The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF 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.
***
>> PAULA MARTINS: Okay, let's start. Again, welcome all, all of you here in the room today and all of you joining us online. As you know, today we are hearing about many processes at the national, at the regional, and at the global level that seek to propose standards, regulate the Internet and its governance. However, we feel that a foundational discussion that should precede those discussions about governance, architecture, and policies, concrete policy proposals, should be ‑‑ it's not gaining sufficient attention and should be, then, a bit more of a priority and have more space for discussion. And that's pretty much what we are trying to create with this session.
And these questions have to do with what is the nature of the Internet itself, how it has changed over time, and what are the fundamental characteristics of the Internet in the past, today, and what are the main ones, how we want them to be in the future. What are the main ones that we want to remain as they are in the years to come.
So, in the session, we will have a stellar group of experts that will share their views on the answers for all these questions. I'll present each of them as I give them the floor. And to begin with, we will hear some opening remarks by Mr. Pablo Castro. Mr. Castro is Coordinator of Cybersecurity from the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Chile. Mr. Castro, you have the word.
>> Pablo Castro: Thank you very much. Can you hear me well? Yeah. So, good afternoon to everyone, and I also have to say good morning and good evening to everyone who is connected online. Thank you very much to all who argue organized this panel. It is an honour to join this session with representatives of Civil Society at the annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum. It's been years since the Internet Governance Forum was established, and since then, the Internet has acquired relevance increasingly linked with people's quality of life, enabling them to not only connect with family and friends, but also to exercise fundamental rights. It is essential that the Internet, including support and infrastructure remains open, safe, interconnected, and accessible to all.
From our country's perspective, this is only possible to address a significant challenge through increasing international cooperation among different stakeholders.
In recent years, there has been a debate around the nature of the Internet. Is it a right to exercise these tools. The answers to these questions could have deep implications for the formulations and development of public policies related with the Internet among nations of the obligation that each state has regarding this technology.
On one hand, if you consider the Internet has arrived by itself, different questions arise in relation to whom shall guarantee access to it and under what conditions, as well as the implication to sharing regulations on Internet providers. On the other hand, if we consider the Internet as a tool to exercise of other rights, such as freedom of expression or access to information, then the obligations states should have will be focused on guaranteeing that people have the capacity to use the Internet for this purpose. These include reducing the economic, geographic, and technological barriers that limit access to the Internet.
The question of whether Internet providers, from the private sector and concessions‑holders of public service, is another key issue surrounding this debate. If the Internet is considered a public good, that Internet providers can be seen as agents that give access to an essential service, which poses the question about regulation and assurance to equitable access.
In Chile, Congress is discussing a bill related to acknowledging the Internet as a public service. The goal that underpins the discussions to reduce the gap in Internet accessibility that keeps nearly 35% of children's homes without access to this network. The project considers imposing regulations regarding universality in relation to the coverage to connect them related to the accessibility of given subsidies for the demand for the connection service. The motivation behind these discussions, which affects both public and private investment, is to allow most citizens to have access to all services offered through the Internet.
Furthermore, the intervention of this in the name of public interest is an issue that must be analysed with caution. Even though it is necessary to guarantee equitable access and protection of citizens' rights, it can be also a risk, such as sensorships and limitation to freedom online.
Ultimately, common goods governance, such as the Internet, is a complex challenge. It requires a balance of individual rights and the promotion of the public interest. It also implies collaboration among different stakeholders, including governments, private sector, academia, tech community, and civil society. In this stakeholders dialogue for public policies about the Internet, we invite you to think about this question, to search for answers that can reflect the evolving essential nature of the Internet of our current society. Thank you very much for all your attention.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Mr. Castro, for setting the scene. And what we will have now is the first round of comments. So, we have some speakers that will talk about different approaches to looking at the Internet. We'll have each speaker talking about one specific approach. And then in a second round of contributions, we will have commentators that will be reacting to what they heard in the first round. And as I said, I'm going to move on, introducing them as I pass on the microphone to each of them.
And we will start looking at the Internet as a public good, something that Mr. Castro already referred to in his opening remarks. And I will invite Luca Belli. Luca Belli is Professor of the Foundation de TeleVargas law school in Brazil and coordinator for the information in technology. Luca, what does it mean to refer to the Internet as a public good? What are the concrete policy to doing that, the responsibilities for stakeholders based on that?
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you very much, Paula, for the questions, and apologies for being late. I was lost in the conference venue. And so, my first ‑‑ I have two key considerations here, if we speak about the Internet and its relation with public goods or whether the Internet itself can be considered as a public good.
The first one, the first dimension is that the Internet is a facilitator of public good. But at the same time, it can also undermine public good. So, if we think of public goods like justice, democracy, security, public health, they can all be facilitated by ICTs and by the Internet; but at the same time, we think about all the infodemics that we have just had, think about the pandemic, if you think about cybersecurity attack, if you think about meddling in Democratic processes, they can also be undermined by the Internet. So, the first dimension of the Internet as a potential instrument to strengthen public goods or to undermine them is very important and depends, is a function of the kind of governance that was just mentioned, the kind of regulation that ensues from the governance that we are able to define.
The other dimension is the Internet itself as a global public good. There are people that are much smarter than me, like Stiglits that wrote about this in the '90s, when he was sterilizing culture as a public good that is non‑rival in its access and the benefits are not exclusionary. And so, but there is a huge transaction cost to have culture, and the Internet breaks this transaction cost. But here again, it really depends which kind of Internet we are speaking of, because if we think about Joseph Stiglitz having a nice, a very good broadband connection, a nice PC, and living in a wealthy area where it's easy and affordable to have good Internet connectivity, that is an excellent example of how the Internet is a global public good because it allows him to directly connect with the global community and freely exchange so you can impart ideas and distribute or obtain culture.
If you think about how the majority world accesses the Internet, through a smartphone, usually through prepaid Internet access plans, where you have sponsored, zero‑rated social media that are sponsored for free ‑‑ for free ‑‑ of course, paid with your data, but not paid with money, whereas all the rest is capped, that is not really what Joseph Stiglitz had in his mind, and that strongly undermines, actually, public good.
So, at the same point, the Internet could be an enormous engine for strengthening public good, a public good itself, but also an incredible machine for undermining public goods, and also just to capture individuals into a set of tools that basically dataify them to then manipulate them, and therefore, undermining democracy, human rights, the economy of entire states, right? So, I think we have to consider this double nature of the Internet when we think about the Internet in comparison with public goods.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you so much, Luca. And thank you for calling attention to the different ways of looking at the Internet, as both an instrument for, like, accessing public goods and the Internet itself as a public good and what kind of Internet we are talking about.
So, I will now pass on the floor to one of our online speakers, and we will have now two speakers that will be discussing the Internet as a commons. Where is this concept coming from? How do you apply it to the Internet? And again, what are the concrete consequences of applying it to the Internet, especially when we use it in policy spaces?
So, I will start with Nandini Chami, Deputy Director of IT for Change. And she will be joining us online. Nandini spp.
>> NANDINI CHAMI: Hi! Are you able to hear me?
>> PAULA MARTINS: We are.
>> NANDINI CHAMI: Okay. So, quickly getting into the subject at hand and what does it mean to apply a common principles perspective to the Internet. I think at the very foundational level, all of us recognise that the entire charm and promise of the Internet is its affordance of being a communication commons for the entire world. And compared to all the other communication technologies that came before it, there is this possibility of many‑to‑many communication that is unmediated by a central broadcaster, and right from the beginning, this is the promise that feminists and progressive movements have always seen, and this is the web that we all celebrate.
But when reflecting on the Internet as a commons, I want to come to this with a reality check orientation also, that the community, communicator ecology of the Internet today is such that, as somebody once made a quip about, you know, the realistic perspectives on the world, the end of the world seems like far more easier for us to imagine than to think of the end of the big tech business model and its stranglehold over the Internet.
We are staring at a reality like that. I think that if we have to reclaim the Internet as a global communication commons, there are three critical areas that I place before all of you for consideration, and I think we need to fix that. So, the first is the issue of like, you know, the infrastructure layer, and it's captured by a few powerful corporations. We all know who holds the lion's share of the world's, you know, deep sea cables. And in the other, like you know, layer of the web, then we look at like cloud services, we know that just like four companies own 67% of the cloud services, like infrastructure today. And if the infrastructure is controlled by private sector in such a massive way, what is the scope for commoning? And then we also know that there are these egregious moves where the companies operating in the network infrastructure sector are also getting into the communications services sector.
In my own country, there is a debate on net neutrality violations, about what happens if telecom companies that hold the lion's share of the Indian market are going to operate in the network like, you know, services, digital services layer, and also demand a network usage fee from the digital services. There is a policy moving push like that. So, what does it really mean for net neutrality and what does it mean for the voices of everyone?
And the other problem we are all familiar with, about like what happens when big tech, who started out in the communication services layer, is controlling the deep sea cables that reach the Internet to the most marginalized regions of the world as well? And we know this issue and we have to do something about it.
The second issue when you look at the digital services itself, the entire point that, you know, there is a surveillant advertising model, and this has completely destroyed the generative power of the hyperlink, which was the open sea of the web, where the web serendipity, and instead, you have like, you know, this kind of social media model of the stream where we are all locked in our own, like, echo chambers and bubbles, and there is no possibility of commoning or any community‑building. We have discussed this problem ad nauseam, so I will not get into that problem again.
But in terms of solutions, if the most radical thing we can come up is like the model like the Digital Services Act, that bodes very ill for all of us, I think, about how do you actually get out of surveillant advertising and think of something different to reclaim communication platforms and the digital spaces. I think this is a question that stares us in the face.
The third point I would like to make ‑‑ and some of you may have seen this op ed piece that came out a couple days ago, co‑authored by the Chair of IGF Leadership Panel and Technology Envoy, where they actually argue about how, in the future of Internet governance, there needs to be a protective mode around the technical governance in terms of serving the political structure and functioning. But looking back at what has transpired in the history that has occurred is actually, like, Internet governance really are political. We all know the story of the incomplete internationalization of ICANN, and we know that the default is, like, one state is able to control the critical Internet resources still. So, if we are not, like, truly internationalizing Internet governance, and we are still, like, continuing to hold on to a somewhat, like you know, fictionalized idea of a political technical governance, then at another level, we all recognise that all technical choices are political choices, as was said. The architecture is a policy choice. And we see that the different geopolitical or economic visions of development have led us to a situation where, in contrast to the Internet we have known, there is another version of the Internet that stands before us today. It was mentioned by another state with a different political model. And we don't want to be caught in a geopolitical war of, like you know, where different political visions lead to Internet fragmentation.
But if we have to address this question, we have to talk about what are these political choices and not like rest in this, like, same old, like, idea of political Internet governance. We must move beyond that and look at, like, what would it mean to truly internationalize Internet governance.
The final point, and I'll just take very little time. I think when we look at the approaches, it may be important to not to see the global public goods and commons as oppositional approaches, as is traditionally done, you know, like when you talk about commons and when you talk about public goods. At some level, there is, like you know, this interesting research work that is coming out of Utrecht University, which is talking about the fact that, oftentimes, a public goods approach will provision the infrastructure on which commoning can take place, because it's important to think of like commoning as a noun, and also remember the communities, the people who are commoning. And then, we have to make choices where they may be kind of having this realistic approach where, like when you think about economy ‑‑ and India, my country, has traditionally thought of mixed economy ‑‑ you have public enterprise, you have private enterprise, you have cooperativist enterprise. So, when we think of Internet governance model, we must be actually asking ourselves, how do we get the public infrastructure and the public financing and, generally, like the governance of the standards in a way that is truly public? So, you build a commons that is truly belonging to the people and not the pro capitalist commons that is then just cannibalized by big tech. So, looking forward to hearing from everyone. I'll just stop here.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Nandini. Well, for calling attention about the idea of the commons and the reality check of the critical areas that need fixing so that we can actually have a commons, and for already touching on what will be the second part of our discussions here today.
And I'll invite now Bruna. Bruna will also talk about the Internet as a commons. Bruna Martin‑Santos is the Global Campaigns Manager at Digital Action. Bruna, you have the floor.
>> Bruna Martin‑Santos: Always forget to turn it on. Thanks a lot, Paula, and thanks, APC, for the invitation as well. And to bring such a relevant debate to the IGF, right? I guess in the past few years, all of us have spent a week in all of these foras or spaces discussing the most relevant issues, but we all live in these spaces feeling really bad and heavy from the pessimistic approach that normally this discussion has taken, so it's good for once to be doing more positive debate and one that looks towards to the future.
At the outset, I will maybe start by saying that for the past 20‑30 years, Internet governance discussions have all guided us through the processes, right, and operated under a normative framework that's focused on rules and values, all of that because it acknowledges how relevant the Internet is for societies and for its development.
There is a rich story and experience on how the internet works, what are the bodies that are involved in it. But we do lack sometimes the further inclusion of some other parts and some other groups in society, or even we do fail in bringing in this very strong global majority narrative to the conversation that's so relevant for everyone involved in this discussion to understand what are the problems in reality.
But despite that, we have also been watching the world grow more and more complex in the past few years, and the equation around things such as elections or human rights gets even more complex with many stakeholders being called to the responsibility to protect ecosystems and rights. And to me, this is very much connected to this discussion, right?
But at the same time, I think it's also possible for us to say that, despite a lot of the societal issues we face nowadays ‑‑ and sometimes problematic governmental intervention ‑‑ the Internet remains resilient in its core characteristics and aspects are still there, and it still allows for everyone to exist and express itself, and it's still perceived as a basic and common and really core aspect of every place that we're at.
I would like to also add that it's interesting to see how the community is evolving towards reflections and debates about things such as the failure of some companies and corporations, but at the end of the day, this is really a conversation about what are the discrepancies, what is lacking in access when we talk about access; what is lacking when we talk about stakeholders and bringing in more voices. As the good saying says, access your Facebook's not access to Internet, and we should not really rest until everybody understands and adds layers to that.
Just to go into the topic further, as a global public resource, I would say the Internet has to be universal and affordable, and its governance should be grounded in international and human rights standards and public interest principles. Technologies in the Internet itself, they do play a crucial role in addressing a lot of the global challenges, and we do need global calls to action to advance access to them and encourage countries to build what is needed in terms of technologies for everybody. And this says a lot about enhancing safeguards, addressing governance issues, and mitigating some of the abuse and some of the problems in this space Luca was also referring to.
Last but not least, I would say that more proactive engagement of the technical community is also required in this debate. The Internet doesn't magically exist or simply operate. We do rely on a lot of folks and expertise for it to exist. So, the success of all of that, the success of spaces such as the IGF is also reliant on these types of communities, such as the technical one.
And the last thing that I would say is that when we talk about all of this, the global equity crisis needs to be a key aspect of such discussions. A lot of the Internet‑related problems are rooted in inequality. This is one of them. Abuse of power is another of the issues. And insufficient collaboration is another one of the topics. And the fact that the narratives from the parts of the world that suffer most with set interventions are not the ones shaping the policies is problematic, so we need the global majority to be making the calls and leading the processes. And I do hope that in the future of spaces such as the GDC and Summit of the Future, we take that into consideration. I guess I'll stop here. And thanks a lot, Paula.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thanks to you, Bruna. Thanks for talking about the importance of, actually not only reflecting about different approaches, but also different realities, the role of inequalities and power politics behind the policy choices.
And with that, I'll move on to our final speaker of this round that will be, again, joining us online, and I will invite Azin Tadjdini, Human Rights Officer from rule of law and policy section from the High Office ‑‑ the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Can you hear us? You have the floor.
>> AZIN TADJDINI: Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me as well. It's a great pleasure to be with you and to also listen to people whose work I admire so much. So, I'll say a few words about Internet access as a human right or as an enabler of human rights. And this is a question that also Mr. Castro alluded to in the beginning, about how to actually legally conceptualize the Internet and Internet access which is a big debate, big debate also in the human rights world. Is it a human right in itself? Is it not? And what difference would it make?
So, there are these two pulls that we have. On the one side, the view that Internet is a technology, and it's a means to an end, but not an end in itself. And so, it is not a human rights and it shouldn't be a human right. And this, the view that, well, it's an enabler of human rights is what is currently reflected in the state of international human rights law, where Internet access, yet, is not recognised as a right in itself. But it is recognised as an enabler right in the sense that restrictions to Internet access can constitute undue interference with rights, such as freedom of expression or freedom of peaceful assembly, but also of socioeconomic rights, such as the right to education, the right to health. So, in other words, from this point of view, this conceptualization means there is a negative duty on states not to unduly interfere with rights as exercised online, but there is not a positive duty to actually provide Internet access.
And on the other hand, there is the view that Internet access is not only a tool, but it becomes so intertwined with our basic ability to exercise our rights, that it should be considered a human right. And then, in other words, there is a positive duty on states to ensure access.
And I'll go a bit back to this, but even though I initially mentioned that internationally there's no such ‑‑ or we haven't reached a state where international human rights law actually creates a legal obligation to ensure Internet access; at the domestic level, in some states, this is already considered a right, so it's an individual or a constitutional right in the sense that the law establishes a positive duty on the state to ensure universal access, and in some cases, also affordable access.
So, some examples that I think we have all heard of is, for example, the Constitution of Greece, that states that the facilitation of access to electronically transmitted information and the production, exchange, and diffusion of such constitutes an obligation of the states. And there is also similar language from the Constitutional Court of France and the Constitutional Court of Costa Rica. And a bit similar to what also I think the bill that is proposed in Chile, there is a law in Finland that has declared broadband access a basic right, and similarly in Estonia, Internet access is part of the universal service that the state has to provide to all its people.
So, at the domestic level, there has been a development towards recognising Internet access as a right and as a positive obligation of the state. And at the international level, that's not the case, although here I think it's also important to bear in mind where we've come from, so the development of how international human rights law deals with the Internet. And one milestone is, of course, the 2012 Human Rights Council resolution that was adopted to protect free speech on the Internet, and they've called upon states to promote and facilitate access to the Internet and international cooperation aimed at developing media and information communication facilities in all countries. So, it was the first UN resolution of its kind. And since then, there's a growing attention by human rights mechanisms, treaty bodies, special procedures, as well as regional human rights mechanisms about the importance of the Internet and Internet access to the ability of people to enjoy and exercise their rights. And this is also recognised by the Sustainable Development Goals, which reinforces an obligation to work towards universal and accessible Internet.
So, there is this development, and I think from an international human rights perspective, what would be important to ask is, so if we recognise universal Internet access as a right, what should that mean, because there's no one form of right. You have rights that can be realized progressively, depending on the resources of the state. And so, what would a human right to Internet access actually look like? Would it be an absolute right? Probably not. But if not, what would be the conditions for restrictions? What would it mean for the interplay between states and private sector, given precisely the sort of global nature of the Internet? And what would it mean, for example, for state duty to protect people from cyberattack that inhibit their access to the Internet? So, even if we move towards, or if the international human rights law moves towards increasingly recognising universal access as a human right, the question still remains, well, what kind of right do we want it to be and what would it actually ‑‑ what kind of obligations should it actually create? I'll stop there and look forward to the discussion. Thank you.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you so much for telling us a little bit of the state of the art, where we are, exactly, in the discussions. We still have two views on the Internet as a right in itself and the Internet as an enabler, but I understand that not only in the examples of national legislation, but the other examples of global policy that you mention, this direction, no, that it seems that we are taking to recognise it, access to the Internet as a right in itself.
And with that, we'll move on to the second part of our discussion here today, that is inviting some commentators to react to these different approaches that were shared with us. And the question is, what are the key, the main takeaways from what you've heard? What are the main commonalities, the divergencies, and how these different concepts can be combined, complemented, how they relate to each other, and how we can use them in global policy spaces. Easy questions. So, Anriette, I'll start with you. Anriette Esterhuysen is Senior Advisor for global and regional Internet governance with the Organization of Progressive Communications. Anriette.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks. I was just trying to convince David to go first. Thanks very much. And I'm sorry I was late. I had another session that ran a little bit late.
I don't know if I have anything useful to say, even though this is a concept that I've personally been grappling with for a long time. And I think what I really want to celebrate and thank APC for doing is to actually get us to talk about this at the IGF, because I think what this is responding to is a conversation that Internet governance should have started with, not actually be trying to end with or go into its next evolution cycle with.
I think that ‑‑ I mean, anyone from the technical community who, if they were here, would say to you, the Internet is not one thing. But actually, as I listened to the speakers, it resonated with me ‑‑ the Internet is not one thing. And for me, that also resonated with Nandini's comment about not looking at commons and public good as being in opposition. And I think, similarly, looking at Internet or access to the Internet as a human right or as an enabler of other human rights, that's also not a conflict, so I think there's synergy between these three different concepts that are being discussed.
And I think what they all speak to is the fundamental problem. And I think Nandini articulated that well, and maybe also before I came. But the fact that how we imagined this Internet as a connector of people, as a disruptor of concentration of power, as a leveller of distributing more voice and more influence. We've lost that to a large extent. And I think what we are really talking about here, whether we are entering it from the commons perspective, the rights perspective, or the public good perspective, is to look at it at a framework that will allow us to reclaim that.
And then I want to just go back to reflect on maybe this is about the Internet not being one thing. And I think we also have to keep in mind that it evolves, and that if we are going to try and make a contribution to Internet governance and encourage some kind of paradigm shift, if we can get as far as that, I think it has to be something that is future‑oriented, that can address the challenges of how a technology that emerges within the public domain, for example, can then become appropriated by commercial interests, further developed, and invest ‑‑ it's a little bit like the pharmaceutical industry. We wouldn't have medication if it wasn't for private sector money going into it, but we also wouldn't have drugs and retrovirals in my country if governments did not intervene to ensure that those patents were available. So, you need a shift of some kind.
So, I'm not going to ‑‑ I'm going to let David give you all the answers, but what I want to say is I think we can look at the concept of the public core of the Internet that is a norm that has been developed. I was personally involved in that. The Dutch government, Dennis Bruder did some work on this, a Dutch academic. But trying to identify if there are parts of this distributed, interconnected Internet which we can actually govern and regulate and manage as a public good, public structure. There are analogies. We can look at places where water is supplied in a municipality by private companies, but there are standards and procedures that private companies have to adhere to, to ensure that that water is affordable, that it's available, that it's clean. And then we have the notion of the protection of the public core as well, which, it requires both governments and companies not to interfere with it in particular ways.
Then I think there's the idea of the commons. And I like Nandini telling us that we don't have to think of them as alternatives, public good, which generally comes with more of a sense of the public sector and the state having to play a stewardship role and the commons, which is much more of a bottom‑up process.
There are parts of the Internet which I think is the commons, but then, there are also parts of the Internet that is run by the private sector and that's bought out by the private sector. And we have to accommodate that. We can't change that. I don't believe in nationalizing the Internet, but I also don't believe in surveillance, capitalism, and models where our data, our behavior, our communications are being extracted for commercial gain. And I think there are ways of looking at that, very practical ways, for example, such as the data that emerges from all these companies. The European Union now has regulation that ensures researchers have access to that data. If you're in Brazil and you want to access what happened during the election with social media last year ‑‑ was it last year or the year before? Last year. You'd have to pay millions of dollars to get access to that data. So, there are lots of things. There are parts of the Internet that I think we should be able to claim as being in the public domain.
And then, I think, then I'm just going to end with two bullet points before I give this to David. I think it is important to recognise that the architecture of both the Internet and of Internet governance, so the technical architecture and the governance, including the technical governance, is not apolitical. I think that's a very important starting point, and I think Bruna also made that point, that point about power, and I think that's important.
Then my final bullet point is, Mr. Castro, I didn't hear your comments, but I think Luca's point about both the positive and the negative outcomes of looking at the Internet as a public good. I think all governance models, including the status quo governance models, we need to look at both the intended and the unintended positive and negative consequences, and I don't think we're doing enough of that with the status quo. But as we develop alternative models, we also need to look at intended and unintended consequences.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Anriette. David, we are ready for all the answers now, so I will invite you to ‑‑
>> DAVID SOUTER: I was trying to send a story and you can't get answers from ‑‑
>> PAULA MARTINS: Let me just introduce. David Souter is Managing Director of ICT Development Associates. David, now you go. Sorry.
>> DAVID SOUTER: Sometimes I have the misfortune to examine PhD thesis in the social sciences, and to some extent, I feet like this is the opening chapters of those theses, where the poor student has to go through every kind of theory there has been in the area in which they're trying to work on and then bring those things together and come up with some kind of new concept, a new contribution, which draws on each of those other areas of previous work. And in very many cases, they get trapped in the semantics of this. And I think there is a danger here of being trapped in the semantics of this. There are, okay, so, we have different conceptualizations here, and you can draw on all of them. Maybe A plus B plus C is essential. You can draw on these things without putting them together. I was a historian, not a social scientist, and historians start by looking at the evidence and only come to the conceptualizations that social sciences use at the end of their analysis of the process. So, that's how I tend to look at things.
So, I'm saying don't be trapped in the semantics.
I think these are fairly random thoughts about the three points that were made. So, there is no constructive theory here because you can't write an essay while sitting listening to the presentations.
But first, in terms of public goods. I mean, when this was first talked about, the Internet, public goods, about 20 years ago, there was a lot of confusion because there is the economic definition of public goods as non‑excludable, which was understood by economists, but then non‑economists were using the term to refer to things that were thought of as good of the public, and in particular to see the Internet as a delivery mechanism for things that were for the good of the public, and that very much puts it in the kind of area of traditional regulation of utilities. It's saying it's a utility which provides a service to people, and therefore, should be universally accessible and available at affordable prices so that everyone can benefit from it. It seems to me that that's the kind of Genesis of that concept of public good.
Whereas, the concept from the commons seems to me to be derived more from the Internet as a communications medium. And in that context ‑‑ so, communications medium ‑‑ and it should be universally available because it is a communications medium and enables everybody to talk for everybody else, as opposed to a medium that delivers to them products and services. And I think the issue here is to do to some extent to the evolution of the Internet. So, once upon a time, it was small, and now it is large. And in things that are large as the Internet, you have infrastructure and you have intermediaries. It's not possible for something that large to be conducted without those things. And if you have infrastructure and intermediaries, you have the power structures that go with that; you have a requirement of a capital investment. And there are not many places where that capital investment can come from.
And in the case of the Internet, you also ‑‑ and other communications media ‑‑ you also have network expert analyses. So, the more people there are on Facebook, the more valuable it is by a factor that is more than equivalent to the numbers. If you have 10 million people on something, it is much more valuable to you, one person, than if there were only 10,000 on it. And those things drive the power of data corporations. It's very difficult to see how you can avoid those power structures. So, if you can't avoid those power structures ‑‑ well, it's not possible to say I can avoid them ‑‑ if you have to regulate them. So, it brings it back, I think, to the regulatory structures that are required. And there are traditional economic models for doing that as well.
And the rights perspective is obviously crucially important, but the rights framework, the international rights framework doesn't cover everything that needs to be considered here, and that's, I think, part of the difficulty in trying to root things in a purely rights perspective. So, the rights perspective focuses ‑‑ the rights framework focuses on states, not on corporations. And increasingly, it's corporations where the real power lies. So, where the responsibilities and obligations that are placed on those corporations.
Generally, there's been discussion in a rights context about particular rights, and there's been an underemphasis on economic, social, and cultural rights, and so on, the development of the environment kind of domains. And I think the rights perspective is a different lens to that which is used by the most powerful actors within the Internet world. So, it's a different lens to that used by governments; it's a different lens to that used by corporations; it's a different lens, in particular, to that used by some governments and some corporations. So, it's an extremely important perspective, but it's not sufficient in itself to cover all that is required. Those are random thoughts not yet in essay form.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, David. And I think our proposal is not to get lost in translation; it's not merely a theoretical exercise. What we are proposing for the discussion here today. But really, to think about the policy consequences and use these entry points to discuss the nature of the Internet and what kind of policy responses we're looking for, for the upcoming years and for right now, actually, for the present, not only for the future.
What we will have now is we will open the floor for questions. So, Nandini, in a second, I will give you the floor to share if there are any questions online. Then I'll ask here if there are any questions in the room. And after that, I will give you all, speakers from the first round, a final chance to react again from the comments you heard from the commentators. You have two minutes each, so it's just like firing back. Maybe if there are any specific questions to you. And then we will wrap up with my colleague, Valerina to try to summarize some of the key points coming out of the discussion. Nandini, do we have any questions from the online participants?
>> NANDINI CHAMI: Yeah. There are about four questions, so how many can we take, Paula?
>> PAULA MARTINS: Let me see. How many questions do we have in the room? One? If you are going to read them quickly ‑‑ they are all questions or comments?
>> NANDINI CHAMI: They are all questions.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Okay. So, yeah, just read them all. We will give the floor here in the room, and I will just invite you to do your best to respond to them. Go ahead, Nandini .
>> NANDINI CHAMI: Yeah. So, first question is about, how do we ensure that what are the best approaches to ensure that we bring affordable connectivity to the largest number of people? The second question is actually ‑‑ yeah, the second one is a comment about the Internet as a tool for empowerment, so I'll skip that. And the third is a question about, what do we do about energy footprint and the consequences of the greenhouse gas emissions and everything of like digital technologies? And how do you think of the sustainability question for there?
And then the last question is about, is it possible to make Internet available and accessible for the underprivileged in developing countries? And what should actually be done about it, like what can we do next?
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Nandini. If you could use the microphone to your left.
>> AUDIENCE: Thanks, Nandini. I think what you said actually kind of addresses, like mentions what I want to ask, but I want to be very specific in what I want to say, which is, Internet for all of us is the web and not accessibility in terms of infrastructure, the fibre, the something, and all that. Internet is the web, which is hyperlinks, interlinking, hypertext, and all those things.
Now, there are 3 billion people in the world who cannot read and write, 1 billion in India who cannot, like, do Google Search, make sense of the results. And if you can't read and write, what is Internet for you? Why are we not pushing technical people to look at this and see what is hyperlinking when you don't have text? What is, you know. And there is so much we can do. And we, as a group of very highly evolved, literate people, stop asking questions when it comes to the web and Internet.
For example, when you give a book, you write in the margins. How many of you have asked, why don't I have it on the web? You know, this is the starting of a beginning ‑‑ beginning at, like, why we need to push things, okay? This is all I want to say. We need to look at it ‑‑ IGF is a forum, not like the Silicon Valley, not like the corporate, not like something, where we can actually take a decision on what is the technology that helps push the web to the illiterate people.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Danesh. Mr. Castro, can we start with you? Two minutes. Everybody will have two minutes to react, or both to respond to questions and also some reactions. Would you like to? Yeah? Okay. So, Luca, we'll start with you.
>> LUCA BELLI: All right. So, I just want to react quickly to the comment that has just been done, about the fact that for most people, the Internet is the web. I think I disagree. And my point before was precisely that for most people, actually, the Internet is not the web, because for those who have the privilege to have fixed Internet access, and you can use the web as an app to browse through the Internet, and that is a chance. But for most people, actually, a couple billions at least of people in the world, a web is only ‑‑ is more part of what they do in the Internet. What they primarily do in the Internet is using two or three applications, which is on their mobile phone. So, it's a very tiny part of the Internet, and it's really an enormous world garden in which they do not ‑‑ they don't have the privilege of being Internet users, browsing through the web, but they are dataified, basically, the entirety, and they are fed with algorithmically recommended content, based either on their profile or based on who is the most.
So, I think if we want to start them to get into what the IGF could do, well, what it has been doing over the past years, it's allowing a platform for these issues to be discussed. What the IGF has not been doing but should have been done is also to try to recommend solutions that could be utilized to, if not solve, at least mitigate these kinds of issues. And these kinds of issues, if they require cooperation. If you take my point on the possibility to consider Internet as a public good, any kind of public good requires cooperation then to be managed, right? The commentator explained about the fact that at the end of the day, public goods end up being utilities, of course, because the market does not know how to price them, and then you have usually the state intervening to provide them.
But it is also actually a huge problem when you undermine them, because if you use ‑‑ if you have a lock, for instance, 3 billion people into a couple of social media platforms and feed them only with fake news, then you are undermining democracy, you're undermining human rights, you're undermining the economy, but you cannot price it. You cannot say ‑‑ you can say 10% more connectivity penetration equals to 3.6% increase in GDP, but you cannot say 70% of people in a country only having access to Facebook equals to minus 50% of democracy, because you cannot price democracy. You cannot price ‑‑ you cannot metre it. So, we ‑‑ I think that we have to be a little bit creative on not only discussing these issues, but also understanding. My point on public goods isn't necessarily ‑‑ I am not advocating for considering the Internet a public good. I think one has to consider both sides of the coin. And then, the interesting part of it would be, and then not to understand whether the Internet should be considered a public good, but whether, when it undermines public goods, how to metre it and which kind of solution ‑‑ who should pay these costs?
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Luca.
>> (Off microphone)
>> PAULA MARTINS: Yes. Nandini, thank you so much for doubling as our speaker and our online moderator. I would like to give you the floor now to have your final remarks.
>> NANDINI CHAMI: Yeah. So, I would just like to take on one of the questions that came from the Bangladesh Youth, which is, what does it mean to make the Internet accessible and available and affordable for the most marginalized? Because I think it speaks to everything we have been talking about so far, including the Internet as a right, the public good questions, and the provisioning Internet as an information commons that is not like cannibalized by surveillance capital. It speaks to all dimensions of the question.
Here, I think that right from the time of the World Summit on the Information Society, we have been like, you know, we fail to find a proper public financing model that can ensure that the Internet in its foundational sense, and not like zero services type of world garden version, is available to everyone in the world. And 20 years after the WSIS mode, we are still talking about that agenda. So, I think we need to kind of have a way to discuss the financing question about that.
And secondly, I think when we are talking about Internet access, the question of access to what, which many of us have been talking about today, that needs to also be addressed, because what is it that this access is supposed to do? Like, there is a study in Africa that talks about the conductivity paradox, where connectivity actually means like more digital inequality. Is that what we want? Or do we ‑‑ are we talking about a world where connectivity means equitable access to the data dividends and the development dividends of the Internet for everyone? So, we might have to kind of, like, push this in, like, however we engage with in the Global Digital Compact process and the World Summit on the Information Society action lines that may come up. So, I feel we have all a lot of work to do here. And thank you, again, for organizing this very, very important and critical discussion.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Nandini. Bruna.
>> Bruna Martin‑Santos: Thanks, Paula. Yeah, just to add some more thoughts to this. I think I agree with some of both our commentators' additions to the conversation about that this is a debate where Internet governance might have started, right, but it's also important to be coming back to this at this point in history, where we still see the gaps, right? And also agree that some of the concepts are not that ‑‑ definitely not opposing, as well as with the idea of not getting lost in the semantics of the whole conversation.
At the same time, addressing the gaps is urgent. Mitigating the abuses and discrepancies as well. We are at a moment in history where it seems to be a need to cooperate even further in order to advance the development and use of digital public goods or Internet as a common or as a human right. At the same time, it's important to discuss appropriate safeguards to ensure the protection of rights, privacy, data protection, as well as inclusion of all communities and genders and regions and claims. This will help us build trust around this space, foster an inclusive technology ecosystem that also meets the needs of the local populations, because it's what we're talking about.
And last but not least, I would say we do need ‑‑ and I hope we get out of the GDC more recognition of the Internet and information as a commons or a public good, and how are we moving forward in governing that and managing that as a collective resource. So, thanks a lot.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Bruna. Azin, can we hear from you?
>> AZIN TADJDINI: Thank you, and thanks to everyone, including the questions online. So, yeah, just to start, I completely agree with David's point that the rights framework doesn't and cannot cover all the elements of Internet governance, all the questions that arise there. But I think it's still ‑‑ the development in the rights landscape will also impact very much on the reality. So, rights will not just reflect the facts. Very often, they don't. But the way in which these discussions are later articulated in terms of rights, legally conceptualized rights, will also impact how, of course, Internet governance takes place. And so, it's a very central part of the discussion.
And also, just on the sort of question about infrastructure versus access. I think one added value of the Rights Framework, is particularly the question about what type of Internet or what type of access do we actually speak about and what kind of content do we speak about, considering that so much of the content in places where people actually do have access to the Internet is very heavily interfered with by states, but also by private sector. So, that's where I think there's an added value of the rights framework, which provides for the free flow of ideas of all kinds.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you, Azin. I only referred to the speakers, but we still have some time, so I'll give our commentators also the chance to share some final remarks before we have a quick systemization of the key takeaways. David, Anriette, who wants to start? I'm asking if you want to ‑‑ yeah.
>> DAVID SOUTER: Maybe I'll just pick up on a couple of the questions and kind of raise some complications with them. So, first thing, on empowerment and tools for empowerment.
I've always had a slight problem with the way in which this concept is used, because innovations like the Internet empower everyone, not just those who are disempowered and not just those who we might hope to empower because they, you know, because they're disempowered, or for progressive reasons. And the Internet empowers everybody, including people who are powerful and abuse their power. And in particular, it can empower people in the sense that people are disadvantaged in the sense that it gives them additional resources which they can use in effective ways; but at the same time, it can empower those who have power over them more than it empowers them. So, think of that in terms of employer/employee relationships, or landlord/tenant relationships, or some gender relationships, family relationships. So, empowerment is more complicated issue I think than is often discussed here.
On the environmental points, I didn't quite catch the question. I sort of ‑‑ I spoke in the main session from the platform this morning, in the main session on the environment. And so, I do think this is a particularly important dimension and is often missing from, still missing from our discussions about the direction of Internet development, and more generally, digital development, which is now much larger than Internet development. And I think there are many dimensions to it.
It's often discussed in digital fora on the basis of what can be done with digital technology to address particularly climate change, but it's important to look at this in a broader perspective. So, there are three ways in which the digital sector is currently unsustainable in the way that it is progressing, and those are to do with the overexploitation of scarce resources which are used in digital devices. The energy consumption growth rate and e‑waste, which is rarely recycled and substantially dumped in developing countries. So, all of those things need to be addressed. And what I was proposing in the session this morning was that we need to introduce into, across the board in Internet governance and in the thinking of governments and businesses and the technical sector, an environmental Ethos which thinks about environmental impacts as part of decision‑making processes, for example, in setting standards in developing new applications, in deploying networks, so that the goal is both to maximize the potential value of those innovations and to minimize their environmental footprint.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much. Well, thanks for the questions. I think much as we want to paradigm shift, we're not going to get one, so we have to start somewhere.
And I think the one thing that ‑‑ there is a lot of regulation of the Internet. I mean, we've talked about the European Digital Services, Digital Market Act. There's regulation at many country levels as well. But I think the problem is that the regulation, a lot of the regulation is actually not targeting the powerful, it's targeting people, it's targeting users. It's not targeting the manufacturers of the devices or the builders of the infrastructure. So, I think maybe a shift away, yes. Regulatory response is necessary, but shift that regulatory response in such a way that it actually tries to address concentration of power in a more effective way. And this applies also to the issue of the environment and environmental impact. So, we need more common acknowledgment and some principles that we need to regulate how companies do business on the Internet, not just in the European Union and not just targeting the big tech companies. Actually, we need to look at business as a whole and look at diversifying and opening markets more and opening innovation more. This notion of permission of innovation is another thing. We need to be able to regulate innovation in such a way, not to prevent it, but to prevent harm. And we have principles from the pharmaceutical industry, the idea of the precautionary principle. If new apps are developed that could change how children learn or how people interact with one another, and why should those not be first tested before they can go into operation?
I think we need to also regulate how infrastructure is built from an environmental impact and energy perspective. And yes, I've mentioned devices already, and this includes the disposal of the devices, but the endurance of the devices. I mean, surely, we should have regulations that stop e‑waste from proliferating at the rate that it does. One can introduce standards for the manufacturing of devices so that they last longer, so that they can be updated. It is possible to change that. But I think to change that, we also need to shift our understanding of development, this whole notion that growth equals development, that we'll alleviate poverty by creating more rich people. You know, we need to shift away from those conceptions.
But then, I think one of the real challenges here is that, because we're dealing with a globalized network and a globalized market, we cannot rely on our traditional ‑‑ I think the rights ‑‑ by the way, I think the Rights Framework does give us what we want, but there's one thing in the Rights Framework that doesn't work that well for us, and that's the concept of the state as duty‑bearers and the rest of us as rights‑holders, and that it's the state's responsibility to ensure that private sector actors comply with rights frameworks. It's very hard to make that work within the current Internet context, both because the companies are so powerful, and because the states are so unaccountable. It becomes very hard to trust states to play the role of holding business accountable when states, themselves, are not accountable for acting in the public interest and managing and growing the Internet and regulating the Internet in the public interest.
And then, I think we also need to have a third dimension here, and that is about empowering communities and allowing communities to create their own approach to Internet. I mean, one of the things that we've learned in APC, by working with community networks, is that there are communities. They only want Internet in their village. They don't actually want to connect to the global Internet. They're quite happy just to be able to have free WhatsApp calls, you know, in their own area. So, I think that's the third thing.
So, I want to stop at that, but I want to say, as Azin mentioned the complexity of the human rights framework. I think it gives us a lot to work with. I disagree with you on that, David. And she didn't mention specifically, but the business, the guidelines on business and human rights, which will probably never become a treaty because some governments will block it, but it's providing us with really good guidelines on how to ensure that companies are accountable.
>> PAULA MARTINS: Thank you all for the very insightful contributions. Very, very interesting. And I'll give now the floor to my colleague, who took lots of notes and she'll tell us how to use all of the insights we collected here today.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you, Paula. And thank you so much to all of you for your insights. Actually, Anriette, you did my job, so thank you so much. So, I won't repeat what has been said. I just want to say that we were motivated to convene this conversation because, obviously, there are questions that are not resolved, starting by the basic one about what the Internet is and also how we can deal moving forward with the governance of not only the Internet itself, but the governance of the implications and impacts of its use.
And we are in a very particular moment in which also the evolution of Internet governance is proving that it is interplaying very directly and deeply with the broader governance of the digital realm. So, in this current moment in which several spaces and processes dealing with issues of the Internet policy and Internet governance and digital governance have proliferated.
So, what can we do? What's next? How can we keep contributing to it? Like, two years ago, we started a process to imagine the future of Internet governance, and this session kind of closes that initial phase of our reflection and also the thinking and analysis of how we can fit into these several processes that are looking at the configuration of the digital future. So, in this moment, I think the speakers have said it all. I think what we can push for and how we expect to use the outcomes of this conversation is to precisely nurture and fit into the thinking of what are the compromises that are needed between the different stakeholders and what's the principles that should guide Internet governance and digital governance moving forward to precisely avoid what Anriette was saying, to avoid, like, causing harm and putting people in the centre and regulating in a way that we address the structural problems, and particularly, the concentration of power in corporations, but also the lack of accountability of public actors in particularly government. So, we expect to use those, not only in the framework of the IGF and the conversations happening here, but also in the framework of the Global Digital Compact and the WSIS+20 review and the commitments emerging in the context of the acceleration of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. So, the role that we want to play and how we want to use these inputs is to make sure that these questions that have kept unresolved for so long are still addressed and that we address in a way that helps us to move towards basic compromises to address structural inequality towards ensuring that the Internet can serve the purposes of ensuring a dignified life for everyone. So, that's what I want to say. And they I pass it to you, Paula, for closing.
>> PAULA MARTINS: And I would just like to thank you all again. Thank you, Valerina, the participants online, the speakers online. And with that, we wrap up the session of today. Bye.