[EN] La société civile s'en va t'en guerre à l' e-G8

http://owni.fr/2011/05/24/direct-eg8-sarkozy-internet/
Improvised press conference of the civil society during the e-G8 Forum in Paris led by Jérémie Zimmermann (porte-parole de La Quadrature du Net) and with Jeff Jarvis (Professor in Journalism at City University New York) ; Lawrence Lessig (Professor at HArvard Law School, founder of Creative Commons) ; Susan P. Crawford (former ICANN member) ; Jean-François Julliard (directeur de Reporter Sans Frontières) ; Yochai Benkler (co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet).
http://owni.fr/2011/05/24/direct-eg8-sarkozy-internet/

Thank you, everyone to be here,

sorry for the improvising and

the impromptu condition

of this press conference,

as you also know,

there is very very little, if any,

representation of civil society in this eG8

In last minute on Thursday,

they threw in some foldable chairs for us,

they improvised some freedom of expression panel

just to say that our issues

were represented after all.

But what we saw yesterday

was Nicolas Sarkozy addressing

only CEOs and business actors,

telling them You are the Internet,

You are the revolution and

You are doing everything.

And you now have the responsibility

to fight the pedonazis,

the terrorists, and the copyright wars

so this is something that disturbs us,

I think, all of us, here.

Maybe each of us will make

a quick statement of 4 to 5 minutes

let's say 4 minutes if we can do it

We have fantastic people around here

from Yochai Benkler of the Berkman Center

to Jean-François Julliard of Reporters Sans Frontières

to Susan, how would you define yourself?

Susan Crawford, former ICANN board member.

Professor Lawrence Lessig who doesn't need any

introduction at all, and Jeff Jarvis.

Maybe Susan, you can begin.

The communique's already been drafted

for this g8 summit,

errr meeting, this e-g8 meeting.

It's been leaked to the NYtimes

which published this story this morning,

explaining exactly what the communique would say

The reason this press conference has been called is

that civil society groups have joined together

from around the world,

to issue a very short and simple statement

calling on the eG8 and in turn the G8

to protect the open Internet

to maintain the neutrality of the Internet,

to establish the principles that encourage

the free flow of the information

All of us sitting up here today

understand as do you out there

that an open Internet is actually the basis

for a democratic flourishing around the world

that all government policies

that hoped to encourage citizens

to flourish including education,

health, energy policy...

every variety of policy

that operates in the world today

are all encouraged by the existence of an open Internet

and that access to the Internet

is fundamental to human beings around the world

These are the most important policies

that governments should be embracing :

an open, fast and fair, and free Internet

so it's a very simple reason for this conference.

We wanna make sure that

these other voices are heard

even though the communique itself

may already have been drafted.

I call on my colleagues here,

Mr Jarvis, Mr Lessig, Mr Benkler and

Reporters Without Borders

to amplify on these remarks.

But it's really very simple :

we feel these voices aren't being heard

We really want to ensure that the voiceless,

the future that hasn't been invited to this conference,

is allowed to have its say as well.

Thank you Suzan

We have a few copies here

of the civil society statement to the eG8 and G8.

The signature list is not the latest one

You can see groups such as Access Now

who couldn't get a badge to enter here

the Association for Progressive Communications

I won’t name them all, but

there is german Digitale Gesellschaft,

the Electronic Frontier Foundation,

the European EDRI and so on and so on…

There is also this petition,

that was organized by Access Now,

that has been signed now by people

from more than nineteen countries

to reclaim exactly what was mentioned before

which is all that is not at the eG8

So, maybe we will hear now Jean-François,

because he will be leaving for a workshop later on

and yep : Reporters Without Borders.

Yeah, thank you, I’m going to speak in French,

I’m sorry for those who don’t understand French,

but I will say the same during

the next panel in a couple of minutes,

but I would like to say a few words

in French because there are many French reporters here.

I am extremely disappointed by what is said here,

in this meeting from the start

because we gathered the top people concerned with

the internet throughout the world

the CEOs of the biggest companies

those that made Internet’s

extraordinary growth possible

whereas there hasn’t been a single word

concerning those who are suffering

because of the Internet

I think of the 126 people who are now in jail,

126 bloggers NetCitizens, Internet users

who are jailed in Iran, in China, in Libya, in Vietnam

and in a whole lot of other countries,

who are jailed only because they have used Internet

I find this outrageous

that no one had a thought for them yet,

none of the leaders in the Internet sector

who talked since the beginning of the meeting

have had a thought for them

It is good to want to promote Internet,

but we should start with having a thought for those

who are suffering from this.

And I can also tell that if we need

to make only one recommendation to the G8

and the governments that compose the G8,

it would be to put the defence

of a Free internet before anything else.

There is today one person in three in the world,

one internet user in three,

who doesn’t have access to a free internet.

So before thinking of regulation,

before thinking of even defending intellectual property,

before thinking to promote

economic transactions on the Internet,

we need to focus on keeping Internet free

Focus on allowing the Internet users,

all around the world,

wherever they might be,

to keep accessing a free Internet,

and to keep accessing the same Internet.

So if we have to make only one recommendation,

it’s this one,

disregarding any other recommendation,

the G8 governments need to make the defence

of a Free internet their one absolute priority.

Thank you Jean-François.

It's very hard now to choose

who between those impressive analysts

will speak first

Shall we cast a vote ?

Professor Lessig, maybe ?

Yes, so, I just spoke and I'll be very brief.

It's surprising to come to France

and find something so deeply American going on

In the United States, for the last 30 years,

we've been trapped in an ideology

that says that we should regulate

by getting business together

and ask them what is good public policy.

We've done that in the United States

to our great detriment.

The financial crisis brought about by deregulation

pushed on the American government by

financial interests who benefited

and then brought the economy down

And in every other area of Internet policy

we see the same thing

we have no broadband

as Bankler's report for the Berkman Center demonstrates,

we have no penetration,

no effect of broadband in the United States

because of a strong policy of deregulation

that the American government bought,

and it bought because the only people

they cared to listen to were business

So to come to France,

and to see an event like this

where the presumption of the President is

« Get the biggest businesses together

and ask them what the future

of the internet should be » is astonishing

it’s just...

You know, I did a little bit of French philosophy,

but I don’t remember the French philosopher

who said : « Public policy is best devised

by asking the businesses

to draw up the public policy ».

That doesn’t sound very French to me.

So I’d love to come back to the Paris

that I loved before,

which is not the American version of Paris,

but the French version of Paris

by a reminder that they are more interests

than the interest of business.

Business is important,

and in business there is a division between

the incumbents and the innovators

and we have to keep that division alive.

But there is also the people

who built the internet.

They weren’t originally business,

it was civil society, it was ISOC,

it was ICANN... it was not ICANN, it was IETF

but it was a bunch of people who just aren’t here

so I agree with Susan,

we need to find a way to remind the people here,

that the people who are not here,

who are just as important to the story as them.

To avoid repeating

the critical change produced by

the digital network environment

is the radical decentralization

of the capacity to speak, to create,

to innovate, to see together, to socialize,

the radical distribution of the poor means

of production, computations, communications,

storage, sensing, capture, human sociality

that which gets us together

inside the experience,

being there on the ground.

That is true for the first time

since the industrial revolution,

that people can actually,

with the things they own,

capture the world and do something

that is at the very core

of the most advanced economies.

Preserving that framework,

preserving a framework that is open,

free-flowing, flexible, adaptive to change

and inviting so that one person's sacrifice

in Sidi Bouzid can then be translated

throughout the Arab world into

a moment of mobilization

That’s new, that’s what is critical.

For over fifteen years now,

we have seen two opposing camps

around the question of internet policy.

One camp is the camp of the 20th century incumbents,

who are afraid that something will change

who are afraid of the people rising to participate

afraid of the outsiders innovating,

and coming from the edges

who aren't authorized by the incumbents to innovate

who don’t have to come and say

« Will you please implement this

for me on your network? ».

These are all the companies

that we see now as great fifteen years ago

were from the outside

That’s where the source of innovation is

And the other model has been

« Let’s keep things open,

let’s keep things flexible, let’s keep things flow. »

And this opposition between those who say

« It’s going too fast, slow it down,

make it manageable, make it safe »

and those who say

« It’s extraordinary, it’s creative, let’s open this up,

because we’re in a process of

continuous experimentation,

and adaptation, and learning.»

This is an enormous learning moment.

That opposition has been there for fifteen years

and occasionally we’ve seen periods

such as in the United States twelve years ago

where the approach of shutting things down

making Internet Service Providers

have to look upon of what it is that the content

of their producers, regulating on software

regulating new services

to make sure that they don't make too much

of a threat to the incumbent industries win.

Then there was a long period of lolling

in between where we understood

the centrality of the commons

where we understood the centrality of what's open

and now what is baffling about this two days

is the seeming resurgence of what we saw

ten, twelve, fifteen years ago

as though we had learned nothing.

When people yesterday on the panel on IP

were talking about if we don't have

strong intellectual property

the Internet will be just

an empty set of tubes and boxes,

I heard that fifteen years ago, and maybe,

maybe then it was a plausible assumption.

Today, it is laughable,

except that it seems to have the ear of power.

So, I think that what's critical here,

is to understand is that there are pathways,

like the Hargreaves Report from last week

shows a pathway that says: No!

I don't have to lock things down,

I have to be very careful about

locking things down for IP

instead I need to explore ways

to open and allow flows.

That's the critical opposition.

Achieving socially desirable

and acceptable and legitimate goals

while retaining an open fluid free Internet.

Versus, being so scared of the new,

that you are willing to lock it down,

or to try to lock it down and to distort it.

That's the opposition on which we all have to be

-- whether it's about business, and innovation

about social equality and access,

or about democracy and participation

whether it's about liberty, equality or fraternity

-- we all have to be on the same side of the path

of retaining an open net

Thank you. Yes.

I find myself profoundly frightened

in these two days

I'm frightened of those who are so

frightened of change that they will try to stop it.

The Internet is not governments,

I said to President Sarkozy yesterday,

yet the government tries to act as if it is.

He said it was not clear,

he feels he has the authority to regulate it.

I tweeted this morning

that I felt rather like a native,

to be so presumptuous,

of the Americas or of Africa

when the colonist ships

would come in to civilize it

« We have nothing to fear »

As the CTO of the Verizon Administration

in America calls it,

the Internet is « The Eighth Continent ».

It is a new land;

it has not been colonized,

there is no flag from France

or the US or the UK or anyone on it.

It is ours.

So, to that extent

I don't blame President Sarkozy

and Publicis at all for convening this meeting

because they are filling a vacuum

that we the people have left.

Then I think it is incumbent upon us,

the citizens of this 8th continent,

of this new land,

to hold and convene our own meeting,

and our own discussion,

so we can invite,

we should invite, the governments,

we should invite the companies.

But I'd rather this discussion

was held at our table,

rather then at government's table,

which is what's happening here.

So what does that discussion need to entail?

I don't think that we need to have

Constitution or a set of laws on the Internet.

This... as my esteemed colleagues up here say,

it is the very architecture of the Internet,

that is its best protection

that is its very openness,

that is its best protection to stay open.

And the fact that it is distributed.

So I think that we need to have

a discussion of principles

as I say, or in... in...

it won't end in some sort of statute or constitution

because I don't think it should.

Yet I do think we need to have a discussion,

because we need principles we can point

to when we see them violated,

when we see Verizon, and Google,

right I am going to talk about Google,

I am a certified fanboy

but I am very disapointed in Google

for doing a devil's pact with Verizon

to cut up the Internet,

into the Internet and Schminternet

when you are on the wire it acts one way,

when you are out of the wire it acts another way

it's all in one Internet.

So, what are those principles?

On my blog I wrote a post

that led up to my question

to President Sarkozy yesterday

on my suggestion that he and others

take an Hippocratic Oath,

and I'm so honored to have been quoted by

Professor Lessig in a Lessig Powerpoint,

I'm sorry keynote,

I'm sorry we'll have an au revoir on this, but I...

There are many good efforts

to build Bills of Rights for the Internet,

and I have thrown out my humble suggestions,

and they weren't certainly wrong,

but I think among them

there is the right to connect,

and when someone cuts off that right

it's a violation of Human Rights.

So when Egypt cuts off the Internet connection,

the Human Rights have been violated.

That right to connect is a preamble

to the right of free speech.

And what follows the right of free speech

is the right to act and to assemble.

It was in the French constitution

that the notion of the right

to assemble was invented.

I think we need a notion that

our information of our institutions

and of our government

should be open by default,

and closed only by necessity.

We are the opposite today.

I think we have to have an understanding

of what it means to be private and to be public.

I wrote a whole book on that

- I won't bore you with that.

I think we have to respond

to the notion of net neutrality by saying that

all bits are created equal,

and that when anyone restricts a bit

for any reason, whether that it was a telco

to restrict how you watch a movie,

whether that it is China restricting you

to search for Falun Gong,

or is that Egypt cutting off the internet,

whatever the flow of the internet that is restricted,

the whole internet is restricted.

And so finally we have to hold up

to the structure of the internet

to be open and distributed

because that is its only defense.

But I would argue... I would say that...

they convened you've gone today.

It's very important and should continue

and we need to talk about these issues

at the table of the internet,

and not at this table here,

or not only at this table here.

Before we go to questions I have

comments myself on this whole « eG8 » thing.

Thank you for restating.

I think that beyond the right to connect,

it's existing fundamental rights

that are being used through the internet.

There is maybe no need to define

new freedoms because it's the existing

freedoms that are being attacked today.

So this eG8 forum,

beyond the local political whitewash

of Nicolas Sarkozy, after 4 years of pushing

for disconnecting French citizens

with the HADOPI law,

censorship of web content with the LOPPSI,

and pushing of his notion of a « civilized internet »,

he pushed up to the organization of this event.

Beyond that local political whitewash,

this eG8 forum is to me a smokescreen

to what the governments are really

doing towards the Internet.

In the last twelve months,

we witnessed an increase in the rate of

repressive measures attacking the Internet,

attacking our fundamental freedoms.

I'm thinking of the US government reaction

to Wikileaks, the US government seizure

of domain names,

the COICA PROTECT-IP act,

the conclusion of the ACTA

(Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)

that will turn internet actors into

private copyright police

the blackout of Internet in Egypt of course,

the administrative censorship of websites

in France, and other countries of Europe.

Everywhere you look,

governments are trying

to gain control of the Internet.

And what we are being sold here

is the red carpet to those, Orange,

Vivendi, Alcatel-Lucent and so on.

But if you look a little bit closer,

those very companies

are more and more basing their business models

on the restriction of fundamental freedoms.

Orange by selling this non-neutral

so-called « mobile Internet access »,

Vivendi by pushing for the tougher

copyright vision, 19th century vision

where you try to forbid copies at all costs

even if it implies to ban freedom to read,

share and access culture;

Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei are manufacturing

the devices that are being used

in authoritarian regimes to censor the Internet,

and by telecoms operators

who harm our freedom of communication

by harming net neutrality

So we, the citizens,

would expect from the governments

that they protect us from those corporations,

that they regulate the behaviours,

whether they're anti-competitive

or against our fundamental freedoms

from the corporations, but instead of that,

what we see here is the glitter and a red carpet.

Now if you have questions,

I see Jean-François has to leave,

but maybe if you're late to

that thing it will be all right.

5 minutes or something?

I mean, they're French, they will be late already.

Yes, of course but it will be another audience,

to tell the same, so I want to use

this opportunity as well

to raise this issue in a more official format as well.

You have maybe three or four minutes,

if then one has questions directed to Jean-François,

maybe first the questions directed to Jean-François ?

Or general questions ?

Ok, no questions so I'm free. Merci.

General questions ?

One here, one here and one here.

Yes, please, maybe you'd like

to speak in a microphone ?

If you want to come here,

Yes, one quick question,

I'm Eric Scherer at France Télévisions.

How do you reconcile

what you are saying,

about open Internet and freedom of expression

and the need to educate governments,

members of Parliament

and the rest of the society

about what you are just saying?

There is a big need of Internet literacy

to the governments

and to the members of Parliament.

They are totally illiterate about that.

How do you reconcile that?

Shall I take this one?

Well, that's what we are trying to do

with « La Quadrature du Net »

for more than 3 years now. And we are building,

thanks to an open internet,

a toolbox for citizens first of all

to understand what's going on,

and then to participate in the public debate.

So, we, La Quadrature du Net,

are nothing but the sum

of all supporters caring about those issues

and pushing for those issues,

to the parliament, to the elected representatives

and to all layers of civil society.

I think we have all the tools,

here on the table to do it,

it's just a matter of working towards it.

Larry ?

Yes. I think that the net

has been pretty good at educating itself

about the values of this network.

I can't speak for France or for Europe,

but I think in the United States,

we see in civil society communities

that are engaged in trying to spread

and defend what Internet is about.

The problem that I see in the United States is,

and again, I speak only of the United States:

our government is so deeply corrupted

by the dynamic that I'm talking about,

that there is a wide gap between

what the educators, the parents, the students,

everybody understands

the future policy should be,

and what our government actually hears.

So, I have shifted a bunch of my work

towards addressing that issue of

that corruption in the United States,

because I don't think we get

anything until we solve that.

But I think that we have

actually seen massive progress on this issue

over the past decade, and I'm encouraged by that,

at least in the context of what people think.

There was one question somewhere... over here ?

Ok. Jean-Jacques ?

Do you want to come to the microphone or shout ?

I can shout, if you can hear me.

Jean-Jacques, I work for European Internet Company

and I'm also Council member

of the Internet Society, ISOC.

Rather than questions, just to make a point,

this is not actually just another

of these ideas which are shared by civil society,

a lot of these ideas are also shared by

companies and actually the vast majority

of Internet companies out there.

Just yesterday, ISOC issued

a press statement which also

called for all stakeholders to be involved

in this discussion around the internet

and internet policy making.

Without all stakeholders being involved

have no point of having a discussion;

and they also called for governments

to uphold and protect the open

and decentralised nature of the Internet.

This is fundamental for all of us

in this ecosystem. It needs to happen.

This is not just about civil society.

This is about users, civil society,

technical communities and companies

and governments sitting around the table

discussing the issues.

Thank you -- I actually want to take that up

and emphasize it.

We have a long tradition

of thinking there is an opposition

between efficiency or competition

or markets, and justice and society,

and that somehow we have to trade off

between two competing goals

that aid society: growth and welfare,

and justice and redistribution.

But in fact, what has happened with the Internet,

is that growth and innovation is exactly

what democracy and justice require.

Both of them need the means of production

distributed widely in the population,

so that anyone can speak, anyone can create,

anyone can create their own innovation,

anyone can create their own business.

This age old traditional divide is a divide

of the industrial economy.

We have been able to overcome that divide

and today it's between

20th century business models,

and both innovation and growth

and civil society, democracy and justice

on the other opposing side.

In that battle between on one hand innovation,

growth, democracy and justice

and preserving revenue streams

of incumbent industries,

it is not a closed choice.

There was a question here ?

Yes, I guess this question is really

for Professor Lessig.

Very basically, why is this so hard?

You know the car came along,

we have parking tickets,

you can lose your license,

there are charges for homicide.

There is a wide range of penalties

for all violation shit.

Copyright law, as you rightly pointed out

at the debate yesterday was

the exact same one as it was in 1999.

So the Internet is not new,

copyright is not new

and I know there are obviously different

regulatory legal things around this,

but why have we seemingly made

no progress on coming up with

a very basic framework that has penalties

that fit all the different shades of violation?

I think it's actually different depending on the country.

I am struck by the debate

in France around copyright.

I was at conference at Avignon two years ago

and I felt like it was 1995 all over again.

Because as if nothing had been

ever talked about this issues,

it was the exact same framework

that we were fighting back then.

But other countries in Europe are different.

I think Germany, for example,

the green party has been pushing

what they call a « cultural flat rate »

that would be an alternative way

to raise money for artists,

that would decriminalize much of the activity

which in France people would be kicked off the internet.

And this point was made.

I want to re-emphasize,

there is something really outrageous,

this point was made on my panel,

by the French entrepreneurs.

There is something really outrageous

about the idea that the penalty

that has been discussed in France

is the idea that you disconnect yourself

from the Internet.

Only somebody seventy years old would think

- people don’t touch the internet

at seventy years old -

would think that's proportionate.

The idea that you will disconnect yourself

from the most important infrastructure

for community, and commerce,

and political activity is outrageous

and yet that is discussed here.

And in other countries, the Nordic countries

and in Germany it is a much more open debate.

In United States again,

I think it is just hide out

by this political framework

where both Democrats and Republicans

are so deeply wedded to the content industry

that you can’t even have an open debate

about this issue among politicians.

This is just not a political issue.

And I think that we need to take advantage

of places where it is a political issue.

So Brazil has been extremely important

getting people to recognize why

there is an interesting

opportunity here for development.

And we need to push in those places

to move it along.

But finally, what has been amazing

to me has been WIPO.

I was at WIPO about six years ago,

when I walked in the bulding I was the devil

and the director general wouln't talk to me

and everybody said no word.

I was just there six months ago

and the Director General is extraordinarily

innovative in his ways of thinking about

the way copyright has got to evolve.

And he's thinking exactly about

the kind of framework

for thinking about what

a future regime should look like,

and I got to address the delegates,

the delegates were encouraging

and thinking about these issues.

It was a completely different place.

And I think we have to take an advantage of that

to some point show countries like

the United States and France that 1995

thinking is so twentieth century.

If I may add something on that, though?

It's very difficult to add something

on professor Lessig.

Those companies with business models

in the XXth century

were based on controlling the channels

of distribution of copies

still have hope in managing to attain

the same objective with the Internet.

There is still a chance with the ongoing mergers

between those medias group and telcos,

with the very strong influence

they have on policy makers.

They still have a chance to turn the Internet,

the universal Internet we love and share

into a globalized distribution channel

for Vivendi, Fox and those guys.

So we're really at a turning point here:

why they are continuing like it's 1999,

it's because they probably still have a chance,

and maybe they have a greater chance

than they had in 1999 to achieve this objective

I'm sure there are tons of other questions.

Andrew Rasiej, the Personal Democracy Forum

I just want to make a point,

and you're welcome to comment on it,

that the arguments will be made now

by the government officials and by

the incumbents that the digital divide

has been bridged because

broadband distribution is available

in many places where it wasn't before.

But they are not actually focussing

on the fact there is a new digital divide

that most working class people

can’t afford the broadband that is available,

and so we need a reframing

of the term « digital divide » specifically around

this subject which is that cost has reached

beyond the point of most people

to be able to participate

in the 21th century economy.

We have to be careful that they don’t argue

against these points that you are making

today to say that we bridge the digital divide

and therefore obscure what is really going on.

Yes, just to add onto that:

to make things very simple,

we are in a moment when government

can join hands with the content industry

and with the telcos to enforce scarcity,

content controls, and lots of their desired goals,

in a sense this is feeding a revenue model

of governments and Hollywood

to constrain Internet access,

to make it much more like a 20th century

broadcast medium and our older policy makers

see the Internet as nothing more

than a one-way screen.

The rest of the world understands

that the world has been turned upside down,

anybody can be a publisher,

anybody should get access to this platform

for democracy, for speech,

for content creation, for human flourishing.

What we are witnessing today

is the joining of hands of these giants incumbents

-- and government is one of the incumbents --

to try to keep things as they were.

And many voices are being left

out of that conversation

who could add significantly.

So a purpose of this meeting here today

with all of you is to make sure that no one

walks away thinking that there is consensus.

There is no consensus on enforcing scarcity,

higher prices and constrain access

for world citizens.

The next Google could come from France,

could come from France,

should come from France

but if Internet access is constrained

and controlled, it won't.

I think this also provides an opportunity

to talk about something that we

- who come here from the US -

can learn very well from France

and perhaps that France can learn

from itself and its own experience.

In a study I did for the FCC last year,

it became very clear

that US broadband penetration,

broadband prices, broadband speeds,

relative to its performance in 2000-2001

had declined from 2002 until 2009

by comparison to European countries.

In doing a very close case study

of half the OECD countries,

what became very clear

was that on all these questions

of penetration, speed and price,

the critical intervention

that European governments undertook,

and in particular in this case

very successfully the French government

that has in France some of the lowest prices

for the highest performance in the OECD

because of this, is to force monopolists

to introduce competition.

And what we have to learn

is that we take this simple principle,

I mean understand whatever it is,

that there is a core platform

that can't be worked around,

one of the things that government can do

is to make sure that there is competition

as a way of reaching this goal

of not having people priced out

even though in theory there is a connection.

It is absolutely critical that we commit

in the US to open access

in the broadband physical layer,

it is absolutely critical that we commit

to open access higher up when

we talk about mobile wireless,

and we need to go to each country

and learn what it has done well

in its processes that have worked

and translate that both to other countries

and to other regulatory problems.

If you are looking for some more digital divides,

I can think of one.

Wouldn't there be a digital divide

between people being connected to universal,

unrestricted Internet access

and the people connected

to some kind of restricted, blocked,

throttled, prioritised network

that isn't related to the Internet?

And if we look at this divide,

maybe there are already more people

if you take into account China

and mobile Internet users,

there may be more people

on the wrong side of that

digital divide as of today.

I'm sure there are plenty of other questions.

Alex Howard, O'Reilly Media.

To what extent can people make a difference?

We've heard this communique has been leaked.

What can and should civil society

and average citizens do

to actually make a difference

to governments who are coming

together tomorrow?

As for tomorrow, we put up

-- it's more of a joyful protest

than something that may have an effect --

we launched a website called

g8internet.com on which we put a manifesto

and called people to react by creative resistance.

So there are dozens of works

that are being submitted, some very funny videos

or images, some trolls and so on.

But beyond that, I think it's about using

that freedom of expression

and freedom of communication

that we have between our hands

in an unprecedented way,

use it to make governments accountable,

use it to make our elected

representatives accountable,

and that's one key point

in the way we campaign

at La Quadrature du Net,

is to try to increase the political cost

of taking the bad decision for policy makers.

This is what we can do with our

added freedom of expression.

I just wanted to add to that

and emphasise a point that Susan has made.

I think that the biggest thing

that we can do is to negate the framing

of this conference as « everyone agrees here's

what the future of the Internet needs ».

And we negate that by first pointing out

that « the Internet was not here »

one slice of the Internet was here,

companies that can afford

the hundred thousand euros

sponsorship cost and whatever else.

They were here, that's fine,

but another huge part of the Internet is not here

and especially the innovating companies

that five years from now

will think of this equivalent of Twitter,

they were not here and so

« everybody was not here », number one;

and number two « we all don't agree

on the basic principles of what

we should be doing going forward »,

so I encourage the G8 to think about

how to open up a conversation

about what the Internet should look like.

I think Sarkozy's decision this year

to try to do that was a good one

but the question is :

« how do you do it so it really is the Internet

that we're talking about

and involve enough of the Internet

so they we can begin a conversation

towards that policy that would make sense ? »

Larry, if I may, you've just said that

you thought that it was a good idea

that Sarkozy launched this discussion

between governments.

Don't you see this also maybe

as some kind of takeover of Internet governance

by government to some extent?

Well, if the idea entails,

I think as Jeff was putting it,

the idea that we should be

taking over the Internet in some way, yes,

I don't think that's a good idea.

But I think that it is necessary

that we figure out how we preserve

this ecology of the Internet.

Like what do we do to make sure that it survives,

and we need that conversation

to include more people who say

« keep your hands off of this part;

intervene here, like Yochai was just saying

to ensure competition in access

at the physical layer ».

That's a conversation that's complicated

and important to have.

And I think that we need to have that,

and I think just right that we should have been

facilitating that more on our own.

We don't quite have the resources

that France has perhaps

to launch that conversation, but if we did,

I'd be happy to have that conversation certainly.

Yes, there's a choice between governments

only talking about this which is what the eG8 is

and a multi-stakeholders approach

which would involve civil society,

all the Internet users and the idea

that the Internet is for everyone

and not just for the large incumbents.

But I'm... I'm still scared.

And I want you to help me.

I think it's the right question:

« What the fuck do we do? »

Right? We can talk here,

we can change the framing.

But governments have the force of law

and companies have the force of the kill switch.

And so I'm not sure what it is that we,

the people of the Internet, really do.

What is the force that we are...

I'm a faux professor in journalism

so it's ballsy of me to quote Habermas.

But the counter to the weight

of government that he sought in the salons

and coffee houses, that I think is questionable,

we do have now, as a counterweight

to government and a counterweight

because Sarkozy said yesterday

that government is the only appropriate

spokesman for the people of a nation.

God forbid no!

Tell that to Wael Ghonim in Egypt.

The internet became the means

for the true voice of Egypt to come out.

And so I really ought to say

I don’t know what to do,

is there anything else we should be pointing out ?

Here is one point:

you know, we can romanticize the Internet

and I have spent many many years as a cheerleader

but the fact is, what the Internet does,

what people on the Internet do,

is more effective in some places than others

So I don't know if you saw

when the big bank bonuses were

recently announced and Goldman Sachs

-- huge bank bonuses.

In the United States there was

some frustration about it.

In Holland there was a twitter campain against,

that led to the governement

blocking bankers in Holland

from taking those bonuses,

a kind of unimaginable effectiveness

of the Internet to goverment policy

by getting involved in having

a government listen.

And you know,

compare that to the United States

where we just lost a battle in North Carolina,

where after the telecom companies

had succeeded into getting

the federal government to say

« No regulation of telecom companies,

not having any of your open access regulation

that Yochaim has been arguing for,

not even having any effective

network neutrality regulation.

They then went to the states,

because in the states,

you have local communities

that are building their own high-speed networks

much faster, much cheaper

than what the telecom monopolies provide.

And the telecom monopolies didn’t like that,

so what they did is they got the states

to pass laws banning

this local telecom franchises.

So here they do not want any regulation

from the federal government

but they want state regulation

to block some competition from local...

So we try to raise a campaign

around this and though we get thousands

of people calling the governor,

the governor doesn't think she needs

to pay any attention to

the internet community at all

So the difference here is not so much

the internet: the internet is the same.

The difference is the political culture

that feels that it needs to pay attention to it.

And the only way to force a political culture

to pay attention to you

is to punish them when they don't.

So in France, this three-strikes fact (Hadopi Law)

should be a source of extraordinary political

organization to punish

the French government and obviously...

It is, it is

...it is of course. It is!...

but the point is when that gets delivered

and that had a message,

when you go from a 5% return to a 20% return

then you're going to see

people recognize the internet is a force.

But we need to do that everywhere,

it is not something we can take for granted,

it is really something that's a culture

that needs to be built.

So what I hear you saying,

to oversimplify as is my want:

we're not protecting the internet,

we're protecting the speech, still.

Well, to simplify it even further,

when roles and office depend on

understanding what the internet is

and forwarding the internet's openess,

then we'll get the result we need.

If we can vote people in or out

based on their reaction to the internet.

Then we'll be going somewhere.

Governments only listen to

the people who elect them

and the businesses that fund their campaigns.

Right? So Larry is taking on the businesses

that fund their campaigns.

We, the internet people,

have to take on their election.

This has to become, as it has become in Australia

and in Canada, an issue

for the electoral politics.

Maybe we can ...

actually, we are all replying

with our own words to the great question of Jeff.

Maybe this will be used as a conclusion

I don't know, maybe there will be

some more questions but ...

There will be, there's one more question ...

In my view we have to continue

what we are doing, doing it more

and being more numerous to do it.

I've got a few examples

with our own campaigning

where we really made a difference,

whether it is with the amendment 138

in the European Parliament

that made everybody be shaking

with fear of « Internet's freedom issue »

we moved the lines in the ACTA agreement,

we directly changed some of its contents

and when we leaked that letter

from Nicolas Sarkozy to Bernard Kouchner,

who was at the time minister of foreign affairs,

who was to organise a conference

about freedom of speech on the Internet,

Sarkozy telling him

« in the balance of the freedom of speech

on the Internet, you'll put the HADOPI

and you'll put the civilized Internet »,

just leaking that letter

and organizing the leak with our Dutch friends

from Bits of Freedom made

the whole conference to be cancelled.

So we have examples already

of civil society pressures getting to a result.

I think it is the way we use our

freedoms of speech or expression.

I think it is the way we use it collectively

that makes us be citizens,

that makes us do our jobs of citizens

that makes us participate to politics

in the noble antic sense of citizens carrying

of the life of the « Cité » and this is exactly

what we have to do between two elections

and this how we win if you have

some volunteer time to contribute.

Well said

I just want to hear Yochai's answer

to Jeff's question first if you don't mind.

I don't want to take more time.

It's just, the stories you heard

tell both that we know how

and that it is very hard.

There are success stories,

there are failure stories.

But kinds of civil organisation

that were extremely difficult

and happened only in great moments of crisis

when people came out in the streets

are now more feasible

at lower levels of activation.

Whether it's free software developers

organising against software patents

at the European level,

whether it's the story you just call

about the conference on free speech,

the level of activation necessary

because the effort necessary

to participate is lower,

allows us more direct participation

but the stakes are very

very high on the other side.

If you look at the net neutrality

debates in the United States,

we did exactly that, we put it on the,

oh you, put it on the agenda.

It became a real agenda item, the only thing -

« We are unfortunatly not able

to provide you the last 3 minutes

of the Press conference.

See you on Owni.fr »