The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: (Speaking foreign language). Good morning, everybody. My name is Carolina Rossini. I lead the global work at Public Knowledge. It's a nonprofit based in the US, a watchdog for net neutrality of the Internet and more. I'm from Brazil originally and I'm very proud to have the IGF back in our country. Our panel is going to deal with one of the most complicated and old, I think, discussions in this world of technology which is copyright and copyright reform and balance copyright.
And we were very lucky to have incredible representation from sectors here, so I'm very proud and I thank you my colleagues and my co‑organizer, Stuart ‑‑ raise your hand, Stuart ‑‑ from the International Federation of Librarians, and Chris is our remote moderator, thank you Chris who helped put this together today.
So there is a lot of evidence backing a lot of discussion of copyright. Even with a lot of companies and sometimes countries trying to find evidence and even academia, for example participated in research in the past about piracy for economy, the good and the bad of it, we still have a lot of questions that were not answered yet. So I think I posed the challenge for panelists ‑‑ and I would love to call them provocateurs (phonetic) instead of just panelists to think about this today.
So this discussion we are going to go in certain order and I ask the panelists, our group of provocateurs to actually refer to four main questions. So in their four to five minutes they are going to refer to them.
Due to rules as they exist in specific countries add to or detract from economic growth, the copyright rules. If the copyright system is strengthening Internet potential to boost economic growth and promote cultural diversity and how it should balance those. How copyright reform could be an incentive in developing countries, and list developing countries. Is it possible to achieve balance between all those interests including Internet users, right holders and Internet companies ICP et cetera?
So these are some of our core questions that have hunted and inspired a lot of us to work in this field so I want to start with Jose (?), he's from the Brazilian ministry. So bear with us. I have to do some form of simultaneous translation here because this room doesn't have simultaneous translation. And then after that we are going to move forward. Thank you, Jose.
>> Good morning. I apologize because my spoken English is so weak but Carolina will help me. (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: So what he's suggesting is the questions we have posed can be summarized in one question, which is in what measure copyright and regulating copyright can serve interests of promote economic development and diversity.
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: And he is a regulator, responsible for copyright reform here right now, has very important question to answer which is which audience we need to address, what are the benefits? And is it society or companies, who is our audience?
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: And our regulation can actually facilitate access to knowledge or create barriers to access to knowledge so we have to be very careful when we develop regulation.
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: In this sense the Ministry of Culture in Brazil sees this problem in two senses. The first one is regarding what Brazil calls the digital agenda of copyright. And by this they refer to work done at the World Intellect Property Organization in Geneva and they think that the treaties that have dealt with technology are already old because Internet and technology are moving so fast.
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: And the second aspect is that one that refers to exceptions and limitations to copyright.
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: And in regard to statute of limitations for framework what they take into consideration is the three steps test rule ‑‑ and ‑‑ oh, yeah, and unfortunately with the three steps test is a very difficult rule to interpret and a lot of countries interpret it in a very restrictive way.
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: And he believes that we should come together to rebuild the interpretation of the three steps test in a way that facilitates better exceptions and limitations.
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: And it's very important ‑‑ and Brazil thinks of that in two levels: At the national level and at the multilateral level. He doesn't think we can do differently way because technology does not know barriers.
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: And the current actions in Brazil leading with this national and multilateral level, national is the copyright reform that has been going on for many, many years and also the international level at the WIPO where Brazil is going to present a paper in the December meeting to review the digital agenda of WIPO moving forward.
So thank you very much. So now I would like to give the word to Katherine Oyama from Google. She's based in Washington, DC, if I'm correct.
>> KATHERINE OYAMA: Excellent. Thanks so much. My name is Katie Oyama. I work for Google. I'm based in our DC office and I focus largely on copyright policy and law. So I guess starting off with the broad perspective, you can imagine some fictional country that's building out a copyright regime for the first time and they're pursuing this reform with a lens of how do I preserve a specific way of doing business? How do I use the law to maybe preserve a certain way of distributing content?
And sometimes traditionally in this fictional sense it's been a very small universe of copyright lawyers, very specialized. Even in Washington there were times when it was a table of people that would kind of sit and hash out these types of proposals. I think something that is happening all over the world that is encouraging is a broadening of the participation and the stakeholders in this process to really reflect policies that reflect interests of authors and creators and innovation and online platforms users that want to access content.
And I think countries do best when they're kind of working backwards from the perspective not from the fictional model of how do you preserve one way of doing business because that shouldn't be the purpose of doing business, but really starting from a first principal of how can a country establish law and policy to really encourage creativity. And that's really the purpose of copyright.
So just in the short time that we have I wanted to flag a couple ways that we have learned kind of through our experience certain features in various countries that have really kind of helped promote creativity and innovation. We are happy to say thanks to the Internet we have seen an explosion of creativity across a variety of platforms all around the world, more music is being produced, more books being written, more films being created and more users able to access. And really barriers to entry for media and content creation falling because of the Internet.
So today things that can happen all around the world that were never possible probably even 10 or 15 years ago you can have a young person who records something in their home, they upload to it the Internet, they can reach a global audience. On our platform for example on YouTube there's a billion users that will come. So if you have compelling content you can reach an enormous audience.
Companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Pinterest, they will all tell that you protections for online platforms and copyright systems are crucial so when you have user‑generated content making sure that platforms are not going to be sued or made liable just for what one user does, that's incredibly important. I think having a balance system that has rights as well as fair use that all of digital platforms are now relying on is also extremely important. Fair use can be both commercial and non‑commercial.
And also I would say very simple and clear rules. So you want to encourage brand new company startups that have just a couple of people to enter markets. So having simple and efficient licensing through copyright, not super complex, not the kind of legal uncertainty that will create a lot of fear but to actually encourage a lot of people to have a great idea and go to market and then over time you can build more sophisticated tools has been tremendously useful.
So I'm sure we will come back to more ideas but I think preserving safe harbors, being flexible, having fair use and not having incredibly scary system is always helpful.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you so much, Kate. Now I would like to invite Paolo Lanteri.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Thank you, very much. I think I'll take the question regarding balance. And I would like to start with linking with the intervention of Katherine that we just heard that we are not here why the system is actually facing some challenges of course but at the same time we have to recognize that there are also many opportunities that have been taken by industries offering unimaginable services only a few years ago and the user's freedom in access content which has reached levels that were absolutely unimaginable only a few years ago.
So the thriving market that we have just heard about has happened within the current framework, this is a fact. So we have this framework, it's challenged but it's also in some ways functioning as well. I would be interested in knowing the proposal of the Brazil about reforming digital agenda as far as I know the digital agenda in WIPO, if we can call it digital agenda, which the organizer of the panel asked me to refer to.
So we can debate whether the system is already fit for the purpose of striking the balance, whether the current flexibilities enable countries to have long space, large space of free users. For instance, what is happening in the U.S. but also in the European countries like in U.K. where you have a long list of exceptions that are tackling some of the challenges posed by the digital environment.
So the three step test ruled in a way functioning, it can be maybe made better but we have to recognize that some results have already been achieved through that rule.
The organizer asked me to move to some more practical analysis of what can be a practical process with which we can reach a balance. If I can access my slides on the screen. The first remark about if we want to discuss about possible copyright forum is we have to discuss first if it's needed or not. As we know the copyright system does not rely only on low, but there are other issues important like enforcement and management.
Low is only one piece of the puzzle. And the first question we need to answer is whether we need the reform. Imagine for time's sake that policymakers agree that we need to modify the international framework, then I would see WIPO as the ideal forum to strike the balance. WIPO is a very open organization, more than 300 NGO's represented. All of them have free access to the working documents, free access to speak at our meetings. WIPO has 188 member states and they play a very important role and they are more and more engaged in the copyright agenda of the organization.
So having said that, if we look at the screen, these reflect a little bit how the system is structured. There are initiatives that focus on (?) reform and those are the standing committee of copyright and (?) rights. The crucial one of the main elements of the agenda is actually limited exceptions. The more mature topic is limited exceptions for the benefit of libraries and archives.
There are a number of useful working documents and studies that survey the situation all around the globe. To be frank and realistic I think the political situation the committee has reflected in recent years does not allow us to be too optimistic in a quick solution of ‑‑ in a quick closing of this item in the agenda.
In fact in the last three years member states will not agree on future work on this topic. Although there is a clear interest, vast majority of countries agree that it's an important topic and it's reflected in our agenda.
To close I would just like to mention there are a number of other improvements that can be achieved without (?) like in the content of management or improving legal offer, improving how collective management is working, improving documentation. And WIPO is very much engaged in these areas.
So with that I think I'll close and I'm sure there will be questions. Thanks.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you so much, Paulo. And if the panelists do not address the three step test, explain what it is because it's a very technical term. Maybe Carlos Afonso can do it, too. But now moving forward we have Christina de Castell from IFL, which is the International Federation of Librarians, and has been working tirelessly on implementing the development agenda and also fighting for exceptions and limitations for librarians around the world. Thank you, Christina.
>> CHRISTINA DE CASTELL: Thank you for that introduction. So I'll touch on a couple of things that, Katherine, on the clarity of law and, Paulo, on the work of international reform.
So in countries that have a system of copyright exceptions already we have certain areas of ambiguity that can detract from economic growth and one of those is text and data mining. So we can take Europe as an example here. Text and data mining analyzes a body of existing knowledge to generate new knowledge. It can improve the performance of science by speeding up new discoveries based on using existing literature without looking to laboratory‑based research.
However, researchers can't take advantage of those opportunities or any of the advantages of economic growth in big data without clarity on whether this work can be undertaken within an existing copyright exception.
In other countries we have no copyright exceptions and limitations for libraries, for research. There are 32 countries including Brazil based on the WIPO study done by Kenneth Cruz that don't have exceptions in these areas. So in these environments a librarian photocopying or scanning an article for a user is breaking the law. You can imagine when we can only conduct research when a physical building is open and we have access to a physical book, we really aren't taking advantage of the economic opportunities of the Internet.
So is copyright strengthening Internet's potential to boost economic culture and diversity? Well, in a digital environment most of what libraries and researchers are dealing with is licensed content and this is putting barriers in front of access to knowledge. Content becomes more expensive every year and the cost increases exceed the rate of inflation. So generally the cost increases for a general database are running at 10 to 15% in Canada where one percent one the rate of inflation in that country.
These publishers have substantial profit margins. They are making money off of this proposition. The other side of the high cost of licensing digital content is that libraries have less money for local content. E‑books published by multinationals in North America cost as much as $100 per copy to lend to one user at a time, where a print book costs $15 for a library to buy with the same ability to lend. If libraries lend multiple copies of hundred dollar books, over time the collections get narrower instead of more diverse.
So although the internet and digital content has enormous potential, the restrictions of the licensing environment are reducing diversity for content for traditional publishers.
And then a question of incentives for economic development in developing countries. Creators build on the work that comes before them. Fair use and fair dealing systems create that potential, limiting copyright terms so that work enters the public domain at life plus 50 years, for example, and insuring that contracts ‑‑ the copyrights don't override exceptions put in place by legislation are important elements.
And we can see the recognition of the need for exceptions and limitations when we see where the support for this work is happening at WIPO for libraries, archives, education and research. It comes in international forums from developing countries, from the Latin American region, from African countries and from India. These are places where the potential of copyright exceptions and limitations are recognized and those countries support very strongly those opportunities.
I believe that it is possible for us to achieve balance if we have strong voices to support users, creators and the public domain who can explain how to balance their interest. Again it's voices that have far more money to spend in their efforts to sway policy makers. Thank you.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you so much. And I don't want to spoil some of the optimism in the room but with the trade agreement coming to force just approved (?) being published a week ago, the average copyright protection is now 70 plus, not 60 plus so keep an eye on all agreements.
So now we have Emilar from APC bringing news from the copyright reform in South Africa. Thank you.
>> EMILAR: Thank you so much and hello, everyone. Okay. So in South Africa the copyright amendment bill has been released against the backdrop of the national draft intellectual policy which aims to deal with the fragmentation in the coordination of all matters related to intellectual property in South Africa.
I'll not really talk much about the bill but what we have done is APC in relation to responding to that bill. And I'm sorry I'll go through my notes like reading because English is not really my mother tongue and I'm not sure you will be able to translate my mother tongue. And we don't actually have copyright in my mother tongue. I don't know how to say.
But anyway, a high level of copyright protection is crucial for intellectual creation because copyright insures the maintaining and develop of creativity in the interest of authors, producers and the creative industry; and it also protects you and me and the public you and me. An effective system for the protection of copyright and related rights is necessary to provide authors, artists, creatives with awards for their creative works. The publishing sector creative industry makes an important contribution to the South African economy and to the African economy but if you look around the room there are not so many Africans here because copyright I think we need to put on the agenda and discuss why it's important and what challenges that it brings. Copyright is also a policy in line with as for progress and innovation but existing copyright laws not only in South Africa but in Africa have traditionally attempted to strike a balance between ensuring award for creativity, investment and dissemination of knowledge, and one of the speakers that talked about balancing of rights. But we should acknowledge that balancing of rights is problematic, to each bill problematic when it's applied to balance of security and rights and privacy monitoring and interception. It often boils down to the balance interest of the powerful and the weak. And some of us who don't even own anything.
Powerful artists and performers research those who are just starting out. How do you reconcile this? How do you level the playing field? For some copyright is a route to wealth but whose wealth is it? That's the big question for me. Where is the money going to? Is it going to me, the person, or to the big tech companies? As I said already, balancing of rights is problematic. Libraries and lawyers in companies cannot be balanced very easily and balancing of rights in Africa in general lies at the very essence of the role of government which is to state the interest of middle cities. And the issues that we need to consider in Africa, it includes looking at the constitution versus copyright laws, protecting the rights of people to use their own language to participate in cultural life, and there's also a need for us to I think to consider that as Africans how do we insure that there is access to knowledge, not just textual knowledge but to oral knowledge as well. I'll just stop here and we can add as we go.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you, so much. I think the case of South Africa of course the work of APC is crucial for this. You guys have been doing great work on copyright reform in South Africa showing a lot of ways to balance, also like to balance among the stakeholders.
But now to close our panel I would like to invite Professor Carlos Afonso. He's a dear colleague for many years and he's actually one of the co‑founders of the technology and society Rio de Janeiro. So welcome for joining us.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Thanks, Carolina. I really have to say I'm certainly a southern addition to this panel so I'll be very brief. I believe in tackling the topic of this panel which is how to envisage how copyright reform intertwines with Internet economy.
I would like to highlight three issues for to us pay attention on and a couple of them have already been mentioned in the panel. One of them is sometimes a more technical one but it's important for us to not lose sight of it is the revision of contracts and how copyright contracts, especially when it deals with related neighboring rights sometimes can empower companies in retaining rights that end up locking in music, content, and the power of one specific company. And that's definitely can generate a certain refrain, a certain hindering of the circulation of a specific work, of a specific creation.
So this is something that needs to be addressed. And this is one thing that I know for sure that under the Brazilian copyright law reform is one of the key issues, especially because if we look at the changes that the Brazilian law has been going through the last decade when it comes to copyright law, it's interesting to see they copyright law when it comes to contracts looks like an island that's not being reached by all the changes in terms of principles regarding contracts that you see in other areas of private law. This is one thing.
The second point that I would like to raise attention is the one that has been tackled right over in this panel is the broadening of the limitations of exceptions and the attention on fair use clauses. And that's something that again the Brazilian reform has been paying attention on for a long time and Vaz has mentioned that. Of course this is the probably first issue that comes to mind in terms of Internet economy and copyright reform, just how to engineer situations in which copyright limitations and exceptions end up enabling people to create and distribute their contents more widely.
And maybe Brazil could serve as a good example because since our copyright law has been so restrictive when it comes to limitations and exceptions, like as a wise man said in the movie Jurassic Park, life will find a way. So if copyright law does not give a solution, things will happen.
And maybe that's one of the reasons why creative (?) has been so successful in Brazil, and Carolina has mentioned it's been working for quite some time.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: 2003, right? Rinaldo, Kathy, a lot of people in this room.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: It's been a long time. So we have contracts and exceptions that sometimes are being so restrictive in the law creates some alternatives or a good ground for alternatives to emerge.
And just to conclude, the third point is intermediary liability and how to tackle Internet intermediary liabilities is something we need to stress on. I really have to say in Brazil we have enacted the Internet bill of rights for Brazil last year. Copyright is not there as I would say as the same happened with the declaration of Internet bill of rights but that doesn't mean that the protection for the authors and creation is not there.
I think we need to here put together the protection of access to knowledge and creating the ways to foster access knowledge together with mechanisms to protect it, the author's right. So what it does is to say that whatever happens with the copyright reform, whatever solution Brazil ends up creating for intermediary liability, when it comes to copyright it needs to address balance with freedom of expression and that's really important for the Brazilian context because the Brazilian Bill of rights doesn't talk largely on copyright, it says that whatever the solution that comes out it needs to balance with freedom of expression. I believe that's a huge problem. So those are the three points I would like to suggest for the comments. Thanks for that.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you, so much, Carlos. And now we are going to open for questions and participation from the audience. We already have a woman there that I admire profoundly. So if you haven't met her yet, you should meet her. Julia Reda. She's part of the ‑‑ the European parliament. But one of the wonderful things she has been able to do there as a young representative is to actually push forward the copyright reform in Europe by drafting a report that she can talk a little bit about it on cross border cultural exchange and why is the copyright system we need for that. So thank you, Julia.
>> JULIA REDA: Thank you. So I'm the only representative in the European Parliament of the pirate party, so to stay within the Jurassic Park analogy I suppose I'm the T‑Rex. (Laughter)
So what is happening in the European Union right now is quite interesting because the European commission has announced this copyright reform as exactly an economic measure. So the goal of the reform which is part of the digital single market package is to enhance economic growth and to make the exchange of culture and knowledge across borders easier. And the European parliament in the report which I drafted that was adopted this summer has actually expanded on this economic focus and has also highlighted some points that are important for fundamental rights and development, particularly the legal protection of the public domain against private appropriation and also some consumer rights aspects such as the rights to interoperability, the right to be able to example play content that has been bought online on different devices and platforms to also make sure that there's competition in the market.
Now, since this report has been adopted with the majority we have learned a little bit more about the plans of the commission. And I think the good news is definitely that the question of libraries and archives and of education is very high on the agenda. So these are exactly the kind of exceptions where we will see movement but at the same time for me it's quite difficult to understand that if the commission recognizes that within the European Union exceptions for research, libraries, education are good for economic development and trade, why would it think that outside the European Union this would not be the case?
So I think this is definitely something that should be explored and also in WIPO in the future. And I think one comment on the broader thing because everything we do in the European Union has to be in the framework of the international laws. And if I can pick one of the limiting factors I think something we really do need to come back to and reconsider in the digital age is the question of no formalities because this was really designed at a time when registering work was very difficult and nowadays with the Internet we have new possibilities for that. And I think it's good to look into this also from a question of voluntary registration of works and how we can improve the findability of the information.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you, so much, Julia for this information, and thank you for your work in the EU. So please, folks, go ahead. I see we have a longer line and thank you for that, guys. So I'm going to probably give you around a minute each to pose your questions and comments. Go ahead.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is David Hughes. I've spent my whole career in the music industry; many of my closest friends are musicians and song writers, so copyright is very close to my heart. I have very strong opinions about copyright.
I think it's a little bit ironic here that everybody has quoted Jurassic Park, a movie that would never have been made without copyright. Nobody is going to invest $200 million to make a movie if they don't expect to get their money back.
So we should start with the points by the eloquently Emilar from South Africa, I absolutely agree with her.
I want to go to a point that Katie made which was the explosion of content on the Internet. I just read recently that iTunes handles 800 million songs per year. But a study that was done in the U.K. said that over 80% of songs have never been purchased even once. So what we should really be talking about is not the explosion of content, we should be talking about desirable content.
I won't use the word "good" because not every will say that Justin Beiber is good. But I will use the term "desirable." And the desirable content comes from strong countries with copyright law. This is without exception. And I agree that copyright needs to be reformed. There's lots of things that need to be changed to catch up with the digital age, but we should look where things are made is where people can afford to invest. If you look at YouTube, for example, 19 of the 20 top all‑time viewed videos are professional produced music videos. Number 14 is not a music video, it's Charlie Bit My Finger, 895 million views or something. But that's the exception.
What people want is professionally created stuff made by people who spend tens of thousands of hours honing their craft and they can't do that if they can't expect to get the money back. And the only way we have right now to do that to ensure that is some form of copyright law. I said my piece.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you, so much, for that, Dave. And I think it's important for us to try to find that balance.
Please go ahead introduce yourself. And the noise you're going to hear is the alarm.
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: The quick translation, just a quick translation. So he was asking should the minister ‑‑ the representative of the minister of culture, what are the next steps in copyright reforming because it has been lingering for a while?
>> (Speaking foreign language).
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: So just to summarize what Giselle was explaining on the state of copyright reform in Brazil, they closed on a draft in 2010 that was distributed and it's available; but that for a series of reasons have stopped moving forward. But one thing that moved forward was the regulation of music and collecting society and accountability of collecting societies in Brazil. And now recently a special commission was formed in the House of Representatives in Brazil to actually evaluate how things are and how things should move.
We have more than 40 bills that impact copyright in Brazil so this commission has unified those bills and will propose a new bill also in negotiation with the Ministry of Culture. We are in a very difficult moment in Brazil with all of the corruption and scandals that you guys probably have heard. So even with the executives that have been lacking for because of this, we all as Civil Society and observers should be paying attention to what is happening in congress because things will start moving and there have been public audiences already in that sense.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm Nicolas (?) in Argentina. We have been part of the discussion on intellectual property and modification in our law system for many years. And our focus has always been on the cultural circulation side. We believe societies and governments should pursue common good. And so we believe that the access to cultural should be the norm and copyright should be the exception considering that it's free culture that moves the society, the access to culture, and copyright is related to smaller groups.
In relation to this, we have always seen working with creators that they mostly need protection from distribution monopolies more than protection from the public. In this respect we all agree that we should not call piracy what is the sharing of culture. And thus this one little example that we always use that is all books in the world could now be available on one big PC in every school in the world, and this would be tremendously expensive in previous eras, unthinkable. But we can now do this with very little investment and how can this not be right?
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you, so much. For this last question, I would like to ask if any of the panelists want to address that, please. Paulo? Go ahead.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: I can make some comments. I think access to knowledge is a very important one in the IGF. But often we forget in this debate that although we understand it's clear the connection between access and new creation, we have also to look at how creation is actually a precondition of access. So you need to have the content that people want to access. This is first. So the creation is one. And on the debate we often forget that content or knowledge is a very broad concept. And that was already mentioned.
So are we talking about accessing my little nephew's pictures? Are we talking about Facebook? Are we talking about Wikipedia? There are already a number of very well‑functioning systems to access user‑generated content to access education material to do collaborative research.
On the other hand, we have resource‑intensive content like Blockbuster video games or music or major publishing industry that requires economic incentives to be there. So you would require an incentive to keep those books that we like all the world to access from the same classroom to keep a wealthy environment. So we have new creation and at the same time we enable through our ways access to it.
So I think a balance can be found in several ways through several things, there can be exceptions and private initiative like open source.
>> I just wanted to pick up a couple comments. One there was a comment made about the music industry and state of music. I think that's a wonderful example of how copyright regimes around the world can lead flexibility for innovation. It's something near and dear to our heart because YouTube was sued for copyright. It took them many, many years to prevail. It was incredibly expensive.
And today you have a platform where you have major music companies in deep partnership with us and we care very much about those partnerships. We send billions of dollars. But it's not true that it's only a certain class of professionals that make use of those tools. So there's over 1 million different creators that personally earn revenue from various channels.
I think that's a wonderful example of when laws and technologies and platforms to develop and for user industry. That's when everyone wins and can be very beneficial to local economies. I think that's very important. I think also the second point that was made about the promise of books digitalization, for us that's very important and I would encourage you all to think more broadly just in terms of text and data mining and the points that were made earlier.
We live in a digital age and there's tremendous potential with data when the law leaves that breathing space to make copies for break‑throughs in health care and education and digital technologies that will grow economic growth for all. But you can't have a system where one single copy is going to send everyone to jail leaving some space there. I think the last point on formality is it sounds technical but is really key when looking at reforms to copyright.
There's a tremendous amount of confusion right now in the marketplace so for platforms that just want to know who to pay and how much to pay so that creators and businesses can be compensated because many systems around the world have not required recordation of ownership rights can be very complicated to know how to license that content. So thinking about incentives for accurate comprehensive rights ownership information I think would help everyone that feeds off of the copyright eco system.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Okay. Thank you so much for that approach. And I would invite you to actually pose your question and then we close because we just have four minutes left and we need to leave the room. So you two and then the panelists are free to make their final comments, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, I'll be brief. Alex from Kenya. In order to help us challenge ourselves beyond this whole idea of copyright because if you ask if you own protect copyright and up don't then you fall in the evil empire but I think we ought to ask ourselves is copyright the only way? She pointed out that we don't even have the (?) for copyright because we are from the commons. We have a very good balance between what is private and communal.
But what I want to challenge is the notion of copyright extremism which is the idea of protecting copyright makes us lose all the good thing about the sharing. That's number one.
Number two in terms of reform the laws we are implementing for copyright are being manipulated from outside. It's an exclusive area that is handled by elite lawyers. It's not a course in universities but it's an elective course even law students don't know about it. So about understanding copyright in addition to it being foreign.
And thirdly there's a copyright industry where the real creators are not the beneficiaries of the copyright. So we must be able to look at who really benefits from this copyright and look at another means. Thank you.
>> So my name is Bobby (?), I'm a producer from India. I have never been able to understand this argument frankly because even while I was waiting here to say something there was talk about books on a PC. You can put all the books and all the movies on a PC, and now what? That's a question I've never been able to answer. So it has to be a balance. I come from a country that does a thousand feature films a year in many languages. Nobody is really rich. Look at the top three or four stars or producers but of the thousands nobody is really rich. They are barely manageable to survive. However the only industry apart from Hollywood that is surviving on revenues without government subsidies, without anything.
And I strongly believe that until we can protect that copyright and prevent its theft, it will be one more large economy of entertainment that will collapse and it's headed that way if we don't follow it.
So, yes, there is millions of dollars of user‑generated content. It is a free economy. Enough people are willing to give away the copyright for free if it's not costing to produce it, if it's information they want to share, whatever it might be. They put it out there and you can have it. But the people who are trying to make a livelihood from it, the people trying to survive on that basis, you have to respect their right and you have to respect the right for this property just as much as you do for any physical asset that they might own. Thanks.
>> I'll conclude and say that I think we need to consider exceptions and limitations to copyright reform especially looking at developing country contexts and interests because not everyone has access; and I know this is not only for Africa, but in developing countries as well. And when I'm talking about access, I mean meaningful access. So there's need to consider exceptions and limitations. Thank you.
>> I'd like to comment that from a library and education perspective we all want a strong creative industry. It's what we depend on. And library exceptions and limitations create that space for public access that doesn't require breaking the law because libraries do pay for content and pay $20 billion a year for content. So we need this access within a legal space.
>> Yeah, I think I would just reiterate that cost of looking for ways that copyright policy can incentivize legal user access to compelling content. If we think about protection, that's someone's right if you want to never share it or keep it so closely held.
But I do think in today's era there's many wonderful opportunities for sharing content and new business models and opportunities that are being innovated and developed every day and thinking about how a copyright framework can incentivize those kinds of platforms to make sure folks are compensated is always a good goal to work backwards from.
>> Very briefly, just to reiterate the last words I think that it's important for us to really try to craft a system for especially looking to the Internet in terms of liability and creating room for people to innovate. And that's really important to innovate and to be protected by that but allowing people to have access to those works. It's something that is not easy for us to grasp but it's important for that to keep in mind. Maybe that's why those Internet Bill of Rights is important because they end up laying the general rules under which we try to construe this forthcoming legislation. So just that.
>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: So thank you so much, everybody, for coming. And as a final note, I'm going to be tweeting some usable resources are under IGF copyright reform including a series of studies comparing exceptions and limitations around the world, if you guys are interested. So thank you so much for coming and see you around IGF. Bye.
(Applause)
(Session concluded at 12:00 p.m.)