Nicolas Sarkozy addresses the E-G8 Forum

The E-G8 Forum (or simply the eG8) was an invitation-only

summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used only for ...

of leaders in government and industry focusing on the Internet in the context of global

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a Group decision-making, decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to Problem solving, solve or address relevant and problematic social issues, guided by a conceptio ...

. The event was put on by Publicis Groupe and was convened by French President

Nicolas Sarkozy Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa ( ; ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012. In 2021, he was found guilty of having tried to bribe a judge in 2014 to obtain information ...

from May 24-25th 2011, prior to the

37th G8 summit The 37th G8 summit was held on 26–27 May 2011 in Deauville, France. Previous G8 summits have been hosted by France in locations which include 1st G6 summit, Rambouillet (1975); 8th G7 summit, Versailles (1982); 15th G7 summit, Grande Arche, Pa ...

, and was held at the

Tuileries Garden The Tuileries Garden (, ) is a public garden between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. Created by Catherine de' Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564, it was opened to the public in ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Origin

The idea for the event came up on a blog post by

Tariq Krim Tariq Krim (born October 25, 1972, in Paris) is a French entrepreneur, creator of Netvibes and the founder of Jolicloud, a personal cloud computing, cloud content computing platform and Joli OS, a free operating system based on the Jolicloud pla ...

in which the founder of

Netvibes Netvibes is a French subsidiary of Dassault Group that previously ran a World Wide Web, web service offering a Dashboard (computing), dashboard and feed reader. History 2005–2012 Founded in 2005 by Tariq Krim, the company provided software f ...

complained that France doesn't have its own CTO. The blog post was reposted by Arnaud Dassier and

Loïc Le Meur Loïc Le Meur (born 14 July 1972) is a French entrepreneur and blogger. He served as Executive Vice President EMEA at software company Six Apart after merging French blogging company Ublog with Six Apart in July 2004. In late 2006 Le Meur became a ...

, and read by the Elysée's technical counsellor Nicolas Princen, who then convinced

to take a step towards the French digital natives after the failure of

Hadopi The French HADOPI law (, English: "Supreme Authority for the Distribution of Works and Protection of Copyright on the Internet") or Creation and Internet law () was introduced during 2009, providing what is known as a graduated response as a mean ...

Attendees

The conference, which was the first of its kind, was a meeting of international government figures and those in the global technology industry. It included participants such as

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the ...

from

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Sheryl Sandberg Sheryl Kara Sandberg (born August 28, 1969) is an American technology executive, philanthropist, and writer. Sandberg served as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she stepped down in August 2022. She is also ...

and

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

from

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American List of Internet entrepreneurs, Internet entrepreneur and former Trader (finance), financial trader. He is a Founders of Wikipedia, co-founder of the non-profi ...

from the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

, French Minister of the Economy

Christine Lagarde Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde (; , ; born 1 January 1956) is a French politician and lawyer who has been the President of the European Central Bank since 2019. She previously served as the 11th Managing Director of the International Monetar ...

Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian - American retired business magnate, investor, and media mogul. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of List of assets owned by News Corp, local, national, a ...

from

News Corp The second and current incarnation of News Corporation, doing business as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The company was formed on ...

, and was opened with a speech by Sarkozy. A few invitees, such as author

Cory Doctorow Cory Efram Doctorow (; born 17 July 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog ''Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of th ...

, refused to attend in protest before it even began, and claimed the event was, more or less, a PR stunt financed by the advertising industry and Sarkozy's connections to Publicis Group.

Content and reactions

The discussion over the two-day meeting surfaced many tensions between technologists and policy makers. In general, Sarkozy led a camp pushing for further

government regulation Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. F ...

(such as

HADOPI law The French HADOPI law (, English: "Supreme Authority for the Distribution of Works and Protection of Copyright on the Internet") or Creation and Internet law () was introduced during 2009, providing what is known as a graduated response as a mean ...

in France) to protect minors, prevent or punish

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of Copyright#Scope, works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the c ...

, and to encourage economic growth through

electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to Commerce, commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling Goods and services, products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on tec ...

. Participants such as

John Perry Barlow John Perry Barlow (October 3, 1947February 7, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for th ...

Yochai Benkler Yochai Benkler ( ; born 1964) is an Israeli-American author and the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Univers ...

, Zuckerberg, and Schmidt spoke out during the event against tight regulatory control of the Internet. While the forum was publicized as a way for technology leaders to participate in the G8's thinking on Internet-related public policy, a copy of a communique from the G8 which was composed before the closing of the Forum was leaked to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''.

References

External links

{{Commons category, E-G8
g8internet.com
a protest site

O'Reilly Radar G7 summits 2011 in Paris 2011 conferences Internet governance