The OSCE representative for Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović said yesterday during her opening speech at the two-day international conference “Internet 2013-Shaping Polices to Promote Media Freedom” that even if Internet is not the only source of media, media in 2013 is unimaginable without the Internet.
She said that this conference was the most comphrenensive one that was ever organized, and at a number of sessions she spoke about the issues of copyright, hate speech, issues of human rights, especially minorities and minors in the digital age, self-regulation, rights and responsibilities on the Internet, and of the issues that editors are facing.
‘’These types of conferences bring us together and allows us to talk about the problems and solutions, and that is exactly what the Internet is doing and we should not be so afraid’’, said Mijatović.
Speaking about media regulation, she said that regarding the regulation of the Internet we should ask ourselves what is the least painful way to do it, and how and what to protect with regulation.
She said that the conference was organized thanks to the contributions of eight countries that are members of the OSCE, which are Austria, Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Holland, Norway, USA and Great Britain.
She noted that all the sessions of this two day conference resulted in recommendations and ideas that will be compiled and available to everyone in several days, and recommendations were provided by experts in Internet legislation, representatives of the civil sector, and academics from all 57 member states of the OSCE.