The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> Thank you for being here. Thank you for being here to this session. Is a session on Public Service Internet that is as main goal, to show where we are as public service broadcaster in Europe and quality media. And the reflection, how to provide to the viewers, to the listeners, to the people that is on the Internet.
A similar experience to what we provide in the broadcasting sector, or in the quality printed media. So for this scope, we have here around the table, three -- no, you don't see all of them, because some are remote. BBC, for instance, is collected in remote. And also UG Geneva remote.
You see representative institutions that take care of guarantee the rights of the citizen when they experience the media. Council of Europe, WIPO, UNESCO. And you see colleague from the left, you see the video clip now. And you see guests from Netherlands broadcaster and Elena Perotti from the Association of Newspapers Worldwide. So we are all here to discuss about this topic, how we can ensure public service experience over the Internet. And each one of us will give his own contribution.
The first to open from the Council of Europe. That's the sunsetting institution for media in Europe. So they are working a lot on how to define a new safe space of the Internet experience for citizens. Thank you. The floor is yours. He told me he is to share the time with another session, so he will leave us after his presentation. But there is somebody in the room, Artemisa, waiting, will be with us in case there are questions for him. Thank you, the floor is yours.
>> Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. My apologies for having to leave you. I was double booked, overbooked for another session immediately after this. A few words about the Council of Europe for those of us who don't know it. We're not the European Union.
We celebrate 70 years birthday this year. And perhaps those of you who haven't heard of the Council of Europe have perhaps heard of the European Convention, the European Court of Human Rights, which are part of our setup and very important guarantees and of course the media freedom are mentioned. The Internet was supposed to and could still provide us with very varied information. Not only in regards quantity but also regards quality. In theory. However, sadly, in most cases it would seem that nowadays the Internet, instead of increasing our choices is limiting our choices. Because most people do not navigate and really navigate the open seas of the Internet.
But stay in port, to use a nautical analogy, don't get out of port. And just see the waves that are pushed against them. In other words, the information that is provided to them, rather than going out there and explore.
Well-known French writer has called this the goldfish culture. We'll all be like goldfish turning around in a little bowl, seeing what is there and what is put before us. But we don't go out and look for it ourselves.
And for democratic societies in the long run, this can be fatal. Because healthy democracy depends on a variety of opinion, contrasting opinions. It requires people to think and to make informed choices, and I stress the word "informed." And echo chambers, filter bubbles or whatever terms, goldfish bowls, if you like, are not likely to promote that. In the Council of Europe, what are we trying to do to resolve that?
First, I would like to pay tribute to the various organizations sitting at this table. Including the IBU. But also the national broadcasters and the media outlets that are trying to counter this through investigative journalism, through quality productions we just saw the example.
And the various initiatives of the IBU to ensure that quality journalism and pluralist media remain strong. We have 47 Member States. 13 million people.
We try to do that through standards, which were already referred to. We have legal text like the European Convention on Human Rights and we produce standards in the form of soft law recommendations to our governments, and we have a whole series of them. Recently adopted and I won't list them. You can find them easily on the Internet. And we have a very good booth here with informational material, booth 9, just outside here, you can find the different texts. Two were adopted this year.
The aim is to encourage governments to support quality media, to also support community media. Because that is also very important in this whole globalized -- the globalized goldfish bowl if you like, that people are also aware of what is happening in their immediate neighborhood and that they get reliable information on that.
So that is one track. Second track, I already mentioned is the European Court of Human Rights, which enables individuals who feel that there's been interference, to complain. And what the court also does, some of these recommendation -- or many of these recommendations I refer to, it uses them in interpreting, for instance, the right to freedom of information under the Convention on Human Rights. Which was drafted 70 years ago.
And in order to interpret what it means to have the right to freedom of expression and freedom of information, the court frequently uses these policy texts. So via the back door, they come in as binding law.
In addition to that, nowadays, as we all know, a lot of Internet content is moderated, not by humans, but by A.I. And last week, we had in Strasbourg, the first meeting of a rather unique committee called Kahei )ph.) and it is unique because it is the first instance in the world that has a mandate to negotiate legal framework for the design, development and application of artificial intelligence. So going beyond the various ethical charges that we have.
Nearly 200 ethical charges and guidelines, many developed by industry, but also like in the Montreal declaration you may have heard of. In a not stakeholder way, but they are now binding. The effects of artificial intelligence today and its impact is such that at least 47 governments decided to give a mandate to a body to negotiate within a period of two years, a legal framework for the use of A.I. It will build on a lot of this self-regulatory elements such as fairness, transparency, robustness. And A.I. literacy. All this will certainly find their place.
I think also in the legal framework. And the negotiations are being carried out with 47 states, European states. Five (?) states, including the United States, Japan, Mexico. But also with Civil Society. I would like to stress that here at the IGF, with industry, and with academia, and of course with other information organizations, which are around the table. The first meeting was last week.
Very promising start. And we really hope within two years to be able to have this legal framework to ensure that as other technology that has a huge impact on us, also digital technology, meets certain standards for the protection of the citizen.
Some people try to push this back and say that any form of regulation would stifle innovation. Personally, I think this is nonsense. We happen to have at the Council of Europe, also a regulatory body from Metson, the European pharmacopoeia. It ensures that the aspirin you buy in Berlin is the same you buy in Athens or Oslo. And Metson, the production is one of the most innovative in the industry, but also one of the most regulated ones. So that regulation puts a stifle in innovation.
On the contrary, good regulation will lead to much more quality products. So that's where we are on both tracks.
We will discuss this also at the highest political level. Next year in May, there will be a political conference in Cypress, which will be attended by the ministers of the 47 Council of Europe Member States responsible for media matters.
We'll discuss the implications of A.I. on the landscape and public service media and its role on the Internet. So very much the things of this session.
And we also intend, not only to have a formal setting where ministers speak to each other, but very much ensure that ministers will speak to Civil Society, to broadcasters, to actors in the field, so that it will be an enriching experience, and that they will take a number of decisions to further make their governments aware and make governments aware that broadcasters need support. The quality media needs support, in order ensure that our societies remain healthy. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Xian. The difference in the past is that in the far west, the train arrived after the sheriff and the justice were established. The training is already there, and we still need the sheriff and the law arriving. Anyway.
I hope that from Cypress there will be some newer indication on that, and also the group on artificial intelligence will have a section on media that will be quite important. I think that is important for all of us to follow carefully what happens there.
Now we try to do sort of magic with remote participation from our colleague from BBC. We tried before. We have some technical problems. I hope now it will work better. Bill, can you hear us and are you ready to take the floor?
>> BILL THOMPSON: I can hear you, and I'm ready to take the floor. Can you hear me?
>> MODERATOR: Perfectly. Thank you.
>> BILL THOMPSON: Firstly, I'm sorry not to be physically present, but I'm pleased that I can take part remotely. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm Bill Thompson, a senior manager in BBC's research and development group, and we're the group of about 200 engineers, developers, user interface designers, social scientists and researchers who are imagining a future world in which the BBC could flourish, and we hope in which all Public Service media could flourish. And our question today is how do we fix the Internet. And I think the first thing is to acknowledge that the Internet is actually broken.
And many people have done that. We've seen just recently Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web talking about – and pointed out the dangers to a healthy society by the ways the Internet is being used currently. It was good to hear about ways the Council of Europe is trying to make things better online for all of us. The questions he wrote are really important ones and I hope at the BBC, we can play our part in addressing them.
But once we admit the Internet is broken, I think it's important to acknowledge that it can be fixed. This is something many people despair about because they worry about human nature. Or crucially, they forget that we built this thing, so we can change it.
We even have a model in the form of Public Service Broadcasters, about how we can shape media and technologies in the public interest. Because the BBC has been for nearly 100 years, dedicated to delivering the best for people through the use of communications technologies, and now in addition to broadcast media, we have IP-based media. And ideas of what Public Service broadcasting is, have grown to encompass the range of Public Service media that we talk about within European broadcasting union. And the idea of media itself is extended to cover websites and apps and data services.
So if we want to deliver public value online as we're talking about here, we need an Internet that can sustain those public services. Services that are shared, that are available to everyone. So everyone can benefit from them.
What we call legible. That can be controlled by the users. Services that are not simply black boxes disguised in legal terms and conditions and insulated from their users. Also services that are there for all sorts of people, diverse groups of people, not just mainstream users.
That's part of our work within the BBC, where we're looking to develop the idea of the Public Service Internet in terms of a broader contest of what we call new forms of value that the BBC can bring to people. And in that context we've identified four main pillars. The idea of Public Service networking. That is a publicly controlled data to ensure the people are in control of and understand the data about them, how it's used. The idea of equal access for everyone, and the idea of a healthy digital public sphere which can encompass all of these. And crucially, we're looking at ways to measure the impact of this new way of operating. We're asking what on online space that can deliver Public Service outcomes looks like and how we can get there from here and how the net might have to change to support those Public Service outcomes.
In some ways, this is very similar to the old question about what does radio transmission and sound and image look like when it supports Public Service. The driving question behind Public Service media in the first place.
But when we began to develop broadcasting in the 1920s and then with television in the 1940's and 50's. These were new media. The Internet already exists. We're moving into a space that has been shaped by commercial and political interests. So it's not as easy to turn the network to our service.
So we've been doing a load of projects around things like the interactions of people with data, how we express human values online in terms of the shape of our software. What are homes will be like when they are censor rich and can monitor us, and how we might control that monitoring in ways that might benefit us.
The use of personal data and personal data stores to insulate people from the large data monopolies, and the social impact of all these technologies. It's crucial we are able to measure the impact of the innovations that we make, and of the changes we make. Because otherwise, it's probably not worth doing it. We can't demonstrate its value. And we're doing all of this work in the open and in collaboration with a range of organizations including fellow EBU members, coalitions such as Public Spaces who are on the panel. Organizations in the UK such as Nesta and the Open Data Institute. It's not something we would ever wish to do in isolation.
The Internet is a common treasury for all. The many services we can build on top of it provide a new way of engaging with audiences, within which we can deliver our Public Service objectives. And as we've heard from Jan Kleij -- a better Internet for people to use. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Very interesting to see that this is a network. It is not isolated experiences. Part of this network is here, so we will listen exactly now. So I propose to change a little bit the order. Instead of having Antonio from Geneva, if he doesn't raise an objection, I would give the floor to Geert. Because Bill just experienced this in the Netherlands, which is a little different than from what the BBC is doing. But it's interesting because it's open to Civil Society. A way to install a permanent dialogue between Civil Society and broadcasters. Can you tell us more?
>> GEERT JAN BOGAERTS: Absolutely. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Let's see if my presentation works. There it is. That's great. So I don't have to talk a great deal about all the problems that we face nowadays with the Internet. There are 99 problems only with the use of Facebook alone associated with it. We all know about it and we all struggle through it.
But I believe with Bill and the BBC there is a solution possible. We can work together, as we try to do in the Netherlands over the last year and a half. By building a coalition of like-minded parties that are not just broadcasters, but also organizations within the sphere of cultural heritage, cultural institutions, festivals, within education, within healthcare. All organizations that share more or less the same dilemma. They are on the one hand, forced to use big commercial platform like Facebook and YouTube in order to get their message to the public, to the audiences. They have in many cases a legal obligation to reach as many people as possible, while at the same time, the use of those platforms runs contrary to their own mission statements.
So I'm representative of the public broadcaster. We make a lot of programs in which we kind of criticize how Facebook is using its data, but at the same time we're using Facebook to promote those problems. So there's really something wrong there. Our dilemma, we try to solve it by establishing a new set of public values that refuel any kind of Internet service provider or Internet platform should try to adhere to. We commit ourselves within the coalition to adopting and building alternative implementations, software implementations, to actually provide alternatives to the public for the YouTubes, for the Facebooks, for the search engines and so on.
And we're doing that not only within the coalition, but also on the broader range within Europe. As Bill mentioned, working with the BBC, but there's some context from ZDF, from Wily E. from Finland. We've been talking to SDF, also present on the panel here. So it's a very interesting thing to.
To notice that in most European countries there are coalitions or initiatives like ours on the way. We're developing along three tracks. We're trying to raise awareness, not only among the general public, us, but even within our own ranks. Within the organizations not too many people still feel or share the insight that there is actually a big problem. Awareness also within policy, within civil service and so on. Furthermore our second track consists of adaptation and adoption of alternative solutions. There are lots of open source solutions out there. For instance, there's an alternative to YouTube which is called peer tube. It is very difficult, not very user friendly. So what our unique selling point obviously is, we reach in the Netherlands along 10 million people. Lots of experience in user experience design. So we can actually improve on those solutions and give them better the open source community, while at the same time adopting and adapting them. Presenting them to the audience.
And the third track is the development of what we call badges. They are kind of like a public representation of the main values that are present in our manifesto.
And I'll talk a bit more about those badges later on. But for now, what's important is what we're trying to do is we identify the solutions that are most urgent to implement from our perspective, from the organizations within the coalition. But also from the audiences and the public's perspective. We met them out, and we tried to identify what solutions are actually most coherent with our values.
So some examples. We're looking at ISO, which is an alternative commenting tool. We're looking at master dome, which is an alternative tool for social communities. And we're looking at authentication solutions, authorization solutions so you don't have to rely on Facebook or Google to log into whatever application or website that you want. But actually the data that you provide are safe within your own vault, if you will.
Once we start using those alternatives, organizations that promote them can apply for badges. And badges are technical representations, but also visual representations and technical implementations of those values. For instance, at VPRO, this is an example of what public spaces might look like. You can click on it on the public spaces badge, and it will open up and tell the audience to what extent VPRO, my own organization where this will be implemented now, is already adhering to those public values.
You can imagine that the more alternative solutions we manage to implement, the greener, so to speak, our badge becomes. This is obviously scalable. So you can apply and then use it within your own environment. So in this way, we think we can actually provide alternative solutions, but also make public more aware of the existence of those solutions while at the same time, trying to establish some kind of brand of trust, if you will.
Where people can actually validate that we are not only saying those things that we adhere to those values, but people can also control that we do that.
You can find this online, obviously. And I hope you'll be able to find us.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Just one question. These badges you provide only for people that are part of the community or you can provide also to third parties? Because it's interesting the concept that you validate if somebody is healthy, doing healthy Internet or not.
>> GEERT JAN BOGAERTS: It's going to be an open batch. So it's going to be an open process that you can apply for online. And there's a system of unit tests going to be in place, and those unit tests will actually manage the validation, the technical validation. So you can imagine the complexity of trying to translate a value like transparency or privacy into something that's technically feasibly validable, if you will.
>> MODERATOR: You told me you are also thinking to apply this to political parties?
>> GEERT JAN BOGAERTS: Well, at the moment, we are not excluding anything or anybody. I mean, as long as parties adhere to our public values, why not?
So in the end, even Facebook, for instance, would be able to apply for it. They're going to have a hard time trying to comply with all our values.
)Laughter)
But if they do, well, why not?
>> MODERATOR: OK. I will tell Mark Zuckerberg.
)Laughter)
Thank you very much. OK. Now that there is another component of this debate, is the technicalities. We need, in order to develop this public sphere safe for citizen, we need also technical tools. In Geneva at the European Broadcasting Union, we have a department that is called technology and innovation. The director is with us on remote. Antonio Arcidiacono. And they are developing a certain number of tools with the members that will make easier to have a healthier Internet. Antonio, we tried the magic again with you. Let's see if it works. Antonio, can you hear us?
Only once. So waiting to have Antonio with us, to reestablish the contact, then we can go to the next part. Elena Perotti from the Association of Newspapers. We made this open because the quality of the Internet and the public setting not a prerogative only of Public Service Broadcasters, but also quality media are part of this future environment in which we hope that we will all live. I leave the second part of the moderation to Elena and try to recover with Antonio. Antonio, can you hear us?
>> ANTONIO ARCIDIACONO: I do. Hello.
Hello. Can you hear me? OK. I assume you can hear me. Was put down because of -- sorry, there was a cut in the Internet connection. So apparently there is still improvements available on the Internet as such.
So thank you for having me today virtually. Unfortunately, I could not come, as we work in the same organization in the EU -- almost 120 organizations. The introduction made by my colleague by BBC, by Bill Thompson, has been the perfect one for my intervention now.
I will -- I am here, director of technology and innovation. So I will speak about some of the applications we have actually -- and we are actually developing, to improve the Internet access and to improve the media access using the advantages of an organization like EBU, working together and building together tools that would help us developing new tools for the citizens.
So using the A.I. for good, using the artificial intelligence where it does make sense. And I will speak about three projects and three products we are working on. One is what we call Eurovox. It's a project and is ate of open source tools that we are developing so to allow any citizen to access any content into their monitor.
This is very important. This is based on A.I. technologies. This is important for many reasons. It's important because any citizen can reach any information from any source. But it's also important mainly for the democratic advantage of this, because you will be able -- any citizen will be able to access content for different sources and create this idea of what is and where is the truth.
So that's one big advantage. And this is a project in which we are today, eight of our bigger and some of the smaller members that are participating. And more and more are joining into this project.
So this is something that we will publicly show into operation. We have already done some early demonstrations, but during the IBC in Amsterdam in 2020.
A second tool that we are developing, and we've developing, is already in operation with several of our members is recommendation and personalization engine that solves the problem of the gold fish bowl. This is one problem underlined at the beginning of this conference. And I think this is very important because working with the values and the principles of a public broadcaster, we have developed a system that is called PEACH, personalization for each. It uses recommendation engine GDPR modules in all the tools to allow the information to reach our citizens, all the citizens in an open way. And in such a way that is not creating this isolation, say, person by person, and having a distortion in the information.
So this is the other element. I would like to underline that these two developments are done on an open source base and on an open platform basis. So the idea is that these tools can be used by any of our members and by any other entity that would like joining to our developments.
And third, what is important is also not only who have the tools to improve the quality, but it's also important to have the ability to reach people. I mean one of the things that is important is how do we reach 100% of the population in any country on any territory.
So 100% of the population, 100% of the territory. For this reason, we are very active in promoting the idea of 5G broadcasting, this is 5G for all territories in all countries. For this, we are in particular pushing for a solution that is sustainable to cover 100% of the countries.
5G should not only be limited to highly populated areas in western countries. It should be able to reach any population in any country with a sustainable cost. To do this, we are proposing a multilayer solution, where you can have the layer of cellular, the layer of broadcasting, using the towers that we already operate for transmission of television. And also using -- layer. So these three layers orchestrated and used together can optimize the delivery of content, reduce the cost of infrastructure, because you don't need to construct a structure that is very costly, covering very large areas in (?). And adding this infrastructure covering 100% of the population, combining the low facing -- they work best. This is done by EBU in collaboration with all the media industries. Not all the public broadcasters, but also the private broadcasters, the regulators, the manufacturers, all the institutions on a worldwide basis. We have created an organization, which is defending the needs for the media industry to reach 100% of the population and 100% of the territory. I am at your disposal to go into more details for this. Apologies for the cut in the Internet. I don't know why. But next time we'll connect using a more reliable connection. Thank you very much and have a good day. I will follow your conversation with a lot of interest. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Antonio. And now I hand over the second part of the moderation to Elena.
>> ELENA PEROTTI: Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me. I work with the world association of news media and our members are publishers all across the world. I'm going to give the floor right away to the next speaker, but I just wanted to touch upon the fact that our friend, from the Council of Europe said this phrase that really struck me. He said, there are people who like to say that any form of regulation would stifle innovation. It is true, what I hear is that many people come to us, the world association on news media saying that any kind of regulation on Internet could stifle Freedom of Expression, which is just not true. What is stifling Freedom of Expression right now is that the independent voices, the news media in particular. The smallest, local publishers, struggle with sustainability. And the reason for this is very often because the Internet so far has been dominated by a handful of extremely obscure companies who very often transform their users in the product, behind the pretense of free services.
So we're struggling with sheer survival, and that is why I'm very grateful that we have been involved in this conversation today. I will now stop and give the word to our next speaker who is to continue this really interesting conversation. And I would ask Stefan Muller, please from ZDF Kultur to explain to us what ZDF Kultur is and how it represents a new form of public service. Thank you, Stefan.
>> STEFAN MULLER: Thanks very much. Yes, thank you for the invitation to this panel and to give me the opportunity to talk about ZDF Kultur. What is ZDF Kultur? A digital space for culture and one of several endeavors of television to take the public service mission into the Internet era.
ZDF Kultur was launched this year in February so, we're still at the beginning of the process, and since these are fast times, we are already right in the middle of reevaluating and discussing new directions.
But let's see where we are today, and as you have seen in the trailer at the beginning of the session, maybe it gave you a little impression, visually, and from audio, what we do so far.
At ZDF, in terms of culture. And the other three aspects I would like to reemphasize now. And the first is user-centered content, which is very important for us. Second is debate or discourse. And third is accessibility.
We have seen in the trailer that you can find a variety of TV shows, concerts, music festivals, opera, theater and cultural documentaries on ZDF Kultur already. These are the T.V. shows that we put on the Internet for other people to stream and to partially even download.
But what's new? We included new categories such as debate, gaming, and design and travel on our website. Why did we do so? Because of needs and expectations of users that we have identified in a media research study.
So in the next step, we decided to produce new web video series representing a wider range of cultural aspects, including gaming, travel and food, and design. The goal was to present aspects of culture that many people can relate to. For example, the discussion about what makes a design object spectacular or a spectacular failure.
Second, we believe that debate and discourse are at the core of democratic life and must be nourished by the public service media. This is even more important in times of fake news and (?) bubbles. So we wanted to give people a forum to express their voice and opinions.
This could be famous actresses and directors talking about the female perspective on the film business. Or it could be activists, scientists or just normal ordinary citizens contributing to debates such as if hijabs should be prohibited in certain public areas. We are here to moderate and listen to the discussion, not to lecture.
Accessibility, we know that people have no easy access to art, for lack of education, for lack of finances or sheer lack of interest. We asked ourselves how can we break some of these barriers, and how can we make art accessible to everybody, and how can we make it interesting or even fun.
So we toured all the federal states to find digital projects together. We have established 48 cultural partnerships at this point in Germany. We developed a digital museum and with our partners we have been creating digital exhibitions from renaissance -- the user can stroll along through these virtual exhibitions and get more detailed information through text, videos, and sound files commenting on each object on display.
Another example for the book lovers, we made an app. The goal is to narrow your search to your next favorite book. And to each book, there's a short video review by one of our T.V. experts.
Finally, we apply all our journalistic efforts to social media. We try to feed our users with interesting information about cultural phenomena and give room for discussion. We started on Facebook in February and plan to go to YouTube and Instagram in 2020. Some our most successful posts on Facebook deal with language.
For example, showing Arabic and Turkish origins in our daily language. This is one of many small contributions we try to make on ZDF Kultur to inform, educate and connect people through culture. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. That's very interesting in the aspiring experience of what you can do on the Internet. Not only making money out of it, but making public value for citizens.
>> ELENA PEROTTI: Thank you, Stefan. Now we would like to hear from Paolo Lanteri from the World Intellectual Property Organization, topics near to our heart and our industry. From you, Paolo do you think that (?) one day could renumerate artists -- today -- do you actually believe that it exists, the Public Service Internet that doesn't include the recognition of the author's rights? Maybe based on creative comments or weak copyright?
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Let's start with first question, and we believe that the Internet can renumerate artists and creators one day, well the answer is yes, it can. And yes, it should. Perhaps it's taking a bit longer than what we could have all hoped. But there are already several examples of successful business models proving that the goal of matching high consumption with fair enumeration is within reach. If you look back 10, 15 years, and the situation for both, the creators and the users, was much more complicated.
Legal offer was significantly lower, and creative content online was scattered and largely offered on illegal websites, from illegal sources.
For example, in 2011, online music services were available in 28 countries of the world, while today, we are talking about full coverage. Practically all world has some legal offering of music. Same trend for movies and individual sector in publishing.
Of course, I'm not saying the situation is solved. There are still very important challenges that need to be addressed, such as finding appropriate solution for regulating Internet service providers' responsibility, or making sure that the revenues are shared fairly among all the players in the chain.
So there are no real magic answers, but there are some particularly promising areas where we see room for improvement.
First, for sure, technology. Technology can provide solution, especially when we talk about granular and interoperable metadata and identifiers. Those can really support efficient management and higher level of transparency for all players of the chain.
Secondly, it's not always easy, but cooperation. Cooperation among business players. For instance, Internet platforms media. Creative sector. Including first role creates can prove in some instances to provide easier solution that will not always require a legal means.
Finally of course norm setting and regulation. Updating the rules of the game and making sure there is a fair market and guaranteeing that corporate system continues to play its role, it's essential. On this point it's clear that technology -- faster than -- it's always been the case.
However, IP norms, that have the specific focus on the Internet already exist at all levels. On the multilateral side, out of the eight WIPO-administered in the field of copyright, four have been adopted and negotiated only to take into account for Internet.
At the regional level, I don't need to mention the European directive on copyright, because I am sure all of you must have heard from the media. And at the national level, a recent study from WIPO showed how 94 countries of the world modified their national system between 2006-2016, to update the law to the digital environment.
And more reforms are coming. At the international level, we are currently negotiating a treating for protection of broadcasters online. Partially online. Not only online, but also online.
At the national level, there is an unprecedented number of countries engaged in corporate low reforms. As we speak today, in all corners of the world. All these norm setting initiatives prove the economic and social importance of the matter at stake. So regulation will probably need to be updated on a quite regular basis, unfortunately.
It is going to be a long and arduous road, but hopefully heading towards the right direction. Regarding the second question, whether I see a Public Service Internet with weak copyright. Well, I sincerely doubt it, and why do I doubt it?
First of all, it's clear we have to remind ourselves that we doubt well-functioning corporate system, you would still need to find incentives to support professionally-created content. The professionally-created content are the content that serve our education, news reporting, entertainment.
Those are very complex businesses endeavors requiring highly skilled labor force and major investments. Other alternatives, do we want to go to patent H, go to public subsidies? That's an open question for you. But now for you, IP is the legal tool that allow those sectors to drive and exist.
The second reason is possibly stronger. Models like creative commons, open source software, that mention in the question, are extremely successful and will continue to drive their respective areas. For example, WIPO believe in -- besides using open source software to providing its services has also launched an open access policy that implies the use of creative commons for all content created by WIPO. So these models are often and wrongly considered as alternatives to copyright. But in fact, they exist and they function only because of copyright. They are based on the exercise of the economic rights, just alternative ways of licensing those rights. Not the viral effect that is the backbone of platform like Wikipedia or all open source software developments. Extremely successful one would not be enforceable and would not exist without copyright norms. So to sum up, if your question, if you replace the word weak with balance, my answer would have been different. But I don't think we should look at this question between looking at whether we need a weak or strong copyright. We should look at -- we should find a way to identify solution that are practicable, effective and balanced, that could actually support both creation of new content and access to existing one on a Public Service Internet. Thank you.
>> ELENA PEROTTI: Thank you, Paolo. We're now going to hear from Xianhong Hu from UNESCO about the Internet Universality Indicators Project.
>> XIANHONG HU: Thank you so much for having composed such a wonderful panel and always flagging the critical issues of media, public service concept in IG discussion.
And it's a great pleasure to be here and in the spirit of the public interest, I just have a very minor suggestion. I hope our panel can be having more women speakers next time, and also, I hope to hear more voice from women audience next time, because gender equality has been such an issue of public interest, both for the media and also for the Internet.
So, let me be short. I like to have some really Q&As. Internet universality has been there for years by UNESCO to promote four dimensions of Internet, which are all about the public interest of the Internet.
First of l for United Nations, for UNESCO, the biggest public interest is sustainable development, a Human Rights based approach. Internet should be used to empower everybody, every country. All the sustainability development of the people in a society.
And for this strategic purpose, we -- I mean not we -- it's really our 193 Member States that have the endorsed. A it should be accessible by all, driven by a multi-stakeholder approach. So that's the basic position.
Now we have the 303 indicators developed to measure these four principles. To what standards is public interest dimensions have been achieved by the national states. So it's called like act 3 of the Internet policy to diagnose the health, the problems of the Internet as an ecosystem, as the largest ecosystem of modern society. Yesterday, we had interesting event to showcase the first 20 countries initiative to assess this Internet indicator.
What I heard was very interesting. From a principle rights direction, in many countries, free expression, freedom of information are beautiful, guaranteed in the law and rights on and offline, but implementation will be an issue. The quality of enforcement at national level.
That will impact the public interest a great deal. In terms of openness, net neutrality continue to be challenge for many countries. In the law it's not clear, not well defined and not mentioned, the implementation. Access, physical access has been achieved to a greater extent. 90% in many countries. Even in Africa there's 50%. Content is a king for media and also for the Internet. The multilingualism of the content and also the access to the content by the people, marginalized group. Women, girls and people with disabilities are far from being well addressed. Lastly, multi-stakeholderism. All stakeholders, it's not just government who is the one to decide unilaterally. It's really a consultative process to decide on all these issues regarding everybody's interests. And social inclusion.
Women and different minorities should all be on board to discuss the policies. And also global level. Just now, I heard a lot of progress, advancement from my European colleagues. Really, congratulations.
I'm so happy to hear that Public Service broadcasting media has been advancing in the digital era. Europe, such a gap in terms of the public service media and also in terms of value being embedded on the Internet. So that's why I'm really looking forward that there can be more international corporation, digital corporation, and your initiative on the public space also impressed me.
And also hope that it can go beyond Europe and have more members from the rest of the world. Because Internet is connecting all of us.
Last point is really one sentence. Artificial intelligence. We are also doing a launching of new research tomorrow morning at 9:30. One issue about artificial intelligence hugely impacting into the media landscape is reinventing new business model. It's changing the way of journalists producing and reading and writing the news. And also, it's a new -- to restrict and define the use of access. I think we discuss everything here. But I stop here. I would like to hear more discussions. Thank you.
>> ELENA PEROTTI: Is there any questions for our speakers? We're now at 11:22.
>> MODERATOR: Because the organizers, they said we have to close as soon as possible in order to prepare the next session that will take place here. So if you have any supplementary questions, we are outside now for the next minutes. So probably we can eventually have a personalized one-to-one service of broadcasting -- not broadcasting. In the case, for all of you. Thank you very much.
Thank you to all the speakers for your contributions. Thank you also to the remote participants that are still with us. And see you around in these days to continue to discuss about the public interests over the Internet. Thank you.