On September 10, this year’s Youth IGF Germany is going to take place at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in Berlin, which is also the host organisation for the 2019 Global Internet Governance Forum. A group of 30 young people is going to draft their positions and claims for a better Internet. These messages will become part of the global Youth IGF Positions to be drafted at the upcoming Youth IGF Summit. More than 100 young people from all world regions will be involved in this process. 

Youth IGF Germany has also produced youth messages in their past meetings, so now - to look back - you can find the 2017 messages below. We are looking forward to the next edition! 

Messages of the German Youth IGF 2017

1. Copyright

We demand the standardisation of the copyright on the European level, as the current fragmentation limits the trans-national access to culture. New applications such as remixing need to be allowed and fully recognised as part of digital culture. Copyrighted material needs to be legally accessible on the Internet for educational reasons.

2. Open access

Research paid by public money needs to be accessible by the public free of charge.

3. Software liability 

Software creators need to secure the maintenance of their products so that bugs can always be fixed. The security of software needs to obtain a precautionary principle (similar to CE-marking). The producer needs to fix security gaps immediately and completely during the average lifetime of a product. When the producer decides to discontinue the maintenance it needs to publish the source code.

4. Ethical council

We call for an ethical council for digital topics on national and international level. It should create exemplary moral guidelines for algorithms. These guidelines should become a binding standard.

5. Data sovereignty

We demand data sovereignty and transparency over personal data from private and governmental institutions. Every human being should be able to understand and control who, when and what data is used on what purpose - following the privacy by design concept.

6. Control over governmental hacking
We demand more independent control for governmental hacking to counter abuse and breach of law. We call for  an independent commission with more power, resources, effective control mechanisms and the permission to publish reports.

7. No development of exploits 

Only in case of danger to life and limb governmental institutions should be allowed to hack – and exclusively known security gaps. But they should not be allowed to buy or develop exploits. This policy will protect the civil society of unknown consequences of unknown security flaws.

8. E-Government

We call for the federal, regional and local administrations to enforce the implementation of digital administration processes, while guaranteeing security of personal data these services are more user- and environmentally friendly and reduce the workload of administrational staff.

9. Digital competence

We are calling for more support for programmes, that enhance digital competencies  for all generations on federal and state level to create active, digitally literate citizens.

10. Fake News

Social media companies should only have limited responsibility for the acts of it’s users*: Therefore, we call for support to civil society initiatives, who engage in the creation of counter narratives and revealing fake news – through financial funds, support for their public relations efforts as well as with a stronger recognition of their activities on federal and state level and by the platforms themselves.