Through the Best Bits platform, the Internet Democracy Project has worked with civil society organisations from around the world to draft and submit an early statement to the meeting’s organisers on what we hope the proposed 2014 Internet governance summit in Brazil will address and which processes we believe are required to do so adequately. The full list of signatories to the statement can be found here. More
On 21 October, 2013, a High Level Leaders Meeting took place in Bali on the day before the start of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The theme of the meeting was ‘Global Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration for Achieving a Safe, Secure and Tolerant Cyberspace: Enabling Growth and Sustainable Development through Cyber Ethics’. Anja Kovacs was invited to address the meeting as a panelist. A lightly edited transcript of her comments, which urged the gathering to give priority to human rights and multistakeholderism over and above cyber ethics, can be found below. More
While progress has been made in some areas over the past decade, there are still numerous Internet-related public policy issues that require to be addressed at the global level and that do not have adequate processes involving all stakeholders in place. Many have proposed that all these issues should be made the responsibility of one global body, be it new or existing. The Internet Democracy Project, however, believes that this is not the right way forward. Instead, we propose a decentralised model that builds on various existing processes but is not restricted to it and that ensures all stakeholders are integrally involved. Let us explain. More
Earlier this week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff delivered a rousing speech in the UN General Assembly, slamming the USA for the NSA’s spying, emphasising the importance of freedom of expression and privacy to support democracy, and calling for a global, democratic and just framework for Internet use and governance. The Internet Democracy Project joined other civil society organisations from around the world in expressing our strong support to Ms. Rousseff, through a letter, for the many excellent point she raised in her speech. The text of our letter can be found below. The full list of signatories can be found here. More
On 31 August, the Internet Democracy Project submitted its responses to the questionnaire that was made available by the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (WGEC) of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) last July. The questionnaire seeks to get input on the broad questions that constitutes the WGEC’s mandate: what is enhanced cooperation as per the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, and how should it be taken forward? The Internet Democracy Project argued that not a centralised, but a distributed model of Internet governance should constitute the road ahead. Our complete responses can be found below. More
With inputs from Richa Kaul Padte In recent months, the calls for a complete ban on pornography, as well as for the criminalisation of consumption of pornography, have fast been growing louder, and both Parliament and the Supreme Court are now studying such proposals. More
Ever since the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) brought out rather starkly disagreements among governments about governments’ role in Internet governance, this issue has received considerable attention. What is discussed far less, however, is that, in this ongoing tug of war, civil society is paying a high price: notwithstanding the extensive lip service both governments and international organisations increasingly pay to the multistakeholder model, civil society’s ability to contribute to and shape the crucial debate and decisions on the role of governments in Internet governance and decisions in practice is consistently undermined in the core arenas in which this debate is being furthered. This negatively affects civil society’s ability to participate in Internet governance as a whole. More
From sexual harassment to rape threats to gender-based hate speech, women face disproportionate levels of abuse online. This briefing paper by Richa Kaul Padte and Anja Kovacs asks: how and to what extent can the law in India help? And what amendments could be made to the law to improve support for women in their fight against online abuse? We investigate. (A shorter version of this paper has been published in EPW (Economic and Political Weekly), 29 June 2013). More
At the recently concluded Freedom Online Coalition conference — [Freedom Online — Joint Action for Free Expression on the Internet] — Anja Kovacs was asked how security and human rights can be balanced, and whether conversations between governments and civil society like those at the meeting were aiding such efforts. More