World Summit on the Information Society

Tue Mar 18 14:02:33 UTC 2003

Hello,

An interesting article for you, I believe:
http://www.worldsummit2003.de/en/web/237.htm

Chantal Peyer

Geneva, 26 February 2003. The government delegations are currently working
on the summit action plan, after they have debated the "vision" and "key
principles" sections of the draft declaration. The latest version of the
draft was scheduled to be out yesterday evening, but only came out to the
public this morning. Civil society groups are working everywhere to produce
comments and amendmends. The drafting group of civil society's "content and
themes" committee is putting them together as a common input for the
sessions of PrepCom subcommittee 2. There are a number of issues that are
not welcome by many groups. For example, all mentions of "open source" and
"free software" have been deleted completely in the current draft.
"Security", which became a big theme in the recent months due to the US-led
"war against terrorism" has got a whole section now, arguing for the need to
"prevent the use of information resources or technologies for criminal or
terrorist purposes". Civil society groups fear that this language would be
used to legitimise new suveillance powers and weaken civil liberties. The
European Union today circulated a "List of Issues" paper for the declaration
themes and the action plan, which was mostly welcomed by Civil Society. But
it is still unclear if the EU will use its international weight to really
push this in the negotiations. The Greek presidency seems to be very calm,
and the other EU government delegations leave it up to them to speak out
publicly.
These conflicts will continue in the coming months. Today it became clear
that PrepCom2 will not produce any final version of the draft summit
declaration. With only one and a half days left for negotiations, time is
running out. Today we heard that the outcome of PrepCom2 will probably only
get the status of a "rough draft". This working document will further be
discussed in an "intersessional process" before PrepCom3 in September. It is
still not clear if this will be an open process with participation of all
stakeholders, or if the government delegations will meet behind closed doors
only. But even if the intersessional process is open, it creates heavy
problems for the real participation of many disadvantaged actors. The
poorest countries which do not have permanent missions to the United Nations
in Geneva might not have the ressources to attend all these meetings, and
the high costs for traveling and staying in this expensive city will prevent
a lot of civil society groups from participating, too.

The lack of openness and inclusion of all stakeholders again led to sharp
criticism in the open session of subcommittee 2 this morning. The private
sector delegates were really annoyed by the exclusion, and the international
organisations and civil society speakers voiced their critique along the
same lines. The president of the PrepCom, Adama Samassekou, was quite
impressed by these complaints. He invited the heads of the government
delegations to a special discussion on multi-stakeholder participation and
involvement. We have not heard any outcomes yet, but we will closely follow
the further progress of these debates.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sascha Brawer" <brawer at acm.org>
To: <discussion at fsfeurope.org>; "Wilhelm Tux"
<wilhelmtux-discussion at wilhelmtux.ch>; <gnu at gnu.org>; <team at fsfeurope.org>
Cc: "Loic Dachary" <loic at gnu.org>; "Chantal Peyer" <peyer at bfa-ppp.ch>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 4:09 AM
Subject: World Summit on the Information Society

Hi all

It seems that the Free Software movement has well-informed allies in
rather unexpected areas.  At least to me, it was news that traditional
development-collaboration organizations are concerned about Information
Technology, to an extent that they are discussing software patents with
the Patent Office.  So, please let me describe an experience before I ask
a few questions.

Today, a number of Swiss non-governmental organizations met in Berne to
discuss WSIS, the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society
[1] whose first part will take place in Geneva in December 2003.  Most of
the audience was rather remote from computing: Besides Alex Schröder and
myself, who were both representing Wilhelm Tux [2], probably pretty much
everyone else was from a media, development, women's, human rights, ...
organization. Correspondingly, a big part of the discussion was about
topics like the digital divide, community radios, or oppression of
journalists -- all very important, but not immediately related to Free
Software.

However, the official position paper ('platform') of the Swiss NGOs [3]
does include short statements about Free Software and Intellectual
Property rights.  The symposium brochure contains several paragraphs
about these topics.  Actually, the organizers turned out to be quite
familiar with the goals of our movement.  For example, Chantal Peyer of
'Bread for All' [4], who co-organized the symposium, has read the GNU
philosophy pages and is well aware of the discussion around software
patents.  Chantal told me that their position on the patent system
actually is one of the areas where they got into a debate with the Swiss
administration, so they had discussions with a representative from the
patent office.

I was quite surprised and delighted to hear this, of course.  In my
humble opinion, the least we as proponents of Free Software should do is
to become more visible to these supporters of our goals.  While I
personally doubt that big-scale events like WSIS can have very concrete
effects, the world summit in December might be a good opportunity for
getting publicity and more supporters. So, I'd like to ask a few things:

* Does the FSF have any plans with regards to the WSIS summit in Geneva?
I've found a few postings on the Web containing both 'WSIS' and ('GNU' or
'FSF'), but nothing too concrete. The official list of WSIS participants
does not seem to include FSF.

* Are people at FSF Europe aware of WSIS? Did the country chapters
establish any contacts to the respective preparation groups in their
area? Maybe other groups will be surprised, too, to hear about unexpected
supporters of Free Software.

* Would it make sense to have more texts catering to NGOs, for instance
explaining why Free Software is good for developing countries?

* Another area where NGOs might become our ally is encryption: Why is it
that the likes of Amnesty International, Greenpeace etc. are not loud
voices in the discussion about outlawing cryptographic technology? After
all, one would presume that these people had an interest in crypto being
legal.

* Wilhelm Tux could officially sign the Swiss NGO position paper [3].

Personally, I wouldn't mind going to some preparatory meetings,
explaining the Free Software movement to NGO people, etc., but I'm sure
there are people around who are better suited for this.

I'd be sorry if all this was old news to everyone but me. I did try to
find information about FSF's participation at WSIS on the Web, but I had
no real success.  I think it would be quite awkward if such a big-scale
event about the "Information Society," which also is a chance to meet
many potential supporters, was without the presence of one of the most
important groups.

Best regards

-- Sascha Brawer, brawer at acm.org [5]
   Berne, Switzerland

[1] http://www.itu.int/wsis/
[2] Swiss Campaign for Free Software, http://wilhelmtux.ch/
[3] http://www.comunica-ch.net/ (cf. sections II.5 and II.6)
[4] Development NGO funded by Swiss protestant churches; http://www.ppp.ch/
[5] http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~brawer/
    (I'm not there anymore and should have moved my page a long time ago..)