[IRP] WE NEED YOU - crucial phase of drafting Charter of Human Rights and Principles on the Internet

[Max Senges]

Hi folks

Ian (who co-moderates the Internet Governance Caucus aka the mother of all
IG mailing lists) makes some interesting points below. I have commented
inline.

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 3:21 AM, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:

>  Hi Max, nice to hear from you. A couple of things come to mind from you
> writing.
>
> Firstly, we have chosen speakers for Sharm main sessions who will be
> willing to advance the rights issue. It will be good to strategise what else
> we might be able to do to advance the cause during the meeting.
>
>
One thing that comes to mind is that I am talking to avaaz.org I would like
to run some sort of campaign and come with a long list of people who
expressed that they care and are worried about their Human Rights on the
internet.


> Secondly, what else can we do during Sharm? I think we need to make our
> presence felt on this issue.
>
> Anyway, to the text ? I?ll have a look later and make more comments but the
> first thing that hit me was the use of both net neutrality and end to end
> principles. I think we have to be very careful here.
>
> Both end to end and net neutrality are retrofitted concepts that some
> people continue to defend but neither of which applies to the internet as
> is. I think we are better off dropping both phrases as both are contentious
> ? the internet is not end to end and never will be, and where net neutrality
> starts to imply no traffic shaping, we are getting into network management
> issues which we are best to avoid. The Norwegians have got it  right here ?
> I think we need to talk about the rights to access content and applications
> of choice, people understand that, and we avoid the technical debates and
> opposition. Similarly with end to end ? lets express what we are trying to
> achieve here and what the right is rather than imagining that somehow an
> internet without firewalls is suddenly going to happen or that?s the way it
> should be.  In other words, we have adopted catch phrases which don?t help
> our cause and create confusion ? lets get what we are trying to achieve here
> right!
>
> Interesting point. I don't consider myself a technology expert on the
infrastructure level. But I did discuss net neutrality on a panel at EuroDIG
and my position is: Yes of course we need traffic management. If there is
too many people and the lines are cogested some stuff (esp. real time apps
like voice, etc.) need to be prioritized. But there are two important
aspects: A) It needs to be reasonable - as in I want to know what and why:
"your skype video has been disabled. Please continue with voice only,
because the XYZ backbone in Chile is overloaded"
and B) the network must be open for innovation: As long as the data can be
transported using standard infrastructure (protokols), the net
infrastructure and the service providers should not have the possibility to
build walled gardens and only allow selected services. (I thought we were
about to overcome lock-in non-interoperable enviornments like compuserve and
AOL)

my2cent
Max


> (Robert, happy for you to pass this on to the drafters ? I?ll try to get to
> log in in a few days, but if that doesn?t happen it would be good to have
> these thoughts considered).
>
> All the best,
>
>
> Ian Peter
>
>
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