Participative Web : oecd-pw-session4a

Photo: Fourth session, stream A

Kieren Mccarthy — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:35:00 GMT

Chair William New, Editor-in-Chief of Intellectual Property Watch

Creation, access and competition? How about legislation?

Kieren Mccarthy — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:14:00 GMT

The last split session of the day purported to cover “creation, access and competition” but the real subject took only just minutes to arrive and it was: intellectual property rights.

Chair William New from Intellectual Property Watch argued that “a topic doesn’t really exist until the OECD holds a conference on it”. But Kiyoshi Mori from the Japanese government proved him wrong – somewhat surprising the audience – by going straight into the issue of Net neutrality.

The Net neutrality debate has been raging, and continue to rage, in the United States but so far - despite constant efforts by US business to push it into the international arena – has been largely ignored by the rest of the world.

The reason is that most countries of the world don’t have a similar telecommunications infrastructure to the United States so there isn’t the telco tie-in and subsequent government role that has become entrenched in the US and been behind much of the debate.

P2P hunger

But Mori stood up and revealed some interesting graphs about how P2P networks were rapidly eating up all the new (enormous) bandwidth that Japan offers its citizens. This came as quite a shock to those that have held out Japan as the future – where you can purchase 100Mbit/s Internet connections and so enjoy extraordinary futuristic speeds of data exchange.

It prompted one questioner to ask whether there was a new law: that data rates will expand to fill the available bandwidth.

Mori himself seemed taken aback by the figures and confessed: “At first I thought that if had a wider use of broadband, it would go more smoothly, but the more we installed the more [peer-to-peer data exchange] happened.”

The figures appeared to show that this data exchange – and by implication widespread copyright infringement – is causing congestion within networks. And so Mori spoke of a “new legislative scheme” that would help cover the distribution of legal content and help tackle the infringement of property rights.

Interconnection

The “network neutrality” debate has just begun in Japan, Mori explained, and the first report on the issues had suggested developing new interconnection rules and reviewing current regulations.

When it came to the actual issue of copyright infringement, however, the debate widened. Anne Bucher explained she would not present the European Commission’s line because there currently wasn’t one. And for good reason, she suggested.

For one, she said, policy makers had not anticipated the participative web, the size of the communities, and the vast exchange of information. But secondly, self-regulation had done a good job so far. “One thing is that we do not have massive court cases,” she explained, adding, “my recommendation would be to be very cautious before moving”.

But that said, she was holding out self-regulation as the answer - she also felt that governments “may have to step in” and some point in the future.

DRM

Which moved us onto the efforts by companies to protect their content using digital rights management technology.

Urs Gasser recognised that he was being controversial when he said that in his view “the role of DRM is dead with respect to fighting piracy”. Even the industry recognises that the attempt to stop people sharing information without approval had been lost, he said. It was now all about new business models, he said.

Bucher appeared to agree when she pointed out that recently music companies had responded to users’ wish to be able to move content from one platform to another and produced DRM-free songs.

Wider view

This isn’t the first time and won’t be the last that an issue has grown foggy because of the clear financial incentives that exist for people to push forward certain points of view. The Internet will continue to cause traditional business models to creak and strain.

The hard part is to decipher when the Internet is damaging industries and when it is refreshing them. The OECD has its job cut out trying to find which is which.

The transcript of this session is now available online here

Session 4, Stream A -- Confidence and Competition in the Internet Economy: Opportunities and Challenges of the Participative Web

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 22:18:00 GMT

STREAM A -- Creation, access and competition

15.05-16.25

TK: 4.05am
PA: 9.05pm
NY: 3.05pm
LA: 12.05pm

William New (Chair), Editor-in-Chief, Intellectual Property Watch
Kiyoshi Mori, Vice Minister Policy Coordination, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan
Urs Gasser, Research Center for Information Law, University of St. Gallen and Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Anne Bucher, Head of Unit, Information Society and Media Directorate-General, European Commission
Martin Senftleben, Professor of Intellectual Property, Free University of Amsterdam

Click here for a rundown of all blog posts covering this session.

The potential of the participative web is based on its fostering of creativity, open exchange and wide-spread use. New access, creation and distribution technologies are rising with new regulatory challenges as Internet distribution replaces and expands on physical distribution and broadcasting. New questions arise around lock-in and high switching costs for consumers, intellectual property rights, new forms of protecting and licensing content, and their effect on content creation.

Questions to be addressed include:

Should content creation, diffusion and access be fostered, and participation and skills be cultivated? If yes, how and what is the role of government?
How can competition and innovation be ensured given large network effects?
What intellectual property right opportunities and challenges are emerging?

TK	PA	NY	LA
Tokyo	Paris	New York	Los Angeles

Anne Bucher

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 20:27:00 GMT

Anne Bucher trained as an PhD economist and a statistician in Paris. She joined the Commission in 1983 and worked in various fields of EU policies. In the last 7 years, she has headed teams responsible for the evaluation of employment policies and economic analysis of EU tax policy. She joined DG Information Society in March 2004 to take over responsibility of i2010 and policy planning.

Urs Gasser

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 20:14:00 GMT

Urs Gasser is an associate professor of law at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), where he serves as the director of the Research Center for Information Law (www.fir.unisg.ch). He is a graduate of the University of St. Gallen (S.J.D. 2001, J.D. 1997) and Harvard Law School (LL.M. 2003). Before joining the St. Gallen faculty, Urs spent three years as a research and teaching fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Har-vard Law School, where he has recently been appointed Faculty Fellow. At the Berkman Center, he was the lead fellow on the Digital Media Project, a multi-disciplinary research project aimed at exploring the transition from offline/analog to online/digital media.

Urs’ research focuses on legal frameworks aimed at regulating information and communication processes, and on the effects of structural changes in the information environment on the legal system. Current research projects explore the regulation of digital media (with emphasis on IP law), the anatomy of informational standards, and information quality issues. Together with Prof. John Palfrey (Harvard Law School), Urs is working on a book on Digital Natives.

Urs is a registered Attorney-at-Law in Switzerland, was chairman of the Forum for European Information Law at the 1st European Jurists' Day and the 64th Deutscher Juristentag, and has published and edited, respectively, six books and has written over 50 articles in books, law reviews, and professional journals. Most recently, he released an article on search engine regulation, and an extensive comparative legal study on anti-circumvention legislation. He frequently acts as a commentator on comparative law issues for the US and European me-dia. Further information is available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/ugasser.html, his SSRN Author Page is http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=362479.

Kiyoshi Mori

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:04:00 GMT

Kiyoshi Mori graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo in 1973. He then entered the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), Japan. In August 2005 he became the Director-General of the Minister's Secretariat. In July 2006 he became the Director-General of the Telecommunications Bureau. Since July 2007 he is the Vice-Minister for Policy Coordination (International Affairs) (Present)

William New

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:49:00 GMT

William New is Editor-in-Chief of Intellectual Property Watch, an independent media organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland reporting on international IP and Internet policymaking. IPW publishes under a Creative Commons licence and covers international bodies such as the OECD, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Trade Organization, and World Health Organization in addition to activity at the national and regional levels.

William also has written for National Journal Group and Inside US Trade, both in Washington, DC, and has appeared on CNBC, NPR, and C-SPAN.

Martin Senftleben

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:23:00 GMT

Martin Senftleben is Professor of Intellectual Property at the Free University of Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit). In the field of copyright, his research focuses on an appropriate balance between exclusive rights and limitations in the digital environment, and individual and collaborative processes of creation.

After graduation at the University of Heidelberg he worked as a researcher at the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam and the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich. In 2004, he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Amsterdam. From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Senftleben worked in the trademark department of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Geneva.

Snapshot: What is the conference rundown?

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:03:00 GMT

This is cut-down version of the full agenda. You can download the full agenda as a pdf here, or use the links below to learn more about each sessions and those taking part in it.

The conference runs from 9am to 6pm. It is based in Ottawa, Canada, so in terms of time that is Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) which is currently GMT -4 hours. See here for a time rundown according to different cities of the world.

The conference comprises five main sessions - three split into two different stream - running for 80 minutes each and with a five-minute conclusion at the end:

Participative Web conference agenda
Time	Event	People
9.00-9.20 TK: 10pm PA: 3pm NY: 9am LA: 6am	OPENING	Michael Binder Suzanne Huttner John Oxley (Facilitator)
9.20-10.50	The Future of the Participative Web	John Lettice (Chair) Jonathan Taplin Cyrus Beagley Ginsu Yoon Michael Gill
10.50-11.10	Coffee break
11.10-12.30	Creativity and the Internet Economy	Stream A	Stream B
TK: 12.10am PA: 4.10pm NY: 11.10am LA: 8.10am	Stream A: Business 2.0 and innovation Stream B: Research 2.0 - eScience and new ways of interaction	David Crane (chair) Bob Young Anthony Williams Paul Misener Daniel Bretonès Shenja van der Graaf	Walter Stewart (chair) Andrew Herbert Bill St. Arnaud Mario Campolargo Diana Rhoten
12.30-13.45	Lunch	Robert Sutor
13.45-15.05	Creativity and the Internet Economy	Stream A	Stream B
TK: 2.45am PA: 7.45pm NY: 1.45pm LA: 10.45am	Stream A: User-created content: What are the impacts? Stream B: Government 2.0 - Engaging citizens	Michael Leblanc (Chair) Jungwook Lim Andres Monroy-Hernandez Jennifer Corriero Manon Ress	Ellen Miller (Chair) Don Lenihan Alejandro Hernandez Pulido Wolfgang Blau Quitterie Delmas
15.05-16.25	Confidence and Competition in the Internet Economy	Stream A	Stream B
TK: 4.05am PA: 9.05pm NY: 3.05pm LA: 12.05pm	Stream A: Creation, access and competition Stream B: Confidence, privacy and security	William New (Chair) Kiyoshi Mori Urs Gasser Anne Bucher Martin Senftleben	Hugh Stevenson (Chair) Gary Davis Chris Kelly Jennifer Mardosz John Lawford
16.25-16.45	Coffee break
16.45-17.55 TK: 5.45am PA: 10.45pm NY: 4.45pm LA: 1.45pm	Policy Roundtable: Opportunities and Challenges for Policy	Michael Geist (Chair) Sangwon Ko Marc Rotenberg Daniela Battisti Joseph Alhadeff Keith Besgrove Neil Anderson
17.55-18.00	CONCLUSIONS and Priority-Setting for the OECD	Richard Simpson

TK	PA	NY	LA
Tokyo	Paris	New York	Los Angeles

Other snapshots: