[IRP] FYI - New CoE group of experts on "Rights of Internet Users"

[Meryem Marzouki]

Dear IRP colleagues,

I'm representing EDRI (European Digital Rights) as observer to the Council of Europe CDMSI (Steering Committee on Media and Information Society, which held its 1st meeting agenda here: http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/media/CDMC/default_en.asp). Among many items on the agenda, the creation of an expert group on "Rights of Internet Users" was (MC-RIU) proposed by the Secretariat and discussed.

The tentative Terms of References and workplan proposed by the Secretariat  (see above link) were discussed during the 1st CDMSI meeting. 
Members States delegates agreed on its creation, provided that the terms of references are modified a bit, so that item (iii) of the "Main Tasks" now reads: "(iii) advise the CDMSI, upon its request, on all questions within its area of competence and on rights and responsibilities of internet users, intermediaries, and other internet actors." 

Anyway, the tasks remain wide enough to develop interesting work in the framework of the MC-RIU group. The main objective for the group, besides the "compendium of Internet users rights" would be to focus on existing recourses and remedies for users.

The group is supposed to be formed by 13 experts (this is the maximum allowed by the available budget, since experts are reimbursed for their expenses to attend the group meetings). It is currently written that these 13 will be 7 Member States representatives and 6 independent experts. After the discussion, there will be "at least" 7 Member States representatives. Of course, there could be more participants in the group, but the additional people will be called "observers". Note that the main difference is that observers don't get reimbursed for their expenses.

CDMSI members and observers were asked to send expression of interests and suggestions for independent experts (i.e. others than member states representatives) to the Secretariat by April 16. The CDMSI bureau will decide on final selection.

On behalf of EDRI, I expressed our interest to participate as expert, and I made suggestions for other independent experts, taking into account many criteria, such as a willing to include IRP people, as well as gender and country balance (needed to have the suggestions considered) and the fact that budget-wise, it is unlikely that the CoE would bring people based outside of the European continent. 
Again, not being in the small group of experts that will be selected doesn't mean not being able to participate to the work, though without travel funding to attend meetings. As the attached workplan mentions, at-large consultations will also be organized.

Obviously, this work would highly benefit from the work already done by the IRP (charter, 10 IRP, etc.), as well as by other groups on the same topic. I wanted to inform the coalition of this development, so that we can also collectively follow and participate to this new initiative, especially through the consultations that will be organized. Dixie and Matthias will probably make suggestions to follow-up on this.

Best,
Meryem

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Meryem Marzouki - Paris, France
Email: meryem at marzouki.info
Lab. LIP6/CNRS/UPMC - www-polytic.lip6.fr
IRIS (Imaginons un r?seau Internet solidaire) - www.iris.sgdg.org
EDRI (European Digital Rights) - www.edri.org