In general, we definitively agree with the report from the Youth caucus, that the Intersession meeting was more fruitfull than expected from the very name of the meeting. I don't know if is the Parisian atmosphere that pervaded into the conference hall, but it seemed to me that discussions with state delegates as well as conference officials, were much more friendly and efficient than in Geneva.

Concerning Scientific Information, our speech on behalf of the WG-SI, in the plenary session had definitively a positive impact. It raised awareness among the delegates that scientific authors are willingly donating the content of their research accounts and are not paid for the papers that are published in extremely costly scientific journals. Most often delegates were unaware of this basic fact, that obviously scientists have failed to efficiently communicate, up to now. The speech by world famous Richard Stallman in the plenary session, on behalf of the WG-PCT working group also stressed that : Copyrights block access to scientific publications. Every university should be free to make an open-access mirror for any journal, so no one is excluded from access. With the kind authorization of H.E Samassekou, chairman of the PrepCom, we are able to make many copies of our statement that we left on tables, During plenary session breaks, we also gave in person our statement to certain delegates. When the discussion turned to be friendly and positive, in many occasions, we also gave "Open Access" T-shirts ( when we were not already out of stock ! ). Per chance, we were even able to give one T-shirt to the chairman of PrepCom H.E Adama Samassekou !. This casual lobbying action was quite successfull. We were very happy that "Open Access" is now been included first in the list of items in paragraph 21-22 We are deeply gratefull to the states ( Fiji and Australia ) that supported the "Open Access" item in the Declaration of Principles. We were pleased to see that "Open Source" is now also listed. It remains to the FSF to lobby so that it should be replaced by "Open Source / Free Software ". Concerning the Plan of Action, although much of the language that we proposed has not been retained, we are pleased that a program to support Open Access journal is included in paragraph 15 ( Access to information and knowledge ) and peer-to-peer technology is encouraged in paragraph 39 - E-sciences.

For the Declaration of Principles, the states have formed working groups : "Communication Rights" (Chair: Canada), "Cybersecurity & Privacy" (Chair: EU) and "Internet Governance" (Chair:Kenya). Session of these groups were openned to observers, but we did not have time to attend to them, as many meetings were taking place in the same time. Of course, when reading the Latin Amercia caucus report, it is clear that some "frustration" remains, depending on each level of expectation. One troublesome paragraph is the new paragraph 40C proposed by the USA. Only IPR owners are mentionned, leaving the true IP creators ( such as scientists that donate their copyrights without counterpart ) without any protection or recourse against the abuse of copyright owners acting contrary to the intents of original IP creators. This point has been included in the Statement by Meryem Marzouki on behalf of the whole Civil Society ( 18 July ) A most worrisome aspect is that the creation of a Digital Solidarity Fund appears difficult, as the European Union opposes it. Without funding, we can hardly see how infracture "actions" can be taken.

The inner working of the Civil Society was, on the whole, satisfactory. Some improvements should be made, however, concerning the openness of the debates in the Civil Society Bureau (CSB). The first project sponsored by the CSB chairperson to organize informal meetings between states delegates and the Civil Society was finally rejected in favor of requesting a right to speak in the plenary sessions. The civil society plenary initiative of a general response of the Civil Society that was presented by Meryem Marzouki was extremely good. The text is very well written and sticks to the important points of difficulty.

It is clear that the Civil Society has gain much credibility within the ranks of diplomats and conference officials. A huge victory is that the Civil Society has been allowed, in the next PrepCom3, to make statements during the plenary session; before opening the discussion about each paragraph. The Civil Society is not part of the negotiation process, but its intervention occurs before each step of the diplomatic negotiation. The hopefully specific and convincing recommandations of the Civil Society should be still fresh in the mind of delegates when the diplomatic word to word negotiation starts. It is going to impose on Civil Society actors a very hard work of suggesting realistic and precise recommandations, but it is worth it.

For the future PrepCom3, if the Civil Society wants to keep its hard won credibility, one should avoid at all costs long and monotone "vanity speeches" that intend to boost the importance, the representativity, the alledged achievements of an organization and that in fine suggest only very vague recommandations in "techno speak". Instead one should focus on the true reason to be part of WSIS which is advocacy. The Civil Society should promote very short ( 3 to 6 minutes ) powerfull speeches that underlines some key advocacy points while always mentionning to which paragrahs, or even sentences, in the documents they refer to. Some would complain that there might not be enough time. I am not certain that the efficiency of a speech is proportional to its duration. These short advocacy speeches can be completed by giving printed docuements to delegates (before or after the speech). We believe also it is quite important and democratic to give the right to speak to as many actors as possible, within the time constraints of the plenary sessions.