IGF 2019 WS #319 Freedom or Regulation?: Data on Online Commercial Platform

Relevance to Theme: With the growing number of data on Internet services, platformers' business becomes complicated for both users and service operators. For instance, it becomes more difficult to distinguish good or bad content or users' behavior in their services. It means drawing a line between correct and treacherous information is on blurred line.Thus, someone has started to consider the necessity of more sophisticated regulation or cooperation with governments to provide their customers with a safe and secure space. However, simultaneously, we must not forget “The free flow of data,” which is inevitable for the evolution of the digital economy. Therefore, we need a well-balanced approach between regulation and business. This works not only the current business but also potential platform business which includes any type of data and information. The multi-stakeholder models’ approach works properly to discuss the topic with different point of views.

Nowadays, sharing economy becomes popular all over the world and consumer to consumer(C2C) service also have been attracted people as an e-commerce on global marketplaces. At the same time, they are facing the influence of regulation in different regions due to local restrictions. We choose this platform business such as B2B for the main topic because it is more related to various stakeholders such as civil society and young users compared to other markets like B2B. With rapid development of information and communication technologies, platform business make a big change of citizen’s daily life. For example, in the past, people visit grocery stores in person to buy what they need. However, we can buy anywhere and anytime through online markets and automated orders and intelligent advisory/recommendation services are also available now. As platform services collect lots of various types of data to make better services, end-users might be curious about proper flow of information. Therefore, a multistakeholder-model discussion will find more practical ideas and solutions to make information useful and stable and figure out clues to not only governments or business sector, international organization, but also users to get their proper rights about personal information.

As time goes by, people know that the quality of services get better for innovative services, but people don’t know how their data could be used and shared with different multistakeholders. That is why this workshop can bring us precise rights of personal information and methods for usage of data.

Relevance to Internet Governance: The Internet is one of the best platforms for people all over the world to challenge the new and creative business. Generally, people believe gross domestic product(GDP) as an index to gauge each nation’s economic activity. With the evolution of the Internet, sharing economy, especially consumer to consumer (C2C) services which do not appear on the existing framework of GDP contributes to creating a new user-centric market. C2C platform contributes to the quality of life by sharing of space, things, transportation, and skills. It enables people to get a commodity or use services cheaper than exiting monopolized services. It is also effective to accomplish a sustainable society from the perspective of SDGs. It provides an opportunity for ordinal Internet users to start their business by using the Internet, too.

Internet Governance Forum is where various experts from all stakeholders and regions with both technical and governance backgrounds, so it is the best forum to discuss “how to create a secure and convenient platform.” Moreover, to expand such businesses for developing countries, we need a stable Internet infrastructure. The IGF provides a forum where both session of "digital economy" and “accessibility /inclusion.” Therefore, we invite not only people from business sectors who know well about sharing economy, but also other experts who have been working on the Internet governance issues to exchange local and global internet governance issues. We believe this session will be a cross point between the digital economy and other internet governance topics.