Internet Governance Forum: Open Standards, A2K and Conclusions

Posted on 2. November, 2006 by Georg Greve

The first Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is now over after two more rather busy days. Time for some recap, some announcements, and some conclusions.

Wednesday, 1 November: day 3

The big news in the morning of the third day was the formation of another IGF Dynamic Coalition, this time on Access to Knowledge and Freedom of Expression.

Dynamic Coalition on Access to Knowledge and Freedom of Expression

The initial group of this IGF Dynamic Coalition consisted of: IP Justice, Google, Council of Europe, CPTech, Sun Microsystems, Yale Law School Information Society Project, Franklin Pierce Law School, Electronic Frontier Foundation, the IP Academy of Singapore and of course the Free Software Foundation Europe.

As the Dynamic Coalition is an invention of the IGF, one of the project’s first tasks was to gather some thoughts on structure, governance and issues. Given that Google is one of the partners in this initiative, you can find the current draft online here.

There will be more information online soon, meanwhile if you are interested in this Dynamic Coalition, there is a mailing list online.

Main session on “Access”

After some meetings with governmental representatives of Brazil and other UN member states, it was time for the main session on “Access” which was transcribed loosely in its entirety and is available online.

The session was rather long (3hrs) and had too many panelists, most of which was spent discussing about low-level infrastructure issues, but occasionally coming to higher-level issues, such as access for people with disability, education, political aspects and even software patents.

While the format was certainly far from perfect, it was possible to point out the importance of Open Standards, including the recently formed Dynamic Coalition, the problems with Digital Restrictions Management, including a pointer to DRM.info, briefly mention the work of FSFE Team member Alex Antener in Malawi, the SELF project, and the Dynamic Coalition on Access to Knowledge.

In short, it seemed worth the time to inform a large audience of people about projects that FSFE has been involved in, and it allowed me to even make a point about software patents towards the end; specific thanks to our friends from the FFII for raising that question.

Thursday, 2 November: day 4

After day 2 and 3 saw the press conferences for the Dynamic Coalitions on Open Standards (DCOS) and Access to Knowledge, Thursday started with the workshop on Open Standards, immediately followed by the workshop on Access to Knowledge and Freedom of Expression.

Both workshops had good attendance, in particular from Brazil, which made its support visible by sending representatives to both. But other countries also stepped up and declared their interest in participating in these workshops. Representatives from Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Sudan declared their interests in the DCOS, and more are likely to follow.

The Access to Knowledge workshop likewise attracted significant interest and participation, and representatives from countries like India entered the discussion vividly, so we hope they will also participate in the work online between meetings. If you wish to join the Access to Knowledge mailing list, you can do so here.

Wrap-Up

The first Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was clearly struggling to find itself, and this was apparent in some parts of the main session in particular. At the same time, the workshops and Dynamic Coalitions that were formed have brought a real impulse into the process, providing incentive and opportunity for people to work together who would otherwise never meet in such ways. So overall, things look promising.

On the downside, this summit was very much dominated by Microsoft, which not only was present in the operating system of every computer in the internet cafes, the logos in the backgrounds of many beamers and on the main IGF website in form of Microsoft Word documents and the request for video testimonials in Windows Media Format.

Indeed, given that Free Software and the internet go hand in hand, enabled each other and were mutually seminal to their rapid growth, it seems strange how much Free Software was marginalised during this Internet Governance Forum. It will be a challenge to the organisers and the Free Software Community to improve things during the next Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Another perspective

Many other conclusions and summaries can be found in the press, but my favorite is that of Kieren McCarthy of The Register: “IGF: The good, the bad and the psycho cleaners.”

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Internet Governance Forum, day two

Posted on 31. October, 2006 by Georg Greve

The second day of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was partially strange, partially funny, and indeed quite productive.

The day began with a main hall session about “Openness”, the whole protocol of which is already online here. As one might imagine, a panel about openness and transparency on the internet did create quite a bit of China bashing, and while Mr Art Reilly, senior director of strategic technology policy at Cisco Systems, had a hard time explaining the exact dealings of Cisco with the Chinese government, Vint Cerf made some clear statement for Google in terms of being transparent about filtering on request of the Chinese government, but trying to avoid to gather data that could be abused: 

     Let me also say that we also chose not to offer certain services in China. We didn't offer Gmail. We didn't offer blogging. The reason we did not do that is that we did not want to have materials on our servers that the Chinese government could ask us or insist that we reveal in order to identify individual parties. So we chose deliberately not to offer certain services in order to protect the interests of the Chinese people.

So when Mr YANG XIAOKUN of the Chinese mission in Geneva stood up after a long discussion about the subject to tell the assembled audience that China has no access restrictions of any kind, it did draw some unbelieving looks, and then some boos. Here is that part of the exchange: 

     >> NIK GOWING: Could I -- may I ask you a question? How would you define, for those who are not familiar with your government's policy and the detail of it, what is the principle on restrictions of openness in China? >> YANG XIAOKUN: We do not have restriction at all.

While it is justified to criticise China for their human rights record, it is not like all Northern countries had such a fantastic record themselves. The United States come to mind immediately, but also European countries are not always the poster-children they’d like to portray themselves as. So we could also have spoken about the surveillance of internet traffic in Germany, the Patriot Act in the United States, or similar things in almost any other country.

Dynamic Coalition for Open Standards

After the hardcore candy-bar lunch following on a skipped breakfast, the day went on productively with a press conference on the first so-called “Dynamic Coalition” at the IGF, which was started by a group of organisations and companies, including SUN, CPTech, the library of Alexandria, W3C, IP-Justice, the Yale Information Society Project, and the Free Software Foundation Europe.

Talks are ongoing with other major companies and several countries, as well as NGOs who have an interest in Open Standards. The goal will be to define a common understanding of what constitutes an Open Standard, practice examples of Open Standard implementations and policy advice on Open Standards.

You can see some first press echo at Computer Business Reviw Online, with more to follow.

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Inauguration of the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

Posted on 30. October, 2006 by Georg Greve

Today is the first day of the inauguration meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens, Greece. The IGF is an outcome of the second phase of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and follows up on its Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). While not having a policy setting mandate, the IGF is a global policy discussion forum, including issues that might greatly affect Free Software, such as Spam regulation, Cybercrime and knowledge monopolisation.

First impressions

When arriving last night, the first positive impression was the general availability of gratis wireless internet access everywhere, including the hotels. Not quite so pleasant is the massive presence of Microsoft advertisement everywhere: The internet cafe runs entirely on Microsoft Windows, the beamers show large Windows XP logos in the background, and the official IGF website has the IGF synthesis paper exclusively in Microsoft Word format. This seems consistent with the experience of the UN WGIG and the process leading up to the IGF.

Indeed, the synthesis paper has something to say about this: 

     63. Many submissions stressed the need to differentiate between two distinct issues: how to define and uphold open standards on the one hand and the debate over proprietary versus free and open source software (F/OSS) on the other. The proponents of F/OSS argued that the Internet and free and open source software went hand-in-hand. It was F/OSS that made the Internet and the World Wide Web possible and continued to shape and develop it. The contribution regretted that F/OSS and its representatives had been all but excluded from the debate on Internet governance so far, first in the framework of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) and subsequently in the IGF processes.

It seems this is mainly what’s left of the Sovereign Software: Open Standards, Free Software, and the Internet submission I wrote for this first meeting of the IGF.

 

This is somewhat disappointing as the submissions were invited with the additional information that they would be made available to the delegates here in Athens in original and translated form. In fact, I was even asked for translator guidelines on my submissions, including a Free Software Essentials Reference Sheet which appears to have disappeared entirely. Worse is the misrepresentation of what was submitted, though, as the paper takes care to explain how Open Standards and Free Software are not connected in theory, but very connected in practice.

Where to from here?

Many of the discussions — as well as many of the main hall meetings — seem to be struggling with the question of where the IGF will be heading, what it will discuss, and how that will be carried forward. So this is probably a central question to answer here in Athens. If you want to follow what’s going on, the IGF does have a timely transcript of statements in the plenary and a live video stream from Athens on its official web page.

So the next days will be filled with plenty of discussions, and on 1 November I’ll try to bring in at least some Free Software perspective at the high level panel on "Access" here at the IGF.

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Sign up against cultural repression in Brazil

Posted on 18. October, 2006 by Georg Greve

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), two organisations that have achieved questionable fame with their lawsuits against young children and grandparents in the United States (also see the resources of the EFF) have announced another round of bloodshed, this time also focussing on Brazil, the "Free Culture Nation".

The so-called "Reproduction Rights Industry" is probably the only industry you’ll encounter that considers it beneficial for their business to sue their customers, including those too young, too old or too poor to defend themselves. And it appears that IFPI itself had second thoughts on the social benefit they were bringing society: Several professors of Brazil’s most renowned law school, the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), wished to hear what IFPI had to say, so they accredited themselves to the press conference on Tuesday, 17 October 2006 at Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro.

When the professors arrived, they were told the room was full (which journalists who were in the room denied) and that IFPI ran out of copies of the press release (yeah, right).

All of this gives an involuntarily clear and obvious image of the mindset of IFPI, RIAA and others and only serves to further diminish the credibility of their claims of usefulness to authors, artists and society at large. They only serve one particular group of companies which artists like Courtney Love describe as the real pirates:

    Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is
    the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying
    for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.

    I'm talking about major label recording contracts.

 

Right now it is illegal in Brazil to use your iPod to listen to a CD you bought in the store. So in order to fight back against cultural repression and re-introduce the right of private copying of music that was legally purchased, the FGV has launched an online petition to amend the Brazilian law.

So please go there and sign now.

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European Commission seeking position on DRM (and it doesn’t look good)

Posted on 12. October, 2006 by Georg Greve

[ copied here from DRM.info, original posting: “European Commission seeking position on DRM” ]

    IP-Watch.org reports that “EU Online Content Stakeholders Debate DRM“, which demonstrates the need for a much more informed debate on Digital Restrictions Management.

    On the one side there is the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a known mouthpiece for Microsoft’s corporate interests with a flaky grasp on truth in numbers, as the Economist has found: “BSA or just BS? Dodgy software piracy data“. It seems to continue this tradition with its newest claims based on “BSA data” that DRM would have allowed for an additional EUR 247 million worth of music downloads, because people would have bought many more players if there had not been private copying levies.

    Unfortunately it appears that Commissioner Reding and even the European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC) were impressed by the BS(A) claims, believing in the perpetuum mobile of total control of all aspects of society without any damage to freedom of speech or privacy.

    As the TiVo, which spies on the viewing habits of its owners and reports them back to the company, and the SONY rootkit, which reported data about CDs played, demonstrated, both are already proven false by existing DRM solutions.

    The saddest part in all of this is probably played by the European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC), which supports the quest of the industry to increase control and dependency of authors and composers by means of DRM, giving them even worse deals and negotiating positions in the future.

    The only voice of reason in all of this discussion seems to have come from the European Consumers’ Organisation (BEUC), which pointed out that Digital Restrictions Management is not about Copyright, but about protecting the business model of centralised and controlled distribution channels, which is why they call for an open dialog on alternative remuneration proposals.

    The Commission plans to make its mind up until the end of the year, and right now seems inclined to follow the lead of the BSA. Where that is heading becomes clear at the end of the article, when they point the finger at the EU Data Protection that makes it difficult for the BSA to play private police and enforcer for the large media corporations.

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Lifting the veil on DRM in different ways

Posted on 9. October, 2006 by Georg Greve

[ The following article was first posted on DRM.info. It is copied here for the convenience of readers of the Fellowship. ]

In the entire discussion on Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) there are multiple problems that prevent broader discussion and understanding. One of them is that when talking about "Digital Restrictions Management" (DRM) the eyes of many people simply glaze over, as it is quite a mouthful and sounds technical, a certain attention killer.

The same is true when using the labels that proponents of the technology would like to see people using, "Digital Rights Management" or "Technological Protection Measures" in particular. The names alone seem to erect a barrier for people to understand how this technology affects their lives in very real ways.

Trying to attract public attention by turning yourself in to the police, as a group of French DRM activists have done, is a good idea. The German consumers organisation vzbv has taken this to a different level by opening a virtual jail for people who admit to have made private copies — a right under German law, but one that is increasingly made illegal by DRM.

But none of this undoes the necessity to explain to "normal" people what DRM is and how it affects all our lives.

For this, I’ve drafted "If paperback books came with DRM… a short story", which takes an object that people know (a paperback book) and describes how it would behave if it came with DRM.

The goal was to describe commonly found DRM effects and put them all into the book, followed by real-world examples of DRM systems that have such effects. If you have ideas how to improve the story, if you know other examples, or if you have general feedback, please let me know at greve–at–fsfeurope.org.

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Back from Day against DRM Protest in Zürich

Posted on 3. October, 2006 by Georg Greve

An exciting day is coming to an end now. You can read a short account of our Day against DRM protest in downtown Zürich on my other blog on DRM.info, so I won’t repeat the same story here, but I will include the link to some very nice pictures.

The FSFE Zürich Crew was very happy with all the people who turned up, there were people from literally all over Switzerland who had sometimes travelled for more than 2 hours on the train to join the protest. Talk about motivation and dedication. Thank all of you so very much!

But unlike the others who could head to lunch directly, we had another task ahead of us: We needed to officially take into possession the new offices of the Free Software Foundation Europe in Zürich. And what could be better suited to this task than hoisting the flag of the Fellowship?

Hoisting the flag in FSFE's new offices in Zürich
(click on image for larger version)

So we’ve now officially taken our new offices into possession.

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DAY AGAINST DRM: Launch of DRM.info, the DRM awareness portal

Posted on 3. October, 2006 by Georg Greve

To describe the past weeks running up on 3 October as hectic would be a major understatement. Within very short time, a group of dedicated FSFE people put together a collaborative effort among digital liberty, new media, consumer protection and library organisations, as well as independent authors such as Cory Doctorow and set up a portal to make the diversity of concerns and issues with Digital Restrictions Management visible. That portal just went online:
DRM.info -- the new DRM awareness portal

We may just have set a new record in setting up such an initiative, and the Fellowship certainly had a great part in this: It was a very special Fellow who spent days enslaved in front of the computer to put together the technology. Other Fellows helped to bring together other bits and pieces. Ultimately, as so often, the collaborative information platform was a collaborative effort. So many thanks to all who were involved!

For the design of DRM.info I would like to send a huge kudo to Agnieszka Czajkowska of creative_geeks who helped us out with some really nice design and also made this button to link to DRM.info:
[ The button to link to DRM.info]

Please use it! Make sure that people will find this site easily, so knowledge about the problems of Digital Restrictions Management will no longer be circulated mainly within closed circles!

But now I need to get ready, because there will be a public protest against Digital Restrictions Management in downtown Zürich 

     TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2006 from 11:30 until maximum 13:00 NEXT to ZÜRICH HAUPTBAHNHOF -- near the Dataquest store Meeting point: central station "Bahnhofquai" exit from 11:00.

and I wouldn’t want to miss it. Hope to see many of you there!

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WIPO General Assembly: Broadcasting Treaty, Development Agenda and better NGO participation

Posted on 28. September, 2006 by Georg Greve

Because FSFE is about to open an office in Zürich and we’re also preparing some interesting actions for next week, I’m currently quite pressed for time. That is why I decided to shorten my stay at the WIPO General Assembly to two days — and naturally picked the two most interesting days to attend. When I left this afternoon, it appeared that development on both the Broadcasting Treaty and the Development Agenda is quite positive.

Broadcasting Treaty

The diplomatic conference to "wrap things up" for the Broadcasting Treaty was hotly debated and in fact the emerging consensus seemed to be along the lines of holding a diplomatic conference only after some more deliberations, during which an understanding of the basic approach for the treaty should evolve. It also seems secure now that webcasting is not going to be part of that treaty.

Development Agenda

Regarding the Development Agenda, all Member States agreed to continue the discussion. The emerging consensus seemed to come down to a continuation of the discussions in the "Provisional Committee on Proposals related to a WIPO Development Agenda" (PCDA), so at the highest level, while the extremely ineffective "Permanent Committee on Cooperation for Development related to Intellectual Property" (PCIPD) is going to be discontinued. It was a remaining question whether to have two or three weeks of PCDA, but the continuation seemed secure.

How to improve NGO participation

Given our experience at the last sessions of the WIPO committees, and triggered by the experience of having all NGOs speak to an almost entirely deserted room on Wednesday night, we starting discussing the points that we felt were most problematic in the NGO participation.

On the grounds of those discussions and with the help of Barbara Stratton, I drafted a proposal paper on how to improve NGO participation in the future, which we circulated for comments among NGOs and some governments:

    Proposal to improve NGO participation at WIPO

    All NGOs appreciate the opportunity to contribute substantially to
    ongoing negotiations and would in particular like to thank the
    vice-chair for his appreciative chairing of last night's session, when
    the Non-Governmental Organisations were speaking to an almost empty
    room. We understand the difficulties of incorporating NGO
    interventions into the General Assembly and appreciate that many
    Member State delegates had other obligations, but with regard to
    contributing to the work of the other committees of WIPO we would like
    to suggest a more systematic approach of incorporation of NGO
    interventions into their deliberations based on our experience in PCDA
    and SCCR this year.

    Non-Governmental Organisations contribute in an important way to the
    work of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) by
    providing expert and hands-on advice about many of the issues
    discussed by its committees. Different approaches have been tried, and
    not all of them were equally effective in incorporating NGO advice
    into the work of Member State delegations in ongoing negotiations and
    between sessions in a way which would be most useful and helpful to
    the delegates.

    Based on this experience, we encourage the WIPO General Assembly to
    establish two best-practice experiences as general practice to follow
    in WIPO meetings with NGO participation.

    1. The opportunity to speak briefly on each substantive agenda item

     As the first session of the Provisional Committee on proposals
     related to a WIPO Development Agenda (PCDA/1) has shown, it greatly
     improved the efficiency of the meeting if NGOs are given the
     opportunity to speak specifically and briefly (e.g. the normal 3
     minutes) on agenda items, thereby contributing directly and
     pertinently into the discussions, instead of submitting general
     statements on the subject of the entire meeting. We believe this
     facilitates more focussed and helpful participation.

     Adopting this as a general principle will make it possible for NGOs
     to prepare targeted and specific input on agenda items before the
     meeting, instead of having to come up with a statement ad-hoc, or
     having to remain more general in their statement.

    2. Verbatim statements in the report,
     Dissemination of written statements

     NGO statements are generally short, but phrased carefully with the
     entire expert knowledge on the issue in mind. When being rephrased
     for the report, they do not become significantly smaller in
     size. Rephrasing them does however generate additional work for the
     Secretariat, while potentially losing some depth in the carefully
     phrased expert advice.

     During the SCCR/14, NGOs were invited to deliver their comments in
     writing for inclusion in the meeting's papers. These were gathered
     into one file, translated and delivered along with the report to
     the member state delegations and capitals and are available on the
     meeting web page. Having spoken to some delegates at this meeting,
     they have indicated that this was very helpful to them. In order
     to preserve and provide the highest level of expert advice, we
     recommend to make this general practice at WIPO.

    This proposal is supported by the Free Software Foundation Europe
    (FSFE), International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA),
    electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL), IPJustice.org

 

The response from Member States to this was generally quite positive, only the rightsholder NGOs I spoke to were not thinking that NGO participation in WIPO should be improved in quality, which did come as a surprise. I have to admit I did not expect them to be happy with occasionally speaking to almost empty rooms, and sometimes not at all, only to then have statements loosely paraphrased and subsequently buried in a very large report.

On the side of public interest NGOs, I know there is a strong desire for a more structured approach to allow substantial input on issues when they are still being discussed, and not only after the discussion is already finished.

During the World Summit on the Information Society there was much talk about how global governance is changing, how governments, which are strictly regional, interact with NGOs, which are focussed on specific issues. For this reason, NGOs tend to have broader knowledge across regional boundaries of certain issues, while governments necessarily seek to represent the interests of their countries.

It is precisely this different view on things that can make the dialog fruitful for both sides, and increase the quality of governance overall. But we’re only just beginning to find ways of how to structure this dialog, and it will take some time to find out how the different approaches can be brought together in the most constructive way.

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Piracy redefined, and other gems from Helsinki

Posted on 25. September, 2006 by Georg Greve

End of last week I found myself at a seminar of the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues (SERCI) in Helsinki, Finland. The seminar was titled "IPR Protection of Software: Copyright, Patent and/or Open Source?" and sponsors were in particular Microsoft and Nokia. Given my experience with the SERCI web site when using Free Software, I was not entirely sure what to expect:


The web site of the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues (SERCI) when viewed with Free Software

The main opening presentation indeed did little to alleviate my concerns: the concluding hypothesis was that it might be a good idea to abolish copyright on software and use exclusively software patents as a means of monopolising software control. This set the context for many of the presentations, including that about how Microsoft was unfairly prosecuted by the European Commission.

While I made sure to distribute at least our Free Software Essentials Reference and provide input by friendly questions at the end of each presentation, that form of interaction is somewhat limited. So software patents and competition law came back up for debate during the "Policy Panel" on day two. Participants of that panel were: Dietmar Tallroth, Director of Open Source and Java, Nokia, Mark Lange, Senior Policy Counsel, Microsoft, Jonas Bosson, FFII, and myself.

I got the final slot in the 15 minute starting presentations (mine is available here) during which I had to set straight some of the things that were said before. Among other things I highlighted how Samba seeks competition on the merits and wants to write better software than Microsoft, which is why they need to know the interoperability information on protocols and interfaces used, but are not interested in any Microsoft source code. I also explained how Microsofts current licensing proposal ultimately boils down to "we only want competition from those who do not compete with us." As you can imagine, the discussion got relatively lively after that.

Nokia: GPLv3 and DRM

My personal favorite was probably the presentation of Dietmar Tallroth of Nokia. He had just come back from a face to face meeting in the GPLv3 process to discuss in particular the clauses on Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), that have recently made the headlines when some Linux kernel developers took public position against it.

According to Mr Tallroth, the potential issues with DRM were clarified sufficiently for Nokia. He expressed understanding and acceptance of the position taken by FSF, and provided that the result of the recent discussions is present in the next draft, there are only a few more points to clarify in the software patent language, for which he was generally optimistic.

Indeed, Mr Tallroth was very explicit on how he found the Free Software Foundation very reasonable, pragmatic and indeed considerate of input into GPLv3 — which he said contradicted the image that some people were having. So his conclusion was that unless there were major surprises, Nokia will be going with GPLv3.

It would be an odd item in the history of Free Software if major companies like Nokia have end up having no problems with GPLv3, but the Linux kernel refuses to use it for what is a percieved lack of friendliness with the commercial world.

Pirates at the end

The final presentation was given by Dr. Mikko Mustonen of the Helsinki School of Economics. He started off by redefining a pirate to be anyone who "writes a piece of software that does something similar to what someone else has already written" to launch into a monologue about how Free Software in general and MySQL in particular is only a bunch of "pirates" and essentially the root of all evil.

Economically he tried to base this on calculations that make the assumption of a zero-sum financial transaction in the distribution of Free Software, which is clearly false, as well as ignoring all the areas which are positively affected by more competition and better software that allows companies to be vendor-independent.

Mark Lange and I briefly discussed that if one were to apply this logic to Window environments, Microsoft would also be considered a "pirate." So would, if one were to apply that logic to other fields, be all of humankind. Maybe Dr. Mikko Mustonen should have spent more time on learning by imitation and studying what other people have already done instead of making up theories that are somewhat remote from reality.

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