco, Mexico 7 December 2016 Room 8 Workshop
OF23:China 17:00 CT

>> MODERATOR: Friends. Dear friends, dear colleagues. Good afternoon. My
name is -- I'm from the administration of China. Welcome you to join this
open forum organized by the CEC of China. The platform is fastering
cultural diversity and exchanges on the Internet. Before I formally open my
open forum I would introduce the speakers on the forum. The director from
UNESCO. The president from China (Making introductions)

>> We will learn some brilliant things by the end of the forum. Colleagues,
before our speaker give his wonderful speeches, I would brief you, the
Chinese situations. Rooted in traditional Chinese culture, the Internet
culture has boomed with the expansion of the Internet. It is well-known
that China enjoys a long history with -- and it provides solid foundation
and plenty of sources for China's Internet culture. At present China has
710 million websites and China's Internet industry has expanded rapidly. We
have 480 million subscribers of online videos, music, literature and games.
In fact China's Internet culture is open and inclusive which features
national characteristic. We normally would have -- during China's
traditional festivals. During these festivals -- not domestically but also
internationally sign on. Foreigners could also enjoy our festival cultures.
Christmas and Thanksgiving day are more popular for Chinese people. People
are able to share the beauty of the different cultures. Colleagues, the
Chinese government has always respected the capacity of different cultures
and devoted itself to establish the platform to sharing the Internet
culture. For China we have a very old theme that gentleman should seek
harmony instead of uniformity. We think harmony have a prior value
regarding uniformity. We believe the culture should be respected and
international corporations should be further strengthened. The service
piece in the -- in fact, we organized the three Internet conference, the
Internet culture corporation always takes an important role and important
topics on that conference. Dear colleagues, the culture is something rooted
in the people. To promote the culture it is to preserve the heritage of the
people and to promote the culture diversity is also to build -- is also a
critical element to build the common community of shared future for all the
people. That's my brief opening. Next I would welcome Dr. PENAGI to give
his speeches.

>> Thank you, Mr. Chairman and let me thank the cyberspace administration
of China for this very kind invitation to me and UNESCO to participate in
something which is very much at the core of UNESCO's mandate and pre-
occupations. It is true within five to seven minutes one can't really
discuss in depth the very complex questions relating to culture and the
Internet but it is true that the Internet offers, as you have said, Mr.
Chairman, unprecedented opportunities to foster cultural diversity through
the Internet which has become by far the largest platform and the most
global platform to produce, distribute and share cultural traditions and
artifacts. Yet it is very clear that all cultures do not have equal
representation and there are numerous challenges to really seek the harmony
that you talk about. Because there are obviously some languages in some
cultures which are largely dominating the Internet. These challenges range
from lack of supportive policy environments, insufficient capacity, lack of
resources, and many other such challenges. I think one of the keys from
UNESCO's perspective in our experience is the need to empower local
communities because culture lives within communities. It is not something
which is coming from outside, it is created by communities and to ensure
minority cultures -- these are critical elements that are essential if the
Internet is to fulfill its potential as a platform for fostering cultural
diversity. UNESCO is responsible for promotion of cultural diversity. Let
me give you a few examples to show what kind of work we're doing on the
ground.  As you know, the 2005 convention on the protection and promotion
on the diversity of cultural expressions with 140 member states aims to
ensure that artists, cultural professionals practitioners and citizens
worldwide can create, distribute and enjoy a broad range of cultural goods,
services and activities, including their own. It is a special focus now on
how digital issues, digital technologies and the Internet can impact the
implementation of the convention. It is when the convention was signed, of
course, people not -- the Internet was not that widespread. Today with the
Internet reaching more than half of the world's population, it is important
to see how the Internet and ICTs in general can be harnessed to make sure
the implementation of the convention goes forward. Many of these projects
that we do focus on capacity and especially training of young cultural
entrepreneurs, once you create the young people who have the digital skills
whether it be museums or local cultural traditions, expressions, they
become the most powerful weapons to promote cultural diversity on the
Internet. Creative industries especially in developing countries including
training projects for the youth and indigenous communities in broadcasting
techniques has become critical. I will not give you a list of projects. We
have around the world tried to ensure that adequate policies are in place
in capacity building, training, entrepreneurship in the cultural realm are
encouraged. And we work, of course, across the range of cultural heritage
including documentary cultural heritage and perhaps I'll conclude my open
statement by mentioning two projects we're doing with China, very
interesting projects. One is taking traditional games, wonderful
traditional games everywhere in the world. You see young people today, the
youth playing all the same games of shooting and fighting and all that. And
those traditional games what we're doing is working with Tencent, one of
the world's largest animation company to bring these games alive. And
within these games, of course, there are a lot of cultural messages.
Cultural expressions. Fascinating project. We've already covered several
countries and it's a project we're very proud of. The second project we're
doing is with a company called talk mate in China. This project is again
very interesting from the cultural perspective because it is creating what
I mentioned in an earlier session today, the Atlas of world's languages. We
want to document online all the world's languages and not only just lists
but also give people -- young people the opportunity of discovering
languages, how they sound, the music, songs, etc., etc. Just a few
examples. I could give you many more but I think I'll stop it at that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Dr., UNESCO is always playing leading roles on the
Internet culture and cultural diversity. We hope to promote more
cooperation. Next I would invite you to give your speech. Welcome.

>> Good afternoon. It is my great honor to speak on behalf of the -- CCIC.
Being the first national -- in China which is specifically responsible for
Internet-based culture promotion, CCIC is also the first Chinese civil
society that aims to study and promote the diversity of global Internet
culture. Before my speech I would like to take a few minutes to show you a
video about CCIC. Please. (Video being shown)

>> As a young lady, I was fortunate enough to witness the birth and growth
of CCIC and experience the joy of Internet-based culture diffusion. Today I
would like to share my experience and the reflection with you. The Internet
links the whole world together. We hope that CCIC can show their one
mission and to establish two platforms. The mission of CCIC is to diffuse
culture more effectively through the Internet and to benefit all people in
the progress. In order to achieve its mission, it has forced CCIC to
establish two platforms. The first one is a technology platforms which
traditional Chinese culture can be promoted with assistance of modern
Internet technologies. The key to make traditional Chinese culture more
attractive and appealing to the young generation. We try to promote
traditional Chinese culture online in friendly ways, friends, CCIC shot
videos learning Chinese classics in three minutes. Which were well received
by young people. Some friends told me that they called youthful knowledge
interesting stories and even elementary traditional skills by watching
these videos when they wait for subway. We are aware that diffusion of
traditional culture must be sensitive to the popular demands of the young
generation. It can also help foreigners to understand and experience
traditional Chinese culture in a better way by using the Internet. Here is
another story of mine. When I was a middle school student my friend and I
invited Malaysian friend to try a cup of Chinese tea. However, we were
surprised to find that he felt sick when seeing green leaves floating in
the hot water. Green, a color of life in China's culture. It's also a color
of a deadly poison for people from other countries. This story tells that
culture shock really matters. During the past year, CCIC -- in the
Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Australia and other countries to help the
world understand the Chinese culture better. The second platform is another
one. People from different countries can communicate and learn from each
other by using this platform. First and foremost we hope to remove
communication barriers and misunderstandings among different countries.
Without cross cultural dialogues, cultural differences may turn to
conflicts. But our cross cultural is difficult. This culture reminded me of
a story in 2005 of CCIC staged concert of Chinese theater and piano which
was a great success. If Chinese theater and the western piano can strike a
harmonious cord together why can't different cultures have friendly
dialogues? We hope the Internet can play an active role in cross cultural
exchanges. Secondly, we also hope the Internet can promote the equality of
cross cultural exchanges and improve the co-existence of diverse cultures.
In the ceremony of the second world Internet conference, Chinese president
stated we should create different forms to promote cultural communication
sharing and learning. The development across the globe, the diffusion
opportunities for different cultures are also imbalanced. We believe the
Internet can narrow down this disparity and the facilitate the co-existence
of diverse cultures as much as possible Ladies and gentlemen, to further
the exchanges and the mutual learning among different cultures we hope our
colleagues around the world to work together to establish effective
mechanisms for online cultural diffusion. The Internet will work so we can
build a cyberspace community of shared destiny. Thank you all. (Applause)

>> MODERATOR: I think -- still feed the people with news tell. That is a
story told by her. Following I would invite -- to give a speech. Thanks.

>> Thank you very much for the invitation and congratulations because I
think that you choose a very interesting and very important argument. Let
me say I also presentation is not possible to see -- just a few slides. I
would like just to introduce a few ideas, a few concepts also if it's
possible later in the discussion. The first point is cultural diversity
today is nearly synonymous linguistic. And we know that if you refer to the
European union, it is written that shall respect its shall ensure that
Europe's cultural heritage is safeguardened and enhanced. UNESCO, they said
we have in Europe local 128 languages spoken in the EU. These languages are
-- put a picture of one language in the north of Italy. And language is
very important. Only when you learn a language you can understand the
culture. Unfortunately, and I regret this, I don't speak Chinese. And when
you speak a language, you understand the culture. So the first concept I
would like to introduce is that cultural diversity is associated with
language diversity.  the second concept. The second slide is more related
to the globalization, technology and what we call homogenization. The
globalization seems bad the becoming something completely wrong and
technology boost economic growth is a reality. Leading to the emergence of
urban middle class. Local different customs what is created? People who do
the same thing. They drive comparable cars, they eat increasing similar
food. Unfortunately they don't know the Chinese is always the best one.
They listen to music in English. They buy international brands, Coca-Cola,
Apple Samsung. They watch Hollywood movies. So -- and this is the second
point that I would like to raise. The third point is that Internet is
creating a new social fragmentation. Is it possible to change the slide?
Has created and has reduced barrier which is good. Let's suppose local
language and dances can be posted on YouTube. We don't need to access to
television. We can do everything through Internet. We can produce digital
movie which does not require expensive studios. We could produce now -- we
could allow other people to watch what we're seeing in the room. We could
even public. We don't need anymore the publisher because we can publish our
own books. This has been very important things that have happened. And so
we are going, I think, through a new cultural diversity, I think, thanks
and because of the technology. But let me say two concepts I think we
should recognize. Culture is an experience good. Every one of us give a
different value to culture. We cannot give the same value that we can have
when we buy products or a service. And let's see the different importance
people give to spoke local languages for example. Psychologists say that
the fact -- Internet will say is good or great to allow to have more
choice. We get choice. You can do many things with it. Let's make an
example. Spotify, we know Spotify is a very famous European music company.
I don't know how many million s of music there are in Spotify by
psychologists say people respond poorly to choose. We know people they
listen to few music. They don't go to look at the check out the music. They
have 30, 40 music and they listen only that one. And every time they
imitate social data. My last point that I would like to raise is that so
what has changed because of the Internet, because of technology and because
of globalization? That we have today a different culture diversity. In the
past was based on the rural community and the cities. Local different.
Today the fragmentation and the defenses are different. Age -- based on age
groups. Income, revenue, how much you earn. And educational level. These
kind of new -- a new way, I think, that we should consider in order to see
how the people are differentiating in their behavior. So this is just a
short presentation and I leave the floor to you. Thank you very much.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, you are in depth -- thank you. And next I would
invite Mr. PODOROF from Asia Pacific. General manager and in fact IDM
always play a key element regarding the issues on the Internet. Welcome
you.

>> Thank you. Well, as you would imagine, I'm a Russian and as a Russian
I'm keen on talking about culture citing Tolstoy and the theater. Let me
start with a quote by Confucius who once said what is god given is called
nature. To follow nature is called TAO. To cultivate the way to TAO is
called culture. That's an insightful comment by one of the wisest thinkers
of all times because, you know, talking about culture. It is not only ideas
for us at APTLD but rather a complex and sophisticated break-off relations
within our organizations. APTLD by itself has little relation to culture
because our major mission is to get together those organizations that run
country code top level demands for nations and territories in the Asia
Pacific region. And we, of course, have a very diverse community, as you
would imagine. And let me tell you that in that case, I witnessed for
already two years, I witnessed the rise of a very special culture following
a very special way by our friends and colleagues from CMNEC. Suffice it to
mention that culture is all about exchanges. And in exchange you give
something and you take something in exchange. And that's what we do at
APTLD and what I believe SEAMNIC has excelled in. The meeting in Beijing
when they took quite a number of people to their technical facilities and
the generally showed what they achieved at that time. Isn't that a sign of
culture? In a very special way in a very special interpretation. Then, of
course, we have our meetings at the APTLD and we share knowledge and know
how and I must admit that SENIC is one of those members on whom we can
always rely with their commitment to give and to promote the best practices
within our organization. Now, we're coming to IDMs, of course, IDMs is a
very important matter because with IDMs, we create a new environment, what
is called the multi-lingual Internet which has so far been dominated by the
English language and late in characters, but with that idea and with those
ideas and also with IDM-enabled services such as the non-latent email
addressing, we create an absolutely new environment. We discussed that
earlier this day in a session. We are trying to do something which would
help people enhance their abilities and their -- promote their access to
the Internet and became a reacher -- reacher culturally first of all. I
think that in that case the leadership in that regard is quite visible. Now
I'm coming to a very interesting development which has been created
recently and I'm happy to see my friend here, the WOJON summit. Some would
indicate it's a showcase for China's developments on the Internet. I
wouldn't mind. On the other hand we can see that many people from around
the world get together to discuss very important issues and we can see how
that summit has evolved over time and how it has become much more inclusive
and much more open and much more multi-stakeholder event. So that all the
voices are heard and all the opinions matter, and we can see that part of
that summit -- unfortunately I missed those sessions. A part of that
summit. A big session and not only single one, was dedicated to the matters
of cultural exchanges. And, you know, that doesn't mean that we agree at
all times on all counts with our friends but again this is a very specific
culture. We cultivate both within APTLD, at IGF and within this community
and that the cultural dialect and mutual understanding which is, of course,
I'm sorry for my -- this is again a cultural thing. Last but not least I
think that what we learn from which other and I for my part learn from my
friends from SEINIC is the culture of crafting or weaving a very delicate
fabric of personal relations. I'm happy to admit here that the friendship
that we created several years ago is still there and I guess that will stay
on for years to come. And with that I guess that's what I wanted to say
about cultural exchanges. (Applause)

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I think you have provided opinion well beyond
technologies. Next I would invite our next speaker to give his speech.
Maybe he will tell us another story.

>> Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is my honor to be
here to attend the meeting and I am a teacher from school China university
in Beijing. My major is gemology. Just like something you can see here,
crystal barrel, Emerald, ruby, opal. All those are fascinating but it is
not interest me so much. Once I interest is good news, good things
especially -- this is my first time to be here to Mexico and I know
something of Mexico, being from the Internet. All of these stones
originated from here, blue Amber and fire agate and having to see them
here. What I want to say is -- as far as I know there are so many gem
cologists all over the world. I come from China. Ancient Chinese in Asia
and the next one is New Zealand. Ancient MOARIS. And the other wing is
ancient -- Asia Pacific jade counters. Although there are some difference,
there are some characteristics of each other but they are something
similarities. The first I want to show several pictures of jades from the
shang dynasty. There are several jade people. They cannot have some right
especially or of their own life. The second is a ring, this ring is not for
decoration, it is just a ring of just like a weapon. When someone is
shooting an arrow, she or he must wearing a jade ring on his right hand is
a help when he is shooting an arrow. There is something else for
decoration, this is ancient China, I mean. New Zealand we know a lot of
things -- (indiscernible) have been made to be decorations for the
bracelet, of weapons also. And New Zealand there is not only BOLONITE and
it is orange and other things nephrite, and what we love. There are so many
kinds of jades especially nephrite, but here in Mexico there is a lot of
green jade or jadeite jade. They love this so much. Not just of these
materials but also to wear. From all civilizations and (indiscernible) to
AD -- the last one I want to say is -- we call it Mexican civilization from
AD to 1531. Here is a calendar, solar calendar, yes, this wall. And from
the similarities of China and Mexico jade culture. So in the era of 2005
shared relevance for jade resulted in dollar between China and New Mexico.
The amounts of the stones also commemorate the 40th anniversary of
diplomatic ties between Mexico and China. The middle pictures is just a
poster, the exhibition is held in China, Beijing palace and the left one is
jade musk from China and red one is a musk from here in Mexico. Both of
them have similarities, a big eyes, big nose or big mouths or perhaps they
want to know something more. Very beautiful. And the difference development
-- although this jade cultures are different from different eras, different
periods and different shapes, their own characteristic developing but they
have some similarities. The first is from China or Mexico, long and have a
blade but perhaps it is not just used for the tools, it is on behalf of the
power for the jeweler. Different development civilization in jade in China
and Mexico started in different eras why their chosen type of rock are
different design. For display and -- (indiscernible) here is -- actually,
the modern technology just has shared a lot of similarities with the
civilization. The culmination of a variety of smaller units and is able to
self-improve -- on the other hand the civilization in different regions are
distinctive characteristics in their own way. I will say despite the
distance between the two countries, China and Mexico share many similar
culture features suggesting that our ancestors may have had some
communication in ancient times. Two different one, musk one is made by jade
and one is by glaze. So as a scholar I think it is essential to protect the
history and the civilization of each distinct group and encourage them to
be -- through the Internet and other medias. That's all. Thank you for
inviting me and thanks for your time. Thank you. (Applause)

>> MODERATOR: Thank you for your jade story. Attractive story. Next I would
have our next speaker from Germany and he will give some in depth opinions
and view. Welcome.

>> Thank you, chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, with the recent rise of
populism, nationalism, racism and in some parts of the world even the
rejection of modern values all together we're are experiencing a clash of
cultures and civilizations. I would like us to take a closer look at how
cultures produce in the time of global markets in the Internet and make us
realize that we are not living in a post ideological world. As you said the
director of a global institute, an independent think thank in Beijing. Most
of the time I'm in Beijing. UNESCO reminds us that cultural pluralism are
-- if our connected world pluralism is the safety guard of cultural
diversity. Without an open and reflective mind and society culture also
causes tension. Now to understand why culture diversity and pluralism are
increasingly at risk let us look at a particular culture such as China's
and highlight how culture has been used the produce within an outside China
and serve different ends. The Internet in this regard has a value in itself
but primarily intensifies to my understanding an already existing broader
structure and historical development which we need to take into
consideration in our debate on Internet governance. Until recently we were
utterly surprised by China's economic growth -- fast growth because the
dominant western experience of capitalism pre-supposed that liberal values
were required for markets to flourish. To explain why formerly socialist
economy, China observers answered with referring to traditional Chinese
culture. So Chinese culture was the answer what reform China since 1978,
developed much faster than anyone else. Interestingly, those culture --
tradition and culture was basically negated in the past in imperial China.
Over centuries prominent western philosophers have denounced imperial China
and con fusionism -- primarily responsible for the country's apparent lack
of struggle, progress and reason which are the corner stones -- or were the
corner stones of western modernization. For the west the written Chinese
language was the ultimate manifestation of imperial China stag nation. They
were construed to not capture thought making the language unsuitable for
possible discourse. Now bringing back to mind the speed of China's
modernization over the past four decades it is needless to say those past
western views of China's culture provided a reverse image of a dominant
self seeking truth and justifying western imperialism. Today we're more
interested in how China will actually continue growth but in a sustainable
way, how it will cope with the domestic disruption of global markets and
contribute to geopolitical stability. What is the basis for China's action?
Modern China has long history of negating its own tradition for the sake of
modernization. Today paradoxically and luckily the Chinese government
strongly promoting as we hear the teaching of Chinese classics, language
not only within China but abroad. The five year plan has a -- the
president's dream is to reestablish China as a great power not only
economically but also culturally. The reason turning back on China's
traditions, however, serves a dual strategy and reveals also its
ideological function. Promoting the market economy over the past three
decades and the rise of global markets have rendered socialist values
meaningless. Traditional culture is supposed to fill that void and provide
new meaning. On the other hand, promoting China's condition counters the
western values that led to the rise of capitalism in the first instance but
also to our local and global imbalances. To be fair, traditional Chinese
virtues can be a viable source for adjust filing action. Now it's supposed
to tame the excess of capitalism in the future. Arguably state benevolence
have helped China since reform and might help them master the next
development phase. A key lesson about capitalism it can adapt to any
cultural values. Domestically China's traditions are challenged by the 200
million millenials. This young generation is the most individualized one
and probably most concerned with the battery power of Smartphones. If in
the IGF context here one important questions remains, which role does the
Internet play in this broader historical context? As a Germany can't resist
to refer to a German philosopher. He called the fundamental process that
allows us to develop our consciousness the public reason. Public means we
can reflect on and freely express our opinion without restrictions. The
public's fear is necessary for developing and exchanging ideas and
constructing our cultural identities. By contrast -- no doubt the Internet
has brought us much closer to culture other but the development of our open
public consciousness is at risk. There is a separation between the free
public use of the Internet and the increasingly private control of it. Such
control and manipulation of our consciousness is achieved in two
fundamental ways. First through the technical. Government and commercial
fragmentation of the Internet. If we're restricted to only a certain part
of the Internet due to censorship, filtering blocking and other ways of
limiting access to such business models that impede our ability to freely
create and access information we're stifled and prevented from creating our
cultural identities. Such fragmentation is not the result of the Internet
but of global markets and ideology, the rise, the power to sustain or alter
realities. Secondly within those frameworks the Internet becomes very
efficient in controlling information and thus the public use of reason,
social media robots set up accounts, provide likes and post and share
information. These social bots have strongly impacted the result of the
recent U.S. election, presidential election and has impacted, for example,
in Germany the public debate on the migration crisis. The danger is that
such automated information does not present public opinion but primarily
seeks to limit the public's reason. To avoid any misunderstanding certain
closeness and fragmentation is necessary to provide security and stability.
In summary, since while the global fault line is no longer between markets
and plan but between openness and closedness. Openness is what brings
progress. Uncontrolled markets tend to lead to closedness and the
assimilation of new technologies that originally promoted openness. To
ensure openness and pluralism we cannot just focus on the functioning of
the Internet but consider global markets and cultural production. Thank you
very much. (Applause)

>> MODERATOR: Thank you for your input. Thank you. Next I would invite
another speaker to give her speeches.

>> My name is -- I work for -- and today my topic will cover how reading
enhances cultural exchange and how Chinese leverage empowers the world from
our business standpoint. So everybody could only live one life but through
reading people could have other experience. Reading is fair and borderless
to everybody. Our company reader technology we want to become the most
available and the most professional E-library in the world. Our main
business is E-reading and we currently have 600 million global users and
100 million monthly active user globally and we completely lead the China
market. Here on the left side is a picture of our product. You can read
novels, magazines and the comic books on our app. On the right side is our
E-reader tablet. We have customized the functions for readers with very
different reading habits and we have volumeous books to read from. We own
all the copyrights on our platform. Next I will talk about how reading
enhances cultural exchanges. So we currently are in 60 countries. We
dominate the market in the E reading category. Every day there are three
million pages being read outside of China. We have prepared many readers
using different languages. So for example we have prepared the Chinese
version of Harry potter for Chinese readers and we have translated some
Nobel prize work in English for English readers. On the right side you can
see our number of accumulated copyrights so we have accumulated many
copyrights in many countries in many different languages. Coming from
different countries users can use the same E-reader. Any time and any where
and the users can enjoy the same book. They can speak on the same book,
interpret the book in one way or another and they can share their thoughts
with us and with each other using English. So in this way cultural values
are carried to different regions. They are carried through different
regions by books and users can comprehend and communicate the cultural
values without having to travel to that specific region and also talking to
local people. In this way, users can -- in this way the reading enhances
the cultural exchange and it makes a smaller world. So as China's largest
E-reading platform our reader wants to go beyond just providing books to
really promote the Chinese culture to the world. And in 2014 we launched
the E-reader public version proper jefjt  -- project. Under the umbrella we
have -- you know China have accumulated 5,000 years of wisdom and we really
have a lot of treasured books to offer to the world. So up to now we have
revised and digitized more than 200 classical books to promote to the world
and we have the public versions for foreign language. That will be spread
to the world. Taking one of the most important China's classical books as
an example is called the dream of -- we actually have added more than 200
photos to that book to -- for example, some portraits and Asian clothes
display and added the character relationship structure to the book to help
people understand the very complicated nature of that book. So up to now
more than 50 million global copies have been downloaded globally and
actually two million happen outside of China. That's really a lot. The
people actually -- the traditional values of China's modesty, integrity and
wisdom are spread to the world. The people from around the world have given
us feedback that they are very inspired by the Asian wisdom and Asian
success stories. We also have the E-reader versions for kids in which we
tailer the design specifically for children. We added the audio books to
that so people could choose to listen to the book if they don't want to
read. In order to discover how reading would effect people over time, we
have launched the 1,000 kit plan in which we plan to keep track of 1,000
children from around the world for 10 years to see their reading habits.
How they are formed over time. And we will offer them our I-reader public
versions to read. Those are all the Chinese classical books and we want to
discover how reading over time could affect people's values, thoughts, and
life and how the Chinese classical literature could shape the current
generation. And up to now many children have given us feedback that how
those have enlarged their scope of knowledge, how it expanded their vision
of the world and how it helped establish their life. In the next few years
our company is going the partner with major providers to promote our -- to
go to bookstores and want to extend our book resources and the Chinese
culture to every corner of the world. So everybody could only live one life
but we want to diversify people's experiences. We want to enlighten the
world with Chinese classical literature and strive for the dream life.
Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: I think I reader is iBOOK for many customers of Smartphone
including myself. I can prove that what she said is totally true. Next one
and finally I would welcome Mr. -- to introduce him. Welcome. Mic.

>> Today has been a long day for me. Especially because just today in the
morning I met Mr. -- my goodness, Antonio and invited to give a speech
about the Mayan culture. When I got here I found out that this is about the
U.N. So it is a big shot. I'm an English teacher and I would like everybody
to pay attention to this. It is going to be like a class. Right over there
in the corner you see there is a black box. I brought the Mayan knowledge
in that box. So if you guys allow me to stand up and walk around just like
a normal teacher would do, right? Am I -- okay. But I'm going to need some
volunteers. This is how I do it in my class. Okay, here it  is. I need
volunteers. Raise your hand if you want to volunteer for my class. Three
people stand up, please. You guys stand up. Would you? You are volunteering
for the video. You are my filmmaker, there you go. And if you want to have
one of this. This is information about -- a little information about Mayan
culture. If you want one of these please raise your hand. My volunteers
will go around and -- raise your hand if you want to have one of these.
There you go. Is there a microphone? Do we have some Mayan or Hispanic --

>> MODERATOR: Do you speak English the guy on the audio?

>> I was asking my friend if we can have some of sounds about the Mayan
culture. Okay. Right there you have some information in English. It is
here. I was going to walk over there. But you know what? I don't want
anybody watching what's in the box. I'll move over there so nobody watch
what's in the box because it is a surprise for each of you, all right?
Okay. All right. So you guys let me know if my time is up, all right?
Anyways, raise your hand if you want to learn something about the Mayan
culture. There you go. I see a lot of hands. So I just need one. Let me
see, I'm going to ask the box who should I bring to learn something about
the Mayan culture? And whoops, you didn't see anything, right? Okay. I'm
going to call Luigi, did I pronounce it correct? The Mayan god just told me
you are the chosen one. Come on up.

>> We have always known that, Luigi.

>>  You can stay right there. You have a microphone right there, good.
Okay. If I ask you a question about the Mayan tradition, would you be able
to answer? Maybe. Could you name one of the most emblematic cities in the
Mayan culture? Anybody. Decal, yes, could you come forward? You know, where
are you coming from? (Laughter) Mexican people are not allowed. That's what
Donald Trump would say. Come on, I have something for you. The gods have
brought you something. From PECAL. Who else wants to learn something?
Anybody? Raise your hand. If I ask you something -- what is your name, sir?

>> Paul.

>>  Where are you coming from?

>>  Australian.

>>  What do you know about Mayan culture? Would you mention something? --
was actually part of the Aztec and Mayan culture. It was like in the
middle, yes. Exactly. There was the Mayans, and the Aztecs. Something
similar to the Mayan and Aztec culture. Pretty much there were three
different civilizations growing but all of them disappeared. Well, the
Aztec, we know what the Aztec -- what they did, right? So Mr. Paul, I think
you will like to have something from the jungle, wouldn't you? So this is
for you. Mayan kids used to make toys from their nature. It's more like a
monkey. It looks like a kangaroo but it's more like a monkey I guess.
Anybody else? There are presents? Who wants to participate. Anybody. Let's
have some fun. You won't fail. There is not an exam. We need a lady. What
is your name? Jackie, where are you coming from, Jackie? San Francisco.
Okay. Is POPALVU. What is that about? Not you, you're Mexican. We don't
like Mexican people here. Anybody? It is like the Bible of the Mayan
culture. It is the Bible of the Mayan culture. And some people who have
this at the last page you can see -- you can buy the book now because it
was restored. This is one of -- well, how do you say that, the book
version. This is one of the versions. There are so many versions. I'm sure
in China and United States they have this version. Well, I want to make
sure but I'm not even sure about that. It was the Bible. In this book they
actually talk about what the lifestyle is about, right? You read it? Well,
but you have heard about this? Imagine that -- okay, we ask people now, we
are living under some -- but the Mayas, they understood the world in a
different way. They used to offer their lives to the gods. And for them
dying was part of the life. And sometimes we as humans, we don't want to
die so how would I say? I mean, we like to live the longest time, right?
Anyways, for the Mayas, offering their lives to the gods was like the
biggest act of dogmatic what, church, culture, sacrificing themselves.
Where are you from? Mexico. (Laughter) Anybody else? Anybody else. Okay.
What is this I have in my right hand? Anybody? This is also a Mayan toy
right here. This is for you. Could you open it, please? Open it up. Watch
out, watch out. Please, please, yeah, there. I mean, you know what? It is
empty. It is supposed to be full with dolls. I have another one. Hold on. I
have two. How is my time in? Good.

>> MODERATOR: Forever.

>>  Thank you, god. Here, okay. Empty the little bucket, empty it. What is
that in your hand? Little people, little dolls, right? Mayas created this
kind of toy but it was not only for kids. Mayas used to believe that
putting one of this under your head at night would take all your worries
and will disappear on the next day. Actually, it is mentioned here. Check
it out. The name is NINOS -- those are supposed to be kids. How would I
translate this? Untroubled kids, could be, yes. According to the Maya
legend the kids help to solve your problems. Take one kid, those, and put
it under your pillow at night. The next day your problem will disappear.
This is for you. Take it back to China. Anybody else? My time is like
running out. I have so more presents here. I'm just going to

>>

>> MODERATOR: Some specific one.

>> We have talked about the Bible, we have talked about kids' toys, yes?
Why don't we take a look in your papers right there. Why don't we go to
page number 3, yes, and we have right here a picture and a little writing
about the calendar. They had two calendars. They had two calendars. One or
the main calendar was the -- (Speaking Spanish) The second one was
(Speaking Spanish) It is still a mystery how these two calendars work.
Because one of them is basically for natural days but the second one it was
about sacrifices. It was about the ballgame which also we have right here
in page number 1. So believing in the gods was everything. Like Mayas would
do everything about nature laws, all right? Talking about the Mayas, it is
like endless, I think. You have information there. More Mayan presents. One
for a girl. This is for you, take it home. It is beautiful. Check it out.
Yes. Who wants another present? They used to make necklaces from bones.
This is -- these are bones from -- exactly. (Laughter) There you go. There
you go. Listen, I have more presents but this one is special. This one is
special. And this -- because they thought that death was part of life. And
well, I want to give this to Mr. Antonio for giving me this opportunity.
(Applause) I do have more presents so if you want a present, you can come
by and just pick it up. Have you ever heard about -- well, this is not
about Mayas but this is another Mexican pretty much like symbol of the
Mexican culture. Have you ever heard of this? A girl -- can a girl raise a
hand and I have heard about her. You are Mexican probably. Anybody here?
This is for you. This is for you. If you have a chance to read her life,
100% recommend it. Yes. So yes. Anyways, Mexico is full of culture not only
Maya, not only -- right, we have Aztecs, we have a whole bunch of tradition
and well, so I hope you liked my presentation, which was kind of in a
hurry. You have a little knowledge here. Who wants this? (Laughter) You
want it? You get it. Anybody else? No problem. I'm Carlos BROBO. I am a
teacher currently. I also write, I do films, I do painting, I do
photography. You can watch my work at my Facebook which is TACHERCHARLETOS.
I was in a hurry today. Where can I write down my email? Never mind. If you
are interested, if you have one of those, come, I get you my information,
right? Anyways, nice meeting you. Thank you, god, for this opportunity and
thank you so much. (Applause)

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, professor. Thank you so much and you know you have
give a wonderful ending. Because of the time limitation I cannot open the
floor to give you comments to give any questions but anyway, I think
culture exchanges, we're always -- there are plenty of gifts. I think our
serious activities to foster the cultural exchanges in the future. We will
still have more activities, have more organized forum together with all the
participants. Thank you so much. (Applause) (Session ended at 6:21 PM CT)
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