The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Hello. We are about to start, and we are wondering if it is fine with you if we move from the podium that is a little bit maybe not too formal for us and gather around a table with you all. Is that all right? Are your mics all working? I'm sure. Yes? So we can go ahead.
So, hello. Hi, everybody. We are here with the Dynamic Coalition of Public Access. I'm Esmeralda Moscatelli from the IFLA, the International Federation of Library Association. And we have here a very generous panel that is going to discuss modalities and example of public access throughout the world.
And because it's very informal and very small, we would like for you to participate and ask questions or make remarks as we go along.
So I have here with me Maria Garrido from TASCHG, a researchist from the technology and social change from the University of Washington and she will be talking about developing access to information and the role and the function of public access within the report. Then I have Janet Sawaya from EIFL that has wide experience ‑‑ (speaker off microphone) ‑‑ hello again.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Speaker off microphone)
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Here we are. The third microphone. Then we are trying to connect with David Ordonez who is a leader at IFLA and he's from Colombia. And he will provide a fresh approach to the idea of the concept of public access in Latin America.
Then we have Winston Roberts which is currently senior advisor of the National Library of New Zealand, and he worked for IFLA for many years in the past and he has both experience in national and public libraries. And he's here to give us perspective from that part of the world.
And then my colleague over there, Stephen Wyber from IFLA is trying to connect David ‑‑ (speaker off microphone).
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: So I think I will start with Maria and then.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Before we start because we are such a small group I don't see many faces from last year. I'm wondering if people can briefly go around and introduce themselves and give us a little bit of information why you're interested in this. Particularly because this intersection on Internet governance in libraries isn't a big world so it would be interesting to know what other's interests are on the topic.
>> KAREL DOUGLAS: Hello, good morning ‑‑ actually good afternoon. My name is Karel (phonetic) Douglas. I'm from Trinidad and Tobago. I'm on the board of directors of the National Library System of Trinidad and Tobago. I'm here for other reasons but I did see this session and I thought it would be very useful to hear what's up since it does impact on my work as a board member. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hello, everyone. I work for the section of communications and I'm here to try to understand ‑‑ I'm coordinating a program in community networks in local access and I would like to explore a bit more of the potential for public libraries as a starting point for community network. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: I am someone who disagrees with anyone on anything even before I hear what you say, especially within the UN system, because I know more or less what people will advocate. I'm surprised that I have to introduce me again because this very morning we had a in‑depth and comprehensive discussion encompassing all aspects of libraries activities vis‑à‑vis the internet from 10:58 to 10:59 this morning with Esmeralda. I thought the Internet, the web, basically was a library issue.
And in the past 30 years I have always hoped that one day it will be addressed as a library issue. And each time I see this mirage, this illusion, that maybe this will be the great discussion about semantics and the universal cataloging or ultimate library implemented by the Internet. I run across the world and try to see if the miracle will occur.
>> RUTH: I am Ruth. And I am a Swiss librarian. And I am here just for interest.
>> PARTICIPANT: I'm from Portugal. I'm part of a group called copy fighters. We are a group of young people who work on the topic of copyright. And we are part of the generation who was born with access to the biggest library ever, the Internet. And that's why I'm here.
>> MAXIM: Hello. My name is Maxim. I'm part of the copy fighters group. I'm from France. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hello. I'm from Japanese government. And I am interested in impact that Internet growth to public access. So I want to study today so I joined this session. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: I'm a librarian. I'm part of Steering Committee. The technical advisory team. And I'm here just to follow the discussion.
>> PARTICIPANT: I'm also with the copy fighters. From the Netherlands. I'm here because I'm generally interested in open knowledge and accessing information just like a previous colleague of mine said. We have the biggest library in the world accessible and really worried that copyright is going to have on the Internet.
>> SYLVIA: Hello. My name is Sylvia. I'm also part of a young movement of copy fighters and I'm interested more particular in the digital collections of libraries and galleries and their public domain status. So basically an education and increasing the awareness of how to find such content.
>> ANDREA: Good afternoon. My name is Andrea. I come from Switzerland. I work in the ministry of ICT so I want to get ideas in terms of how to use libraries to bring more access to the communities.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hi. I'm from the people‑centered Internet and I'm very interested in public access and the role that libraries can play.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Okay. So do you want to say something very quickly? Do you want to introduce yourself and then we can start? Not really. Okay. Perfect.
So we'll start with Maria Garrido and then I would say maybe speaker would have maximum time of ten minutes really maximum, or less. So let's start with Maria.
>> MARIA GARRIDO: Thank you very much. I'm a researcher at the University of Washington (speaker too far from mic).
Do I need to use this? I'm short person and I feel like this over the table this. Is weird. Sorry?
>> (Speaker off microphone).
>> MARIA GARRIDO: Yeah. It's on? Okay. As you all know, the UN2030 sustainable development agenda is the first time where public access information is codified in one of the targets, 16.10. It's not the only target where information is mentioned as an important conduit to achieve goals.
There's 14 other targets where information is specifically called out so within the context of the UN2030 agenda we want to understand and access to information and define access to information where we define it here can promote and help advance those targets in the role of public libraries and specifically in helping advance those roles. I'm preaching to the choir but libraries play a very important role in different aspects. So I guess we started this project asking can access to information create more socially inclusive societies.
I'm sorry I have my back to you. I don't know how to coordinate microphone and people. You're working your generation, we have today to share to create to exchange, is it possible to create a more inclusive society, the opportunity for young people, better opportunity for women and other people that don't have the same chances that others have. For us access to information is capacity to use, create and share information in ways that are relevant for peoples in everyday lives.
There are many ways which information is minimal. When I say information I don't mean access to information. The technology, the social context, the legal aspect that you guys pointed out when you introduced yourself. From that multidimensional perspective. We selected 17 indicators and people working in the UN system know there are very few indicators that can help us understand from a global perspective beyond connectivity.
There's very little information on the legal aspect, on gender, statistics but we work with indicators available today from four different dimensions. One, connectivity which are the most readily available, two, the capabilities of people, three the legal context and four the social context.
I feel you would be out of place trying to convince these people at this table but today in the world we have 80% of the world covered with 3G network and only 36% of people in less developed countries are able to access the Internet from a connectivity perspective, forget about knowing things and being able to use it in their society. So that's the first line in support of public access. Two, of course the gender gap. Today even in countries where you would not expect that gap exists there's a gap.
Only 85 countries starting from there gathered data on women and Internet so what we have data in terms of understanding women and men that use the Internet comes from 85 countries in the world, that's it. So the gender divide starts in knowing how many women and of course the gender gap is ginormous. Turkey has the biggest gender gap growing at almost 20%. We know from the very little data available that young people today in many parts of the world especially in this global South are more active use in if Internet in social media, are more active taking advantage of online courses, for education and employability.
And our least participant in political aspects of Internet especially blogs and forums and other platforms, and that has to do of course with not only the lack of civic engagement from young people in these countries but from the legal space perhaps does not allow them to participate without political consequences or repression.
And I think I just want to conclude by saying that it's critical for us and once again on this table there's no need nor preaching to the choir but the component of public access to the Internet needs to be a key political priority. They cannot pay only lip service to these areas. Access to information from a right's based perspective where it includes economic rights, human rights. One group of rights aren't divisible. And with that I'll let the librarians and experts on the panel to share their experience.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: I think we can move to Janet and we will keep questions to the end. I think it would be best.
>> JANET SAWAYA: My name is Janet Sawaya and I'm from electronic information for libraries. EIFL and IFLA were the founders of this Dynamic Coalition. And it was founded based on the idea that public libraries are the vehicle for public access to knowledge and information which is the critical purpose of the Internet. And each year we talk about ‑‑ we come to this and we are trying to convince others that public access is critical. It's a really challenging issue.
This year when we were brainstorming for the session we said what do we need to be focusing on. One of the areas that we need to be focusing on is not just saying public access is important but also what are the policy issues that need to be addressed in order to make public access available to people?
Libraries are important vehicles for public access because they're one of the few institutions that are free and open to the public throughout the world. EIFL works in over 40 countries and previously I was working at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and we worked in dozens of countries and did research on other countries.
We did research on access to public access. The conclusion is public libraries provide the best environment because of trained staff. In that context we had to look at two areas. One is in terms of just providing support to public access. And from that perspective we often talk about universal service funds or other types of vehicles. Government programs I'm assuming people know what universal service funds are. A way that government taxes through telephone bills or other mechanisms and then subsidizes through a discounted rate through school institutions as well as in some countries providing the technology for public access as well. How do we get the technology out there?
And I think because public access has been actually on the decrease this is an issue we need to continue to raise. More and more it becomes a discrepancy between those that have access to some type of device and those who do not.
And more so those who have access to device on a phone as opposed to some other access because we know the limits of access on a phone and it does not allow for full development of access to knowledge and information in the way access to some other device does. There's the one part of the policy which is how do we get people the technology and Internet access that they need.
And one critical way is through some type of universal service fund in which the government is helping to subsidize as a public good access to the Internet and access to technology. The other policy area I think is critical for us to talk about is the role that public access to knowledge and information plays in all the different development goals that governments have particularly the SDG's.
For example we are working in as EIFL we are working in about ten countries across Africa and what we did a public study in five of those and across the board the African countries in which we did the study there was acknowledgement by public officials that access to the Internet is critical for them to achieve their policy goals but yet rarely is access to information, knowledge or the Internet mentioned as an inter goal to various policy goals.
Part of our advocacy is get access to information and the Internet so when policies are being implemented whether it be an education policy, health policy, agricultural policy, economic development policy that, public access and particularly libraries are mentioned as critical partners to making those policy goals happen.
So I'm trying to make it quick because we were supposed to end and I'll leave it there.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: So I just for time purposes do we have remote participants, Stephen? Do we? Okay. Good. Now we go to Winston. Winston.
>> WINSTON ROBERTS: Thank you, Esmeralda. In view of the comments that people in this micro workshop have made, I can see that there's a strong bias towards younger people and there's a strong bias towards non‑government and Civil Society academic stakeholders and not so many people from governments here.
And there's also I get the impression there's also an expectation that an impression on the part of everyone in this round table that public access to information in libraries is something that we still have to fight for. That's something that concerns me. And I'll tell you why. Because it's all been said before. I was here in 2003 for the world submit on the Information Society, as a New Zealand government representative. I spent months working up to the outcome documents for the 2003, the first summit.
And I personally negotiated and argued for expressions of support for access to information through libraries and they all in the Geneva principals 2003. I would like to suggest maybe the people at the top desk could you possibly call up from ITU Google the Geneva principals and put on the screen for us if you could go to ITU.org and WSIS and get the original Geneva principals and call much a section of those principles that were referred to the access line on access to information. If it's not possible, don't worry.
What I mean is, at the Geneva summit, we talked about freedom of expression, freedom of access to information. We referred to article 19. We debated the need for providing information to populations. And bearing in mind of course in those days there were no such things as smartphones. Smartphones came along since 2003. But we talked about the use of mobile phones in dense urban environments in remote rural communities in the Bush, we talked about the use of mobile phones to leap over problems of fixed line technology and to put information out there to populations.
We talked about access to information in public libraries in schools, in post offices. There's an old word for you. Public access to information in government‑funded, community funded institutions at local grassroots level. All that was explained in the first WSIS 2003. It's all there. And the reasons for debating those questions were that we I mean the assembled states parties to the summit we agreed that the purpose of that summit was to not only discuss Internet governance in the technical terms but also to discuss the reasons for being concerned about why the Internet should be well‑governed.
In other words it should be a platform for putting out honest clear information, and that's why UNESCO was given responsibility for applying a number of action lines just as other UN agencies were given responsibility for other action lines. UNESCO had responsibility for particularly for the ones relating to access to information and culture. Another reason for another important point that I recall from 2003 is that we discussed the importance of bringing indigenous communities to ‑‑ or rather turn it around ‑‑ giving indigenous communities access to the Internet, and protecting the expression of indigenous cultures on the Internet.
That's also an action line in the Geneva principals. It seems to me the reason for talking about that at great lengths it seems to me that many people now do not know about the Geneva principals. They happened before the time that you began to take an interest in these questions. They also may have been overlooked by the people in ITU who have gone on developing Internet governance since then. But the working group on Internet governance that was officially launched at the second summit was started off in Geneva 2003.
So there's history there and I don't think we should forget history. In fact I would urge you to refer back to the principals as the beginning of everything for this whole process, for this debate. Libraries were mentioned in that world summit document. It's not only about bits and bytes. It's not only about the mechanics of the Internet. It's about the social consequences and outcomes of access to information. The reasons why we do it.
As who was it from the Internet Society at the opening, Catherine Brown was it? Mentioned that the Internet is our life now. And that's absolutely true. And it always was true. All our lives are on the Internet and that's why we had the world summits to talk about how we can organize our lives, how we can defend against hate speech and religious intolerance, how we can extend access to the Internet to deprived communities and indigenous communities, people who are not in the highly‑industrialized world so everyone has a chance to improve their economic life chances by getting an education on that platform which is the Internet and then by using the Internet to develop small SME's, small industries.
I'm talking too much. But I think you get the point, that it's all been said before and I think I would like to encourage you to look back at some of those older texts and remind some of the people in the ITU and other UN agencies that what they're saying is not new. They need to apply what was discussed before.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Thank you, Winston. And let's hear from David. David? Are you there?
>> DAVID RAMERIZ‑ORDONEZ: Hi. Sorry. Well, I am David. I'm Columbian librarian. Thanks for this help in participating in Dynamic Coalition. I'm going to speak about two cases. What is happening right now in Colombia. Imagine we were in war for 50 years. It means that the health of our country is not discovered yet in institutional way. The people living but the government cannot be part of these process. So after the peace process, we have like a new country for discover. The ministry of culture is implementing the mobile libraries for peace.
So in 20 towns, like created towns, for the people who is reintegrating from Colombia to the society, they have the opportunity to access to model library with technology, with lap‑tops, with e‑readers. Imagine people since they were a child they have only in mind they have to carry on a gun or things like that and now they discover all these diverse world, all these things in digital world. And this is about an interesting case because it's happening right now. Maybe it's very common for us.
This is the first case. And the other case is the policies for libraries. We have people policy makers that I am making laws for everybody. I am working specifically in copyright laws. But the thing is that in this case the multistakeholder is not always something that you have for sure. We took space here because not always we are part of these conversations. And this beautiful idea of multistakeholder model is not always implemented in all spaces.
So we have to find the way to interact with other stakeholders to see what can we do in these negotiations, in implementations of technology, of policies. And the greatest thing with the libraries is we are the core of the society, in the communities. So we have like one part in the countryside and one hand of us in the capital, in the big capitals. So the challenges that we are facing is who can we meet the policy makers that never hear about technology?
We have to think about who can we represent to the people who has never been connected or never had been physically or never imagined something that's happening now that I'm away from where you are sitting right now this can be possible? And in the other hand, we as librarians can give access to information. This particularly challenging in places where there's no infrastructure. Imagine we can give tablets for example to the people but there's no Internet connection there or we don't have digital intelligence to see how it works.
So the Internet is a good access provider for information but how can we go a step further for knowledge? Because the information maybe it's in the books, it's in a CD or E‑book but not in the heart and brains of the people. How can we try to meet these things together?
And the other thing is that sometimes in copyright laws we are talking about clients. We are thinking about the people with money, the people who can buy for access to information who can buy things but what happened with the people that don't use money because the conditions were different? So well I know that I have no time so that's my presentation. Thank you, very much.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Thank you, David. So just I would ask you to contribute with questions or comments but my personal question to you all is, so from what we discussed, we ‑‑ things were said before, essentially. That's what Winston reminded us. Public access is important, it's fundamental. Access to information and other milestones for us to be mindful users, consumer and co‑creators of what happens on the Internet.
So what is not ‑‑ really my question what is are we doing wrong? Why are we preaching to the choir and don't move in meaningful way engaging all the actors? And essentially, I think we are at a place where we don't need to justify and say public access is important. It's fundamental. It's done. It's a fact. How can we move forward? How can we engage all of you here and others to actually move forward and do something constructive and tangible? It's a little bit of a ‑‑ sorry about that.
>> (Speaker off microphone).
>> PARTICIPANT: Okay. I'm not sure mic is on or off. I'm from Bangladesh. I'm a blind person here representing disability community as an IGF ambassador. When we are talking about the library, you know, when I was a student I didn't get a single book in accessible format. So libraries is our dream. It can give a person with disability to access books in alternative format. Unfortunately many public libraries are not considering the needs of public accessibility at all, even though there's a standard available.
So how we could deal this challenge to ensure accessible information what we call print disability. Do you have any solution or how you will engage the disability community as a collaborative force with library‑related issues?
>> PARTICIPANT: In the time before the Internet if you didn't have books in braille, there was no accessibility. With the modern tools you can have voice books and that fixed the thing much better. So I'm not sure that this is an issue of non‑access. It is on the country an example of obvious solutions.
>> PARTICIPANT: May I jump in quickly. It's an important question in Argentina, there's a fantastic project that allows people to get access to accessible format books. We have been working closely with the world blind union to make sure that the treaty of Marrakesh which removes the unnecessary copyright restrictions to access of books which are increasingly inexplicable given we can share books online.
We are working with them and pushing to make sure member states input this treaty without imposing additional costs or bureaucratic barriers without making things difficult to make sure that access can be a reality and we can really take advantage of the potential of the Internet to give every library with Internet access full access to books that everyone can read.
>> (Speaker off microphone).
>> PARTICIPANT: We do. And if the law helps, that's great.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Yes, somebody else, otherwise there's Winston, here. Oh, Pedro.
>> PARTICIPANT: I don't know for people with full blindness but I'm aware of a project that maybe is not part of IFLA but called (No English interpretation) what they are doing is augmenting for people that are ‑‑ I don't remember now the word ‑‑
>> PARTICIPANT: Visually impaired?
>> PARTICIPANT: No. The people that have the skin white ‑‑ albino people that have visual impairments to greater extent so they are creating audio books and creating augmented text for people to go into these mobile libraries to actually access the books but I don't know what is your background and I don't know how much do you know of countries like Bangladesh or many other people in Africa or areas where there's no libraries, there's no devices where ‑‑
>> (Speaker off microphone).
>> PARTICIPANT: No, there's not. There is not. There are more than 3 billion people that have no access to Internet.
>> PARTICIPANT: You know there was a foundation for the digital gap created in Geneva and it was ‑‑ they had to close before they opened because it was a non‑issue. That was 20 years back.
>> PARTICIPANT: Sorry, sir. I encourage you to come to many of the sessions today.
>> PARTICIPANT: I have lived in Bangladesh. If you are here to have the voice of officialdom to speak, your view of the world is UNESCO is here and the real world is there. And I have the opposite view. There's no way we can start the conversation as long as you address people as you said we all know that. No, I don't know what you know and you don't know what I know.
>> PARTICIPANT: One thing from my user experience there's number of visual books but which are not accessible.
Maybe they converted to PDF or something but maybe Internet is a good help but there are thousands of visible books which are fully inaccessible. Unfortunately the public libraries are not following their standard. So we need to consider the reading reads of persons with visual disabilities. Even though there's progress but still we are behind. Thank you.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Winston.
>> WINSTON ROBERTS: Let's remind ISOC's in respective countries and remind library associations to get the ear of the relevant ministers in our governments and remind those ministers that in the Geneva principals 2003 it refers to providing effective assistive technologies for access to information.
The outcomes of the first world summit was a strong recommendation to governments that the Internet should be taken full account of in integrated development policies. National and regional development policies. Integrated policies. Okay? That means that policies should not only focus on improving GDP but they should focus on improving education outcomes and improving soft infrastructure in determines of digital skills, school libraries and things like that for people at a sort of human level, grassroots level to learn about these things. There needs to be integration and policies developed by national governments. They're the only ones that can do that.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Sorry, your name again?
>> PARTICIPANT: I want to make a small comment, I hope it's at least relevant. But it's personally my opinion and of the copy fighters. I want to say to you, Winston, it worries me as well that you're telling me about 14 or 15 years politicians were talking about the sharing of knowledge and still nothing has happened. The Internet started to be acceptable and integrated in society 30 years ago.
And phenomena you go to panels today and ask some questions or even people hearsay they don't understand technology which is maybe a little bit too late because it's not just my generation or even your generation that has grown up with the Internet.
What I'm really positively surprised a little bit because I went in here not expecting anything. Libraries are really thinking about the existing knowledge. And I think it's an interesting process to make people understand the knowledge and show the knowledge to people around.
I'm wondering a little bit if maybe that's also a thing that libraries should educate other people and not maybe the general public but also the politicians themselves, making them understand what you're actually talking about. And I'm afraid that when looking at the current reform let's copyrighters becoming more and more restricting and politicians are restricting access to information without realizing their doing so. Access to information through Internet with content filters and also copyright rules in which makes it impossible to adapt content to different environment and also countries where the licensing fees may be too high to even consider buying the information in itself. It's not really a question but I wanted to say it and show our perspective.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Yes. I think before giving you again the floor, I think what Winston was waving that Maria talked about is exactly reports like this that we are trying to shape the mind and the approach to access of politicians. That's what we are trying to do.
It's a long road but at least it's something that it's worth trying because I think, I don't know you, but I think when you are in the political spectrum you have to sort of prove or show what are the benefits rather than what is the process. The process is something that we might design but a politician might be more interested in what is the outcome of a certain decision or certain policy he adopts. So if you want to become familiar with this, that will be something we can do. Maria?
>> MARIA GARRIDO: And not talking from as a representative of my university or in the partnership for this project, it's very personal. Today, 13, 14, 15 years of recognition of public access is important to the Internet so we live today in a world where 60% of the people that have access to the Internet lives in countries where they are arrested or persecuted for speaking freely online.
I think your generation faces the biggest challenges because even though you have the opportunity and the platform to voice your opinion, I think ‑‑ I don't understand what it is. I think it's a combination of things. Those voices actually are transformed into political actions.
And I would love to hear from your experience with copy fighters, especially because it's such a critical aspect of public access to information and such a complicated one because of the commercial front of it. In your experience what do you think is the biggest obstacle that you face in terms of transforming that voice. We face the same problem trying to bring in libraries into the development conversation, right some so I would love to hear from them, first, if it's possible. I mean from the people in the ‑‑ I point to the young people in that corner.
>> PARTICIPANT: It's been said before, I think it's people don't think it's a big subject but they don't realize it's very important. And politics don't really understand when we talk, they don't understand how it's working so how can they vote without knowing what actually is going to happen? And it feels like they are only listening to commercial lobbyists who was perfect and not public access. We can talk but we are ignored. So that's a problem.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Thank you.
>> (Speaker off microphone).
>> DAVID RAMERIZ‑ORDONEZ: Okay. Well, the thing is that we in libraries facilitate the access to the information and knowledge but how can we do ‑‑ don't think in libraries as just how things that happen inside.
(Captioning will end in five minutes)
How can we make other Civil Society actors or private sector? We need many actors in many places using the infrastructure.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Thank you, David. Please.
>> PARTICIPANT: Basically I have three points to make. First, we all know that if you are poor or sick or in jail or whatever, you might have less access to books or music or whatever. This is not the issue here. We are Internet Governance Forum.
And in my understanding the core issue of Internet governance or Internet is how do we deal with information in a world which has gone from information poor to information plenty? Of course access does not mean the same thing when you have instantly 400 million documents when you are poor sheepherder in the middle of the Sahara, et cetera.
Should there be a directive of IFLA to make all accounts accessible urgently online or should we wait 50 years for academics. Yes or no, I have no position but that's one point. What is the future of the decimal system, classification system in the age of Internet?
Is the distinction between index table of content catalogs still relevant or is it not with Google? Does Google have something to say with IFLA or should IFLA speak with Wikipedia which still has some project of having rational ‑‑ all these to me are real questions, are they real questions? So the last point, I did also attend with this in 2003. I was one of the few to attend. Why? In Geneva which is the core of the UN system where there are no journalists. I felt strongly let's say constrained, uneasy, with article 19.
We had Ronald Coven, maybe you remember, who said that the main crucial issue is article 19. We all know even Hitler knew that cutting the tongue of journalists is not good for freedom of information. When she would ask the question she would talk about the Egyptian woman is the way not the address the real issue. The real issue as I felt in 2003 was the power of the media, vis‑à‑vis the actor, vis‑à‑vis the actors who would like to take avail of that opportunity not to be blocked by the media. I'm not going to list you the catalog.
But to me article 19 was a way to preach the gospel, formal gospel of the system and silent the voice of those who wanted to address the real system. The media had to pay the price. And development and access to information. We have development in the goal of humanity for the past 200 years and all have failed by the way. Access to information in the regions of the big and since Galileo, et cetera.
We have been trying to implement it for centuries and all the recipes we advocate are usually the wrong ones and bring to failure. So understand that the free‑lancer who is of course a bit paranoid and hysterical because the only way to have a voice, you understand that I agree with officialdom on nearly every count. If other journalists agree with you, you are stuck with the unreasonable one, and I am here but next time you can ask me to leave the room before the start of the workshop.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Thank you.
>> (Speaker off microphone).
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: I want to thank everybody. I would never ask anybody to leave the room.
Thank you for being here. Thanks again. Enjoy your lunch.
(Session concluded at 13:48 p.m. CET)