 Our next speaker is Leonhard Dolbusch. Most of you will know him because he blogs at Netspolitik. He's also a professor at the University of Innsbruck. But the reason why he's here today is that he is a member of the German television broadcasting board. Welcome Leonhard. Thank you for inviting me here. And I must say I'm very happy that so many of you came. I wasn't sure if a talk about broadcasting and broadcasting councils would still pass as being nerdy, but let's dive straight into it. I would like to start with the question that I asked myself. When I was asked if I would like to be nominated for the broadcasting board, what is a broadcasting board and what does it do? I admit that I wasn't quite sure about that myself. I had some idea of it having to do with broadcasting and television. And if you look at the website of this broadcasting board of the second German TV channel, they say that it represents the interests of viewers, and it's about no more or less than the interests of the society at large, of representing the interests of society at large towards the TV channel. And if you consider how much the second German television channel earns in license fees every month, it's a bit less than five euros from each of you. That's an important job. And this board elects the chief executive officer that they elected every five years and was elected the year before I joined the board. And it elects eight out of twelve members of the administrative board of the TV channel. The board meets four to five times a year in a plenary session, usually in Mainz or Berlin. But even though these sessions are public, I don't want to invite you to them because it's not really very interesting. You could say that they're heavily scripted. Most deals are done in advance. And the session has to end by 12.30 for a press conference, but more on that later. You're not allowed to take photos there just like you're not on how to do it at this congress, which is a bit strange because it's public service broadcasting. But I took an illegal photo here that the police don't share it without consulting your lawyer. But why is there chaos in this board, which of course has a double meaning? Why is a member of the Chaos Computer Club, why has a member of the CCC been nominated for this? But also why is that important? Why does it matter what a body like this does, a body that many of you may never have heard of before? It all started with an argument about this person here, who was editor-in-chief in 2010. His contract was not renewed after pressure from the German Conservative Party. And you can see that this has been relevant when you see that people have written PhD theses about this. His name is Nikolas Brenner. And this thesis was written because somebody sued in front of the German constitutional court. And two years later there came the ruling that the second German television had not done its job in limiting the number of representatives close to the government. So for example people who are nominated by parties. And in the old board in 2016 that was more than two-thirds. Two-thirds it was then limited to one-third. So it was allowed to be less than a third, it could never be more than a third. Of course they made sure it was exactly a third. Twenty of the sixty of these are directly nominated by the state, but forty of them are not immediately, not directly nominated by the state. So they had to fill this board. And many of you know that this is a federal matter in Germany. Each of the German states was allowed to nominate one person for one specific subject. And this means that we have sixteen representatives from these subjects. Bavaria picked the subjects of digital matters. And gave it to Telecom lobbyist Berlin on the other hand. Picked internet. There is now a representative from the internet area and he is being sent by the federal state of Berlin. And gave this to four associations. The Chaos Communication Club, the D64, close to the Socialist Party, ECO and media.net Berlin Brandberg, which is a club I had never heard of before. And these four associations agreed for some weird reason on sending an Austrian. My first question was, I'm Austrian, are you allowed to nominate me? And they found out that if it's not explicitly forbidden, it must be allowed. And that means that since July 2016, I'm allowed to represent the internet in the broadcasting council. How am I trying to do this? Mostly I'm putting a lot of what I do online. And I don't want to exaggerate my role here. I'm one of sixty in this body, but simply tweeting and blogging at Netspolitik is something that already irritates a lot of people. I try to attend a lot of conferences, like Republika and this conference and give talks. So that's why the internet is part of the broadcasting council, the broadcasting board. But there was another reason for this. People said if there's this governing body here, or this observing body, which has a different name and different makeup in other public service broadcasters. And this ruling from the Constitutional Court said that legislators must ensure a minimum amount of transparency. And I thought that was the way they argued here is quite nice, because they said that it can prevent misuse of power and misuse of particular interests. And this minimum amount of transparency will be interesting later. But this meant that I now fly regularly to Mainz and Berlin. And there are two main points here. Two main topics I've tried to work with for two years now. And I want to increase transparency in this governing body. And this minimum amount is probably not enough. And secondly, I want to help answer the question of how public service broadcasters, public service media, have to work online in order to remain relevant in the long term. Because I think it makes sense that there are public service media on the Internet that are working competition to profit-driven companies. And these public service media could potentially play that role. But I don't believe they do so today. And I think there's a lot of work yet to be done. And I want to help with that. I think these two subjects are connected. If public service media want to remain relevant, they also need to be anchored in society in a way that's credible. To prevent people claiming that these media are too close or too far from society or too far from society. And these are the two subjects that I want to talk about in this talk. So let me start with the transparency. It is adequate for the title. What does it mean to have a minimum of transparency? We first need to look at what a minimum measure of transparency could look like. So any change to the policy of the session is something that should be documented. So the sessions are not normally public. And that's an improvement over it's never non-public. So there can be exceptions to make it public. So my experience isn't that they have gone out of bounds and gone crazy on it, on their openness. But from my perspective this means that now it is not impossible to make an exception and open it up. So the secrecy topic is very delicate and they take it very seriously. So I got a letter from the head of the session and there are new communication channels and she wants me to sign a secrecy agreement. So every year I need to sign a nondisclosure agreement and I have to fax it back. So in my office I couldn't use the fax machine so I sent a scan. But the interesting thing is the justification that they use. So they are saying that it cannot be discussed freely if it is more open. And I believe to some degree that may even be true. Some of the sub-sessions are more open. So being able to talk to them in confidence allows more openness. So the official sessions are public. So people are allowed to come to Mainz and join in person. But before the big session in Mainz there are a lot of proposals. Here are the proposals and 24 of them were secret and 5 of them have been accessible publicly anyway. So this means that the participants in the session refer to documents that are secret and they refer to it in a public session. But they are very serious about the secrecy. So I took the proposal on youth and offerings for the youth. And I publicized this in a blog entry in netspolitik.org before the session. And I immediately got a letter from the head of the session. And I wrote an exchange of multiple messages and she asked me to remove that link. So she was justifying her request with the freedom to discuss it freely. And she doesn't want to have it prejudged in the public opinion. And he agrees that he needs the interested public. So the interested public is never as big as the audience in this room. And he needs to discuss with the interested public in order to form an opinion. And the justification that if the sessions were more public then the proposals would be even less contentful. And I can understand that from the perspective of the television station to send out 60 copies of those means that it does reach a journalist if there is something cross inside it. So it almost is public. So the question is what can one do? So if I want to comply with the House order, I have reflected on my competencies as a professor. And I started reading this word for word so that I was able to twitter about it afterwards. Now whether this is the adequate way of dealing with this I put into question. But my opinion is that a minimum measure of transparency is not achieved with the current proceedings. So some people might think that this is boring. But when I read about it in the media then there was a different topic. So the problem always being discussed is the circles of friends. And my question is aren't those circles of friends not the real problem to transparency? So these informal circles of friends were the reason for the decision from the court. So the justification from the court says that the party communication structures are too strong and they are being expressed in those circles of friends. And this is why transparency is necessary. So when anybody joins this session there are two types of circles of friends and you have to decide which one you want to belong to. So during the first session there was a reception and starters were served and I got invitations to both of those circles. So the left one is from a former defence minister and the right one is from a former red workers union politician. So you're part of that circle that you attend and they happen at the same time. So it has nothing to do with friends. It's simply a party function. And this is the election of the executive committee here. So these are simply political meetings. And I joke about this because it is a bit funny. But it's not just absurd. It's not only absurd. One thing that I liked is that these elections which are done properly in secret and with a ballot. So it's a bit too easy to just say this is silly. It's naive to think that a committee as large as this doesn't reach agreements in advance. Of course they do. And these circles of friends mean that they help to formalize this a bit. And at least for those who are within these circles it establishes transparency a bit. For those on the outside I blog. And the second German TV channel, these friends of circles have advantages as well. There are people who test the limits of these. And a professor friend of mine was part of the West German TV channel's supervisory board. He was a member of the pirate party and no other party really wanted him. So he didn't really have any formal friends. This wouldn't have happened in the second German TV channel. He would simply have joined one of these circles and that would have been that. Another thing that's important to me as somebody who blogs a lot is that an informal board such as this can't have any formal non-disclosure agreements. So I can blog about this if I can live with the social consequences. This was one of my first blog posts. And as I mentioned earlier these boards have to determine some of the administrative boards. And of course four of those go to the largest parties. And the conservative circle of friends had five candidates that wasn't planned. So they sat until there were only four. And the socialist circle of friends had actually candidates running for election. And it took three elections to fill all the seats. And I could blog about this because there is nothing preventing me. There's nothing formally prohibiting it. And the same thing happened when these circles of friends elected the supervisory board of Arte. And the most democratic elections were actually conducted in these circles of friends. And I have to say that if I object to something here I couldn't take part in these elections. But if I don't I can actually blog about it. And I would actually like to livestream these elections the next time. But I wonder why we can't add a new paragraph into the regulations where we actually construct formal factions. And those would hopefully not necessarily delineate along the same lines as they do in the federal parliament. But the very term circle of friends is not dignified for a board such as this supervisory board. Why not call something factions if it is a faction practice? And my experience with these pre-elections was that some members who represent social groups and groups of society have a very strong party affiliation. And to change this we would have to have a certain share of representatives who are assigned randomly. Who are assigned randomly from those who pay the license fees. And that would make it more difficult to get party majorities. There's one last thing I would like to mention. I've been talking about distancing this body from the state for quite a while. But I think you don't have to distance them from the state. You also have to distance yourself from the TV channel itself. And that's another thing we struggle with. Something that we struggle with a lot is complaints. You can send a complaint if there's something you object to. But for your complaint to be discussed in these board meetings you have to complain a second time. And when you've done that it will be discussed. But the likelihood of it ending in anything other than a rejection is zero. This is a statistic I compiled from the two years I've been a member of this board. We discussed 43 complaints. And 41 of them were ended in this template text. And two of them had a slightly more customized reply. But none of them ended in agreements. And I don't really know what happens if there is an agreement, if hell freezes over or hedge roll. I don't think anybody really knows because I don't think it's ever happened. And the point that is made is that even though these rejected questions are still being asked. And I can imagine that it's not great for those involved. But the optics of rejecting all complaints simply aren't great. And it's maybe something we should reconsider. I've talked a lot about supervisory supervision. But something I find far more important is the future of public service media online. Where transparency certainly can contribute. But it's about far more than that. What can public service broadcasters accomplish under the new conditions? One of the first things you might think of are these web TV. Where Stefan Stuckmann wrote of horror trips. I would like to, to their defense, public service broadcasters struggle to have far more to do than simply Netflix. Because they also have sports to deal with. They also have a culture. And the first TV channel has in fact 12 of these, of these Watch It Later libraries. And that makes it a bit less surprising that there's a call for integrating these all into one. But there's actually a call for merging even the private broadcasting companies into one giant library. If this is a problem, if one of the most important things is that these are distinguishable, that public service broadcasters are distinguishable from private companies that are profit driven. The second German TV company has just one library and it doesn't really consider the cross media implications either. And the CEO Thomas Bellot said that the second, his TV channel online is still essentially a TV channel, but there are no TV channels on the internet. If you want to build it on an online TV channel, you're going to lose. Somebody who understood this a bit better is the BBC and it's not often happens that the BBC is the shining example here. And there was a consensus that the BBC has to be an open platform for content. And this could go as far as allowing users to submit their own content. And this is a fundamental thing to understand. If I'm interested in creating a digital public sphere, we have to have open platforms. How can public spheres exist in the digital world? And these are shaped by, these are more and more mediated by digital platforms. What do I mean by low level public publishing activities, blogs? It's also the streaming offers from the Chaos Computer Club. But all of these offerings have to pass the bottleneck of digital platforms and that's mainly YouTube and Facebook. And this is something that even public service broadcasting companies have understood. I'd say it happened mainly by accident, but it was a very productive accident. That when they discovered that viewers are becoming older and older and the idea was to create a youth channel. But channels are really expensive and at some point people understood that young people don't really watch linear TV anyway. Maybe we should create something that simply broadcasts online now exists. It's called Funk. Most of you are no longer in its target group and has one huge advantage to all other public service offerings. It was never part of a TV channel. There's no legacy problem. So from the very beginning they could orientate themselves to a platform. So they built a multi-channel network on YouTube and they're not unsuccessful with that. But in order to allow this we had to change broadcasting law and we inserted a paragraph on how long things can remain online before you have to de-publish them, unpublish them. And the consensus was that we had to consider the interests of young people. But why is that true only for the youth channel and not the existing channels as well? And why does it not cover the remaining public offerings? The Germans are present on these platforms but they are subjugated to the law to de-publicize. So if you look at the platform strategy of the second channel, the ZDF, this is from the strategy paper and reach can be achieved by being present on as many platforms as possible. Mainly the big ones, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, video. And this means not only in the own media platform but also publication in those commercial platforms. So I don't disagree with it but I don't see how it increases the value. But I agree that no YouTube is no solution either. But there are other platforms and they are not mentioned in here. So Wikipedia is not mentioned and they all visit that. And especially the youth that we are so keen to reach according to their own study. 95-4% of the youth do use Wikipedia. So the reach is good on them. But I would find it a better fit and I find it a greater mission. So Wikipedia has mostly text and has few movies. And here at the television there's mainly moving pictures. And there's no text without reference to some broadcast. And that has not been changed. So on the one side there's only text and no moving images. And on the other side there's only moving images. So I think it's a match made in heaven. Both of them are oriented towards quality and public service. Especially when you look at encyclopedic content. So I've shown this at the Republic Conference. And I have been most notable in the public sessions with this topic. So the public agreement has found that they can use this to counter fake news. So they have always been accused of being able to publicize anything. So Wikipedia has addressed fake news right from the start. And there are robust ways of, depending on topic, to avert the worst. Now the public media, how much do they spend? So I posed the question, why do we want to be on the commercial platforms but not on Wikipedia? And the answer was we have to set priorities. And then I answered, that is what I agree, we have to set priorities. So you're paying for commercial platforms and I want to set different priorities. So this is how much they're spending on it. Wikipedia has actually published a wish list on what they would like to have. So explain pieces, historical pieces, documentaries, documentations of the elections, standing images, info pictures, commentaries and self-productions. Wikipedia doesn't want fiction, Wikipedia doesn't want gay mom music. Wikipedia doesn't want any material from the agencies. So on Wikipedia there's an open license. So on Wikipedia people are permitted to share without having to ask. So these are the requirements for Wikipedia compliance. This must be permitted. And that means that our television stations have a challenge with this. So they wouldn't have a problem with this on many things. So this has been published. So what I'm doing here is I'm violating this license. Why does the television station have such a problem with Creative Commons? Why do they find it so difficult? I think that public content is part of the C3 mantra to publish public data and to protect private data. So my opinion is it would be worthwhile to invest in this endeavor. After two and a half years of discussion, I keep still repeating this. And there's fear of manipulation. Naturally a restrictive license does not exclude a use by third parties. And it is different whether this is happening without permission or without. They are afraid that their material is going to be abused. And the problem is that there's many rights owners. So here's an example of a film that was published under Creative Commons license. So this is not compatible to Wikipedia. So here's a fictional example that wouldn't go into Wikipedia. Wikipedia wants something simple. It wants their own creations on facts. Another problem that they have is how to pay for it. Who gets paid? So there's repeat payments and time-limited users. And there's free participants or freelancers. And they are being paid very little for the first time. And they profit from repeat showings. And that wouldn't work with Wikipedia anymore. We do have three reasons that increase the cost. But I think it is important to demand that this is a worthwhile investment. And I'm convinced they would bring benefit to the public. For a long time I tried to beg for it. But it has been a learning with myself. And now I've become more offensive and more... So this was at Republika. They had virtual reality at that conference. So they're investing in History 360. Where historic buildings are built and you can walk through them. And you can see them from the inside. And it's been presented to him. I just tried to avoid being photographed with it. And then the people who made it came to him and said... We don't know how to bring it to the public. And my answer was that this is a historical documentary. And I have an idea here. And I asked whether they had all rights. And there are no rights that aren't with them. So I believe in 10 years they will be begging Wikipedia to include their content. Because they are becoming irrelevant themselves. And now we come to the last part of my talk. It is important for me to get the permission to publish them in Wikipedia. Because this frame of mind of the Wikipedia licenses... That would be the test whether the stations are ready for going towards these public digital spaces. So these public open spaces are something that arises from the cooperation of these different platforms. And I can see that the public media could be a part of this. They could be cooperating with the other ones. So ZDF is starting with a cultural platform to reach out to the non-commercial most. It could mean to be an amplifier for blogs and other non-commercial amateur publications. And it could mean that there is investment into public good. I don't think these people are evil. I just think that these new requirements are overtaxing them. They have always been busy with what they've been doing. And they're busy with it today. And now to say that they should be doing everything that they've been doing in the past. And then additionally they should take on this. That's asking a bit much. This is why I think it needs something new. Just like FUNK, which we've seen earlier. So I've given it a name that sounds vaguely like what we had before Internet Intendance. And I would think that this should be focused on the new requirements. It should be funded with 10 times the amount of the children's program FUNK. 5%. About a third should be amateurs. And I think that it should have two tasks. It should be an open-place-off platform. It should attribute cash. It should attribute cash to public good innovations. And the third task should be to be a librarian and archivist and curator for non-commercial and blogs. And if this new function were to fulfill these three tasks, then we can have something that is public media or something. So you can find my comments on Twitter under this hashtag Fernsehrad. And you can read my blog on NetsPolitik.org. We have five more minutes for questions and I will be happy to take them. We have exactly five minutes for questions. Thank you, Leonhard. So if you think you have a question that you can answer in a single sentence with a question mark at the end, please line up at one of the microphones. Thank you for your talk. I was wondering what prevented you from joining both of these circles of friends. Well, most coincidentally, they always meet at the same time. But there are groups of these circles of friends that talk to each other. So I know what the competing circle of friends has been talking about. Not in detail, but still. But the main question is if you want to continue with these two separate circles, the internet has a question as well. The internet wonders if you as a licensed fee payer can influence this process because there's not really much leverage you have with the supervisory board. That's a great question. It's incredible how unusual public attention is for the members of these boards. For example, the fact that they get five complaints from the ultra-wide-wing AFD makes them wonder if they've been reporting fairly for the last 20, 30 years. And that's something these people abuse because a few people getting involved would make a huge difference. I would like to ask about complaints. What percentage of complaints is justified? How much is trolling? How much are misunderstandings? I'm not part of the complaints board. I mean, I have been following this. But my impression is that the majority of complaints tends to be driven by party politics and party interests, Russian conspiracy. They're not very helpful. But the fact that no complaint ever has been admitted is just, it sounds so unlikely. And you have to find a mode of operation that doesn't have such horrible optics. I would like to know what the background, what the reason for all this secrecy might be. Is there a reasonable explanation? Or do they simply not want things to be discussed publicly? Well, there's pure speculation, but even in these circles of friends, well, if everything was being debated there, that would be great. But that's not even what happens. There's a small, very small circle of people that essentially does everything. I would say that the more number of people who notice this, the more difficult it gets to central figures to decide things on their own. But the non-publicity of these meetings means that things can be discussed much more openly behind closed doors that couldn't be discussed otherwise. That's all we have time for, unfortunately, even though you're here for another three days. And a huge applause for Leonard, please. And thank you for listening to this translation. If you have any feedback at all, please do leave it at...