the i-witnesses

Internet leaders tread carefully at IGF round 2

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) opened in Rio yesterday on a sober note, with speakers cautious about their expectations.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s message to the assembled crowd emphasised the groundbreaking nature of the consultation mechanisms introduced at the Forum’s first meeting in Athens.

“The Internet Governance Forum is not a traditional United Nations meeting. It is a new model of international cooperation,” he said – reflecting the fact that here at the IGF participants from business, government and civil society meet as equals.

But he acknowledged that the Forum has no decision-making powers – instead it aims to inspire people to head in right direction:

“The forum can develop a common understanding of how we can maximise the opportunities the internet offers, how we can use it for the benefit of all nations and peoples, and how we can address risks and challenges.”

Meanwhile, Anriette Esterhuysen, executive director of the Association for Progressive Communications argued that the internet should be treated as a ‘public good’ (as opposed to a market product for profit-making) and that this approach must also inform its governance structure.

She noted that access to the internet – five billion people are currently left out – could be dramatically improved if there were more diversity (in terms of both local languages and content) and if the internet were freed from its closed and proprietary nature. “Why should blind people pay more for interfaces to read text because they're blind?” she asked.

But John Klensin, former vice-president of internet architecture at AT&T, defended the notion that technology requires a great deal of costly research and development. He also argued that it would take time for the internet to become diverse, and that many of the challenges for internet governance were rooted in historical problems.

“The decision to exclude [Kanji] characters wasn't based on an ignorant preference for English or Roman-based characters, but on the fact that the technology at that stage just had not matured enough for more international use.”

This begs the million-dollar question: how long will non-English speaking people have to wait to be part of the information society?

[Journalists unable to attend the Forum can get live webcasts from the IGF 2007 website]

Happy birthday ICANN?

It is nine years since ICANN – the ‘global’ agency that oversees the system of internet addresses – was set up. Since then it has been the subject of significant controversy, which came to a head last year when the European Union put pressure on the United States to decentralise ICANN’s powers.

So what’s happened since? Well, despite its global remit ICANN is still registered as a non-profit organisation in Los Angeles. But recent efforts by civil society organisations and other governments are gradually forcing ICANN to be more open and transparent. For example, there’s now an online survey for public users to say just what we think about it.

The trials and tribulations of ICANN illustrate the challenges of trying to develop a suitable governance framework to manage our global internet architecture. Political and geographic boundaries are increasingly blurred, and the influence of those making profits from the industry adds another layer of complexity.

That’s why civil society organisations must be granted official status in ICANN's decision-making processes. Only then will the internet have a chance of surviving as a genuine ‘public good’.

> download Panos London's briefing about ICANN

Who’s who on the internet: a matter for privacy?

Building your own website has never been easier. Type those words into Google, and you’ll discover numerous companies that offer cheap services to help design, manage and register your site. 

But for several years a quiet battle has been raging over a controversial aspect of website ownership: namely whether the name and contact details of the person who registers a new website should be made available to the public.

At the moment, anyone who registers a website domain name is held in ICANN’s searchable whois database. For example, click here to find out who ‘owns’ panos.org.

Caught in the middle are the internet domain registrars, which are required to provide this information as part of their contractual obligations to ICANN. As one of the whois FAQs explains:

“Why don't you stop showing my address/name/email address on your website?

We have little control over what information is shown in our whois output as it comes directly from your domain name registrar's whois servers. If you want your details removing or changing, you should contact your registrar.”

Not surprisingly, the existence of such a database raises all sorts of data protection and privacy issues – for example, abuse by spammers. But intellectual property firms, as well police and government agencies, maintain that it’s necessary for internet surveillance in order to curb ‘cyber-crimes’.

After three months of intense debate over the issue, an ICANN working group has failed to arrive at any concrete decision. As Milton Mueller – professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies – says on the Internet Governance Project’s blog:

“Despite flirting with the kind of compromises and reforms that might actually reconcile privacy rights with identification needs, in the final weeks of the process trust and agreement among the parties broke down completely”

Inevitably, unlimited public access to such data is open to abuse by both crooks and the authorities. A consensual process between data protectionists and governments would help to ensure that a balance is struck. But ultimately I feel it is the provision of information by domain registrars that needs to be controlled locally – on a case-by-case basis – rather than by ICANN’s global decrees.

Africa left in the dark: why infrastructure matters

Satellite image of Africa at night / ESRI

Many of us are staunch advocates of the positive role ICTs can play in human development. But with this statement comes a whole load of assumptions. For example, access to an affordable communications infrastructure does not happen without electricity.

On this score, Africa fails abysmally. A recent article in The Economist states that “power shortages have become one of the biggest brakes on development [in Africa]”. The continent is home to over a sixth of the world’s population, but generates only four per cent of its electricity.

In response to this energy deficit, the World Bank recently set up the Lighting Africa initiative. This aims to provide “up to 250 million people in sub-Saharan Africa with access to non-fossil fuel based, low cost, safe, and reliable lighting products with associated basic energy services by the year 2030”. We must wait and see whether it succeeds.

But it’s not just lighting that relies on electricity. Open politics, freedom of expression, equitable health and education – none of these can be achieved without the development of adequate infrastructure, including electricity.

And as Panos London highlighted three years ago in our report, Completing the Revolution: the challenge of rural telephony in Africa: “The lack of electricity is excluding much of Africa from the communications revolution”. 

Yet current policy debates on access to ICTs barely touch on infrastructure issues, such as electricity. It’s all very well to roll out connectivity – to telephones or the internet, say. But without adequate investment on basic infrastructure, those in rural areas don’t stand a chance of benefiting from Africa’s communications revolution.

Tense times for Google’s ‘marriage’ to the media

Last week, Google quietly introduced a facility on their US news service that allows anyone quoted in an article to respond with their personal comments – even though Google doesn’t own the copyright to the original stories.

This move will undoubtedly strain the already tense relationship between Google News and the media industry.

For a start, Google is buying into the growing trend of subjecting mainstream media to a high level of scrutiny with the help of interactive technologies. For some journalists and editors, the idea of listening to what their readers think is wholly unpalatable. This style of self-righteous journalism simply cannot survive.

Another complaint is that Google is creating content on the back of material published by others. Former editor of New Media Age magazine, Mike Butcher, told The Guardian:

“This is an attempt by Google to hijack not only media but the entire online conversation. Since it does not own the rights to republish the news content, its next best option is to own the content produced by people commenting.”

Google says it is merely using its technology to enhance the news experience for readers, and claims that it’s not attempting to be a content provider. Software engineers Dan Meredith and Andy Golding explain that:

“Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as "comments" so readers know it's the individual's perspective, rather than part of a journalist's report.”

I’m not so sure. Google may not be carving out a full editorial role for itself, but its algorithms are a powerful factor in determining what news we read. And with its comment facility Google is definitely edging into the realms of content production.

As such, it will be increasingly difficult for Google to escape the regulatory mechanisms that keep media organisations in check. By the same token, ‘traditional’ media outlets can no longer view Google as a marketing machine. It seems to me that this marriage of convenience is on shaky ground.