[Chapter-delegates] Worth a glance. A new digital trade agenda: are we giving away the Internet?

[Dave Burstein]

>
>
> F​
> olks
> Renata Avila is the Senior Digital Rights Advisor for the World Wide Web
> Foundation. In the important article below, She raises three issues I find
> important:
>
> *What should be done about the massive market power of Google, Facebook
> and a handful of others?* Columbia Profs Katz and Noam point out their
> scale and other advantages make it extremely difficult for new entrants to
> compete. Traditional economics suggests protecting "infant industries" with
> high tariff barriers but we also want openness on the web.
>
> *Is the large and growing flow of funds from developing countries to a
> handful of giant multinationals an issue we should address? Put another
> way, should 3/4ths of the income from local digital advertising or 20% of
> local cab fares leave developing countries? *
> Follow the money and you'll discover $billions are starting to flow.
>
> *How do we bridge the gap between the global North and South over the
> rules for the Internet? *India now has more Internet users than the U.S.
> and Africa soon is going to pass Western Europe in users. Two-thirds of
> Internet users now live in less developed world and have a very minor role
> in rulemaking (wireless standards,) financial issues (trade, unreasonable
> royalties, high transit/backhaul costs,) Internet organizations (ICANN
> DNS.)  I believe the system will not be stable if so many are excluded from
> so much; many I respect believe the current system is important to protect.
>
> *These are issues I hear when I speak to network and policy people in
> Africa and Asia but very rarely in the discussion in the U.S. and Europe.*
>
> Date: Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 3:20 PM
> Subject: [fastafrica] A new digital trade agenda: are we giving away the
> Internet?
>
> <renata.avila at webfoundation.org>
> ​
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> Sharing an article Burcu and I wrote on our personal capacities. We are
> keen to discuss this further and organise ahead the WTO Ministerial, G20
> Argentina and the upcoming domestic challenges related to e-commerce.
>
> Better to be prepared than surprised. A version in Spanish is on its way.
>
> Renata
>
>
> A new digital trade agenda: are we giving away the Internet?
> link https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/renata-
> avila-burcu-kilic/new-digital-trade-agenda-are-we-giving-away-internet
>
> *opendemocracy.net*/digitaliberties/renata-avila-burcu-kilic/
> new-digital-trade-agenda-are-we-giving-away-internet
> <https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/renata-avila-burcu-kilic/new-digital-trade-agenda-are-we-giving-away-internet>
> Burcu Kilic and Renata Avila
>
> Will this foster digital rights, or leave us with even lower standards and
> a concentrated, quasi-monopolistic market benefiting from public
> infrastructure
>
> [image: HRI]
>
> [image: lead]
> <https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/wysiwyg_imageupload_lightbox_preset/wysiwyg_imageupload/500209/PA-30817511.jpg>Trump
> holding up a chart of regulation at a CEO town hall on the American
> business climate, April, 2017. Olivier Douliery/ Press Association. All
> rights reserved. As we enter the uncertain Trump era with respect to
> trade policies, one can only guess that big trade players will come back to
> the multilateral fora, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), as a
> reliable vehicle to foster their global trade agenda, especially as the
> free trade agreement (FTA) model fell apart after President Trump took
> office. Since the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead, Transatlantic
> Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trade in Services Agreement
> (TISA) are on hold, a return to the multilateral WTO offers the best chance
> of progress on e-commerce rules.
>
> E-commerce will be one of the key issues at this year’s WTO's Ministerial
> Conference in Argentina, December 2017 (MC11). The Minister of Foreign
> Affairs of Argentina – host nation of the MC11 in December and G20 meeting
> in 2018 – has described e-commerce as
> <https://dig.watch/resources/launch-etrade-all-online-platform>“an
> essential part of the future of global trade, to bridge the inequality gap,
> improve gender equality” and “leapfrog into the twenty first century”. He
> has urged member states to renew their commitment and mandate to work on
> e-commerce.
>
> In fact, the US and other major developed countries have been promoting
> the e-commerce agenda since July 2016, by effectively dictating the terms
> and asking WTO members to remove any so-called regulatory barriers in the
> global e-commerce market.  Along with some developing countries, they are
> determined to secure a mandate on e-commerce in Argentina despite
> opposition from many, including African countries and India. ( See the
> latest discussion in Euro-DIG here
> <https://eurodigwiki.org/wiki/International_trade_agreements_and_Internet_governance_%E2%80%93_Pl_04_2017>
> ).
>
> If they succeed in Buenos Aires, the WTO’s 164 members will negotiate a
> new agreement on e-commerce.
>
> One must wonder whether this will be an opportunity to foster digital
> rights or leave us with even lower standards and a concentrated,
> quasi-monopolistic market benefiting from public infrastructure? The
> rhetoric of opportunities for the excluded – connecting the next billion –
> sounds great, but only if we disconnect it from the current realities of
> the global economy, where trade deals push for deregulation, for lower
> standards of protection for the data and privacy of citizens, where
> aggressive copyright enforcement risks the security of devices, and when
> distributing the benefits, where big monopolies, tech giants (so called
> GAFA) based mostly in the US, to put it bluntly, take them all.
>
> So far, developing countries and civil society actors, while opposing this
> negotiation, don't have their own digital agenda sorted out. E-commerce
> markets in developing countries are unprepared, lagging behind in terms of
> competitiveness and skill.  Trade policy-makers in those countries are not
> yet sufficiently informed on highly technical digital issues. Civil society
> organizations (CSOs) and digital right activists are unprepared to meet the
> challenges of a highly technical trade negotiations on e-commerce, with
> nuances directly affecting the way digital rights and safeguards are
> deployed.
>
> The WTO e-commerce agenda is inevitably complex: it includes far-reaching
> provisions on the cross-border delivery of services affecting privacy, data
> protection, consumer protection, cybersecurity and net neutrality, and new
> Internet-related IP rights in a digital context. These raise significant
> concerns for the Internet, its global infrastructure, and the right of
> governments to develop policies and laws that best preserve the free and
> open internet.
>
> There are many unknowns regarding the technological advances ahead, and
> therefore the digital economy. Given the uncertainty in the policy
> landscape, devising rules at the WTO that place binding commercial
> protections above digital rights and public interests could be devastating
> for global internet law and policy, leaving the developing countries with
> eroded rights and limited freedoms.
>
> Never before has a trade negotiation had such a limited number of
> beneficiaries. Make no mistake, what will be discussed there, with the
> South arriving unprepared, will affect each and every space, from
> government to health, from development to innovation going well beyond just
> trade. Data is the new oil – and we need to start organising ourselves for
> the fourth industrial revolution. The data lords, those who have the
> computational power to develop superior products and services from machine
> learning and artificial intelligence, want to make sure that no domestic
> regulation, no competition laws, privacy or consumer protection would
> interfere with their plans.
>
> Disguised as support for access and affordability, they want everyone to
> connect as fast as they can. Pretending to offer opportunities to grow,
> they want to deploy and concentrate their platforms, systems and content
> everywhere in the world. Enforcement measures will be coded in technology,
> borders for data extraction will be blurred, the ability to regulate and
> protect the data of citizens will be disputed by supranational courts, as
> local industries cannot compete and local jobs soar.  If we are not
> vigilant, we will rapidly consolidate this digital colonisation, a
> neo-feudal regime where all the rules are dictated by the technology
> giants, to be obeyed by the rest of us.
> [image: Creative Commons License]
> <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/>
> This article is published under a Creative Commons
> Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If you have any
> queries about republishing please contact us
> <http://www.opendemocracy.net/contact>. Please check individual images
> for licensing details.
>
> Renata Avila
>
> *Senior Digital Rights Advisor*
> renata.avila at webfoundation.org
>
>
>
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