 And now Kevin Bankston who's the director of OTI is going to introduce our panel so panelists also if you want to come up and Take your seats. That would be great Thanks, rich for filling us in on that great opportunity and more to the point funding that important work As Georgia said I'm the director of numeric is open technology Institute where we're dedicated to ensuring that all communities have access to an internet That is both open and secure MLAB has been a flagship project of OTI's for as long as there's been an OTI We're celebrating our 10th year anniversary next year. Hope you'll join us Thanks, especially to the support of my predecessors In the role of OTI director Alan Davidson. Thank you for being here and OTI founder and MLAB co-founder Sasha mine Rathward Sasha go over there, and I just want to personally thank them For being here today and thank all of you for being here today MLAB is especially important to the work at OTI because in the policy world positions and decisions are too often adopted because of Ideology or financial interests or gut instinct or simple ignorance and perhaps some other things that start with I that are bad reasons MLAB and projects like it can provide hard data to better inform decision-making about interrelated internet related policy Whether we're talking about net neutrality or broadband access and adoption generally or just whether consumers are getting the speeds that they paid for Which brings us to our expert lunch panel who are focused on the role of measurement in internet and telecom policy Around the world and let me briefly introduce them, and then I'll hand it over We have Thomas Leninger who is a Mozilla senior fellow and executive director of epicenter works European rights European digital rights NGO that focuses on net neutrality and privacy We have Pablo Villar Who is currently a public policy analyst at the NGO directives digitalis digitalis a non-profit organization dedicated to technology and human rights in Latin America We have Shazna Zuhail Who manages the telecom and ICT focused research projects and big data and mobile network research at Learn Asia an ICT policy think tank working in Asia and the Pacific that works at the nexus of economics policy and technology We have Josiah Shavula Who's an internet measurement researcher based in the computer science department of the University of Cape Town? Where he focuses on performance of internet systems particularly in the context of Africa and other developing regions? He also works closely with research ICT Africa An ICT policy think tank based in Cape Town and with Afro neck the regional internet registry for Africa and last but not least OTI's very own Sarah Morris who is our director of open internet policy where she leads OTI's efforts on issues related to broadband access and adoption Online consumer protections and preserving the open internet. So Sarah Well, I think we're gonna start doing a bit we'll go down the line maybe start on that end And then do introductions. We'll do some brief introductions. We have some prompts We have some prompts that the folks putting together this conference and put have Selected for us. We'll run through those and hopefully that will facilitate some conversation here We'll leave plenty of time for questions from the audience and We anticipate this being like a really robust discussion Go ahead Right. I didn't know that having to sit here to make me go first Out of choosing sit in the middle, but that's fine All right, so as was mentioned, my name is Josiah Chavola. I'm based in South Africa at the University of Cape Town Where I I started for for the last five years that I moved on to work with Afro neck the regional internet registry in in Africa So the allocation of IP addresses and so on I think the equivalent of Aaron. I think if you if you know what it is But during all that time also been working with research I city Africa, which is a sort of I city policy I think tank based in Cape Town where they mostly concerned with issues of access to I cities the internet in particular and With that also looking at issues of performance of the internet to user users quality of experience quite of service as measured from the user's point of view issues of pricing and and and Limits to access based on on coast and and Expensive bandwidth so to speak. So that's the the area that I've been working with from the from the Research I city point of view, but from my own point of view Working with you city the University of Cape Town I've mostly also been concerned with understanding The issues of performance of the internet from the user's point of view I've had a chance to live in different parts of Africa in in urban centers But also in very little places where I grew up and also lived for a bit in Europe So I have an experience of what the internet could be at its best But also how painful it can be when the internet is is is not performing. So that is Developed in me a very passionate desire to almost always measure how good the internet is Particularly from the point of view way. I think there is that my generalization So that's what we do Afrinik where I worked for about a year just just before now Because they are a member organization of internet service providers They tend to focus more on Network-centric measurements in other words how network operators interconnect to the level of bealing and how that affects end-to-end Performance. So that's what I was doing while working with with Afrinik lots of measurements understanding end-to-end Traffic routing traffic engineering and so on and so forth. So all of that it comes into play in my understanding of what the internet is performing like in Africa and I try to bring all that together from network Centric measurements user-centric measurements, but also working with research. I see Africa from a sort of social aspect of how costs a Sort of excludes a lot of people from accessing the internet So I'll talk in terms of those those things Going forward. Thank you Yeah Hello My name is Thomas learning I am based in Vienna, Austria and What to say so I started off programming was 13 and in my previous life I used to be in IT But then I started to study anthropology and had my first podcast and went into more social issues. I was Working at an anti-racism NGO that LGBT work We even occupied the university in Vienna, but then I got into digital rights It was really the adoption of a surveillance bill in my country that politicized me and We managed to actually kill that bill We had a huge combine with the biggest petition of my country back then but then we won in front of the constitutional court and then I got bored and so I Looked for a new issue and there was net neutrality which really appealed to me both from a technological, but also philosophical concept and Back then in 2012 it was luckily There weren't so many laws. There wasn't so much written about it. So I could actually Kind of screen everything and we had our group and measurement was one of the first things that we looked into and how could you actually Then also test whether you really have net neutrality can we also quantify the problems that we are talking about and That put me in a good position to also work on the European net neutrality law We started in 2013 and since 2016 Europe has safeguards Against network discrimination and now our work mostly circles around enforcement so we are Constantly submitting to consultations of the European Union of regulators and also to to still keep the public debate going in Europe around these issues Because there are many challenges I had not just in privacy also in net neutrality And when my current affiliations, I'm a fellow of the center of Internet Society of Stanford Law School I'm a senior fellow to the Mozilla Foundation and I'm also executive director of an Small Austrian NGO called AP Centerworks Okay, all right, I work with Learn Asia based in Sri Lanka But we work in South Asia Southeast Asia and in the Pacific Islands We're a research organization and our primary focus is to take research to policy. So Conducting demand side research and data and having access to data from the demand side is really what our foundation is Based off and then we use that to take it to policymakers when we have opportunities to inform policy we work primarily on We will one aspect is like just I have mentioned on access and use of ICTs ICT is sort of like a cross-cutting theme. So if whatever silos we work in indifferent from transportation to agriculture It's all the ICT is sort of like a cross-cutting platform that we work and we focus on and broadband measures is also Area that I focus on I've worked with MLAB in the past when we conducted some broadband measures in Myanmar and more recently with an application called Netreda in some other countries that I will share with you later on. I think tomorrow My name is Pablo Violien a public policy analyst at Derechos Digitales Which is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the defense promotion and development of fundamental or human rights in the digital environment In the whole of Latin American region. We started in Chile But now we are having a regional a regional work our regional focus. We have three pillars that are is access to knowledge or balance intellectual property and laws freedom of expression and privacy and Having these three pillars we have a very broad range of issues. We deal with with trade-related Agreements that impact e-commerce and intellectual property We are dealing with cybersecurity data protection privacy surveillance and everything that is technology and human rights We are an NGO that it was founded 13 years ago So where the oldest NGO in the in digital rights in Latin America And we're an NGO that was founded by lawyers Exclusively lawyers and exclusively boring lawyers. So we used to have this policy 90 paper policy papers that nobody read So during the the last years we're trying we are we've been incorporating Sociologists Journalists and other kind of process professions to try to have a more impactful To have more impactful research or have a policy advocacy that is actually impactful. So the last year we We created a tech a tech team that there's a bunch of tech people and some of them studied others Just develop the tools themselves. So we're trying to put those kind of knowledge in the fight for digital for digital rights and Regarding for example And the role of measurements in all of this a Nenotrality she is the first country in the world to have a net neutrality law back in 2010 But the problem is that we don't have a lot of enforcement of that law the regulators usually wash their hands saying that for example in the big issue of Serating that sero rating is a it's a commercial practice. It's a commercial practice has nothing to do with networks It's nothing we do with the technical things that there are actually that these regulators is in charge of enforcing So if you have a problem with net neutrality, you should go to the antitrust regulator The problem is that a to be able to go to the antitrust regulator You have to have a lot of money. So you need something someone who is affected for example, I don't know Maybe some social media that is not in the in the commercial Agreements with the ISPs So having a tech team and have been able to to to conduct these measures Has allowed us for example to be able to discover that some of these ISPs are Arbitrarily blocking some source some technologies for example, Torrents saying that Torrents are used for piracy And they block a bandwidth for users So we were we were able to stop that and that's a good And example of why measurements are being used to to protect people's fundamental rights and digital rights but we're still trying to struggle to to be able to Convince the children regulated to have a clear criteria on net neutrality I think what is one of the biggest challenges in the region regarding a net neutrality because It doesn't allow people especially in the developing country to have access to the whole of the internet People need people need internet to find jobs to study to organize To be able to apply to governmental subsidies and social programs and having access only to Facebook, Twitter and what's up and Closest people to an corporate and close internet and doesn't Allow them to have the experience of The internet that we dream of And empowering internet and internet for social equality And internet for education So I think that one is that's one of the biggest challenge in Chile and also for the Latin American region And I'll give a little bit of an update about our work So I work at the Open Technology Institute, which is a program within New America New America is a think tank and civic enterprise That encompasses a lot of diverse programs that focus on a lot of issues spanning education policy work family balance policy and technology policy and so the Open Technology Institute is the Technology Policy Advocacy Intersection arm within New America and The so I run a bucket of policy issues or a suite of policy issues Which we like refer to as our open internet policy work that includes net neutrality, of course, but also a A wide range of broadband access and adoption questions. How do we access the internet? What are the conditions? Under which the internet is available to different parts of the country. How do we improve outcomes around broadband access and adoption? And what does concentration in the telecommunications sector mean for the widespread? Availability of affordable broadband access and all of these questions are interrelated We believe that an open internet promotes more affordable ubiquitous access Because it increases the demand like the development of platforms and technologies on the internet which increases the demand for high-capacity internet access In addition, we believe that an open internet is fundamental that having access to a closed internet is not access to the internet at all So where does measurement fit in or where does this work fit in? So we are a partner and as kind of pointed out a an original developer and founder of the measurement lab Platform and you know I where we've really I think moved forward in the last several years is thinking about ways that we can take the Incredible data that exists as a result of measurement lab and inject that into conversations policy conversations At the federal level also at the local level And in various different contexts and situations. So I'll focus on a couple different examples In part because I see a couple different people in the room that have worked on these net neutrality so we Back when we were in the fight to achieve strong net neutrality rules and not in the fight to reinstate those rules that were repealed last December OTI started to hear from different Stakeholders that there was this emerging problem that no one was talking about in the net neutrality context and that was interconnection disputes So the idea that we'd always up until that point the conversations about net neutrality harms had tended to center around You know just general blocking and throttling on the last mile What we learned was that there was a problem that was developing a basically the front door to the last mile the gate Where transit providers who are paid by? Edge companies Vimeo or Netflix to carry traffic and route it throughout the internet when they would approach the consumer ISP ISP's front door that that was starting to become more and more congested and we weren't no one was really sure exactly What was happening? There were lots of allegations about whose fault it was And lots of really really angry consumers throughout the United States saying what is going on with my broadband They would call their ISP their ISP would say you could upgrade your service or it's not our fault That's just Netflix having a bad day you'd ask Netflix and they'd say oh the ISPs are mean bullies We don't know what's happening either, but for certain ISPs were just having a lot of problems You'd ask the transit providers and they'd say well We're in these really terrible negotiations with the ISPs who are demanding money before they let our The traffic that we're carrying through to the last mile And unless we pay them they're just going to refuse to continue augmenting that capacity at the interconnection point and this problem will just get bigger and bigger and bigger and So we thought huh like this sounds like a really big problem. This sounds like a net neutrality problem And so we worked with the measurement lab team and developed some measurement lab put out a report where they Using a carefully designed Study looked at different pairs of transit providers and ISPs and markets throughout the United States Concluded that from a technical standpoint there were certain pairs of transit providers and ISPs for which there were significant and sustained Problems for consumers. These are not not like little problems These were nine months of unusable internet of internet at speeds that were deemed by the the FCC the regulating body here to be unusable So the open internet team at OTI took that data And we looked at it and we situated in the context of consumer complaint forums, which were erupting in various Geographic locations about problems. We talked with different states that we had those conversations at the various stakeholders And we wrote a policy brief about that work and Submitted that in the context of the open internet proceeding that was really the the start of a long and intense Conversation about what interconnection policy should be in the context of net neutrality and ultimately led the Commission to adopt an approach to help Make sure the congestion wasn't causing consumer harms in the context of interconnection So it was one another one that I'll talk about briefly and I think some more will come up as we go through the prompts We've done a lot of work with the FCC's internet Universal service fund Specifically the lifeline program and the e-rate program the e-rate program provides subsidies for schools and libraries To make sure they have adequate robust internet capacity several years ago when Some former colleagues and I were writing comments to the FCC. We were urging them to improve their data collection practices They get a lot of self-reported data from From ISPs we thought that's like not a very good way to judge what schools and libraries are getting So we thought wouldn't it be great if there was a premise level tool that could measure internet performance and could be a check on the self-reported data that ISPs are performing several years later now we have a robust Project devoted to looking at premise level measurement in schools and now libraries And so this is all part of our efforts to make sure both the policy is injected with data driven realities data and That also we are thinking about things in a forward-looking In an innovative way and identifying problems that are not part of the conversation yet, but that we can bring in as policy advocates Okay, so the first question for the group Is what are models that you look to you with your work? Is there a success story that you look to I? Will pass this one off because I think I just kind of answered that one, but Anyone want to jump in What are the models that you look to you with your work? And is there a success story that you look to? For me, it's kind of easy I mean for us the the fight for net neutrality was really inspired by a debate that started in the US and I mean, it's Kind of obvious when I registered save the internet dot you I of course looked at the dot-com version here There was a little bit before battle for the net before the fight kind of shifted to to another campaign website but we of course looked at these arguments and Also at the tools that they utilize to Really campaign around these issues because it really is a global debate and So I would citrate Europe here in a way in a tradition that started in the US But then I also have to give a lot of credit to the dot-in version because the Indian net neutrality movement really really Is for my myself like the gold standard of what? Activism could be and the fact that this was really such a grassroots movement that incorporated so many different aspects of society really shows us how digital rights activism Can also start without big organizations or big funders just by an idea which makes sense to the general public and thereby Together with the tools that the internet gives us all become really powerful So they only after they had this huge success Started an NGO. It was mostly I had a self-written code or Google Docs for information sharing and everything was organized about self empowerment So how can I give these arguments and these tools to other people that feel the same way and then just go with it? And that also says It's something that I see in in my own work whenever we run a successful campaign There comes this moment where you lose control Where people that you've never met in cities where you've never been go around and Collect signatures for your petition or something like that Or when others take your message and really go with it and put it into another context like What does this mean for for teachers, you know, and those are examples I'm looking for Okay, so I'm gonna go for a more generic thing not to do with the technology But just in the sense of how we work I mentioned earlier that we take research to policy and that is sort of our main game So how we do this is we look one thing is we have done the research We've got the data at hand and we look for policy windows. So there are for example Consultation papers that policy makers put out at various points Some of the things that come to mind are India tried the regulator wanted to have introduced benchmarks And in their broadband policy and they want to know how best to do it So they put out a consultation paper in the Philippines There were Senate hearings about how to introduce because that's severe price and quality issues in the Philippines the broadband And so they wanted to introduce Certain measures and they want to know how to do it So these are policy windows that we capitalized on and then the second stage is how do you get policy makers to ask the right questions and for that we look at Training courses so like capacity building building networks of researchers We run an annual conference called CPR South's Communication policy research where we get together a bunch of researchers who would then network with each other Build their own networks of researchers and thereby influence policy and take you know get policy makers also More educated on how to organize Ask better questions. So one of the examples I can give you is on regressive tax. There was a regressive tax introduced in Sri Lanka in 2007 or 2008 and we went really hard at it We went to the policy makers and we got that removed now that was a policy win but a couple of years later you've got Different forms of taxes coming into To the place so we can keep knocking down taxes, but that's not the point you want them to understand what sector specific taxing is and We come at it from an informed decision-making point of view and away comes to Voice and data in developing Asia. We find that with voice. I think we've won and by voice I'm talking mobile what we Knowingly or unknowingly adopted was something called the budget telecom network model So if you think of it as a budget YR line You're talking about getting a person from point A to point B. Anything else is an add-on So if you look at how when the mobile was first introduced to our parts of the world and when you sort of looked at how The network was we just concentrated on you can't be absolutist or have hard regulations You have to sort of be a bit lacks have a light touch approach and have the network set up so that people can first get on Then you talk about prices we benchmark prices and we got prices reduced now We have some of the lowest prices in the world for both voice and data And there after comes quality issues and that's what we're dealing with now on the data side mobile I mean on voice. We are pretty good. So on the data side of it what I mean we started benchmarking broadband quality In 2007 2008 The focus was on fixed networks and at that time we didn't go hard on regulators again It was just about getting people to use the internet getting our measurements and Methodologies out getting operators to acknowledge that there is a problem and to come up with solutions to fix it So we engage with operators for two years. We didn't go to regulators. We didn't We didn't go hard on on this subject But we just engage with them brought them to the table had policy discourse so that we gave them a chance to Kind of fix it and to have transparent Measurements and so on and after that two-year period we found that nothing was really moving And there was a big event in Colombo where all the regional regulators were going to be at We knew the hotel they were staying in we knew the newspaper that the hotel was going to provide to them and we read advertisements massive one-page Advertisements about contention ratios about our research about how poor quality is in the region and that got the attention Two months down the line the Sri Lankan regulator starts having their own broadband measurement and publishing Things online. So that is sort of the model in which we try and engage in Getting our research to policy and actually influencing the policy makers and the regulators And at the end I think what would be a win for us would be if we are made redundant if policy makers do The work we do that will be I think that will be a success story in itself I think that's the only example that I ever heard of micro targeting with newspapers And I think in Latin America one of the biggest challenges for us is And it's kind of difficult to say but it's resources We have a lot of at the regional level a lot of very small and Organizations of civil society. I think in the United States The fact that you can have a strategic litigation and found your organization is strategic litigation is a It's a huge boom you have organizations like EFF going to the Supreme Court and getting huge decisions that affect policy But in Latin America Resources on founding is a very challenging for organizations. So a model that I think it has been successful And we look up to it is eddie. Eddie is Is an organization in Europe is more a federation of a smaller organizations And and that's more similar to the to the Latin American model that we every country has it's small very small Civil society organizations, but every being a being a federation of organizations have Actually have a lot of big successes Last month or a couple of weeks ago. They actually managed to repeal Article 11 and 13 of the of the intellectual property and propulsive and there was very damaging for the internet They tried to try to impose some sort of obligations for platforms to impose a filtering a previous Filtering without loading any kind of files over content to try to manage intellectual property that would be made platforms into sensors and And I think they have it's it's it's a little bit easier for them because they have Geneva and Brussels right there And if you try if you change and one directive that applies to all of Europe and in Latin America It's a little bit little bit more challenging, but we do have Also a lot of things in common. We have a very low threshold of data protection. We have the same language We have governments that are very prone to surveillance and controlling citizens So I think we have to look up to this more federation model of a small civil society organization that can Try to act More organized to tackle all of the all of these challenges for human human rights and digital rights in in the region I would just jump in and say that the idea of a federated approach I think is actually bearing out a little bit in the u.s. As well with the state state efforts around privacy and net neutrality vis-a-vis some of the the big gaps that have been Created at the federal level through various policy decisions over the past few years So there I think it creates more a lot of challenges Certainly more distributed resources and lots of Different processes in each state, which I'm sure is true among different countries whether it's in Latin America or the EU But but there can be some really interesting models new models for achieving success in this but Josiah Did you want to weigh on on this question? Yeah, thanks So I think what how we've been operating particularly in South Africa and in Africa generally is We've tried to really create some sort of Collaborative network between the the policy the academia and then sort of the network operators themselves So for example research, I see Africa has quite a wide network within Within Africa with the researchers in different countries and different institutions doing more of the ground ground research Providing providing sort of a continental data a data view which which I think helps quite a lot but more than that if Try to collaborate very actively with the academia saying in South Africa I've been working with the research I city Africa working on on on some of the measurement data and analyzing and providing research I city Africa with sort of more simplified Visualizations of the data or analysis that then they can take to the government officials or police makers So this is what is happening and this is what we were proposing So that works quite well because a research I city Africa has access to government officials Is able to go to to to parliament for example to make Submissions and present a case of how regulations ought to be And then we've also partnered with network operators through after Nick so that gives a different sort of Dimension to how much we can influence what's happening. So For example, some of the research work that we've done we've been able to present it at The forum of network operators like the Africa peeling forum where all network operators come together to discuss Challenges with the interconnection and performance and so on and so forth and we we've been there with with the data presenting For the performance and also research I city Africa bringing in a policy argument for why things ought to be different And I think I found that to be quite quite exciting So in one of the recent Africa peeling forums, we had data about different network operators and how they perform for So for example in this particular case, we're looking at Page load times and latency to websites hosted in different operators when accessed from different countries And we had this this particular example of how cloud flare was operating, but there were cloud fairs a big hosting Company for most of the web Content in Africa. I'll discuss that tomorrow But we showed how the performance was different in different places and we had once senior Engineer from cloud flare at the at the forum and he was of course in agreement with most of what the visualization was showing Except in one country says I don't understand how our performance can be that bad In Swaziland So that was where the performance was was really but it was they are supposed to have the same performance as Africa because we've Engineered them to get content from there and so on and so forth. So we don't understand how that is I said, yeah, but that's how you've engineered it and this is how the users are experiencing it So there must some there must be something wrong with how you've engineered your so he was able to call his engineers and other people in the in their network to find out and Eventually he was able to confirm later on how Swaziland Users were actually being Forwarded to to to Europe for accessing content that was supposed to be available in South Africa and so on so giving us Those different forums to talk about research from the technical point of view from a policy point of view I think allows us to reach a bigger audience and influence more in terms of Getting the measurement data to the right audiences and getting their feedback and influence So I might just pause in between the prompts and see if there's any because where I think we have a 1 p.m. Stop Okay, so I see a hand. So let's turn to the audience first Oh The gentleman right in the middle in the green shirt. Oh Josh. Thanks. My name is Jose Munoz I'm a Google policy fellow at the National Hispanic Media Coalition. So my question regarding is how was corporate lobbying? You know the nexus to corporate lobbying. How did that? You know, was it a deterrent to your success stories? Was that I'm trying to get a global perspective on How corporate lobbying kind of that nexus to public policy and advocacy at the global level? Specifically, you know Thomas's comments. So, you know the grassroots type of thing, right? So I think there's a lot of grassroots efforts here, you know Yesterday commissioner Rosenworstall made a comment publicly on Twitter regarding the inspector general report about a denial of service regarding the comments to the FCC in the wake of net neutrality repeal, so You know, we might have a great grassroots effort here or you know, you could have a million petitions But the corporate the power of the corporate lobbying cannot be ignored. So I'd like to know how that impacts other countries and other advocacy organizations So it one thing that I like about the show rights Is that you always have to shift in coalitions? It is not an issue, which is at least in from European perspective that I know Divided in a classical left-right political spectrum And that means for example on on privacy the ISPs are strong allies of ours and we fight surveillance laws together with them But on net neutrality, of course, they are our opponents and We already mentioned that the most current fight in Europe is about the copyright directive because it includes two very dangerous articles Article 13 would establish upload filters. So something that we only know from China or Russia where every content is sent through a filter and Might not even appear on the internet if the filters has no And this is something where the Wikipedia was asked to do this in China They refused that's one reason why they are blocked now in China and now the European Union is basically coming up with the same technology We could stop it But we have another vote on September 12th that will decide Whether or not we do this horrible thing and for example the main argument from the rights holders is oh, you are all Google controlled lobbyists You are all not that's not real grassroots. That's not a real Wikipedia community because they get money from Google they get money from Google and They make the arguments not about the content or the merits of this proposal but about the funding of the actors that speak out and so that is also Something I wanted to say in the next question that the biggest challenge in Europe is that the only sustainable form of Finance is really individual donations Because there are almost no foundations in Europe that's a sustained our work And there always is a problem when it comes to corporate money Europe is in this regard really the opposite of the US in in the US When you take money of the government people look at you, but taking money from corporations. That's fine in Europe is really the reverse And and that of course puts us in a difficult position Particularly as more countries in Europe How to sort of put it move away from the ideals of liberal democracy? I would just jump in and say one thing that the the net neutrality fight Specifically in the in the US and the sort of more recent arc I think has has taught us as advocates here is that there's there's all different types of corporations and I think we're sort of moving into a Period of advocacy where? these you know these buckets of the the bad ISPs the Platforms that maybe are now the bad platforms and that we kind of I think we're hopefully moving to a place where Because the internet is so central to so many aspects of art to every aspect of our daily lives And so central to the business models of companies whether they're a Company I said Vimeo earlier like a video content distribution company or Walmart or any brick-and-mortar Traditional brick-and-mortar store that now has an online presence that these questions about what the policy policies of how the internet operates should be now affect so many different types of entities that I think There's more it presents lots of real opportunities for new coalition building and Leveraging consensus across new players and bringing new new people new people new companies new Associations into the the conversation and the space Yeah, I think the digital rights landscape has really Developed and changed in the last years And for example in copyright copyright discussion used to be Copyright maximalism or the industry versus digital right activists and a couple of academics and now the thing is a lot more Complex like we team with Google in the in the in the struggle in Europe about Article 11 and 13 When you talk about but when you talk about privacy then Google and Facebook are on the other side of the street And you team up with the with ISPs But then you talk about the neutrality and Facebook is on the other side and the ISPs are on the other side And you have to team up with Whatever side So it's really changing it's really changing but something that I think it's a constant is the Ability in the industry and I think that's your question to be in the table The fact that they can have the resources to be in every meeting go to every forum go to Be able to have one guy in every meeting taking notes asking questions engaging with the policy makers is something that is really difficult to do for a social civil society organizations Myself half of my half of my time is being a lobbyist for my organization Going to Congress acting engaging Policy makers and that's half my time and the other the other day Well, I was asking one guy from the Chamber of Commerce in Chile how many people they are have in charge of of following the The bills and they have 12 guys and I have they have 12 guys full time I'm only one guy half time doing that, but I also have to engage with trade policy Negotiations, I also have to do a cyber security follow-up also have to do and whatever so It's it's very challenging to Have enough resources man hours to be able to even be on the table And if you're not in the table, you're not going to be Neither considered so I think that one of the biggest challenges to lever in the field between the capacity of the industry to do lobby We already talked that the industry is doing lobby for different Interest right now But the ability of the soil of civil society to be in the table is it's very challenging One more question and then people can have further conversation during the break Jim Snyder, so it seems that the panelists are primarily policy oriented rather than engineers or computer scientists but the measurement business requires Presumably quite a bit of technical skill Is it actually at the end of the day a pretty trivial skill to develop the measurements that are the basis of your policy work? Or does it require significant technological chops? And if it does do a really good job in the internet measurement business, can you attract? Good technologists when they're very unlucky to rise to the top to be the panelists for example here And is it you know a reasonable career? I think most of these jobs are short term. It's not a good career It's very risky So assuming that actually tech technological skills are important Can you get those folks to help with these internet measurements are not given the incentives of this type of business? I can I can jump in a bit. I mean this is this the question of how of how one specifically injects data analysis and technology expertise into this policy space is a question that we grapple with like Within new amid within the entire tech policy space within new America within the open technology institute specifically and with the measurement lab project I mean this is I would say that that it's not a question of who's more important the policy advocate or the technologist I think it's how do you create? projects and project management that that allows for the seamless integration or the lowest amount of friction between the data analysis and the policy Changes that you want to see and that sounds Lovely, I mean that's just really hard to do and and it requires I think cultivating a lot of skill sets that are more at the nexus between those those two buckets of Technology expertise and policy expertise and and really looking at like what are the mechanisms to to cultivate that? Expertise in between those two points whether it's in within an organization whether it's within the university system whether it's within tech mentorship in mentorship within these these communities in a professional setting Yeah, I don't think you can have one without the other you need to have both so we've got People like you said the nexus between the two so you've got people who are very skilled Technically, you've got people like me in the middle who understand the tech and the policy and then you've got others who Completely engaged with the policy advocacy so you kind of you just need to extreme line it from one to the other and Yeah, I don't think you can do one without the other and I think there is There is potential to develop both if you've got the right type of mentorship and if you've got the right type of incentives Yeah, I think as I mentioned I think building collaborations, I think is probably Key because okay if you're a police organization, you may not necessarily want to invest in a full-time Okay, maybe you could but you may not want a full-time highly trained computer scientists But maybe you may work with a computer science department people that are working that type of research and want their output somehow to be fed into Policy so computer science related paper goes to our networking conference Policy people never read those papers But if you want to influence policy you want that to be translated and work with policy people write a policy-oriented paper that goes to a policy Audience and then that sort of brings sort of impact. I think that's what we've been doing I'm from a computer science background. I do measurements, but I work with research. I see the Africa Where people are mostly social science Background and and then we work together to get output from my work into their policy Discussions and then that goes out to their to their debates I think research I research I city Africa is also got a Mozilla fellow Sara. I didn't mention she's here Also, she's from an IT background She's been a fellow at research I city Africa helping with some of this data analysis providing technical support to the policy-oriented people at research I city Africa. So I think bringing together people like that is quite useful, but Yeah, I think different models could work differently And I'm also realizing I'd be totally remiss if I didn't identify the the public interest technology program within New America Which is looking at ways in which to to integrate technology analysis into into Whether it's civic engagement or or policy-making and also our tech Congress program which Injects tech expertise into Congressional offices, which I think is another part like you need you need to be able to Communicate the technology to policy makers, but it's really helpful if there's someone within the policy-making Space that is receptive to those ideas and has their own skill sets to To take what you give them and run with it Yeah, that seems like a good note to end on. Thank you to everyone on our panel if everyone wants to give them a round of applause