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Policies impacting the Internet in Europe - An ISOC European Regional Bureau perspective on some key issues

Frédéric Donck, Director, European Regional Bureau

Central Asia Internet Symposium, Kyrgyz Republic, Bishkek (Dec. 10, 2014)

Perspectives for Internet Development in the

Kyrgyz Republic

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*Some* Key Issues in Europe

1. Network Neutrality

2. Solutions to illegal on-line activities

3. Privacy and RTBF (« Right to be forgotten »)

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NETWORK NEUTRALITY

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3.« Network Neutrality »: the origin of the debate

•Increasing demand for Internet connections with greater bandwidth = More pressure on network capacity, hence greater deployment and use of congestion management and traffic shaping

•At core of the debate: is traffic management (i.e. ability to treat packets differently) a threat to the open architecture of the Internet?

•Network Neutrality: broad term - no clear definition (free expression, user choice, traffic management, pricing, discrimination, etc.)

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Desired Outcome: Open Internet

•Users expect an Internet in which traffic is conveyed in a manner that is agnostic to source, content and destination.

•Internet service is: connection of an Internet endpoint or network to the rest of the Internet with non-discriminatory, best-effort routing of data packets as part of the Internet.

– Non-discriminatory by definition– Networks should simply move the bits along the wire– Can include application-agnostic congestion management, for

example, or traffic management to maintain network resilience

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Comparison?

Imagine your electricity provider could charge you more for the electricity you use to light, heat and power ICT devices in your home office.

– they can’t do that– if new technology made that possible, would we welcome it?

This has nothing to do with ‘reasonable network management’ and everything to do with trying to segment the market for commercial advantage.

It is an abuse of the network operator’s role.

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Key challenges: Traffic Management

• Traffic management is a normal part of every day network operation and network management- It is needed to ensure that all subscribers are able to obtain adequate service, esp. at peak time (congestion is a ‘natural’ consequence of the Internet’s design)…but

•Should remain protocol or application neutral

•Should not be used as a tool for anticompetitive behaviour

•Should be transparent

•…and should not be considered as a panacea (adding capacity to networks is alos critical to alleviating congestion!)

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Key Challenges for Policymakers and Regulators•Effective competition…(but it might not be enough) •Enable the users to make an informed choice•Clear information on limitations and traffic management practices that the subscriber is subject to,•Reasonable network management, neither anti-competitive nor prejudicial•Share common terminology of Internet service•…and Internet service monitoring

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Finding solutions to

illegal On-line activities

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Finding solutions to Illegal On-line activities

•Policymakers, legislators, and regulators around the globe want to protect specific users, as children, or combat illegal online activities such as infringement of intellectual property rights and cybercriminal activities.

•Critical & legitimate issues to address but we believe that they must be in ways that do not undermine the global architecture of the Internet or curtail internationally recognized human rights.

•The real solution is international cooperation

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Filtering/DNS blocking is not a solution and why it is both inefficient and damaging Easily circumventented

Doesn’t solve the problem

Incompatible with DNSSEC and impedes DNSSEC deployment

Causes collateral damage

Encourages fragmentation

…And raises Human rights issues

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PRIVACY (« AND THE RIGHT TO BE

FORGOTTEN »)

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Privacy (and the « Right to Be Forgotten »)

“The right to be forgotten” allows a person to ask web companies to delete personal information on their servers.

The right to be forgotten is part of a 2012 EC proposal to revise EU privacy law. It was adopted by the European Parliament and is now under review by members States in the European Council. ECJ case: Mario Costeja Gonzalez (May 2014):

1.EU data protection rules apply to search engines (“Google is controller of personal data”)

2.Offer users the right to prevent Google from linking to information that is “unaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive”

3.Give Users the right to (ask to) remove personal data from search engines where the individual right to privacy overrides the public interest

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RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN: CONCLUSION

•There is no right to be forgotten: there should be a right to privacy that is effectively enforced

•Deleted content/deleted links still reside somewhere

•Distinguish between the many cases: is it a transaction between individuals/individuals with a company or sharing personal data publicly (in which case it becomes part of the public domain= outside the control of the online application or service provider)

•Sometimes does interest in publicly disclosing information override an individual’s right of privacy?

•Balance between fundamental rights: Internet (re)opens new conversations on well-known issues…

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CONCLUSION

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1. Importance in shifting to a new paradigm when addressing Internet development, evolution and issues: from Aristotle to the Empirical Multistakeholderism model (IGF as a model)

2. Difficult challenges to reconciling trade-off issues… and what if we could minimize trade-off, for example obtain both security and privacy?)

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