Information Society Watch

February 27, 2008, Eric Bangeman, Ars Technica

In an effort to preserve freedom of expression on the Internet, the European Parliament has passed a proposal to treat Internet censorship as a trade barrier. This is among the first proposals to tie trade to Internet censorship.

October 20, 2006, Garth Graham, Alternative Telecommunications Policy Forum

This note from a panel on telecommunications and the public good discusses issues around Internet governance and community networking. The Internet has evolved from a repository of information to a means of linking people together and allowing them to more effectively communicate, thus building social networks.

April 20, 2007, Ogle Earth

The author reports on the curious case of the unavailability of Google Earth service in Sudan, apparently due to export control enforced by the United States. This episode brings to focus how such sanctions are actually detracting from helping Sudan in its time of crisis.

January, 2008, Gurumurthy Kasinathan & Anita Gurumurthy, IT for Change

Given that the Internet has emerged as a critical global public good, and a fundamental building block for transformative change, its governance is being increasingly perceived as a critical political arena. The contestations around Internet governance are significant for the vision of an inclusive, just and development-oriented information society. The trajectory of Internet governance processes has led to creation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), characterised by its format of ‘multi-stakeholderism’, which opens up an opportunity for governments, civil society, business sector and inter-governmental institutions to collaborate in discussing and suggesting policies for meaningful governance of the Internet.

2007, David Souter, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

This study conducted by The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) analyses developing country and civil society participation and influence in World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) by drawing on participants’ observations, questionnaires and interviews with individual participants, detailed interviews with forty key actors, case studies of experiences rooted in five developing countries. The study concludes that WSIS had only limited success and is not necessarily the best starting point for action on ICTs or ICTs for development.

Internet Society

The Internet which started as a defense project nearly 35 years back, has now evolved into arguably one of the most significant technological breakthroughs of the twentieth century. The article traces the history of the development of the Internet from its beginnings in a DARPA research program in the United States.

November, 2006, Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

This document by APC presents the Internet Rights Charter which lays out the principal rights that must be recognised with respect to the Internet. The driving force behind the charter is to enumerate a set of guidelines that should be followed by the Internet in order to effectively serve the people as a tool for empowerment to bridge the digital divide, instead of becoming a service which increases social and economic inequalities.

2007, Jeremy Malcolm, PhD Thesis

This thesis describes how the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), might participate in the development of public policy on Internet-related legal issues (such as cyber crime, spam, privacy and e-commerce), using a governance model that draws inspiration from the existing institutional structures for governance of technical issues (such as the development of Internet standards and the allocation of Internet resources). This model is geared towards the achievement of consensus on legal norms for the Internet by an open and informal deliberative process in which the role of civil society is not subordinated to that of governments.

August 2007, IT for Change

IT for Change has prepared a background paper for providing a Southern perspective on key issues for the UN - Internet Governance Forum in Rio from November 12th – 15th, 2007. These issues are: a) Development Agenda in Internet Governance, b) Public Domain and the Internet, c) Governance of Critical Internet Resources, d) Role of the IGF. The input paper argues for greater debate on developing a good framework for clearly understanding and articulating developmental priorities in the Internet Governance arena which till now has been largely ignored. Without a solid discussion on structural issues of Internet Governance, a discussion on capacity building will simply not help.

2005, Waudo Siganga, Working Group on Internet Governance

In this paper, the author suggests that Internet governance mechanisms need to build on policy coordination at national levels and can only be effective if there is coherence with regional, sub-regional and national-level policies. Towards this end, the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) recommends that coordination be established among all stakeholders at the national level and a multi-stakeholder national Internet governance steering committee or similar body be set up. Such national committees or other institutions could in essence be microcosms of international mechanisms, displaying a multi-stakeholder composition in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) spirit of multistakeholder partnership.