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Lessig on Digital Barbarism
Lawrence Lessig has posted a review of David Halperin's recent book, Digital Barbarism.
Halperin, who authored the (in)famous New York Times article calling for perpetual copyright, has now compiled his ideas into a book. Lessig offers a much-needed critique, including citing misconceptions about Creative Commons (Halperin conflates it not only with "freeware" with software... more
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The Internet Governance Forum: A story in its beginning, middle or end?
Heather Ford · Johannesburg (South Africa) · Jul 31st, 2006 9:12 am · 20 votes · no comments made
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 I was in Geneva last week at the 'Experts Meeting on the Internet Governance Forum'. The meeting was organised by the Consumer Project on Technology, the South Centre and the Third World Network, and we discussed the possibility of taking issues such as the Access to Knowledge Treaty to the newly formed Internet Governance Forum (IGF).
Remember the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)? Well, at the final session of WSIS, the delegates drafted the 'Tunis Agenda' which asked the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, to convene a 'new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue'. Some say that the IGF was just a way for the US representatives to draw attention away from the impasse over critical aspects of the WSIS Declaration (including issues around intellectual property alternatives). But James Love from CPTech is determined that this isn't just another talk shop ' which is why he brought us together in Geneva to talk strategy with regards to the upcoming conference in Athens in November.
Love is excited by the fact that this is a multi-stakeholder forum that will give equal voice not just to governments and the private sector, but to members of civil society and technicians too. Others are positive about the open mandate of the IGF which includes the exchange of information and best practices, and capacity building for internet governance in developing countries.
What I found most interesting about this planning meeting were the debates around a) strategy and b) governance of the IGF ' especially because of the current discussions we've been having at iCommons about these two topics.
There were heated debates about what strategy civil society groupings (like those who propose alternatives to the current ICANN structure) should employ when trying to make maximum impact on governments at the IGF. Should they propose workshops that point out the undemocratic nature of the current structure? Or should they spend the majority of their time talking about alternative models that have been proposed, and the benefits of each model?
It seems as though the IGF has already decided what format the workshops should take. According to the Secretariat, workshops that represent the multi-stakeholder approach of the forum (i.e. with representatives from government, private sector, civil society etc) will probably be chosen over those that represent only one perspective. For example, if Creative Commons wanted to propose a workshop on 'Open Content Licences and Collecting Societies', they would probably have to involve representatives from collecting societies in order for the workshop to be accepted.
According to the IGF, if there is then some consensus between participants around an issue, groups are able to form what is called 'dynamic coalitions' which will be represented in the final report.
I'm happy to say that iCommons gave the secretariat some advice when participants from the workshop asked whether the IGF will put these 'dynamic coalitions' on their website, thereby 'sanctioning' them. I showed them what we had started to do with nodes on the iCommons wiki ' providing a space and, in the future, tools for nodes to grow and develop under the iCommons banner, suited their purposes well. We may just have the UN employing a derivative of our own strategy!
With regards to governance, Milton Mueller (who wrote a book called 'Ruling the Root') talked about the suggestions that his organisation, The Internet Governance Project had made to the IGF on governance structures. 'Building an Internet Governance Forum' is an interesting piece on what they believe are the most important design criteria for such a global, UN forum:
a) It must be as open as possible and give all stakeholders equal participation rights;
b) Its deliberations must be wide-ranging and resist politically motivated barriers to discussion; and
c) Its products must feed into other, more authoritative internet governance forums.
Above: The proposed structure of the IGF.
With permission from the Internet Governance Project.
This thoughtful paper made me reflect on the discussions that we've been having about governance within iCommons.
iCommons is far from the UN. We have very different goals and we should have very different processes. But iCommons could be complimentary to the IGF because we are the practical expression, often, of the multi-stakeholder alliances the IGF wants to showcase. They want members from governments, the private sector and civil society to stand together on the same platform to show how they can gain the kind of consensus that gets things done. Or to stand on the same platform to debate how things should be done better, together.
The IGF Secretariat didn't end up taking the Internet Governance Project's advice about how they should structure the forum. Perhaps it was too daunting for a Secretariat of just 2 people. They did, however, decide to form an Advisory Group of 46 people (20 of whom are government representatives) who are guiding the IGF in its first steps.
Many people at the planning meeting have already written the middle and the end of the IGF story, but the forum hasn't yet begun. Robin Gross and Jeanette Hoffman, two amazing stalwarts of the WSIS process who are also on the IGF Advisory Group, are encouraging people to submit workshops in the four broad agenda themes:
* Openness - Freedom of expression, free flow of information, ideas and knowledge
* Security - Creating trust and confidence through collaboration
* Diversity - Promoting multilingualism and local content
* Access - Internet Connectivity: Policy and Cost
Please let me know if you're interested in getting involved. The deadline for workshop submissions is August 2, and this may just be a great opportunity to engage policy-makers in the kinds of solutions that the global commons community has been developing with great success over the past few years.
I'm relieved to find that governance and strategy are challenges all communities face ' that we learn by doing, by being humble and open to challenges, but, most importantly, by making choices and by taking action ' even when the odds may be stacked against us.
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