[IRP] IRP Meeting

[Dixie Hawtin]

Hi all,

The IRP meeting will take place from 11-12:30am on Tuesday 27 September - put that in your diaries! Please note, even if you can't make it to the IGF you will be able to participate in the meeting remotely.

This is the outward-looking IRP event, we will also have a meeting to discuss internal issues - see bottom of this email for more details). As an outward-looking event, this is a good opportunity for us to raise awareness about important issues and contribute to building a wide movement for human rights in internet governance. Coming out of the last conference call, our two main aims this year are:
(a) to publicize the 10 Internet Rights and Principles which grew out of our meeting at the last IGF - encourage people to use them in their work and to unite behind them; and
(b) to discuss copyright in Internet governance - copyright is one of the main internet freedom battlefields at the moment in many countries across the world and certainly at the international level. It is underrepresented on the IGF agenda, so we will use our workshop to: examine the issue, develop a human rights message, and begin to think about strategies for action over the coming year.

Here is a suggested agenda for the meeting (which is 1.5 hours long):

1. Introduce IRP Coalition (30 minutes) Who we are, our aims/vision, our activities since last year -
*10 Internet Rights and Principles
*Other things we have done: Charter Version 1.1 (I don't know if we have time to get a Version 2.0 together), Charter Commentary and the new website (that Robert and his wife Jenn are developing)
*Discussion: how can we use the 10 IRPs? What role can they play in internet governance? How do we make sure they are used in this way?

2. Copyright in Internet Governance (1 hour)
*Description of the issue: case studies from different countries around the world, and at the International level.
*Human rights and copyright - a discussion about human rights approaches towards copyright (both as an issue in itself - ICESCR Article 27, for some background see Chapter 4 of http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/studies/download.do?language=en&file=31731, and in relation to other rights which are being violated by the solutions being pursued such as freedom of expression and privacy).
*What are the human rights messages? How can we promote them and fight back against the practice of cutting down on freedom to protect property? Who are our allies?

Questions to the coalition:
*Does this agenda look good? Do you have any suggestions/comments? Would you like to speak on any points?
*For the copyright section - who should our speakers be? What case studies should we look at?

Internal meeting
We also need to have an internal meeting at some point during the IGF to talk about internal matters: organisation and structure of the IRP, a process for electing a new chair (and steering committee?), and strategies/activities for the next year. Shall we agree a time for this meeting now, or shall we wait until we are there and then try and find a suitable time?

All the best,
Dixie

**** Global Partners has moved office, please see my new phone number and address below****
___________________________________________________________
Dixie Hawtin
Project Coordinator, Freedom of Expression and Communications Global Partners and Associates
Development House, 56-64 Leonard St, EC2A 4LT, UK
Office: +44 (0)20 7549 0338
mailto:dixie at global-partners.co.uk
www.global-partners.co.uk<http://www.global-partners.co.uk/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org/pipermail/irp-internetrightsandprinciples.org/attachments/20110905/328f091e/attachment.htm>