It is probably too early to summarise everything that took place in
and around the WSIS,
in particular its statements and activities. Thinking about a first
summary, there are a couple of things that come to my mind, though.
Firstly, this summit was definitely at least in part a human rights
summit. The Civil Society plenary had to deal with numerous protests
of Tunisian GONGOs (see "Leaving Tunis")
that complained bitterly about the planned Citizens Summit, which was
essentially shut down by the Tunisian government. Their main argument
was that since Tunisia was a place of law, not everyone could do as
they please and do strange things like meet and talk. Interesting
perspective.
Also, the European Union member states and European Commission
apparently had to pull some strings to bring the Human Rights in China
(HRIC) representatives into the WSIS, because China tried to block
this to the very last minute. In a meeting organised by the European
Commission with Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner on the
Information Society, Sharon Hom, Executive Director of HRIC, delivered
a very energetic and powerful account of how human rights are
systematically violated in China and how Northern companies are
willfully supporting that policy. In the discussion that followed she
was then attacked harshly by the Tunisian GONGOs again -- and
apparently some employees of the companies Ms Hom criticised.
But while human rights are fundamental, they were not the only
issue. Of all the issues, Internet Governance certainly got most
attention by the media and participants; even if that was in many
cases owed to misconceptions about the DNS system as well as naive
approaches at regulating spam and cybercrime.
With the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the United Nations now
created a forum in which governments, industry and non-governmental
organisations shall come together to discuss regulations on spam,
cybercrime and similar issues. As all these inherit a significant risk
of de-facto mandating proprietary software and establishing anything
from systematic imbalances to outright monopolies, FSFE probably has
no choice but to enter into that forum and make sure that digital
freedom and Free Software are a part of the considerations.
As far as Free Software was concerned, the summit was not
exclusively joyful, either. If there were interesting statements and
initiatives, they happened in the side-events of Civil Society, or
were local initiatives. The Free
Software censorship by the Austrian government was a good example
of the difficulties we encounter in the higher levels. We were able to
keep the door open for Free Software and educate some representatives
about it. But the WSIS is not over, now it will enter the followup and
implementation phase. So we will need to work that these activities
choose, or at least not exclude, Free Software.
With all these things going on we will need to intensify our UN
efforts. Unfortunately, the large companies have their own agendas and
prefer to go to these conferences themselves or not contribute at all,
and the smaller ones don't have a direct benefit and often can't
afford it. The burden of sustaining these activities therefore rests
mainly with the Fellowship: So I hope many more people will join and thus
allow us to continue this work.
To my regret, I was unable to find the 100 dollar laptop, although
I went looking for it. But at least I discovered the very cool SchoolNet
Nambibia project. Also, the WIPO
reform panel was fun.
Also, it was good to see all the people again with whom I have been
working for the past years throughout the World Summit. Unfortunately
for most of them I did not get to talk half as much as I would have
wanted, and some I knew to be there I did not see, at all.
