FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
23 OCTOBER 2013
9:00 CET
SESSION NUMBER 59
CONTENT CREATION, ACCESS TO INFORMATION, OPEN INTERNET
*****
This is being provided in a rough‑draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
****
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Good morning, everyone. We are start in approximately two, three minutes. It is the first session of the day. So let's wait a little bit for people to come and have some coffee. Thank you. May I also kindly ask people if they wouldn't mind to move on the table so we can have a more robust Round Table discussion. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone and welcome. Please if you would like you can move on the table. This is the workshop on content creation, access to information and the open Internet which is co‑organized by the Internet Society and the World Intellectual Property Organization. We have what I believe will be a very interesting discussion, touching on various issues that are very pivotal and timely as well as we keep on discussing the relationship between content and the Internet. So before I introduce our esteemed panelists I would like to provide a content. Imagine the world where the Internet is private and the access and ability to use the Internet is controlled and is limited and directed. And fortunately for all of us we are not even close to there. However this is not a scenario that cannot happen. So what we are going to be discussing today is the value of access and the value of content creation and the value of Internet. For access there have been many, many discussions on what access is. We have ‑‑ we see access as an access to information. And its ability actually to act as a socioeconomic and political driver. We see access as a means to communication and, of course, we have access as a collaborative tool for creativity.
The Internet in that sense is a key driver because it opened and has broadened many horizons, making creativity limitless. And content creation now is actually a key part of the Internet. We have not seen so much content being created before the Internet and, any form of content, it doesn't really matter and this content creation actually contributes also to the evolution of the Internet being a driver to incentivize at the technical level.
Our panel today is comprised of people who come from different perspectives. They agree that content creation is a critical tool for the Internet and the value of the Internet needs to be open and preserved. I will introduce the panel and I give them a minute or two minutes to make some high level comments before we proceed to the questions. The idea is to have a robust discussion with you. We want to hear what you are thinking. We want to especially if you are creating content which I am sure you are in any formal fashion and see whether ‑‑ where we are and how we can advance our discussions.
So I will start by introducing our first panelist, Susan Chalmers. Susan Chalmers leads Internet New Zealand on public policy initiatives and she works with staff members and other policymakers. She holds a master of law from the University of Auckland and doctor from Loyola University Chicago and a bachelor of music in piano performance and a bachelor of arts in French and Francophone studies form the University of Michigan. She is from Kalamazoo in U.S. and lives in Wellington, New Zealand which is on the opposite side of the world. And she loves to ski.
And then I will go to Ellen Broad. Ellen recently is a manager of digital projects and policy for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, IFLA. Prior to commencing with IFLA Ellen was executive officer for the Australian Digital Alliance for the Australian Libraries' Copyright Committee advocating for balanced and flexible Copyright Laws in the public interest. In these roles Ellen coordinated a broad coalition of sector members including libraries and archives and IT companies and consumer organizations. And prior to this Ellen worked for the law firm Kingman & Good and for the National Film and Sound Archives of Australia.
Then we move to Andres Guadamuz, I know I am not saying it right. He is a senior lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Sussex. He is an international research consultant and has done work for the international organization, WIPO and the NGO, Creative Commons. He has been ‑‑ his research areas are on the interface between IP and technology. Andres has published two books and the most recent is Networks, Complexity and Internet Regulation.
Right next to him we have Glenn Deen. He is the director of networking and distribution technology at NBCUniversal which is part of Comcast. And he is a technologist that engages in engineering and standards community, seeks a way to rich global content ecosystem for creating and consuming all types of content be it professional, social or even pictures of cats. He is a strong believer in the idea everyone is a creator. He does not have a law degree but he does work at a movie and television studio that has made many great films and shows with lawyers in them.
Paolo Lanteri, he recently participated in the two diplomatic conferences that gave birth to the Beijing Treaty on audiovisual performances and the Marrakech Treaty to facilitate access to published works by visually impaired persons and otherwise print disabled people in 2013. Before joining the WIPO in 2007 Paolo practiced in the IP department of the law firm Uria Menendez Abogados in Madrid, Spain and worked in the legal departments of the Spanish collective society, Sociedad General de Autores y Editores.
And certainly last but not least we have Aries Kurniawan. He is an associate partner in a law firm where he specializes in telecommunications and IT and Intellectual Property and also project director of Creative Commons in Indonesia where he works voluntarily to promote Copyright for maximum access to knowledge. Since 2011 he has joined the Founder Institute, the world's largest startup accelerator as a mentor in IP. Aries holds a bachelor degree of law from the University of Indonesia.
Welcome all. And before we start with the questions, Aries, I would like to start with you to give us a two‑minute high level view on our panel, on our theme today. Thank you.
>> ARIES KURNIAWAN: Thank you very much. I think in accordance to the topic of this today the discussion is firstly I think stakeholders should consistently use the open approach of looking at the Copyright system. Not only look at the Copyright system as the source of income but also Copyright as a tool of ‑‑ a tool to build civilization, to provide the benefit, the real benefit to the community. And yes, the real challenge is the ‑‑ how to achieve the right balance between the needs of creators and the public interests. Thank you.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. Paolo.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Good morning, everyone and welcome to our workshop. As one of the co‑organizers I would like to use my first minute to just tell you a little bit why we did it, why we set up this workshop. What WIPO is looking for this session is really hearing your views, opinions, suggestions on how we could develop balance and neutral policies and our goal, of course, is to look at specifically how we keep rewarding creativity, how the Copyright system is addressing this side of the situation at the same time how we also maintain a high level of access and how the Copyright system may be already as the tools to allow those. That's the first question. How those questions relate to the development of the Internet and the practices of the creators and, of course, the consumers and the users.
With our dream that would be to have in the future a digital environment where accessing legally to content would be as easy as accessing legally. So I am very much looking forward to this open discussion. I think we can all contribute. So thank you.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks.
>> GLENN DEEN: So I take a rather different view than we traditionally have of the content and the Internet. We have this concept in the past that we have creators, film studios and filmmakers and the Internet has broken down that barrier. Everyone creates content. If you have a cell phone and you take a picture, you are now a creator. Just today I took a photo of the sunrise over the beautiful ocean here and posted it up to Facebook. I now created content and I posted it on the Internet. And that was something I did standing on a beach in Bali and it is made completely possible by the Internet, but we have a problem of the Internet's infrastructure from a technical standpoint was never created with content in mind. It was created with a purpose and a very difficult goal of reliably moving data from one device to another device. And there was never a consideration for what is that data and how do I describe and what do I understand about it. And what do I understand about the user who created that content and the user that's consuming that content. And I think that one of the areas we have to look in to is the intersection of policy with the technology and is the technology driven by the open standards there to meet what the policy requires it to do.
And I am not sure we are doing that today and I think that would be a very positive thing for the Internet technical community to join in with the policy people to make sure that the standards being developed meet with what the policy community thinks that it needs to have.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank, Glenn. Andres.
>> ANDRES GUADAMUZ: I would be remiss if I didn't thank the contributor agreements who have allowed me to be here. Apologies for the little plug. And I would like to start by completely agreeing with Glenn and I think that his point of creation of ‑‑ content creation of the Internet is absolutely spot on. Content creators, the Internet has learned the boundaries of what was considered publication or what was considered the gatekeepers and everything like that. I think that we are passed that. And where we are at the moment is on the access to information stage and where I think that we would like to discuss more it is not so much on the content creation. I think we have content sorted out. People generally are good at creating content all the time. And now we are able to publish it quite easily. Now where I think that we need to explore more and governments are starting to do this and creators and industry is in the access to information part and I think we ‑‑ we will have to tackle those issues and how to make information more accessible to the wider number of people. Thanks.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks. Ellen, please.
>> ELLEN BROAD: Hello, everyone. So I have agreed with everyone on the panel so far and I wanted to go back to what Glenn was saying about the intersection between policy and technology because I think he is absolutely right, we need to consider the relationship between the two. And what I am really interested in is whether our Copyright policies and our frameworks really fit with the Internet technologies that we are all using. And I think the considerations in a number of jurisdictions are not. And they are looking for ways to make it appropriate for the digital environment. And the things we need to consider at its core, so much of what you do online, it is quite difficult to do anything online that doesn't involve the making of a copy or a communication of something. So much of what we do online potentially infringes one of the exclusive rights of Copyright holders, and how we develop a Copyright framework that doesn't necessarily catch up all of those very necessary acts of technological copying involved in communicating online, researching, developing new services, developing new products, how we create Copyright frameworks that potentially, I don't know how to say this, without having it sound sacrilegious, have it copied at its very core for the Internet but a very complex issue to figure out in the legal context but I think it is something we need to consider.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. And, of course, you know, libraries are very vested in this and there is work which I hope that we will have the chance to discuss taking place at the World Intellectual Property Organization. Susan, please.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you and good morning, everyone. I'd just like to I guess in my opening minutes I would like to go back to how Konstantinos began this session with a question about openness or closure. And I think it is important for us to really have a good think about how openness traditionally has allowed the Internet to flourish in the way that it has, through open and interoperable standards and the idea that anybody can join the network so long as they speak that same basic language. Openness, we owe the success of the Internet in part to the principles of openness and then we on the other hand, we have closure. So if we are considering kind of where these ‑‑ where closure can come from, closure can come in many different forms but oftentimes we see closure coming from those ‑‑ coming as a perpetuation of a business model that is not necessarily compatible with the open Internet and this is not just related to Copyright. We can see it, for example, in ETNA's proposals at WCIT or the World Conference on International Telecommunications where they had sought to introduce a more sustainable economic model for the development of the Internet based on the traditional telephony principles sending network party pays. So this proposal would have required some unfeasible changes to Internet transit arrangements that are modeled on the telecommunications approach to things. So I think it is not just Copyright. Closure can come in many different forms. But at the end of the day we are always going to have a mix between the two, and I think it is important that both sides and all stakeholders accept that development of Internet policy requires compromise. And so long as we are all trying to arrive at the same place I think that if we are willing to compromise we can get there.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks. And I thank you all. Before I continue I forgot to mention our remote moderator Luca Belli. She will let us know when we have questions. I would like to kickstart and I would like to start with the work that WIPO is doing. We know that the World Intellectual Property Organization is a key organization. It is there to advance and protect and provide a fair balance on Intellectual Property. And we know also that they have been doing great work, especially over the couple of years they have successfully concluded two very key treaties. First of all, a more general question how does the Copyright system support the creation of content and access to information and then move, you know, especially in the context of WIPO, what you have been doing for those two treaties and the plans in the future. Because, you know, you guys are the gatekeepers of a lot of Intellectual Property rights including Copyright thus content creation. So please, Paolo, thanks.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Thanks. So I have two questions here. One is possibly the most complicated question is how Copyright is actually enhancing creation at the same time access to knowledge. I think the answer to this question is a very basic principle of the system. It rewards creation by giving them ‑‑ by giving creators a basic set of rights that can be used in different ways. The current system allows commercial exploitation and also allows for creators to decide and go for a more open way of distributing content.
In fact, initiatives like Creative Commons, open source software is not an alternative to the system but an alternative to some way to distributing content. That's very important to highlight. The current system supports both ways and professional and commercial way of creation distribution and at the same time the nonprofessional, the open way of creation. In terms of access, we all know there are several provisions in Copyright Law, one dealing with the fair use, fair dealings, additional exceptions to strike the balance and to allow access to content without going through permission by the rightsholders. Having said that I believe in addition to the law there is much more that can be done to improve the situation. And on the second part of your question what WIPO is doing could be ‑‑ what WIPO is doing I must say is doing a lot in this area on how to strike a balance to enhance access, access to creative content and to information.
I would divide the area of activities in two separate fields. One is the normative field, treaty making. And the other one is non‑normative. So regarding the normative field I cannot forget to mention the latest gift of the international community, the Marrakech Treaty enabling access to printed works for the blind and the Visually Impaired people. This treaty is a major change, a major shift in the development of international norms because in fact, it is the first multilateral treaty that does not recognize new rights, does not increase the level of protection. But in fact, establishes a minimum level of limitations and exceptions that Member States will need to recognize in favor of certain beneficiaries.
So this is a big change that will ‑‑ is already enhancing the discussion at the international level. Of course, I will ‑‑ I don't have time now to dig in but in terms of the Copyright framework internationally there is much more to say in terms of this treaty. The scope is limited but it has a great power to enable new discussion. In fact, if you look at the new agenda in the WIPO context the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights have two other items on international exceptions; one in the field of libraries and archives and the other one in the field of educational and research institutions, what those institutions need in order to be able to keep delivering their mission. Do we need international framework or minimum level of limitations and exceptions to be recognized internationally to allow them to keep doing their job? That's a discussion that is taking place in an international forum. So WIPO is very open. It is not a member ‑‑ Member States are very open to the discussion. And I think it is very hard ‑‑ we are in the very early stage of our negotiations but still I believe it is already a big change and even the discussion itself is contributing a lot. It is contributing a lot to create new ideas and new ways forward.
On a non‑normative side of things I could be talking for hours. We ‑‑ I could list tens of initiatives but I would like to pick a few of them that are particularly relevant to the debate. We have in WIPO a process called the Development Agenda. It is set over recommendations that our Member States gave to the organization saying please, keep in mind development consideration in the IP debate. This is cross‑sectorial. It goes from how you manage internally, how you select consultants, how you develop technical assistance, how you develop norm setting. Of course, it deals with Copyright. In this context we have specific projects on the public domain which was raised already in several departments. The other side of the barrier which is not protected by Copyright. So we published a study a few years ago, a scoping study which I suggest everyone to read because it really is the first step, a very important step. The objective of that study was to inform and raise awareness of Member States of how complex is the issue because it is very different to talk about the public domain, open licensing, limitations and exceptions, open access, education are all different issues and technically speaking very complex. If we want to advance we need a focused discussion.
Coming soon we have a new study on Copyright relinquishment. It is authored by our friend Andres and also we have a full new project that will go through the screening of Member States next month in November that is called "Using the Copyright system, enabling access to information and creative content". The title is enough to tell you what it is all about and we will tackle new ‑‑ a completely new area that WIPO has not developed activities on.
Finally, and I know I already passed time, WIPO has already started re‑evaluation of our own internal IP and Copyright policy. Together with several other international organizations we discuss and we set up a Working Group to negotiate with Creative Commons a ported version of Creative Commons license that would be compatible with our way of functioning. So it is a matter of a week we will be releasing a Creative Commons license that will sort of standardize, and I see here the word standardization as a positive environment I believe in that would be with other Creative Commons licenses around the world and potentially be the standard for all the material created by the United Nations agencies. As you can see the international community is deeply engaged with the issues discussed today. We recognize a lot of challenges but we stand ready to tackle them. Thanks a lot.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. May I ask also that we be a little brief on our responses so we can go through all the questions. Aries, I know that you are working closely with the Creative Commons in Indonesia. Would you like to react to that? We had a new collaboration between various organizations. Creative Commons will also be one of them. Would you like to respond to that, how does the Copyright system support the creation of content and access to information, especially also the license of Creative Commons? And if you can be brief, please. Thank you.
>> ARIES KURNIAWAN: Thank you very much. Yes, basically ask like Paolo said that Creative Commons license is just part, a small part of the Copyright system and then any rules, regulation or any provision in the Creative Commons license also adopt or harmonize with the national Copyright regulation. The challenge to implement the Copyright Creative Commons license in Indonesia is how to educate people about the Copyright itself. Because the Copyright system is yes, a very complicated issue. It is a very complicated issue and then we have to educate people about Copyright first and then we introduce the Copyright, the Creative Commons license.
Related to this topic about the content creation, open information and access, open Internet and access to information, I would like to open ‑‑ to give an opinion that yes, like Paolo said that there is a concept of limitations and exceptions in the traditional Copyright system. That yes, any regulation, any national regulation has the concept of exceptions and limitations in the national Copyright regulation. But it can ‑‑ it is still not socialized or disseminated to the people because yes, this is a very complicated issue.
So I think the duty of the Government or CSO related to the ‑‑ related to the Internet activity is to optimize, to optimize the exceptions and limitations of the Copyright, and the Government would be encouraged to make the clear provision about the exceptions and limitations. So people can easily understand what they can do and what they cannot do to the Copyright materials.
And if, if the provision is not ‑‑ is still unclear, then we like Creative Commons, we encourage the community with the specific activity to make a best practice or guidelines to ‑‑ on what we can do to the Copyright materials related to their activities, like librarian community, like photographer and then ‑‑ and so on. So that's how we benefit for them.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. Thank you very much, Aries. So we have heard a lot ‑‑ we have heard the word education and Creative Commons, and Creative Commons we know it is ‑‑ it was the license that was created because of the Internet and I would like to turn to Glenn, and this is not in the order, but because the concept of education and we ‑‑ there are a lot of people out there that they don't know how the Internet works. And we talk about the open Internet a lot and you mentioned as well that, you know, of course, you are doing a lot of work for this open Internet or the level of standardization. So the Internet is premised on an environment where open standards proliferate and it is interoperable, and it has a generative nature and these are Internet values that we need to preserve, in what ways does the process of development and can it ensure your protection. And I know you are doing a lot of work on that because I have seen you doing it. Thanks.
>> GLENN DEEN: A lot of work. Hopefully some progress, too. Yes. So it is a very good question. You know, the ‑‑ the standards organizations historically I think describes themselves as policy neutral or at least not policy implementers. They create standards and then the policy community with companies that then take those standards implement and deploy, apply the policies on top of them. The policies can change over time. And if the technology, if one really well can remain neutral, it can enable the policy to be applied but not necessarily have that policy baked in to the technology itself. But I think there is a couple of areas that are very important focus items for content of all types. I attended a panel or a session yesterday on identity which I thought was very valuable. Today we have ‑‑ I will go back to the example I posted a picture of the sunrise up on the Facebook and that was done by Glenn Deen and it went out there as posted by Glenn Deen. The photograph doesn't have any real tie other than a posting made by me. One of the theories that the standards organizations can help is give us the means in the way that content is provided on the Internet and content is moved around the Internet is to start doing associations of the content with the creator. And so that it is an association strong enough that can then have policy built around it and applied.
So you need strong identifiers and a strong identification policy. We have very simplistic authentication protocols that then are used by organizations like Facebook which has the Facebook I.D. system or Google or a variety of others that all have them but they are not interoperable across platforms and they are very simplistic. They don't have privacy built in to them as a fundamental element and they are having extensive discussions on what that means. One of the use cases that I like to go back to a lot if I create a picture when I am 15 years old as something that is fascinated as a 15‑year‑old and I post it up to Youtube and ten years later I am going for my big hit but ten years later I am going for my first big job interview at Wall Street but do I want it to be associated with Glenn Deen the candidate for the big job? Today it would be. There isn't that breakdown of roles. One way that the community can help by creating a better delineation of privacy and identity so the standards organizations can build the authentication protocols that work around that. Likewise the association of that information with content I think is important for the standards community to work on. Within the technical world we talk about this idea of glass to glass. For the glass of the lens, I've taken to the content to the glass of the person viewing the content. What would be wonderful to have ‑‑ is to have an ecosystem that is understood from end to end and did it in a way that was scaleable so we could have in the end an ecosystem that when the policy community has developed its rich set of policies on content on the Internet that they can then be applied and flow through the whole entire creation process. And I think that's a way if we can solve the problem that will help content because that will empower creators to have control over what they create, where it goes and how it is used, be able to express their intent from the beginning of creation all the way through the final step of consumption.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much, Glenn. I think this is quite refreshing, is trying to figure out standards development processes, especially of the way they are done on the Internet can facilitate the creation and production of content. On that basis I will turn to Susan. We have heard Glenn talking about Internet infrastructure and how that can support. So what are the necessary tools you think to establish reliable Copyright infrastructure that is based on this open and interoperable Internet?
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thanks. I think that you need to think about principles and we need to think about tools. And in terms of principles for the development of Internet related Copyright policy, I think a first good principle to start with from the Internet policy perspective is that laws and policies should work with the architecture of the Internet and not against it. And then if we are thinking about an Intellectual Property principle and especially for Copyright I think we ‑‑ let's not forget kind of the Utilitarian normative framework that the inspiration behind the original Copyright Laws is that you want to incentivize creation so that the public can benefit from the consumption of what has been created. In that sense we do have that balance between incentivizing authors. We can't make that incentivization or that right, the Copyright too strong prejudicing the public and we can't make it too weak prejudicing creation. So I think that if we take those two principles and keep them in mind and understand that Copyright policy and Intellectual Property policy is not just ‑‑ it doesn't stand in isolation anymore. It is part and parcel of Internet policy now. So when we are developing those frameworks we need to keep in mind how the Internet works and the architecture of the Internet and ensure that certain enforcement mechanisms that are introduced do not impact intermediaries beyond what they need to be.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks. So we keep on hearing this need to start A, using the Internet to understand better the content creation and protected content and then Copyright, how Copyright is fitting the Internet. Ellen, I will turn to you. In Europe in particular, we are going through an extensive debate concerning licenses. So in Europe we are supposed to be a single market. Yet again a Copyright owner needs to acquire 27 different licenses in order to be able to promote the content. So the European Commission is actually going through a huge and extensive debate about it. So I would ‑‑ licensing is a huge part of the Copyright regime. So I'd like to turn to you and first of all, I would like you to react and tell us what do you think is the place licensing holds or should hold better yet within the Copyright regime, whether it is compatible with the Internet and finally whether it actually provides those incentives that Susan just mentioned.
>> ELLEN BROAD: Thanks. So I will talk a little bit about licensing with reference to for licenses for Europe discussions that Konstantinos has mentioned and the work that libraries and archives is doing at WIPO. Copyright Laws that have been available between licensing and limitations and exceptions and I don't see that mix of the two like changing as we embrace the Internet fully. It will be a mix of licensing and limitations and exceptions. What we are seeing in the digital environment I feel is the overreach of licensing in some contexts that impacts on the technological processes involved with developing new services on the Internet. So, for example, in the licenses for Europe discussion we have been ‑‑ there has been a Working Group considering text and data mining and whether we should be adopting or considering a licensing approach for text and data mining. And this is something that I think really at least from a library perspective articulates the problem with the way some of your Copyright Laws and regulations are framed for the Internet environment.
Text and data mining was taking place before we had the Internet. It was slower. It existed. In the digital environment text and data mining is a huge resource. It facilitates research, huge advances in science and technologies. It has become an increasing part of academic practice but it is the technological act of copying that brings it in to the framework of Copyright Law. The use itself was still taking place before the Internet. And when we ‑‑ when I think about Susan's point about incentivizing the creation of new works and how we find that balancing Copyright I think of text and data mining in this instance where you are ‑‑ if you are providing a license for access to a database well, that is your license. It is for access. It is the value of the information inside. The licensing on top of that of the act of extracting information is almost I think of it as placing a toll on the information highway. It doesn't add any value to the underlying work. It is kind of just placing a tollbooth between your access to the works and what you can do with them. So that's I think a concern for us in terms of these uses that in the print environment the uses were never the realm of Copyright Law, but on Internet because of the technological uses involved it suddenly operates in a space that could be defined through exceptions but also is an opportunity to try to extract toll benefits from what are otherwise quite productive nonharmful uses.
Very briefly because I know I am going to get to the discussion, for libraries and archives licensing is an increasing issue because so many of our core services are being eroded by licenses. Not many jurisdictions have any protection of Copyright exceptions and limitations where a contract applies and we have seen that happening in the consumer space. So we have gone to WIPO because Paolo brought up the treaty for the blind which is a great moment for WIPO and as Paolo mentioned it is the first treaty that has at its core exceptions and limitations. It came in behind last year's and then alongside libraries in December at WIPO there will be the Broadcasting Treaty. It is great to see exceptions and limitations being discussed in the same forum. The purpose of being at WIPO these exceptions and limitations need to be considered at the international level with the same weight as the rights that we provide to our content creators. And through these international norm settings we might be able to carve out or protect some fundamental services from overreach through licensing.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much, Ellen. Andres, I saw you nodding a lot when Ellen was speaking. So I will turn to you now and ask you, you know, what Ellen essentially said is that the licenses, the current licensing regime is a little bit challenging for some organizations, more challenging than others but nonetheless challenging. So what do you believe are the future major challenges to creating a healthy and balanced creative content markets where creators and the artists and the public are still provided with the appropriate incentives?
>> ANDRES GUADAMUZ: As it is a difficult question to answer, I am going to tell you a story. I love stories. It is a nice way to wake everyone up. This story comes from far away, the land of Costa Rica where I am from and as part of a groundbreaking effort, national effort to protect biodiversity, Costa Rica is a per square kilometer, the most bio diverse country in the world. A law was passed that created a new institution, more of a private institution for developing, collecting, storing, cataloging our biodiversity. So, you know, try to protect against bio piracy and try to get benefit sharing and all this information started being collected by this institution called the INBio, institutional of university. It is a very interesting institution because it started funded by the government in a way, but at some point it became more of a private, one of those public/private institutions. And their choice was to take this information, this data and then they started trying to commercialize it, sell it to companies, and to pharmaceutical companies and the idea was that some benefits would be shared with the country.
To do this the institution conducted pretty much a very closed, very commercial information policy. And that wasn't very successful and I think that the more that we are starting to see how a public information, particularly information like this, that is for the benefit of everyone, should not be kept commercialized and actually their commercial efforts did not succeed because pharmaceuticals did not want to pay pharmaceutical companies to pay a Government to do this. There were some agreements at some point but they did not generate enough funds to sustain this private institution.
So what happened is that the government had to take over funding again and become public. Contrast that, the closing of information, the making information less available with what has been happening in some other countries like Europe where it is now almost a de facto Consensus that information that has been paid for by the public should be free or it should be accessible and in that sense we see this with the European Commission. The UK Government has just decided that it was going to release all sorts of information that had been paid by the public, scientific information to via open access, and I think this story of what has happened to this institution, that if you close in the interest of trying to commercialize and try to squeeze some pennies from information that should be public, actually does not work quite well and we should be opening more. And that's the story that opens up for discussion. Thanks.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much. So you have heard everyone, all of our panelists reacting. Do we have any questions so far? Do we have any remote participants?
>> We have no questions.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: So I will turn to you and I would like to give you the floor and ask questions to our panelists and then we can proceed. But please anyone any questions for our panelists? Please.
>> Chris Mozian, University of Sussex. I have moved. Question, there is actually two really. The first is Paolo, we are not expecting the ITU to start using a CC WIPO license any time soon I guess, but it would be a lovely thought, but adoption through the UN agencies will be, what's the expression, gradual. And the other question which any of the panelists can take, there is a huge concern more generally about the really vicious way in which e‑book standards are being fought over at the moment and the refusal to use EPUB 3 which is a perfectly acceptable standard. And I wonder how much this illustrates about whether or not rather than holding hands in a circle and saying how things are getting better we are actually seeing things getting worse offline as well as online.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks, Chris. I think Paolo would like to intervene and then we can take the second part of the question.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: I cannot, of course, speak on behalf of ITU or this organization. The way we developed this license was a very broad work, I mean Working Group where they did not participate but as you know Creative Commons licenses are open by definition. So we expect to have also other institutions beyond IGOs to use it. In terms of ITU I don't have any information. What I can tell you is they are not part of the discussion, but in addition to that we are receiving recently after the news spread out more and more people that were not in the discussion making statements. They want to understand how it works and they want to start using and we are already at least 15, 16 including the United Nations in New York. So it looks promising.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks. Anyone wanting to take. Ellen.
>> ELLEN BROAD: I feel I should take this one. E‑books are a huge challenge at the moment for consumers, for academics and those who are Visually Impaired for libraries and archives. And it is not only from the policy regulatory perspective, what the laws enable us to do with the content we are licensing but also in very real, practical terms what happens when you move with your e‑book, like take your Kindle across international border whether you can still access the work, whether it could be amended at any time, whether ‑‑ if you are someone with a visual impairment have the technical capacity in the circumstances that you do have an exception that says that you can remove the TPM, whether you can actually remove it. I think we need to be very strong on this. And it is a priority for the libraries and archives at WIPO is something an Article that somehow protects certain exceptions and limitations fundamental uses from override by contracts, because from at least the library and archive perspective we are looking at a future if we are moving increasingly to e‑books, we can't lend content or provide it to those for certain research purposes.
Say it is text and data mining. We can't interlibrary loan. Some of our researchers they can't print off documents and they can't access them off the library terminal and we can't purchase content in a number of jurisdictions. And that is a real big issue to access in general, both in developed countries. But what we as individuals can do with content but also for developing countries where that access alone is necessary for development for further innovation. So it is a huge issue. And I think that's precisely why, for example, where at WIPO it has moved beyond discussion. We need to be moving to some kind of strong normative settings I think because I talked to ‑‑ we have been talking to publishers about it and the answer seems to be licensing. We will eventually be licensing all of these underlying uses. But the libraries and archives but for individuals who would like to lend an e‑book to a friend. It is that the primary and secondary markets will take care of this issue eventually. So this is the way forward. I don't think I in the future will want to perhaps pay more to lend my e‑book to a friend.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you very much. I think we have ‑‑ yes. A question. Amelia.
>> AMELIA ANDERSDOTTER: Thank you. I was particularly captivated by some of the remarks by Mr. Dean that concerned technological measures because we have been engaging the European Commission and also ‑‑
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Can you state who you are?
>> AMELIA ANDERSDOTTER: Amelia Andersdotter. I am a member of the European Parliament for the pirate party. We have been trying to engage the European Commission and somehow our colleagues and other technical community people in the discussions about the World Wide Web Consortium encrypted media extensions. It is the feeling of the people in the technical community and outside of the technical incorporating APIs for dealing with linked content in to the browser in to all basically global browsers will be disadvantageous to the use ‑‑ the exercise of legal rights of users. And so they will say in the technical discussions that no, no, it is not disadvantageous actually because the actual content delivery stuff will be implemented elsewhere by private actors that are only going to be using these APIs to interface with the hardware of users and so forth. This is an ongoing discussion now at the World Wide Web Consortium that would be decided in less than there a year and enforce rules for broadcasting rights. The Copyright problem obviously is very big. It is aimed at the audiovisual sectors. So I think particularly some large streaming companies of the Internet have been involved in producing the standard but also, of course, it could spread in to stuff like e‑books, newspapers one could imagine would be interested. So I am wondering if the panel could reflect on that process and what we could do to ensure that legal rights of users worldwide are not negatively affected by this Forum, the World Wide Web Consortium and their technical standards decisions.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: If I may also broaden up the discussion I think it also goes back to what Glenn raised in his intervention about the collaboration between the technical community and the policy community and how essentially this increasingly becomes for this collaboration to be more robust. So if any of the panel would like to take this, please.
>> GLENN DEEN: I will try. This goes back to my comment about the policy neutral role of SDOs. I spent a lot of time in the ITF and I dabble in other standards organizations and I will tell you that my view is very much that technology should be policy neutral. It shouldn't be combative with policy. In fact, the policy when created should be supported by the technology. And so I don't see any of the work being done in various places as violating that. It is a policy neutral technology in 3C and ITF and wherever we are doing work and it is complimentary to the policy decisions that are made by legislators and by the Internet community of how they are going to take that technology and make use of it.
And I don't see that it should just be ‑‑ the role of being policy neutral means very much that the technology as developed should be developed, made available without either trying to enable a particular policy or trying to prevent a particular policy and I see that taking place today. And I don't see a problem with what is going on in any of these forums. I think they have walked the line very carefully. So I actually think it is ‑‑ we have a good thing because it is working the way it should be working.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Andres.
>> ANDRES GUADAMUZ: Having agreed with Glenn before I have to disagree slightly. I am highly, highly worried about the standard setting procedures and even though I completely agree with the ‑‑ with the sentiment that policy ‑‑ or the technology should be policy neutral, it isn't. Are we ‑‑ after what has happened with the NSA, do we still believe that even the most sound technological standard setting bodies are technology neutral? At some point somebody is going to push some Government and I am not going to push names, some Government is going to try to push some form of technology, surveillance to make it in to the standards. I am deeply troubled by this and I think it is ‑‑ people should be mentioning more. I see all these mentions of everyone talking as if nothing has happened in the last year.
Everything has changed and I don't think that we can be blinkered in to thinking that the world is revolving and we are all singing Kumbayah in a circle. It is not like that. Sorry.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Glenn would like to react very quickly and then I will go to Susan to also react very quickly.
>> GLENN DEEN: One of the interesting things that has happened in the past year is we have seen awareness growing in the Internet user community and also these are creators, people as well very much around wanting themselves to have access to technology that helps them control who or particularly what group can look at what they are doing. And so it is an interesting dichotomy where you have the professional content community seeking more ways to get more eyeballs on their content and meanwhile you have the larger social communities working very hard to adopt technology to prevent eyeballs from seeing their content and maybe this is a good thing because we will get a new set of voices to come in to the dialogue that has not been heavily involved in the past.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Susan.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: I just wanted to agree with Andres and share my concern with what seems to be the mounting institutional capture if these fora for the development of standards that we have heretofore always held up as the Bastians of openness and open and honest development of standards. And I think that if we are working in a multi‑stakeholder environment and trying to develop multi‑stakeholder policies for the Internet one thing that that entire concept is predicated on is that everyone will act in good faith. And so I just wanted to share that concern with my colleague.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. Questions? Anyone else? I can't see in the back. Nope. Okay. Then I would like to ‑‑ I would like to take us back a little bit to content and content creation, what ‑‑ as part of what the Internet Society is doing is also focusing a lot on content and over the years we have seen an increasing amount of local content being created and becoming increasingly more and more important for social and economic reasons, especially for the developing world. We see that as Internet infrastructure is being built and in the developing countries and we see this in particular in Latin America and Africa more local content is being created that needs to be exploited. So I would like actually this to be because we have stakeholders from different perspectives, what do you believe are the regulatory technical and social and economic tools that can assist the creation of content? Professional or professional at this stage, let's not make a distinction and I would like to throw this to Aries in the beginning and see whether ‑‑ what's happening in Indonesia especially in relation to those two supporting creation of content, be it social or regulatory or economic for that matter. Thank you.
>> ARIES KURNIAWAN: Okay. Thank you very much. Basically Indonesian people are very creative. There is a lot of local content created by people, the musicians, and then the musician and filmmaker and so on. And then ‑‑ but however they don't understand about the Copyright system and then maybe sometimes when they create something that they take somebody else's works and then that's okay and then they create something and they are public. Therefore I think the main problem in Indonesia is how to educate people about the Copyright system in the right thing. Not only just our government, yes, basically our Government has socialization or education to people but I think this is not a creative way. Just like ‑‑ this is the regulation and you can read it by yourself, this is the Article 1. But they don't know the context of the Copyright system to support their ‑‑ when they create something like local content and to this need to publish their local content. So I think the main problem is about the education ‑‑ to educate people about the Copyright system and then to explain how the exceptions and limitations in the Copyright so they can use any content, content for like the education proposed or research proposed and so on without violating the Copyright owners rights. Thank you.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. I think, you know, you have mentioned the word education and you have mentioned also the role of Government. So I would really like to go to Paolo now because you know, part of what WIPO is doing is actually going and speaking to Governments and you are speaking of the time actually to Governments and you know you are promoting the Intellectual Property system including Copyright. So what sort of education if you want and I am using the word very, very loosely here, is WIPO doing when speaking to those Governments and does it go even beyond to asking Governments to speak to their users because of the discussions that are actually happening. I mean right now everyone has an opinion on Copyright and we know that we have seen it. So please if you can.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Thanks. Aries raised a very important issue. Possibly the most fundamental one. The alarming lack of awareness of the regulatory system people don't understand ‑‑ don't know the details of the law and we ‑‑ I had an opportunity to share other opinion from Indonesia and here in particular and in most also developed world there is a lack of awareness. How to address this lack of awareness it is not an easy answer. There are certainly different components of it. On the one hand there is the problem of I mean that we should go towards simplification of the system. Copyright Law is complicated. It is complex due to many of these fundamental principles, like territoriality and different ways of development and the formality free protection itself. That's one element.
In addition we may want to tackle this issue also with a little bit of social policy. I mean we may want to have a change in culture of consumers in addition because when we look at how to develop LT, wealthy and world functioning digital environment ‑‑ it is a matter of economic viability of culture in this century. It is not only a matter of how can I use my Facebook account, how can I post it, it is something that should really concern all citizens and policymakers. So together with needs, needs to access, needs to low cost of culture, interoperability of systems we may also want to install duties or collective wisdom towards collaborating for something that would work also for the other side of the barriers. That's one thing.
And the other element we are trying to convey to Governments is that policy, you mentioned technology needs to be neutral to policy and I also believe that policy needs to be neutral to technology and to business. Copyright is about enabling and rewarding. Creativity is not about maintaining business models and it is linked very much with the debate on digital rights management which are rightly defined by the treaties. Actually there are two components and we always focus attention on technological measures and treaties dealing with another component which is rights management tools. They are the building blocks of what we are talking here, like the digital environment without this sort of basic protection, collective management organization will not work. I mean all the stakeholders would not work. So I believe there is a lot to say.
And let me just highlight that again recently the international community has approached this issue of balance, in fact, the last two pieces of international norm setting there are provisions. One is only an agreed statement where it is clearly stated the principle that, for instance, limitations and exceptions and fair uses should not be overcome by Technological Protection Measures. And it states openly that public domain cannot be gated by Technological Protection Measures. And one of the basic fundamental principles behind the Marrakech Treaty is again the same. There are reactions and I think this kind of discussions are very healthy. And we need to keep working with all the Governments but also with the consumers.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you, Paolo. I think we have a question. Please, state your name and affiliation. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. I am Maria Delray, member of the European Parliament and I come from Barcelona, Spain. I would like to know the view of the panelists on the issue that in my opinion Internet has played and is still playing a great role on the way creation is developed. And as it has been in my opinion an advantage on some creative sectors and I would like to know what is the view of the panelists in relation to the way how to legislate on creation and Internet because I think of an advantage. We had our rules when we were not Internet, not in the digital world, the previous world without objectives. Now I think our objectives probably are more or less the same ones. But everything has changed with advantages and disadvantages. And I would like to know the opinion on how this change must change also the regulation. And it is taken in to account. Thank you.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Andres, I think you want to react.
>> ANDRES GUADAMUZ: Excellent question. I would actually recommend anyone who was thinking of regulating creativity not to legislate it. Having most of legislation, already we need to fine‑tune things like exceptions and limitations, making ICT, little things. The most important thing is policies that provide, for example, funding for creation, education programs for the public. So not legislation ‑‑ help the creativity.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Ellen, please. Anyone else want to respond to ‑‑ no. Please.
>> I am a member of the European Parliament and I come from Germany. So the parliament is here now. We are discussing on many issues. We touched this morning. So especially the work we made directive to get a better use of those things. The problem I see is that many things come still from the old let's say analog systems. High quality, normally made by analog system and not just online and the mechanisms that work there don't work always well on the Internet because of let's say the way refund is made or the way how they can deal with the Copyright questions. Because we have a very limited ‑‑ in Europe a very limited territorial system of Copyright and that makes the problem to all these Internet content because there you cannot deal with such a strict system. On the other hand, it is always told on different creators side that they need these territorial systems to get adequate refund of the work they do and to get a financing system for their content because otherwise they are not able to do it as professionals and just having nonprofessional content in the Internet is not what we want. How do you see we can find a balance between the need of also having professionals in the creative sector and not just having much content and multiple content and much diversity but the high quality standards cannot be kept because there is not enough refund for professionals. Ellen? Paolo?
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Thanks. Well, it is definitely a very pertinent question and not an easy one to answer and I would definitely not enter in to the European debate of multi‑ territorial licensing but on a ‑‑ from a general viewpoint I mention in my voluntary my intervention the principle of (Audio is cutting out) and in this way. First of all, professional creators, we have heard that creation is not at stake. It is not ‑‑ (audio is cutting out) the problem which we ‑‑ it was not raised today, yet is about the revenue stream. Who is getting I mean economically rewarded for creation. Because if we look at the data we may see the market of digital media growing, but if you go and look at collecting societies numbers, CSAC, for instance, how authors are not getting the same amount of money they were getting before. So the cake is shared in a different way. This is something we look ‑‑ we need to look at if you want to keep having incentives, economic incentives for professional creators which are in many cases the first and weaker ring of the chain. We still need them. It doesn't need to be done by law. It can be done through collective agreement, licensing, many different things we don't have time to step in to possible solutions.
So to your question, I would agree with Andres, we got two different approaches, normative and non‑normative approach and collective management has worked very well for several decades with no specific big international treaty. In fact, in the multilateral treaty do not deal with collective management. So maybe the solution is only a matter of another time, again a stakeholders agreement. Agreement between the institutions. And that's my very personal suggestion, very personal suggestion. And I am sure a directive will move forward and better the situation. But there is no magic answer. In my view I think that everyone needs to ‑‑ it should be agreement more than a position. Thank you.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. Susan very briefly. We have five minutes and I would like to give each one of you some closing ‑‑ for some closing remarks.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thanks. One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that levelling effect. Everyone regardless whether or not they are the worst guitarist in the world or the best one they still have the opportunity to put their content online. But in terms of just responding to your question, I think that's something that I am going to watch with interest is how the digital Copyright exchange unfolds in the UK and how if that program, if it is successful can really be able to create an effective licensing regime that will be able to deliver a greater return to authors and creators.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thank you. So we have five minutes left. We have heard that the Copyright system is complex. We ‑‑ because of the Internet this complexity is becoming even bigger. So under this framework of complexity I would like to hear ‑‑ you have one minute for closing remarks. I will start with Aries and I will move on to Susan. Aries, please some closing remarks. Thank you.
>> ARIES KURNIAWAN: Okay. According to our experience in Indonesia that our Government is also what they say making regulation with adoption from the international Convention, they are always making, they are always adopting and making regulation, new regulation but they forget to disseminate people but the regulation is good. If no education to the people about the regulation then the regulation will not implement well in Indonesia. So I think the big challenge is how can we educate people so they can understand about the Copyright system. So they can get the benefit from that. Thank you.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Susan.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thanks. So I am just going to target back to the title of this workshop for my closing comment. Content creation and access to information, I think we can think about them as the two different sides of the Copyright coin. We often talk about Copyright, substantive rights, creating the substantive rights incentivizes content creation and having carve‑outs for limitations and exceptions. And I think we should dispatch with that language and think about them as equal partners balancing each other. And considering all of this within the context of how to preserve the Open Internet, I really appreciated Ellen's comment earlier about when you are hoisting the analog Copyright framework on to the digital environment, and the copying that is made incidental as part of a technological process that does not necessarily add any economic value, I think that's really ‑‑ we have to be really mindful about not creating a greater right in the technological environment that is otherwise merited. With that I want to say thank you.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Ellen.
>> ELLEN BROAD: I think that Susan has already summed up everything that I was going to say. You will be summarizing what I had on the panel today, that we do need to be rethinking our language around exceptions and limitations as carve‑outs and be rethinking Copyright as a balanced framework. And when Susan said that access to content and content creations, the two sides of Copyright coin I don't see them as opposing sides, access to content being on one side and content creation being on the other because it has always been the case that it is the access to content, access to information is part of the process of content creation. The standing on the shoulders of giants, the inspiration of the tools from which you create your work. So I don't think we should even be thinking of them as two opposing principles.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks.
>> ANDRES GUADAMUZ: It's good to come across as a complete anarchist because I complete proposing nonlegislative and non‑Governmental solutions. I am a lawyer that doesn't like the law making and that's probably a good description. And I think what I like about the processes and one of the things that I think it has been mentioned before that I like about the Internet it is the self‑organizing capabilities that it can have. I am a strong believer in bottom‑up solutions that come from communities, come from informed users that can help us. I know I was a bit pessimist before but there is room for optimism in the sense that if we continue enabling people to connect and to participate together, I think good things can happen.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks. Glenn.
>> GLENN DEEN: I like to harken back to the point I made at the beginning which was trying to break down this vision we often fall back on because we have had it for a very long time that there is two roles here of creators and consumers and I think the big change that we have to address that we are all creators. One of the key points that when we develop our Internet policy around that that has to be included as a foundational principle when we create.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: Thanks and Paolo.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Thank you. So the outcome I like very much from this discussion this morning is that Copyright is still relevant and many challenges and the real challenge is to find the right channels that cannot be only law making but to adopt and develop to and also together with the Internet. I like to think that way. Thank you.
>> KONSTANTINOS KOMAITIS: With that I would like to thank all of our panelists. In particular I would like to thank the World Intellectual Property Organization for organizing this workshop and Luca Belli for being our remote moderator. I would like to finish that everyone is a creator. Go create. Thank you.
(Applause.)
(Session concluded at 10:34 CET)
*****
This is being provided in rough‑draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
****