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<TITLE>Re: [governance] NYT opinion by Vint Cerf: Internet Access is not a HR</TITLE>
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Dear Ginger, Avri, Jean-Louis and other members of the list<BR>
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I would like to join my support to Jean-Louis’s approach to Vint Cerf’s comment and make it a plea not to confuse technology with humanity, so as to remain people-centered as a civil society group. I understand the need to bridge the digital divide and to ensure that ICT-driven media foster equality and solidarity. But, the real human rights behind access to internet already exist, and they are related to freedom of expression and freedom of diffusion, as well as right to dignity, equality, privacy, education and participation (among the most important). Access per se doesn’t make sense, because it is too easily confused and confined to technological hook-up: access is also about understanding quality content, using it and eventually producing it (which requires education, expression...). <BR>
It doesn’t mean that we can’t battle to ask for cheaper, open, interoperable access to broadband but it has to be seen as an enhancer of rights and not be confused as a right in itself. I would rather plea for a broader information and communication rights package that supports individual and collective creativity as well as pluralism of ideas. <BR>
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What we need to engage in, when dealing with this issue in multi-stakeholder perspective is to ensure that the engineering community is ethically minded and considers those human rights in the early design process of ICTs, not as post-production gimmick under the form of opaque guidelines for indiscrimate users. We need to ensure that human rights applied to ICT-driven media maintain their capacity to evolve for the benefit of people and we need to keep concentrating on relevant international instruments to ensure just that. As such we cannot let the technical community focus our attention on a single aspect of the package that happens to play in favour of the commercial expansion of proprietary infrastructures. Let’s keep our attention focused on open software, public value, information commons, net neutrality and interoperability. This should empower people to prevent fragmentation of the networks, privatisation and monopolistic property, unwarranted surveillance, and threats on freedom of expression and dignity.<BR>
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Best<BR>
Divina <BR>
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Divina Frau-Meigs<BR>
Professor, Sorbonne nouvelle University<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">New books: <BR>
Divina Frau-Meigs, <B><I>Socialisation des jeunes et éducation aux médias</I></B>, Eres, 2011<BR>
To order: <FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U><a href="http://www.editions-eres.com/parutions/education-formation/education-et-societe/p2839-socialisation-des-jeunes-et-education-aux-medias.htm">http://www.editions-eres.com/parutions/education-formation/education-et-societe/p2839-socialisation-des-jeunes-et-education-aux-medias.htm</a> </U></FONT><U>and download online chapter on “news and youth images” </U> by clicking on "Supplément à l'ouvrage" <BR>
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Divina Frau-Meigs, <B><I>Media Matters in the Cultural Contradictions of the ‘Information Society’: towards a human-rights based governance</I></B>, Council of Europe publishing, 2011<BR>
To order : <FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U><a href="http://book.coe.int/EN/ficheouvrage.php?PAGEID=36&lang=EN&produit_aliasid=2606">http://book.coe.int/EN/ficheouvrage.php?PAGEID=36&lang=EN&produit_aliasid=2606</a><BR>
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Le 07/01/12 00:29, « Jean-Louis FULLSACK » <<a href="jlfullsack@orange.fr">jlfullsack@orange.fr</a>> a écrit :<BR>
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In a necessarily short article Vinton Cerf found the right words for countering the ICT/Internet evangelists –the heads of ITU and UNESCO, in tune with Cisco and Carlos Slim are some of the most zealous for different but concurrent reasons- who are using the context of WSIS <I>ad nauseam,</I> to convince the whole world that access to ICTs and Internet IS TO BE a Human Right. What’s more, this “new age human right” has shifted from “old fashioned DSL access” to Broadband access two years ago, with the full blessing of UNESCO (many thanks from the corporate ICT world !) and the ITU. Listen to their apologia for the “Broadband as a basic need for DCs, like water” during the WSIS Forum last year, on the ITU WSIS website !<BR>
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Never was this shocking comparison questioned by any African representative, even from the civil society. <BR>
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That’s why Vinton’s statement is not only right in words and in time, but also urgently needed for bringing this derailing WSIS bandwagon on a new track, i.e. on actual Human needs, namely those mentioned by the MDGs, the Earth Summits (i.a. Jo’burg) and the Fourth UN Conference of the Least Developed Countries (LDC IV, Istanbul 2011). For this to happen, Vinton’s statement that <BR>
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“Technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself” <BR>
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is the fundamental idea to take in account.<BR>
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What’s more, he considers “the responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and civil rights” as a fundamental issue. And he adds <BR>
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“As we seek to advance the state of the art in technology and its use in society, we must be conscious of our civil responsibilities in addition to our engineering expertise”. <BR>
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Isn’t that at the very core of the WSIS discussion and of the CS commitment ?<BR>
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The only issue I missed in Vinton’s statement is the mention of the pharaonic amount of financing invested in ICTs and Internet broadband infrastructure in DCs, in particular in Africa, and the huge sums paid by the mobile phone users. A large part of this treasury is a misuse of precious financial resources which could be otherwise spent on more vital needs for the population. <BR>
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Notwithstanding, my warmest congratulations and gratitude to Vinton Cerf for this brilliant lesson. Let’s hope that those to whom it is addressed are able for listening it.<BR>
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