[governance] The web we want

[Guru गुरु]

The World Wide Web turned 25 last week. After the invention of the 
printing press, this is the most defining development in the world of 
communication. Its impact is still growing and its full potential yet to 
be realised despite the many changes it has brought in its wake....

....Tim Berners-Lee maintains that there are a few principles which 
allowed the web, as a platform, to support such growth. “By design, the 
Web is universal, royalty-free, open and decentralised. Thousands of 
people worked together to build the early Web in an amazing, 
non-national spirit of collaboration; tens of thousands more invented 
the applications and services that make it so useful to us today, and 
there is still room for each one of us to create new things on and 
through the Web,” he declared.... in March 1989, a British scientist, 
Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear 
Research, submitted a rather simple sounding paper titled “Information 
Management: A Proposal” that gave birth to the World Wide Web. And how 
does he view his creation? Why did he not opt for a proprietary system 
where he would have minted billions? Why did he advocate an online 
“Magna Carta” to protect and enshrine the independence of the medium he 
created and the rights of its users worldwide? His answers capture his 
concerns. In an interview to the BBC he said: “As to making lots of 
money? If I’d made it something which was a proprietary system then it 
would not have taken off. The only reason it took off is because people 
were prepared to invest in it because it’s open and free…

....The forthcoming “Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of 
Internet Governance,” to be held in São Paulo, Brazil, in April is a 
crucial development. In India, last month, a new coalition — Just Net 
Coalition (JNC) — was formed to provide inputs for this meeting. Its 
main arguments are: “a set of principles that should underpin the 
emergence of an Internet that advances human rights and social justice 
globally, and the reconfiguration of Internet governance into a truly 
democratic space. *These principles are based on a recognition that the 
Internet has become a vitally important social infrastructure that 
profoundly impacts our societies; and on the observation that 
opportunities for the many to participate in the very real benefits of 
the Internet, and to fully realise its enormous potential, are being 
thwarted by growing control of the Internet by politically, economically 
and socially dominant actors. Existing governance arrangements for the 
global Internet suffer from a lack of democracy; an absence of 
legitimacy, accountability and transparency; excessive corporate 
influence and regulatory capture; and too few opportunities for 
effective participation by people, especially from developing countries.”**
*
read the full article at 
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/Readers-Editor/the-web-we-want/article5792955.ece
read the JNC principles document at 
http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/towards-a-just-and-equitable-internet-for-all/110

regards
Guru

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