THANKS IDRC !

I just wanted to extend one great big thanks to the International Development Research Center (IDRC) for funding my attendance at this year's IGF. I had an amazing experience, made some excellent professional connections, and was lucky enough to be connected with an amazing group of young researchers, many of whom are now friends.
Special thanks go out to:
Graham
Laurent
Ben
Lucy
Maria and the rest of the IDRC team.

And thanks again to Prof. Michael Geist for letting me know about the opportunity.

Closing Statement

The conference has now come to a close. I won't dare to assemble a coherent summary until I sit down to write my research paper. I will certainly post the paper to this blog once it's completed.

The IGF was an amazing experience and I can't say enough good things about the process. Although this blog is drawing to a close, much more content can be found on the blogs of my international colleagues:

• Abdallah Diwan (Egypt)

• Laura Leon (Peru)
  

• Andrea Molinari (Argentina)
  

• Marouen Mraihi (Tunisia)
  

• Robert Sagun (Phillipines)
  

• Ula Shirt (Canada, Piikani Nation)
  

• Shamistra Soysa (Sri Lanka)
  

• Dante Villafuerte (Peru)
  

• Daniel Albahary (Canada)
  

• Cassondra Campbell (Canada, Metis Nation)
  

The Most Hated Man in Web 2.0

The closing day of the conference featured a fantastic plenary discussion entitled emerging issues. A full transcript of this far-reaching discussion is available. The highlight of the conference came with an impassioned speech by Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet CultureIs Killing Our Culture, which Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, so eloquently described as "crap." Keen controversially suggested that Web users should have to identify themselves online in order to improve the accountability and quality of user generated content.

The audience was none to impressed with privacy advocates crying foul. I certainly do give keen credit for generating an interesting debate.

The Lemos Taxonomy

The hardest part thus far has been trying to conceptualize such a vast topic. Thankfully, Ronaldo Lemos, director of iCommons [Creative Commons International] and the director of the Center for Technology & Society (CTS) at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), chaired the openess disciplinary (see images below) and open the proceedings by putting forward the three dimensions of openness:

1. Legal [copyright, liability of ISPs
   
2. political [WIPO development agenda, UNESCO diversity convention]
3. Economic [open business models, open-source software]

He went on to give three examples of concrete issues.:

1. open standards
2. open source software
3. open access [access to knowledge]

And just like that, I have a structure for my research paper. Many thanks to Prof. Lemos for pointing me in the right direction. I'll be dividing the topic by these three dimensions and then adding issues with concrete examples in each one.

Openness Plenary

Mark Kelly then spoke as an international human rights lawyer based in Dublin. He tied together many of the international efforts, led by the Council of Europe and others, currently being developed and discussed at the IGF. He concluded that the goal of openness or freedom of expression is best achieved through this multi-stakeholder process which includes members of government, civil society, and the private sector alike.

• Alexandre Jobim was the following speaker on behalf of the International Association of Broadcasters [IAB]. He summarized a joint declaration by the IAB:

1. technological communication is not an end on itself but is a means to provide information and content.
2. reedom of expression, pluralism of the media and cultural electronic media are a vital importance to the Information Societ.
3. diversity should be respected and truly promoted.
4. television and radio are key for the consistency and development of the digital world.
5. information should be accessible and available to anyone.

• On top of these most idealistic and noble principles, he added that broadcasters remain concerned about their intellectual property interests in the context of transmission and retransmission of broadcasts and suggested that this is exactly the task that Internet governance may prove useful in remedying.

• Nick Dreardren of Amnesty International also delivered a speech on the human rights angle. Nick may have been one of the busiest people in conference having spoken on at least three panels that I attended. For more on Amnesty's Internet freedom of expression campaign and to sign their petition see Repression.

• Next up was Mr. Peter Dengate Thrush, a most eloquent british intellectual property barrister and the newly elected chairman of ICANN. Quoting directly from his speech which steered clear of ICANN politics:

  It's clear that freedom of expression is one of the most fundamentally supported views and there's been reference to it already in the Tunis declaration. There is also the fundamental freedom to enjoy the fruits of your labor and also the freedom to enjoy the undisturbed use of your property. So there is, as others have suggested, a potential conflict between those freedoms. And the Internet makes the copying of people's property so extraordinarily easy. And not only easy, but available all over the world. We have the ability now to take the images, the music, the text, and all and any combinations of the above and to use them instantly, without authority. So how do we balance those various freedoms. Well, it's important to understand that the law, as others have said, is a product of society. It's not a separate institution that lives by itself or lives by its own rules.

• Finally, Carlos Gregorio, a privacy advocate from Uruguay, spoke on the delicate balance between ensuring for privacy and supporting freedom of expression. He used the example of court records being posted online and noted that there is both a social interest in disclosing this information as well as an interest in protecting victims of crime.

The speeches were followed by commentary from a group of experts. The full text of of this dialogue can be found online.