Deeplinks Blog posts about Internet Governance Forum
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
These are the opening words of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, written by EFF co-founder and board member, John Perry Barlow almost two decades ago. The document is more of a visionary dream than a political program, and doesn't shape EFF's policy on a day to day level (indeed, Barlow himself has said that he would write it differently today). Yet it continues to resonate strongly for many.
At the start of her opening address to the NETmundial conference in Sao Paolo this Tuesday, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff ceremonially signed the Marco Civil, Brazil's long fought-for Internet Bill of Rights, into law. Even as she did so, activists from the floor below waved Ed Snowden masks and banners protesting the bill's inclusion of a data retention mandate.
It was a prefiguration of the battle between high hopes, user rights, anti-surveillance activism, and the forces of compromise that would take place in this forum over the next two days.
Earlier this month, the 47 member states of the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a landmark Resolution (A/HRC/20/L.13) to include the “promotion, protection, and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet.” The Resolution, which was presented by Sweden, was backed by more than 70 countries in all, both members and non-members of the HRC.
In the New York Times, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt called the Resolution a “victory for the Internet”, while US Secretary of State Clinton praised it as a “ welcome addition in the fight for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms online, in particular the freedom of expression.”
Several governments are pushing for proposals that seek to draw borders around the global Internet. With big decisions at stake, it’s critical that Internet users understand the threats and have a meaningful say in the final outcome. At a panel held in Washington, D.C. June 26 to highlight global threats to Internet governance, much of the discussion revolved around multistakeholder processes, or the involvement of all stakeholders in Internet policy making discussions on equal footing.
Yesterday morning, the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing on "International Proposals to Regulate the Internet," focusing on the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), an important treaty-writing event set to take place in Dubai this December. The WCIT is organized by an UN agency called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a slow-moving and bureaucratic regulatory organization established in 1865 to oversee telegraph regulations. The ITU Member States adopted a legally binding set of telecommunication regulations in 1988, and now some countries are seeking to expand those regulations to cover the Internet.
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