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

Fri Aug 13 20:05:53 EEST 2010

Hello everyone, 

Thank you Wolfgang and other experts for this extensive document. It will be exciting to release to IGF and world community (and use in classes). I appreciate how the discussion points are outlined (by Lisa and others) and I am sure that there are more within the Charter. 

To touch on one or two, or three:

Re: Privacy (Article 12)  referring to Anonymity (commented on by Ian Peter and Sylvia Caras)
Anonymity is tricky ? a ?key component to freedom? - ?A shield from the tyranny of the majority,? and ?an enabling component of the marketplace of ideas and essential to free expression? Hosein, 2006). But it can also be used for ?counter-strategies? (Mroz, 2008) to promote social injustice and intolerance, and commit fraud (as Ian suggests). In keeping with the consistency of the intentions of the UDHR as transposed to the Net - and to avoid weakening rights - people's anonymity should be included, with e-commerce's reliance on verification processes being another matter, it seems to me. This could be further supported by referring in the Charter to people (not companies) when discussing anonymity (and not stakeholders). 

Re: Users/people/stakeholders  (commented on by Parminder, M. Gurstein, F. Bajwa, Olivier)
I agree about the importance of terms, how functional descriptors (users) can limit freedom and agency, perpetuate inequalities (Dervin, 1989), and be used to elide power differences between social actors - people and companies. I think ?people? is best, with Lisa's suggestion to add  ?This applies online as well as offline.?

Re: L1-  Internet or digital communications (commented on by Olivier and Ben Wagner)
I thought we used the term ?networked communications? in an earlier draft so as not to date the Charter and to be inclusive. Was there opposition to that term? Manuel Castells uses this term and I tend to like it as it describes our networked era (networked individual, networked publics, network culture, network economy, etc) and covers mobile communication as well. 

Cheers, 
Robert

Dervin, B. (2003). Sense Making Methodology Reader: Selected Writings of Brenda Dervin. Hampton 	Press, New Jersey. 
Hosein, G. (2006). Privacy as freedom. In R. K. J?rgensen (Ed.), Human Rights in the Global Information Society (pp. 121-147). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Mroz, J. R. (2008, February). Countering violent extremism: Video power and cyberspace. New York: 	East/West Institute. Retreived from http://www.ewi.info/countering-violent-extremism-videopower-and-cyberspace

Robert Bodle, PhD
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
College of Mount St. Joseph
5701 Delhi Road
Cincinnati, OH 45233 USA
Phone: 513-244-4829
Fax: 513-244-4211
Email: robert_bodle at mail.msj.edu
________________________________________
From: irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org [irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein [gurstein at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 10:29 AM
To: 'Lisa Horner'; '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

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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