On 14-16 November 2016, the first Global Internet and Jurisdiction conference was held in Paris. Around 200 experts from around the world discussed different aspects of applying jurisdiction to the borderless Internet.
Quite a few of the participants represented ccTLDs and as such, showed how important this topic is for our industry. It was interesting to see that the organisers succeeded in bringing together senior representatives of governments and industry with academia, law enforcement and civil society. The diversity of the group made it a perfect example of a multistakeholder approach. The size of the group gave it the critical mass that it required to make this exercise successful.
The group was split along its expertise in three different task forces. The Data and Jurisdiction group focused on the need for transparency and standards, user notification and the jurisdiction of the intermediary. The Content and Jurisdiction group discussed in detail the risk of intermediaries making content-based decisions, the necessity of affordable cross-border redress and again, the need for transparency. The Domains and Jurisdiction group concluded that a common terminology was urgently required, in addition to a common procedural framework to handle the deletion of domains in a transparent way.
Since the three working groups concluded that transparency is in their priority list of issues to solve, CENTR will look into the possibilities to provide a portal for all its members to publish the number of requests they receive from Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).
What made this conference different compared to other discussions on this topic is that through in-depth preparation and a successful call for participation, the attendants had the knowledge and the capacity to come to actionable conclusions. It remains to be seen when we’ll take stock next year how much progress we’ve made, but this was a very encouraging example of how a multistakeholder approach can tackle a very complex set of problems.
An excellent summary of the conference provided by the organisers can be found here. An interesting analysis of the issues was also published by The Economist.
