IGF Openness session discusses blog regulation
Today’s Openness session at the IGF dealt at length with the implications of the Greek blog aggregator arrest, whether blogs should be regulated and the larger question of free speech on the Internet; which is, as everyone knows, a series of tubes :-p (cheers, kuk).
Update (1/11 14:00): Μετάφραση στα ελληνικά από το Nylon (μπράβο, Νίκο!)
Update (2/11 8:40): Kieren’s take on the infighting going on in the Greek gov’t for control of the Net.
The session minutes make for interesting reading, to say the least; especially the last 15-20′:
[...]
>> NIK GOWING: Minister I have to put this to you because there are many questions about this, including blogging on the Web site, about the Greek blogger who has just been arrested for defamation. And they are wondering how you can arrest a blogger for defamation in an open environment which is being encouraged.
>> CHAIRMAN ROUSSOPOULOS: Well, I’m not aware of this case. But what I can state is that over the last period, we have had to face various bloggers who make any kind of references really untrue statements. In fact, these lies get on television and on other media which are widely followed in my country. So we have a problem with bloggers who spread lies through television. What we need to guarantee in a democratic environment is to respect professional codes of ethics and international rights guaranteeing the rights of everyone, but also giving the opportunity to freedom of expression, but also to the truth. Because there are people who are not politicians or business representatives but is the victim of slandering or defamation. How can this person deal with statements, untrue statements, made by a blogger against him?
>> NIK GOWING: We happen to be in Athens having this meeting and time has been a chance here in terms of the convergence between this case and this meeting taking place. Are you suggesting that there now has to be a code for bloggers which everyone has to sign up to, almost like journalists? We should at least be trained in the basics of how to do good journalism, but there should be a blogging code. Otherwise, bloggers are going to fall foul of it in this way which you have identified of defamation? Because that’s a new element to the issue of openness.
>> CHAIRMAN ROUSSOPOULOS: As I said, my statement is more of a question. I am reflecting on this. And I am reflecting on it because we have such cases in my country. We have bloggers or “bloggers” in quotation marks, that create false news and disseminate false news. And in this case when you have a blogger who creates a piece of news, anyone can send an answer. So what we found out is in some cases you cannot answer these blogs because people use the cover of being a blogger to create a site which can’t be answered. You can’t send your answer to the site, and these answers you send cannot be seen by anyone. So perhaps, yes, a code of behavior is an idea. This is not a proposal I will be tabling this today. No, I don’t think it’s the right time. But I will make certain points during the conclusion. But I think it is an ethical point, because what we need is in all democratic societies to follow certainly democratic principles.
>> NIK GOWING: In this last ten minutes, then, let’s just raise this issue. Joichi, given the way you are ranked and Carlos, what’s your view on this? Because we are trying to look at the implications of the level of openness there is now. And particularly what the Minister has just said. Is that going to run as an issue when it comes to the openness now of the Internet?
>>CARLOS AFONSO: Okay. No. I just want to give an example of the recent political campaign my country, Brazil, if we were to arrest bloggers, we would have about 800 people arrested. And maybe we have learned — we have been good students of democracy, which have been originated in Greece. And we did not do that. So they have not been arrested. Slandering has been incredible, incredible. So just a note to compare cultures and countries and societies in how to deal with that.
>> NIK GOWING: Picking up what the Minister said about creating false news, there is an interesting problem there about creating false news and providing an opinion. I am told by one of the blogs that the man arrested was only linking to the defamatory information as opposed to reporting it. Joichi.
>>JOICHI ITO: I think we need to really think about what we are as a democracy, because while force may have been the most important thing in the last century, I think information is going to be exceedingly more important. And we were talking about censorship earlier but we are creating technologies that provide everyone with voice. And I think that there are issues of the quality and things like that, but if we are unable to win the arguments in the public debate and allow a free competition of ideas, we are not about democracy. We are not about transparency. And so when we censor hate pages, when we censor news organizations in the Middle East, is this the way we promote our ability to win the argument in public? I think right now every child who is being brain washed on the Internet by some sort of hate group will Google and our page is one click away. So why not focus on making our voice louder and more convincing rather than trying to stifle the free speech of people we don’t like? Because we are not leading by example when we sit around and we say well, we don’t like those voices because they are lying. Well, why don’t we figure out a way to make our voices louder? [ Applause ]
>>HANNE SOPHIE GREVE: I think this may sound wonderful and that’s why it’s applauded to, but it has to be appreciated that the freedom of speech is not without limitations. And there is something called hate speech. And speaking up against a nation or individuals, religion, whatever, or old Nazi ideas is not suitable for the net or anywhere else. And it is not permitted. So hate speech, we may draw narrow lines around it but it is not permitted. It is not part of the freedom of speech. We have come to the understanding internationally that if you would give a specific group, be it a Nazi group, be it Ku Klux Klan whatever, you would easily have a very, very difficult task to stop violence time. And we have a primary obligation to respect the life of others.
>> PASCHAL MOONEY: Can I speak? I am not just amazed at the comment but also surprised at some section from the audience. Where have you been, people? World War II and what’s going on, international terrorism, and yet you would defend unequivocally free speech in the Internet ambiguously without any restrictions whatsoever. You would not tolerate it in your own jurisdictions. There are laws, as Sophie has pointed out. Are we to retrench, go back on all of the case law, on all of the experiences we have had over the last 50 years simply because we have a new means of communication internationally? We really do need to get a grip on this, and I would hate to think we were leaving here with that thought that ire respective of what people felt that somehow, somehow in theory that if we speak louder that we will drown out all these other voices. There are laws in your own countries which prevent this. Why should it be any different on the Internet? It is not above the law.
>> NIK GOWING: Andrew Puddephatt. I should underline, Andrew, that you were formerly executive director of Article 19.
>> ANDREW PUDDEPHATT: Yes, and we accepted the International Standards on Freedom of Expression which do have some limitations. And I think you need to be wary that the Internet can’t carry a U.S. based first amendment standard in opposition to the generally accepted standards of Article 19 and international human rights law. The key problem is the national jurisdictions can’t exercise that legal authority on the net. And to give national jurisdictions the power to exercise that autho
rity on the net would bring with it a whole bunch of other problems and restrictions on speech that would, I think, be very dangerous. So I think at this stage, the onus is upon those of us who use the Internet to try and act responsibly to promote good speech, to counteract bad speech and try and raise in a self-regulatory manner the best possible standards. Because the studies and the surveys that we’ve done as part of our project show that the Internet is the least-trusted news medium in the world. It’s less trusted than television, less trusted than radio, and less trusted than newspapers. And that is because of the people’s suspicion that the Internet, because of its unmediated form does not carry accurate, good, up-to-date information. And it’s the responsibility on those of us that see the potential of the Internet to show how we can develop standards and quality of information that match the best of the major broadcast medias.
>>PASCHAL MOONEY: Andrew, could I just ask, why can’t there be an international consensus among states? We already have it, for example, where there are hackers who spread viruses. There’s a classic example of a gentleman that was traced back to some small village in India by the international community. We’ve already heard there’s an international consensus on the prevention of child pornography and of pedophilia on the Net, there is an international consensus. Why should it be any different?
>>ANDREW PUDDEPHATT: Because there are countries where the state and symbols of the state and nation are protected. And you can defame — if you attack or criticize that country or nation, you’re accused and tried for defamation. That would be unacceptable in many other jurisdictions where defamation only applies to individuals, personal reputation. The idea that you could develop a standard on defamation as an agreement among states at the moment I think would be extremely fraught.
>>JAMIE LOVE: I think if the quest is to eliminate any falsehood, you know, that could appear, you know, in anyplace on the planet, you live in a pretty boring world. And you wouldn’t really see much. I think if you asked me, do I trust the average thing I see on the Internet, the average blog or the average e-mail, probably not. But, you know, looking at average is the wrong way to think about it. I think it’s what Joi said. The areas where you have people who are well known, they have a lot of authority. They have more authority than you can possibly imagine in their areas of expertise. When you see a news report, a lot of times people will say, is that true? I better go to the Internet and see what people are saying about it, because that’s where you actually get kind of a reality check on something that maybe you see on television. I think there’s sort of an old school, new school, old media, new media, where people represent these distributions and voices. But to sort of try and legislate the answer is less important than following the more speech is a solution to problems. I think there will always be exceptions. You mentioned the hate, libel is illegal in almost every country. And there are always these various exceptions, and they will be problematic. At the end of the day, what’s more important is education, getting people to become more knowledgeable rather than try and keep information from them. And I think that responsible press eventually kind of wins out against stuff that people learn over a period of time is just crap.
>>NIK GOWING: All right. I said this was right at the beginning, and it was three hours ago, that this is a multistakeholder policy dialogue. Let me just go to Kieren who has been sitting at the front. We have bandwidth. I hope this connection will work. What kind of things have people been saying. Certainly — microphone number 2. >> Hello. Hello? Yes?
>>NIK GOWING: Speak.
>> [KIEREN MCCARTHY] (*) Most of the interest has been around Google in China, and also with regard to this [blog aggregator arrest] there’s been a huge amount of talk, obviously, because this is the blogosphere. And they’re worried, genuinely worried. A blogger himself was thinking about coming here and he was genuinely worried about what may happen if he does so. There’s various people. Some people are complaining that it’s the — there’s a disparity, there was a lot of China-bashing going on, whereas, in fact, here, as an example, the guy was only linking to blog material, not writing to blog material, so that is even one degree of separation, and he’s getting into trouble. There’s — one of the interesting issues with blog something translating the blogs from around the world. We have Russian, Chinese, French, Spanish, and English translating and then this Greek popped up. And now we’re trying to find Greek people to translate what is going on. With Google, if there’s various questions, Karl Auerbach, who many of will you know, he wants to know while Google has a great value, is that sufficient to overwrite the rights of authors to profit from their own creations. The BBC, following up on its blog at the moment, he’s following up on the bashing of corporations and what they’re doing in China, whether that’s right or wrong, he’s talking to people. He hasn’t come up with any conclusions, you’ll be pleased to know. And, finally, well, to get back to the Greek blogging thing, they’re saying this is a disgrace, he shouldn’t have been arrested, and this is — this cuts to the core.
[...]
>>CHAIRMAN ROUSSOPOULOS [CLOSING STATEMENT]: Thank you very much, Mr. Gowing. Thank you very much. After such a successful coordination, my conclusions may seem to be rather poor. So I’ll be very brief. The chief issues under discussion today was to reinforce democracy on the Internet, social cohesion, the protection of free expression, as well as intellectual property rights and censorship. [...] And we talked about protection of the freedom of information on the Internet being looked at. And also it was said we should have very clear rules of the market to establish freedom of expression. The discussion over the last 15 minutes was on the Internet and how we can separate out freedom of expression vis-a-vis being able to say anything you want on the Internet and it’s also been said that the northern developed countries usually are a point of reference for freedom of expression, and it is also said that we perhaps move only in one direction on this. And it’s also true to say that we have to give more attention to this issue. Panelists talked about the access to knowledge being an important subject. And my own comment on this is that we have also talked about the morality and the moral aspects involved of the Internet and how the morals of users and of those being controlled or not, or those, in fact, who are acting as regulators and controllers of the Internet and should they actually exist in terms of the moral aspects of Internet access. Now, when we say “ethics,” that is something there comes from the Greek word “ethos,” and it is true to say that this is the strongest unwritten law through time. So in Greek, we would say deontology, and ethos and the quality of democracy is what we are all aiming for, quality is not determined by the quantity of information. Having a lot of information does not always mean that you have quality. I’d like, therefore, to thank you all, the participants, I’d like to thank the panelists. [...]
(* Kieren’s transcript was garbled, but I happened to be watching the live feed at the time and I think I got the missing words down correctly.)
Update (2/11 8:40): Kieren McCarthy’s take on the infighting going on in the Greek gov’t for control of the Net:
The Greek government has a few problems. It’s an interesting phenomena watching how responsibility for the Internet moves through various government departments over time. At the start, it is always dumped on one department, and then gradually, as the Net becomes more important, struggles begin over its ownership because it means power and, most importantly, junkets to interesting and pretty cities across the world.
The Greeks are fighting amongst themselves – particularly because so many important people are in town. I can’t recall exactly which department is actually in charge and which one wants the Internet portfolio (some Greek did explain it to me over an Ouzo), but it has caused ructions.
The department in charge has been playing its own game at the Apollon, but the other department today hosted a conference in the Hyatt up the road, pinching some of the best guests from the IGF. One department gave a bash at the fancy Astir Palace complex on Tuesday night. The other did the same the next night. The failure of the Greek Empire is replaying itself over and over again in history. It’s just that in 2006, no one really gives a shit.
Coverage & commentary: Guardian Unlimited News blog, CNET News, Kieren McCarthy, betabug, Free Internet Press, IPWatch, Argos, vrypan, πιτσιρίκος, Old Boy, Nylon (translation in Greek), newManifesto, rodanis, raresteak, Oxygen, Arxedia Media, Postnuclear Icehouse, Manblogg, Δημήτρης Γλέζος, Isis Unveiled, Λαπούτα, Reality Tape, Zpiderland, SykoFantiS_Bastoyni, jim_hellas. Lida, e-saloni
Related:
- Irrepressible bloggers (Amnesty Int’l)
- The Internet is “a series of tubes” (US Sen. Ted Stevens speech about network neutrality, 28/6/06)
- DJ Ted Stevens Techno Remix: “A Series of Tubes“
Technorati search: IGF+Roussopoulos
Technorati tags: IGF, censorship, blogging ethics, free speech, defamation, Internet regulation, Tsipropoulos, Blogme.gr
