WSIS Civil Society Working Group
on Information Networks Governance

A commented Summary Report

Preliminary non-official draft V0.1

Francis Muguet in a personal capacity

as a proposal to the group.

INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM

Advisory Group Meeting

Geneva, 4-5 September 2007

Summary Report

1. The Advisory Group met in Geneva on 4-5 September to prepare the second meeting of the IGF to be held in Rio de Janeiro on 12-15 November 2007. The agenda, as adopted by the Advisory Group, is published on the IGF Web site. Below is a summary of the discussions under each agenda item.

Transparency / Observers

2. The group discussed how to improve the transparency of its proceedings and how to fulfill the mandate as it was set out in the press release issued by the United Nations announcing the renewal of its mandate. (“As part of its mandate, the Advisory Group has been asked to enhance the transparency of the preparatory process by ensuring a continuous flow of information between its members and the various interested groups.”) The group agreed to make publicly available the agenda of its meetings as well as summary reports of its deliberations.

3. The group also discussed a proposal made at the open consultations on 3 September to admit observers to its meeting. As there was no consensus on this proposal the group concluded that it would not be possible to admit observers at this session. While some members were in favour of admitting observers, others argued that a decision at this late hour would lead to an imbalance in terms of geographical and stakeholder balance, as it would have favoured Geneva based participants.

After the request, on September 03, from Dr. Francis Muguet, and supported by quite a few other stakeholders, that the Advisory Group meetings should be open, to fulfil the words of the renewed Advisory Group mandate, the question of openness of the group was debated.

None of the IGC advisory group members who had the courtesy and interest to be present to the open meeting voiced any support for an open meeting.

Since openness and the fight to get meetings open, is one of the core value of Civil Society, it demonstrates that current IGC advisory group members do not belong to Civil Society.

It is dully noted however that Prof. Kleinwachter, a special adviser, and Parminder, the IGC co-chairman voiced their support for observers. The argument of those opposing inclusion of observers because of a geographical imbalance is just a very illogical pretext, that does not take into account that observers would have been keen to divulge the meeting content to a wider audience. So the real issue was to keep the full content of the discussions in this meeting under secrecy.

The rules of procedure of the Advisory were not determined. It appears to continue to be the rule of silence. Dr/ Pisanty alluded during the open consultation to the Chatham House Rule This rule reads as follows: "When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed"." Therefore it does not means that the content should be kept confidential. The list of the participants to the closed Advisory Group meeting should be disclosed.

Review of the draft programme paper

4. The group reviewed the draft programme paper. A revised version is made available on the IGF Web site. In terms of the substantive programme the group recommended the following:

Critical Internet Resources:

Starting point for the discussion is the definition contained in the WGIG report (Para 13 a):

“Issues relating to infrastructure and the management of critical Internet resources, including administration of the domain name system and Internet protocol addresses (IP addresses), administration of the root server system, technical standards, peering and interconnection, telecommunications infrastructure, including innovative and convergent technologies, as well as multilingualization.”

The session will use a baseline approach, taking into account WSIS principles. The purpose of the discussion is to bring out information and opinion.

Suddenly the WSIS principles are reminded to be respected, while the IGF WSIS mandate is not respected.

There will be a balanced panel of five to seven experts, including the major players, reflecting a range of views

Access:

- Special connectivity problems faced by Africa, land-locked, island and least developed countries.

- Access challenges in rural areas.

- Skills development, training and capacity building in the use of technology.

- Low cost access solutions.

- Mobile and wireless access.

- International infrastructure reliability, connectivity policy and costs.

- Local and regional interconnection and cross-border regulation.

- Economic impact of access.

- Issues related to net neutrality.

Diversity:

• Building support and stimulating demand for locally developed content. This includes content that is not commercially viable, software support and the role of audio-visual communication.

• The role of open standards in promoting diversity.

• The involvement of language communities in developing internationalized domain names (IDN) and in developing multi-lingual content, including content in indigenous and minority languages.

• Technologies, policies, and capacity building to reduce illiteracy and to provide access and accessible content for marginalized and vulnerable groups of society, including older persons and persons with disabilities.

• Public policies concerned with User Generated Content (UGC).

Openness:

• Freedom of expression and the role of governments to protect that right.

• Protection of privacy and its relation to freedom of expression.

• The relationship between national regulations on freedom of expression and the border-free Internet.

• The relationship between private enterprise, human rights, and compliance with national law.

• The balance between citizens’ rights, and the rights of IPR holders.

• Innovative business models, made possible by the Internet, for dealing with digital content and their application in development.

• Open source software, proprietary software and open standards.

  The WSIS texts recognize Free Software, Open Source and proprietary software as three distinct paradigms.

• The challenges to access to information and knowledge and what can be done to overcome them.

• Maximizing access to content.

Security:

• Security threats to Countries, Companies, and Individuals as users of the Internet and to the Internet itself

- The definition of security threats, international security cooperation, including such issues as cybercrime, cyber terrorism and cyber warfare.

- The relationship between national implementation and international cooperation.

- Cooperation across national boundaries, taking into account different legal policies on privacy, combating crime and security.

- The role of all stakeholders in the implementation of security measures, including security in relation to behaviour and uses.

- Security of internet resources.

• Authentication and identification

- Authentication and identification and their role in fostering trust online and relation to the protection of privacy.

• Challenges to privacy in a security environment.

- Respecting freedom of expression.

- Privacy and identity.

- Privacy and development.

• Security issues related to the protection of children.

- Protecting children from abuse and exploitation in the online environment.

Emerging issues

- Emerging pervasive nature of the Internet in a political, economic, and social context.

- Policy implication of rapid spread wireless and mobile Internet.

- Policy implications of user generated content.

- Implications of competition policy.

The agenda of the most important emerging issue session is not in agreement with the IGF mandate, while trying to avoid to make recommendations.

Review of the draft schedule of the Rio de Janeiro meeting

5. The group agreed to make available as many meeting slots as possible for the various types of meetings. A revised schedule will be made available on the IGF Web site soon.

6. The group agreed to adopt a liberal policy with regard to the request for meetings of the Dynamic Coalitions. It agreed that there was a need for clearer criteria after the Rio de Janeiro meeting and that in future no Dynamic Coalition should have an automatic right to report back to the main session.

The denial of a right of reporting by dynamic coalitions is clearly a regrettable attempt to prevent coalitions to propose recommendations, in compliance with the IGF mandate..

The Meeting Point / Village Square

7. The group was informed about the logistical arrangements for a non-commercial Meeting Point / Village square that will be made available free of cost to interested stakeholder groups. It noted that the space had been extended, as the commercial meeting space had been cancelled, due to the lack of interest expressed in a commercial meeting space.

The Synthesis Paper

8. The group discussed the possibility of an extension of the deadline for contributions as an input into the synthesis paper and asked the Secretariat to clarify with the United Nations office in Geneva the modalities of a translation of the document.

The list of the consultants (with their affiliations ) involved in the preparation of the synthesis paper should be disclosed. Consultants should be selected within an open and transparent process, taking into account geopolitical, linguistic and gender diversity.

Schedule of work ahead of Rio

9. The group approved the following deadlines:

Deadlines for :
Proposals for panellists	12 September 2007
Secretariat notification of all meeting organizers	12 September 2007
Possible extension for contributions for inclusion into synthesis paper	17 September 2007
Initial lists of speakers to be provided by meeting organizers (as potential panellists)	22 September 2007
Final lists of speakers to be provided by meeting organizers (for inclusion in programme)	10 October 2007

The deadline for proposal of panellists is much too short.

The Advisory Group

10. The group had a first exchange of views of its own role and function and its renewal. An adviser to the Host Country Co-Chair, Mr Everton Lucero, presented a paper for discussion. The group was not in a position to give a considered view on this proposal. The paper is made available on the IGF Web site.

The question of the “rotation” of the members has been seemingly avoided.

Any Other Business

11. Mr Lucero put forward a paper on substance, structure and outcomes of the Rio de Janeiro IGF meeting that is available on the IGF Web site. The group was not in a position to give a considered view on this paper.

It seems that the views of the host country were given little consideration.

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