2014年4月， 腾讯公司副总法律顾问、公共战略研究部总经理司晓博士受邀出访牛津大学，与牛津大学法学院、牛津大学互联网研究所、牛津大学比较传媒法项目组等进行了交流。司晓博士通过研讨会和演讲等形式向大家介绍了中国互联网产业、政策立法及腾讯的发展成就。
在牛津普莱斯国际传媒法模拟法庭竞赛期间，司晓博士以“网聚智慧，连接世界”为题发表了主题演讲，并与参加模拟法庭竞赛的师生进行了热烈的交流。以下为演讲实录。
网聚智慧，连接世界
Gathering Wisdom , Connecting the World
——在牛津大学法学院的演讲
司晓
OxfordLaw,April 2014,
Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen,
It has been a great honor to be invited to come to Oxford,one of the world’s top lawschools with brilliant history. Oxford was my dreamschool back to the time whenI was still in law school, and I believe thatwould be the same for many Chineselaw students and law students around theworld. I guess that is also one of thereasons why Price Moot Court chooses tobe held right in here. Before kickingoff the speech I would like to introducemyself. I am Jason Si, and I am thevice deputy counsel of Chinese internetcompany Tencent.
Speaking of internet companies, I am sure the first namesthat run into your mind wouldbe Google, Facebook or Amazon. May I ask aquestion, how many of you have heardabout Tencent? (Yes, Tencent, not tendollars or ten pounds. Thanks for thosehands and one of them is my colleague).Actually, Tencent is the fourth biggestinternet company in the world in termsof market value, right after the namesthat I have just mentioned. I have beenworking in the internet industry forquite a while, so the key word of thisspeech, as you can imagine, will beinternet, and I would also like to talkabout the development of the Chineseinternet industry and the path of Tencent.Since cyber law has becomeincreasingly important as the industry rockets, andit is quite relevant to thetopic of the moot court, I will also share with yousome of my opinionsregarding this at the end of the speech.
Internet
The Chinese internet industry first made its baby steps in1990s.
The China Internet Network Information Center published its33rd Statistic Report on China’s InternetNetwork Development inJanuary 2014. According to the Report, up to December2013, there are618,000,000 internet users and the internet penetration rate hasreached 45.8%.The local internet service provider prospers in the domesticmarket while their business has shown some Chinese characteristics. For example,the most popularinternet service in China is instant messenger and onlinegames, which havedone even better than the average global performance. Taking Tencent as anexample, Tencent was founded in 1998 and published QQ in 1999,which has becomethe most popular instant messenger in China with more than 200 million usersonline at the same time. Have any one of you used WeChat? Pleaseraise yourhand. Thank you. Tencent brought out WeChat in 2011, and the numberof WeChatusers has reached six hundred million in 2014, including a hundredmillionoverseas users. Additionally, most of the giant internet serviceplatforms in China provide integrated service to their users. As described byTencent’sslogan, the company aims at improving thequality of human life by providinginternet service. Through providing instantmessengers such as QQ and WeChat,social blogging platforms such as Qzone,mobile internet service, online games,online malls and commercial service, wehave brought together China’s largestInternet community where users may log into our different services with onesingle account and do what they need incommunication, information,entertainment, e-commerce and others. Just for yourinformation, Tencent isalso the largest online games provider by revenue in2013. Tencent in 2011acquired the majority stake of the Riot Games, thedeveloper of League of Legends,and LOL has now become one of the most played PCgames in North American and Europe.
MobileInternet
Now we are in the mobile internet era .The 2013 of theChinese internet industrywitnessed a boost in the mobile end users, which havefurther encouraged thedevelopment of multiple mobile apps. As of December2013, there are around fivehundred million mobile users in China who usemobile phones as their major wayto get connected to the internet, and thenumber has grown by 19.1% comparing tothe previous year. With more than 81.0%of the internet users using mobilephones to surf the internet, mobile phoneremains the dominant tool to getconnected to the cyber world. With theincreasing use of smartphones, mobileservice has been designed to be morerelated to real life. For instance, mobilesocial apps such as WeChat, Viber,Uber-like-app that allows you to book a taxi,or apps that can make paymentthrough scanning a QR code. We want to provide aneven more convenient app inthe mobile internet system, so as you can imagine,all of the above functionsare included in WeChat. In order to take care ofcertain privacy concern that auser may have while using WeChat, we have themobile application covered by theTRUSTe program and a TRUSTe Privacy Sealawarded by the leading global dataprivacy management company.
Internet+ How internet has changed thetraditional industry
The internet is playing an increasingly essential role inreshaping the traditionalindustry. It is quite obvious that traditionalindustries are actively trying toredefine their development model by learningfrom the internet mindset andtechnology. Internet finance, which is currentlya very popular topic in China,first raised our attention when the UK P2P loanservice ZOPA and US Kickstarterwas introduced to the world. Lately we havecome up with something cool anddifferent: the WeChat Wealth Management. WeChatWealth Management is where weprovide WeChat users with an access to purchasecurrency fund within themessenger, sounds amazing isn’t it. WeChat WealthManagement raised around ten billion RMB just oneweek after it came out. Wealso incorporated a taxi-booking app into WeChat,which means passengers nolonger need to download another app to book a cab, andcab drivers become moreefficient in their business.
Now let’s start to talk about cyberlaw with a western idiom:ubi soceietas,ibi ius, which means where there is a society there is law. Theworld ofinternet changes with each passing day, and the unknown is alwaysgreater thanthe known. When new technology and applications are invented, theyalso bringalong a lot of new challenges without existing solutions, which thencalls forthe constant improvement of the legal system. As for the copyrightmechanism,the development of the internet industry challenges the traditionalcopyrightsystem with new broadcasting technology, while in turns theamelioration of thecopyright will serve as a better systematic base for thedevelopment of theindustry.
The copyright system is always associated with the inventionof new technology eversince it was first implemented. The first moderncopyright law, the Statute ofAnne, was passed in 1710, when the law firstcited the protection of an author’s personalright, though limited to the workat the time. Throughout the following 300years, the copyright system evolvedas the revolution of new technologycontinued, which include the invention ofradio, camera, and the computer.Computer is the most revolutionary inventionthat challenges the traditionalcopyright system.
The United States published Digital Millennium CopyrightAct, DMCA for short, in1998. DMCA cited the Safe Harbor principle for theinternet service provideragainst copyright liability if they are onlyproviding online storage withoutdealing with the content. However, if theservice providers receive noticeregarding content that infringes copyright,they have the legal obligation todelete the content. If the right-infringingcontent is not stored with theinternet service provider nor does the providerreceive any notice, the serviceprovider will be shielded from liability byinvoking the safe harbor principle.The Chinese law has similar rules in place.
A lot of countries have drafted new online copyrightprotection laws to fight backincreasing online piracy, the most famous onebeing the French HADOPI law orCreation and Internet law, which says thatinternet service provider mayblacklist the repeat infringer after appropriatenotice for three times. In 2011the US legislator proposed copyrightlegislation that enables the government toapply for restraint order andprohibit certain internet service providers fromdealing with an infringingwebsite. (PIPA and SOPA)Though these rules do nottake the lead of the globallegislation, it worth a second thought on what kindof responsibility theinternet service provider shall take, and what kind ofliability assessmentmechanism shall be in place. Gone are the days withoutinternet, and we need tothink about the balance between the freedom of internetand the protection ofcopyright.
Then it comes to privacy and personal data protection. Theconcept of privacy rightwas introduced in 1890, and the EU Data ProtectionDirective became effective in1995, which is the most important law regardingpersonal data protection. As weall know, the EU countries have established aunified legislation framework onpersonal information protection with specificdata authority in place, and posesstrict limits on cross border data transferwithin the EU territory. The US, incomparison, tendsto provide only general guidelines to the private market andrelies on acombination of legislation, regulation and self-regulation indealing withpersonal information. Personal information is relevant to each ofus sittinghere, and to find out the balance between the protection of personaldata andthe development of the internet under a protective legal model wouldbesomething interesting to think about.
I hope I have made myself clear in talking aboutthe abovementioned internet legalissues, and there are also some otherinteresting topics, such as netneutrality, which we cannot cover today due tothe limit of time. There are waytoo many research topics in world of internet,and that is the reason why wehave TISI.
Mootcourtis no doubt one of the key extra curriculums for law school studentsaround theworld. By participating in moot court you will learn how to preparelegaldocuments, how to conduct effective legal research before you become areallawyer, and it definitely practice your reasoning ability andexpressiveness bymaking arguments in front of the audiences. The adversarymodel is a uniquesetting to generate new ideas. Do you have any idea what isthe biggestdifference between civil law system and common law system? Civil lawstudentsare sleeping when their professors are talking, but in the common lawsystem,the professors are sleeping when their students are talking .
Dear ladies and gentlemen, the internet connectsthe world and gathers wisdom. It isthe internet law that makes this virtualworld an organized world. The Chineseinternet legislation is still exploringits way, and as the biggest player inthe Chinese internet industry, we wouldlove to know more about theinternational internet legal research. We highlyvalue the opportunity to visitOxford and to hear the thoughts from you. Thisis exactly what we want to dowhen considering what TISI’s slogan should be. Wethank for a wonderful opportunity like this,and I look forward to yourperformance in the moot court. Again, feel free totalk to me or email TISI ifyou have any questions. Thank you.
