[kictanet] IGF- is it more than talk??

Fri Feb 23 07:11:32 EAT 2007

Internet Governance Forum: Is It More Than Talk?
				By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch

Multi-stakeholder “dynamic coalitions” of the UN Internet Governance
Forum (IGF) are pushing to have privacy, intellectual property, open
standards and freedom of expression on the agenda of the second meeting
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil next autumn. 

	At
a 13 February IGF stocktaking meeting in Geneva, several of the
coalitions formed at the first IGF (in Athens in October-November 2006)
presented short progress reports. Agenda-setting, the role of the
coalitions, the IGF as a whole and the IGF output are still to be
debated. IGF activists and organisers also look to New York where the
new UN Secretary General has yet to make his first comments on Internet
governance issues.

	The dynamic coalitions so far are the most
visible and practical outcome of the IGF in preparation for the second
IGF meeting in Rio. The 50-member IGF coalition on privacy sponsored by
the governments of France, United Kingdom, companies like Microsoft and
Cisco Systems, and data protection officials from various countries,
met on Sunday before the meeting.

	According to Ralf Bendrath,
expert in privacy policy at the University of Bremen, the Privacy
Coalition will publish issue papers shortly on privacy and identity,
privacy and development, and privacy and freedom of expression. An
Italian government delegate announced a meeting for discussion on an
Internet Bill of Rights this summer.

	The A2K at IGF Coalition,
another large dynamic coalition, aims at coordinating participation and
awareness of access to knowledge (A2K) activities at the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), including proposals for a
Development Agenda and an Access to Knowledge Treaty at WIPO. 

	“One
focus of the coalition is setting methodologies or best practice norms
for the implementation of laws dealing with technological protection
measures (TPMs) and digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, which
have been shown to present serious impediments to access to knowledge
and the free flow of information,” said Robin Gross, executive director
of IP Justice, which is instrumental in the coalition.

	Gross
said coalition member Franklin Pierce College Law Center was for
example checking on the effects of free trade agreements. Strong
interest in the issue which was nearly untouched at the World Summit on
the Information Society (WSIS) was shown by the growing partner list of
the coalition. “Ghana has joined the coalition and I think more
countries will follow,” said Gross. Key deliverables for Rio, according
to Gross’ statement, are development of best practice norms for DRM
technologies and anti-circumvention laws.

	Nitin Desai, senior
UN official and IGF chair selected by former UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan, said with regard to IGF’s role on intellectual property issues:
“We are very well designed in providing a space for discussion.” The
IGF’s non-negotiating role might help to “look for some common ground.”
Any resolution on a recommendation or official output naturally would
have to be taken at the WIPO level, he said. 

	IGF Executive
Secretary Markus Kummer said, “The IGF is a neutral environment to
discuss these issues.” Kummer also referred to another aspect of the IP
problem that he said would stay with the IGF: the question of open and
non-proprietary standards. The IGF was criticised during the
stocktaking phase for relying only upon proprietary formats. “There are
no easy answers,” said Kummer.

	The role of the IGF as a pure
discussion forum - “a neutral, non-binding and non-duplicative process”
as the EU presidency put it - was intensively discussed during the
stocktaking meeting. While hailed as a “liberation” of the bounds of
classical diplomacy by some, several governments and NGOs asked for a
more formalised output.

	“As for the results it is important to
have some kind of written conclusion or concluding statement that could
be a reference for the meeting,” said the head of the Brazilian
delegation. “In fact, the mandate given to the IGF in paragraph 72
refers to the possibility to make recommendations.”

	Without a
more formal role accompanied by more dialogue between governments, “we
risk entering into a course whose result will be the lack of interest
for the IGF process,” he warned. Several civil society members as well
as government delegates said they did not agree with Desai’s point of
view that formal decisions or votes were made impossible by the
non-member nature of the IGF. Ideas like “rough consensus", “messages
from the IGF” or other compromises were put on the table beside the
“recommendations” mentioned in the 2005 Tunis WSIS agenda. But US
business and many Western governments warn against a mission creep of
the IGF.

	What the final agenda for Rio will look like had to
be left very much open. Procedures for next steps still have to be
cleared by the new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The future of the
IGF Advisory Committee that was tasked with the preparations and
programming of the first IGF still is not clear. While he would
recommend keeping the advisory group, Desai said, the final decision
lies with him.

	An update on another hot issue, the so-called
enhanced “cooperation process” also had been delayed, said Desai,
because of the change in New York. Several governments urgently asked
about the outcome of bilateral consultations Desai held over the last
month. Enhanced cooperation was agreed upon by the WSIS as a
complementary process to the IGF. Its target was - at least as some
interpret it - better cooperation between governments and relevant
organisations on Internet governance.

	Whether or not the
management of Internet infrastructure resources should be placed more
prominently on the IGF agenda was a second issue of debate at the
stocktaking meeting. A strong appeal to tackle it came from the
non-governmental Third World Network. “The issues of root servers,
domain name servers and Internet Protocol are among the most important
issues in Internet governance,” Riaz Tayob urged participants. “If they
are absent from the agenda, the core issues are absent.”

	Tayob
complained that while the IGF was mainly established because these
issues had not been resolved, it had been kept off the agenda.
“Supporters of the current governance model should not try to preclude
discussion, and the IGF should not be a party to such censorship,” he
said. Brazil’s representative recommended to at least invite Internet
governance organisations like the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN) or UN International Telecommunication Union
to give an update at every IGF session.

	Patrik Faltstrom,
former member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), said he
personally would reject discussion on issues like root servers at the
IGF as long as the questions to be answered were not more specified.
While there might be aspects of the technical system that could be
discussed at the IGF, so far questions had been very vague.

	In
a way, Gross told Intellectual Property Watch, the infrastructure issue
and the IP issue were related as both were facets of US attempts to
have a certain control over the Internet. The IGF had to tackle both
issues. The IGF should not, said Bendrath, “shy away” from the most
controversial issues and be satisfied with simply being a
multistakeholder-model accepted by everybody.

Rebecca Wanjiku,
journalist,
p.o box 33515, 
Nairobi.00600
Kenya.

Tel. 254 720 318 925

blog:http://beckyit.blogspot.com/

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