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>> What I'm going to try do to is talk about the economic and international implications
of public protest over U.S. legislation or policies towards the internet.
And my takeaway is that it's not the end of the K Street deals but rather,
a new approach to building K Street deals and I think what this is is that some firms,
in particular Google, and EBay, but, you know, we'll just leave it at that --
learned how to collaborate with some activists to use the net in their own economic interests,
and I'm not sure that the internet freedom agenda is as altruistic as it makes it seem.
And so my own interest here is that I'm working on a project that compares how the U.S. the EU
and Canada use trade policy to who will govern the internet.
And I want to talk a little bit about public protests outside the United States
and there's been a lot in New Zealand, Australia, but in particular, Europe.
And what happened?
So right now, the protest continues
about something called the Anti-Counterfeiting trade agreement which is a trade agreement
that has gone into force already but has not been completely accepted
by the 27 members of the European Union.
And many of the actors in Europe were very upset about SOPA and PIPA
because they saw it as extraterritoriality, right?
And that meant that U.S. law could apply in their countries
without their assent, if you will.
And so this particular trade agreement which,
these countries have decided their parliaments must approve first.
The U.S. debate is totally different and we can talk about that later.
But 2 million Europeans signed anti-ACTA petitions.
But the protestors didn't just protest in that traditional way.
They got down and dirty and they did some pretty horrible things like in the Czech Republic
and Slovakia, they took private information of parliamentarians who are
yet to vote on this, and put it on the web.
So not only did they name and shame protestors --
these legislators, but they punished them even before they voted.
They threatened them if you will.
So what you have is -- this was, I'm sure not approved by Facebook and Google.
I have no evidence of that, but I am sure of that.
But these companies did work with activists to spread the word about what was bad
about these attempts to try to govern the Internet.
Now what does the public really think?
I would say the polling data is pretty scarce.
I know of only two polls.
The first poll I know of is a 2009 poll of 20,000 people in 22 countries.
And the data says that they found -- it says, on average --
so that's an average of all these 22 countries --
62% support unfettered access to the Internet.
There's been another more recent poll in the United States
and that was why the American assembly
and it said 57% opposed blocking and filtering of Google content.
That's not a very high majority if you will, let alone illegal content, which was at 62%.
So the public is not -- you know, it's not like 80% of people saying.
I think that's a sizable amount and I also think the data is not good enough yet,
but the public does seem to have a new conception that they think it's okay
to share some things over the internet.
So they said, you know, I think what they're saying, to some extent is Google's position.
We need to rethink, if you will, how we define what we can share legally.
But on the other hand, I think this battle is very, very worrisome for another reason.
I don't' know if any of you have been to China or Brazil lately, but these are countries
with huge, you know, internet related companies and in these countries,
their trade policymakers think that the U.S. government and its internet industry essentially
in cahoots to control the Internet.
And it is true even in Europe because U.S. companies are so dominant that, you know,
they don't, you know, from my talks with European officials, they don't even feel
like they can yet advocate in the corporate interests.
They feel like they're advocating in the consumer interests,
whereas they see the United States is sort of trying to use trade policies
to help these companies control the Internet.
I don't think it's that simple.
But should Google, as example, if there's censorship of the Internet,
in a country like China, or Romania, that means less eyes
in their products and their services et cetera.
Less revenues.
So it's harder for them to compete.
So they tend to be advocates, if you will, of the Internet Freedom Agenda.
Now the Internet Freedom Agenda sounds really good.
But it is also, if you will, benefiting companies like eBay and Facebook whereas
if you were a Chinese company, you know, you might see such censorship as in your interests.
So, you know, it's not quite as altruistic as it appears.
That's not to say it isn't a good agenda.
I just don't want you to be, you know, thinking, oh, Google's, you know,
mission statement is truly, you know, benign.
It's not just do no evil, it's let's [inaudible].
Okay. So will it be the end of K Street deals?
I don't think so because I would say both the Internet content, you know, owners of copyright,
et cetera, they -- they're rent seeking, as is Google and Facebook, right?
Rent seeking meaning they use law and legislation and trade policies et cetera,
to try to make profits or to maximize their market access.
So I'd say my best friend Mark Zuckerberg said it best when he said quote,
"We can't let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the Internet's development,"
and he used this comment to explain his company's opposition to SOPA and PIPA.
Zuckerberg is not going to abandon his staff on K Street or his friends on Capitol Hill.
So let me make some really quick suggestions.
First, the OPEN Act is a really interesting approach.
It is a form of crowd searching and you go to their website.
They allow you to comment on their provisions of the bill.
I did not know they had incorporated any of the comments.
It will be interesting to see if they do do that.
Another solution I would really like to see is just
as we have a congressional executive commission on China,
right, how we will govern the internet.
How we'll balance internet freedom and privacy and, you know, ensure that American companies
and market access and other countries and vice versa, this is a huge issue
and I'd like to have a congressional executive commission with public hearings
where people can comment and try and influence deliberations and come up with a new approach
to public policy because clearly what we're doing right now is
out of date and it isn't working.
So - but I do think there's no evidence that people want this kind of legislation per se,
nor is it evidence that they want trade agreements to govern the internet
or that U.S. laws that have extra territorial application.
So I think our policy responses have to be internationally acceptable, they could have --
and they also have to be coherent.
And they're clearly not there yet.
I'm hoping that this kind of activism will be less mean, if you will, less of this naming
and shaming as it happens in the Slovak and Czech legislatures, and more of a dialogue.
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