It is probably too early to summarise everything that took place in and around the WSIS, in particular its statements and activities. Thinking about a first summary, there are a couple of things that come to my mind, though.
Firstly, this summit was definitely at least in part a human rights summit. The Civil Society plenary had to deal with numerous protests of Tunisian GONGOs (see "Leaving Tunis") that complained bitterly about the planned Citizens Summit, which was essentially shut down by the Tunisian government. Their main argument was that since Tunisia was a place of law, not everyone could do as they please and do strange things like meet and talk. Interesting perspective.
Also, the European Union member states and European Commission apparently had to pull some strings to bring the Human Rights in China (HRIC) representatives into the WSIS, because China tried to block this to the very last minute. In a meeting organised by the European Commission with Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner on the Information Society, Sharon Hom, Executive Director of HRIC, delivered a very energetic and powerful account of how human rights are systematically violated in China and how Northern companies are willfully supporting that policy. In the discussion that followed she was then attacked harshly by the Tunisian GONGOs again — and apparently some employees of the companies Ms Hom criticised.
But while human rights are fundamental, they were not the only issue. Of all the issues, Internet Governance certainly got most attention by the media and participants; even if that was in many cases owed to misconceptions about the DNS system as well as naive approaches at regulating spam and cybercrime.
With the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the United Nations now created a forum in which governments, industry and non-governmental organisations shall come together to discuss regulations on spam, cybercrime and similar issues. As all these inherit a significant risk of de-facto mandating proprietary software and establishing anything from systematic imbalances to outright monopolies, FSFE probably has no choice but to enter into that forum and make sure that digital freedom and Free Software are a part of the considerations.
As far as Free Software was concerned, the summit was not exclusively joyful, either. If there were interesting statements and initiatives, they happened in the side-events of Civil Society, or were local initiatives. The Free Software censorship by the Austrian government was a good example of the difficulties we encounter in the higher levels. We were able to keep the door open for Free Software and educate some representatives about it. But the WSIS is not over, now it will enter the followup and implementation phase. So we will need to work that these activities choose, or at least not exclude, Free Software.
With all these things going on we will need to intensify our UN efforts. Unfortunately, the large companies have their own agendas and prefer to go to these conferences themselves or not contribute at all, and the smaller ones don’t have a direct benefit and often can’t afford it. The burden of sustaining these activities therefore rests mainly with the Fellowship: So I hope many more people will join and thus allow us to continue this work.
To my regret, I was unable to find the 100 dollar laptop, although I went looking for it. But at least I discovered the very cool SchoolNet Nambibia project. Also, the WIPO reform panel was fun.
Also, it was good to see all the people again with whom I have been working for the past years throughout the World Summit. Unfortunately for most of them I did not get to talk half as much as I would have wanted, and some I knew to be there I did not see, at all.
