How to run your bill review event — campaigns around Digital Intermediate Service Draft Act at Mozilla Taiwan community
Notes of the sharing on Mozilla Reps’ Call, 2022/9/22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPw7oyFDrrM
Background
On June 29, the Taiwan NCC (local version of FCC) proposed the draft “Internet Intermediate Service Act”. It was largely referenced to the EU “Digital Service Act” and the UK “Online Safety Bill”. The main goal is to regulate large internet intermediate service platforms, such as FB and Line, as well as AWS, CDNs, and ISPs. And asking for more responsibility on them. Enforce transparency and procedure of notice & takedown, account blocking, and try to draft a outline for government to deal with online misinformation.
Civil worker creates a co-work hackmd co-pad to collect all relative info on G0v hackathon on Aug 20, and we begin to plan the bill review event.
https://g0v.hackmd.io/@mrorz/ncc-disa/
Read more
The draft law proposed by the National Communications Commission (NCC) last month that aims to increase the accountability and transparency of large online platforms in Taiwan is largely based on the EU’s Digital Services Act, digital policy experts told CNA on Sunday
— https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202207030015A proposed bill to regulate the content of online platforms has been shelved, amid heavy criticism from service providers and the public, who have expressed concerns about the implications for free speech, privacy and the future of the internet industry
— https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202208200008
The bill review event
2017 — the first draft “Internet Act” review event
We had host a review event for the formal version of this internet bill (Digital Communication Dissemination Act) on 2017, focus on the net neutrality, but also reviewed the whole act. The author of the draft bill from NCC also joined the discussion. It had not passed the legislative procedure in the end due to the “government regulate internet” issue.
2022/8/27 & 9/17 - The Digital Intermediate Service Draft Act review events
For this updated bill, we host the discussion event (again) to review the bill line by line. It took us two afternoons (on Aug 27 & Sep 17, 1–6 pm each day). About 40+ participants on the first day and 20+ on the second one. The participants included students, lawyers, researchers, engineers, NGO workers, and other backgrounds.
Here is the colloboration notes during the event — https://g0v.hackmd.io/@irvin/20220827-digital-act
Photos,
YouTube streaming
8/27 —
9/17 —
Meetup to compare and discuss the same and differences between DSA, Online Safety Bill, and draft Intermediate Bill
And we host another discussion event during the “IFF internet freedom monthly meetup” on Sep 22 with professor Yachi Chiang from college of law and policy, the event focus on the same and difference of DSA, Online Safety Bill and this intermediate draft Act.
14 steps to prepare a bill review event
Here are the steps and the suggestion if you would like to host a similar event,
1) Secure a venue with projector, chairs with multiple wireless mic. We set up like this: host’s table on front with projector. If there are less people, you can consider do a round table, but ensure everyone can have the projecting screen in the sight.
2) Water and toilet is necessary. It took a long time for such discussions.
3) Prepare a co-note (hackmd, google doc…) with the bill’s context. Ask participants to take notes during the discussion. It will be beneficial for others and would be the most important result of the whole event
4) If the draft doc were in pdf, you will need to convert them and get some people to double-check the conversion. It would be much easier (to add notes, search and cross-reference) to work on online docs rather than a pdf file. https://g0v.hackmd.io/jKDwUF3cTgOdI-yZHITthA
5) Plan for streaming or at least recording videos. Recommend to direct stream to YT as records (FB as well if you can reach more people).
6) Invite related organizations to joint-host the event. We invite the Open Culture Foundation ( ocf.tw ), Taiwan Association for Human Rights, and PTT BBS to co-host the event.
7) One people from each org to be the host and co-facilitate the discussion. During our discussion, one of us will read each act article, and we ask each host to comments first, and than attendees
8) Open a registration page (on FB, meetup, Eventbrite… etc.)
9) Do some promotions, e.g., open FB events, ask people to share via SNS, post to the mailing list, and IM groups such as telegram or matrix.
10) Invite people from different background to join. Lawers or law school students &teachers can help answer many questions during the discussion. Legislators or staff from their offices and researchers from governments are also helpful.
11) Review the act line by line (article by article) and note down every problem, issue, mistake, recommendation, questions… etc.
12) We also ask co-hosts to introduce their organization’s overall opinion at the beginning of the event
13) Mozillians already had ideas of internet privacy, net neutrality, platform liability, and algorithms. Although we don’t major in legal, we indeed can do meanful discussions and provide important response to the draft act.
14) If you had time you can also write some articles about it after the event and take co-note as reference.
