Civil Society Internet Rights Initiative, Chris Bailey

Civil Society Internet Rights Initiative, Chris Bailey

I work for the Association for Progressive Communications, the APC. I am the co-ordinator of its "Civil Society Internet Rights Initiative". First I want to explain briefly what the APC is and then I will tell you about our Internet Rights Initiative.

The APC is ten years old this year. It was the first, and remains the largest, globally interconnected NGO network of groups using the Internet to work for peace, human rights, social justice, and protection of the environment. We have member networks operating in more than twenty different countries around the world.

The Internet has become a vitally important area for civil society. While powerful political and economic interests dominate traditional media, the Internet has allowed the voices of ordinary people and organisations without strong financial resources to be heard. We are living today in the era of globalisation. Giant multi-national corporations and un-elected bureaucracies are making decisions that have a profound effect on the lives of people all around the world. Democratic institutions at both local and national level are being severely undermined by these developments. Social rights that have been established through long struggles to incorporate them into national law are being swept aside as capital moves rapidly from one country to another seeking areas where the workforce has the lowest wages and worst social conditions.

How can we fight back? The APC believes the Internet has a vital role to play in countering the power of the giant corporations and un-elected bureaucracies. New technology has been central to the globalisation process. It would be impossible without computers and computer communications. They have provided the means by which the corporations have been able to re-organise production and distribution on a world scale. They have made it possible for vast sums of capital to move around the world every day seeking the highest profits and undermining national attempts to establish social standards. How can we fight back against the power of this new technology without using it ourselves? It would be like trying to fight an armoured tank with a bow and arrow. We must use this technology and we are able to because of the Internet.

At present, there are 200 million Internet users worldwide and it is estimated that by the year 2005 this will rise to more than one billion. This provides a unique public sphere where people around the world can freely debate and consider the issues that are shaping their lives. Global communities, crossing national boundaries, can be and are being built through the Internet that are able to challenge and limit the power of international corporations and bureaucracies. APC has worked for the last ten years to help build such communities. We recognise that despite many successes we have achieved, that is still a lot to be done. Large numbers of individuals and organisations that could benefit greatly by using the Internet for social campaigning work are still not aware of its potential. Teaching them about the possibilities remains the central work of APC.

However, while the full democratic potential of the Internet still remains largely untapped we are being faced with a threat to this potential. The relative freedom that has existed on the Internet to exchange and discuss ideas is coming under attack. The threat comes from two sources. First of all commercial interest are trying to turn the Internet into a giant shopping mall. They have no interest in the potential that the interactive nature of the Internet has for allowing people to communicate their ideas and opinions on important issues to others. They view Internet users as simply consumers they want to sell products to. Secondly, the threat to free debate on the Internet comes from some politicians who are frightened by the power the Internet can give to ordinary people. They see the democratic potential of the Internet as a threat to their domination.

Together, commercialisation and increasing government regulation are attacking the power of the Internet for social campaigning work. APC's Civil Society Internet Rights Initiative has been launched to counter these developments. Its main aim is to defend and extend our right to use the Internet for this purpose.

The work of our Internet Rights project takes place in four key areas. I shall now deal briefly with each of them in turn.

The Right to Communicate

The Internet provides new opportunities for accessing information cheaply and easily. Information can now be obtained in minutes that often used to take weeks of searching through libraries to find. But the Internet is not just about receiving information. It is also about transmitting information. It provides a unique opportunity for voices to be expressed and heard that are excluded from other media.

The right to communicate should be recognised as a fundamental right for everyone. In a modern society in which communications has assumed such a central role, those that cannot be heard are largely ignored. It is essential for democracy that such exclusion is ended. New communication technology must be made available to all.

APC campaigns and works to achieve:

• Access to new communication technology for the developing countries
• Provision of facilities and training to assist the socially excluded in using the Internet
• Equal access to communications regardless of gender, race, language or disability

The Internet has provided the right for small or unpopular speakers to achieve a new degree of equality with large corporations and media outlets. This should be valued and defended as new broadband Internet technologies emerge. Wide public access to facilities for providing high standard multimedia Internet content should be guaranteed. Wealthy speakers must not be allowed to dominate these new technological developments.

The right to free speech and debate on matters of public interest

APC opposes all attempts to censor civil society debate, whether it comes from governments trying to stifle opposition from their own citizens or from powerful vested interests threatening to use their superior political or economic power to silence views they do not like. We oppose the use of copyright and intellectual property rights to stop criticism of corporations and their policies. The right to parody should be strongly protected.

The Internet is a medium for both public and private exchange of views and information, providing previously inconceivable possibilities for achieving an open and democratic society. This tremendous potential must be safeguarded and realised to the full. The free speech rights of everyone using the Internet to campaign for democratic rights and social justice must be guaranteed. Internet facilities should be made available to allow the widest public discussion of the policies of governments at international, national, and local level.

Protection of privacy

APC believes that the government, military, police, and commercial spying on the private communications of citizens are not acceptable in a democratic society. We agree with Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, who in an interview with the British Internet Magazine stated:

I feel that the arguments for the right for two people to have a private conversation even at a distance outweigh the very serious fears of it being used by criminals and terrorists.

We are particularly opposed to the sinister secret surveillance operations, such as Echelon, that are carried out by intelligence services behind the backs of elected representatives. The already dubious argument that this was necessary in the Cold War disappears completely now that situation has ended. APC supports the right of any organisation or individual to use encryption without having to reveal the key.

For open democratic processes in setting Internet standards

The Internet has grown and developed through bottom-up, decentralised, consensus based standards. It is this that gives it its open democratic nature. Those who want to transform it into a closed and controlled medium attempt to undermine its openness by imposing new hierarchical structures on it. Powerful commercial interests that want to turn the Internet into a giant shopping centre, designed only for consumers not citizens, support their efforts. APC opposes these developments and sides with those who work to maintain decentralised and open Internet standards. We are committed to supporting open source and free software.

Decisions taken by technical standards bodies can have a profound effect on the privacy and freedom of Internet users. For instance, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has come under increasing pressure to modify IP standards for political reasons. The FBI wants modifications to make surveillance of email easier, while representatives of the Chinese government want changes to enable them to carry out Internet censorship.

Clearly, decisions dealing with such requests are not just about technical questions. They involve issues that wide sectors of society should have a say in. Similar considerations concern the Internet Domain Name System (DNS), where corporations are trying to take control of the name system by using trademark law. APC calls for the maximum representation and participation by civil society in all aspects of Internet governance and standards setting. We want to end the present domination by corporate interests. We also want to achieve equal representation for developing countries. At the moment, use of the Internet is being restricted in these countries by standards bodies failing to support non-European languages, character sets, and cultural values.

Building civil society alliances for cyberspace

APC believes a broad alliance of civil society organisations has to be built if we are all to defend the Internet as a vital sphere for public debate and the building of cross-border communities. We want to build alliances with other civil society organisations and individuals on these issues, particularly those working in other media. We would like to work with others to produce more detailed policies on the key areas I have just outlined.