Post date: May 25, 2011 3:46:51 PM
French President Nicolas Sarkozy softens his usually tough stance on Internet regulation at a forum that has brought together tech titans in Paris, but stark divisions remain on everything from privacy to copyright.
PARIS, FRANCE (MAY 25, 2011) REUTERS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy softened his usually tough stance on Internet regulation at a forum that brought together tech titans in Paris on Wednesday (May 25), but stark divisions remained on everything from privacy to copyright.
Sarkozy, who is notorious among techies for creating a law that calls for copyright pirates to be cut off from the Internet, lauded the gathering of executives that included Google Inc's Eric Schmidt and
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg for helping fuel the Arab spring and spurring economic growth.
But he maintained that governments have a role in setting ground rules to limit the abuses and excesses of the Internet.
As speakers paraded on a stage built in the Tuileries Gardens of central Paris, deep rifts between policy makers and Internet executives became apparent, with few signs of how they would be resolved in the two-day forum.
A draft communique reviewed by Reuters, which is being finalized for release at the conclusion of the forum, suggests that the gathering will paper over the deepest divisions and shy away from making concrete policy proposals.
The draft will urge G8 leaders to adopt an international approach to protecting users' personal data but will sidestep the fraught issue of intellectual property by leaving it largely under the purview of national governments.
Copyright has proven one of the most divisive issues at the forum. Executives from big music and publishing groups have argued for more protection of their works, while Internet executives and activists criticize anti-piracy measures, such as France's anti-piracy law, as crimping the Web's essential open nature.
The European Union's Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes defended the bloc's new Privacy and Communications Directive which is scheduled to come into effect on May 26.
It requires users' consent before dropping cookies that allow online companies to track peoples behaviour online. Some companies have complained the directive is unwieldy and will be bad for business.
"Im absolutely certain it wont hurt the business. So we are involving and were involving them (internet companies) too. That is my style of filling in my responsibility, always asking the people who are involved in the game to come and sit with me, Im listening, and just make a real proposal on which both sides can be dealt with," Kroes told Reuters TV.
As for the e-G8 Forums stated aim of fuelling growth of the digital economy, while insisting that upstart technology companies abide by laws governing the sharing of online content, two successful serial entrepreneurs who have previously run peer-to-peer file sharing services spoke about the value of disruptive technologies.
Niklas Zennstrom is a co-founder of Skype, which was recently bought by Microsoft for $8.5 million dollars (subject to regulatory approval), but his first venture was the Kazaa file sharing service.
Asked whether he thought it possible that innovation could be orderly, he laughed and responded
"Innovation sometimes happens by people who have a completely different view of things. You need to be kind of an outsider. If you're part of an established industry, you're probably less likely to do breakthrough innovation than if you're coming from a completely different mindset, different background, so you have to allow that to happen."
Sean Parker is now probably best known for being portrayed by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network, a film about the founding of Facebook.
Prior to playing a key role in the early days of the popular social networking tool, he co-founded the peer-to-peer file-sharing site Napster.
"I think by definition, technology and progress in order to create it must also destroy. This is a concept that applies much more broadly than the topic of this conference, more broadly than the internet, more broadly than what we consider technology today. Its been true through all history and all human civilizations. Technology has always been the forcing event that drives culture," Parker told Reuters TV.
Zennstrom pointed out: "Today Sean is an investor in Spotify which is a subscription-based music service and I'm an investor in Rdio which is a subscription-based music service so there's a full-circle there,"
Asked whether his investment in the legitimate music service Spotify was atonement for Napster, Parker replied: "I never set out to harm the music industry. In fact, Sean Fanning and I when we started Napster our goal was to usher in a golden age of music. We were music fans. We were hardcore music fans."
"So, I wouldn't say its atonement so much as finishing what I started," he added.