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COMPELLING CONTENT FOR SMART GROWTH

EIF online — 26 Feb 2010 07:39:18 +0200

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Mats �kerlund, Head of Digital Strategy of Swedish Radio was the first speaker at the EIF breakfast on 24 February 2010. Swedish Radio and TV has been a major player on the Internet in terms of innovation and can be heard via a whole range of distribution channels, such as FM, on demand, and of course online.

Mr. �kerlund said that one of the blessings is that old radio works perfectly well on new media such as Internet. The important aspect is to ask what value can be added from a content and an innovation point of view in the online channel?

Mr. �kerlund foresees a strong future for online radio and presented a range of reasons why. First, of course, is that the computer is a radio and that therefore there is one in every pc and laptop. The users have freedom of space because the Internet is global and you can listen to your local radio station wherever you are in the world. At the same time the Internet brings the possibility to have more content and unique channels segmented even for special interests such as political debate and other channels. Freedom of time is another advantage of Internet radio. FM programmes are streamed online and can be retrieved in a 30 day web archive. In addition podcasts are made available for download as MP3 files, so people can listen to them wherever they want. Mr. �kerlund also mentioned the new 3G and 4G smart cellphones which are ideal platform for online radio with new smart applications and geo tagging. Interactivity of online radio allows users to see what other programmes have been selected by listeners and which programmes are most popular. Everything becomes searchable because of the application of meta data to each programme. As a result, content has a longer lifetime and further reach.

The game is yet to begin however, according to Mr. �kerlund. Mobile will become extremely important for online radio as will be further innovations, but for now the future of radio will be both FM, direct terrestrial broadcasting and online.

The second speaker of the morning was Jesus Badenes, CEO of the Spanish Publishing Group Planeta. Mr. Badenes addressed the question of how to create compelling content for economic growth. In broad terms, he cited the obvious need for an adequate legal environment, investment capacity in financial terms, an entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the right commercial environment.

The good news, in his words, is that 7 out of 10 of the largest publishing companies are European based. However, the content creation industry is fragmented, it has no market power, it is not sexy and faces strong competition in very fragmented markets. It is important to consider that there need to be consistent incentives for companies to create content. If people steal that content there is nothing left to give away. In other words, piracy is a real danger to the future of quality content creation.

The dynamic of the ecosystem has dramatically changed, Mr. Badenes argued. Search engines, telecom companies, the consumer electronics industry, companies like Nokia, Sony, Apple and new content distribution companies such as Amazon have created a new role for the content creation industry, as the latter provides traffic to these companies. From his perspective, Mr. Badenes does see such companies as partners and not as enemies, because they can help in the distribution of content and hence his company would be willing to share revenue as partners in the value chain.

However we should be careful not to overhaul the licensing system too much or allow piracy to continue, as this will affect future quality content creation. We should not forget that out of all the billions of books created, only 10.000 of these are responsible for 50% of the market. To conclude, Mr. Badenes called upon the European Parliament to maintain an Intellectual Property Rights system that keeps the right balance between content creation and content distribution, building in mechanisms to foster cooperation.

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COMPLETING THE DIGITAL SINGLE MARKET: WHAT STRATEGIES DO WE NEED?

EIF online — 26 Feb 2010 07:32:14 +0200

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Pilar Del Castillo, MEP and EIF Chair opened the EIF dinner debate on completing the Digital Single Market (23 February 2010) by providing a perspective from the European Parliament. As rapporteur on the new Digital Agenda for Europe in 2025 she made a clear statement that indeed we do not yet have single digital market. Only 7% of e-commerce transactions in the EU are currently cross-border because the digital market is still fragmented by national legislation. Mrs. Del Castillo for example mentioned that rights holders and online service providers need to spend far too much time and money on the administration of rights, whereas consumers can often not access content if uploaded in other member states. As a consequence, the potential for M-Commerce is left unexploited. Especially in a time of financial crisis, the digital arena can be a great booster for the economy, she said. In order to do so however we need to look again at the framework of directives such as Data Protection, Electronic Signatures and Electronic Commerce and update these Directives. They are crucial for further developments in the Digital Single Market, such as the free circulation of online content.

Detlef Eckert, Director, Lisbon Strategy and Policies for the Information Society of DG INFSO shared some remarks and ideas about what he personally thought we should be thinking about. In his opinion it is all about balancing different interests. The telecom framework is now in place but this does not mean the end of telecom issues. The spectrum allocation issue for example is still a hot topic. But on top of that, the real problem is that Europe is fragmented and the Digital Age makes this fragmentation very clear; the borders are disappearing and regulation in the policy areas is not catching up quick enough. Mr. Eckert urged Europe to ?wake up?. Reality in the telecoms market is that there are good elements to it, but that it is divided by national borders and not by business decisions. As examples he mentioned that spectrum allocation is national. The same is true for license allocation: If you own, as a pan euro player, stakes in other operators you have to deal with 27 different regulatory regimes. The question we might ask is: why do we have roaming in a truly single market? We should not forget in Mr. Eckert's opinion what the cost is of a ?non-Europe? in the telecom market. He advocated that there should be a report about this.

In the area of broadband we can let the market decide and let private operators roll out broadband. The problem is that very often broadband has high value for a society similar to roads or airlines. This led Mr. Eckert to suggest that maybe the benefits of broadband are not factored in into the private return of investments. The stock markets, in particular in this crisis, are not very keen on subsidizing or supporting the social value of broadband because they wonder about the return on their investments. Mr. Eckert believes however that this return is in the society and in all the online services that make out the digital single market.

The other extreme is to say that infrastructure at the end of the day needs to be run by governments. Mr. Eckert proposed that we need to find a middle way where in particular we need to look at a number of factors that lower the private return on investment. One of these factors is cost. We should combine forces and bring in some public money in areas where investments alone are not profitable. Last but not least Mr. Eckert focused on the fragmentation of copyright licenses in Europe, and closed off with the words that Europe needs a united European legal framework that encompasses copyright.

Mr. Erkki Ormala, Vice President, Business Environment at Nokia said that the advent of new interactive types of personalized semantic services will forever change the digital landscape. The market growth in this area is predicted to be gigantic but to harvest economic returns from it, all stakeholders and consumers need to commit to making it a success.

For example, the Commission launched a study about ordering goods and services from another EU country. The results show that a large majority of providers is not able to deliver the requested goods or services because they have no legal certainty. The same occurs in the area of data privacy. There are more interactive services and the law prescribes that we need to protect private data. If you transfer that private data into a cloud outside the EU for instance, you have to notify your clients, and you have to do so in every single Member State. The cost of notification is roughly half a million Euros per Member State. When businesses become successful they therefore often move to the USA.

Mr. Ormala also advocated for copyright reform. A recent UK government exercise to invite the most important licensing organizations to a gathering, resulted in a total of 300 showing up. That means that if you would like to launch a Europe-wide service for selling copyrighted services, you would have to negotiate with 27 times 300 players. Mr Ormala also advocated reform in the copyright levy. The new telecom package requires that different costs are made explicit to consumers. But, he argued, copyright levies are not visible in these fees.

Sebastian Brandis, Chief Operation Officer, BT Germany and CEO, BT Austria started his speech by saying that we need to try to truly understand what the Digital Single Market is going to be used for. The key challenges according to Mr. Brandis, are that we need to maintain the productivity advantage we have over other regions and transform our society into true sustainable development. Mr. Brandis stated that productivity is generated by intelligently combining the network services and logistics to create productivity gains for business. (He mentioned the example of a coffee shop that is automatically being supplied because of an intelligent supply chain network that measures when coffee needs to be replenished in the store). The first lesson we can learn from that, he said, is that ICT delivers productivity gains primarily in the b2b sector and that intelligence of the network is key, the network itself is not creating the productivity.

Another example is that it is the intelligence of the network that creates the productivity gains and not the pipe itself. For instance, if your pay tv provider knows your profile when you call, then the very fact that you get routed to the right person with the right skills is because your operator has invested in creating an intelligent network of connected call centers. Using the intelligence of networks can generate a productivity gain of 15%. As such, ICT in the business segment creates opportunities to build a sustainable society, for example by having true Virtual Video Conferencing, where it appears you are sitting next to each other despite a distance of thousands of mile. This saves money, time, and fuel.

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INTERNET GOVERNANCE - FEEDBACK FROM THE 2009 IGF IN SHARM EL SHEIKH

EIF online — 29 Jan 2010 09:32:32 +0200

The EIF breakfast debate on Tuesday 26 January focused on feedback from the Internet Governance Forum in Sharm el Sheikh. Catherine Trautmann, MEP and EIF Governor, and Head of the EP Delegation to Sharm el Sheikh, was the first speaker of the morning and provided context to what had been discussed during the Forum.

A major outcome of the recent IGF is that a majority of governments, except China, believe that the IGF as a multi-stakeholder platform is successful and should continue. The next meeting of the IGF will take place in Vilnius in Lithuania from 14 to 17 of September of this year. This will be the last IGF meeting in the current cycle.

Mrs. Trautmann strongly advocated a continuation of the process even after Vilnius, as she firmly believes that this multi-stakeholder approach is the right one. She emphasized that now is the moment for the European Union to provide topics and contributions for such a continuation, and recapped some of the topics that were at the top of the agenda during Sharm el Sheikh: identity and privacy versus security, net neutrality, cloud computing, the Internet of things, multilingualism, city domain names, green ICTs, child protection. Mrs. Trautmann also mentioned that ? if IGF continues after Vilnius - there is support for holding the next IGF in Kenya and referred to a meeting of the European chapter of IGF (EuroDIG) in Madrid in April of this year (29 ? 30 April).

She also addressed the evolution of ICANN and its competences, saying that ICANN in the eyes of the European delegation should be confirmed as a private organization, and that from the perspective of the EP delegation, there is no need for a new organization.

Alice Munyua, Coordinator at Kenya ICT Action Network - East African Internet Governance Forum/Kenya IGF, was the second speaker of the morning. She began by saying that the East African region has for a long period of time not been on the map for broadband Internet access. Kenya wanted to reverse this trend and take leadership to bring the east African countries into the information society and into the IGF, she said. This is why the East African Internet Governance Forum was set up.

One of the aims is to balance cyber crime, and to benchmark how the region is doing in comparison with other countries. The East African IGF discusses (local) issues that are typical for the region like access and development. The most important issues in EAIGF are different from the ones encountered outside the African region, she explained. For example, country code top level domains still need to be properly dealt with. Kenya is probably most advanced is this area. Getting good models for managing TLDs and cybercrime is key to the discussions and the future of the Internet in the region. Language is also an important issue, given that there are 45 languages in Kenya alone. Managing electronic waste is slowly starting to get on the agenda as well, as is consumer protection in the light of the increasing access numbers.

Mrs. Munyua advocated the need for policy to create the right legal environment. She mentioned that as of 2009, there has been a program to target policy makers, to make them understand and contribute to the Internet governance processes. This is a must, if effective legislation is to be put in place. At the same time, politicians in the region need to understand the multi-stakeholder system of IGF, and the uptake is relatively slow in her view.

Kenya hopes that in the new IGF, if it is decided to continue the Forum, there will be a more concrete role for the regional IGFs, and to have more representation in the development of the IGF program. She also made a plea for developing funding for regional IGFs via the local private sector, and to ensure that democratizing Internet is seen as a priority. EAIGF also supports the ICANN changes with a focus on how the institution can become more international than it has been in the past.

Fr�d�ric Donck, Director European Regional Bureau of the Internet Society was the last speaker of the morning, heading the new regional bureau of ISOC. He mentioned that ISOC is a strong believer in an Internet ecosystem, and that IGF is important in that system. He commented on the logistics of Sharm el Sheikh, saying that it was great there was an increase of sessions, but advocated shorter meetings and a more concise format and reducing too many simultaneous sessions.

Another comment referred to a perceived need to create a more stable platform for remote participation, and to promote this possibility. In addition, IGF should ensure that non native English speakers can understand what is being said through better translation services and native speakers realizing that they should slow down during their speech. Mr. Donck observed that the content and the level of discussion is now more mature, which also means that more time is needed to come to conclusions in workshops.

In his closing remarks, he mentioned that there may be a need for a new IGF format to facilitate deeper understanding. Perhaps it would be an idea to have a driving theme each day, he said? The afternoon could then be used as a main session to report about the inputs from the workshop in a plenary format. For the future Mr. Donck suggested as a theme: Internet Governance for Sustainable Social and Economic development for the next five years.

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THE DIGITAL PRIORITIES OF THE SPANISH PRESIDENCY - EIF DEBATE WITH SPANISH SECRETARY OF STATE FRANCISCO ROS PERAN

EIF online — 27 Jan 2010 17:30:07 +0200

Fransico Ros Per�n, the Spanish Secretary of State responsible for Telecommunications and Information Society, was the special guest at the EIF dinner debate on Monday evening 25 January. He is responsible for the Digital priorities of the Spanish Presidency until the end of June and shared his views with the audience, followed by a lively discussion between the Presidency and EIF members.

Mr. Ros Per�n gave an overview of what the Presidency hopes to achieve in the coming months. He emphasized that the next five years will be crucial to put in place a new digital strategy for Europe to replace i2010. New models are going to be required in the political sector and the social sector, and Europe must understand this or it will lose opportunities, he said. The cornerstone of these new models is to realize that ICTs are indispensable to sustainability and efficiency for Europe's success.

Mr. Ros Per�n believes that Europe is losing ground in the ICT area. For instance, in telecoms equipment manufacturing, European companies have little presence within the ICT businesses of the new era (limited presence on search engines, digital content platforms, design and production, digital content for multimedia, high definition, video games etc.). At the same time, Europe does not educate a high enough number of experts that will be needed for the ICT sector and related industries in the near future. The people we do educate often leave Europe for other regions of the world to find more interesting work than what they can find at home in Europe.

Europe only has a small window in time left to gain ground in these areas, and Mr. Ros Per�n pointed out that all regions in the world are already very proactive in these areas, making this small window a top priority. Europe has recently started doing the same as can be seen in the Digital Agenda of Mr. Barroso, and the Presidency aims to work closely together with all those involved. Spain aims to do the following in the next months:

Work with the industry on the basis of the common views presented by the industry in a common document (as was recently published)
Creating an action plan based on the main priorities
A strategic plan 2010-2015; a plan that should address all the issues at hand (from cloud computing and education, to spectrum issues and many others.)
Facilitating investments on infrastructure and platforms by European companies to avoid a digital divide.
Create a European charter of user rights. The Internet users have to feel safe and therefore trust and security (cyber security) and IPR are elements that need to be addressed beyond the national level.
Focus on Digital content and services and use the opportunity given by the diversity of Europe
Last but not least: a single digital market

Spain is -as we speak- creating proposals together with stakeholders and all governments. At the same time the Spanish Presidency is discussing several of the issues, like governance, spectrum, broadband, universal access and net neutrality in an Atlantic context.

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Andrew Keen, bestselling author of 'How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture' speaks at EIF event

EIF online — 08 Dec 2009 07:10:48 +0200

Andrew Keen, Internet entrepreneur and bestselling author of 'Cult of the Amateur, how Today's Internet is Killing our Culture', gave an intriguing speech at the EIF breakfast debate on 2 December 2009.

Like in his book, Andrew does not hide that he is a web 2.0 skeptic. He explains that in the 1990s, web 1.0 was all about using a new technology to maintain traditional business models, music being the best example. Music was sold in the traditional way on a new medium, but there was nothing really innovative about the business model.

However, web 2.0 is about much more than just using a new technology: it is the first real manifestation of the digital revolution and Andrew believes that Google is the first real web 2.0 company. Why? Because Google has a completely different business model that is truly revolutionary (unlike the music business in the 1990s). Every time we use the Google search engine it becomes more intelligent. Like Wikipedia, there are no editors, there is no hierarchy, we create web 2.0 collectively.

In a similar way, Andrew foresees social media becoming competition to traditional political networks and eventually becoming a new way of doing politics. The nature of the entire web 2.0 culture is that it flattens the hierarchy: a blogger has the same access to publishing as the editor of the Financial Times for example.

This is where Andrew's skepticism kicks in, because with everybody being so-called equal, we also start believing that everybody can make films or newspapers, but the truth is that professional filmmakers and professional newspaper editors know how to add value to their products, to a much larger extent than a 15 year old kid will ever do.

Andrew strongly believes that the values we have in the real world should be applied in the virtual world. The Internet is just another form of society. There can be no room for anonymity if we want the Internet to prosper; people should reveal who they are, and similar to the real world people should not only be coming to the web to take what they want, but also to think about what they can bring to it.

Andrew's next book is a political and cultural critique of digital society and will be called 'Digital Vertigo, the Inequality, Loneliness and Anxiety in the Social Media Age'.

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THE FATHER OF THE WEB SPEAKS TO EIF MEMBERS ABOUT THE CHALLENGES OF THE INTERNET

EIF online — 03 Dec 2009 09:14:26 +0200

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was the honorary guest at the European Internet Foundation on December 1 2009. His speech and discussion with EIF members and friends took place over a dinner in the Solvay Library in Brussels. The event was organised in cooperation with STOA Annual Lecture.

Sir Berners-Lee talked about the future of the World Wide Web and emphasized that it is important to keep one web with a single URL system (although he did not exclude the possibility of (for instance) http2:// in that respect.

He also referred to the paradigm of a new world driven by mass collaboration (as also put forward in the EIF publication ?The Digital World in 2025?). He argued that we have no models for this new economy of mass collaboration because today, the economy has become the web; and if we do not understand the web, then we do not understand the economy.

The web has, however, become much more than its technology; this is studied by what is called 'web science'. Web science tries to look at both the technical and the social pieces of how the enormous complexity of the web is changing our world. Very few people imagined that Wikipedia would come into existence. Sir Tim Berners-Lee argued that although this is made possible by the http:// technology, it is the social part, the interaction between two or more people that makes all these new ideas become possible. The best way to look forward is to realize that the web is made up of people, and you have to understand the motives of the people.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee ended with the bigger picture of the web. How do we make the web multilingual? How do we make people understand it is a two-way street (that blogs are not only for reading but also for writing); is the coming year the time to show a big moment of leadership to change the web? All were put forward as questions. His advice was to think about the answers in the way you want the world to be in 2025, and then think of Europe?s role in getting it there.

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For more info on Sir Tim Berners-Lee at STOA click here

From left to right: Malcolm Harbour, MEP; Catherine Trautmann, MEP; Cristina Monti, EIF Director; Sir Tim Berners-Lee; Pilar del Castillo, MEP and EIF Chair; James Elles, MEP and EIF Chair; Maria Rosa Gibellini, EIF Assistant.

EIF dinner at Solvay Library, Brussels

Copenhagen Climate Conference and the Role of ICTs - 11 November 2009

EIF online — 16 Nov 2009 14:40:07 +0200

The EIF breakfast meeting on 11 November focused on the advent of the Copenhagen climate conference and the role of ICTs in helping to reduce carbon emissions. Two excellent speakers gave their vision on the future role of ICTs in climate control and energy efficiency. Chris Tuppen, Chief Sustainability Officer at British Telecom and co-editor of the SMART 2020 Report talked about the role of ICT in realizing a de-carbonised economy, and Nicola Villa, Global Director of the Connected Urban Development Program at Cisco, who gave an overview of ?Smart and Connected Communities? through case studies of how cities in Europe are embedding ICTs to support sustainable urban infrastructure and planning.

Chris Tuppen of BT explained that for the ICT industry there are two angles to the discussion about carbon emission reduction. The first angle is the carbon footprint of the ICT industry itself. The second is the use of ICT to reduce carbon emission in other economic sectors. Mr Tuppen explained that the ICT sector is currently responsible for producing two percent of total global carbon emissions and is working hard to reduce this by a range of initiatives. These initiatives include virtualization in data centers but also ideas to decrease waste production by producing a universal mobile phone charger that can be plugged into any model mobile phone. These initiatives could reduce the carbon footprint of the ICT industry by an amount equal to current carbon emissions of the US or China. ICT can also create synergies to help other economic sectors reduce their carbon output. Using ICT applications in industrial processes, increasing the use of smart grids, or using ICT in buildings, logistics, and transport will have a major impact on decreasing carbon output over time. Such new technologies focus on transforming the way in which applications connect. Mr Tuppen concluded by advocating a holistic approach to the low carbon economy to ensure a sustainable framework.

Nicola Villa of Cisco then presented an overview of the Cisco Urban Connected Development program (CUD). CUD is a partnership between the cities of Amsterdam, San Francisco, and MIT (and new cities around the world who are joining the program regularly). The program focuses on the effect of increased connectivity on the life of citizens, and monitors its impact on mobility and transportation, energy efficiency, and urban planning. The overall thought behind the program is to see how energy efficiency and climate change initiatives can create economic development into local communities. Mr Villa mentioned a range of examples. In Amsterdam, Cisco developed a project to reduce traffic on the highways by creating smart work centers at the borders of the city that connect people via high speed internet connections; this allows workers to work from these centres instead of going to their offices in the heart of the city. Another example is a project in Madrid where Cisco connected buildings and apartments using ICT solutions to combine and regulate energy sources to increase energy efficiency.

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Smart Politics: Digital Policy Priorities for the European Union

EIF online — 11 Nov 2009 22:27:32 +0200

EIF?s breakfast debate on 4 November 2009 hosted two speakers who presented their perspective on digital policy priorities for the European Union. Mr Ken Ducatel, Head of Unit - INFSO C1, Lisbon Strategy and i2010 of the European Commission; and Mr Ziga Turk, Secretary General of the Council Reflection Group on the Future of Europe.

Mr Ducatel was the first speaker and discussed some of the main priorities that the Commission is focussing on in the digital regulatory landscape; these are connectivity, services, the low carbon economy, and skills and employment.

In the area of connectivity, one of the aims is to guarantee 100% broadband connectivity in Europe by 2013. With regard to services, the Commission recognizes that Europe is failing to perform because the single market does not work flawlessly in a digital environment yet. The Commission is currently carrying out a large study to look at the entire ?acquis? to establish improvements in this area over time.

The Low carbon economy is another EU priority in which ICT can be of great value, not only by creating low carbon footprint hardware, but also by providing the software that is needed to measure carbon output and to help define standards in this area.

Mr Ducatel finished his speech by discussing e-learning and e-skills, areas that are underdeveloped in Europe. In his opinion, the available skill base in Europe needs to be repurposed to ensure that greater digital literacy is created.

The second speaker, Mr Ziga Turk, discussed the forthcoming report of the Council Reflection Group on the Future of Europe (on his own behalf). The main challenges for Europe according to Mr Turk can be summarized in a group of challenges called A, B, C, D, and E. The A stands for the Abundance of industrial and other cultural products, B refers to Bricks and signifies the process of globalization, C is the challenge of Climate change, D signifies Demography (maintaining quality of life and economic growth with a declining population) and E the Economic crisis we are in.

The 'sun' (renewable and green energies), the people and the European Union are the resources that we have to meet these challenges. According to Mr Turk we are underutilizing these resources. What is needed is a transition from a coal and steel union to one based on sun and bytes. The abundance economy is another and different challenge. The creativity of people should be used tackle this problem. By having leaders who empower others to go into this process together, Europe will stand a chance to meet the ?digital? challenges it is facing.

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Priorities for Internet Governance - 14 October 2009

EIF online — 20 Oct 2009 15:18:53 +0200

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Sharm El Sheik in Egypt is around the corner and the European Internet Foundation invited three high level speakers to comment on the state of play of the IGF as well as to provide thoughts about the future of this platform.

Henrik Hansson of the Swedish Presidency; Michael Niebel, Head of Unit "Internet, Network and Information Security" in the European Commission; and Nick Thorne, International Relations Adviser to the President and CEO of ICANN; all three provided their vision on the IGF.

The Swedish Presidency kicked off acknowledging that it would be important to speak with a single European voice at the IGF. The Presidency also mentioned support for the continuation of the IGF in the future as a non-decision making body and an open platform for discussions. Sweden is currently preparing a EU guideline statement for the IGF.

Michael Niebel raised the question whether or not the IGF will continue and, if yes, in what form? He put forward that the EU has expressed an interest in continuing the debate as long as the same, multi-stakeholder, non-binding approach is followed. In that way, the EU believes that IGF success can be continued. For many, the IGF is a one-stop shop on Internet issues, where you can learn and exchange ideas and that within that appears to lie its strength.

Nick Thorne from ICANN emphasized that the IGF process is under threat and that it would be in Europe?s interest to maintain the IGF process. He focused on a document named the so-called AOC (Affirmation of Commitments), a document signed between the US government department of Commerce and ICANN that confirms the multi-stakeholder approach. Thorne advocated that the multi-stakeholder element should be extended to stronger participation from national and European Parliamentarians.

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Article about the Forum of Fora in European Parliament Magazine

EIF online — 01 Oct 2009 16:59:32 +0200

European Parliament Magazine published an article about the networking cocktail of the three Fora. These forums give parliamentarians the chance to meet, and debate with, experts in their field. Forum events are designed to illuminate arguments, test solutions, and help MEPs reach the right decisions. Representatives from the European commission and the permanent rep- resentations are also regular participants in these events. Key players in the sectors concerned provide the resources and organisation, but the forums do not take policy positions or lobby for any particular outcomes.

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2nd September - EIF Networking event opened by Barroso

EIF online — 14 Sep 2009 16:47:19 +0200

On 2nd of September the European Internet Foundation, together with the Forum for the Automobile and Society and the Financial Forum, organised a networking cocktail to re-launch their activities at the beginning of a new Parliament. Mr. Harbour MEP and EIF Governor opened the evening and welcomed Mr. Barroso, President of the European Commission, who spoke about the important choices Europe needs to make to climb out of the crisis and make Europe competitive again. Mr. Barroso acknowledged the important role of the parliamentary fora in helping this process by bringing together the various stakeholders.

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Socio-political Aspects of the Digital World in 2025: towards a European Identity Platform

EIF online — 28 Apr 2009 17:06:40 +0200

"Tax website shut down as memory stick with secret personal data of 12 million is found in a pub car park" headlined a recent newspaper article. It is one of the tangible ways for us to understand how important digital security has become in today's society. The Breakfast debate at EIF on 15 April focused on that subject matter and Prof. Dr. Reinhard Posch discussed how a strong European Identity Platform protects and helps privacy in a global Internet-powered knowledge-based economy.

It is obvious that in order for the Internet to be useful to us all in society it needs to be a safe and reliable environment for everybody. We know as well that today this is not the case. Spam is 98% of all email that is going around, and if we order something online we can sometimes be unpleasantly surprised by the added local taxes added to the bill, which the sender omitted to report when we bought the product.

What eID is offering is a secure zone where providers guarantee that only services of cooperating jurisdictions are available. It would allow mail or downloads from non-trusted servers being restricted to non-active content if the user decides this or even fall back to text only email. In such a secure zone users could profit from the rich possibilities of web 2.0 without risking exposure.

Professor Posch explained that by 2010 all European citizens, businesses and administrations will be able to benefit from such secure means of electronic identification (eID) that allows people online to enter secure zones where they can be sure that their privacy is respected and where they can make use of services without fear of getting attacked by malicious software or fraudsters.

The eID is completely different from the kind of ID that travel documents represent. When citizens pass the border control in a country travel documents are checked for inspection. Electronic ID on the Internet has a different function. When we go to the Internet we go there to do something, i.e. to consume a service or to buy a product, whereas if we pass a border we do not engage in any willful acts.

The fact that we are still missing a quality eID has severe consequences. Let's take an economic example. One study shows for instance that when something goes wrong with an Internet banking transactions, a high proportion of customers would leave their bank to find a more secure bank. What is interesting about this is that the consumer would not really be open to discuss if it was their pc or Internet connection that may have been at fault or if, for instance, the bank had a temporary Internet outage. No, instead customers, especially those over 50, would rather leave the bank than take another (perceived) risk. Only building digital trust can avoid such scenarios in the future.

Currently the EU is funding projects to test eID such as "SaferChat", "eID electronic delivery" and "eID change of address" mechanisms that would allow for easier authentication and verification of transactions. Possible future directions could be a "European Citizen Card" but the question is if our society is already ready for that level of detail at this moment.

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The Digital World in 2025: Socio-Political Aspects

EIF online — 27 Apr 2009 16:33:50 +0200

Online mass collaboration has the potential to trigger and shape significant changes in the way future societies will work. What are the implications of an improved empowerment and engagement of individuals, groups and communities? Three speakers shared their vision on this subject: Mr. Ziga Turk (Secretary General of the European Council "Reflection Group on the Future of Europe"), Mr. Henri Serres (Managing Director of Information Systems and Communication at the French Ministry of Defence) and Mr. Ajit Jaokar, Founder and CEO of Futuretext.

Mr. Turk kicked off the dinner debate by talking about the role of Government in the Digital Society by 2025. He started by explaining that we are moving into a conceptual economy where function is overtaken by meaning. The function of a concept or product ("thirst quenching") becomes less important than its meaning ("is it the original Coca Cola?"). Talent creates this meaning, and the current communications revolution stimulates a kind of mass collaboration that allows more people than ever before to share their talent with the world via web 2.0 platforms.

Political systems follow these new communication technologies. The better the communication technology, the more people get involved into the process of democracy. Milton Friedman said "government should decide when people do not have information to decide for themselves" which today is of course a no brainer: information is literally all around us. This will impact the role of government strongly. The portion of educated people working for the states keeps decreasing and "the majority of smart people is outside the government." The key question will become: how can governments, states and business make use of all those smart people, with all the information and knowledge available to them with a few mouse clicks?

The answer to this is to stimulate open innovation and to reinvent government in a web 2.0 way. Government will become a platform for people so that they can add value. Government as such becomes a place in the middle instead of at the top of a pyramid, not a decision making body but a coordination platform among stakeholders. What the government should do is to empower talent, and to gather talent around its structure. At another level governments will also need to ensure net neutrality and provide law and order specifically when it comes to security and safety, but also in terms of property rights. The issue of property rights will become a big one because new property is often not tangible but in the realm of (intangible) ideas and the sharing of these ideas. The central question about this kind of property is what the most productive way is for governments to handle them.

Cyber Security Aspects in the Digital Society by 2025

Another vital element of the socio-political dimension is cyber security. Mr. Henri Serres painted an intriguing picture about this subject. We all know that today there are intentional attacks on computer networks. Even the home pc has to be protected by antivirus software to not get infected. With the whole world being computerized and ICT being the true nervous system of our western economies there is a big potential for destabilization. Think of disrupting power plants by attacking their ICT or so-called "denial of access" attacks that make a network simply unavailable. Such attacks can also have a negative impact on the military capability of a country.

Reality is that society is ill prepared for such attacks. This is because cyberspace is fundamentally different from physical space, it is in a place where there are no frontiers and people can be anonymous. What types of attacks are governments expecting? Anything from the physical destruction of satellites, neutralization of computer systems, data theft, or tampering with data, to hostile control of systems such as your own pc.

It will be the role of the state to develop a fighting capacity in this space and to define the rules of engagement. Cyber warfare strategies will be developed with the help of hackers. Of course these will not be government employees but let?s call them state sponsored hackers.

Security is however a concern for all parties. Businesses rely on secure networks and privacy as do ordinary consumers. The answers cannot be only of a technical nature. We need a strong government response. At the same time, companies need to reduce the vulnerability of transactions and individuals must ensure that they do not become part of a bot network by attacks on their own pc. Trust is the word to look out for and it should be addressed globally. It will not be sufficient to only create these efforts in Europe alone.

The 3rd speaker, Mr. Ajit Jaokar talked about the Economic and Social Aspects of Blogs in the Digital Society 2025.

Mr. Jaokar kicked off his speech by asking the audience what their most trusted news source is. He himself switched from The Economist to YouTube as he outlined that with a channel like YouTube you get all the perspectives, you can look at everything and use your own brain without any editorial control being enforced on that process.

Then here comes the question: what is the most trusted blog? But in fact you should never trust a single blog. If you are not looking at many blogs together you are risking of going back to watching tv in a way. Blogs are personal perspectives that you subscribe to. In that sense newspapers should start carrying a health warning according to Mr. Jaokar. "This newspaper is left wing" for instance.

Mr. Jaokar predicts a bright future for journalists because they are in essence bloggers. This also makes the newspaper model more and more difficult to sustain, to keep together all these bloggers under a single umbrella of a newspaper.

People often ask what a good blog consists of and the answer to it could be summarized as follows: in the UK in Hyde Park there is a speakers corner that you stand up in and talk about anything. If you can stand there and get an audience then you have a good blog. The future of the blog will be a social artefact. The sculpture of the thinker. In 2025 we will be thinkers, we will all be forced to think and to make choices.

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Meeting with Craig Mundie, Microsoft Chief Software Architect

EIF online — 17 Apr 2009 16:12:05 +0200

If we look back in time we can see that email software and browsers made the Internet popular. These technologies are now part of daily life. Since major innovation shifts happen every 10 to 15 years, the question is to predict the next "wave". Craig Mundie, Microsoft's Chief Research Software Architect visited EIF on 2 April to talk about Microsoft's view on the next big developments in areas such as healthcare and education and about future prospects for the software industry.

Two major developments in the foreseeable future are the arrival of much faster microprocessors (100 times faster!) for the same price as today's with the same power consumption. The second major development is the large-scale use of distributed or cloud computing. All that new computing power will lead to an Internet that will morph from a publishing vehicle to a programmable environment. At the same time, the actual computing power of the pc (also called "client") will become much less important. What will emerge is a new composite computing environment, composite in the sense that there will be a union of the pc and the cloud in some new hybridized platform.

Irrespective of platform, Microsoft is focusing its energy on 2 specific areas of software development: healthcare and education. Large amounts of money in our societies are spent on healthcare and education but often with unsatisfactory results and calls for improvement of existing models. If we first look at education, we can conclude that in fact less than 25% of people on the planet are currently using all this computing power and more advanced information technology. The Internet of things however can change that if people in less advantaged areas of the world can receive the right education. Microsoft is trying to develop a (software) model in which the poorer areas of the planet will get the tools to improve their own productivity and capability to create sustainability.

What can software do to help improve education? Many studies show that lecturing to people is not an effective mechanism. Retention of information in a lecture only model is limited to roughly 35% of the material presented. However, if you add a level of interactivity between the student and the professor, the retention goes up to 65%. In the past, creating interactive software was too expensive but today it is within reach. Microsoft's team in India developed software that allows plugging up to 50 mice into one computer. In rural village schools they now buy one mouse per child for one dollar and put all children around the table with a projector at the end. Each child?s mouse has their own unique cursor that allows them to collaborate by moving their cursors. By building classroom training around that concept significant changes in the level of participation and learning are being made.

Similar new developments are happening in healthcare. We are at a transition point for medicine, perhaps the biggest in one hundred years. Medicine is about to go from analogue to digital just like so many other things. One big challenge in health care from a software point of view is to keep medical records. If you can combine records of individual medical history with actual intake of medicine you can achieve real benefits for the individual and for society. One of the applications that emerged from this is based on the needs of the medical community and called "hospital in a box", an a la carte menu of integrated software solutions. In the consumer space, Microsoft developed "HealthVault" which is an online secure private repository for personal clinical medical records controlled by the patient himself. An additional software toolkit for researchers allows utilizing medical data and more advanced methods of prediction to aid prevention. Such software will have the potential to dramatically reduce medical costs.

To download the transcription of Craig Mundie's speech CLICK HERE

The Digital Economy in 2025: A European Industrial Property Strategy for the 21st Century

EIF online — 24 Mar 2009 18:14:03 +0200

On Wednesday 18 March 2009, the EIF organized a breakfast meeting about a European Industrial Property Strategy for the 21st century. Speakers were Margot Froehlinger, Director of DG Internal Market D (Knowledge-Based Economy) from the European Commission, and David Benjamin, co-Chairman of the Steering Committee of BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy).

Both speakers talked about IPR as the backbone of the digital economy of the future. If we look at the big picture, already more than 10% of the European GDP comes from IPR (all IPR produced in Europe taken together). If Europe wants to keep its place in the knowledge based economy then it will be vital to maintain innovation and stimulate investments in research and R&D in Europe. If we don?t do this we risk leaving innovation to other economic players such as the US or Asia.

In that respect the quality of our IPR system is going to be vital, as is the relationship between IPR and competition policy. Secondly, Europe is much behind in terms of awareness building about IPR in universities and ensuring that SME?s understand the true workings of IPR. On yet another level Europe needs to tackle the issue of Internet law enforcement (and not only Europe given the global nature of the network). Enforcement is a fight of the mind in the sense that it is about changing the mindset of people to respect IPR and to refrain from stealing IPR. In relation to that, a European IPR Observatory will be launched in April which will be a collaboration between the European Commission and Industry. Its aim is to improve data collection about IPR use and abuse and to create a deeper understanding of the economic impact of IPR. Finally, European businesses and consumers must feel that it is safe to do business over the internet, hence the EU must effectively tackle counterfeiting and piracy.

It is not an easy task to accomplish all of the above. The Internet has started out as a free haven for communication and this has brought many positive changes, but, as David Benjamin of BASCAP pointed out, internet lawlessness makes true competition on the Internet impossible and would stifle growth of the Internet based economy. One needs guidelines that will truly be enforced, and work towards a ?rule of law? for the Internet economy. Education about IPR will likely be the only way to truly create a paradigm shift about the value of IPR. Chinese kids in school from the age of 5 get educated about what IPR is and how it is important to respect it. In Europe this is not happening (yet?). The real struggle as such seems to win the battle in the mind of the people.

For more information on this event click here

The Digital Economy in 2025: Europe's Role and Weight in the Global Digital Economy

EIF online — 24 Mar 2009 18:00:52 +0200

What will the global digital economy look like in 2025 and what will Europe's role and weight be in the world at that time? 3 distinguished speakers reflected on this subject during an EIF dinner debate in the European Parliament on the 17th of March. G�rard Pogorel, Professor of Economics and Management, Paul Hofheinz, President of the Lisbon Council, and Larry Hirst, Chairman for IBM in the EMEA region all gave their vision about a future Europe in the new economy.

In 2025, we will live in a smarter world because we will be able to obtain information and knowledge from everywhere. This will lead to new models of economic value. If we want a strong Europe within this new economy it will require that we become 'sustainably smart'. Combining smart leadership, smart investments, smart spending and smart laws to drive the new market.

We have to understand that companies in the new market will have lower margins because of lower prices for products and services (driven by much increased market transparency), and will be forced to focus more on generating new business. At the same time, customers will become like co-producers and companies will invest less in their in-house capacity. The growth of online mass collaboration will also be a factor in these new economic developments.

To be competitive in 2025, Europe should put money in creating innovation and not look at preserving old economic and legal standards. Curiosity based research at Member State and EU level would bring us closer to such an improved innovation system. Europe has great people, great engineers, but we seem to be less good in getting the right people together. There seems to be a gap in strategic design, as one of the speakers put it. In this respect we should also understand the key importance of the right educational framework, to make sure that Europe's people are 'fit for the future'.

Finally there is the question of the legal framework to support business. Technology has dramatically sped up possibilities for offering services and products, and it is becoming increasingly hard for regulators to keep up with the pace of technological innovation and implementation of an adequate legal framework. We should realize that technological advances are only at an early stage and as such it will be crucial for Europe to create or be part of a regulatory framework that is predictable to ensure businesses and consumers feel that they can operate in a trusted environment.

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Meeting with Stephen Carter, UK Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting

EIF online — 04 Mar 2009 12:09:23 +0200

Lord Carter, the UK Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting visited EIF for a dinner debate on March 2 to share his views on the opportunities for Europe to be proactive in the internet society and about a new UK report called 'Digital Britain'.

"Digital Britain" tries to identify how to create the right conditions for next generation network capability for wired and wireless networks and poses questions on how to build a legal framework that will allow right-holders to accommodate their interests while at the same time keeping the interest of consumers, who today can get any type of content anywhere on the Net. The 'Digital Britain' view is that this should be a universal proposition.

The "big prize" for governments, according to Mr. Carter, would be the digital delivery of public services, of making sure people have access to information, and to put them in control of the services they are getting. Many of these ideas have already transformed businesses, but not yet governments nor the delivery of public services, and this is crucial he said. The minister remarked that in that sense these networks are failing to deliver what should truly be the basis for them.

He emphasized that the EU has a tremendous chance with agreeing on a European framework for this sector right here and now, but that this will not happen if there is no common view on why this industry sector is so important. The minister continued by saying that we can have the ambition of having a strong European Internal Market but that we then must provide the means to businesses to have a harmonized market. Only this will allow Europe to compete on an international level.

Google does not have to ask 27 countries for permission nor 52 US States and that is the same for every American player. Mr. Carter put forward that some people see the next phase of the Internet as taking it away from American control. And if they do see it that way, he continued, then there is no better way for the EU than to give people a platform to exploit the potential of a major developed market outside the US: namely Europe.

Mr. Carter highlighted that the businesses in the Internet sector that are looking outwards are logically not going to be the broadcasters or the content providers because they are -historically- focused on national culture and territory. Instead, the ones that will be looking outward are going to be the network businesses, the application business, the service providers, the equipment manufacturers; and Europe should ensure a level playing field for these businesses.

In his closing remarks, Mr. Carter said that Europe has the opportunity to get it right in the forthcoming Framework Directive, but only if we let go of reservations and decisions taken on the basis of protection. We should imagine that we do get it right this time with 4G, Next Generation Networks or Universal Service -to name but a few-, and move towards fully interoperable Internet at high speed.

To see Stephen Carter talking about the Digital Britain project on YouTube CLICK HERE

Cloud computing and the convergence of networks and services

EIF online — 27 Feb 2009 16:46:23 +0200

Cloud Computing is an increasingly popular subject and the EIF organized a special event around it on 17 February. Three speakers from Cisco, Google and Ericsson demystified Cloud Computing and looked at different perspectives on the major trends, potential benefits and challenges surrounding these technologies that will affect Europe and the world in the coming years.

Cloud Computing seems a relatively new concept, but we are already part of the Cloud Generation. If you have ever used a search engine, put your photos online to share with friends, used Facebook, or stored any files on a website, then you are already using Cloud Computing.

The road to a new level of Cloud Computing will see what is called a convergence of networks and services. The services we use will become more virtual in the sense that storage, processing and the actual operating system used will be located in one (or several) datacenters instead of on a home or office PC. When we say that these services will converge with the network itself in the future, we mean that the network itself becomes more intelligent and part of the service. Networks will be able to connect services from a number of locations together and dynamically decide how to transport data over the network and deliver it to the end user. This whole process called virtualization is capable of vastly improving business continuity and efficiency by providing on-demand services.

At the same time, Cloud Computing will ensure that we always will have access to information and services over the electronic highways, wherever we are. Our browser will become the portal to the Cloud and will allow any consumer or business to create, share and access content.

As a result, the scale of mass collaboration will increase and change the way we communicate, do politics or business. For instance, innovations are now first happening in the consumer space (look at the rapid development of Facebook applications for example) and feedback from users has become instant. For businesses, the use of mass collaboration through Cloud Computing will enable cost savings and help small businesses to compete at an equal footing with much larger enterprises. Mass collaboration via the cloud will also generate dramatic reductions in time-to-market for a service.

The challenges to overcome at the policy level are however numerous in this new model. Do you trust your data in the Cloud, or what if the network would be down? In terms of infrastructure there is another challenge: Europe needs to be careful to ensure that it does not lag behind in creating the fiber infrastructure that is needed. This will require investments of around 300 billion Euros. In the area of radio frequencies another challenge awaits, which is the re-farming of the radio spectrum to ensure that all devices can seamlessly and wirelessly connect to the IP Cloud and that we achieve fast last mile access to the home.

In 2025 Cloud Computing will no doubt be as common as having electricity in the house, but the steps we take today in debating these new technologies and the policies surrounding it will be of crucial importance to create a sustainable Cloud.

For more information on this event click here

EIF Meeting with Intel's Chief Technology Officer: Justin Rattner

EIF online — 12 Feb 2009 17:09:10 +0200

Justin Rattner, Intel's Chief Technology Officer, provided a fascinating look into the future of the microchip over an EIF breakfast meeting on the 28th of January 2009. Mr. Rattner emphasized that the digital revolution is young and that new developments will not be linear but exponential. Progress will be faster than ever before in technology. 'In the next 100 years we will experience as much technological progress as we have in the last 20,000 years'.

We will see new applications of microchips like wireless sensor networks, chips embedded in the wall using short range radio that are not wired to power sources but that harvest their energy from the energy surrounding us. These chips could for instance measure the temperature of the room and switch appliances on or off. New chips also will become ? even ? more energy efficient, which is a necessity in a world that will be powered by billions of them.

In healthcare, other new microchip developments will allow monitoring of people?s behavior or location and could -for example- be beneficial for an Alzheimer patient. Such a chip would register what a person is doing or has done: if they have eaten, if they sit or walk and where they are located. The chip then sends this information to a monitoring facility that could take action in case of irregularities. In the same area, new DNA sequencing chips will allow instant blood analysis for a particular DNA strand for patients.

In the big picture, we will see an ?Internet of Things? coming our way that will have gigantic proportions in terms of the number of devices that we will connect to this Internet, ranging from cars to the fridge or microwave in your kitchen. Each person may have well over 1000 ?radios? on them that are continuously connected with the Internet. Apart from being a tremendous opportunity and an improvement of our lives the advent of such technologies still poses many challenges like spectrum frequencies regulation for instance.

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EIF Dinner on the Internet Governance Forum: Follow-up on the Hyderabad meeting

EIF online — 12 Feb 2009 17:05:33 +0200

The European Internet Foundation organized a dinner discussion in the European Parliament on the 20th of January about the outcomes of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad in India at the end of last year. The event in Hyderabad was attended by over 1280 participants from 90 countries and as such is one of the largest and only international platforms for Internet Governance that is open to all stakeholders in this matter.

The EIF event about the IGF featured speakers from the European Commission, Nokia Siemens Networks and Nominet UK. All gave a perspective on IGF outcomes. There was large consensus that in order to be successful in Internet Governance, a new and integrated approach is needed to internet issues. An approach that should focus on sharing best practice to come to innovative solutions, raise further awareness for these issues and increase multi stakeholder involvement. On the latter, one speaker noted that it is crucial to make sure that what is shared in the IGF is heard by the stakeholders who were not able to come to Hyderabad. There also was a call for more Parliamentary involvement from both the EU side and the national Parliaments, because it will be the members of the Parliaments that have the potential to reach the majority of national stakeholders.

Other discussions centered around important (and common) themes such as the protection of children online, the future of ICANN, crime reduction, privacy, security and access. All participants and speakers agreed that the IGF is a highly useful forum to get a closer understanding of the complexity of these issues and for developing ideas 'that work' to create sustainable and future oriented Internet Governance. The next round of the IGF will take place in Vilnius in 2010.

For further information on this event click here