Internet Governance Forum a beacon of openness

Berlin, Sept 17th 2010 — This week the 5th meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2010) took place in Vilnius. The United Nations organised it as a multi-stakeholder dialogue on global internet governance which inherited from the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The wide range of deliberations span from classical internet governance topics such as IPv6 to open standards, accessibility, public sector information, privacy, freedom of expression and other internet values.

In a broad variety of working groups the IGF participants echoed a call for open standards and an open end-to-end internet safe from censorship. On the European side many Members of the European Parliament for instance Catherine Trautmann (S&D), Francisco Sosa Wagner (NI) and Amelia Andersdotter (PP) conveyed their passionate attention to open internet aspects.

“Ten years ago technologists aimed to keep the Internet safe from unwise regulatory interventions. Now they encourage public authorities to enforce openness in the digital markets”, explains André Rebentisch from the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. “Likewise the IGF transformed; from diplomatic debates on humanity and ‘Digital Divide’ into a forum which attracts internet-savvy stakeholders.”

A representative from Internet Society (ISOC) proposed to extend the open and global multi-stakeholder approach of the IGF, its unique and sucessful governance model, to other processes such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations. The ACTA addresses Internet Governance issues along Camembert and is negotiated by a small coalition of supportive trade administrations.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure has been participating as an non-governmental observer in the WSIS and IGF processes.

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About FFII

The FFII is a not-for-profit association registered in twenty European countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 1000 members, 3,500 companies and 100,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing.

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