Global Voices Advocacy » Internet governance

Internet Governance and ICANN: Reflections from Beijing

Joy Liddicoat — Fri, 10 May 2013 23:28:13 +0000

The original version of this post appeared on the Association for Progressive Communications’ website.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) self-described role is:

To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer — a name or a number. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination, we wouldn't have one global Internet. In more technical terms, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates the Domain Name System (DNS), Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions.

ICANN holds regular meetings where community participants discuss current issues, develop policy proposals and make decisions. Last month’s meeting in Beijing was the largest in ICANN’s history with 2600 people registered as participants including 700 from China.

The timing for the Beijing meeting was good: many human rights advocates are focused on the rapid rise in internet users in China (now more than 540 million) and their access to and ability to participate in global Internet-related policy spaces such as ICANN.

For example, a significant issue that ICANN is confronting, and one that has human rights implications, is its consideration of more than 1500 applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .gay, .patagonia and .islam. ICANN determines what gTLDs are available globally and has been implementing a process for the creation of new gTLDs for several years. The first new gTLDs are likely to become available before the end of this year.

Fadi Chehade, CEO of ICANN. Image by ICANN. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The road to the new gTLDs has not been a smooth one. ICANN’s lack of international presence and US-centric operational focus has been a persistent criticism given the global nature of its functions. But ICANN does appear to be trying harder and doing more to be seen as an international organization. A major announcement at this meeting was the opening of a new ICANN regional office in Beijing. While these new developments are welcome, human rights advocates remain concerned at the impact of ICANN presence in countries where human rights records are poor and access to the internet is curtailed.

The openness of the Beijing meeting and uncensored access to the Internet were raised as concerns by participants in the lead up to the meeting. Many people took additional security protections by using Tor, VPNs, and alternative devices. During the meeting participants reported a considerable amount of surveillance – rumour had it seven people were arrested for attempting to use the ICANN VPN, but we did not get good information about who these people were.

Progress but not at the expense of the multi-stakeholder process.

The ICANN community has long had a testy relationship with its CEO. The current CEO, Fadi Chehade, has been in the role for just over seven months and has made a good start, demonstrating a laudable desire to broker better community engagement. In early 2013 his efforts focused on proposals for implementation of the trademark clearinghouse aspects of the current gTLD process. Unfortunately, significant policy matters were included in the details of the proposals resulting in protests from non-commercial constituencies (which include NGO members), registrars and registries. However, the proposal was pushed through to the Board for approval at the Beijing meeting.

Attempts to push along implementation of new gTLDs have also ruffled feathers and raised human rights concerns. Attempts to finalise the new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (needed by Registrars who will operate the new gTLDs, also known as RAA) foundered with the proposed introduction of a power for the ICANN Board to unilaterally change the contract. This met with near universal condemnation, as it would drastically change the relationship between the governance of the organisation and hands-on operational matters related to technical coordination functions.

Concerns were also raised about a newly introduced list of registrant “rights and responsibilities” that did not reference human rights. A rights-affirming RAA can have a critical impact on users’ abilities to register and use domain names – for netizens in countries with pervasive online censorship practices or real name registration policies, this is no small matter.

Last minute negotiations in Beijing resulted in a new proposal which is now out for public comment.

These developments are evidence that tensions continue to surface about the democratic nature of this “multi-stakeholder, bottom-up” policy development and technical coordination body. ICANN’s mandate is to be multi-stakeholder, meaning that representatives from governments, registrars, registries, civil society, the technical community and private sector alike can actively participate in the organisations’ processes. But the community messages in Beijing were clear: circumvention of the multi-stakeholder model is not acceptable, will not be tolerated and should not be sacrificed in order to push ahead with new gTLDs.

One positive outcome from these tensions is a renewed focus on ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO); it is clear that the GNSO must remain the pre-eminent policy making body in ICANN. In order for this to happen, GNSO Council members will need to work together despite their strong philosophical differences.

Increased civil society diversity

Another positive development, especially for those in developing countries, is that the number of ICANN civil society community members is growing. The Non-Commercial Users Constituency, is now the most diverse ICANN constituency group, with nearly 300 members from more than 70 countries. While in Beijing, NCUC hosted a policy event “One World One Internet: new gTLDS in a global changing internet” and launched a new video explaining its role in the ICANN policymaking landscape.

The ICANN fellows, a group of up to 30 participants who received funding to attend the meeting, included Internet rights advocates from countries such as Chile, Thailand and Egypt. A number of these participants raised human rights issues related to ICANN policy, for example, concerns about the impact of filtering and human rights and ccTLD policy-making. They emphasized the fact that one of the biggest threats to security and stability of the DNS in some regions is government action and that ICANN must strive to be sensitive to civil society concerns about its international outreach strategies.

Internet governance workshop

A session on Global Internet Governance was facilitated by Peter Major, the Chair of the United Nations Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation. The absence of any women on this panel was very disappointing (it really is time for a gender audit of ICANN's meetings). However, this session was timely, well-attended, and perhaps striking for the lessening of overt tension in discussions of global internet governance in an ICANN context. There is a growing maturity in the conversation about policy-shaping forums (such as the Internet Governance Forum, or IGF) and policy-making forums (such as ICANN) and how they connect to and influence each other. Participants emphasized that the IGF remains a unique and important space for multi-stakeholder dialogue.

Government participation

More than 80 government representatives attended the meeting including some new members, such as Lesotho. In a surprise move, almost all Government Advisory Committee meetings were held in closed sessions, many until late at night. However, the traditional GAC communique (through which it provides advice to the ICANN Board) was finally prepared and released during the last public forum.

The communique has some excellent aspects (including the very small number of formal objections to new gTLD applications.) However, it has also raised serious concerns as it appears to anticipate registrars and registries having more active roles in monitoring online content. The communique is open for public comment and a number of civil society groups are looking closely at its human rights implications.

All of these issues continue to be discussed and will be followed up at the next ICANN meeting, which will be in Durban.

The Future of the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean

Jenny Fumero — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:07:59 +0000

In April, nearly 60 specialists and members of civil society gathered in Montevideo, Uruguay, to discuss the future of the information society in Latin America and The Caribbean.

In both meetings, which took place April 1-2, attendees from all over the region discussed issues such as privacy, new collaborative business models and copyright.

The first meeting, “Open Development: Exploring the Future of Information Society in Latin America and The Caribbean (ALC),” was announced by different civil society organizations led by the Comunica Foundation (Fundación Comunica) and its project, 25 years of Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The concept of the “information society” refers to a society “in which technologies allow creation distribution and manipulation of the information that play a key role in social, cultural and economical activities.” It is somehow seen as “the inheritor of industrial society.” Edgar Uriel Domínguez Espinoza shares a more complete definition on his blog En corto Circuito.

The aims of the meeting were “to discuss the future of the information society, explore the new opportunities and challenges and debate policies that need to be established, insuring that technology contributes to the development of open societies and more dynamic economies in the region. For this purpose, the meeting was organized in five themes: Openness, Copyright, New Models of Collaborative Business, Participation and Democracy and Privacy.

Speakers at opening session. Image shared on Twitter by @Info25uy.

Working groups and lectures in the program provide an accurate idea of the issues tackled. For instance, one session analyzed “Digital Citizenship.” Another asked: Is privacy dead? Additionally, sessions broached topics such as Internet openness and also presented the book called Banda Ancha en América Latina: más allá de la conectividad [Broadband in Latin America: beyond connectivity.]

Videos of all sessions, as well as the following activities, are available on the website Info25.

The organizers also filmed some brief videos with speakers and attendees, who spoke during the last part of the event, “Voices of the Region.” In the following video, Carolina Botero, from Colombia's Fundación Karisma and Creative Commons, comments on policies that would ensure useres free access to the scientific publications in the region:

In this video, Katitza Rodriguez, a Global Voices Advocacy contributor and staff member of the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, calls on governments in the region to be concerned about privacy and freedom of speech in internet:

Eduardo Rojas, from Fundación Redes para el Desarrollo Sostenible [Networks for Sustainable Development Foundation] explains the importance of having qualified people in internet leadership.

The Mexican media communicator Ximena Arrieta attended to the event and she reports on panelists’ discussion of four possible scenarios for the Internet in the future, from best to worst. These scenarios were surmised by the Internet Society, the international Internet governance organization, in a debate about the proposed topic: “The Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will be free, public and open.”

1) Canasta comunitaria (internet como una red global de procesos colaborativos y participativos).
2) Jardines porosos (el acceso es global a los contenidos acertados, se potencian empresas como Google o Facebook).
3) Telecomunicaciones monopólicas (redes cerradas)
4) Redes boutique (muchas redes, sin articulación y resolución universal).

1) Community Basket (Internet as a global network with a cooperative and participative process).

2) Permeable Gardens (in which users have global access to accurate content, and companies such as Google or Facebook are strengthened)

3) Monopolized telecommunications (closed networks where access is controlled)

4) Boutique networks (many networks, without articulation or universal resolution)

Ximena also includes notable recommendations from the panel, which were provided by Sandro Jimenez from Kolaboracción, regarding digital citizenship. Some of them include:

- Superar el énfasis de los programas de alfabetización sobre la herramienta. La alfabetización digital como el nuevo melting pot donde desaparecen los usos diferenciados en la medida que pareciera sólo interesar la igualdad por vía de la competencia técnica.
- Los estándares técnicos (banda ancha) genera asimetría [sic] que privilegian el consumo y no la construcción de contenidos contextualizados y adaptados.
- Si la democracia se piensa interactiva, el Estado debe plantearse como plataforma abierta de interacción y definición colectiva de las políticas públicas y no sólo un aparato regulador.

- Increase emphasis on literacy program tools. Digital literacy as the new melting pot, in which different uses disappear when interest in equality through technical qualifications is the only aspect that seems to matter.

- Technical standards (broadband) trigger differences that prioritize consumption over the construction of adapted and contextualized content.

- If democracy is considered to be interactive, the state should not only be recognized as a controlling tool, but also as an open platform for interaction and providing a collective definition of the public policies.

Additionally, the economist Alfredo Velazco in his post for Internet Users in Ecuador, comments on his impressions regarding the debate on entrepreneurship and business online, which took place in the second session:

Una lluvia de ideas bastante interesante comenzando por el concepto de moneda social, pasando a negocios colaborativos, observaciones o apoyos de los gobiernos sobre la temática, plataformas de colaboración, medición del impacto y opción de que estas plataformas sirvan para brindar información ordenada para un open gov. Lastimosamente coincidimos en la existencia de restricciones gubernamentales a la moneda social (desde la no formalización hasta su impedimento de uso) principalmente por no pago de impuestos en las transacciones logradas con esa moneda; adicionalmente la ausencia de políticas en apoyo a negocios colaborativos, desde crowdfunding hasta plataformas verticales.

An interesting brainstorm which starts with the concept of social currency, touching on collaborative business models, government support on these issues, platforms for collaboration, measuring the impact and an option for this platform regarding providing organized information for an open gov[ernment]. Unfortunately, we agree on the fact that there are governmental restrictions for social currency (from a lack of formal processes to deliberate limitations on use), which is mainly due to unpaid taxes in the transactions with that currency. In addition to this, the lack of policies supporting collaborative business, which ranges from crowd funding to vertical platforms.

Finally, organizers made a last call in a latter post:

Aunque el evento ha terminado, el Desarrollo Abierto continúa. Estamos preparando una publicación y estaremos recibiendo con gusto contribuciones adicionales en la forma de comentarios y respuestas a los temas del evento, realizados por los participantes en el evento Desarrollo Abierto, la Conferencia Ministerial y el público interesado, a través del sitio web y del email info25@comunica.org. Las contribuciones son bienvenidas en cualquier idioma de la región.

Although the event has finished, Open Development continues. We are preparing a publication and we would gladly receive additional contributions and comments on the topics of the event from Open Development attendees, the Ministry Conference, and the interested public. This can be seen in both website and the email info25@comunica.org. Contributions are all welcomed in any language from this region.

We will return in the second meeting in Montevideo.

This post was originally published in Spanish on the blog Globalizado.

Japan: The Police Don't Want You to Use Tor [UPDATE]

Keiko Tanaka — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:01:09 +0000

UPDATE (April 28, 2013): Press outlets originally reported that authorities intended to encourage Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block Tor; this has since been corrected. Police allegedly are encouraging website administrators to blocks users of the program.

According to an April 18 news report, Japan's National Police Agency (NPA) may soon urge website administrators to ‘voluntarily’ block users from accessing their sites via Tor, the anonymous online communication program. The NPA report carrying this announcement has not been formally released; whether NPA will actually put this move into practice remains unknown.

A report published in late January [ja] quotes the chair of the NPA cyber security committee [temporal translation] saying:

例えばＴｏｒについていえば、「捜査」そのものから離れて、Ｔｏｒからのアクセスを制限するというようなことを提言して、国民のコンセンサスを得て、政策として展開していく。本部会では、このような観点から議論していきたいと思っています

As for Tor, for example we would suggest to limit access from Tor. This is something outside of investigation and should proceed as a policy with consensus of the citizens. We would like to discuss from this standpoint.

At Global Voices Online, we have written about Tor which offers a protective measure allowing users to remain anonymous in online environments where freedom of expression is limited and surveillance is prevalent.

The proposed NPA policy would be a voluntary effort to keep criminals from using anonymous networks as a way to issue threats against others. Still, the hacker collective Anonymous had something to say to NPA. ChanologyAgent who claims to be the Anonymous of Japan uploaded a message on Youtube on April 19.

Anonymous emblem. The image has been released into the public domain by its author, Anonymous.

What is regrettable is that Tor is not the dark and dangerous shadow network that you and the mass media would like to paint it as. Tor is merely a tool, and like all tools, it can be used both responsibly and irresponsibly.

The truth is, the Tor network helps people in repressive countries, such as Tibet, bypass censorship and communicate with the outside world. It helps whistleblowers safely expose unethical behavior by powerful people. Tor can and is used every day for noble ends.

At our last count, there were 52 Tor nodes operating in Japan, several of those exit nodes. Each and every one of those nodes contributes to the strength and stability of the network, and the exit nodes in particular help users in less fortunate countries than ours.

By discouraging Tor use in Japan, you weaken the strength of the entire network. You reduce the options for people in repressive regimes. And you rob your own people of a legitimate and perfectly legal tool they can use to protect their privacy in a world that regards it as less and less important with each passing day. We urge you to withdraw this report and renounce your recommendation for ISPs to block the Tor network in Japan.

On social networks and citizen media, users responded to the news, mostly with indignation. On bookmarklet service hatena, users commented in cynicism [ja] that the country's Internet is “turning Chinese”:

umeten:もうインターネットじゃないな

umeten: That's it, there will be no more the “Internet”

Another user, activecute, jokingly writes that communication methods may be very limited in the future.

activecute:今から伝書鳩事業を作っておけば、30年後には…牢屋行きか

activecute: why don't we tame pigeons to be carrier-pigeons…or we may be sent to jail in 30 years later

arajin :「一方で、中東の民主化運動では政府の弾圧から逃れるため民衆が活用。」国内で起きているのは愉快犯。どちらが重大かは自明。

arajin: it says [in the article] ”on the other hand, Tor was used by citizens in oppressive regimes during Arab Spring.” Compare this to what's happening in Japan, which is more like vicious users playing with threatening comments [without real action]. It's obvious the former matters.

Mobile developer Kenji wrote on twitter in reference to the Article 21 of the Constitution that guarantees confidentiality of communications:

@needle:警察がプロバイダに対してTor規制を言い出す。遅かれ早かれ言い出すだろうなと思ったら案の定か。露骨に通信の秘密に抵触しといて何が「理解を求める」だ。

@needle: Now the police start saying that they want to restrict Tor via ISP. I knew they would say that sooner or later, but this could violate the right to communications privacy. What do they mean by ” ask the public for understanding”?

On technology news blog techdirt.com, user JarHead posted a comment wondering whether this move has any effect in decreasing online crimes.

JarHead: Say that there's an “effective” ways to block Tor. What's to stop people to just abandon ship and use yet another anonymizer? Tor isn't the only one in the game, there are others. Then they'll be calling to block those as well, and people just pick up yet another one. This will go on and on until everything is blocked including legal channels.

Police were criticized last year for making wrongful arrests of citizens who they identified using IP addresses. On user submitted news site and forum slashdot.jp [ja], many commented, doubting the ability of the police to tackle cyber crimes.

However, hatena bookmark user festerfester writes that measures are needed and that the anonymous online bulletin board is becoming the hotbed for crimes.

festerfester: 警察の情報通信関係の捜査のずさんさには心底憤りを感じるけど、だからといって２ちゃんねるなどの悪質な書き込みを放置していいという話は全く別問題のはず。元管理人とかあまりにも無責任すぎると思う。

festerfester: I do feel furious about the cops for being so terrible at investigating cyber crimes. With that said, it's a different story that vicious posts on 2channel can be remain untouched. I think the former manager of the 2channel is way irresponsible.

Global Voices Advocacy will continue to cover this threat as it takes shape in Japan. If you have information or ideas for our Japan Internet policy coverage, tweet to us @Advox.

On Eve of Elections, Advocates Challenge YouTube Blocking in Pakistan

Nani Jansen — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:56:03 +0000

Nearly one out of every two internet users visits YouTube, the company reported last week, after announcing that it now has over one billion users each month. But none of these internet users are in Pakistan, where the government blocked access to YouTube last December, only hours after it had reopened the site following a period of blocking that began in September 2012. The government has also temporarily blocked access to Facebook and Twitter on various occasions.

Access is My Right campaign poster, from Bytes for All, Pakistan.

While many YouTube visitors browse the site for Harlem Shake videos and cute cats, many rely on YouTube for news items. In October last year, millions of viewers watched the first round of the United States Presidential debate on YouTube. The importance of websites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook as channels for news distribution is underlined both by citizen networks using these platforms to exchange information about local happenings (think of MENA uprisings or citizen journalists in Mexico), and by the substantial presence the established media have on these sites. They are used as a forum to circulate content, be it first-hand information, articles, or video, to a wide audience that can’t be reached by traditional means.

When you cross the border into Pakistan, however, access to content on YouTube and many other news websites is blocked. Websites including the Toronto Sun, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed.com, pages on Wikipedia, and many others have been placed on a government blacklist. Their URLs are blocked under the guise of protecting morality. However, upon closer inspection these restrictions appear to be mostly politically motivated. In one instance, authorities blocked access to a video of a military officer assisting in a land grab; in another, a video of the President of Pakistan telling listeners to “shut up” in the middle of a public speech was blocked. Morality doesn’t seem to be at issue here.

With general elections forthcoming in Pakistan, this restricted access to independent and traditional news content is alarming. Indeed, elections are a time when people should have access to information that might impact their vote; free political speech and the free flow of information is what makes a democracy function. And access to non-mainstream news is very important in this context. The government of Pakistan clearly understands this, or its continuous blocking efforts, which are in violation of its obligations under both national and international law, would not be worth the effort. Pakistani NGO Bytes for All is challenging the blocking of YouTube in court and, together with the Media Legal Defence Initiative, has requested the urgent intervention of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression.

Bytes for All argues that blanket and arbitrary blocks on URLs undermine the right to freedom of expression and the right to information as protected by Pakistan’s Constitution. Its Constitutional Petition requests that the Government of Pakistan be ordered to (1) make available a list of all blocked websites, along with the motives underlying the blocking in each case; (2) unblock YouTube and all other websites that are currently unavailable to the public; and (3) put in place adequate safeguards to prevent illegitimate future blocking. The court is scheduled to hand down a decision in the first week of April. Hopefully, it will act upon the requests placed before it and restore the Pakistani people’s access to independent news before they make their way to the ballot boxes.

Digital Freedom: Principles and Concepts

AFTE — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:30:20 +0000

In February, the Egyptian Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression issued its first statement on digital freedom, a simplified research paper to propose definitions for digital rights and related principles which the paper summarised as: universal access, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to privacy, and the right to creativity, development and innovation.

The paper took the principle of universal access to include universal access to both technology and information, taking into consideration other relevant factors such as the cost and quality of available communication services, in addition to their suitability for all people and even the licenses required to operate and use communication networks. The paper summarised the principle of universal access as:

“حق جميع الأفراد في الاستمتاع بالاتصالات وتقنية المعلومات، عن طريق التقليل من الحواجز، المسافة، والتكلفة وكذلك قابلية تلك ألأنظمة للاستعمال من قبل الجميع، وهناك أكثر من صورة للإتاحة، حيث يمكن -على سبيل المثال- تناول حق المعاقين في إتاحة استخدام وسائل الاتصالات والإنترنت وتوفير الأجهزة اللازمة لذلك، أو حق الأطفال في الريف والمناطق الفقيرة في التعليم الخاص بتقنية المعلومات.”

The right of every person to use communication and information technology by means of reducing barriers and costs in addition to promoting their use by all. Universal access includes a range of things such as, for example, the right of the disabled to use communication technology and the Internet and to be provided with the necessary equipment and the right of children living in rural or disadvantaged areas to be educated about information technology.

The paper also discussed the issue of digital privacy and the threats to privacy that users can face from governments, service providers and malicious software. The paper defined privacy in digital spaces as:

“حق الأفراد في التراسل دون مراقبة والحق في خصوصية بياناتهم الموجودة على الإنترنت ومنع فرض مراقبة من قبل حكومة دولة ما على مجموعات أو أفراد، أو غير ذلك من التصرفات التي تصدر عن حكومات أو شركات تجارية يمكنها أن تشكل انتهاكا لخصوصية الأفراد.”

The right of individuals to send messages and emails without being monitored, the right to privacy with regard to data stored on the internet and the prohibition of government monitoring of either individuals or groups as well as the prohibition of other behaviour by governments or private companies that could represent a breach of individuals’ privacy.

The paper also included a principle related to freedom of expression and considered access to the internet and digital media as tools that provide a platform for the expression of opinions and thoughts to all, be they individuals, groups, or journalistic or media institutions. The paper described freedom of expression in digital spaces as :

“حق الأفراد والتجمعات في التعبير عن آرائهم بالطريقة والكيفية التي يريدونها عبر استخدام أي من أجهزة الاتصال بالإنترنت المتاحة، يجب أن ينظر إلى الإنترنت في إطار السياق المتكامل لحرية التعبير وعلى أنها ضمن سياق حرية الإنسان بشكل عام”

The right of individuals and organisations to express their opinions in the manner of their choosing using any type of device connected to the Internet. The Internet should be seen within a comprehensive framework for freedom of expression and within the context of individual freedom generally.

The final principle discussed by the paper was that of freedom of use, development and innovation which referred to freeware and its philosophy and ability to support digital freedom and technological growth in addition to the principles of open source, free content and open source hardware. The paper referred in this section to article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and highlighted the contradictory behaviour of certain governments and companies. Also discussed in this section was Creative Commons licensing with regard to digital content, programs, user guides and hardware.

Click here to download the report on digital freedom [ar].

This post was translated by Neil Sadler and AFTE.

GVA: Promoting User Rights at the UN

Ellery Roberts Biddle — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:34:46 +0000

Next week, hundreds of Internet technology and policy experts will gather in Paris for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), where they will discuss and debate some of the most pressing Internet policy issues of the moment. The conference will mark the tenth anniversary of an ongoing process through which various UN agencies have worked together, alongside industry, governments, and civil society, to develop goals for global ICT development and Internet governance.

Global Internet traffic map by Joana Breidenbach. Approved for reuse.

The WSIS process has been driven primarily by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency that ignited controversy during its treaty conference last December where several governments put forth sweeping Internet security and access measures that could have severely threatened rights to free expression and privacy online. While the most troubling treaty proposals did not pass, the conference left many Internet rights advocates concerned about the intentions of certain ITU member states. It is now clear that some governments see the ITU as an apt vehicle for imposing international Internet regulations that could lead to greater government control over Internet users’ rights.

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade speaks at the opening ceremony at WCIT 2012, courtesy of Flickr user itupictures.

Unlike the December conference, which was largely closed to the public, and allowed only limited participation for civil society groups, the WSIS is intentionally open to participation by all stakeholders. Global Voices Advocacy will benefit directly from this structure, as three of our staff — GVA Director Hisham Almiraat, GVA Editor Ellery Roberts Biddle, and Global Voices’ Northeast Asia Editor, Oiwan Lam — will participate in the meeting. We’re looking forward to joining this global dialogue and offering our perspectives (and those of our community) on the policy challenges that affect bloggers, tweeps, and online activists every day.

We’re not just treating this as another conference — in fact, we see our participation in the meeting as a manifestation of one of the core commitments of the WSIS process, which is to truly consider the interests of all entities that hold stake in the Internet, including users. While policymakers often wax about the importance of including citizens or users in Internet governance-related processes, this does not always translate to real participation. While some policymakers may not have users’ interests at heart, others may genuinely want to incorporate user input. But this is no simple task: how do you evaluate the infinitely diverse range of opinions and ideas online in order to incorporate them into a policymaking process?

We believe that the Global Voices network provides a strong platform for exactly this kind of information-seeking. As an international network of Internet-savvy bloggers and citizen journalists, we find that our community often holds strong and well-informed opinions about Internet policy issues. Our hope for this conference and for our work ahead, is to find unique, participatory ways to voice these ideas in forums where we can have a real impact. We’re honored to be participating in the WSIS and eager to do our best at representing the interests of our community and rights-conscious users around the world in doing so. Please feel encouraged to use the comment field below to share your ideas and concerns about global Internet policy issues — we will do our best to represent these concerns at the WSIS!

[Video] “Don’t Fear the Internet”: Wikipedia, Copyright, and Free Expression Online

ONGDD — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:26:55 +0000

Note: Article [es] by Derechos Digitales originally published in Spanish, translated by Silvia Viñas.

It is no exaggeration to say that Wikipedia has revolutionized the way we create and access information, showing a sustainable and collaborative model of intellectual work and of understanding of phenomena such as intellectual property. This platform has managed to make us all connect to knowledge differently, and it has also jeopardized closed models of access to knowledge.

In this recent interview from the #NotemasaInternet (Don’t fear the Internet) campaign on online copyright, we talked to Osmar Valdebenito, president of Wikimedia Argentina (and former president of the Chilean chapter), a foundation that coordinates and makes the infrastructure of Wikipedia possible worldwide. We spoke with Osmar about how Wikimedia works, but also about how online freedom of expression is fundamental for its development, and how initiatives that seek to be even more restrictive with online copyright (SOPA, PIPA, etc.) would make the existence of Wikipedia as we know it impossible.

Understanding Free and Open Source Software

Global Voices — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 14:36:03 +0000

FOSS by opensourceway (CC BY-SA 2.0)

After publishing a post about Egyptian demonstrations calling for the government to adopt free software, Global Voices Advocacy (GVA) received an email from software freedom activist Richard M. Stallman (rms). We were honored to learn that a figure as important as rms reads our work!

In his email, rms was more than pleased with the movement taking place in Egypt, but he also noted that some of our points regarding free software were misleading. We were glad to receive his comments — we recognize that, as he pointed out, our post did not do enough to explain to readers what free software is and what it means in the broader context of open Internet advocacy. Therefore, we have decided to write this follow-up post in which we'll break one of the main rules of the Global Voices (GV) model. We normally aim to quote social and citizen media rather than main stream media, yet in this case we've chosen to override this rule for two reasons:

First: Much of what we quote here falls in a grey area between mainstream and social media. Take Eric's Random Writings as an example; it is not a blog per-se, as many posts on the site predate blogs and blogging, but it can be seen as the blog of that time.
Second, and more importantly: Although most of the information we mention here has been available for decades, we want to make use of the huge network of translators in GV Lingua and our readerbase to spread the message about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), especially given that many of the values of the FOSS movement coincide with those of GVO. Both aim to defend user rights to seek, receive and impart information online. The FOSS movement defends users’ rights to create and have control over the software they use, while GVO – among others – defends users’ right to be the media, rather than just being a consumer of the media.

What is Free Software?

Thankfully, in my language, there are two different words for free: gratis and libre. The fact that there is one English word for the two concepts, and that people do not typically pay money for free software, leads many to assume that the term “free software” simply denotes software that is available free of monetary charge, yet the intended meaning is the latter definition (libre or “liberated”). The website of GNU, the free software-based computer operating system project, puts it this way:

…“free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”.

The site offers further elaboration on this definition:

“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

GNU summarizes the concept by identifying four essential freedoms a software user should have:

The freedom to run a program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how a program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Free software developers do have the choice to sell their software if they want to, provided that they adhere to the four freedoms mentioned above. Mac's NeoOffice is a strong example of this. Yet if software developers decide to release their software for free, but do not respect the Free Software essential freedoms, then their software cannot be called Free Software. Many closed-source Shareware and Adware programs can serve as examples here. In those cases, users cannot access the programs’ source code, hence they cannot modify it or study how it works. As long as you don't know how software works and have access to its code yourself, you cannot blindly trust it. It may have the capacity to track your activities, modify your computer, and do a range of other things that you do not want it to do.

Source code can be distributed with software. As one Stack Exchange user wrote:

Making source available does not mean download. It might be that you must get a written request and you send a photocopy of a listing. You are allowed to charge a “reasonable” handling/copying charge. But you can not escape the obligation to make your own source code available.

Should we call it “Free” or “Open Source” Software?

So far, we have been using the terms Free Software and Open Source Software interchangeably. It's true that the two terms are very close to each other, and being Free implies that it should be Open Source, however since 1998, the two terms sometimes have been used to refer to two slightly different things.

Eric S. Raymond (ESR), another advocate for Open Source Software, has argued that for Free or Open Source Software to be adopted by the masses, larger technology companies may have to get involved. It's hard to convince people to install GNU/Linux on their laptops, as it can be difficult to configure with certain hardware. ESR has said that hardware vendors should release special drivers for GNU/Linux, or else open source developers will have no option but to reverse-engineer those drivers, an approach that does not always succeed. ESR writes:

The term “free software” is older, and is reflected in the name of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), an organisation founded in 1985 to protect and promote free software. The term “open source” was coined in 1998 by a group of people — the founders of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) — who also supported the development and distribution of free software, but who disagreed with the FSF about how to promote it, and who felt that software freedom was primarily a practical matter rather than an ideological one.

ESR has emphasized that their practical approach makes it possible for people to accept what they call for without being obliged to change their position on whether intellectual property is good or evil. He has also notes that the term Free Software seems to leave corporate entities reluctant to be involved:

The term makes a lot of corporate types nervous. While this does not intrinsically bother me in the least, we now have a pragmatic interest in converting these people rather than thumbing our noses at them. There's now a chance we can make serious gains in the mainstream business world without compromising our ideals and commitment to technical excellence — so it's time to reposition. We need a new and better label.

ESR suspects that rms's approach would not appeal to corporate entities:

RMS's manifesto attacked closed source code on moral grounds; he asserted a right of computer users to access and modify the code they depend upon, declared a crusade against the ownership of software, and proposed a program of building an entire production-quality environment of ”free software” modeled on the powerful Unix operating system … On the other hand, RMS's general attack on intellectual property and the quasi-Marxist flavor of much of his propaganda turned off many hackers and utterly alienated most software producers and customers outside the hacker culture itself.

In a response to ESR, rms explains that he decided to stick to his approach because he believes that the presence of non-free software is a moral rather than practical issue:

The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, essential respect for the users’ freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that nonfree software is an inferior solution to the practical problem at hand. For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software … In practice, open source stands for criteria a little weaker than those of free software.

McGill University professor Gabriella Coleman writes in her book, Coding Freedom, that the two concepts often travel on the same path, despite their distinct motivations. (Readers should know that Coleman's book is published under a Creative Commons copyright license, which enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge, and is inspired in part by the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License.)

They designate the same alternative licenses and collaborative methodologies, but they differ in their moral orientation: the term free software foremost emphasizes the right to learn and access knowledge, while open source tends to flag practical benefits.

It's more than software

GNU/Linux is probably the most famous open source project in the world. The GNU project began in 1983 with the goal of creating a free operating system. Later on, Linus Torvalds built the Linux kernel and the combination of the two with many other open source software programs resulted in what we have today: a fully functional operating system competing with the likes of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Mozilla Firefox, Apache Webserver Server, and Android provide more examples of programs that have been more widely adopted and trusted than their non-free alternatives.

Nevertheless, the movement does not stop at software only:

Software manuals must be free, for the same reasons that software must be free, and because the manuals are in effect part of the software. The same arguments also make sense for other kinds of works of practical use — that is to say, works that embody useful knowledge, such as educational works and reference works. Wikipedia is the best-known example.

Gabriella Coleman writes:

I argue that F/OSS draws from and also rearticulates elements of the liberal tradition. Rather than designating only a set of explicitly held political, economic, or legal views, I treat liberalism in its cultural registers. Free software hackers culturally concretize a number of liberal themes and sensibilities— for example, through their competitive mutual aid, avid free speech principles, and implementation of meritocracy along with their frequent challenge to intellectual property provisions. Indeed, the ethical philosophy of F/OSS focuses on the importance of knowledge, self- cultivation, and self- expression as the vital locus of freedom.

Watch George Osborne MP – Open Source Politics:

Ideas and projects related to online freedom and openness can be seen today everywhere from Wikipedia, to projects tracking government financial transactions across the world, to initiatives that promote sharing educational material and research papers.

See “Egypt: Why Open Source Software?” for ideas on why Egypt (as well as almost any other country) should adopt Free Software.

South Korea: How to Regain Ownership of the Internet

Jae Yeon KIM — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 01:26:20 +0000

On January 11, 2012, Network Neutrality Forum (ko), an alliance of South Korean Internet freedom-concerned civic organizations, hosted a public workshop at the Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, to address concerns over waning civic participation in global Internet governance.

Internet policy expert and lawyer Borami Kim moderated the whole event and Professor Dongman Lee, from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), one of the early participants in Korean Internet governance, joined as a main speaker. The panel also included Eung Hwi Chon, a seasoned Internet civic activist at the Green Consumer's Network, and Jae Yeon Kim, an activist and member of Creative Commons Korea and Global Voices Online.

Lawyer Borami Kim. Photo by Jinbonet (CC BY)

The inconvenient truth about Internet governance

During his lecture, Professor Dongman Lee emphasized what he called the inconvenient truth about Internet governance: “Many people are tempted to believe that the cyberspace is a de facto level-playing field,” he says, “but that is hardly the truth.” At least at the level of Internet critical infrastructure resources, such as domain names and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, the controversies regarding who controls the net are the more conspicuous. In recent years, many nations, especially emerging powers such as Russia and China, have constantly challenged the U.S. control of the roots of the Internet. The U.S., on the other hand, have faced difficulty balancing their global leadership with their so-called national interest. This unresolved problem was one of the agendas of recent global public debates on the process and consequences of World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) held in Dubai in late 2012.

Although the Internet was not directly mentioned in the WCIT final resolution, Pr. Lee warned of the potential implications of Article 5A which deals with security problems on the network. As a technology expert, he warned that this particular clause in the final WCIT document may bring about problems in terms of global filtering of the free flow of information. He asserted that such scenario will be fatal for the future healthy growth of the Internet as a liberating medium for all.

Professor Dongman Lee from KAIST. Photo by Jinbonet (CC BY)

How net regulations hindered Korean civil society's participation in global internet governance

Eung Hwi Chon's presentation followed Professor Lee's lecture was more focused on how South Korean net regulations have hindered Korean civil society's participation in global Internet governance. He stressed that initially Korean civil society had been responsible for the management of distributing domain names and IP addresses. For example, from 1986 to 1994, KAIST lab—the birth place of Korean Internet where Professor Kilnam Chon led his group of students including Professor Lee to pioneer the Internet in Asia—had managed Internet governance in Korea. As a matter of fact, that trend had been consistent from 1986 to 2004.

However, Korean government intervened in this self-regulating Internet governance environment in 2004 by establishing the Internet Address Resource Law (in Korean “인터넷주소자원법”). The law empowered the Korean government which was then able to distribute domain names and collect commission fees without a sufficient auditory structure.

Korean civil society has no say as to how that money is used. Government monopoly over domain name distribution in South Korea has brought about a lack of transparency and accountability. Furthermore, an opaque decision-making culture is prevalent in the Korean information communication technology (ICT) industry, making the market resiliently oligarchic. It is no surprise then, that in terms of revenue, Korea Telecom (KT) has dominated almost half (49.3%) of Korean Internet backbone market in 2010.

Activist Eung Hwi Chon. Photo by Jinbonet (CC BY)

How can transnational activism keep the Internet free

In his presentation, Jae Yeon Kim raised the question of what a multistakeholder approach, as a governing principle of Internet-related resources, really means and how it can work.

He started by noting that from the very first years of Internet development, the format of public discussions on the Internet has been persistently bottom-up, consensus-based and transparent. This approach, also known as multistakeholderism, has not changed up to date. The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the rising venue for global discussions on Internet governance, has adopted the multistakeholder approach as a basic principle and a globally accepted norm.

Nevertheless, the tricky part of multistakeholderism is its implementation. Bringing individuals and organizations who have diverse interests and norms in the same room does not guarantee they will come up with a better idea.

In South Korea, there is a tradition of perverting the idea altogether: the government usually uses experts and cherry-picked civil society members to legitimize a quasi clandestine decision making process. The government often invites those who are in favor of its policy proposals. This is far from the spirit of multistakeholderism. Therefore, Kim insisted that not only appearance but substance counts in Internet governance processes. He proposed that the principles of transparency and accountability be compulsory for Internet policy-related decision-making processes in South Korea.

Kim also stressed the fact that fighting against net control within South Korea is not enough. Since the Internet is a global communication system, isolationism cannot guarantee the victory. A local net control system can rapidly become a global filtering system. Therefore, transnational activism advocating Internet freedom can be an answer to create a counterweight against the forces trying to control the free flow of information. We are now only seeing the beginning of Internet freedom-related transnational activism. How that social movement will become institutionalized in domestic and international settings still is largely unknown.

Activist Jae Yeon Kim. Photo by Jinbonet (CC BY)

In the follow-up discussion, the attendees from Korean online service providers such as NHN, Daum Communications, and SK Planet, and government agencies, such as Korea Communications Commission (KCC) and Korea Internet Security & Agency, and other civic activists shared their diverse opinions on the problems of Korean Internet governance and the ways to solve those problems and achieve higher goals.

South Korea: Public Interest in Internet Governance Issues Rekindled

Jae Yeon KIM — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:13:28 +0000

On January 3, 2013, Creative Commons Korea, Korea Association for Information Law [ko] (a Creative Commons project lead by Jay Yoon, a presiding judge at the Seoul Northern District Court), and Haja Center (an alternative educational institution for Korean youth) organized a public event on Internet governance entitled “Global Great Power Rivalries on the Internet”.

The meeting was especially focused on the outcomes of the recent World Conference on Information Technology (WCIT) held in Dubai, on December 2012. The primary aim of this event was to inform the public on the main sources of contention raised by South Korea's approval of the controversial WCIT resolution, also know as the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR). South Korea was indeed one of a few democracies who voted in favor of a resolution that many other countries decided not to sign for reservations over potential dangers for Internet freedom.

Susan Crawford, former President Barack Obama's Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, was a speaker during the meeting. Other panelists included Professor Kilnam Chon from Keio University, a pioneer of the Korean Internet and an outspoken advocate for open Internet and digital commons, Professor Jaechon Park from Inha University, a long-time expert on Internet governance in South Korea. Judge and Creative Commons Korea project leader Jongsoo Yoon (who is better known outside Korea by his English name “Jay Yoon”) moderated the event.

Public interest in Internet governance issues rekindled

Although the public event was hosted during weekdays, the conference room was full of attendees—a sign that Internet governance has gained interest among Korean media and public.

On December 15, 2012, Professor Kilnam Chon already ignited public interest on these issue by addressing the significance of the voting results at the last WCIT. During the Creative Commons' 10th anniversary party held in Seoul, he argued that the WCIT resolution demonstrates that the age of innocence was gone due to states’ rising interest in influencing the Internet. Furthermore, he stressed the fact that only a small number of democracies voted in favor of the resolution like South Korea.

In a response to Professor Chon's public statement, I contributed an article [ko] to Bloter.net, an influential online tech newspaper. In that article I explain why the South Korean government lacks concern for Internet freedom due to its authoritarian legacy, and how it approved of a potentially dangerous resolution for the future of the Internet.

Why did South Korea vote in favor of the WCIT resolution?

Professor Susan Crawford. Photo by Creative Commons Korea volunteer Moira (CC BY 2.0)

During her lecture, Professor Susan Crawford said that the reason why the U.S. did not sign the new ITR was because they do not believe state control of the Internet is desirable for reasons related to Internet freedom and its association with economic innovation, cultural diversity and political empowerment. She explained that for the same reasons many western countries decided not to sign the new ITR. According to Professor Crawford, the U.S. vision is to keep and develop a multistakeholder approach which has been the modus operandi of the Internet from its nascent stage. She pointed out that a multistakeholder approach is more democratic, more accountable and more beneficial for the long-term development of the Internet.

From the left, Judge Jongsoo Yoon, Professor Jaechon Park, and Professor Cho (Han) Hae Jung. Photo by Creative Commons Korea staff member Dayejung (CC BY 2.0).

Following Professor Crawford's brief lecture, Professor Jaechon Park tried to explain why South Korea made a somewhat weird decision considering its status as one of the most wired nations in the world. As a chairperson of Korean Internet Governance Alliance (KIGA), a Korea Communications Commission affiliated organization, he was able to provide an insider perspective on the issue.

He started by pointing at the “severe imbalance existing in the Korean delegation to the WCIT”–a team that was selected by the government. Although it was known in advance that the WCIT would address Internet governance issues, most members of the team came from the traditional telecommunications sector, with only a few Internet experts. Only one member of the civil society was included in the team. The team could therefore hardly claim to represent the diversity of interests and values within the Korean society.

Professor Park also thinks the Korean delegation voted with diplomatic concerns primarily in mind. South Korea doesn't want to upset a certain number of countries ahead of the plenipotentiary meeting of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) (the UN agency in charge of global telecommunications regulations and the WCIT organizer), to be held in 2014 in the city of Busan.

Professor Kilnam Chon, the “father of Korean Internet.” Photo by Creative Commons Korea staff member Dayejung (CC BY 2.0)

Professor Kilnam Chon, the “father of Korean Internet,” noted that South Korea wasn't in the majority among full democracies (see the following “infogr.am.”) Although not sure himself why his country voted in favor of the ITR, he asked the audience to think about what it means for the country, the Internet and the future.

In conclusion, Professor Chon shared his vision of the future of the Internet in South Korea. He argued that Internet leading countries not only are advanced in terms of their technological infrastructure but also in their social infrastructure. Among the elements of that social infrastructure he cited “digital commons” as a crucial element because of their liberating potential for the creativity and therefore the economy and the society as a whole. Professor Chon also said that he will commit himself to working on initiating a digital commons project to “enhance civic interests and norms in Internet governance in South Korea and elsewhere.”