Re:publica 14: “Take Back The Net From Criminal Services” – And Develop A Business

The fight for copyright reform has become a secondary issue, it seems, amidst calls to take back the internet from “evil” intelligence services at the 14^th edition of re:publica, the mega-conference on all things digital that took place in Berlin last week.

Rights owners asking for ever stricter protection of their content have been dwarfed by states hacking the privacy of their citizens. Addressed was copyright as yet another tool of those in power to block transparency. The battle of the new digital natives with old media kingdoms, meanwhile, has been left behind, with re:publica looking more into the future of creating, publishing, and redesigning media work.

The call for asylum for US whistleblower Edward Snowden was made up front by Markus Beckedahl, founder of the Digitale Gesellschaft, one of the organisations behind re:publica. “We ask our governments to enforce our fundamental rights,” Beckedahl said during the welcoming session of the 6-8 May event.

Some seemed to view Snowden’s revelations about pervasive surveillance as a feasibility study. “We are shocked,” Beckedahl said, inviting use of the conference for discussions “how to take back the net from criminal intelligence services.”

Taking Back the Net

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s continued position of putting “Obama’s herb garden above our fundamental rights” was unacceptable, said Sascha Lobo, in his internet state of the union address. Lobo, a well-known blogger, at the same time took the internet community to task over the lack of funding for digital civil rights organisations.

Tweeting about the issues, while leaving German and European NGOs working on the privacy issues under-resourced with a fraction of the donations spent, for example, for the work of bird conservationists eager to protect the fantail snipes in Bavaria, is as unacceptable as Merkel’s pussyfooting, he warned in his well-received rant.

Surveillance, the five eyes (the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) connections, potential protections and the ways to encourage people to use these – “Let’s talk about sex baby, let’s talk about pgp” [encryption] as one panel put it – remained one or perhaps even the major topic during the three-day conference attended by at least 6,000 international participants.

Finnish cybersecurity expert Mikko Hyponnen, chief research officer at F-Secure, presented a Digital Freedom Manifesto. Hyponnen, together with US actor and singer of the “Looking for Freedom” song David Hasselhoff, invited people to join in completing the text on “mass surveillance”, “digital persecution”, “digital colonization”, and “right of access, movement and speech”.

It is not the only digital freedom declaration these days, for the PEN writers group’s version see here, for a version of the mainly US-based tech companies and NGOs see here. And more for sure is out there in the wild.

Beware of the “Censopy” Attack

Copyright and copyleft were a major combat area of earlier re:publica meetings. This time copyright was discussed, but concerns more focussed on what people call “censopy” – the abuse of copyright to censure content.

“We see a growing trend to use copyright in order to prevent unwelcome content,” said IT law expert and Wikimedia lawyer Thorsten Feldmann in a clinic on social media rights.

A court case on “censopy” was announced by Open Data activist Stefan Wehrmeyer. The Open Knowledge Foundation Germany has filed a complaint for negative declaratory relief against the Ministry of the Interior, Wehrmeyer declared during re:publica, according to a report by heise.de.

The OKF project “Frag den Staat” (Ask your Government) published an expert study commissioned by the German Ministry of Interior on the minimum threshold of voting percentage for parties in the upcoming EU elections. While the German Constitutional Court obliged the legislator to cut the minimum threshold to 1 percent (from 5 percent), the cease and desist order on the expert study still stands.

A court judgment now will clarify if the state can withhold such a crucial document – crucial for the electorate – and if the foundation can ask for a check to pay their lawyers’ fees.

Beckedahl confirmed that copyright discussions have not been as prominent as in earlier years.

“I think this stems very much from the fact that mass surveillance is more dangerous than copyright enforcement”, he said.

Copyright also has not been as prominent in the general political and media debate. “I expect this will change once more,” Beckedahl mused, adding that another reason for the decline in talking about “p2p prosecution” in his opinion was that there now were more legal offerings on the net.

“The problem is eased by the fact that demand is served from legal supply and there is remuneration,” he said.

Future Formats, Future News

The number of start-ups presented over the three days and 350 panel discussions and speeches was breath-taking. Besides some nice crossing of swords on nerdy topics like the “intuitive internet” – in which German Telekom Innovation Labs and Google talked about the future or non-future of devices like Google Glass, for example – one focal point was on media and journalists and how journalism can be saved.

Google incidentally got served a much-applauded satire from activists who presented four new fake Google projects on a new fake google-nests site. Products announced include “the world’s first model for data insurance”, a personal drone, the Google Bee and Google Hug for those in need for some consolation by another Google user around. The “Bee” could follow your children to see if they are going where they say they are going, Faith Bosworth alias Dr. Gloria Spindle, from the Peng Collective said. “Of course you pay with your data,” she quipped.

Much applause during the conference was reserved for media-like start-ups, quite a number of which are driven by journalists. Vice, a Canadian arts, culture, news and lifestyle magazine for young people has developed into a worldwide media network which also supplies traditional broadcasters with video footage from war and natural disaster areas.

For these media, the distinction between crowd and editors is very much blurred. But even for a very traditional news provider, Richard Porter, controller of English at BBC Global News, during the panel discussion at the Berlin Media Convention (a more classical media conference attached to the re:publica bridging internet and broadcasting and publishing worlds), rejected any notion that “crowds” were somehow one side while “editors” on the other.

Hyper-Topical News Revolution

Former ABC correspondent Lara Setrakian decided she had to go about her work – reporting from the Arab revolutionary movements and later Syria – in a different way. When the Syrian uprising started there was already a story fatigue, she said, adding, “We had an ‘F11’ problem,” referring to the journalism expression of stories being place far back in the newspaper.

Instead of being content with delivering only tiny bites of a “highly consequential story” with “very low comprehension,” in December 2012 she started Syria Deeply, a site for in-depth reporting and aggregating of information about one single topic. Writing black figures from year one and being highly acclaimed, the News Deeply start-up now is considering exploring additional single topic sites, such as the Arctic.

For the former ABC correspondent, News Deeply is itself part of a revolution, one of hyper-topical news which she expects will become more important in the future. Said her Swiss colleague at re:publica, Constantin Seibt: “To re-invent journalism is the task of our generation.”

TTIP Not Welcome at re:publica

Some concerns about copyright issues were brought up in one of several re:publica discussions about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), being negotiated between the European Union and United States.

Following a dialogue between Germany’s Minister of Economics, Sigmar Gabriel, US Trade Representative Michael Froman and EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht, re:publica saw three dedicated panels on the controversial trade agreement.

Brigitte Zypries, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economics, confirmed the Germans’ rather sceptical position with regard to investor state dispute resolution, and said Germany was looking for support for that position in the EU Council. She also promised Germany’s preparedness to make the negotiations as transparent as possible.

During a debate, Joachim Buehler, head of economic and innovation policy at BITKOM, the association of the German IT industry, and Bruno Kramm, candidate for the Pirate Party for the European Parliament elections clashed over the cost-benefit analysis.

Bühler said “it could offer big opportunities if it is the first trade agreement including a digital agenda.”

Kramm, on the other hand, criticised the TTIP as perpetuating old-style, non-transparent trade negotiations and politics that just serve traditional rights owners’ Christmas lists.

“Don’t we need some kind of open source of politics to allow people [to decide] how they want to trade in the future?” Kramm asked.