IGF 2010
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
17 SEPTEMBER 2010
SESSION R/N 8
0900
GERMAN IGF
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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. 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 session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> This is just for people in the room. The background is I will explain it a little bit later in a minute, that the in Germany we had a very quick debate with members of the German Parliament, it was five Parliamentarians, we discovered that exactly these weeks they have a very important meeting in the German Parliament and they have negotiations about the budget, and the budget is the most important meeting the Parliament has and we said what can we do? We cannot expect the Parliament to fly to Vilnius and let things go at home.
There's a priority and why not make use of technology which is available and because this is not earlier in the morning, so it's now 8:00 o'clock in Germany and before you start the meeting in the Bundestag, come to video and we can have a small chat.
So between German community here in Vilnius and members of the Parliament to demonstrate that the dialogue in Germany works, and so that means we at this IGF and we will also report a little bit about, you know, what has been the main points from the German IGF. But at the same time, we wanted, also, to demonstrate that this dialogue, the politicians between the politicians and stakeholders from the technical community, private sector and civil society in Germany, you know, is moving forward.
So and for some reasons, you know, there was one of the members of the Parliament became ill and yesterday we got this information and someone had a conflicting date this morning, so we ended up out with two parliamentarians in the building, so the Green Party is the opposition party and the Christian Democrats are together with two other parties from the government.
And as probably you have followed it in the German Parliament, the Internet is now a hot issue. They have adopted and before the elections, which is still under consideration, which relates to filtering from to Internet content related to child pornography.
And there's usually been debate what to do one rate a legal framework and one of the first things the new German Parliament did after the election was to establish a commission called Commission on Future. And the interesting part of the commission is it includes 17 members of the German Parliament representing the stakeholder groups and we are very happy to have here two member, and one from the commission and Jeanette Hofmann and she is also a member of the Commission and not yet here but in Vilnius and join us a little later.
The idea this morning is we prepare a Q and A session so up here on this podium, this is Michael Rotert is a professor and also the president of the German Internet Economy Association and also the chair of the European ISP Association. And he is deeply involved in IGF issues since a number of years in particular accord association, I think, is meanwhile one of the main players nationally and internationally.
And Emil is one of the representatives of the largest trade unions, she is head of the eGovernment, and to my right is Max Senges and he needs no introduction because there Kanevsky, he represents the community and he is known as the COO of the Dot Opinion Project and we that process and country process.
So can you hear us? Probably not.
Because I say he describes us in a way we are still waiting for the
>> (Women speaking).
>> Here in the people on the room, on the screen on the left side this is okay.
Yeah, so that call is there from the she's responsible for also child protection on the Internet and she will be the moderator in Berlin and also to members of the Parliament I introduced already. Now, we have a microphone and so I Ludwig
>> Where is not in Berlin?
>> Oh
>> We notice all the problems with innovation, you try to do something new and the first test produce a number of problems.
Anyhow, I think you can only learn from cases like this. Because you see the wheel and see the problem and take it as a challenge, next time you try to do it better.
So I think if it doesn't work, we should just try to probably have a text based communication.
This is one of the alternatives Mr. Max, can you hear us? You see us, but you do not hear us?
>> FEMALE SPEAKER: We see you and we hear you.
>> Probably can we start?
>> Sure.
>> Okay. There is obviously a delay, so we have to speak slowly and to wait a little bit.
To the members of the German Parliament, Mr. to the Christian party it's it's notice for you, but this way on Germans, but also other groups. We are in Vilnius where we'll discuss the Internet, Diversity access infrastructure to cyber security, to cloud computing to divide, to protection of children on the Internet, domain names, cyber attacks and all the bad issues which are under discussion in the German Parliament.
We have a lot of Parliamentarians here and the society met yesterday in a very constructive meeting, members of the European Parliament. We understand that the meeting this week in Berlin to allow members of the Germany Parliament to come and we are very excited with the help of this technology here, we can at least, you know, raise some issues.
Originally five members of Berlin and five members of the podium, and we are changed our approach and there were only two now in Berlin and I would the colleagues in Berlin to start the conversation.
As we have prepared it the first questions will start with Mr. Notz, you are a member of the International Society as well as member of the German Parliament, and being here on this global level on Internet Governance Forum, I was very impressed by the presentation of the Charter of Human Rights and Principles on the Internet. Shall I wait a little bit?
I think this charter tackles a lot of problems we are dealing with on the national level. And this charter was developed in a multistakeholder process. That means business, civil society and government were involved in the developing a policy framework, how to implement the human rights on the Internet world.
And here is my question. As you are a member of the parliament, as well as this multistakeholder on Enquete Commission, I wonder if you think we do not have to invent the wheel again and can take ideas presented on the global level and use those on the national level, would you think that these principles are a basis for political framework and legal initiatives in Germany and Europe?
>> This is castle and this is possible because of our (off microphone) (feedback on microphone) framework we can integrate on that basis, and (off microphone).
>> And according to our plan, I understand our we'll ask a question to Mr. Karnofsky.
>> (off microphone) the initiative and the duty of the (off microphone) become duty of the (off microphone).
>> Thank you for the question. We have seen a pretty lot Parliament resolutions in Germany on this in the Germany Parliament in Bavaria. I think Zala did some good task on this, and in Berlin we had a lot of discussion in Parliament as well.
So that was our approach when we started five years ago to create that multistakeholder model that we have was in Eich and IGF and was in the framework for Berlin. That means incorporating from the very, very beginning of Berlin politics, economy and the civil society, and this is, for example, reflected in the advisory boards we have in Berlin.
So I think the multistakeholder model is necessary to have all the interest group representative and their interest have been set and incorporated in these top level domain names.
If it comes to Cologne or Berlin, there are great chances for each of these endings. Some chances derive directly from better search engines, position for the cities, for the well youth chain that is created in the city by the top level domain chain, some revenue coming into these cities for the economy there.
We will see much better access to eGovernment because these intuitive new addresses like taxes.cologne will give citizens direct access to what they need in government. But there are differences between Berlin and Cologne, we see it as a real, real identity of the city and the region. It's not only the city and in this respect, I see Cologne aspect as the Berlin area in this case because it's a very strong economic area there.
In Berlin we might see an interesting symbol for the city marketing, for the tourist and attraction of Berlin in this case.
>> Thank you very much, according to my list here
>> Since we as a business entity are also affected by Net Neutrality and the whole discussion on the new business models which come up there, we are concerned on how politics sees the discussion in Net Neutrality and that would be my question to you, Mr. Notz. How do you see Net Neutrality evolving in Germany?
>> KONSTANTIN VON NOTZ: I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you this morning since we didn't have the opportunity to come to Vilnius. There I really appreciate Mr. Ludorf and Jeanette Hofmann are in a meeting and they are commission we talked earlier about as well as we hope to get input out of your meeting.
Net Neutrality is regarding the issue right now and Germany we have a wide discussion about it in several months and one of the difficulties is it is quite technically problem of technique, and in the same time it is a very wise Democratic fundamental issue you have to get out to the people and have a wider discussion about it.
Often the main part of the German politics should be to keep the big chances of Internet as we have it today where everybody can communicate and on the same level take that status and on the other hand, find a way to manage some of the data problems we have. But the final line has to be the standard is to the opportunity on the as we have it.
>> Thank you, very much, I think Mr. Notz will have a question to Mr. Rotert.
>> KONSTANTIN VON NOTZ: The topic in German, the if you think there is a chance to change and better off the infrastructure from Internet of Internet government?
>> MICHAEL ROTERT: Wow. I mean, this is the type of fundamental questions and I would be happy to look in the future to answer this according to the development of ICANN, but indeed, there are discussions in this arena going around, but that's my view on these issues, but it might come to competition between ICANN and other bodies who may compete about the same issues.
Who can run the Internet if we talk about Internet Governance? But ICANN what I don't see at the moment is a clear way going forward. They're talking about various issues and sometimes you hear the Internet is not secure from the ICANN arena, which is not the case. Of course, there is security aspects in many cases.
But in your case in looking at the ICANN development in the future in terms of Net Neutrality, the Net Neutrality discussion on as you may know, has two two angles.
One is the discussion which started originally in terms of bandwidth, that is more the American way to see it. And the other one, according to Net Neutrality, according to civil to citizens and the content on the net. I think at the moment, ICANN is a little bit more on the side discussing the original American way of Net Neutrality in bandwidth and on these issues.
That's my perspective, but I didn't follow the ICANN issues at IGF here, in particular, because it was much more on the human rights aspects, what was discussed here as not as much on technical issues.
>> Okay. Thank you very much. And the question from the Professor to Mr. Jarzombek in Vilnius from the IGF, we had workshops on the liabilities or freedom of expression and privacy, which seem to be the cornerstones of the future Internet politics, so my question is rather two questions. What is the significance of these aspects in the German politics? That would be the first question.
And the second question is a little bit according to it, as in this context, I would like to know if you have any knowledge or ever heard of the ACTA initiative because ACTA was seen here in the discussions critical?
>> THOMAS JARZOMBEK: Okay. Well, freedom of speech, we had last year a big discussion with Germany which have tax Internet users from child pornography. And I think we were we want to find a solution to (off microphone) which we don't like. I think the future we will have to accept there are things we cannot censor out.
I think for us, the relevance to focus on the mass media on the Internet. This is what we can what we can to speak of this provider and to transfer in our society which content should be out and which content should pass with the content which people don't like.
And I think this is the much more productive discussion and this so this is the discussion we are having at this time, and so this is my opinion on this and yesterday's discussion on this topic. So to answer your question, yes, it is will be a big discussion on the political issue in Germany and critical position depends on what will come out of the Parliament.
>> Thank you, very much. Now, my list is Mr. Jarzombek will ask a question to Mr. Senges from Google.
>> (off microphone)
>> People can make decision at home in their own apartment or wherever, and the relevance on the IGF?
>> Thank you, Mr. Jarzombek, I think that will tie nicely to the question. I will give back to you in Germany.
>> MAX SENGES: For us the IGF has the enormous advantage in comparison to most of the other political discussions that here you come together in a very contradictive environment.
Basically, Google brings out a lot of innovations that have to be integrated into society and made useful, made adopted into the different cultures and environments that they are used in. And here you find users, you find civil society organisations, governments, and technical community to really deliberate.
And I think about how to do these kind of integrations, how to tackle the challenges. Basically, what we have seen in Germany has as most of you know, is that there is some criticism and it's not necessarily a constructive dialogue, but rather the feeling that, yeah, the it's not accepted in a smooth way. And we would like to see the discussion similar to the ways that we're discussing here more as seeing the opportunity to create value to integrate the innovations, to reap the innovations and this is what we are finding here.
There's a lot of discussion on principles, so what are underlying governance structures that we want to see. Yeah, there's several developments in the IGF context that we believe are a very much pointing in the right direction.
In this context, I would like to mention we do have several initiatives in Germany, like the open consultation from the interior ministry that point towards dialogue oriented situation and we very much appreciate the possibility to contribute to that.
>> Thank you, very much. And Max Senges will ask a question to Mr. Behrens.
>> MAX SENGES: My mandate was set up five years, it's up for renewal right now. There's several discussions going on in different levels. Within here most of the governments express their support. I know that, unfortunately, you cannot be here right now, but there's possibilities to express your feelings and position on the IGF.
Do you think that the German government can have an input for the development of the future of IGF?
>> HERBERT BEHRENS: The other question is why our government is not in Vilnius. The political issue and the Internet, there is no one in Vilnius and and actually in the interesting in discussion when we get back to Berlin, and I really do hope that this will change in the next year.
I think when we talk and especially two of the neighbors of our on task commission which has this agenda that has many issues that you're talking about that the IGF and will bring back what you talked about and the relation and exchange of at years and discussions in the future will be better than they are right now.
>> Okay, thank you. And, Mr. Notz, can now ask a question to Mr. Karnofsky.
>> KONSTANTIN VON NOTZ: The discussion coming up, cloud computing, you talk about cloud and cloud computing and the issue on policy and maybe even cloud and cloud computing.
>> Thank you for the question, and that was more than three questions on this. I was talking about cloud computing because that could potentially affect us as a business. What we really thinking of that cloud computing might be a chance for companies in Germany which store or distribute large amounts of content in this cloud or bring business processes to this, that could include potentially also the operation of DNS servers, for example, which then top level domain names, chances that we as a very small company are looking for from the prospective of big companies, I see some of them working with the cloud, some not. Maybe also due to privacy concerns they have, that would be concern I have as well.
I would not store all my back up from the computer in the cloud because I don't know where it goes to.
>> Thank you, Doug. And you can now ask a question to Mr. Jarzombek.
>> Okay. Mr. Jarzombek, since your state is now affected by some new domain endings from Cologne from others which has made interest so far, what does politics expect from these new players and new name spaces, what should the private sector do in this respect?
>> THOMAS JARZOMBEK: Get people like you engaged, and I think if people in our country would touch the top level domains, then we try to if we did, I can see a lot of interesting education on this and if we looking for it would be easy to tap into actually, in Germany that one topic and that means we likely change and the (off microphone) German people access the (off microphone) back to you or would be the last, how can we make it locally the way it should be.
>> So I can directly respond to this, this is possible, the possibility to apply for so forward variance, variance are the umlaut in German language and they would post direct to the same address. People that don't have the umlaut on the keyboard can use oe and people in the German speaking country can use the umlaut and it goes to same e mail and same web site when it resolves.
>> Maybe I can add, there's a really interesting best practice example in dot cat in Cataluña. They're already doing this with the special characters I used in the Cataluña language.
>> By the way, we also have some questions here from the floor. I think Cristos is from Spain. Can you come to the podium and ask a question probably to both Parliamentarians?
>> CRISTOS VELASCO: Thank you very much. I'm Cristos Velasco. I'm also part of the ISOC ambassador this year. I'm in the field of cyber security, and I'm been involved in different workshops and different work at the international level within the Council of Europe within OES in this particular field, so I would really like to know from Lithuania representative what's the status quo of the latest legislation of Cybercrime in Lithuania, whether they have ratified the Budapest Convention, the Convention on Cybercrime, and what are some of the problematics that the problematics that Germany has come across?
I know Germany has ratified the treaty this year and what are they doing to recommend that? Sorry for the misconfusion. Since I was speaking in English, I was confused, but sorry.
>> I'm not a specialist in Lithuania or Cybercrime or things like that, but I think I can say that Cybercrime is a very big issue in Germany right now as well. It's been pushed by many different actors in the discussion, and I think as well as interesting things that show what feel net politics really are because it has a very strong international context.
And in Germany the discussion the Internet buying and things like that, so I I think the Internet commission we just started, we have to deal with those problems. I think it's a special question for Lithuania, I think, I can't give you
>> We have a representative of the German representative of justice, and he can give a status of the cyber creation.
>> You can see there are members of the German government, it's not only the member of the German justice I represent, there are also members of the ministry of business and technology. And, you know, the head of our ministries have the same problem as the Parliament. It's the discussion in the Parliament, so please excuse that there are no head of the government, but it's the people who are working with those teams, they are here and we represent the German government.
To come back to this theme of cyber security, I'm not in the cyber security, I'm not in the theme of that, so please excuse that I can't say something in detail but as you said, it's a very important issue and perhaps we have to think about it because there are some matters of privacy concerned and so I think we need a real bright discussion in Germany because before we can ratify such a treaty.
And, perhaps, we will have a wide discussion later in the coming weeks because we get a lot of really difficult problems here concerning Cybercrime on the IGF, and I think we will come back to this theme later and the person will represent the government of Germany will have a lot of things to bring to the apartment in the next weeks.
So please await and then we will there will be a real German position to this thing.
>> Thank you very much and you will see we're moving forward with the stakeholders of Germany. We're moving ahead of the one hour and the next group want to use this group in Vilnius and we should come to some closing remarks.
And then it's also still an announcement by Max, so I would ask the two Parliamentarians to prepare brief closing remarks, and in the meantime max wants to make an announcement and the closing remark from the two Parliamentarians we have a question from Monica Hammett from Heizer is here and then
>> Hello, from Vilnius. I have one question following up to the Cybercrime discussion we heard here and I would like to ask, are you aware of any proposals in Germany that are discussed to have more network filtering to provide outgoing malicious traffic of Germany? It is discussed here a lot if countries should be held liable or should at least fulfill duties to prevent that?
The second is a clarification question to Mr. Jarzombek. You said we have to talk to users of mass media, and I would like to have that qualified to see which content could pass or not as an alternative to the networking blocking things.
And the third question is whether or not to come to Kenya next year? Thanks for the answers.
>> Probably you can adjust the timetable for 2011 please answer the question of Monica, and then we come to the final part.
>> THOMAS JARZOMBEK: It's a long way to Kenya, we will try. We will try.
Monica, it's a long way and we don't want to make any (off microphone) recollection from Germany, and which is having a policy on the ballot and a big platform about this kind of content should be should be brought back and should be this is a process which is already set out and I'm quite satisfied.
I think the Internet will be in the future more we cannot make a legal framework and every month or half year whether technology of content (off microphone) regulation and this is what we from the block net, I think it's a real problem.
But I think the Internet barriers, there is a lot of ways of communication to block attack on the local area and where it's starting from, and so you can discuss this more in detail in your conference in Vilnius.
I think any solution which is starting to block anything anywhere because the machine is thinking there is an attack going on. I think it's (off microphone) by humans and if (off microphone) a real big problem. What I'm concerned about is that we can see the Internet access provider can see that there is some communication with computers to block that. And we don't have a right to in years a lot of computers which have, so to go to the level up to date.
And in some way we have to find a solution and ask people to come up with security products on their computers and see if there's communication that their computers are being part of ask from the provider a message that says the computer is not a zombie and it's a good idea to install an anti virus.
It's not a good idea to do nothing. The minimum should be to give the information to install the software.
>> Thank you. Mr. Max.
>> MAX STADLER: If there is any chance to go to Kenya, I will assure you that I am going to come. The problem this time was we were prohibited to come, which is sad.
I would like to answer a little bit more main issue of crime on the Internet. I think it is an important issue we have to talk about those new ways of crime on the Internet. We have to the Internet grows stronger and stronger internationally and Internet with the ways of people selling and buying and transferring money, so we have strong growing numbers of Internet crime, this is connected to the growing of Internet colony.
So we have to deal with those issues and we have to find solution, but we have to do this calm and we have to look to our and to the human life and so that we don't overregulate, overcontrol the free Internet and find a small answer to this question of crime on the Internet.
>> We are running out of time and unfortunately no time is left now for final round and comments. Let me say some very final words. I think it was a good start for new kind of dialogue, even if we had some small technical problems, I think this will be better and better year by better.
If we have Internet government formed in 2015, we will go and sit and really in real world with components where we have higher quality both in the video and audio streaming.
I remember when the first e mail was sent out in 1969, so it means do not be surprised if we enter new if we have some difficulty, it will be better. We still have constituencies, Michael represented or big companies like Google represented by Max or innovators represented by Till.
Our very short final announcement by Max and he wants to introduce another meeting in Germany not so far in Berlin. Be very brief and we're going to close the meeting.
>> MAX STADLER: To close off on another positive note in regards to Germany, as many know and, in fact, some of the members, Wolfgang and Annette are part of multistakeholder effort that Google has initiated in Germany, the Internet Society collaboratory, we're tackling the broader topic of open government which, of course, offers a lot of multistakeholder components, it's almost a mini IGF next week in near Potsdam Friday, and I wanted to reinitiate the invitation to all Parliaments and video stream.
>> This meeting is archived and you can distribute this to fellow members of Parliament. They can watch this one hour before they go to bed tonight. It will stay on the rest of the year, and so this is the beauty that everything you say on the Internet, it will be there forever.
And bye in Berlin and hope to see you soon in real life again. And thanks for the audience here in Vilnius. It was an interesting new step how we can use innovative technology to promote the stakeholder dialogue.
Thank you very much and bye bye.