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Report from the conference

“Dialogue Forum on Internet Rights - Italy 2007″

This is the Rapporteur’s report about the “Dialogue Forum on Internet Rights”, organized by the government of Italy and held in Rome on 27 September 2007, as a preparatory activity to the Internet Governance Forum in Rio.

Given the broad attendance and substantial amount of interventions, this report will aim at extracting commonalities and key topics from the discussion – including online contributions – rather than at a punctual summarization of each participant’s
points.

After the opening speeches, the conference started with two keynote interventions, by professor Stefano Rodotà and by Desiree Miloshevic representing the Internet Society. Both of them, while coming from very different backgrounds, insisted on the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach to the governance of the Internet, reflecting the socio-economic nature of its model, and recognized the need to set some common principles or “pillars” to drive the distributed policy making processes that determine the future of the network, especially to address those problems that are global in nature.

More generally, several interventions recognized the existence of new issues of principle that are posed by the Internet, and that would deserve specific conceptualization in terms of rights. However, the importance of making good use of the existing human rights framework was also stressed; the work should focus on how to make existing human rights meaningful, practical and enforceable in the Information Society environment, rather than on rediscussing them.

The conference revolved around the two questions that the Dynamic Coalition on the Internet Bill of Rights posed as a working item for 2007: what are the forms and processes through which the rights of Internet users can be specified and protected, and what are the areas of rights that should be covered by the process.

For what regards the first question, most of the discussion brought to the surface the existence of several “fractures”, gaps and tensions.

First and foremost, there is a clear fracture between principles and reality. Several declarations of rights exist, many of which already focused on the Internet or on the Information society, under several different forms, ranging from the basic international human rights treaties to charters proposed by individual stakeholders. At the same time, the day-to-day reality is shaped by rules that usually do not reflect these declarations, but tend to be unilaterally set by the strongest stakeholders, and to pursue technical and business objectives rather than social and political ones; the Internet is ruled by an effective but “un-principled” governance system, often tending to the law of the jungle.

Several participants stressed the disconnection between the high auspices of the international treaties and of the opening speeches, and the reality of ordinary online policies and practices, also with references to recent proposals for Internet regulation by the Italian government and Parliament. While some argued that the Internet works and that lack of governance is preferable to bad governance, most stressed the need for appropriate instruments to establish and uphold the rights of the less powerful stakeholders, particularly developing countries, non-profit initiatives, and individual users.

As a consequence, a second fracture was identified: that between traditional “hard law” regulatory instruments, which lack the flexibility and inclusiveness that are necessary to preserve the Internet model, and self-regulation practices, which are very effective but tend to be easily used to promote private interests over the public one. Some proposed as a solution the model of co-regulation, in which all stakeholders design the rules together.

Finally, a third fracture became evident by comparing several interventions, especially those by advocates of individual freedoms and those by governments complaining about the lack of security over the Internet. There is a tension between individual rights from one side, and collective needs from the other; this is clearer in certain areas, for example in the ongoing discussions about balancing privacy and security, or freedom of expression and collective moral concerns; the tension becomes stronger at the global level, as different countries and societies found for themselves different balances, some more on the side of individual freedoms, some more on the side of communitarian attitudes, and are not easily willing to move to someone else’s balance. There is the need for more discussion and for better reciprocal tolerance and understanding, as in some cases the approach was to defy the other viewpoint’s legitimacy.

All in all, from the discussion emerged that the forms and processes to specify and protect the rights of Internet users have to be:

• multi-stakeholder, under a co-regulatory framework, so that all affected parties have a chance to influence the principles and the rules before they are defined;

• multi-level, not aiming at a single “monolithic” document, but using a range of different instruments according to the specific issue; such instruments could range from slowly changing international treaties, to establish some general principles, to quickly changing codes of conduct and practices, to implement such principles in a practical and understandable way;

• people-centred, addressing the actual needs and problems of the various types of Internet users and of the various online activities, in a manner that can be easily understood, applied and enforced by all parties;

• glocal, establishing global principles when necessary, but also leaving way to regional, national and local variations and to different schedules for adoption, to accommodate cultural diversities and sensitivities, and to adapt to the distributed nature of the Internet;

• process oriented, trying to establish a continuous process through which the rules can be kept up to date, and through which emerging issues can be addressed promptly in a predictable manner.

For what regards the second question posed by the Dynamic Coalition, a great number of areas were mentioned as relevant to this process.

Several interventions referred to “traditional” and well established rights, such as freedom of expression, privacy, cultural diversity, right to development, right to education, and many aspects related to universal access to the Internet, both in terms of connectivity and of access to knowledge. The need emerged for these existing human rights to be recognized as founding objectives of governance activities, and also to be consistently applied and upheld in practice; the Bill of Rights process should facilitate such application by bridging the fracture between principles and reality.

However, several “innovative” rights were mentioned by many, also as principles which are necessary to preserve the open nature of the Internet and its potential for further development for all, in social, cultural and economical terms. Among these, the most frequently mentioned were network neutrality, interoperability, global reachability of all Internet nodes, the use of open formats and standards, public access to knowledge, and the right to innovate, as well as market-oriented principles such as the right to a fair and competitive online market, and consumer rights in general. It was recognized that these new rights and principles, even if lying at a different level in comparison to basic human rights, are a necessary part of a fair and inclusive Information Society, but are not yet clearly recognized and protected. There is the need for a process leading to global instruments to specify, clarify and uphold them.

Finally, some interventions raised another question for discussion: who, in Internet governance processes, is the representative of the global public interest, and of the interest of the network itself? As a “meta-governance” activity, the participatory rights of all stakeholders should be better defined and applied.

In conclusion, this preparatory conference launches a strong message to the Internet Governance Forum to be held in Rio. The issue of a better recognition and enforcement over the Internet of human rights, both existing and innovative, should be recognized as a founding and cross-cutting theme for the IGF, becoming one of its main themes for the future. The establishment of a process and framework to address this issue should become an objective of its initial five-year term. There is the need to establish concrete instruments to generate real advances on this matter, going beyond the declarations of principle; the IGF, as an international multi-stakeholder forum, is the natural host for these advances. This could be a deserving and historical target for a high level process such as the IGF.