--- Upon
commencing on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 5:02 p.m.
MR. OXLEY: What we saved is one of the best sessions for
last. And again this is the participative
web. As just by the last conversation in
the Sussex Room over there, we’ve had some great participation.
So if everybody would work their
way in here and the panellists for the last session work their way up here.
And I’ve got to say the feedback
that I’m getting from everybody has been absolutely wonderful. The conversations have been happening in the
coffee room –- it’s why we can’t get the people back in here -- are great. The panellists are spawning some wonderful
ideas.
And I can’t wait to see what
ideas and possibilities come out of here. Like Suzanne said earlier today, it is about
all the possibility that’s there.
All right. So, without further ado and to give them all
the time that they can because they’ve got some wonderful topic, so, “Opportunities
and Challenges For Policy”.
And I’d like to introduce Michael
Geist the Canadian Research Chair of Internet and e-Commerce Law to lead us and
chair us through this conversation.
Michael.
MR. GEIST: Well thanks very much. It’s late in the afternoon but I think we
have a panel that will keep everybody’s interest on our way to the reception
later on.
Let me start by introducing --
I’m going to actually just upfront just introduce the panellists. But I’ve been asked to provide a bit of a
summary of the day which is impossible, not just because of course there were
parallel sessions and you can’t be really in two places at once, but because
frankly it’s been such a full day that I think to try to provide a brief
summary in just a couple of minutes won’t do it justice.
But I do want to at least put a
couple of issues on the table. The last
panel that we have is really charged with trying to answer some of the
questions that were posed at the very beginning of the day and that is to take
so much of what’s happening on the participative web and put it into a policy
context.
And so we’re really fortunate to
get a diversity of views who are going to help us try to do that by providing
some of that policy context.
We’ve got, leading off, and we’re
going to go, I’m going to ask each of the panellists to go in order, Sangwon
Ko, who is Vice Chair of the OECD Working Party on the Information Economy with
the Korea Information Society Development Institute; Mark Rotenberg who is the
Executive Director of EPIC; Joe Alhadeff, many of you know is with Oracle;
Daniela Battisti, who is the Vice Chair of the OECD Infromation, Computer and
Communications Policies Committee; Keith Besgrove who is Chair of the OECD
Wokring Party on Information Security and Privacy as well as with the
Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts in Australia;
and finally Neil Anderson who is the Head of Telecom with Union Network
International and part of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD.
Now I have to say as we came into
today it struck me that almost two years ago in January, 2006, the OECD held
its Digital Content Conference in
And I have to say that I found
that conference to be truly a turning point in much of the discussion around
the participative web even though I can’t recall anybody ever talking about the
participative web. But there was
certainly a lot of talk about user generated content, user created
content. And I think it really marked
the first time in a truly international policy fora, that the issue was put on
the agenda.
In many respects when you went to
many of these international meetings the focus was much more on some of the
things we were accustomed to from the 90’s, digital rights management and
stronger enforcement tools and the like.
And this really started to shift the dialogue.
Though there was no reference to
YouTube or Facebook, Club Penguin, no even Web 2.0 or any of those sorts of
references, that issue was I think very much in the air. There was I think a true recognition even at
that point in time that something exciting, something important was happening.
And I think it’s fair to say is
sitting through the various panels and plenaries today that it’s very clear
that indeed what we saw taking place almost two years ago has continued to
blossom in really remarkable ways today.
The panels in answering the
question about what next for the participative web, clearly demonstrated that
we’re seeing some pretty profound economic shifts; a number of panels focusing
on the way in which corporations are using some of these technologies in very
innovative ways; the way that individual citizens and consumers can use these
in some very innovative ways and how new companies are being created using these
very tools, the Yochai Benkler type of issues.
We also, I think, just as
importantly, focused a lot on the societal shifts that we’re seeing. There’s a tendency to read about many of
these issues on the business page and focus on who is buying whom and where the
dollars are and less on the kinds of things we saw in a number of panels that
showed the degree to which these kinds of technologies can have a deep impact
on education and on citizen empowerment and on development more generally. And I think that’s terrifically important.
We also saw discussion about how
the network itself continues to evolve and that there are going to be network
shifts as well.
Now, we were asked at the very
beginning of the day to think about this in the context of the policy issues
and the role that national governments can play as well as the role that the
OECD and international organizations can play.
And it seemed to me and I’m hoping that our panellists will address some
of these issues, it seems to me that there were a number of issues for which we
could identify a clear role for government and for the OECD and around which
there is at least some emerging consensus, in many instances quite a lot of
emerging consensus.
I place access under this
umbrella, access in a number of different guises: access of course to high speed networks, to
broadband or access to wireless networks depending on the community, affordable
access in many instances; access to research and access to education, the
research output, things like open access for federally funded research,
government funded research; access to public documentation, the documents that
the government itself has now have easy vehicle to ensure that there is broader
access to communities; and access to knowledge, the digitization programs that
we’re seeing receive an increased amount of attention. This clearly is a policy issue that I think
there is a role to play.
So too for privacy and
trust. Many of us have just come from
the Facebook panel, one in which there was a lot of discussion about the role
of Facebook and MySpace and social networks.
And it seems to me that it was fairly clear that throughout the day
there was a growing recognition that notwithstanding the emphasis on privacy
and trust now for several decades, it continues to be a core issue in many of
the things that we’re facing, whether that’s privacy concerns, security
concerns, emerging concerns, Spam, which isn’t really emerging anymore but
Malware, Spyware, those sorts of newer issues continue to be an area where
there is a role for governments and groups like the OECD.
So too a role on standard
setting, recognition that in this global environment we need global organizations,
international organizations to help guide us on some of the standard settings.
There were also, and with this
I’ll stop, there were also a number of issues that we might describe as the
elephants in the room, the issues that I think many recognized are issues,
issues that I think in order for the OECD certainly in terms of its work here,
in terms of the ministerial conference next year, has to address in order to
ensure that it’s relevant. But issues
for around which at least for the moment there is not a clear consensus, indeed
issues that can be highly contentious.
Yet I think it’s fair to say that the OECD can provide an important
forum to try to help address those issues.
Those would of course include
intellectual property related concerns.
An issue that was often raised but never really dealt with in any significant
detail, a recognition that it raises all sorts of thorny question: questions around safe harbours and liability
for intermediaries that was raised by Amazon but others as well, in effect, how
do we apportion liability and responsibility as part of a participative web
when there are so many participating?
Network neutrality related
concerns which also came up on a number of occasions, the OECD has already
started exploring some of those concerns, issues that we certainly aren't going
to solve today, but one in which we need some international fora to help guide
us.
Also, I think very
interestingly, the way in which government engages with the new
engaged participative citizen. How can
government, recognizing that today users and citizens are using these tools in
ever more ways and are engaged in many of these issues in very important ways,
ensure that policy processes ensures that consultations and the like can keep
pace. There were some that really
wonder whether or not government is in a position to do that.
So there are clearly some really
interesting challenges at a minimum and some policy issues to be addressed.
With that, I would like to hand
it over to the panel. Nobody is
presenting with PowerPoint slides. I
have asked each to keep their remarks to about three to four minutes so that we
can truly end with a panel that is participative and engaging.
Let me start with Mr. Ko.
MR. KO: Thank you, sir.
The participative Web is really
important for
Since I'm from the government
sector I would like to focus my discussion on government law.
To fully exploit participative
Web problems the government is implementing industrial policy,
implementation policy and regulatory policy.
For industrial policy we
encourage R&D, innovation in content and content‑related network,
software and hardware. Also we promote
human resource development and promote venture capital industry for detailed
content. Those are major tools for
industrial policy.
The implementation policy is
about building the infrastructure. I
think building the infrastructure is sort of key to this participative
Web. And things like net neutrality problem
comes from the fact that the growth of content is much higher than the growth
of the infrastructure itself. When you
have growth of infrastructure that exceeds the growth of content, then you
don't have natural neutrality problem.
Lastly, we have witnessed the
negative side effect of participative Web such as privacy infringement,
copyright infringement and obscene UCC posting and we have to deal with that
properly.
Norwegian delegate from the floor
raised the issue of anonymity of the UCC posting. Some countries like
I guess that's what I would like
to talk about.
Thank you.
MR. ROTENBERG: Thank you, Michael, and thank you to the OECD
for the opportunity to participate in this discussion on the participative Web
I wanted to mention that a number
of civil society groups are here and we met earlier today. Those groups include the Internet governance
projects at
We are very enthusiastic about
the opportunity to work with the OECD on the upcoming ministerial and also to
provide some balance, I guess, to the development of public policy for the
future of the Internet.
The OECD is a really remarkable
organization. It has earned an important
reputation for its ability to publish reports that tell us about the world as
it is evolving and the very rapid adoption of new technologies, broadband
networks, changes in literacy around the world, as well is to help formulate
principles that can guide national governments and inform business practices to
help safeguard important interests.
In many respects I think Andy
Wyckoff was correct this morning when he said that the OECD makes you do your
homework. But it is important homework
to do, because it is homework that helps inform public policy discussions about
how to make choices about the type of future we would like to have.
There is a lot of discussion
about choice in terms of the marketplace, which Web browser to use, which
online social network service to use, you know, who has really cool photo
software, and so on. But in the end I
think the choices that we end up making at the macro level, the policy choices
that we make are the ones that reflect the quality of society that we will live
in.
I would also like to suggest to
you that the benefits of this new world tend to take care of themselves. It's the problems that will need attention.
Just to highlight some of the key
areas of concern that civil society groups have identified, we are interested
in approaches that governments are developing toward consumer protection,
efforts to promote broadband deployment, efforts to encourage competition,
which might seem surprising when things are changing so rapidly, but things can
also consolidated quickly as well and we think that issue needs a lot of
attention, privacy and security of course, and also respect for different
cultures around the world.
In
We are enthusiastic, obviously,
about the vibrant marketplace innovation, literacy and education, but at the
same time we also believe that a good approach, a balanced approach, one that
incorporates the views of civil society, will help ensure not only that the
benefits are realized, but that the problems are addressed early on.
MR. ALHADEFF: I, too, will join in by giving my thanks to
the OECD and Industry
The fact that we are in
Ottawa, and both Mark and I are kind of ‑‑ we
had been in Ottawa 10 years ago for the ministerial as well ‑‑
it made me think that perhaps one of the reflections from a business point of
view was the difference and the evolution between Ottawa and Seoul.
When we were in the
That's one of the places where I
think the OECD has an important role to play, because it's some of these kind
of momentous events that happen without notice because of the fact that it is
part of the fabric of our lives that need to be highlighted. So we think about
At that time it was a department
and a business; now it's the concept of information flows. Then it was the idea of an isolated
enterprise using technology inside the enterprise; now it's the concept of a
value chain and an ecosystem and how information flows across those ecosystems.
As you look at the participatory
Web, one of the main roles the OECD has to play in this phase is looking
at how the creativity, the confidence and the convergence, the three C's that
are the subtext of the ministerial, work together across all stakeholder
communities in order to make sure that we are delivering and Internet and a
future that enables economic growth and provides societal benefit, because
those are the two hallmarks of what we are looking for in this space.
I
think when we look at the growing pains of the ecosystem a number of the issues
that Mark raised are exactly those growing pains ‑‑ and also
that Michael raised ‑‑ the concept of responsibility, net
neutrality, intermediary liability, the role of government, the emerging role of business,
the different roles that civil society takes on, the role of the consumer, the
role of the citizen. All of these are
morphing, to an extent, and they are morphing in a situation that is perhaps a
little less obvious than it's been before.
Because, in many ways, when we have listened to various
panels there's a concern because I don't exactly know what's happening to my
information, I don't exactly understand everything that happens in the magic in
the box on my lap or on my belt or wherever it is. It's understanding what the frameworks are to
make those things more real, more trustworthy, to understand that the pathways
are converging across the media because the information has been digitized, and
making sense of these as we go into the future.
Looking at the future of the Internet, that is one of
the roles where the OECD plays a very beneficial role and where I think the
ministerial, you know, is an important place to stop and do a stock‑take. I think that's one of the importances we see
here, and look forward to questions on this topic.
MS BATTISTI:
Well, thank you, Mike, and, of course, thank you to the OECD.
I think that this event is very important and, in a
way, I see, as Michael said before, as a second step towards a definition of a
digital content framework, something that, by the way, the Working Party on the
Information Economy is working on.
Of course, when we started this forum, the impression
was that, in a way, participation is almost the equivalent of a process of
democratization, but during the day this impression, in a way, remained just an
impression, and the reality was quite different.
The idea that everybody who participates in a way
represents a large community, I think is not true, and here I see a role for
policy‑makers, especially in terms of digital literacy.
Also, another important point that was raised by other
speakers is responsibility, because, of course, if you have the right and the
opportunity to publish something, I think you have also the responsibility of
publishing in the right way and publishing by the rules.
Of course, for young people, for instance, it's not
easy. Last year, in
Again, I think I see that here government can do
something, not so much in terms of a regulation, but maybe thinking about other
ways. I'm sure that five years ago I
would have never believed myself saying that, but I think that things have
changed a lot. So we cannot just look at
the past and avoid to look at the present, or, as Michael put it in a nice way,
the elephant's in the room.
The other point I think is very important is that most
of the young people who use uTube, MySpace or whatever, any other social
network, are not aware of what they are doing, in the sense that they are not
aware that they are creating content and that someone else may use this content
or gather information about their behaviour and do whatever they want with
their own data.
Of course, we talk a lot about trust and privacy, but
I think this is a government responsibility.
Of course, there are so many other controversial issues, but, okay, for
me it's all over.
MR. BESGROVE:
Well, thank you, Michael. Thank
you also to the OECD.
I have just finished two days of the Working Party on
Information, Security and Privacy, which I chair. One of the things that we were talking about
was RFID. The work that we have been
doing there is the direct outcome of a forum just like this one two years
ago. So in case you are wondering what
the OECD does with these sorts of events, they usually lead to at least some
activity by some of the working parties.
Anyway, I was just going to come at this from a
slightly different perspective. When I
was a student in the sixties and the seventies in
Today, as a policy‑maker in Australian and chair
of the WISP, I often find myself listening to presentations that are still
based on this assumption. Each new
technology seems to be assumed to be liberty and privacy diminishing, and, to
an extent, many of them are, or they could be, if we could get them to work
properly.
But the reality is that the Internet, and its related
technologies, have also often been remarkably subversive of government
control. They have also been disruptive
for governments, themselves, who have increasingly had to adapt their models,
their systems and their operations to cope with the Internet.
The emergence of the participative web is, in my view,
compounding these challenges to policy‑makers posed by the rise of the
Internet in the first place. At a recent
His view was that if even the most repressive
governments could not control content in interactions on the web, then OECD
governments had comparatively little hope.
Whether you accept this view or not, it is clear that
the participative web poses some interesting challenges for policy‑makers,
and we have heard of many of them today already, such as privacy and security,
which keeps coming up, and particularly content issues, including finding ways
to reward or penalize the creators of content, depending upon the kind of
content and where they put it.
So it seems to me that this is a valuable opportunity
to reflection, and one of the roles that the OECD can certainly play, and is
playing through this forum, is to help policy‑makers to research, to
analyze and to understand emerging technology issues and to inform policy‑makers. So that's certainly the value I see in today.
I will conclude there.
Thank you.
MR. ANDERSON:
Thank you.
Well, I guess I get lucky to be the last speaker on a
very long day.
Michael asked me to make sure that we are a little bit
controversial to stimulate some debate, so hopefully I can be a little bit
controversial and we can stimulate some debate to round the day off.
First of all, this session is talking about
opportunities and challenges, and so I have looked at it in respect of
opportunities and what the challenges are.
One of the opportunities that the OECD has recognized is that the
participative web and the web will create employment. But there are a number of challenges with
that creation of employment, not the least of which for the policy‑makers
is what kind of employment is that going to be and what should policy-makers be
doing to ensure that their employment is good employment, that there is no
discrimination in that employment against all the workers, for example, who may
not be able to participate to the same degree?
What kind of skills and training do we need? We have had nothing today, unfortunately, on
the skills, the training, the kind of workers that we are going to need to be
able to participate in this new challenge and in the employment that's being
created, we hope, by the web.
The other opportunity is that the free market and
innovation are going to create amazing new services, but for workers, actually,
free market and innovation also is a problem for them in how are their wages
going to be paid? I'm talking about
creative workers. Intellectual property and creative rights has been one of the
issues that's been discussed here regularly today, and it's one of the
challenges for us.
Actually,
20 years ago workers used to be concerned about blackguards wearing masks and
shotguns steeling their wages from the payroll van. Well, frankly, now workers are now worried about the blaggers who are manipulating
their computers to steal their wagers, because creator's rights are their wages
and, you know, we're concerned, as unions, and we want to see better policy on
creator's rights.
Does
open innovation and innovation, does that mean it's an invitation to take
unpaid work for profit by companies?
Take for profit, unpaid, the creative rights that others have
developed? So that's a challenge I think
that today I don't have an answer for and I don't think we have had an answer
from today, and that's a challenge for the policy makers.
The
other opportunity is, you know, is telework and the fact that we can use that
much more to get a result for the problems that we have with global warming and
with climate change.
But
the challenge for us is only where there is going to be affordable access, and
I think again today that one of the main issues that has come up from the
debate is about how do we get open access and how do we get better access to
affordable Broadband services.
Actually,
you know, speed matters. That's
something that we all need to know. I
mean, ask Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. Speed definitely matters. And it does with the Internet, as well. And we have a problem when, you know, Verizon
who is just across the border there is saying that they're only fibre into the
home, and 40% of their network. That's a
problem, that's a challenge for us. And
that's not unique to
The
other opportunity is, everyone has talked about democracy and freedom of
expression and the opportunity that the participative web brings with that for
people. Actually, trade unions are using that opportunity and that freedom of
expression quite well. Actually, last week there were two virtual strikes on
SecondLife. You might have seen
apologies to our providers over lunch, but there was a virtual strike against
IBM and a virtual strike against the Dutch Telecom Company KPN last week, and
that's an opportunity for people to make their view and the protest known. But the challenges are the gatekeepers that
are keeping the gates, companies who can stop Internet access. In a recent strike that there was here in
Finally,
I just wanted to say that access -- I come back to that. Access for people is hugely important. It's not just important for the OECD
countries, but if we're going to make the global economy work, then we have to
have access for everybody and, frankly, the access in developing countries is
worse than pathetic. And it is worse
than pathetic because everyone has run down the line of thinking that while
this will solve everything and no one has put any investment into fixed line in
the developing countries. And, at the
moment, fixed line is where the opportunities are for getting fast network
access. And so we have to think very carefully, as the policy makers, as to
what kind of policies need to be put in place to ensure there is access outside
of the OECD as communications is a two-way thing. It doesn't work unless it
goes both way. And at the moment, it's going one way.
The
very last word is about this is a participative web conference and yet the participation
from other than business, trade unions and governments is very poor. And I don't know the answer to that. I don't know the reason why. Perhaps there were not enough invitations.
Perhaps there was not enough thought put into who needed to participate. We don't have any children here who are on
the u-Tube or My Space. We don't have
any of those participants in the web here giving us their views on what's going
on. So, I think to make it a
participative web conference we have to be much better.
I
think in 1998 there was a declaration from the Ministerial about participation
of civil society, and that's never come about, and I think it's time that we
looked at that.
Thank
you.
MR.
GEIST: Well, thanks, Neil. I would like
to encourage the people who we do have here, and Mark noted that there are a
number of civil society groups here who came together. But I would like to invite you to come up and
pose some questions or just provide comments on some of your takeaways.
I
thought it interesting that even amongst the panellist's comments, we had a
number of issues raised that I didn't hear a lot about over the course of the
day, ranging from the very outset to the role government plays with respect to
infrastructure -- a sensitive topic in some jurisdictions who think it is best
left to the private sector, yet, clearly, in some places, has played a pivotal
role in dealing with issues; and, Neil's comments just now about the impact on
labour and the role that all of this has on labour.
While
you're thinking about your questions and making your way to the microphone, I'd
like to ask the panellists a couple of questions of my own. One, is, that Joe made reference to the value
in stock-taking, and I think we all recognize that there is a lot of value in
stock-taking, and, indeed, so many of the OECD output, some of the research I
think provides a great deal of value.
But, in this area, the speed with which, and the rapidity with which
things are changing sometimes leave me wondering about the value of some of
that stock-taking; if you're simply unable to effectively implement it into
relevant policy.
We
had Bob Young on one of the panels earlier today I think make a bet with the
audience, not a real bet but just a suggestion bet that in a number of years'
time he would bet that of the ten most popular sites on the Internet five of
them are ones that we have not heard of today. It is moving that quickly.
Given
that even in
How
valuable -- how can we ensure that the stock-taking is relevant?
And
I open it up to anyone on the panel.
MR.
ROTENBERG: Well, I just wanted to answer
you, Michael, with a reference to a wonderful science fiction movie that some
of you may be familiar with, and that's Ridley Scott's Blade Runner which is,
this year, celebrating it's twenty-fifth anniversary. A new
Director's Cut is out and apparently it's supposed to be absolutely
gorgeous. But, what's remarkable about
that film, as fans of the film know, that virtually every high tech company
that's featured in that 1982 movie no longer exists. Atari, for example, and there were a few
others as well. So I think there's a lot
to be said for how quickly things change.
Nonetheless
-- nonetheless, and this is a really key point about the OECD, I think in many
ways this organization has been very forward looking as to its mission. Because, if you think about it for a moment,
what the OECD sought to do, beginning in the seventies and eighties, was to anticipate
the policy frameworks of a world that would increasingly be shaped by
globalization, by international trade, a world where national laws didn't have
quite the same bite when companies and consumers were interacting across
borders.
So,
in many respects, the policy work that's been done and the questions that have
been asked I think give us, if you will, sort of a running start on the
Internet economy and some of the challenges we face today.
MR.
ALHADEFF: I would say, I mean, you know,
there's a reason why I think the Ministerial is entitled the Future of the
Internet. The Ministerial concept is
not ‘Let's look in the rearview mirror and figure out life, you know, five
years ago and see if it's relevant to us still.' I think the idea is the stock-take is in
order to better understand how things are working, but it's not limited to just
saying ‘Let's look behind' it's also incorporating ‘Let's look ahead' and it's
thinking about, you know, you have new technologies and new ways of doing business
and new ways of governing, and new ways of social interaction, and all of them
are moving at Internet.
There
was a product line at one time called Life At Internet Speed. I don't remember what the product was, but it
was a good tag line.
The
idea is, as you look at these, you have to take a look both forward and
backward to understand where you are, and I think that's what the OECD is well
positioned to do.
So, I
think, you know, yeah, if you take a look at research and the fact that research
has numbers and it takes time to crunch the numbers and those will always be
attempting to catch up to where we are.
But, if you take a look at policy frameworks, part of what they are
doing is attempting to rationalize also where we're going, and help make sure
that we're going in the right direction in a way that supports responsible use
of information and doesn't overly constrain innovation and helps you go to
those places so that you can reach the possibilities of the new technologies
and constrain, where possible, the problems that may be inherent in them.
MR. BESGROVE: I
would just make the comment that I don’t believe that policymakers should
respond to rapidly changing ephemera, things that come and go quickly should
come and go quickly. Policies should be
more concerned with significant change and particularly fundamental changes
that technology brings on society and on economy and on the way we interact.
So yes, things change quickly, but sometimes we can
ignore some of those things because they do change so quickly. I think the OECD and policymakers should be
much more concerned with the deep-seeded changes that the technology brings
about. One example, the impact of
broadband on education and the way in which the internet, enabled through high
speed broadband, can actually change teaching models that have been around for
thousands of years and change them probably forever and what does that mean for
education?
So I think we should be more concerned with the
underlying societal and economic changes and not be distracted by this year’s
product versus last year’s product.
MR. GEIST: I
will give
MR. BESGROVE:
We sometimes get that wrong, but I think by starting with the question
do we think this is actually going to make a significant difference or is this
just, you know, the latest buzzword? And
sometimes you have no alternative but to give it a bit of time to analyze that.
One last thing I would say is while the OECD is often
playing catch-up mode, sometimes the OECD has analyzed things years before they
became important to society. The OECD has
sometimes been very good at getting an idea of what was emerging and analyzing
it quite early.
MR. GEIST:
QUESTION: A
topic that I haven’t heard much about today is global governance. If you go back to 10 years to the first OECD
meeting, 1998 was a time of very significant institutional changes. You had ICANN being formed, the framework for
electronic commerce in the U.S., you had new WIPO treaties, you had digital
millennium Copyright Act, and you had kind of an overarching perspective on the
internet economy that I don’t see here.
Do you think that there is any need for major
institutional changes at the global level that would pave the way for new
initiatives in the way we actually make policy?
The WTO, for example, another thing that came from the late 1990s, the agreements
on telecom services. What I see is that
the globalization associated with the internet is really grinding to a halt in
many areas, that there is a new trade protectionism in different countries,
there is bordering of the internet by blocking and filtering, they is attempts
to linguistically border the internet. I
am interested in your approach to the globalization on the internet.
MR. GEIST: Who
wants to try tackling that?
MR. BESGROVE: I
can’t give you a terribly satisfactory answer, but certainly within the working
party on information security and privacy we have looked at some of the
responses to issues that cross borders in terms of things like spam and
malicious software, privacy and so on.
And it is very clear to us at the moment that there are some gaps which
are currently being met by informal mechanisms.
And our judgment is that those informal mechanisms are quite valuable
and we are suggesting that it is probably worth thinking about ways that we
could support them better.
It also seems to us that it is a bit early to do much
more than accept that those informal mechanisms are playing an important role
in a growing space. And it is certainly
one of the things that we will be putting forward for consideration within the
context of the ministerial. I can’t
really give you a more satisfactory answer than that. It is certainly something that a lot of
people are looking at, but there is not much clarity and there is no consensus
whatsoever to respond to your question.
MR. ALHADEFF: I
will take a shot at taking a slightly different attack at it. And I think if you go back to the time of the
Ottawa Ministerial, I mean, it was a new concept and we had the idea of, you
know, there was going to be the technology solves all was kind of permeating
through some of the hallways at that time.
And, you know, I think we had a lot of papers that were written on a global basis at that time and they started running into the fact that there are nation states, they started running into the fact that there are legal and cultural norms that vary across countries an