I recently attended the National Conference for Media Reform in order to build bridges between Internet governance and advocates of free speech and media reform.
I recently attended the National Conference for Media Reform in order to build bridges between Internet governance and advocates of free speech and media reform.
The purpose of the workshop, the first of its sort, is to allow scholars involved in Internet Governance related research to describe their ongoing research projects to other scholars in the field, in order to share ideas, forge possible collaborations, and identify emerging research themes in the field. Scholars from various academic disciplines and all regions of the world are expected to contribute to this reflexive exercise, with the long-term objective of collectively building this interdisciplinary research field.
This is a press-release from ISOC-Bulgaria; as ISOC.bg website is going through changes, I prefer to publish it here, and at the ISOC’s site there is a link to this article.
Internet Society Bulgaria being an active participant at the WSIS and IGF , expresses their views for the coming IGF in Hyderabad, India.
Need for new participants
The IGF has a tendency of slowly shifting from a place of a discussion about the way the world accesses information resources, into a place where only topics that make the headlines are being highlighted, with many of the same players being among the loudest speakers. We believe that due to cross-cultural reasons, these people are mainly coming from North America and western Europe. We urge the IGF to allocate equal time for people from regions outside of those two. Having that in mind, we urge the participating organizations to send new people to the IGF in Hyderabad, and also to try to send as many young people as possible. The IGF needs new people, carrying the young spirit of the new Information Society.
Contents of the discussions at the IGF
We believe that some of the topics like security and critical internet resources and diversity seem to be explored extensively already (also at other forums), and the biggest challenge continues to be how to connect the rest 5 billion people on the planet. We see no real attention paid to the under-connected nations; we see no real attention paid to the digital divide in the developed countries themselves - between the big cities and the small towns. We see that some of the proponents of the agenda of the workshops and plenaries, coming from the developed countries, do not take any steps to ensure competition among the Internet Service Providers in their own countries (one such an example is the USA and the behavior of some of the American Internet Governance Civil Society Professionals). In the era of the climate change threat, we see not serious attention paid to the Environmental Sustainability theme in the discussion, as it is inextricably bound up with development of the Information and communications technologies.
Suggestions
We would like to propose an open poll - for all participants at the IGF, to name what are the three or five most important issues for them. Based on this poll, we suggest focusing the discussions at the remaining IGF meetings. For us, in Bulgaria these are, in random order:
- assaults on freedom of the Internet and freedom of access to the Internet - by the Interior Ministry, and by the Business Software Alliance (here and here)
- corruption deals of Microsoft with the Ministry of State Administration
- the monopoly of the .bg domain name registry
The world-wide poll (survey) is here:
What are the five most important Internet-related issues in your country?
About
Internet Society - Bulgaria is a non-governmental organization (NGO), founded on December 4, 1995 in Sofia by a group of Bulgarian Internet professionals. It became known world-wide in 1999, when it sued the government of Ivan Kostov against the proposed licensing of the Internet Service Providers in Bulgaria. In 2001, through ISOC-Bulgaria’s influence, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) remained outside of the monopoly of the national telecom, which allowed a great variety of new Internet services to start in Bulgaria. ISOC-Bulgaria is a non-governmental organization for public profit, and represents users. More information can be found at ISOC.bg site.
The Second IGF meeting held in Rio raised , in one of its workshops on last November 13th, a latent and to-date crucial issue, a Development Agenda for Internet Governance.
Panelists and participants discussed about the importance of considering a development perspective into internet governance mechanisms, institutions, principles and initiatives; and also offered a brainstorming of possible approaching ways. Some of those ideas were to follow a top-down approach; to analyze the impact on development some controversial issues of internet governance such as freedom of expression, privacy, intellectual property among others have on development, and the way they interact to each other; to take into account existing differences in markets, decision-making processes and regions; to consider development as a cross-cutting issue among the Internet Governance themes -access, openness, diversity and security- and as a way to evaluate their performance; to take into account not only implementing businesses practices in the community but also empowering ICT to ordinary people because they know how to use it for development and reducing poverty; and last but not least to build a development agenda by the aggregation of related issues or by a horizontal approach considering how key Internet Governance principles of multilateralism, transparency and democracy impact on development.
[Editors note: Below is a summary of discussions which will feed into a report on the "DNSSEC: Securing a Critical Internet Resource" workshop held at IGF-Rio on November 14th.]
This informative workshop, co-sponsored by the Internet Governance Project, CGI.br, and EuroISPA, drew approximately 80-90 attendees from government, civil society, the private sector and technical communities. While the multi-stakeholder panel brought a diversity of opinions regarding DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), they agreed that improving the security of the Internet’s infrastructure is an important activity which should be pursued.
In general, there are two camps concerning the deployment of DNSSEC, which is a technical standard that requires coordination among many actors to be successfully deployed on a wide-scale basis. One side is ready to proceed with deployment, particularly the hurdle of creating a “trust anchor” key and digitally signing the root zone file. The other is more cautious in its approach, believing that the successful deployment of DNSSEC is subject to many open technical and governance questions.
Reflection on what was wrong and what was right with the Rio Internet Governance Forum is not waiting for the February 25 "stocktaking" session planned by the IGF's Secretariat. Civil society advisory group member Adam Peake has already opened an interesting dialogue on the governance list. I have some opinions about that...
Too much of the energy of the Forum and its participants is being thrown away on issues that are not global in scope, and have nothing to do with global governance of the Internet. We all must pay closer attention to the distinction between issues that are best addressed at the national, local or regional levels and those that truly require global coordination and global institutions. IGF should be restricted to the global. If the truly global governance issues are actually quite narrow and specialized, and don't include the issues that turn you on, so be it. Those who are fundamentally not interested in those issues should find a more appropriate venue for their activities. The disappointing thing about IGF 2 was that the dialogue was so cluttered with things that do not require or will never get international coordination or agreement that it was impossible to focus on the things that do.
As a contribution to the 2007 UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF), IGP has released a new paper showing how network neutrality can serve as a globally applicable principle to guide Internet governance. The paper defines network neutrality as the right of Internet users to access content, services and applications on the Internet without interference from network operators or overbearing governments. It also encompasses the right of network operators to be reasonably free of liability for transmitting content and applications deemed illegal or undesirable by third parties. Those aspects of net neutrality are relevant in a growing number of countries and situations, as both public and private actors attempt to subject the Internet to more control.
An important part of the mandate of the Internet Governance Forum is to develop globally applicable public policy principles for Internet governance. The paper contends that the principle of network neutrality combines and integrates concepts of universal access to the resources connected to the Internet, freedom of expression, economic innovation, and free trade in digital products and services.
The global debate on Internet governance will once again gather people from all over the world at UN’s IGF, this time in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The process was started last year in Athens, when more than 1,200 participants focused on discussion of the overarching issues tied to the future of information and communications technologies, including control over the Internet architecture and numbering and naming system, security, intellectual property, openness, connectivity, cost and multilingualism.
The IGF’s innovative multi-stakeholder format, designed to grant governments, NGOs, and commerce an equal seat at the table, was praised by many as an evolution from the bounds of classical diplomacy. But the role of the IGF as a pure discussion forum — “a neutral, non-binding and non-duplicative process” as the EU presidency put it — and the absence of a more formalized output were intensively discussed by several governments and NGOs, Brazilians included. Blogs report:
Great expectations and a good dose of self criticism will surely be present at the Second Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which will take place in November in Rio de Janeiro. The occurrence of the IGF in Brazil was the result of a big effort of the local government, and the discussions will focus not only on the conventional issues related with the virtual environment, but also on the foundational purposes of the IGF process. In a significant evolution from its last meeting in Athens — which was characterized by the absence of deliberative power — the IGF in Rio will position the present Internet governance model and the IGF’s mandate as central themes of the forum.
II Forum de Governança da Internet - Dialógico
A revised draft program for the event, and the definition of the items of debate in each of the five thematic axes — access, diversity, openness, security and critical Internet resources — were the results of the IGF’s multi-stakeholder Advisory Group meeting in Geneva last week. A civil society appointee of the Brazilian delegation blogged about the meeting and its outcomes.
The main debate in this meeting of the multi-stakeholder Advisory Group focused on defining the items of the ‘critical internet resources’ thematic axis. The Brazilian delegation fought an almost solitary fight to include issues like interconnection costs, telecommunications infrastructure, root-servers administration, and names and numbers registry… the IGF’s multi-stakeholder format is at the same time its biggest strength and also its frailness. How to reach decisions in a meeting with actors from such different natures? And in the long run, what is the use of a forum that does not decide anything? In order to discuss IGF’s mandate and find answers to the previous questions, one of the main panels will be “taking stock and the way forward”. This was proposed by the Brazilian delegation and opposed by the “ICANN group” [who have been against the IGF’s very existence], but finally approved as part of the official programme… The third dispute was to decide if the IGF would or would not produce a final report. In this case, Brazil managed to attract the EU to its position defending that, although the IGF-Rio still won’t produce a final document [voted by the plenary], it will at least generate a report reflecting the diverse positions presented… Once again, and suffering strong opposition from the “ICANN group”, Brazil has supported the concept of an “Athens Plus” for the IGF-Rio, or a going beyond what happened in Athens 2006.
Gustavo Gindre direto de Genebra - PSL Brasil
There are two other interesting issues in the UN Press Release. It explicitly mentions that the Advisory Group has been tasked to make proposals on “a suitable rotation among its members”. This reflects a concern among civil society groups who suspect that unless some rules of procedures are established the multi-stakeholder approach will degenerate into some nontransparent back-room deals by a few self-appointed buddies. The fact that the UN addresses this concern indicates a comprehensive care for the IGF’s legitimacy which includes the views of non-governmental actors. The second remarkable issue concerns the mandate of the IGF. The press release announces “critical internet resources” as an additional fifth theme on the IGF’s agenda. Similar to old WSIS days, the G-77 countries forcefully made the point at the May 23 consultations that the question of DNS and IP address management needs be tackled in the context of the IGF to fulfill the Tunis Agenda. The UN press release acknowledges this claim by referring to its widespread support. So far, the UN’s political support structure for the IGF strives to be inclusive and to balance the concerns of the various stakeholders. No major mistakes have been made.
IGF’s MAG renewed: government flex muscles? - IGP
Apart from the Brazilian interest in the IGF — with preparatory events at FGV and Nupef — which in great part comes from being the host country, the event doesn’t seem to be attracting much global attention at the moment. The Italian government is organizing a preparatory event in Rome, specially focusing on Internet rights, and the Open Society Institute for Southern Africa (OSISA) is preparing to send a 20-member delegation to Rio, but that’s all we can trace on the blogosphere right now.
In regard of an event intended to hold the global dialog on Internet governance, and which has as one of its main goals reaching out for a broad remote participation, we are not seeing yet any preparation of participatory channels for the event in terms of interactive web interfaces. But, as the Brazilian government has announced efforts to assure the participation of all interested sectors of society, especially focusing on Brazil and Latin America, we are hoping to hear more about it soon.
In contrast with the almost reticent coverage of the IGF-Rio by the media and the blogs, there was an event last week that caught the attention of almost everyone involved with the Internet: Google’s call for web privacy laws. Extensively covered by all kinds of media, the venue did not go unnoticed. It was at the UN’s Strasburg conference where the company’s privacy chief Peter Fleischer choose to make his announcement. This meeting was the third of a cycle of regional UNESCO’s conferences on the ethical dimensions of the information society and was intended as a contribution to the implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and preparatory to the Internet Governance Forum. Surely, the success of an international privacy standards initiative will depend on support from many stakeholders. Some are wondering if this move by Google could be a signal that it plans to use the UN as a platform to reach out for global consensus?
He [Peter Fleischer] described a typical scenario of an online transaction, involving a French consumer that uses a North American website. This North American web page can have data processing centers in many countries and the customer service may proceed from India. “Each time a person uses the credit card, the information can cross six or seven borders”, said Fleischer mentioning the importance of reaching global patterns for privacy protection of the internauts. Asked about the reason why Google chose to propose a global privacy agenda instead of approaching Washington, Fleischer showed resignation about the North-American simplifying policies. “I honestly don’t believe that changes will occur in this Congress”, he said. “The global debate will help to motivate the debate in the US.”
Google propõe padrão mundial de privacidade - Cdigitalizando
As the Internet Governance Forum continues to evolve definitions of the potential UN role in promoting the global debate on the future of the Information Age, stake-holders from small to large are also in the process of defining themselves, their agendas and their participation in the new worlds of cyberspace governance. The November meetings of IGF-Rio could be the place where many conversations and initiatives rise from blog-talk into a world view.
The attached paper suggests approaches to both, by showing how the MAG is consistent with past practice and its composition can be adapted. It argues that the funding for the IGF Secretariat should be built into the assessed budget of the United Nations in order to ensure continuity and permit medium-term planning.
When the EU and US disagree, and there is wide divergence of interest among the rest of the world, we will get "sham" standards, putative global governance principles that don't mean anything and can't be enforced. Drezner puts our beloved Article 19 in this category. Ouch. But he's right about its effectiveness, isn't he? And when the EU and US disagree and have clusters of allies around the world we will get rival governance standards, like in the case of genetically modified foods.