[EuroDig Interview] Simona Popa, Romania

Simona Popa is a Romanian national living in Brussels and took the European Capacity Development Programme and is part of the team coming for the EuroDig in Geneva next week.

DIPLO IGCBP: Simona, you recently took a capacity building programme with Diplo. What was the reason that brought you to explore this field?

SIMONA: Internet is one of the fields that relate to my professional activities. Looking at it from a regulatory point of view raises more questions than I had thought; it is a relatively new communication medium with a lot of opportunities but quite a few pitfalls as well. I joined the Diplo programme hoping I would be closer to finding answers.

It has been a great pleasure to experience this type of programme - based on knowledge sharing especially as the group was very diverse. Differences of opinion stimulate the best discussions and bring out the strongest arguments.

DIPLO IGCBP: Tell us more about the current situation in your country: what do you see as the main challenges ahead? What are the main topics of interest for you in Internet governance? And how do you expect to touch these issues on the EuroDig?

SIMONA: In Romania, internet caught on quite late compared to others European countries as the country was in almost complete isolation from the rest of Europe until 1989. I myself started to use the internet only in the late '90s - computers were very expensive, access was scarce and connections very slow. I believe Romania is catching up now both in terms of availability, infrastructure and use. Some of the key issues for Romania are security of the infrastructure and privacy awareness. Piracy of online content is also a big problem.

DIPLO IGCBP: What are the professional and research projects you would like to continue over the next years? What type of people would you like to be connected to for these goals?

SIMONA: I would be interested in looking into how a flat rate for the internet would work with a view to facilitate circulation and (re)use of content on the internet without infringing copyright while offering a fair compensation to those involved in the making of the content. There is already some literature in this sense but it does not describe in detail and in practical terms how this type of system would work for the whole food chain. Or, for the same reason, I would like to get knowledge on any other model that would help achieve the same goals.


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This interview is part of a series with participants from the European Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme (although in this case our guest Vedran took the Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme). Diplo IGCBP stands for Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme and you can find more on our Facebook profile, the Internet Governance Capacity Building page on Facebook or the Twitter for Internet Governance