Internet (Governance)

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) on obtaining the debate, and on his leadership of the new group, the Parliamentary Internet Communications and Technology Forum, of which the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) is also a member. PICTFOR is making good strides towards getting people from different places around the table for a series of debates, to which the internet is central.

I shall be as swift as I can, Mr Benton, so that another hon. Member can speak. I want to reflect quickly on the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi, which the Minister attended. Several other colleagues were there too, and I should make the same declaration as my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth with respect to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and Nominet sponsorship. It seemed to me that there were interesting thematic divides at the forum that reflected discussions and debates that we have—or often do not have—here. It is clear, as has already been alluded to, that some Governments see the internet primarily as a threat, whereas others see it as a benefit, but with substantial caveats. The rest of us—although we are not perfect in any respect—tend to see the internet as best advanced through collaboration, common sense and a multi-stakeholder approach. Although the divide is not unbridgeable, in some respects it creates very different perspectives. A society that is not open at the best of times will have some difficulty with the way it manages the internet. That is not to be critical of emerging countries, which have their own challenges, but we hope we can help them to come to a benign or constructive impression of how the power of the internet can be harnessed to everyone’s benefit.

In this place we tend to discuss technicalities. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth mentioned the Digital Economy Act 2010 and relatively few hon. Members engaged with that, although more would do so now, since last year’s intake. The reason relatively few engaged with the issue was largely that not a great deal of party politics was involved. It is a bit annoying that the Government insist on being commonsensical on most of the issues; we would rather it were different, as it would make our job as party politicians a lot easier, but it behoves us all to look at the intelligent arguments for pursuing one or another course of action. Of course, there are conflicting ideas about how to approach matters such as copyright, which was mentioned earlier, and freedom of use. I shall not bang on at length, but the Hargreaves report on intellectual property rights seems to me to be an intelligent step forward. It is super that the Government have accepted all 10 of Professor Ian Hargreaves’s recommendations. We must be aware that in the coming years it will be a constant—battle is probably too strong a term—contest, perhaps, to ensure that the multi-stakeholder approach that we are calling for endures, and we do not end up with an over-regulated internet. As with anything else, over-regulation would damage it and it would fall apart. That was one of the significant themes I identified.

A couple of my colleagues made interventions earlier in the debate, which were perfectly understandable and intelligent, and the kind of things that our constituents raise with us all the time, about bad things that might happen on the internet. An academic called Dr Vicki Nash, who was also at the IGF, said on the UK IGF Network:

“We spend a great deal of time balancing risks, identifying potential harms or assessing trade-offs in key values which does little to convince those who are ambivalent about getting online. Isn’t it time we redressed the balance?”

Through no fault of ours—well, who knows; perhaps it is our fault to some degree—there is an awareness in society about potential risks, but less of an awareness of the enormous benefits of the internet. We often think about internet issues through the prism of fear. It seems to me that it would be good if, over time, partly through the leadership of this place and the kind of language we use, we were to try to move beyond that. I suspect that to some degree it boils down to theories of human nature, if that is not too grand. On the whole people will use new things to do good things. We must do what we can to prevent the bad stuff, but inevitably bad stuff will happen, and we must minimise that. However, if we continue to think about the internet and its governance through the prism of fear, we will end up over-regulating it.

It is worth referring to a couple of other observations that were made by some of us at the IGF, which were helpfully referred to on the ukigf.org.uk website. One was that some emerging economies or developing countries are concerned about EU blocking practices. I do not mean to say that the practices they have in mind are wrong, with respect to the examples I heard in Kenya, but they see it as a restrictive practice. Lots of stuff coming out of Nigeria gets blocked automatically, because of the country’s reputation—deserved or otherwise—for economic crime on the internet. I have never replied to an email by giving my bank account details in the hope of getting the $10 million lodged in my account, so I am not sure how much of what is said is fear-mongering and how much is real, but nevertheless it has led to some emerging countries having their country domain names blocked. That is a pity and I hope that over time the Government, in conjunction with other Governments around the world, can do something about the relevant perceptions and practices.

I had not come across the Internet Society before I went to Nairobi. It is a very good organisation, with a good website, showing a series of models of how the internet could evolve. One model is called the common pool: that is, generally, a bit of tussle and roughness along the way, with, in the end, people stressing the collaboration, competition and sound evolution of the internet. There are other models, showing the risks of over-regulation. Governments might over-regulate because they fear the consequences in their own countries—if they fear freedom of speech, for example. Over-regulation might come about because large commercial interests demand that walls are put up for their commercial reasons. We must guard carefully against that and I recommend looking at those models on the isoc.org website.

I have been reading a book called “The Revolution Will Be Digitised” by Heather Brooke. Many hon. Members will know who she is. I do not see her around here much; perhaps that is for her own protection. She has written a pretty good book, actually. It is a romp through things that have happened—particularly, from the past year or two, WikiLeaks. She mentions the Icelandic modern media initiative, and that pooling of different legislation together for good use is quite interesting. I do not say that it is necessarily the exact model for the future, but it will be interesting to watch it as it evolves in the Icelandic Parliament.

Ms Brooke raises an issue that is a core aspect of another of the divides in our discussions of the internet, and the WikiLeaks phenomenon is central to it. There is a trend among some people to laud the release of information for its own sake, and to see that as reflecting a sound, open internet. I am currently a member of the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions, and it is my opinion that a balance must be struck between such openness and privacy. I am not as negative as some hon. Members about the Pirate parties, because I see them as putting a polemical argument that can be deconstructed and can be seen to have some valid points. The clash of ideas is important. It is necessary to listen to those parties’ lines of argument, make sense of them and break down some of their assumptions. I have found that they will often accept an argument, and they are a useful addition to the mix—not that I am encouraging any kind of piracy, obviously. The important thing is that we will have to find a balance between privacy—and everyone, including the pirates, stresses the importance of that—and the free flow of information. I do not propose to present the full solution in the next 30 seconds, but it is an important theme, which came out at the IGF.

When the IGF was held in Nairobi the Kenyan Government did a super job and flew the flag very well for emerging economies. I took the opportunity, while I was there, to have a long meeting with the Rwandan Foreign Minister. As the Minister knows, this Government have followed the path laid by the previous Administration and formed close contacts with the Rwandan Government. They have also provided strong budgetary support. Rwanda is not a perfect regime, but it is a progressive and positive force. One of things that it has done of which it is proud is to install fibre optic cables across Rwanda. Clearly, it wants to be at the forefront of the internet age, which is a big challenge for such a poor country. I have a particular interest in Rwanda and have found that people refer to Rwanda in all sorts of ways; sometimes they say good things and other times not such good things. When it comes to the internet though, Rwanda is making a genuine effort to bring the benefits of the internet to an impoverished, developing country—albeit one that will hopefully reach middle-income status in the next nine years, which would be a remarkable feat.

I encourage the Minister not to see the internet through a prism of fear, cyborgs and men in shiny suits. We are not talking about the silent footfall of the mad cyborg axeman. He should look at the whole area in a constructive way and accept that the divides that exist can often be overcome by intelligent discussion and debate, as I have found in recent discussions with corporate stakeholders and ISPs. The Minister should perhaps reflect on that fact. It behoves all of us to remember the enormous potential benefits that mobile networks and mobile access will bring to Africa.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Benton. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) on securing this extremely important debate. Ironically, when the Minister and I were debating one of the world’s oldest technologies this morning, this place was packed out. Now, we are at the cutting edge of technology and there are far fewer people, which is perhaps not the best reflection on parliamentarians.

What has emerged this afternoon is the complexity of the issues and how difficult it is to get the balance right. I was struck yesterday by the impact that the net is having on business development in this country. Despite the recession, net-based firms are expanding at a phenomenal rate and are completely bucking all trends. We are also aware of the positive role that the net and mobile devices have in developing countries. They enable people to know which markets to take their produce to and to save time on travel when travel links are not very good. It is clear that there are many positive benefits to be had.

Children and young people’s capability on the net and their capacity to use it for positive purposes are way ahead of the rest of us. Politically speaking, we have seen in north Africa and the middle east the huge impact of the net on enabling people to communicate. That had two benefits: access to ideas, which was not previously available to people there, and the facility for communicating swiftly, which was undoubtedly significant.

At the same time, however, there are risks and we need to consider the public policy aspects of the internet. One public policy aspect that I shall be interested to hear about from the Minister is whether the internet service providers or the owners of the technology are themselves competing in a proper market. Because the technology has emerged very quickly and because some firms have grown very speedily, I wonder whether there is both monopolistic and monopsonistic control of some parts of the market. We need to think about that issue, because obviously a firm such as Google, which has grown very quickly, is technology-based. In a way, one could almost say that it is a happy accident that Google has been so successful. One can imagine that similar market power held by other companies might not be quite so beneficial. We need to address that issue.

Labour endorses the report by Ian Hargreaves on intellectual property. We look forward to the implementation of many of his recommendations.

My hon. Friends the Members for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) spoke about crime on the internet. There are many dimensions, but I want to say something about child safety online and online harassment. A major piece of work is being done at the moment by some colleagues about online stalking, which is emerging as a significant problem. I wonder whether people take online stalking seriously enough and realise how terrifying and harassing it can be. We hope for some developments on that issue.

One of the things that I have noticed in the short time that I have been in the job of shadow justice Minister is that for many of the proposed protections people are supposed to engage in self-protection. For example, I went to a meeting last week where I was told by BT that it was quite simple for people to organise online protection for their children on their home computer; it was supposed to be perfectly straightforward. I went home, tried to do it and could not make the computer work for the next 24 hours.

Earlier this week, I visited another company and we discussed the use of cookies. I do not know how much you know about cookies, Mr Benton, but it was extremely interesting to learn how much information can be gathered through their use by the ISPs or whoever it is—I am not sure who it is, which reveals the shallows of my knowledge. Anyway, I was told once again that it is quite simple for people to go on to the internet and edit their own entry, to control the information held about them. Again, I tried to do that and again I completely failed. If we are to have a safe internet, it must be safe for people who are not technologically sophisticated. Going down the line that everyone must have a DPhil in physics to be able to protect themselves is not the place to go.

I reinforce the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth: it is important that we discuss different aspects of the issue in different parts of the House and think about the different elements of behaviour that impact on people. It is also important that we take understanding of the internet, its implications and its governance beyond people interested in the technology involved, because as my right hon. Friend said we cannot simply have technological solutions.

It is clear that there is a group of people who think that the internet should be like the forest in the 14th century—a place where outlaws can run free and unrestrained. That is not realistic and it is not what any of us who are here for this debate want. I respect my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), but we have learned that piracy is not a very good idea. From the 16th century to today, we have had increasing developments in the international law of the sea.

[Eric Joyce]

I was not suggesting that piracy is a good idea and I was not referring to Somalia. I was simply saying that it is good to listen to polemical arguments sometimes, because sometimes they are made with considerable force. I would also caution against situations where some interests—I am not being negative about corporate interests—will sometimes use the internet to extend their control, such as was the case when someone wanted a book loan in the past but were not able to pay to file-share.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend makes a good point—I was only teasing him. However, the fact is that we have been told on a number of occasions that we cannot control things that are problematic on the internet because it is international; that was the first set of responses when people were raising concerns about the internet. Well, what that tells us is that we must have international governance arrangements. I am very pleased that so many of my colleagues, from all parties in the House, were in Nairobi to look at the international governance arrangements.