IGF 2023 DC-CIV Evolving Regulation and its impact on Core Internet Values

    Time
    Tuesday, 10th October, 2023 (07:20 UTC) - Tuesday, 10th October, 2023 (08:50 UTC)
    Room
    WS 11 – Room J
    DC

    Dynamic Coalition on Core Internet Values

    Round Table - 90 Min

    Subtheme(s)

    International Legal Perspectives

    Description

    The Core Internet Values, which comprise the technical architectural values by which the Internet is built and evolves, and derives what can be called ‘social’ or, in other words, ‘universal’ values that emerge from the way the Internet works. The Internet is a global medium open to all, regardless of geography or nationality. It's interoperable because it's a network of networks. It doesn't rely on a single application. It relies on open protocols such as TCP/IP and BGP. It's free of any centralized control, except for the needed coordination of the Internet Identifiers (Domain Name System and IP Addresses). It's end to end, so traffic from one end of the network to the other end of the network goes unhindered. It's user centric, and users have control over what they send and receive. And it's robust and reliable.

    The Dynamic Coalition on Core Internet Values held sessions at the 2020 and the 2021 IGFs discussing Internet in Crisis Management and Renewal and its evolution when faced with the Global Health Pandemic. In 2022, we discussed the Geopolitical neutrality of the Global Internet which touched on the possibility of a sanctions regime on the Internet. Every year, there seems to be another challenge one of the most basic Core Internet Values: its Uniqueness.

    In 2023, the world's economy having not recovered from the challenges of previous years, with a local crisis having global implications, inflation has affected the economy of many countries and with this, price pressures on services which might have been cheaper in the past. What was "free" on the Internet might no longer make sense financially for companies offering the service and might end up behind a paywall. What was "free" movement of information in the past might not be seen by governments as a good thing today. What was "free" connectivity might not be financially sustainable any longer. What was "free" might be blocked tomorrow - for many reasons.

    Pressures on Core Internet Values

    On the one hand, there are calls from Commercial Operators, such as Telecom Providers, asking for a Fair Share of Internet Profits, which is gaining ground with some lawmakers.
    See the 2nd October 2023 letter: https://etno.eu/news/all-news/777-a-call-for-fair-share-legislation-europe-must-act-to-protect-its-digital-future.html

    In addition to this commercial pressure, where the "free" mode of operation might no longer be the preferred mode of operation, recent years have seen a lot more regulation affecting the Internet.

    Whether it is the UK's Online Safety Bill, the Australian Online Safety Act, the European Digital Services Act and Digital Market Act or the US Kids Online Safety Act, regulation is being drafted and rolled out by many Governments.

    The UK Online Safety Bill's objectives are:

    • to increase user safety online.
    • to preserve and enhance freedom of speech online.
    • to improve law enforcement’s ability to tackle illegal content online.
    • to improve users’ ability to keep themselves safe online.
    • to improve society’s understanding of the harm landscape.

    The Australian Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth), which regulates harmful online material such as cyber-bullying material or intimate images shared without consent

    The Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Market Act (DMA) form a single set of rules that apply across the whole European Union (EU). They have two main goals:

    1. to create a safer digital space in which the fundamental rights of all users of digital services are protected;
    2. to establish a level playing field to foster innovation, growth, and competitiveness, both in the European Single Market and globally.

    The US Kids Online Safety Act

    This bill sets out requirements to protect minors from online harms.

    So not only is there a strong movement worldwide to implement some major structural changes to the way the Internet and Internet services work, there is also a commercial interest from some to change the Internet business model altogether.

    A few years ago, the DC on Core Internet Values promoted "permissionless innovation". These days, for many governments this translates to "the wild wild west" - is this a fair assessment of the Internet that we have been defending?

    A recent Freedom House report for 2022 paints a grim picture: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2022/countering-authoritarian-overhaul-internet

    Are the Core Values that gave Internet its "freedom" at risk? Regulation is now firmly back on the agenda - for all of the above reasons. In fact, was regulation ever off the agenda? Was it overshadowed by more pressing topics? Was it just evolving out of the public eye? How could it lead to fragmentation? After all, isn't regulation meant to serve the people?

    With this year's IGF Main Theme being "The Internet we want", the IGF Leadership Panel produced a paper:                               https://www.intgovforum.org/en/filedepot_download/263/26312

    This session of the DC Core Internet Values will again bring world class experts to discuss "The Internet We Want", each bringing their unique experience to the table.

    Agenda

    1. Introduction (Sébastien Bachollet)
    2. Interventions (5 to 8 minutes each)
    • Lee Rainie - how have things changed over the years which the Pew Research Center has studied the Internet
    • Jane Coffin - speaking about how we have seen regulation erode the Internet Invariants over the years
    • Nii Quaynor - speaking about how AFRINIC, African's Regional Internet Registry was affected by local legislation in Mauritius - and what impact this could have on for Regional Internet Registries
    • Iria Puyosa - speaking about protecting point to point messaging systems globally and why it is important?
      Ref: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/point-to-point-messaging-apps/
    • Vint Cerf - speaking about likely effects of some regulations which are well intended but may have unexpected or undesirable side-effects.
    3. Open questions / dialogue with all participants - approx 45 minutes

    What next?

    • In a changing world and a changing Internet, should the Internet stick to its Core Values?
    • Should more legislation be needed? If yes, then how should it be drafted?
    • What are the risks of "changing" the Core Internet Values for the future of the Internet?
    • Could we end up with fragmentation? With the end of the Internet as we know it?
    • Could we end up with a better, safer, cleaner post-Internet network of networks? Is this achievable or is this a pipe dream? Does this have an impact on democracy across the world?
    4. Conclusions

     

     

    Organizers

    Olivier Crépin-Leblond, ISOC UK England, Technical Community, WEOG.
    Sivasubramanian Muthusamy, ISOC Chennai, Technical Community, APG.
    Alejandro Pisanty, UNAM, Academic Community, GRULAC.
    Joly McFie, ISOC NY, Technical Community, WEOG.

     

    Speakers

    Vint CERF, Internet Evangelist, Google, Business Community, WEOG.
    Jane Coffin, Senior Executive International Infrastructure and Internet Issues, Connect Humanity, Civil Society, WEOG
    Nii Quaynor, Chairman of the Board, Ghana.Com, Business Community, AFRICA
    Iria Puyosa, DFRLab, Atlantic Council, Civil Society, GRULAC
    Lee Rainie, Former Director, Internet and Technology research at Pew Research Center, Civil Society, WEOG

     

    Onsite Moderator

    Sébastien Bachollet, EURALO Chair, France, WEOG

    Online Moderator

    Alejandro Pisanty, UNAM, Mexico, GRULAC

    Rapporteur

    Sivasubramanian Muthusamy, ISOC Chennai, AP

    SDGs

    1.4
    1.5
    1.b
    4.4
    8.2
    8.3
    9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
    10.2
    16.10
    16.6
    16.7

    Targets: The above SDGs relate to reducing poverty by providing a dynamic environment that allows for all and everyone to succeed economically. The open nature of the Internet is such that it fosters innovation. But so many factors today are likely to affect it negatively thus affecting the above listed SDGs negatively. Over-regulation has the strong potential to negatively affect the poorest - because over-regulation can induce added costs which are not affordable by everyone. Internet Fragmentation resulting from over-regulation will widen the divide between the rich and poor, as the rich will be able to navigate the fragmentation whilst the poor won't. Poverty is less likely to be ended. Industry, innovation and infrastructure is likely to suffer.

    Key Takeaways (* deadline 2 hours after session)

    1. The Internet has been self organising with as little regulation as possible for it to work and if strong regulation is introduced it will hinder its technical functioning. Too much regulation will damage interoperation. As Internet networks evolve into space with no borders there are questions marks as to how its Core Values will be sustained.

    2. One of the major policy tensions in digital life pits anonymity against accountability. Anonymity has been a key aspect of internet activity, but we have painfully learned that full anonymity can be exploited in ways that allow bad actors to escape being held accountable for the harms they cause. Systems must be developed to bring accountability without compromising essential anonymity - and layering identity levels is one way to do it.

    Call to Action (* deadline 2 hours after session)

    - The Internet community including the private sector, civil society, technical community should actively engage with governments to make them understand why a multistakeholder IGF is important.

    - Use of encryption needs to continue - as without encryption many of the functions of the Internet's safety will be negatively impacted.

    Session Report (* deadline 26 October) - click on the ? symbol for instructions

     

    DC-CIV Evolving Regulation and its impact on Core Internet Values

    Report on the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Session.

    Main Report

    The Core Internet Values, which comprise the technical architectural values by which the Internet is built and evolves, also comprise ‘social’ or, in other words, ‘universal’ values that emerge (or derive) from the way the Internet works.

    The Internet is a global medium open to all regardless of geography or nationality. It is interoperable because it is a network of networks. It doesn't rely on a single application. It relies on open protocols such as TCP/IP and BGP. It is free of any centralized control, except for the needed coordination of unique identifiers. It is end to end, so traffic from one end of the network to the other end of the network goes. It is user centric and users have control over what they send and receive and it is robust and reliable.

    The Dynamic Coalition on Core Internet Values held sessions at every previous IGF. During the 2023 IGF at Kyoto, the Coalition discussed the topic of "Avoiding Internet Fragmentation"  with "International Legal Perspectives" as the sub theme - all part of this year’s “Internet We Want”.

    The following questions were examined during the session:

    • In a changing world and a changing Internet, should the Internet stick to its Core Values?
    • Should more legislation be needed? If yes, then how should it be drafted?
    • What are the risks of "changing" the Core Internet Values for the future of the Internet?
    • Could we end up with fragmentation? With the end of the Internet as we know it?
    • Could we end up with a better, safer, cleaner post-Internet network of networks? Is this achievable or is this a pipe dream? Does this have an impact on democracy across the world?

    Panelists included  Lee Rainie, Jane Coffin, Nii Quaynor, Iria Puyosa, Vint Cerf with interventions from the floor moderated by Sébastien Bachollet as Co-Chair at Kyoto together with Olivier Crépin-Leblond.

    Deliberations

    The deliberations during this meeting by panelists' presentation, participant interventions and Q&A are reported here without attribution to the specific panelist or participant.

    Broadly and roughly  there have been four notable 'phases' that could be seen as 'revolutions' in Internet evolution:

    • Home broadband. It sharply increased the "velocity of information" into people’s lives, bringing support for the way it democratized creativity, story-telling and community building. But it also spawned concern about misinformation, for example, in the medical community – and concern about the type of content to which children might be exposed. 
    • Mobile connectivity. Mobile phones became ubiquitous and became all-purpose “extra body parts and brain lobes” that allowed people to reach out and be contacted at any time, anywhere, without the need for knowledge on how to operate a computer. But a backlash grew about the ways in which phones disrupted people’s time use and attention allocation.
    • Social media.  Exposed users to new information and allowed them new ways to share their lives and create. The backlash has focused on the impact of social media on people’s emotional and mental health (especially for younger women and girls), the way social media can be used for information war purposes, enabled political polarization and tribalism, and menacing behavior like bullying and physical threats.
    • Artificial intelligence. Often functioning unnoticed and uncommented upon, AI allowed people to live their lives more conveniently, efficiently and safely. It promised productivity increases. But the backlash starts with people’s inherent wariness of anything that might challenge their rights, their autonomy and their agency. There are widespread concerns about job loss, bias and discrimination, and whether AI can be used ethically. 

    It is worth noting that these and other concerns have mostly arisen at the level of applications, rather than the essential architecture of the Internet. Unfortunately, the concerns at the cultural, legal and social level usually drive policy deliberations that could limit the way the Internet functions.

    Users almost unanimously support the Core Values of the Internet: open, free, secure, interoperable, end-to-end, permissionless innovation. The revolutions and the backlash they engendered:

    Beyond those general concerns about digital functions, there is evidence that different people have different experiences of those revolutions. Those group differences drive concerns and calls for further regulations. At the group level, it is clear that divisions by gender, age, race/ethnicity, class, nationality, religious affiliations, affect people’s online experiences. There are also divisions along the lines of people’s level of awareness and their knowledge about technology, and their traits cause them to experience and react to technology differently. 

    To further complicate the picture, it is clear that individual technology users act in different ways under different circumstances. They are not necessarily predictable and their actions are often contingent, transactional, and context specific. This makes it very hard for those designing policies to take into account the variety of ways people will use technology or have concerns about its impact on them.

    In global surveys and other research, there is a division that pits individuals against society. Individual actors are often confident they can navigate the problems of information and communication ecosystems, but others are incapable of doing so. That results in an almost universal sense that “I’m OK, but the rest of the world is not”. 

    How should policy makers understand that and take account of such an array of social, cultural, and legal variance as they try to think about regulations for the Internet? It is a chaotic picture that suggests that policy proposals affecting the basic functioning of the Internet should be undertaken with great caution and much humility.

    The Internet has been self organizing its network of networks with as little regulation as possible for them to work. There is a lot of support for this self-organization on the network level even though in some cases the shared objective of developing networks for people who do not yet have access appears to have been lost.

    Regulate

    Caution is advised when facing pressure to “regulate fast... because some serious harm is upon us". Quick and ill-designed regulations may undermine online freedoms or lead to Internet fragmentation.

    Before regulating, it is necessary to assess the tradeoffs of different policies as well as the suitable technical implementations of those policies.

    Unfortunately, pressure to legislate is driven by public opinion on harms - often emphasized by governments to impose legislation. Law enforcement requests for access to private communications, national security, and cyber-sovereignty agendas dominate public debate in most countries.

    The Internet will not be the same if it is run in a non open way - and we can see that with countries where there is a zeal to pass laws to "protect the interests of the regimes".

    The intent may have originally been laudable but they may also have side effects.

    For instance, we observe this problem in legislation threatening end-to-end encryption under the urge to provide more safety for children online, legislation establishing widespread Internet surveillance pretexting rising concerns related to violent extremism, cyber-sovereignty agendas undermining net neutrality, and cybersecurity policies that pose a risk to interoperability. 

    Technical solutions to online harm must ensure respect for human rights and the rule of law in line with the principles of necessity and proportionality. Any restriction of access to the Internet must be lawful, legitimate, necessary, proportional, and non-discriminatory.

    Civil society and the Internet technical community must continue collaborating in facing overregulation trends threatening Internet Core Values.

    Some participants in the meeting pointed to further study in countries like Finland and Estonia, that have advanced in terms of e-governments. It was also mentioned that the borderless nature of the Internet would expand with a more widespread use of “satellite Internet” and Internet Exchange Points in Space - thus bringing a new perspective on cross-border issues.

    Key Takeaways 

    1. The Internet has been self organizing with as little regulation as possible for it to work and if strong regulation is introduced it will hinder its technical functioning. Too much regulation will damage interoperation. As Internet networks evolve into Space with no borders there are question marks as to how its Core Values will be sustained.
    2. One of the major policy tensions in digital life pits anonymity against accountability. Anonymity has been a key aspect of Internet activity, but we have painfully learned that full anonymity can be exploited in ways that allow bad actors to escape being held accountable for the harms they cause. Systems must be developed to bring accountability without compromising essential anonymity - and layering identity levels is one way to do it.
      Such systems must be designed with clear and minimal implications for deep architectural changes. A layered approach (possibly in the application layer) may be desirable. 

    Call to Action

    1. All stakeholders should actively engage in understanding, appreciating, and expanding knowledge of the Internet’s Core Values and the damages that may arise from actions that, deliberately or as unintended consequences, impinge negatively on them. The list is not long and it starts by layered architecture, packet switching, “best effort” i.e. design for resilience against failure, interoperability, openness, robustness (Postel), end-to-end (meaning that most functions that are not packet transmission are a responsibility of the “edge”, and implying network neutrality), decentralization, scalability, and, as a consequence, universal reach and “permissionless innovation”.
    2. Laws, norms, and treaties must all be commensurate with these values and only impinge on any of them after a deep analysis by all stakeholders, and with safety valves to avoid irreversible unexpected consequences down the road. 
    3. The Internet community including the private sector, civil society, technical community should actively engage with governments to make them understand why a multistakeholder IGF is important.
    4. Use of encryption needs to continue - as without encryption many of the functions of the Internet's safety will be negatively impacted.