IGF 2010, 14-17 September 2010, Vilnius (Lithuania)

Open forum: Internet openness and privacy

Speech by Markku Laukkanen, Chairman of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Sub-Committee on the Media

The World Wide Web was developed as a concept at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva some 20 years ago. It has spread all over the world meanwhile – and ownership and governance are global now.

It may be helpful to develop standards at a regional level at first, for instance within Europe, but it is essential to have the support of all key stakeholders worldwide.

In the field of cyber crime, a leading set of standards was developed through work at the Council of Europe a decade ago. Hundreds of states around the world apply those standards, and many have signed this Budapest Convention on Cybercrime.

Guided by this positive example, we at the Council of Europe have been working on other issues relevant for implementing human rights and freedoms in cyberspace. I am pleased that this event of the Sub-Committee on the Media of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly will launch new work by including all stakeholders through the Internet Governance Forum 2010.

We shall prepare parliamentary reports with policy recommendations on privacy and Internet freedom by next year. Those recommendations will be based on the European Convention on Human Rights: the right to the protection of private life and the right to freedom of expression and information.

Human rights are universal and parallel norms exist for the UN. However, different regions in the world have different experiences and put different emphasis on those issues. Both subjects are a necessary condition to ensure that the Internet remains the prime tool for knowledge and information sharing as well as for many other interests of our societies, be they commercial or private, public or personal interests.

Therefore, I am grateful to the experts on this panel as well as to the participants in the audience. Through you, we politicians will be able to make political recommendations which reflect the multitude of challenges and the diversity of approaches. Thank you in advance.
The World Wide Web was developed as a concept at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva some 20 years ago. It has spread all over the world meanwhile – and ownership and governance are global now.

It may be helpful to develop standards at a regional level at first, for instance within Europe, but it is essential to have the support of all key stakeholders worldwide.

Speech at the panel on Internet freedom – structural and operational openness online

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the right to freedom of expression and information irrespective of national borders. The right to freedom of expression and information constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and one of the basic conditions for its progress and for the development of every individual.

This right, which is also enshrined in Article 19 of the UN Declaration, applies in a technology neutral way to traditional media and the Internet alike. However, it is an abstract right which has to be transposed in a practical way into our rapidly changing media environment.

Internet media have revolutionised this freedom by enabling virtually everyone to communicate with an unlimited number of individuals around the world.

Print media depend on a physical distribution system, book stores and kiosks. Television and radio depend on radio frequencies, cables and satellite access. Telecommunication depends primarily on cables and radio frequencies as well as on universal access. In those areas, the respective standards have been established over years.

The structural requirements for Internet media are more complicated, because they depend on software, hardware as well as telecommunication infrastructure.

Besides those technical requirements, Internet media require also operational openness – users must have access to content and be free to contribute own content. The amount of content uploaded on the Internet today is overwhelming.

Internet freedom and openness become even more important with the steady increase in audiovisual media on the Internet and the majority of users shifting from traditional media to those new converged Internet media.

The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers decided in 2009 to start work on the protection of the cross-border flow of Internet traffic and to protect resources which are critical for the functioning and borderless nature and integrity of the Internet. A new parliamentary report initiated by our late colleague Andrew McIntosh shall produce by next year policy recommendations in this field to governments and the Council of Europe.

As Chairman of the Sub-Committee on the Media, it is my role to take the place of Andrew McIntosh here today. Looking at this issue from my professional career with the Finnish television company YLE, I see that Internet-based media will soon have the same vital role in ensuring freedom of expression and information necessary in a democratic society, which television and newspapers had in the past.

It is therefore important to identify and tackle the structural and operational restrictions to Internet freedom which may endanger the freedom necessary for every individual and democratic states in the 21st century.

This second panel will help to collect information and views which shall contribute to the new report of the Parliamentary Assembly. I appreciate your active co-operation in this process.