Web conference

French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on Tuesday opened a two-day forum that brings together the biggest names in Internet business and new media, dubbed the "eG8".

Attendees included the heads of Facebook and Wikipedia, the president of eBay and new media entrepreneurs from France and around the world.

Summit participants are to discuss the present and the future of the World Wide Web, and a delegation is due to share its conclusions with world leaders at the G8 conference in Deauville on Thursday.

In his opening speech, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said world governments still had a lot to learn from the Internet.

"We need your expertise to help reinforce democracy, solidarity and social dialogue," he told the assembled experts.

But he also delivered a stern reminder that "governments are the legitimate guardians of society" and floated the idea of what he called "a basic minimum of values and rules agreed at the world level."

Web sovereignty

Several guests said they were worried by Sarkozy's comments, and feared they may indicate an intention to strike the "free and democratic structure" of the Internet by regulating it at government level.

"I was glad to hear President Sarkozy say at his talk that the government does not own the Internet," said Jeff Jarvis, a professor of new media at the City University of New York. "But nonetheless he is claiming sovereignty over regulating the Internet, and getting the G8 to do so. There's danger there."

Jarvis surprised delegates by asking President Sarkozy over the microphone to make a promise to the conference to "take a Hippocratic oath for the Internet - and that's first: Do no harm."

"The best protection for the Internet is its open and distributed structure, and we need to leave it that way," Jarvis said.

John Perry Barlow, a founder of the digital rights advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Sarkozy demonstrated a lack of understanding among world governments about how to deal with the Internet.

"It's not just that they don't get it," he said. "They don't want to get it. Because getting it means having to change what is essentially a religious view of how the world operates."

Fast-moving technology

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said at a panel on Tuesday that "technology will move faster than governments," and that legislators should not regulate until they know the consequences.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales seemed more optimistic, saying the eG8 summit could be an important chance for governments to get the right advice on Internet policy.

"Everyone can agree that there are different kinds of problems on the Internet that do need some solutions," he said. "But we can also agree that governments tend to be quite clumsy and heavy-handed, because they don't understand the technology. They don't understand the social forces that work on the internet. I think it's a positive sign that at least for the first time we're being asked."

Author: Tim Martin, Paris / acb
Editor: Susan Houlton