Andrey Kolesnikov, the CEO of the Coordination Center, participated in the e-G8 Forum of the Internet business powerhouses in Paris, France. The event got together representatives of Google, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, among others. The Russian segment of the Internet is represented by SUP and Yota. The Coordination Center and the “Kaspersky Lab” are official participants in the Internet summit. Yury Milner, the head of DST Foundation, contributed to the e-G8 plenary session. A huge two-day event is held on 24-25 May 2011 on the eve of the G8 summit. The Forum deliverables will be submitted to the G8 representatives for further discussion in Deauville, France.
The eG8 Forum is a unique event: none of recent Internet events has ever gathered so many key players. Another important feature of the Forum is that it got together participants from all the Internet areas, rather than subsector-specific ones. The event echoes one of main topics to be discussed at the Deauville summit – that is, the challenges facing the global Internet.
Specifically, e-G8serves as a platform for heated debates on the most critical issue of Internet governance. While opening the event on 24 May, Nikolas Sarkozy shared with the participants his vision on the issue: the President of France thinks that some set of rules is required to regulate legal issues on the Internet. Mr. Sarkozy zoomed in on protection of intellectual property and streamlining taxation in the first place. At the same time, he emphasizes the urgent need for governments to vigorously contribute to development of the Internet law. The French President’s address drew a broad response, as many sector players believe that state regulation can result in stagnation, rather than progress, of the Internet. Specifically, this issue was widely discussed at a special plenary session on the Internet development scenarios at the Russian Internet Governance Forum (RIGF-2011).
One of the key messages of the Forum is that the Internet is central to economic growth and offers boundless opportunities to users. However, development of the Internet is directly reliant on users, the business community and governments who are Internet stakeholders. The role of the state, according to eG8 participants, should not be boiled down to regulation, but ensuring a universal access to the Internet. It was ascertained that the private sector constitutes one of drivers of the Internet’s development: it is decisions by the private companies, which are, as a rule, better adapted to the global network realities than the public ones. Protection of intellectual property rights is also addressed at the Forum. The central challenge in this respect is the impossibility to control any area of the Internet without affecting other aspects of daily online activities. In practice, this means that overly strict law can trigger undesirable consequences and slowdown of the Internet’s advancement.
Overall the Forum participants are unanimous in believing that any attempts to regulate the global network should be based on straightforward scenarios of the Internet’s future development, rather than on its current state.
It is worth noting that the Forum specifically focused on the boom in the Internet sector in Russia was: according to speakers, the country has become home to the two largest Internet companies in Europe.
