Telecom Asia: The Internet is perceived as being borderless by nature, but borders exist in the real world. How can the ITU and the world's national regulators resolve this contradiction to create what you've referred to as the 'digital society'‾
Dr Tim Kelly: When the Internet first really took off in the mid-1990s with the World Wide Web, there was this perception that the Internet changed all the rules, that it was different from other media and the old rules didn't apply. It's been a slow learning process to realize that while it is different and opened new possibilities, in many ways the issues the Net faces are the same as the issues print or broadcast media face. Also, for all the talk of the Internet being the frontier of freedom, every country has their red line - in Britain it would be pedophilia, in Thailand it would be criticizing the royal family, in the US it's gambling. Because we have different red lines in different places, we need to recognize there are times when the Internet is not a borderless world. It sounds good on paper, but in reality we have to be sensitive to local differences, we do need some safeguards, and we're only now putting them in place.
The trick is that national regulatory approaches to these differences are doomed to failure. If you have a regulatory approach based on cooperation with other regulatory authorities based on shared principles and understanding, then you're more likely to succeed.
Is that where initiatives like the WSIS come in‾
Yeah - WSIS was really about setting a common vision of what we want the information society to be, and because every country's different, we can't guarantee that everyone wants the same thing. It's a painful process, because you're reaching the lowest common denominator between all the different societies in the world to come up with something bland. But it's a useful process, because then you begin to understand each other better and where those red lines are.
At the same time, though, it's a slow process, while the Internet is growing rapidly - how can regulators ever hope to keep up‾
Well, the issues themselves don't change so rapidly - things like liberty, freedom of expression, access, trade, etc. What changes are the dimensions of the problem. When we began WSIS in 1998, there were probably fewer than 200 million Internet users and a half million mobile phone users. By the time we finished in 2005, there were more than two billion mobile users and over a billion Internet users. But the issues stayed the same, largely. There were some new challenges we didn't anticipate in 1998 - for example, digital identity - what is it, what are the threats, how do you manage it technically, what principles should you follow in establishing and protecting it‾ But most issues haven't really changed.
On the subject of digital content and DRM, how can the balance be struck between users who want the same freedoms they've always had with media consumption and content owners who want to stave off piracy‾
We all have to work out the right balance for a particular business model. We probably went too far with the idea that information wants to be free.