E-G8 meeting considers role of Internet regulation, ability to move quickly

The question of Internet regulation took centre stage at the first-ever e-G8 forum in Paris this week, where French President Nicholas Sarkozy and European policy makers contrasted their vision of the Internet’s future with executives from Google Inc., Facebook Inc., News Corp. and dozens of other companies. The two-day summit, held May 24-25 in Paris ahead of the G8 leaders’ meeting in Deauville, France, this week, represented Sarkozy’s effort to put Internet governance on the G8 agenda. In an opening address Tuesday, the French President warned that while technology may be neutral, its uses are not and it shouldn’t be permitted to undermine rights to privacy and autonomy. “The world you represent is not a parallel universe where legal and moral rules and, more generally, all the basic principles that govern society in democratic countries, do not apply,” he said. “You can't be exempt from minimum rules.” Sarkozy, who hosted the meetings, alluded to the Internet’s historic impact on society and said that the responsibility of executives in the technology sector “is undoubtedly the highest ever given to individuals who do not work in the public sector or as state representatives.” He said governments can’t be excluded from a medium that impacts so directly on most people’s lives. “Nobody could, nor should, forget that these governments are the only legitimate representatives of the will of the people in our democracies,” he said. “To forget this is to take the risk of democratic chaos and hence anarchy.” In a discussion Wednesday with Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen, European Commissioner for the digital agenda Neelie Kroes made a distinction between practical and principled regulation. “I’m aware that, at a certain moment and for certain issues, you need regulation. But I’m not the one who wants to regulate principles,” she said. Kroes recounted a conversation she had with an eBay executive about his business’ pace of change, which the executive told her limited the company to looking ahead by only three months. Kroes said the rapid evolution of technology must be taken into account when trying to regulate a sector or industry. “Within regulation or legislation, taking into account how long that takes, we are missing, in the meantime … what is changing in the real world,” she said. “And that is one of those issues that I am actually fascinated by. How can we be more alert on that issue?” Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, raised similar concerns during a panel discussion Tuesday, saying it is essential to “tread lightly” on new, innovative industries. Schmidt said “stupid” government rules risk slowing Internet growth. “Before we decide that we need a regulatory solution to these problems, let’s ask, ‘Is there a technological solution that can scale, that can work globally, and move very quickly?’” he said. “Because we'll move more quickly than any one of the governments, let alone all of the governments.” Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe’s editor, asked Kroes during an audience question session whether she is “like a man who used to run in front of an automobile with a red flag in 1910 in order to stop progress and make cars go slower.” Butcher said Europe's hands are tied by regulations while the U.S. and emerging markets face much less red tape. Kroes responded that she’s aware of what’s at stake and that the forum provided her with inspiration to speed up the process. Responding to a question from Brian Message of the Music Managers Forum U.K., Kroes said she’s “very much in favour for different remuneration for artists, creators and what have you. It is absolutely a must.” She added that the current system is outdated and that a more user-friendly system must be developed. “Sometimes we are only discussing the piracy. Come on. We need to beat the piracy but to solve the problem you should go to the heart of the matter,” she said. “Netflix is giving a great opportunity and I’m not saying that that is it. But we should come to a European way of filling in what is at stake: user-friendly, giving their remuneration but also be in-time.” The New York Times reported this week that G8 leaders intend to issue a joint statement for stronger Internet regulation following the meeting in Deauville. The Times quoted a leaked draft of the communiqué, dated May 20, saying the leaders agreed to “a number of key principles, including freedom, respect for privacy and intellectual property, multi stakeholder governments, cybersecurity, and protection from crime, that underpin a strong and flourishing Internet.” David Ellis, a technology consultant and educator at York University’s department of communication studies, said by email that the e-G8 is “a contradiction in terms.” Ellis wrote that executives are worried about protecting their proprietary content but “have nothing in common with mainstream end-users, the millions of people who are devoted to creating their own content, using social media and enriching their lives with online resources. “It's another rich white guys forum, like the WTO, which exists to defend the status quo, not encourage reform,” Ellis wrote. Politicians and executives who spend their time discussing the circumvention of digital locks distracts from more important issues such as broadband—something that has happened in in Canada, Ellis said. “These pleas from the rich and famous to stop stealing their stuff make it seem as though the Internet—and the Web in particular—was invented for the movie studios and record labels,” he said, adding that large corporations already receive ample access to policy makers. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg closed the forum in a question-and-answer session with Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Lévy. Zuckerberg said the most significant web trend over the next decade would be the individual’s power to share things, adding that society is much closer to the beginning of this trend than the end. The Facebook founder pointed to the success of the Zynga Game Network, which “baked the social dynamic into games themselves,” and that this strategy will be incorporated into the movie and music industries. Zuckerberg downplayed Facebook’s role in this spring's uprisings and revolutions in the Arab world, saying credit should go to the larger trend of people communicating and sharing their thoughts via new technologies. “It would be extremely arrogant for any technology company to claim any meaningful role in those ,” he said. On Thursday afternoon, following the e-G8 meetings Tuesday and Wednesday, the world leaders of the G8 held a closed-door meeting about the Internet and the economy with Schmidt, Zuckerberg, Yuri Milner, CEO of Digital Sky Technologies, Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten, Maurice Levy, CEO of Publicis Groupe, and Stephane Richard, CEO of Orange. mburgess@thewirereport.ca

E-G8 meeting considers role of Internet regulation, ability to move quickly

News | 05/26/2011 8:04 pm EDT

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