IGF 2021 - Day 3 - WS #175 Clash of Digital Civilizations: Governments and Tech Giants

The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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>> MODERATOR: We are going to start in one minute.  Microphone is working.

>> We all live in a digital world.  We all need it to be open and safe.  We all want to trust.

>> And to be trusted.

>> We all despise control.

>> And desire freedom.

>> We are all united.

>> MODERATOR: Good afternoon.  And I welcome those of you who visiting us in person and those who join us virtually.  My name is Anna Dupan, and I am researcher in Russian National Research, University National -- Highest School of Economics.  The topic of our discussion is Clash of Digital Civilization:  Governments and Tech Giants.  And this topic is interesting for me because over the last seven years I researched the problems of balanced regulation in digital environment.

Online part of our discussion will be moderated by David Okpatuma, who is a member of the board for France for leadership.  David, can you hear me?  Yes.

Today is the fourth day of the IGF.  And I visited a lot of sessions and how to think what's the most popular ones during all of these sessions?  Balance.  Balance of internet.  Balance of regulation, stakeholder regulation.

So, everybody talked about it.  And one of the main questions for our discussion is, is it possible to create balanced system of regulation where national interests of governments will be protected, where fundamental human rights of users will be protected, and when business interests of technological companies will be protected?

Yesterday Vint Cerf, one of the founder of internet, said very interesting thought.  He said that in modern world, the internet is the same global resource, the same ecosystem as that of all the world's oceans.  Of course, we can establish the level of one country, their rules, which how to protect or how to use (?) care, how to use world's ocean.  This requires the efforts of all countries.

In the past the establishment of rules for regulation of air was ridiculous and even stupid.  But now no one doubts that it's necessary.  We have a lot of international treatise concerning regulation of atmosphere and lotion and we have a lot of national legal aids which weighs on this convention of regulated atmosphere and world's oceans.  The same story is with internet now.

Since the IT giants have major entrance on the use of internet, it's time to define their rights and responsibilities towards users and national governments.  Now we have less than one hour to discuss these problems and I would kindly ask all of our panelists to meet their presentation within five minutes, or six.  And I suggest we will ask all the questions after the presentations.  So for our panelists I will present every panelist before its presentation.

And our first panelist, whom I hope will open our discussion will be Patrick Penninckx.  Mr. Patrick is the head of the Information Society Department of the Council of Europe, and he deals with freedom of expression, protection of journalists, data protection and the internet governance itself.  That's why Mr. Penninckx, I have the following question for you.  How to find the right balance between the respective roles of states and live platforms and many stakeholders as well as (?) themselves.  Without imposing drastic changes in regulatory and liability frameworks.  Mr. Patrick.

>> PATRICK PENNINCKX: Thank you so much, chair.  I never thought I was going to be introduced with the sound of the "Game of Thrones," especially not in speaking about the clash of civilizations.  Maybe it's the clash of thrones that we have to look into.

A week ago the Council of Europe adopted the framework, the framework for the management of artificial intelligence.  Some of us will say to which extent would we not have needed a similar legal framework when the internet came about.  Not in order to stifle it, but to enhance it, to ensure that on the one side you have announcement of progress and innovation, but also to underline that certain applications of the internet potentially pose risks to human rights, democracy and the rule of law.  In some ways we are backtracking now.

I think we need to be open to discuss those items, openly and freely.  Because there's a number of developments that we need to regulate.  I think we need to be able to regulate the prevention of unlawful harm.  We need to be able to regulate equal treatment and nondiscrimination.  We need to be able to regulate data governance for AI systems, ensure robustness, safety, security, cybersecurity, transparency, explainability, auditability, accountability to the life cycles of AI systems, but also in the life cycle of the internet.

We find that search an instrument should include provisions on access to effective remedy as well and mandatory right to human review.  We recommend that this issue be sustainable in relation to all AI systems that should be considered.

The Council of Europe has always had a very strong connection with civil society on the one side, but also has a strong connection with business.  And in doing so, we strive for a balancing act.  Council of Europe, together in the framework of the IGF, but also in the framework of the European Corporation of Internet Governance and in its standard setting approach has also formed a close cooperation with civil society, in what we call this multi-stakeholder process, which is so important also on the IGF.

The present of digital platforms over the past decades, obviously, has taken an incredibly fast, a whole new dimension.  At the Council of Europe we look particularly at the impact of the platforms and the internet intermediaries on human rights, the rule of law and democracy.

In order to be able to, as you say, balance the acts, we have to make responsibilities clear.  We should not be able to give too much responsibilities to private stakeholders, which some governments tend to do.  Think about hate speech.  Or not too little responsibility when they are taking over some editorial functions from curational functions.  We need to -- in the sense of digital platforms that have become an important part of our everyday information and communication activities, they have also transformed our media and use consumption habits.  They offer new opportunities in terms of access to information, freedom of expression, public debate and participation.  They have become gradually almost indispensable for all sorts of activities, commercial, cultural, social.  And at least for the two years during the pandemic, brought aspect even more to the front.

So platforms are not only become our intermediaries between content producers and audiences, about have also assumed the central position in the world economy, while the whole public sphere has gone through a tremendous transformation.  New powerful actors, internet intermediaries have become in a position of prominence and political importance.

So, those platforms pose new challenges.  They give us opportunities, first of all, but they also pose new challenges.  Not only for the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of expression and information, the right to privacy life and the protection of personal data, but also for the functioning of our democratic societies.  We have seen that.

If you see that around in 70 countries we have had election interference, that, basically, means we have to make sure that all of this is protected.

So, the rise of digital technologies and the fast growing use of artificial intelligence systems because that's one of the developments, I would say, that since the creation of the Internet Governance Forum, we have as counselors of Europe embarked far more into a broader area of digital development and its impact on human rights, and, of course, the latest exponent, even though this has been present for some time is the whole use of artificial intelligence.

And we have seen in front of such immense challenges that health crisis has exacerbated misinformation, hate speech, polarization of public opinion, have never been so widespread and are hindering the necessity necessary debates, discrimination, reinforcement of already existing inequalities, so where is the balance there?  Bias in treatment, permanent and generalized surveillance, manipulation of individuals, electoral interference are just some of the content risks related to the application of AI in general, but specifically also through the internet.

So, justifying a reaction, including through regulation, co-regulation and self-regulation from state and nonstate actors.  I will state there for the beginning and then we can open up the debate afterwards.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Patrick.  You have already said we have already heard from the member in parliament on the question to regulate or not to regulate, the answer of Europe is regulate.  But we need to find topics which will be regulated. 

So, now we know about the European situation and I would like to give the words to Mrs. Hariniombonana Andriamompionona, who can tell us about the situation in Africa.  A telecommunication engineer and a leader also.  That's why I like to ask you, what is the context of digital transformation in Africa?  What are legal frameworks of digital rights and internet regulation in this region.  Thank you.

>> HARINIOMBONANA ANDRIAMOMPIONONA: Thank you for giving me the floor.  Yes, I would like to extend our debate to another part region of the world.  The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation around the world.  Global coverage continues to grow.  Last year report highlights that even Sub Saharan African, which was the region with largest covered care is actually now at 81% covered sure, after it comes to concerns of onset, the ability, the resiliency of internet but we can say global coverage has increased consequently the last year.

So, the subsequent medication measures put in place by governments during lockdown period including the stay-at-home instructions have changed a lot the use of internet.  Internet has become a critical enabler of social and economic change, and therefore, new ways of addressing development challenges.  Those who are online tend to enjoy richer experience of internet by engaging wider range of activities.

Local startups, multinational companies was expected to be labor of development in the south and bringing with them new employment and increasing state resources, of course, they are engaged in both social impact and improved infrastructure.  To provide legal environment conducive to the creation of local (?) businesses becomes a priority in the south.  So, it has been more accelerated, flowing the outbreak of COVID.  We are then witnessing the adoption of legal data protection framework.

However, actually, only 33 out of 54 African countries have enacted that (?).  The others does not address the regulation, but they have not passed yet.  So, in addition to that, the countries have adopted various legislative frameworks and obligation that governor the way that content is regulated.

Despite these efforts which should have been improved to public-private partnership as well as the daily live of all citizens, there is a regressive online content and taxation.  Startups working remotely (?) as they do not participate or not enough participate in consolidation of state fund.  And straggling with license fees.  That is the situation.

A lot of African countries have recently still experienced internet or social media shutdowns and these disruptions have been ordered by the governments.  And even outside Africa it still happened.  They were related to elections, protests against government policies, government sites digital technology increasing, spread misinformation, propagate hate speech and public disorder, undermine national security.

The use of this practice means that the regulation phase and the government is trying to regulate by themselves harmly internet.  Internet shutdowns not only have impact on digital rights and even human rights, but it has corrosive effects on economy.

Governments should prioritize all shout and no arrest options when seeking best practices choice of regulatory issues.  Dialogue between the states and nonstates, multistakeholders could provide solutions based on improved internet governance (?) for the regulation or the taxation.  While criminal sanctions can be an effective way to counter hate speech, it is necessary to find an appropriate balance between censoring content and expressing freedom of expression.  I will leave it for now, but we will continue with David.  Thank you very much, Ana.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much.  As we can see the processes the same over the world, and with great pleasure I would like to introduce our next panelist, he is here in person.  It's Mr. Lucien Castex.  Mr. Lucien is representative for public policy of France, top level domain manager, and also researcher at Durban University.  Mr. Lucien, what situation with content regulation and regulation of digital platforms in France, and how its plan to provide transparency of digital platforms in the Europe?

>> LUCIEN CASTEX: Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me the floor.  That's quite an interesting question, indeed.  And, indeed, it was quite right to have the introduction from Patrick to set the scene.

The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly accelerated the digital transformation of the world and it's making visible key challenges such as digital transformation, for example, of SMEs and new policies on digitalization.  Also society and transformation of businesses are in the making.  And, clearly, there is also a need to consider digital inclusion by design.

Internet has an incredible potential but also pose a number of risks for human rights.  And one of the example which is quite interesting, is the balance between content regulation and, obviously, freedom of speech.  You need to have an effective remedy to unlawful arms but I wanted to present you two initiatives that we like in France, quickly, to notice your discussion on, first, fake news regulation.  And secondly, on hate speech.

So, first of all, there is a problem, clearly, of definition.  Regulating this information has a lot of implications for speech, but also for privacy.  And in the European Union, the ongoing dynamic in regulating this information is, as the chair said, focusing on the balance between rights, between freedom of expression on the one hand, and cybersecurity and the resilience of society on the other end.

For the French use case, I will go back to a law which passed in 2018 with the aim which is called the load, in French is --

(non-English language).

>> LUCIEN CASTEX: It's a fight against information disorders.  That law aimed, basically, to tackle this information online and better protect democracy against cyber threats.  It was enacted in December 2018.  It creates a range of new duties for online platforms, including an obligation to cooperate with regulator, the French regulator, and to develop a necessary accessible and visible reporting system as well as implementing a number of complimentary measures, some of which were mentioned by Patrick, for example, transparency of algorithms.

So, basically, the idea is to target the rapid spread of fake news online, and have a particular attention and, you know, in France we have a presidential election coming in 2022, in a few months.  So it's quite a key topic.  In an election campaign, either just before an election or, obviously, during an election.

So, in a nutshell, the law creates legal injunction allowing an interim judge to qualify the fake news legally and then order its removal under strict legal regime.  So fake news must be manifest, disseminated deliberately and compromised, obviously, the outcome of an election.

Another interesting point I will mention quickly is promoting transparency obligation for digital platforms and a duty of cooperation for such platform.  The compliance with the duty has been interested in 2018 to the French audiovisual regulator --

(non-English language).

>> LUCIEN CASTEX: In French.  And the authority has gained new power to do so.  A key point following remarks on the multi-stakeholder way is that the regulator at the time has put together a project team, which is becoming a direction with the growing duties of the regulator, and also an expert committee in a multi-stakeholder way composed of 18 experts from different backgrounds to be able to understand the phenomenon and to tackle it.

So, back to the content regulation dynamic.  Obviously, the freedom of speech and content moderation on the broader scale is still ongoing.  We had a number of legislation.  But I see the time going.  And you have also legislations at the European level, including the Digital Services Act, the digital markets act, the data act, the data governance Act, the AI Act, and most of these are being discussed as we speak.  The council position for the DSA are being validated last week.

And in the last months we had two also major laws enacted in 2021, one in August this year on the principle of the republic having new provision on these topics.  And another one on October 25, this year also, protection of IP in France and also the regulators (?) as well.

To conclude, clearly, there is a need of balance, not too much responsibility, but not too little, to quote my colleague.  And that's a key point, because it's encompassing all stakeholder to build long-term vision of the development of the internet with the aim of safe and stable internet.  Thank you.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Lucien, for sharing your position with us.

And now we want to know the situation on another group of -- in another group of countries.  I speak about the Latin American and Caribbean Group and with great pleasure introduce our another panelist, Mr. Roberto Zambrana, a communications engineer and his vast practical experience in the complex questions of regulation.

So, can you share with us your position.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much.  Happy to be here with this great panel.  Yes, in our region in GRULAC, in Latin America, there are certain experiences regarding all the different aspect of regulation that we had to face.  In my case, I was working for last 10 years at the city hall in the (?) Bolivia, in charge of the government era.  And we had a chance to, actually, provide a draft for a law in order to regulate what some people used to call transport services is.  Of course this kind of digital are in the transfer area but not responsible for the transfer itself.  We all know which kind of companies we are talking about.

And what we did at the beginning was to analyze what we had as the terms of use of this particular company, as initial study case.  So, one of the things that we noticed, because, as you may think, these terms of use are really long documents with different stuff and with several, several pages.

One of the things that we noticed is that in order to use this kind of platforms, the users had to resign all their information, their personal information.  And it's not something that usually the people is aware of.

The other interesting aspect is that in case of conflicts, we needed to go to the places where these companies are based.  That's another problem in terms of jurisdiction.  And, well, of course, when we started to write the law, we decided to ask them to change these kind of things because, of course, there are basic aspects that we need to have control in terms of regulation.  One of those is, of course, the jurisdiction.  The others are related with personal information.

And I am mentioning this as an example, because usually in most of the terms of use of this digital platforms, we have to face with this kind of reality.  And we can also see, we can also have evidence about this regarding how different these terms of use are from one region to another or from one country to another.

We would all like that this kind of terms of use based with approach of human rights, for example, will be the same for all the regions.  It doesn't have to be different in one to another.  And one of the reasons for this, I will say, it's in our case, in Latin America, we see this as great temple regarding Europe and European Union, because in Europe you have a way to provide regional regulatory framework and that's not the case in our region.  In our region, actually, we feel that we are really warm, actually we are (?) between each other.  But the problem is each country have its particular agenda.  And in regulatory area it's not different.  And that's a problem.  That's something that we as region, we need to learn from some other regions, such as Europe, in order to come up with a very strong regulatory framework.  Otherwise, going to be very difficult to face this kind of problems with what we call these giants.

I would like to put another example.  I was talking about public service, and the other example that I wanted to talk about is regarding to entertainment.  Again, and after pandemic or during pandemic, entertainment companies, again, grow a lot.  And which is good, of course.  The problem is that in some cases they were affecting local markets.

I would like to mention in our case in Bolivia, the TV cable companies.  Most of them are -- most of these companies are, actually, the companies providing telephone systems, telephone service, I mean.  And one of their core business was TV and cable services.  And when this entertainment companies, we are talking about, of course, as platforms, digital platforms, when they came to Bolivia to be one interesting and very cheap alternative for users, of course, nobody wanted to continue paying for the TV cable service.  So, that's another interesting aspect to analyze, because, yes, these kind of services in some cases are really disrupting for our local economies.  And in most of them, they don't even pay taxes, the local taxes, claiming that they can't pay twice because they already are paying taxes in the cities or countries where they are based.  So that's another problem that we need to face.

And we need to start talking about taxes.  I know.  Even being (?) which is a very dear person that I really appreciate and, of course, we all recognize him with all the great job have done, even he has a little bit of problem talking about taxation, when we talk about -- when you talk about applying these kind of taxes to digital platforms.  I know his point of view.  But, again, it's something that we need to start talking about.  It's really important about it.

Well, I think I can stay here.  I think I covered two interesting examples of what we need to face when we are dealing with these giant companies.  Thank you.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much, Roberto.  I remember that during our last session about emerging regulation, Sierra said we need regulation.  He also said about it, of course, he said about self-regulations and other methods, but he emphasize it's necessary to regulate some aspects of international attitudes.

And also you have very good idea that when countries have the same regulation, it's very good for them.  They have common legal framework and their experience of Europe emphasized it.  That's why we also need to look at its experience.

And our session called Clash of Digital Civilizations:  Governments and Tech Giants.  There are three parts.  We need to hear the use of civil society.  That's why our national panelist will be Ms. Mary Lou Cunanan.  She is virtually with us.  Ms. Cunanan is founder of daily newspaper and founder of -- culture to the world.  I hope Ms. Mary Lou provide us the user feedback for this problem.  Mary Lou.

>> MARY LOU RISSA CUNANAN: Good day, everyone.  My name is Mary Lou Cunanan from (?) and I'm here to share with you about our learning platform that was created during the COVID-19 pandemic and some lessons that we have learned about fostering digital innovation.

In 2019 about 8.2 million visitors came to Philippines because of business, tourism and the warmth of our people.  Philippine tourism was clearly on a roll.  However, this momentum was cut abruptly by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Those who wanted to visit the Philippines and experience our culture were locked out of our borders.  Out of this massive gap, see mana was born.  It is a Filipino virtual platform focused on culture learning experiences touching from local languages, Philippine mythology, cultures, medicine and so on.

We provide assistance to displaced hospitality teachers, tourism workers on how to pivot digitally and how to market their crafts and skills locally and help them become part of our platform so they could continue to promote Filipino culture under the new, quote/unquote, normal.

We expect it to grow even further in the coming years but so far let me share with you the biggest lesson we have learned as we grew our platform.  Multi-stakeholder cooperation is very crucial.  Suyomano, which is a private endeavor that started out as a passion project, would not be here where it is today if not for our partnerships with different entities from the government, private sector and civil society.  We partnered with Philippine airlines to create cultural packages, specifically catered to those quarantined after returning to the Philippines from overseas.  Many independent cultural workers -- and advocates are sharing our expert piece via our platform.

The board in promoting local tourism to international community and engaging cultural workers to go virtual.  All of these, of course, while complying with digital, local regulations such as data privacy acts of the Philippines.

Suyomano, as well as other emerging digital platforms, continue to evolve and innovate to shed beauty of the Filipino culture.  We are looking forward to partnering with government bodies, private businesses and state groups alike to help accelerate one of the pieces -- accelerate the paces of digital innovation in the Philippines.  So we are very happy that we have those partnerships with the government, cultural workers, private sectors such as airlines, in order for us to move forward and help together in this digital world.  I look forward to whatever questions you may have.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much, Ms. Mary Lou.  Now we are starting the period of questions and answers.  So, if you have questions and you are here in person, so you can go to the microphone and ask your question.

And our organizer, Mr. Roman, will help me with online questions from our chat.  That's why our first question will be from online.

>> ROMAN CHUKOV: Thank you very much for interests in our topic.  And I would defer to first raise the question/comment from the chat, which was my question.  I think that the crime, whether it happens in physical world or in digital space, we really need law and regulation to ensure social order, public health and users' rights in both spaces.  Immediately at global level especially when internet enabled crimes like ransomware or child pornography happen on the internet including cross-border social platforms.  Good and proper laws and regulations at national and international are necessity to have a safe, secure, healthy, let us free from harms and crimes for all.

Interest in rather comment than question.  I want to share with you very briefly my personal experience of IGF engagement, since I think 2016 or '17 in Geneva, and the next year I was elected to the mark, which I am outgoing mark member right now.  At that time when I raised the hand in the session for newcomers, I think Vint Cerf, we already mentioned, was there.  When I said the word regulation, the whole room was looking like, what?

And now you see the full room almost all the discussions are about this necessity.  Because the pandemic really showed us that we drastically need to understand the rules of the game and widely share the responsibilities, the rights and to ensure that all stakeholder groups are in a perfect balance and that all interests are taken into consideration.  This is my reaction and comments on our online comment and one of my friends told me that our main task is to ensure that the pandemic will not happen online, because if we don't take the necessary precautions and measures, including in this rules of the game or what the honorable Secretary-General of the United Nations recently proposed in our common agenda, the global digital compact, I think we need to proceed in that direction and I am happy that the United Nations is moving in this direction.  Thank you.

>> ANNA DUPAN: And, do you have any questions.

>> ROMAN CHUKOV: Can you mute the audience?  Thank you.

>> ANNA DUPAN: There is no question off-line.  Maybe you can -- you have question online or in the auditorium.

>> AUDIENCE: Me.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Yes, you can ask your question.

>> AMIR MOKABBERI: Thank you very much Moderator.  I would like to mention that I had one question.  In the situation of cybercrime, to whom we can call and mediate the (?) level officially went neighbor crimes like ransomware and online (?).  Internet including on the cross-border of social platform.  That was my question.

But I would like to mention, too, another important issue here.  If it's possible I can talk about --

>> ROMAN CHUKOV: Please keep it short.

>> AMIR MOKABBERI: As I have learned from Moderator, Mr. Cerf said, internet was life's world ocean.  If this notion, then we should access at least public core of internet is for all human kind, like outer space, it could be (?) human kind.  Then our nation should have share and role in internet governance in economy.  But right now I can an internet public program only under U.S. jurisdiction.  Don't you think that large outer space that the world has experiences of peaceful users of other states (?).  We need an international labor framework, I mean something like (?) user cyber space.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much.  It's a great idea and I also have the same position.  And I would like to ask Mr. Patrick Penninckx to answer this question, if it's possible.  Patrick.

>> PATRICK PENNINCKX: Thank you very much.  It is, indeed, possible to answer the question.  In the Information Society Department we happen to have one convention, which even though it's not global, was started by the Council of Europe some 20 years ago.  It's, actually, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, which is a cybercrime convention.  And that tackles exactly what Amir is referring to.  It has been ratified by 66 state parties right now, all over the world, not every country adheres to it.  But we have around corporation activities with around 130 countries around the world.

Just a couple of weeks ago it was supplemented by an additional protocol and that additional protocol refers to access of evidence in the cloud when it comes to cyber offenses, and it was already supplemented by a first protocol, which is intolerance and xenophobia.  There are tools out there and these are practical tools because it's law enforcement that cooperates together, police, prosecutors, judges, at a global level that cooperate in order to combat cybercrime.  That's not enough.  That is clear as well.  But that is, definitely, an important starting point.  And we hope this second additional protocol on cloud evidence will be ratified -- well, will be open for signature in May next year and we hope it will be followed by ratifications by the countries of all continents.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much.  And we have the question from our audience.

>> AUDIENCE: Hi.  My name is Professor Gunash.  I'm India.  I'm a professor of law.  And I'm interested by your regulation that you introduce in 2017.  I think that was the right time.

I do my research on law and regulation of AI and emerging technologies.  And my specialize in international law.  My question to this forum is that in last 75 years what we have observed, that we have created so many rules, regulations, soft laws, horizontal laws, sectoral laws, subject specific laws at the global level, but enforcement was an issue, yeah?  Enforcement was a very serious issue, even in the human rights, humanitarian law or even the WTO you have seen it was very difficult to enforce the judgments of the tribunal against the big countries.

So, having said that, my question is that when we talk about the virtual world where the countries even doesn't have much control, because the stakeholders, they have the independent presence within the country and outside of the country, so the question is that what type of rules and regulations we are expecting at the UN, are we looking for, again, the soft loads or some guidelines or some horizontal?  My first question.

And second one, two big players are absent in this debate right now, the U.S. and China.  The two countries, they are having the most advanced technology in terms of AI, cyber and all these things.  So, unfortunately they are not participating much at the global level.

So in their absence, if any law is made, so would it be possible for the enforcement?  Thank you.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much for questions.  And whom do we want to answer your questions?  Anyone?

>> I think anyone like (?)

>> ANNA DUPAN: Lucien, can you help us answer the question?  Roberto.  Roberto, then you.

>> Thank you, Madam Chair.  I will be quick.  Examples led were quite interesting, indeed, having international instruments.  Cyber (?) is in this regard as well as protection of personal data convention 108.

At the European level, just to give an example, the idea between the legislative package, DSDMA, as well as other acts such as GDPR or the Data Act, is as well to try to pave the way to enforceability and setting a scene of -- that, say, balance regulation, having actors collaborate in that sense.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much.  And, Roberto, can you add something to the words of Lucien?

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Yeah, very quick.  And I also wanted to mention this general regulation about data protection, because without the need to force to the global -- as a global level, because this is our regulation for European Union, without that need, as a matter of competitiveness, it had to be followed by all the world.  And I want to put just example in my country.

If one local company of transportation, air transportation, wants to transport European member, have to follow this kind of regulation.  So, in a way, that's another form of comply or reinforce this kind of regulations.  Thank you.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Roberto.  Yes, the problem of enforcement, it's the crucial one, I think, and that's why almost everyone think about the international treaty, because in this case it will be possible to reflect the provisions of the treaty in the national legislation.  And then provide the enforcement, like in at sphere we have international law and international practice.  How to enforce the international treaties.

Maybe someone else wants to answer -- ask a question, maybe from our online auditorium?  Is there anyone who wants to ask the question from online auditorium?

>> Still maybe have 10 minutes.  And I understand that while we are coming from Russia, we didn't share our own position from this, your space.  Maybe I can comment on this.  That would be a bit available.

And there is recent piece of legislation, like, local act, I don't know how correctly to translate it, but you can use very illustrative infographics from our website, organizers of this session, CGIC (?) you can come and visit our booth off-line or online, of course.  And you can see how Russia is trying to, actually, make this dialogue between global IT platforms.  And just to make it regulate it, but in the favor of all sides.  So kindly have a look.  And, plus, we also have recently issued a comparative analysis of digital platforms regulation from different countries.  It's also quite interesting because you see how, actually, very commonly many countries are now considering this necessity to regulate.  So I really do think that the answer of this question in there is, yes, to regulate or not.  But, again, I believe that we can all do it in harmony and that's all stakeholder groups can be eventually happy.  When users are happy, businesses are making profits, governments are happy, because their citizens are safe and sound.  Young people also should be happy and see the global perspectives for their talents realization.

>> ANNA DUPAN: And when you heard the speech of Lucien, I also think about the ability to provide transparency.  When we look at projects of this, DMAX, of course they are very interesting, they are huge, and they have a lot of provisions how to provide the transparency.  Maybe you can give us some examples of these provisions, how to provide transparency of algorithm and so on.

>> LUCIEN CASTEX: In six minutes?

>> ANNA DUPAN: Yes.  We have two minutes.

>> LUCIEN CASTEX: Challenging.  I will say this quick.  Indeed, you have a lot of instruments being negotiated with informatic instruments and intelligence proposed regulation, and also, as you said, backbone of the UN internet regulation with DMSDA package.  Designed it was that online platform need to be tackled at the European level, not necessarily at the national level.  As you said, obviously France but also Germany and other Member States in the European Union, national legislation, some of which were effective or were nice tries to try tackling, for example, accountability of such platform and putting forward new regimes of liability.

Other stakeholders are of the opinion that if an actor is too big, is too big to care, and then, obviously, there is a need to set international standards for the digital economy.  And for that, the main objective is to, let's say, to clear rule and redefine responsibilities of digital services to address the risks faced by the users and take into account gatekeeping position, meaning big actors that act as gatekeepers on markets and new market leveraged by such platforms.  Clearly to tackle you have IP infringement and reappearance of illegal content and also as mentioned by colleagues of (?) from time of law enforcement.  That's the aim of the packages, let's say.  And it's, obviously, being discussed, as we speak.  It's one of the key discussion of the French presidency of the European Union and as you may know, as the French president Macron will set the scene of the French presidency later today.

>> ANNA DUPAN: Thank you very much.  And our time is almost finished.  That's why we need to summarize our discussion.  As we can see in most countries there are the process of adoption of laws concerning digital platforms.  We speak about Europe, we speak about Africa, we speak about GRULAC countries.  And also if you look at legislation of Australia, United Kingdom, India, China and even United States, you will see that they are also try to find their instruments to influence their digital platforms.  And it's very interesting situation because I think in some time we will see that there are almost the same rules in different countries for digital platforms.  Because of dialogue, each country look for legislation of another countries.  Of course we analyze the European experience and, for example, Australia and United Kingdom experience and we have the best practice in our legislation.  And the same country as the same process.  That's why I think in the future we will have cumulative effect which is almost the same as international treaty.  But, of course, it can't be instead of international treaty.  Of course, the convention about cybercrime is very important, and we need to discuss it.  But it's also -- I think it's time to define some principle and main provisions of rights and obligations of digital platforms in international treaty itself.

First, it's content moderation, accessible access to data and structural services.  And other questions which are already defined in lots of laws or bills.  Thank you very much for discussion.

I'd like to thank everyone who join us.  And, of course, I would like to thank our technical team for promoting this session and, of course, I'd like to thank our panelists who join us here and virtually.  Thank you very much.  And I think this discussion will continue after the completion of our session and after the IGF itself, because it's the main question of modern world, how to find a balance.  Thank you very much.  And you are dismissed.

>> Thank you, Ana.  Tremendous job.  Thank you, participants.  Let's keep in touch.

>> We all live in a digital world.  We all need it to be open and safe.  We all want to trust.

>> And to be trusted.

>> We all despise control.

>> And desire freedom.

>> We are all united.

(Session was concluded at 13:48 UTC)