[governance] RE: the "rights" issue

[Mary Wong]

At the risk of devolving into a pedantic law professor, I'm jumping into
this discussion... 
 
The word "rights" not only has several aspects and meanings, it's also
often used as an interchangeable or overlapping term for concepts such
as "powers", "privileges" and "liberties" (each of which also suffers to
some extent from imprecision.) There are, for example, legal rights and
(versus) natural/moral rights, individual and collective (group) rights,
etc.
 
Where governments are concerned, we need to distinguish between a
"state" and a "government" (and perhaps also a "nation" or "nation
state"), and between a state's sovereignty (and the autonomy and rights
that accompany that status) vis-a-vis other states, and its ability
(power) and corresponding duty to act towards its citizens.
 
I'm not sure that we're all using the word "rights" in the same sense,
and I think it would be awkward to use the same word to describe both
the kind of fundamental guarantees many of us would like to see in
relation to Internet users as well as the legal and factual powers of
governments.
 
As such, themes or titles along the lines of something like "User
Rights on the Internet: Citizens & Governments, Individuals & States"
might be more appropriate (though admittedly perhaps less of a "sexy"
clarion call.)
 
Just a thought,
Mary
 
 
Mary W S Wong
Professor of Law
Franklin Pierce Law Center
Two White Street
Concord, NH 03301
USA
Email: mwong at piercelaw.edu 
Phone: 1-603-513-5143
Webpage: http://www.piercelaw.edu/marywong/index.php 
Selected writings available on the Social Science Research Network
(SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=437584 


>>> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <isolatedn at gmail.com> 3/26/2009 11:37 AM
>>>
Hello Meryem,
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 8:40 PM, Meryem Marzouki <marzouki at ras.eu.org>
wrote:


Not sure to which extent this isn't a language problem: the sovereignty
is not a capacity of governments, but of States, with the exclusive
right to exercize a political authority within a given territory and on
a given group of people.
In any case, sovereignty shouldn't be dealt with as a 'right', at least
not in the same way as human rights, since it defines the independence
of a State vis a vis other States (non intervention) ... 
Here "Independance" is often misinterpreted by nationalistic myopia
possibly as:
Independance of China via a vis the rest of the world (with respect to
Internet traffic) ???
Independance of Australia or India or Canada from interference from
external content, opinions and views flowing through the Internet??


The Internet is of course a special case, and the IGC held an
interesting workshop at IGF 2008 on related matters ("The Transboundary
Internet : Jurisdiction, Control and Sovereignty"). 
That is what needs to be exmpahized...
Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
India.



Meryem


Le 26 mars 09 à 14:47, Konstantinos Komaitis a écrit :



Governments have only one right to sovereignty – I think this is
important in the context of the international Internet. Perhaps a
workshop theme could include the governments’ sovereignty as opposed to
the non-sovereign state of the Internet. The case of ccTLDs could be
used as a good starting point for the discussion.

Konstantinos


On 26/03/2009 13:34, "Milton L Mueller" <mueller at SYR.EDU> wrote:



Governments do not have any "rights;" they have powers. Only people
have rights. Insofar as governmental powers are justified and just, they
are held and exercised to secure rights for people.
Milton Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
------------------------------
Internet Governance Project:
http://internetgovernance.org ( http://internetgovernance.org/ )
<http://internetgovernance.org/>





Perhaps the workshop could address aspects related to the Rights of
Governments, apart from focussing on the Rights of the Users?
Governments of the world might want to argue that they have a right to
demand certain content removed - You Tube has faced such rights based
requests in the recent past and now.



Governments would like to argue that they have a moral right to filter,
and to censor inappropriate content ????



What is this "rights-based values and principles for internet
governance" any way? Define rights, principles and then enact laws
according to the agreed values and principles ???





-- 
Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis,
Lecturer in Law,
GigaNet Membership Chair,
University of Strathclyde,
The Lord Hope Building,
141 St. James Road,
Glasgow, G4 0LT,
UK
tel: +44 (0)141 548 4306
email: k.komaitis at strath.ac.uk 
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
governance at lists.cpsr.org 
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org 

For all list information and functions, see:
http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance 


____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
governance at lists.cpsr.org 
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org 

For all list information and functions, see:
http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20090326/c69c35fe/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance