[IRP] FW: Charter of Human Rights and Principles forthe Internet

Fri Aug 13 17:29:12 EEST 2010

I think the terminology of "people" is probably better than "citizens" which
in a national context could be discriminatory against non-citizens.  

This does though, raise in my mind a question--who is meant to be the
"owner" of the Charter.  I'm assuming the UN (GA?) but as we all know, I
guess, the remit of the UN in Internet/digital communications areas is a
subject of some dispute and even (ICANN?) areas of "non-jurisdiction" or in
other case (the IGF?) shared jurisdiction?

This querstion of course, raises very significant issues for the medium and
longer term and may be a mis-direction of energies at this point but it will
need to be addressed at some point.

BTW, I strongly agree with Parminder's point about "multi-stakeholderism"
(which is in fact a sister issue to the above).  The fact that certain
institutions (state structures) are proving less than completely effective
(to a considerable degree as a result of deliberate processes of undermining
their capacity and legitimacy) doesn't mean that we abandon them, but rather
for civil society it should mean that we redouble our efforts to strengthen
them as frameworks for democratic action and expression.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
[mailto:irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org] On Behalf Of Lisa
Horner
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 2:29 AM
To: 'parminder'; irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
Cc: 'irp-charter at rp.lip6.fr'
Subject: Re: [IRP] FW: Charter of Human Rights and Principles forthe
Internet

Hi

...

But it?s also good to continue discussion about the use of the word ?users?.
Michael suggested we use citizens, and Parminder suggests people or human
beings.  I agree with the points about rights deriving from our humanity and
not from the technology, but the idea of the Charter was to translate rights
standards to apply to the internet.  So I think we need to reference the
internet somewhere.  Maybe we need something like:  

?All people are equal before the law and are entitled without any
discrimination to equal protection of the law.  This applies online as well
as offline.?

Best,

Lisa

From: irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
[mailto:irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org] On Behalf Of
parminder
Sent: 13 August 2010 10:12
To: irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
Subject: Re: [IRP] FW: Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the
Internet

My response to what appears to be Oliver's notes on my comments

L5. I would steer well away from anything undermining equality before the
law. Lack of equality brings discrimination by definition. I would be
interested in hearing more about your question here, because I can't quite
catch it.
That said, I'd rather have "All Internet users" instead of "All Internet
stakeholders".

My objection was to saying all stakeholders - which seem to included
businesses - are equal before law. I dont think citizens/ people and
businesses are equal before law.

And to that extent, your subsequent comment about using 'all internet users'
instead of 'all internet stakeholders' does partly address that issue.
Though, as I said in my last email I have issues with use of 'Internet
users' term as well, and would prefer 'people'

A couple of reasons (and some overlap with my last email)

Many parts of a charter of rights vis a vis the Internet will apply to
non-users as well, for instance personal information, defamation etc....

also I am  never sure with the fast changing world if the user is always a
human being :), and hope in a few years in an era of Internet of things, we
would not like to give 'things' the same rights as Internet users.

So best to say 'all people' or 'all human beings', the traditional subject
of human rights.

Parminder 

On Friday 13 August 2010 01:57 PM, Lisa Horner wrote: 

Hi all

Comments on the Charter from Olivier below.

Thanks,

Lisa

Commenting on your discussion-annotated document:

L1: do we want to call it the Internet or use the broader term digital
communications

I think that these principles only apply to the Internet. I just cannot see
corporations running their own Global Virtual Private Network (VPN) abiding
by this charter. What they do on their private network is their own choice
and a lot of  articles would therefore not apply.

L2: if you start referring to each regional human rights bodies, you might
miss some out who might take offence. Keeping "United Nations" only is fine.

L4: this is a charter of rights. I don't think that it should defer itself
for national laws.

L5. I would steer well away from anything undermining equality before the
law. Lack of equality brings discrimination by definition. I would be
interested in hearing more about your question here, because I can't quite
catch it.
That said, I'd rather have "All Internet users" instead of "All Internet
stakeholders".
Also - replace "internet" with "Internet". The "Internet" as we know it has
an upper-case initial. internet with a lowercase i is any kind of
inter-networking which includes the use of corporate intranets & private
networks not connected to the Internet.

L6. I think that the context of digital identity here points definitely to a
privacy issue. Whilst one aspect of privacy is the right to keep information
about oneself private, the protection of digital identity deals with
identity theft which, in my opinion, is one of the biggest case of privacy
breach.
I also wonder whether this section should include a "right to be
forgotten/deleted" - ie. if you wish all information about you to be deleted
from your favourite social networking site, you may do so with a clear,
simple procedure - and will be assured that all information pertaining to
yourself, which you control in your social networking account, will be
deleted. This issue is becoming very significant with young people
publishing all sorts of details and possibly incriminating pictures on their
social networking sites, and companies looking for such information prior to
hiring - this is a gross privacy problem.

L7. I like the way the freedom from defamation is explained. It is left as
an open statement and I am concerned that any attempt to focus it further
would indeed open a can of worms. Here, I interpret the statement to say:
online defamation is the same as real world defamation - and I think that's
fine.

L8. Good point - I frankly do not know how to word this to make it sound
right.

L9. I would indeed remove "freedom of movement" from the list since this is
out of scope. That said, you'd also need to remove "movement" from the
"concerned right" column where appropriate.

Point of detail: the default spell check for parts of the document is
English (UK) and part of it is English (United States) - I suggest choosing
either one or the other for the whole document.

The rest of your comments notes amendments which you have made & I agree
with all of them.

Now for comments on parts of the text itself:

Preamble (Page 4)
"The Charter is addressed to all stake-holders of internet governance"
Suggestion to add: "The Charter is addressed to all actors and stake-holders
of Internet governance"
I find stakeholders to be too restrictive - you can be an actor without
having a stake in the process.

14.b. (page 13)
Sentence: "Workers and employees should have internet access at their
workplace."
I have a problem with this sentence because this is impossible in an
industry that's totally unrelated to the Internet. I cannot imagine a farm
worker having the right to Internet access at their workplace, or a builder,
or a bus driver for example.
I suggest removing this sentence and keeping the rest of this paragraph as
is.

Last but not least, I'd like to really congratulate the expert group - this
work is breaking new ground and I am absolutely thrilled with it. Well done!

Kindest regards,

Olivier

-- 
Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html

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