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@acm.org To: discussion@fsfeurope.org; "Wilhelm Tux" wilhelmtux-discussion@wilhelmtux.ch; gnu@gnu.org; team@fsfeurope.org Cc: "Loic Dachary" loic@gnu.org; "Chantal Peyer" peyer@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@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..)