The World Summit on the Information Society is one of the grand UN summits, and its peculiarity is that its occurs in two phases. The WSIS is going to be closed by the Tunis Summit , 16 to 18 November 2005. It is the first UN summit where the Civil Society has been recognized and has played a significant role.

Recommendations in favour of Open Access to Scientific Information . have been adopted by the UN in December 2003 in the texts Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action thanks mostly to the long and difficult work accomplished by the Civil Society Working Group on Scientific Information (WSIS-SI). We shall discuss how ow to make use of those successes in the Second Phase.

Recommendations in favor of Free Online Coursewares and their implementations is an important topic of the Second Phase which now currently being discussed within the Education & Research family (WSIS-EDU). We shall discuss those crucial aspects that determine the elaboration of cognitive processes.

Last but not least, texts of recommendations in favor of the recognition of the role of Digital Aerts within the Information Society shall be discussed. As it is underlined by the Civil Society working group WSIS_ARTS being formed ( which all artists are called to join and to play a determinant role ) : Until this stage of the WSIS, Arts have been almost complety forgotten from the Declartion and the Plan of Action. What is the long term future of a Society without Arts and Artists ?.
Raising awareness is all the more an urgent and acute neccessity when we consider the Digital Arts that are born from the technological evolution that has made the Information Society possible, and which are therefore the inborn reflection of this new Society being created. It is time to react. We must act quickly because the last WSIS preparatory conference : PrepCom3 is going to be held from 19 to 30 september 2005. This is what explains why Arts&Sciences was held on such a short timeframe, because the goal of Arts&Sciences is not to be an event per se, but to reinforce the inclusive participation of the Civil Society at the WSIS, at the UN and International Organizations. All Civil Society organisations that wish to participate to the WSIS must send requests for accreditations as soon as possible since the deadline is 8 August 2005. People may still participate to the various WSIS meetings in their personnal capacity as observers included in the delegation of an accredited entity that is willing to accept them.

LEGAL VALUE of RECOMMENDATIONS

A question that is often asked : What is the use of the UN and WSIS recommendations since they are non-binding ? :

Besides their obvious political and mediatic values, recommendations are bringing the following legal advantages :
1. Concerning the UN specialized agencies (ITU, UNESCO, WTO, WIPO, World Bank,... ), there are several consequences :
   1. a recommendation should be binding since an agency is part of the UN ( an assessment that remains to be confirmed by the UN Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) that we are currently contacting, and which might depend on the history and relationship of each agency with the UN ).
   2. a decision, an initiative of a specialized agency cannot contradict with a WSIS recommendations. It might depend if this decision and initiative was made before or after the WSIS recommendation. ( again to be confirmed by the UN Office of Legal Affairs ).
   3. A WSIS recommendation authorizes the direction of a specialized agency to start directly and implement quickly a program according to the recommendation without the need of a yet another formal approval by the assembly (if any) of the said specialized agency. It is strongly incitative. For example: the UNESCO direction does not have to wait for a decision from the UNESCO General Conference to start a policy supporting Open Access. Some lobbies well implanted at UNESCO do not have the means to oppose it.
2. Coming from a special representation of the UN General Assembly, a WSIS recommendation supersedes all recommendations, past and future, on the same topic coming from a UN Specialized Agency that would contradict it.
3. A recommendation allows to waive the international responsibility of a state that is implementing it. For example, if state A is accusing state B before the WTO or WIPO because state A considers that the support by state B to an Open Access initiative amounts to an unfair competition to commercial publishers of state A or is causing damages to copyright holders of state A, then state B may invoke the recommendation.
4. Concerning international litigation between states, managed by an arbitraging procedure, the arbiter may based his/her decision on a WSIS recommendation.
5. A recommendation helps to waive the responsibility of whatever entity in a State is implementing the recommendation in regards to the Authorities of this State. Par example, if a research and funding institution takes the initiative of a policy whereby its researchers are obliged to follow an Open Access policy ( journals and/or archives ), then the Ministry of Industry & Commerce, sensitive to the lobbies of the publishing industry would have hard time to convince the Government to take actions against such institution. It provides an impeccable legal and political cover to cautious administrators.
6. A recommendation helps to waive the responsibility of an administrator in regards to the internal control body of his/her own entity concerning his/her decision to support the implementation of a UN recommendation. For example, it provides a cover for a University dean in regards to the University board of Trustees, as he/she is supporting the Open Access activities ( advocacy and/or management of journal/archives ) of a faculty member. Of course, it provides also a cover for a faculty member also in regards to his/her own hierarchy. Simarly, it provides a cover for the director of a philanthropic institution, in regard to his/her trustees, as he/she decides to open, or gives a special emphasis to, a grant program to the effect of supporting the implementation of a recommendation.
7. During preliminary drafting works of treaties between WSIS signatories states ( almost all the countries in the world are now part of the UN ), recommendations must be taken into accounts.
8. During preliminary drafting works of national laws ( de lege feranda process ), parliamentary inquiries, the existing international law shall be taken into account.
9. During litigations between private, state or international entities, in the absence of clear legal indications in national laws, a UN recommendation gives the judge or the arbiter a strong incentive to follow the the recommendation that could quoted within the text of the judgment. In the unlikely case, whereby the party that is invoking the recommendation happens to loose the litigation, this party shall benefits from "good faith", which waives this party from paying any damage. We can consider, as an example, the WSIS recommendation concerning the use of peer to peer networks concerning contents that has been produced by scientists who have waived their rights to payment. Therefore, writing a peer-to-peer software for the exchange of such scientific content may benefit from the support of an official scientific institution implementing direct scientific communication between scientists.