AW: [governance] Declaration of Internet Freedom

Tue Jul 3 08:46:46 EDT 2012

What I wanted to point out as well is that we already have two more declarations under this name, the Geneva Declaration on Internet Freedom of 2010 by a group of NGOs and the Guiding Principles of Internet Freedom of 2012 by Praxis think tank of Estonia, which are both more elaborate.

It would be good to bring all these initiatives together and the DC on Internet Rights and Principles would be a suitable place for doing so.

Unfortunately, people seem prefer to work in parallel which might limit the effects of such efforts.

Wolfgang Benedek

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Benedek
Institute for International Law and International Relations
University of Graz
Universitätsstraße 15, A4
A-8010 Graz
Tel.: +43/316/380/3411
Fax: +43/316/380/9455

Von: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] Im Auftrag von Jeremy Malcolm
Gesendet: Dienstag, 03. Juli 2012 06:57
An: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Betreff: [governance] Declaration of Internet Freedom

Most of you have probably seen the Declaration of Internet Freedom that is going around; see http://www.internetdeclaration.org/freedom.

It's not very good.

For one thing, it's very high-level and vague, so that if you look at the discussions, people are making all sorts of extrapolations from it like "if we have the ability to save something on our hard drives, we should have the right to freely copy and share it", arguing about whether anonymity is or is not included, etc.  It's just pretty sloppy and unhelpful.

For another, although a lot of groups have signed on to it, it seems to have been developed by a fairly narrow segment of US-based groups and entrepreneurs, and there was no serious attempt to reach out ahead of its launch yesterday.  Even a lot of people who are usually in the loop hadn't heard about it until the last minute.  At least one major European digital rights group has decided not to sign on.

Also, it contains no explicit mention of human rights, and the clear emphasis is on the interests of the Internet industry rather than users or non-user citizens/consumers (note the emphasis given, for such a short document, to the principle "don't punish innovators for their users' actions").  Whilst I agree with the principle, it's not the first thing I'd include.

All that being said, these are just my views.  Does the IGC want to sign onto it?
--

Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International
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