At e-G8, "Wild" Silicon Valley Bigwigs and "Civilized" European Fogeys Make Plans for Your Internet
Posted by Ryan_Broderick on Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Nicolas Sarkozy has organized a 2-day “e-G8 Summit,” bringing together some of the world’s most powerful companies, in an attempt to address the unchecked growth of the web. Critics are claiming the massive international event is Sarkozy’s attempt at tightening governmental control of the internet.
The summit’s guest speakers are Eric Schmidt, of Google; Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook; Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon; along with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and representatives from Microsoft. Also speaking at the event are Rupert Murdoch of NewsCorp and BBC director general, Mark Thompson. If that list of speakers sounds a bit unsettling to you, then it means you don’t live under a rock somewhere.
The suspicious nature of the forum isn’t completely unfounded. Sarkozy outlined his opinion on an open, unregulated internet last year in a speech where he said, “The internet is the new frontier, a territory to conquer. But it cannot be a Wild West. It cannot be a lawless place, where people are allowed to pillage artistic works with no limits.”
“Now that the Internet is an integral part of most people’s lives, it would be contradictory to exclude governments from this huge forum,” Sarkozy said in his opening address.
“Nobody could, nor should, forget that these governments are the only legitimate representatives of the will of the people in our democracies…To forget this is to take the risk of democratic chaos and hence anarchy.”
Le Troll Face?
Google’s Schmidt recently stated his feelings about regulation, saying in London last week that he was strongly against blocking domains and other forms of Internet censorship. “I would be very, very careful about that stuff,” said Schmidt.
The BBC is saying that what really is at play this week at Sarkozy’s summit is the meeting of two different schools of thought on the future of the Internet, with American companies representing a hands-off philosophy, and the predominately European idea of tight regulations on the web’s excess.
Inside the e-G8 on Tuesday, there were already clashes of ideology, with Sarkozy saying to the fellow speakers, “The world you represent is not a parallel universe where legal and moral rules and, more generally, all the basic principles that govern society in democratic countries do not apply. You can’t be exempt from minimum rules.”
While it may not be as Orwellian as it seems, proposals for regulation could very well emerge from this summit. Especially when you consider how jam packed 2011 has already been in terms of Internet-related turmoil:
- The spring revolutions in the Middle East saw revolutionaries fighting country-wide internet black outs
- Threats of the Obama administration’s “internet killswitch,”
- The massive breach of security of Sony’s Playstation Network (and the hilarious subsequent break-ins)
- The recent use of Twitter to fight the English court’s super-injunctions,
- France’s huge data-leak of their HADOPI copyright system, a system that tracks blocked users from internet access
Much is still unclear – the Internet is just a baby – which is precisely why the e-G8 could become as household an acronym as its namesake, or WTO. It certainly sounds more exciting than ICANN. To follow live coverage of the summit check out #eg8 on Twitter.
Connections
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Egypt, Net Neutrality, and the Ethics of Internet Suicide
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About the author
Ryan_Broderick
If the internet was liquid, I'd take through an IV
Hempstead, United States
Member since 2011
