IGF 2019 Reports
Moderators:
- Milton Mueller, Professor, Georgia Tech, Internet Governance Project
- William Drake, International Fellow and Lecturer, University of Zurich
Roundtable participants:
- Lise Fuhr, ETNO
- Vinton Cerf, Google
- Ilona Stadnik, StPetersburg University, Russia.
- Alexander Isavnin, Internet Protection Society Russia
- Ambassador Achilles Zaluar, Foreign Ministry Brazil
- Xu Peixi, Communications University China
- Mona Badran, Cairo University Egypt
The discussion moved sequentially through four key policy questions/ issue-areas that were listed on the program and agreed online by participants in advance of the meeting. These were:
Q1 The nature of national sovereignty and its extension to 'digital sovereignty' or ‘cyberspace sovereignty’
Q2 National effects of digital sovereignty
Q3 Global effects of digital sovereignty
Q4 Governance responses
Discussion of these questions facilitated better cooperation in cyberspace by revealing the contradictions and problems posed by assertions of territorial sovereignty in cyberspace, and by clearing up our thinking on how states need to interact in cyberspace.
On Q1, the group discussed the many meanings that have been given to “digital sovereignty.” Concerns were expressed about service fragmentation by statist policies but panelists differed as to whether these can be justified by the asserted need to regulate multinational companies, primarily the big American platforms.
On Q2, most panelists noted that attempts to create national "sovereign Internets" have negative effects on human rights, economic development, the global digital economy.
On Q3, the group considered whether the new sovereignty claims will lead to increasing fragmentation of the infrastructure or the services and processes that it supports. Panelists also considered how digital borders impact foreign firms seeking to operate locally, and whether they are consistent with countries’ international trade and other multilateral obligations. On these points panelists agreed about effects but differed about the causes.
On Q4, the group expressed a range of views. Calls for further analysis and dialogue in the IGF engendered support. Due to time pressures, only brief attention was given to the role of international rules dealing with access to data held abroad. Similarly, there was brief but inconclusive consideration of whether it would be better to conceive of cyberspace as a global commons similar to the high seas or outer space. The open discussion among all participants that followed the panel raised a wide variety of issues with varying connections to the sovereignty/fragmentation linkage.
Again, there was interest in exploring these issues further within the IGF ecosystem. The issues involved are multidimensional and include economic, technical, and overarching governance dimensions and hence would be best addressed through the IGF and other multistakeholder processes. In parallel, efforts to build consensus on some of the issues raised by “digital sovereignty” policies is underway in a number of intergovernmental settings, e.g. the G7, G20, OECD, and WTO, as well in the diverse intergovernmental negotiations on access to data held abroad, mutual law enforcement agreements, etc.
There are no notable international projects or initiatives specifically designed to assess or build global consensus on the ascendant “digital sovereignty” discourses per se. But as noted previously, there is work underway to deal with a some of the state practices that have been justified in these terms, e.g. efforts to devise rules limiting forced data localization and barriers to crossborder data flows. The desirability of such rules remains a hotly contested point, and this was reflected in some of the discussion.
However, there have been research projects linking “digital sovereignty” policy frameworks and Internet fragmentation. Examples include:
William J. Drake Vinton G. Cerf Wolfgang Kleinwachter, Internet Fragmentation: An Overview (World Economic Forum, January 2016),
Milton L. Mueller, Will the Internet Fragment?: Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace (Polity Press, June 2017) and the journal article Against Sovereignty in Cyberspace, International Studies Review, September 2019
Perspectives on the topic were divided along the usual IGF ideological/political lines. Many participants expressed concerns about governments’ increasingly expansive use of “digital sovereignty” rhetoric to justify statist policies that contribute to Internet fragmentation. Some participants nevertheless wanted states to adopt strong regulatory approaches toward certain Internet platforms. Due to the lack of consensus on these matters there were no well defined agreement on how progress might be made other than by supporting further dialogue.
The Saal Europa was full and some attendees were left standing. A rough estimate is that about 200 attended and 40% of the attendees were women.
Gender issues are not uniquely relevant to the topic and hence were not discussed.
The video and raw transcript of the workshop are at https://www.intgovforum.org/content/igf-2019-–-day-2-–-saal-europa-–-ws-59-digital-sovereignty-and-internet-fragmentation-raw
Key policy questions:
- How should governments react to the growing economic and market power of big tech companies? By breaking up big tech companies, regulating digital industries, or just observing the developments and leaving it up to international competition?
- Do we need an access to data for competitors in order to retain competitive pressure? If so, to which kind of data should such an obligation apply?
- As data is an important value-adding factor – who should reap the benefits out of the personal data of consumers?
The open forum 11 “data governance and competition” aims to discuss the competitive situation in the digital economy and the role of access to data for competition. To this end, advisory groups and committees on digital competition policy from different countries will present their findings.
Due to the rapid change and evolution of digital markets, there was broad support for speeding up competition proceedings and using interim measures more extensively. The speakers also agreed on the view that there is a need to further develop the existing instruments of competition policy in order to reflect the higher complexity of multi-sided markets and to go beyond classical price theory (especially the BRICS-Report recommended to take greater account of value chains and vertical power).
A controversial debate arose on the effects of data access on innovation: The key issue was the tradeoff between innovation incentives of data exclusivity and the possibility of anti-competitive behavior. Moreover, the experts described briefly the discussion on "killer acquisitions": On the one hand a strict merger control is crucial in order to prevent the accruement of exceeding market power; on the other hand being bought by a major platform company is a strong incentive for many startups to delevop innovative products.
The panelists recommended that governments should establish a pro-competitive ex-ante regulatory environment in order to complement the “traditional” instruments of competition law. This ex-ante regulatory structure should comprise rules on data portability and interoperability as well as a code of conduct for dominant platform companies (e.g. prohibiting measures of self-preferencing). Moreover, they suggested strengthening consumer power regarding personal data (e.g. establishing "data trustees").
The reports that have been debated during the open forum deal with the respective issues. On national and supranational level, we observe several legislative initiatives to modernize competition law or regulate specific tech sectors (taking competition issues into account).
The key ideas have been to develop a toolkit approach (in order to modernize the analyses of digital markets and contractual relations) that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, to modernize competition law (see above), and to use regulatory sandboxes in specific sectors.
approximately 80 to 100 participants (approximately 50% female and 50% male)
Gender issues have not been discussed explicitly.
Due to the limited time of the open forum (60 minutes), the key outputs are the policy recommendations that all participants could agree on (confer item 3 “policy recommendations”).
- How can we, as a community, more effectively monitor digital platforms’ activities, their market power and behaviours, and the potential consequences of those activities for citizens, journalists, news media organisations, and advertisers?
- What can be done to address competition barriers, and how can we promote plurality, sustainability, and diversity as well as overall consumer choices? This includes examining strategies to address regulatory imbalances – i.e., what are new approaches to the regulation of digital spaces?
- What are the mechanisms that would support and sustain choice and quality of news and journalism in digital spaces, as well as catalyse those individuals and organisations concerned with media plurality to get more engaged in Internet governance and digital policy discussions?
As this was the launch of the DC, the session mainly provided evidence for why journalism and news media have an important stake in Internet governance processes, and why voices from this sector should be more involved going forward. The discussion largely contextualised the journalism and news media's relationship with digital policy and its impact on the sector, and highlighted how various aspects such as content takedowns, safety, and digital market failures are undermining high-quality journalism around the world.
The coalition said that the media has changed with time. Like the revolution that came with the television, the media and news production and consumption were revolutionised with the rise of the global Internet. Because of digitalisation, the circulation of newspapers has dwindled. As media companies continue to adapt to digitalisation, they must continue to update their business models and find innovative ways to monetise content, but these changes threaten their focus - reporting the news. For some news and media organisations, the membership model works as an ethical means to support some forms of advertising (e.g. native advertising). Others have turned to philanthropy and donations to support their work.
The discussion also addressed issues like combatting disinformation. ‘There is an asymmetry between government actors or wealthy actors who are able to buy botnets and buy social media manipulation, whether it's elected leaders as in the United States, Brazil, India, or whether you create armies, as in China and Iran, to manipulate social media. How are journalists supposed to compete in this information environment?’ asked Raj. Content moderation has also become an enormous issue for journalism due to the introduction of algorithms that make choices that are determined by platforms or governments, and not the journalists themselves.
Suggestions for the way forward include working across the IGF community, but especially with the other Dynamic Coalitions, to amplify journalism and news media voices in the discussion, as well as create a cohesive action plan outlining work over the coming intersessional period to identify/collate key policy recommendations that can support the sustainability of journalism and news media sustainability.
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/platforms-and-publishers-end-of-an-era.php and many others can be found at: https://gfmd.info/internet-governance
We also worked closely with the DC on Platform Responsibility this year, and plan to continue collaborating going forward.
As of the session, our charter is now officially ratified (available at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BINK564Lq4-jXnVfXAjZVJ-Mi1vRSaOu4fCZ0d79HXA/edit?ts=5dc9816f), and we are working to cement an action plan for 2020 and elect our first official co-coordinators, which will be elected by the end of 2019 for the 2020-2021 period.
Around 105 total participants, of which around half were women.
The discussion did not explicitly focus on gender, however, harassment of journalists online was identified as an important barrier to sustainability – and many of those harrassed are women.
This session will provide some examples that responds to the following questions:
- What's the role of ICTs in enabling Development and how can Internet accelerate progress towards reaching the different SDGs?
- Who's responsibility is the Access and what other stakeholders are involved? Importance of national cooperation and partnerships
- Beyond mere connectivity how can meaningful access be implemented to ensure everybody is included?
ICANN - DNS, Threats and Opportunities
Policy Questions:
1. How the DNS has become a key component of the future openness, security and stability of the Internet;
2. The threats that ICANN faces and the approach benig taken with the Community and other actors on such issues as DNS abuse and DNS Security;
3. What are other key strategic priorities for ICANN looking forward?
The Session focussd on ICANN’s 2020-2025 Strategic and Operational plans that include security, development of the DNS system, global development and improvement of the multistakeholder system, with a focus on the potential of the DNS in terms of threats and opportubnities. There was much optimism about the future of the DNS (such as grwoth in IDNs and local scipts) but also concern on the damage of DNS abuse; not least how it affects trust and confidence.
There were no specific Recomendations as such; though an agreement on the importance of tackling DNS abuse (across multiple fronts) to enhance future confidence in development and use of DNS.
ICANN is active in monitioring DNS abuse; we have established a project (known as Domain Abuse Activity Reporting (DAAR) with details posted at https://www.icann.org/octo-ssr/daar-faqs
In terms of making progress there was a broad consensus that stskeholders had to be active on all fronts ; not least at ICANN,
There were around 20 on-line particpants and about 200 in room.
There were no specific gender issues rasied. ICANN encourages a diverse gender balanced stakeholder particpation
Looking beyend the isolation - The LLDC´s and the World
The session aims to discuss connectivity, availability, affordability and quality of ISP general services and ICTs public policies regarding sovereignty and development issues for Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) that, due to its geographical position, are bound to adopt and adapt policies and actions towards solving the higher costs and lower access to technology, broandband availability and internet quality that result en less development levels and competitiveness in a connected world.
There was broad support on the differenciated scenarios and diffulties LLDCs face to develop. Particularly those that also are Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The interaction between the floor and the panelists from DiploFoundation (GIP), Nepal, Uganda and Paraguay were patent proff of the fact that the geographical position and geopolitical as well as economical situations affects largely the realizarion of the right to development in these countries.
The African Union in cooperation with the European Union is implementing since the beginning of 2019 the Policy and Regulatory Initiative for Digital Africa (PRIDA) aimed at building capacity of various stakeholders for digital inclusion at the national, regional, continental and global levels. What is the philosophy and Vision of this project? What are the milestones and the concrete outputs of the project, if any? Did the project reach its objectives and what are the next steps?
On the African IGF 2019
The following positive elements were widely acknowledge by participants: high profile opening and closing ceremony; large number of participants; hosting of the first African Youth Forum and active engagement of youth (62%) which outnumbered by far the other age groups; hosting of a caucus of elders, delivering of an African IGF Award. Participants recommended that this trend in supporting youth be escalated in the next African IGFs and that the forums continue to be opened and closed by very high level officials and hosted in 5 stars hotels.
On the other hand, many participants questioned the low number of female participants (22%). Also some wondered if the African IGF had a policy in favor of the disabled and why its website did not include tools for the blind. The secretariat promised to consult with some of the disabled leaders in order to craft guidelines on access for the disabled. One participant provided information on dot Africa implementation.
One unanimous observation was the need for IGF to make available interpreters in English and French to be hired by session organizers to make sure that the diversity and language dimensions are adhered to in line with the IGF principles, hence making better use of time allocated and available intellectual resources.
Need to take into account the situation of the disable in the African IGF process and on the use of its website and in the PRIDA strategy and outputs.
Need to increase women participation in IG process and sustain the trend in youth involvement.
Empowering policymakers, diplomats and legislators to be able to take full part in the IG process, to understand IG policy issues and enact the right policies and laws.
Over 200 participants took part in the Forum, including three Ministers and over 20 Parliamentarians.
Gender issues were discussed by several participants who raised concern on the low level of women participants in the 8th African IGF held in Ndjamena, Chad from 10-12 September 2019. One suggestion was to make mandatory inclusion of at least one women in any delegation the African IGF. Another was to promote application of females while looking for fellows to take part in the African IGF. It was also suggested to reserve a quota for women when fellowships are available and one selecting candidates.
The following outputs are posted on: www.afigf.africa:
- Facts and Figures - The African Internet Governance Forum 2019
- PRIDA Internet Governance Implementation Strategy and Planned Activities
- Report of the African Union Open Forum 2019