This week, internet governance debates will centre on the UN General Assembly, which is due to make a decision about the future of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF); specifically, whether or not to renew its mandate. In advance of that decision, Luca Belli, Researcher at the Center for Technology and Society (CTS) of Funda??o Getulio Vargas Law School, Rio de Janeiro, outlines the value of the IGF and why he believes that its mandate should be renewed. This is the??to be published by the Media Policy Project which considers the issue of the IGF＊s mandate.

Next week, the UN General Assembly will decide on the mandate renewal of the UN??at the??, the official UN meeting aimed at assessing the implementation of the??. The IGF is one of the main outcomes of WSIS and, over the past decade, the Forum has allowed world policymakers, private sector representatives, techies, academics and human rights advocates to congregate and debate the most salient Internet policy issues in a multistakeholder environment.

The Forum has proven to be a valuable platform for policy discussions and a significant catalyst for cooperation by allowing different stakeholders to organise new partnerships. However, multistakeholder dialogue is not the exclusive goal of the Forum, and the??explicitly states that the Forum shall ※find solutions to the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet§ as well as ※identify emerging issues [＃] and, where appropriate, make recommendations§ (Tunis Agenda, para. 72.k and 72.g).

There is no doubt that the first decade of the IGF has triggered a number of stimulating debates and has managed to engage a critical mass of stakeholders into a self-organised, yet incredibly wide-ranging, process. However, it also clear that this process has not realised its full potential yet, and the production of ※recommendations§ and ※solutions§ has been long 每 and unjustifiably 每 deferred.

As emphasised by the 2012 Report of the Working Group on Improvements to the IGF (?)), the need for ※more tangible outputs§ has become patent, and the reluctance to do so can only undermine the credibility of the whole IGF process. The lack of formal IGF outcomes has been criticised by many as a failure to fully comply with its mandate. Such dissatisfaction seems justified, not only due to the fact that the development of solutions and recommendations is explicitly requested by the mandate, but also in light of the fact that tangible outputs already exist yet are waiting to be formally recommended.

Habemus outcomes!?

Over the past few years, a great number of IGF participants have expended considerable efforts in open and participatory processes, leading to concrete outputs through the IGF??and the??. Despite the absence of a formal process of ※recommendation§ of outcome documents, it is worth noting that some have already inspired the work of several institutions. For instance, the??, developed by the??, was a considerable source of inspiration for the??, put forward by the Italian Chamber of Deputies. Similarly, in their effort to??, European policymakers have taken substantial inspiration from the??on Network Neutrality, developed by the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Network Neutrality.

The documents produced by Best Practice Fora and Dynamic Coalitions are a clear example not only of the possibility of achieving concrete IGF outputs, but also of the willingness of many IGF participants to collaborate to produce them. The undeniable benefit of any multistakeholder approach is not only to nurture discussions with experts holding a wide range of views, but??. Therefore, it is a very positive sign that, following the 10^th?IGF, the documents produced by Dynamic Coalitions and Best Practice Fora have been finally acknowledged as outputs of?.

※The best IGF ever§

One of the reasons why ＆?acknowledged IGF 2015 as??is probably because this year, the IGF has been the most outcome-oriented ever, demonstrating that multistakeholder fora can be much more than a ＆talking shop＊.

For the first time in the IGF history, the IGF community was allowed to express its own opinion on concrete outputs, having a say on the content of the proposed documents,??. Although this participatory experiment may be seen as quite timid, it is remarkably innovative for a forum that has shied away from the adoption of any official outputs for over an entire decade. Furthermore, to make this experiment even more inclusive, the IGF??have been kept open until the end of December 2015 to allow individuals to express feedback on key policy issues such as??, online??and the??.

The way forward?

The first step to making any future ambition for the IGF a reality is the renewal of the Forum＊s mandate by the UN General Assembly. This is not yet certain, although is highly probable. A very telling sign seems to be the recent decision to??on the IGF website, particularly as the UN has avoided to allow the display its logo on the IGF website for almost a decade. In addition, the IGF＊s capability to produce concrete outputs seems to be a very good argument in favour of the mandate renewal 每 not to mention the fact that once an international body is established, it becomes virtually impossible to disband it.

If the mandate is renewed, a crucial element for the future will be how to enhance stakeholder cooperation to enable the production of stable outcomes. Many IGF participants cheerfully herald ※the beauty of the multistakeholder model§ but the atmosphere becomes slightly less cheerful when stakeholders are asked to debate how to concretely implement such a model (assuming that they would even agree there is only one in the first place).

It seems undeniable that the current trend towards further cooperation and outcomes 每 particularly within Dynamic Coalitions and Best Practice Fora 每 appears to be beneficial and it would be unwise to curb such cooperative momentum. Besides fostering stakeholder engagement in the IGF process, the production of tangible outputs is instrumental in producing policy suggestions that may be valuable for national and international policymakers and that may ultimately lead to interoperable legal frameworks, based on compatible rules inspired by shared principles.

To date, Dynamic Coalitions and Best Practice Fora have been the only components of the IGF structure allowing for the production of ※tangible outputs§, although there are no formal impediments to the experimentation of new forms of multistakeholder cooperation. The organisation of IGF main sessions in a more outcome-oriented fashion may be considerably more productive than keeping the current super-workshop format that allows, at best, repetition of the same kind of discussions enabled by regular workshops and, at worst, sterile collections of micro-statements.

The IGF process is on the right path to becoming more output oriented, and the Jo?o Pessoa meeting has clearly proven that the IGF can go further than mere debate. This year, the IGF has finally provided participants with the possibility not only to debate but also to table concrete suggestions. This is why the IGF 2015 has truly been the best IGF ever.

The post The future of the IGF: mandate renewal? appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Stakeholders from all of the above-mentioned groups and more gathered at the in Indonesia, October 22-25, 2013, to discuss all manner of issues related to including online surveillance, privacy, big data, online child protection, youth perspectives, cybersecurity and cybercrime, freedom of expression, ?and?access to information, human rights in context of the Internet, jurisdictional conflicts and harmonization, international development, and of course, intellectual property (relating mostly to copyright and domain names). First convened by the United Nations in 2006, the IGF is the world's largest and highest-profile conference wholly dedicated to the betterment of the Internet and its continued governance and preservation. With no binding goals, negotiations, or decision , the ostensibly affair provides a platform for otherwise-rare direct dialogue between multiple cross-sections of society and mass cross-pollination of ideas, general principles, and best practices, which can be taken back by members to be used in their own decision-making processes.

This year, the Indonesian government〞whose national population includes over 63 million Internet users〞hosted approximately 2000 delegates from 111 countries, who explored this year's across 135 workshops, focus sessions, open forums, roundtables, and panels (with more participating remotely and millions checking in on Twitter). Organizers made a concerted effort to integrate into the sessions more tangible policy outcomes that participants could take away with them, as well as attention to initiatives. Meanwhile, ※ § and ※§ constituted an underlying all discussions, while ※§ and ※§ infused electric static into the air.

As providing complete coverage of all news, events, discussions, and ideas that emerged during the week-long IGF within one post would be impossible, this article will restrict itself to highlighting certain issues directly encompassed by intellectual property law, particularly those explored in a titled, ※§.

1. Square Laws in Round Processes: Has Copyright Policy Gone Awry With Respect To Technological Reality?

This question challenges the notion that current and trending copyright legal frameworks are at all suitable for the way Internet infrastructures and associated technologies work today, suggesting increasing misalignment between laws designed in a more analog world and technological processes where copying is strictly incidental to otherwise legitimate use of the work. Glenn Deen of NBCUniversal asserted that technology should be ※policy-neutral§, as in developed without any particular policy favoured or hindered by or coded into the technology itself. In other words, copyright policies should be created such that they fit the technology, rather than the other way around. Other panellists agreed but maintained this is currently not the case〞technology has not been made policy-neutral, and through phenomena such as institutional capture of standards fora, it has in fact been designed to promote and enforce certain policies (examples of this are technological protection measures (TPM) and digital rights management (DRM) systems). , argues , takes the Internet for granted and distorts its basic architecture, such as by turning neutral online intermediaries into unofficial law enforcement entities with respect to user behaviour.

2. The Librarians Strike Back: This Isn't the Copying You're Looking For

of the made a compelling case for copyright law to pay closer attention to the kind of copying involved in different situations. Sharing others' concerns over unbalanced copyright frameworks, she explained how in a library research access context provides a clear illustration of copyright laws not fitting an Internet environment. According to Broad, text and data mining is one of several ※productive, non-harmful uses§ that operated freely outside the realm of copyright in a print environment, but are now captured by copyright frameworks purely through the incidental copying that occurs as part of Internet-enabled technological processes today. She compared licensing text and data mining, in essence the extraction of information, to ※placing a toll on the information highway§.

While Article 5.1 of the exempts "[t]emporary acts of reproduction...which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process,§ in transmitting content between computers, this is a narrow exception that will not encompass all cases that require protection, such as text and data mining. Furthermore, as Broad points out, such a framework presumes infringement unless proven otherwise; one must make an exception rather than find the use not infringing at all to begin with.

Lastly, e-books and their associated licensing regimes present ※a huge challenge§ in terms of access for consumers, academics, public libraries, and the visually impaired, among other user groups. With respect to the visually impaired, users must overcome obstacles by acquiring a right to remove from the content (recently enshrined in the universally lauded , the first-ever agreement to limit rather than expand copyright), and by possessing the technical ability to actually remove the TPM and access the content through assistive devices. In these respects, some at the IGF spoke of licensing regimes ※defeating the purposes of the Internet§, particularly in the context of , where public libraries can play a valuable role in providing access to information.

3. Say It to Belie It: The Language of Limits and Exceptions in Copyright Law

One current problem that IGF 2013 participants identified with current copyright law is its unbalanced nature: in many jurisdictions and on an international level, rather than balancing copyright against user/access rights as if the latter were of equal weight, laws provide for overarching copyright with specific exceptions that are explicitly carved out. The starting point of the law is not one where the limits and exceptions hold the same weight as copyright; this is reinforced by their being referred to precisely as ※limits§ and ※exceptions§ to an otherwise default backdrop of established copyright. Speakers suggested instituting a new international norm that would conceptually elevate rights of access and other ※limits§ or ※exceptions§ to the same level as copyright in order to better protect them, as seen in the Marrakesh Treaty. As asserted, ※We often talk about copyright substantive rights...and having carve-outs for limitations and exceptions.... [W]e should dispatch with that language and think about them as equal partners balancing each other.§

4. Meanwhile at WIPO: Additional Issues & Initiatives

Initiatives and ideas beyond those outlined above were featured in IGF 2013 presentations. These included - according to WIPO legal officer Paolo Lanteri - the ; a WIPO study on and a WIPO-compatible, world-standardized licence (to be released within the next few weeks). Regarding the latter, Ari Gema of Creative Commons Indonesia pointed out the need to educate the general population on the concept of copyright before introducing the Creative Commons license, hinting at cultural and regional differences in the significance and relevance of copyright, and the potential implications for corresponding law, regulation, and policy.

Lest the Marrakesh Treaty be a one-time in terms of internationally-accepted limitations to copyright, the IFLA is working on a , to establish ※a binding international instrument on copyright limitations and exceptions to enable libraries to preserve their collections, support education and research, and lend materials§.

Lastly, in keeping with the spirit of IGF, a panel titled, "" that "multistakeholderism" was the preferred approach to formulating internet copyright policy and frameworks going forward, despite drawbacks such as being potentially inefficient, time-consuming, or inconclusive.

5. Say 斕疑?to 攸戒抑抗.?????(aka Internationalized Domain Names)!

In a palpable boost to principles of multilingual access and globalization of the Internet, CEO Fadi Chehad谷 revealed at the IGF 2013 opening ceremony, to rousing applause, that Arabic, Russian, and Chinese i were delegated to the Internet root for the first time. This means that one can now register websites ending in ※dot [insert Arabic, Cyrillic, or Chinese characters here]§, resulting in expanded online accessibility for those who use technology〞including keyboards〞exclusively in one of the three languages added. This will likely have an impact on trademark law in different parts of the world, in the context of branding and domain names, although trademark as managed by the (TMCH) currently provide for ASCII (English and Latin) characters alone.

Logging Out

As mentioned above, this was but a peephole into the ongoings of IGF 2013. Even live, it could only be experienced in self-tailored slices given how much was going on at any given moment. For those who are interested in learning more, are available on the IGF website and further comments and insights abound on the Twitter backchannel, not to mention the multitude of papers, articles, blog posts, updates, and analyses written throughout and in response to the forum. If we care about preserving, protecting, and bettering the Internet as we know it, the least we can do is start by getting to know it.

Cynthia Khoo is a JD Candidate at the University of Victoria. She is currently completing an exchange semester at the National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law.?

The post When the Internet Has a Party, Everyone's Invited: IP Law Issues at the Internet Governance Forum 2013 appeared first on IPOsgoode.