20 April 2010

Self-regulation may be key to dealing with international privacy and Internet regulation

Privacy, data exchange and the disparity in country laws regulating the internet in Latin America emerged as key issues affecting everyone from cell phone provider Nokia to payment companies like Visa and Mastercard, from internet firm Yahoo to courier FedEx, at WorldCity's Government Affairs Connections event on April 16.

"Latin America is at a difficult stage because there is not much regulation on these issues, unlike in the United States and Europe," said Jose Martinez, Senior Director of Governmental Relations for Nokia Latin America, and the presenter during the discussion, sponsored by Chevron and international law firm Fowler Rodriguez Valdez-Fauli.

In the United States and Europe, internet service providers and search engines such as Google and Yahoo have some protections against lawsuits over content a user finds or sees. They are given "safe harbor."

In Latin America, the law is less well developed. So, for example, when Argentine soccer player Maradona sued to have himself removed from search engines Yahoo and Google, he won. Apparently, in some cases, celebrities and athletes are finding that searches of their names result in the users being directed to porn sites. In this case, the government is willing to hold the search engine liable, rather than the company that is using meta-tag or other technology to fool the search engines.

 

The burden should be on the content provider not the medium, said Eduardo Santos, Public Affairs Manager for HP Latin America, noting "it should be against the law to tag, as opposed to the search engines and platforms being responsible," he said.

The issue is not limited to Latin America. According to Yahoo's Laura Juanes, who served as Chief Legal Counsel for Yahoo in Spain before moving to Miami, there were good and reasonable laws in Europe regarding regulation, but now "we're now seeing judicial decisions destroying the intent of the directive." Juanes is Legal Director for Compliance for the Americas.

As the internet has become necessary for doing business globally, inconsistent regulation is affecting every industry.

 

Malvina Longoria, head legal counsel for Mastercard in Latin America, said certain governments now ask payment providers to share private transaction information, to help with revenue collection.

And then you have government Customs offices "now using the internet to assess the value of packages that are shipping," and then adjusting for the cost of items that may have been downplayed to save shipping fees," noted Stan Clement, Senior Regulatory Affairs Advisor, International Global Trade Services for Fedex Latin America and the Caribbean.

HP's Santos pointed out the serious ramifications of the varying definitions of "sensitive information," which is often prohibited from being shared. This could mean, he said, "customer service won't legally be able to register information if information from, say, a purchase in Germany is handled by customer service in Costa Rica."

"The law needs to consider uses that are correct," he said.

The idea was raised about trying to create the equivalent of a World Trade Organization for the internet. But most seemed to agree that in light of the difficulty in overseeing the medium, the effort would simply be too massive. The best tactic to approach this seemed to be self-regulation.

Salvador Perez-Galindo, Vice President for Government Affairs at Visa Latin America, noted that there are several examples of active corporate self-regulation already, for example in Brazil, while Longoria chimed in, "and in China."

"Self regulation is the best type of regulation," noted Martinez. "We need to have some restrictions, and try to get countries to stay away from regulating the internet."

The next Government Affairs Connections meeting is Friday, June 18.

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