Transcriber: Emma Gon Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
I'm going to ask you to start with a little exercise.
Try to imagine what the world would be without Internet.
(White noise sound)
It's really hard to imagine that today.
And that's because the Internet has empowered us
to do so many things.
It's been a wonderful enabler.
It enables people to do the things they couldn't do before,
economic activities, unknown, otherwise learning.
We are exploring fantastic new ways to learn
and democracy as well.
Which why is really I think
that Internet neutrality should be a human right.
Just like I need to drink, well,
I don't drink the Internet, but I need to have access to the Internet.
So I really think it has to be protected.
One way that we've been using is what's called
net neutrality.
I'm going to read you the principle
according to which all Internet traffic
is treated equally, without discrimination,
restriction or interference, independently of its sender,
recipient, type, content,
device, service or application.
That's a long description.
To try to make it clear, I'm making an analogy.
Imagine a phone call.
I'm calling a friend of mine who lives in New York, Eduardo,
and I decide to talk to Eduardo about my work.
And, you know, here in Europe is really tough now,
and we talk for about 10 minutes, from France to New York,
and that call would cost us one dollar.
Now imagine that same situation, I'm calling again Eduardo in New York,
from the same place, and we're going to talk about movies,
because I like Al Pacino, so we say that was a nice movie,
and that call would cost 3 dollars,
simply because we chose a different topic.
Even worse, imagine that I want to talk with Eduardo,
always in New York, always for 10 minutes,
about my political views, which may be different from
the political views of the phone company I'm using.
Maybe the call will cost $9.00
or maybe, even worse, the call would be completely blocked.
So it's really important that we have a neutral Internet,
without worrying about what's happening behind the doors,
because, unless we have that, we cannot make an open government,
we cannot have a good democracy, even good healthcare,
and so many other aspects that now are fundamental.
So it's really important that we have open access to all,
because that lowers the barriers to innovation.
Imagine, I am an individual, maybe in an isolated place.
I come up with a brilliant idea.
Thanks to the web,
If I have free access to it, I can try to gather
a number of people behind me and, who knows,
maybe I can change the world for the better.
So, it's really important,
because creation is only limited by our imagination,
if we have access to the Internet.
It's very important to be aware now
of what's happening, just last week here,
the European Parliament was in favor of net neutrality.
Whereas, a few months ago, in the United States,
we had a vote, which was going against it.
I think it would be really interesting
to find a way to have a global solution,
instead of having each one individually
trying to come up with a solution.
Also, because what we are doing now
is going to cause an impact in the next decades to come.
And since I really believe deeply
that knowledge and free sharing can make me a better person,
I want to make sure that my daughters, too,
they're going to have a free Internet.
(Applause)